Quoting out of context (sometimes referred to as contextomy or quote mining) is an informal fallacy in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
Contextomies may be either intentional or accidental if someone
misunderstands the meaning and omits something essential to clarifying
it, thinking it to be non-essential. As a fallacy, quoting out of
context differs from false attribution, in that the out of context quote is still attributed to the correct source.
Arguments based on this fallacy typically take two forms:
As a straw man
argument, it involves quoting an opponent out of context in order to
misrepresent their position (typically to make it seem more simplistic
or extreme) in order to make it easier to refute. It is common in
politics.
As an appeal to authority,
it involves quoting an authority on the subject out of context, in
order to misrepresent that authority as supporting some position.
Contextomy
Contextomy refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context
in a way that distorts the source's intended meaning, a practice
commonly referred to as "quoting out of context". The problem here is
not the removal of a quote from its original context per se (as
all quotes are), but to the quoter's decision to exclude from the
excerpt certain nearby phrases or sentences (which become "context" by
virtue of the exclusion) that serve to clarify the intentions behind the
selected words. Comparing this practice to surgical excision,
journalist Milton Mayer coined the term "contextomy" to describe its use by Julius Streicher, editor of the infamous Nazi broadsheet Der Stürmer in Weimar-era
Germany. To arouse anti-semitic sentiments among the weekly's working
class Christian readership, Streicher regularly published truncated
quotations from Talmudic texts that, in their shortened form, appear to
advocate greed, slavery, and ritualistic murder.
Although rarely employed to this malicious extreme, contextomy is a
common method of misrepresentation in contemporary mass media, and
studies have demonstrated that the effects of this misrepresentation can
linger even after the audience is exposed to the original, in context,
quote.
In advertising
One of the most familiar examples of contextomy is the ubiquitous "review blurb"
in advertising. The lure of media exposure associated with being
"blurbed" by a major studio may encourage some critics to write positive
reviews of mediocre movies. However, even when a review is negative
overall, studios have few reservations about excerpting it in a way that
misrepresents the critic's opinion.
For example, the ad copy for New Line Cinema's 1995 thriller Se7en attributed to Owen Gleiberman, a critic for Entertainment Weekly, used the comment "a small masterpiece." Gleiberman actually gave Se7en
a B− overall and only praised the opening credits so grandiosely: "The
credit sequence, with its jumpy frames and near-subliminal flashes of
psychoparaphernalia, is a small masterpiece of dementia." Similarly, United Artists contextomized critic Kenneth Turan's review of their flop Hoodlum, including just one word from it—"irresistible"—in the film's ad copy: "Even Laurence Fishburne's incendiary performance can't ignite Hoodlum,
a would-be gangster epic that generates less heat than a nickel cigar.
Fishburne's 'Bumpy' is fierce, magnetic, irresistible even… But even
this actor can only do so much." As a result of these abuses, some
critics now deliberately avoid colorful language in their reviews. In 2010, the pop culture magazine Vanity Fair reported that it had been the victim of "reckless blurbing" after the television show Lost
had taken a review fragment of "the most confusing, asinine,
ridiculous—yet somehow addictively awesome—television show of all time"
and only quoted "the most addictively awesome television show of all
time" in its promotional material. Carl Bialik recorded an instance of an adverb being applied to a different verb in a 2007 advert for Live Free or Die Hard, where a New York Daily News quote of "hysterically overproduced and surprisingly entertaining" was reduced to "hysterically... entertaining".
In the United States, there is no specific law against misleading movie blurbs, beyond existing regulation over false advertising. The MPAA
reviews advertisements for tone and content rather than the accuracy of
their citations. Some studios seek approval from the original critic
before running a condensed quotation. The European Union's Unfair Commercial Practices Directive
prohibits contextomy, and targets companies who "falsely claim
accreditation" for their products in ways that are "not being true to
the terms of the [original] endorsement". It is enforced in the United Kingdom by the Office of Fair Trading, and carries a maximum penalty of a £5,000 fine or two years imprisonment.
Their
[Creationists'] favorite sport is stringing together quotations,
carefully and sometimes expertly taken out of context, to show that
nothing is really established or agreed upon among evolutionists. Some
of my colleagues and myself have been amused and amazed to read
ourselves quoted in a way showing that we are really antievolutionists
under the skin.
This has been compared to the Christian theological method of prooftexting:
Pseudoscientists often reveal
themselves by their handling of the scientific literature. Their idea of
doing scientific research is simply to read scientific periodicals and
monographs. They focus on words, not on the underlying facts and
reasoning. They take science to be all statements by scientists.
Science degenerates into a secular substitute for sacred literature. Any
statement by any scientist can be cited against any other statement.
Every statement counts and every statement is open to interpretation.
The Institute for Creation Research
(ICR) described the use of "[a]n evolutionist's quote mistakenly used
out of context" to "negate the entirety of [an] article and creationist
claims regarding the lack of transitional forms" as "a smoke screen".
Both Answers in Genesis (AiG) and Henry M. Morris (founder of ICR) have been accused of producing books of mined quotes. TalkOrigins Archive (TOA) states that "entire books of these quotes have been published" and lists prominent creationist Henry M. Morris' That Their Words May Be Used Against Them and The Revised Quote Book as examples, in addition to a number of online creationist lists of quote-mines. Both AiG and ICR use the following quote from Stephen Jay Gould on intermediate forms.
The fossil record with its abrupt
transitions offers no support for gradual change. All paleontologists
know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of
intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are
characteristically abrupt.
Context shows that Gould rejected the gradualists' explanation for
the lack of support for gradual change in favor of his own
interpretation. He continues:
... Gradualists usually extract
themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the
fossil record. Although I reject this argument (for reasons discussed
in ["The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change"]), let us grant the
traditional escape and ask a different question.
Knowing that creationists are quoting him as if he were saying there were no transitional forms, Gould responded:
Since we proposed punctuated
equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and
again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not
know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms.
The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends (on
the staircase model) are rife at the higher level of transitions within
major groups.
To suppose that the eye with all
its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different
distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the
correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed
by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest
degree.
This sentence, sometimes truncated to the phrase "absurd in the
highest degree", is often presented as part of an assertion that Darwin
himself believed that natural selection could not fully account for the
complexity of life.
However, Darwin went on to explain that the apparent absurdity of the
evolution of an eye is no bar to its occurrence, and elaborates on its
evolution:
Yet reason tells me, that if
numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect
and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to
exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the
variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any
variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under
changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a
perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though
insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.
Other out of context quotations
Besides the creation–evolution controversy, the fallacy of quoting out of context is also used in other areas. In some instances, commentators have used the term quote mining, comparing the practice of others with creationist quote mining.
Entertainment: with The Times
reporting its frequent abuse by promoters with, for example, "I
couldn't help feeling that, for all the energy, razzmatazz and technical
wizardry, the audience had been shortchanged" being pared down to
"having 'energy, razzmatazz and technical wizardry'".
Travel: The Guardian
ran an article in May 2013 with the subheading "Sri Lanka has the
hotels, the food, the climate and the charm to offer the perfect
holiday, says Ruaridh Nicoll. It's just a pity about the increasingly
despotic government".
A highly edited version of this piece was immediately posted on the
official Sri Lankan news portal under the heading "Sri Lanka has
everything to offer perfect holiday" [sic].
Pseudohistory: A book review in The New York Times recounts Lerone Bennett Jr.'s "distortion by omission" in citing a letter from Abraham Lincoln as evidence that he "did not openly oppose the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party"
because, as Lincoln explained, "they are mostly my old political and
personal friends", while omitting to mention that the remainder of the
letter describes Lincoln's break with these former Whig Party associates of his, and his anticipation of "painful necessity of my taking an open stand against them."
Alternative medicine: Analysis of the evidence submitted by the British Homeopathic Association
to the House of Commons Evidence Check on Homeopathy contains many
examples of quote mining, where the conclusions of scientific papers
were selectively quoted to make them appear to support the efficacy of homeopathic
treatment. For example, one paper's conclusion was reported as "There
is some evidence that homeopathic treatments are more effective than
placebo" without the immediately following caveat "however, the strength
of this evidence is low because of the low methodological quality of
the trials. Studies of high methodological quality were more likely to
be negative than the lower quality studies."
Godwin's law, short for Godwin's law (or rule) of Nazi analogies, is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler becomes more likely.
Promulgated by the American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin's law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions. He stated that he introduced Godwin's law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics. It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric where reductio ad Hitlerum occurs.
There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself) than others.
For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet
discussion forums that, when a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is
finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress. This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law.
Godwin's law itself can be applied mistakenly or abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, when fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparison made by the argument is appropriate.
Mike Godwin himself has also criticized the overapplication of Godwin's law, claiming it does not articulate a fallacy;
but rather intended to reduce the frequency of inappropriate and
hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a
law of nature or of mathematics," Godwin wrote, "its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust."
In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump,
saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of
history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump, or any
other politician." In August 2017, Godwin made similar remarks on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter with respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging comparisons of its alt-right organizers to Nazis.
In June 2018, Godwin wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times
denying the need to update or amend the rule, and rejected the idea
that whoever invokes Godwin's Law has lost the argument, and argues that
appropriate application of the rule "should function less as a
conversation ender and more as a conversation starter."
Pigs confined in gestation crates, part of the animal–industrial complex. According to Noske, animals "have become reduced to mere appendages of computers and machines."
The term animal–industrial complex (AIC) refers to the systematic and institutionalized exploitation of animals. Proponents of the term claim that activities described by the term differ from individual acts of animal cruelty in that they constitute institutionalized animal exploitation.
Definitions
The term animal–industrial complex was coined by the Dutch cultural anthropologist and philosopher Barbara Noske in her 1989 book Humans and Other Animals, saying that animals "have become reduced to mere appendages of computers and machines." The term relates the practices, organizations, and overall industry that turns animals into food and other commodities to the military–industrial complex.
Richard Twine later refined the concept, regarding it as the
"partly opaque and multiple set of networks and relationships between
the corporate (agricultural) sector, governments, and public and private
science. With economic, cultural, social and affective dimensions it
encompasses an extensive range of practices, technologies, images,
identities and markets." Twine also discusses the overlap between the AIC and other similar complexes, such as the prison–industrial complex, entertainment–industrial complex, and pharmaceutical–industrial complex. Sociologist David Nibert
defines the animal–industrial complex as "a massive network that
includes grain producers, ranching operations, slaughterhouse and
packaging firms, fast food and chain restaurants, and the state," which
he claims "has deep roots in world history."
Origin and properties of the complex
Although the origin of the animal–industrial complex can be traced back to the time when domestication of animals began, it was only since 1945 that the complex began to grow significantly under contemporary capitalism.Kim Stallwood
claims that the animal–industrial complex is "an integral part of the
neoliberal, transnational order of increasing privatization and
decreasing government intervention, favouring transnational corporations
and global capital."
According to Stallwood, two milestones mark the shift in human
attitudes toward animals that empowered the animal–industrial complex,
namely, Chicago and its stockyards and slaughterhouses from 1865 and the post–World War II developments such as intensive factory farms, industrial fishing, and xenotransplantation.
In the words of Nibert, the Chicago slaughterhouses were significant
economic powers of the early 20th century and were "famous for the
cruel, rapid-paced killing and disassembly of enormous numbers of
animals." To elucidate animal–industrial complex, Stallwood cites Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle, which explicitly describes the mistreatment of animals during their lives until they end up at the slaughterhouse. He also quotes Charles Patterson's Eternal Treblinka, which compares treatment of animals with the Holocaust and explains how the disassembly of animals in the slaughterhouses inspired Henry Ford's assembling of cars in factories and how it further influenced the Third Reich in Nazi Germany in building concentration camps and gas chambers.
According to Stallwood, the animal–industrial complex breeds
animals in the billions in order to make products and services for human
consumption, and all these animals are considered legal property of the
animal–industrial complex. The animal–industrial complex is said to
have transformed the already confused relationship between human and
non-human animals, significantly increasing the consumption and
threatening human survival, and the pervasive nature of the
animal–industrial complex is such that it evades attention.
Nibert argues that while it has its origins in the use of animals
during the establishment of agricultural societies, the
animal-industrial complex is ultimately "a predictable, insidious
outgrowth of the capitalist system with its penchant for continuous
expansion". According to Nibert, this complex is so destructive in its
pursuit of resources such as land and water to rear all of these animals
as a source of profit that it warrants comparisons to Attila the Hun. As the human populationgrows to a projected 9 billion by the middle of the century, meat production is expected to increase by 40%. Nibert further states,
The profound cultural devaluation
of other animals that permits the violence that underlies the animal
industrial complex is produced by far-reaching speciesist socialization.
For instance, the system of primary and secondary education under the
capitalist system largely indoctrinates young people into the dominant
societal beliefs and values, including a great deal of procapitalist and
speciesist ideology. The devalued status of other animals is deeply
ingrained; animals appear in schools merely as caged “pets,” as
dissection and vivisection subjects, and as lunch. On television and in
movies, the unworthiness of other animals is evidenced by their virtual
invisibility; when they do appear, they generally are marginalized,
vilified, or objectified. Not surprisingly, these and numerous other
sources of speciesism are so ideologically profound that those who raise
compelling moral objections to animal oppression largely are dismissed,
if not ridiculed.
Contributors to the 2013 book Animals and War, which linked critical animal studies and critical peace studies,
explored the connections between the animal-industrial complex and the
military-industrial complex, proposing and analysing the idea of a military-animal industrial complex.
The exploitation of animals, argues Colin Salter, is not necessary to
military-industrial complexes, but it is a foundational and central
element of the military-industrial complex as it actually exists. One of the aims of the book as a whole was to argue for the abolition of the military-animal industrial complex and all wars.
Many
philosophers argue that the differential treatment of cows and dogs is
an example of speciesism. They argue that members of the two species
share similar interests and should be given equal consideration as a result, yet in many cultures cows are used as livestock and killed for food, while dogs are treated as companion animals.
Speciesism (/ˈspiːʃiːˌzɪzəm,-siːˌzɪz-/)
is a term used in philosophy regarding the treatment of individuals of
different species. The term has several different definitions within the
relevant literature.
A common element of most definitions is that speciesism involves
treating members of one species as morally more important than members
of other species in the context of their similar interests.
Some sources specifically define speciesism as discrimination or
unjustified treatment based on an individual's species membership, while other sources define it as differential treatment without regard to whether the treatment is justified or not.
The term first appeared during a protest against animal experimentation in 1970. Philosophers and animal rights advocates state that speciesism plays a role in the practice of factory farming, animal slaughter, blood sports (such as bullfighting and rodeos), the taking of animals' fur and skin, and experimentation on animals, as well as the refusal to help animals suffering in the wild due to natural processes and the categorization of certain animals as invasive, then killing them based on that classification. They argue speciesism is a form of discrimination that constitutes a violation of the Golden Rule
because it involves treating other beings differently to how they would
want to be treated because of the species that they belong to.
Henry S. Salt criticized the idea that there exists a "great gulf" between humans and other animals
Buffon, a French naturalist, writing in Histoire Naturelle,
published in 1753, questioned whether it could be doubted that animals
"whose organization is similar to ours, must experience similar
sensations" and that "those sensations must be proportioned to the
activity and perfection of their senses". Despite these assertions, he insisted that there exists a gap between humans and other animals. In the poem "Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne", Voltaire
described a kinship between sentient beings, humans and other animals
included, stating: "All sentient things, born by the same stern law, /
Suffer like me, and like me also die."
In Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, published in 1824, the English writer and advocate for animal rights Lewis Gompertz, argued for egalitarianism and detailed how it could be applied to nonhuman animals.
He asserted that the feelings and sensations experienced by humans and
other animals are highly similar, stating: "Things which affect us,
generally seem to affect them in the same way; and at least the
following sensations and passions are common to both, viz. hunger,
desire, emulation, love of liberty, playfulness, fear, shame, anger, and
many other affections".
He also argued that humans and other animals share many physiological
characteristics and that this implied "similitude of sensation".
Gompertz was critical of the human use of nonhuman animals, arguing
that they are used "without the slightest regard to their feelings,
their wants, and their desires".
English naturalist Charles Darwin,
writing in his notebook in 1838, asserted that man thinks of himself as
a masterpiece produced by a deity, but that he thought it "truer to
consider him created from animals." In his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin argued that:
There
is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in
their mental faculties ... [t]he difference in mind between man and the
higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of
kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions
and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation,
reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even
sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.
English writer and animal rights advocate Henry S. Salt in his 1892 book Animals' Rights,
argued that for humans to do justice to other animals, that they must
look beyond the conception of a "great gulf" between them, claiming
instead that we should recognize the "common bond of humanity that
unites all living beings in one universal brotherhood".
Edward Payson Evans, an American scholar and animal rights advocate, in Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology, published in 1898, was critical of anthropocentric
psychology and ethics, which he argued "treat man as a being
essentially different and inseparably set apart from all other sentient
creatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental affinity or moral
obligation". Evans argued that Darwin's theory of evolution
implied moral obligations towards enslaved humans and nonhuman animals,
asserting that these obligations not only implied that cruelty to
slaves must be mitigated and that slavery be abolished, but also that
nonhuman animals need more than just kind treatment; they require rights
to protect them and that would be enforced if violated.
Evans also contended that widespread recognition of the kinship between
humans and even the most insignificant sentient beings would
necessarily mean that it would be impossible to neglect or mistreat
them.
Writing in 1895, the American zoologist, philosopher and animal rights advocate J. Howard Moore described vegetarianism
as the ethical conclusion of the evolutionary kinship of all creatures,
calling it the "expansion of ethics to suit the biological revelations
of Charles Darwin".
He went on to argue that ethics still relied on a "pre-Darwinian
delusion" that all nonhuman animals and the world were created
specifically for humans. In his 1899 book Better World Philosophy,
Moore contended that human ethics is in an "anthropocentric stage of
evolution", having developed "from individual to tribe, and from tribe
to race, and from race to sex, and from sex to species, until to-day the
ethical conception of many minds includes, with greater or less
vividness and sincerity, all sexes, colors, and conditions of men."
He argued that the next stage of ethical evolution was "zoocentricism",
the ethical consideration of the "entire sentient universe".
In his 1906 book The Universal Kinship,
Moore asserted that a "provincialist" attitude towards other animals
leads humans to mistreat them and compared the denial of an ethical
connection between humans and animals to the "denial of ethical
relations by a tribe, people, or race of human beings to the rest of the
human world." He went on to criticize the anthropocentric perspective of humans, who "think of our acts toward non-human peoples [...] entirely from the human point of view. We never take the time to put ourselves in the places of our victims."
In his conclusion, Moore argued that the Golden Rule should be applied
to all sentient beings, stating "do as you would be done by—and not to the dark man and the white woman alone, but to the sorrel horse and the gray squirrel as well; not to creatures of your own anatomy only, but to all creatures."
The term speciesism, and the argument that it is a prejudice,
first appeared in 1970 in a privately printed pamphlet written by
British psychologist Richard D. Ryder. Ryder was a member of a group of academics in Oxford, England, the nascent animal rights community, now known as the Oxford Group.
One of the group's activities was distributing pamphlets about areas of
concern; the pamphlet titled "Speciesism" was written to protest
against animal experimentation. The term was intended by its proponents to create a rhetorical and categorical link to racism and sexism.
Ryder stated in the pamphlet that "[s]ince Darwin, scientists
have agreed that there is no 'magical' essential difference between
humans and other animals, biologically-speaking. Why then do we make an
almost total distinction morally? If all organisms are on one physical
continuum, then we should also be on the same moral continuum." He wrote
that, at that time in the United Kingdom, 5,000,000 animals were being
used each year in experiments, and that attempting to gain benefits for
our own species through the mistreatment of others was "just
'speciesism' and as such it is a selfish emotional argument rather than a
reasoned one". Ryder used the term again in an essay, "Experiments on Animals", in Animals, Men and Morals
(1971), a collection of essays on animal rights edited by philosophy
graduate students Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris, who
were also members of the Oxford Group. Ryder wrote:
In as much as both "race" and "species" are vague terms
used in the classification of living creatures according, largely, to
physical appearance, an analogy can be made between them. Discrimination
on grounds of race, although most universally condoned two centuries
ago, is now widely condemned. Similarly, it may come to pass that
enlightened minds may one day abhor "speciesism" as much as they now
detest "racism." The illogicality in both forms of prejudice is of an
identical sort. If it is accepted as morally wrong to deliberately
inflict suffering upon innocent human creatures, then it is only logical
to also regard it as wrong to inflict suffering on innocent individuals
of other species. ... The time has come to act upon this logic.
Spread of the idea
Peter Singer popularized the idea in Animal Liberation (1975)
The term was popularized by the Australian philosopher Peter Singer in his book Animal Liberation (1975). Singer had known Ryder from his own time as a graduate philosophy student at Oxford. He credited Ryder with having coined the term and used it in the title of his book's fifth chapter: "Man's Dominion ... a short history of speciesism",
defining it as "a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the
interests of members of one's own species and against those of members
of other species":
Racists violate the principle of equality by giving
greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there
is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another
race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favouring the
interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests
of their own species to override the greater interests of members of
other species. The pattern is identical in each case.
Singer stated from a preference-utilitarian perspective, writing that speciesism violates the principle of equal consideration of interests, the idea based on Jeremy Bentham's
principle: "each to count for one, and none for more than one." Singer
stated that, although there may be differences between humans and
nonhumans, they share the capacity to suffer, and we must give equal
consideration to that suffering. Any position that allows similar cases
to be treated in a dissimilar fashion fails to qualify as an acceptable
moral theory. The term caught on; Singer wrote that it was an awkward
word but that he could not think of a better one. It became an entry in
the Oxford English Dictionary
in 1985, defined as "discrimination against or exploitation of animal
species by human beings, based on an assumption of mankind's
superiority." In 1994 the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy
offered a wider definition: "By analogy with racism and sexism, the
improper stance of refusing respect to the lives, dignity, or needs of
animals of other than the human species."
Anti-speciesism movement
The French-language journal Cahiers antispécistes ("Antispeciesist notebooks") was founded in 1991, by David Olivier, Yves Bonnardel and Françoise Blanchon, who were the first French activists to speak out against speciesism. The aim of the journal was to disseminate anti-speciesist ideas in France and to encourage debate on the topic of animal ethics, specifically on the difference between animal liberation and ecology.
Estela Díaz and Oscar Horta assert that in Spanish-speaking countries,
unlike English-speaking countries, anti-speciesism has become the
dominant approach for animal advocacy.
In Italy, two distinct trends have been identified in the contemporary
anti-speciesist movement, the first focusing on radical
counter-hegemonic positions and the second on mainstream neoliberal
ones.
The Trial of Bill Burns (1838) in London showing Richard Martin (MP for Galway) in court with a donkey beaten by his owner, leading to Europe's first known conviction for animal cruelty
Paola Cavalieri writes that the current humanist
paradigm is that only human beings are members of the moral community
and that all are worthy of equal protection. Species membership, she
writes, is ipso facto moral membership. The paradigm has an
inclusive side (all human beings deserve equal protection) and an
exclusive one (only human beings have that status).
She writes that it is not only philosophers who have difficulty with this concept. Richard Rorty
(1931–2007) stated that most human beings – those outside what he
called our "Eurocentric human rights culture" – are unable to understand
why membership of a species would in itself be sufficient for inclusion
in the moral community: "Most people live in a world in which it would
be just too risky – indeed, it would often be insanely dangerous – to
let one's sense of moral community stretch beyond one's family, clan or
tribe." Rorty wrote:
Such people are morally offended by the suggestion
that they should treat someone who is not kin as if he were a brother,
or a nigger as if he were white, or a queer as if he were normal, or an
infidel as if she were a believer. They are offended by the suggestion
that they treat people whom they do not think of as human as if they
were human. When utilitarians tell them that all pleasures and pains
felt by members of our biological species are equally relevant to moral
deliberation, or when Kantians tell them that the ability to engage in
such deliberation is sufficient for membership in the moral community,
they are incredulous. They rejoin that these philosophers seem oblivious
to blatantly obvious moral distinctions, distinctions that any decent
person will draw.
Much of humanity is similarly offended by the suggestion that the
moral community be extended to nonhumans. Nonhumans do possess some
moral status in many societies, but it generally extends only to
protection against what Cavalieri calls "wanton cruelty".
Anti-speciesists state that the extension of moral membership to all
humanity, regardless of individual properties such as intelligence,
while denying it to nonhumans, also regardless of individual properties,
is internally inconsistent. According to the argument from marginal cases,
if infants, the senile, the comatose, and the cognitively disabled
(marginal-case human beings) have a certain moral status, then nonhuman
animals must be awarded that status too since there is no morally
relevant ability that the marginal-case humans have that nonhumans lack.
American legal scholar Steven M. Wise states that speciesism is a bias as arbitrary as any other. He cites the philosopher R.G. Frey
(1941–2012), a leading animal rights critic, who wrote in 1983 that, if
forced to choose between abandoning experiments on animals and allowing
experiments on "marginal-case" humans, he would choose the latter, "not
because I begin a monster and end up choosing the monstrous, but
because I cannot think of anything at all compelling that cedes all
human life of any quality greater value than animal life of any
quality."
"Discontinuous mind"
Richard Dawkins argues that speciesism is an example of the "discontinuous mind"
Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, wrote against speciesism in The Blind Watchmaker (1986), The Great Ape Project (1993), and The God Delusion (2006), elucidating the connection with evolutionary theory.
He compares former racist attitudes and assumptions to their
present-day speciesist counterparts. In the chapter "The one true tree
of life" in The Blind Watchmaker, he states that it is not only zoological taxonomy
that is saved from awkward ambiguity by the extinction of intermediate
forms but also human ethics and law. Dawkins states that what he calls
the "discontinuous mind" is ubiquitous, dividing the world into units
that reflect nothing but our use of language, and animals into
discontinuous species:
The director of a zoo is entitled to "put down" a chimpanzee
that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might
"put down" a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with
howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo.
Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the
rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees is seldom spelled out,
and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the
breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the
abortion of a single human zygote
(most of them are destined to be spontaneously aborted anyway) can
arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the
vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! ... The only
reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the
intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.
Dawkins elaborated in a discussion with Singer at The Center for Inquiry
in 2007 when asked whether he continues to eat meat: "It's a little bit
like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred
years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery."
Centrality of consciousness
"Libertarian extension" is the idea that the intrinsic value of nature can be extended beyond sentient beings.
This seeks to apply the principle of individual rights not only to all
animals but also to objects without a nervous system such as trees,
plants, and rocks.
Ryder rejects this argument, writing that "value cannot exist in the
absence of consciousness or potential consciousness. Thus, rocks and
rivers and houses have no interests and no rights of their own. This
does not mean, of course, that they are not of value to us, and to many
other [beings who experience pain], including those who need them as
habitats and who would suffer without them."
Comparisons to the Holocaust
David Sztybel states in his paper, "Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust?" (2006), that the racism of the Nazis
is comparable to the speciesism inherent in eating meat or using animal
by-products, particularly those produced on factory farms.
Y. Michael Barilan, an Israeli physician, states that speciesism is not
the same thing as Nazi racism, because the latter extolled the abuser
and condemned the weaker and the abused. He describes speciesism as the
recognition of rights on the basis of group membership, rather than
solely on the basis of moral considerations.
Arguments in favor
Philosophical
Defenders of speciesism such as Carl Cohen argue that speciesism is essential for right conduct
A common theme in defending speciesism is the argument that humans have the right to exploit other species to defend their own. Philosopher Carl Cohen
stated in 1986: "Speciesism is not merely plausible; it is essential
for right conduct, because those who will not make the morally relevant
distinctions among species are almost certain, in consequence, to
misapprehend their true obligations."
Cohen writes that racism and sexism are wrong because there are no
relevant differences between the sexes or races. Between people and
animals, he states, there are significant differences; his view is that
animals do not qualify for Kantian personhood, and as such have no rights.
Nel Noddings,
the American feminist, has criticized Singer's concept of speciesism
for being simplistic, and for failing to take into account the context
of species preference, as concepts of racism and sexism have taken into
account the context of discrimination against humans. Peter Staudenmaier has stated that comparisons between speciesism and racism or sexism are trivializing:
The central analogy to the civil rights movement and the
women's movement is trivializing and ahistorical. Both of those social
movements were initiated and driven by members of the dispossessed and
excluded groups themselves, not by benevolent men or white people acting
on their behalf. Both movements were built precisely around the idea of
reclaiming and reasserting a shared humanity in the face of a society
that had deprived it and denied it. No civil rights activist or feminist
ever argued, "We're sentient beings too!" They argued, "We're fully
human too!" Animal liberation doctrine, far from extending this humanist
impulse, directly undermines it.
A similar argument was made by Bernard Williams,
who observed that a difference between speciesism versus racism and
sexism is that racists and sexists deny any input from those of a
different race or sex when it comes to questioning how they should be
treated. Conversely, when it comes to how animals should be treated by
humans, Williams observed that it is only possible for humans to discuss
that question. Williams observed that being a human being is often used
as an argument against discrimination on the grounds of race or sex,
whereas racism and sexism are seldom deployed to counter discrimination.
Williams also stated in favour of speciesism (which he termed
'humanism'), arguing that "Why are fancy properties which are grouped
under the label of personhood "morally relevant" to issues of destroying
a certain kind of animal, while the property of being a human being is
not?" Williams states that to respond by arguing that it is because
these are properties considered valuable by human beings does not
undermine speciesism as humans also consider human beings to be
valuable, thus justifying speciesism. Williams then states that the only
way to resolve this would be by arguing that these properties are
"simply better" but in that case, one would need to justify why these
properties are better if not because of human attachment to them. Christopher Grau supported Williams, arguing that if one used properties like rationality, sentience
and moral agency as criteria for moral status as an alternative to
species-based moral status, then it would need to be shown why these
particular properties are to be used instead of others; there must be
something that gives them special status. Grau states that to claim
these are simply better properties would require the existence of an
impartial observer, an "enchanted picture of the universe", to state
them to be so. Thus Grau states that such properties have no greater
justification as criteria for moral status than being a member of a
species does. Grau also states that even if such an impartial
perspective existed, it still wouldn't necessarily be against
speciesism, since it is entirely possible that there could be reasons
given by an impartial observer for humans to care about humanity. Grau
then further observes that if an impartial observer existed and valued
only minimalizing suffering, it would likely be overcome with horror at
the suffering of all individuals and would rather have humanity
annihilate the planet than allow it to continue. Grau thus concludes
that those endorsing the idea of deriving values from an impartial
observer do not seem to have seriously considered the conclusions of
such an idea.
Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff
stated: "By its nature and throughout the animal kingdom, life survives
by feeding on life. To demand that man defer to the 'rights' of other species is to deprive man himself of the right to life. This is 'other-ism,' i.e. altruism, gone mad."
Douglas Maclean agreed that Singer raised important questions and
challenges, particularly with his argument from marginal cases.
However, Maclean questioned if different species can be fitted with
human morality, observing that animals were generally held exempt from
morality; Maclean notes that most people would try to stop a man
kidnapping and killing a woman but would regard a hawk capturing and
killing a marmot with awe and criticise anyone who tried to intervene.
Maclean thus suggests that morality only makes sense under human
relations, with the further one gets from it the less it can be applied.
The British philosopher, Roger Scruton,
regards the emergence of the animal rights and anti-speciesism movement
as "the strangest cultural shift within the liberal worldview", because
the idea of rights and responsibilities is, he states, distinctive to
the human condition, and it makes no sense to spread them beyond our own
species. Scruton argues that if animals have rights, then they also
have duties, which animals would routinely violate, such as by breaking
laws or killing other animals. He accuses anti-speciesism advocates of
"pre-scientific" anthropomorphism, attributing traits to animals that are, he says, Beatrix Potter-like, where "only man is vile." It is, he states, a fantasy, a world of escape.
Thomas Wells states that Singer's call for ending animal
suffering would justify simply exterminating every animal on the planet
in order to prevent the numerous ways in which they suffer, as they
could no longer feel any pain. Wells also stated that by focusing on the
suffering humans inflict on animals and ignoring suffering animals
inflict upon themselves or that inflicted by nature, Singer is creating a
hierarchy where some suffering is more important than others, despite
claiming to be committed to equality of suffering. Wells also states
that the capacity to suffer, Singer's criteria for moral status, is one
of degree rather than absolute categories; Wells observes that Singer
denies moral status to plants on the grounds they cannot subjectively
feel anything (even though they react to stimuli), yet Wells alleges
there is no indication that nonhuman animals feel pain and suffering the
way humans do.
Robert Nozick notes that if species membership is irrelevant,
then this would mean that endangered animals have no special claim.
Religious
The
Rev. John Tuohey, founder of the Providence Center for Health Care
Ethics, writes that the logic behind the anti-speciesism critique is
flawed, and that, although the animal rights movement in the United
States has been influential in slowing animal experimentation, and in
some cases halting particular studies, no one has offered a compelling
argument for species equality.
Some proponents of speciesism believe that animals exist so that
humans may make use of them. They state that this special status conveys
special rights, such as the right to life, and also unique responsibilities, such as stewardship of the environment. This belief in human exceptionalism is often rooted in the Abrahamic religions, such as the Book of Genesis
1:26: "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our
likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds
in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all
the creatures that move along the ground.'" Some Christian theologists assert that dominion refers to stewardship, not ownership. Jesus Christ taught that a person is worth more than many sparrows. But the Imago Dei may be personhood
itself, although we humans have only achieved efficiencies in educating
and otherwise acculturating humans. Proverbs 12:10 says that "Whoever
is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the
wicked is cruel."
Social psychology
Psychologists
have also considered examining speciesism as a specific psychological
construct or attitude (as opposed to speciesism as a philosophy), which
was achieved using a specifically designed Likert scale.
Studies have found that speciesism is a stable construct that differs
amongst personalities and correlates with other variables. For example, speciesism has been found to have a weak positive correlation with homophobia and right-wing authoritarianism, as well as slightly stronger correlations with political conservatism, racism and system justification. Moderate positive correlations were found with social dominance orientation
and sexism. Social dominance orientation was theorised to be
underpinning most of the correlations; controlling for social dominance
orientation reduces all correlations substantially and renders many
statistically insignificant. Speciesism likewise predicts levels of prosociality toward animals and behavioural food choices.
Those who state that speciesism is unfair to individuals of
nonhuman species have often invoked mammals and chickens in the context
of research or farming.
There is not yet a clear definition or line agreed upon by a
significant segment of the movement as to which species are to be
treated equally with humans or in some ways additionally protected:
mammals, birds, reptiles, arthropods, insects, bacteria, etc. This
question is all the more complex since a study by Miralles et al. (2019)
has brought to light the evolutionary component of human empathic and
compassionate reactions and the influence of anthropomorphic mechanisms
in our affective relationship with the living world as a whole: the more
an organism is evolutionarily distant from us, the less we recognize
ourselves in it and the less we are moved by its fate.
Some researchers have suggested that since speciesism could be considered, in terms of social psychology, a prejudice
(defined as "any attitude, emotion, or behaviour toward members of a
group, which directly or indirectly implies some negativity or antipathy
toward that group"), then laypeople may be aware of a connection
between it and other forms of "traditional" prejudice. Research suggests
laypeople do indeed tend to infer similar personality traits and
beliefs from a speciesist that they would from a racist, sexist or
homophobe. However, it is not clear if there is a link between
speciesism and non-traditional forms of prejudice such as negative
attitudes towards the overweight or towards Christians.
Psychological studies have furthermore argued that people tend to
"morally value individuals of certain species less than others even
when beliefs about intelligence and sentience are accounted for."
Law and policy
Law
The first major
statute addressing animal protection in the United States, titled "An
Act for the More Effectual Prevention of Cruelty to Animals", was
enacted in 1867. It provided the right to incriminate and enforce
protection with regards to animal cruelty. The act, which has since been
revised to suit modern cases state by state, originally addressed such
things as animal neglect, abandonment, torture, fighting, transport,
impound standards and licensing standards.
Although an animal rights movement had already started as early as the
late 1800s, some of the laws that would shape the way animals would be
treated as industry grew, were enacted around the same time that Richard
Ryder was bringing the notion of Speciesism to the conversation. Legislation was being proposed and passed in the U.S. that would reshape animal welfare in industry and science. Bills such as Humane Slaughter Act, which was created to alleviate some of the suffering felt by livestock during slaughter, was passed in 1958. Later the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson,
was designed to put much stricter regulations and supervisions on the
handling of animals used in laboratory experimentation and exhibition
but has since been amended and expanded.
These groundbreaking laws foreshadowed and influenced the shifting
attitudes toward nonhuman animals in their rights to humane treatment
which Richard D. Ryder and Peter Singer would later popularize in the
1970s and 1980s.
Great ape personhood
Great ape personhood is the idea that the attributes of nonhuman great apes
are such that their sentience and personhood should be recognized by
the law, rather than simply protecting them as a group under animal cruelty legislation. Awarding personhood to nonhuman primates would require that their individual interests be taken into account.
The rights suggested are the right to life, the protection of
individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. The organization
also monitors individual great ape activity in the United States through
a census program. Once rights are established, GAP would demand the
release of great apes from captivity; currently 3,100 are held in the
U.S., including 1,280 in biomedical research facilities.
The Great Ape Project (book)
The book of the same name, edited by philosophers Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, features contributions from thirty-four authors, including Jane Goodall and Richard Dawkins,
who have submitted articles voicing their support for the project. The
authors write that human beings are intelligent animals with a varied
social, emotional, and cognitive life. If great apes also display such
attributes, the authors argue, they deserve the same consideration
humans extend to members of their own species.
The book highlights findings that support the capacity of great
apes to possess rationality and self-consciousness, and the ability to
be aware of themselves as distinct entities with a past and future.
Documented conversations (in sign languages) with individual great apes
are the basis for these findings. Other subjects addressed within the
book include the division placed between humans and great apes, great
apes as persons, progress in gaining rights for the severely intellectually disabled (once an overlooked minority), and the situation of great apes in the world today.
World Declaration on Great Apes
The Great Ape Project is campaigning to have the United Nations endorse a World Declaration on Great Apes. This would extend what the project calls the "community of equals" to include chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.
The declaration seeks to extend to non-human great apes the protection
of three basic interests: the right to life, the protection of
individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture.
Right to life
The declaration states that members of the community of equals, which includes humans, have an essential right to life and may not be killed except in certain strictly defined circumstances such as self-defense.
Protection of individual liberty
The declaration states that members of the community of equals are not to be deprived of their liberty, and are entitled to immediate release where there has been no form of due process. Under the proposed declaration, the detention of great apes who have not been convicted of any crime
or who are not criminally liable should be permitted only where it can
be shown that the detention is in their own interests or is necessary to
protect the public. The declaration says there must be a right of
appeal, either directly or through an advocate, to a judicial tribunal.
Prohibition of torture
The declaration prohibits the torture, defined as the deliberate infliction of severe pain, on any great ape, whether wantonly or because of a perceived benefit to others.
Under International Human Rights Law this is a jus cogens principle and under all major human rights documents it cannot at any time be derogated by any State.
Opposition
Professor Colin Blakemore, head of the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom
from 2003–2007, is opposed to granting rights to non-human apes,
stating "I can see no current necessity for the use of great apes, and
I'm pleased that they're not being used and that every effort is being
made to reduce the use of other primates. But I worry about the
principle of where the moral boundaries lie. There is only one very
secure definition that can be made, and that is between our species and
others." Blakemore suggests that it would be necessary to perform
research on great apes if humans were threatened by a pandemic virus
that afflicted only humans and other great apes. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection described Blakemore's stance as "backward-looking."
Recent developments
United States
A study commissioned by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and conducted by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded in a report (see report brief)
released on December 15, 2011 that ‘while the chimpanzee has been a
valuable animal model in past research, most current use of chimpanzees
for biomedical research is unnecessary’. The primary recommendation is
that the use of chimpanzees in research be guided by a set of principles
and criteria, in effect to greatly limit government-funded research
using chimpanzees. Falling short of calling for the out-right ban of
using chimpanzees for research, the report acknowledged that new
emerging, or re-emerging diseases may require the use of chimpanzees,
echoing Professor Colin Blakemore's concern.
Francis Collins,
Director of NIH announced on the same day the report was released that
he accepted the recommendations and will develop the implementation plan
which includes the forming of an expert committee to review all
submitted grant applications and projects already underway involving the
use of chimpanzees. Furthermore, no new grant applications using
chimpanzees will be reviewed until further notice.
On 21 September 2012, NIH announced that 110 chimpanzees owned by
the government will be retired. NIH owns about 500 chimpanzees for
research, this move signifies the first step to wind down NIH's
investment in chimpanzee research, according to Francis Collins.
Currently housed at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana, 10 of the retired chimpanzees will go to the chimpanzee sanctuary Chimp Haven while the rest will go to Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio.
However concerns over the chimpanzee's status in the Texas Biomedical
Research Institute as ‘research ineligible’ rather than ‘retired’
prompted NIH to reconsider the plan and it announced on 17 October 2012
that as many chimpanzees as possible will be relocated to Chimp Haven by
August 2013 and eventually all 110 will move there.
On 22 January 2013, a NIH task force released a report calling
for the government to retire most of the chimpanzees the U.S. government
support. The panel concluded that the animals provide little benefit
in biomedical discoveries except in a few disease cases which can be
supported by a small population of 50 primates for future research.
Other approaches such as genetically altered mice should be developed
and refined.
On 13 November 2013, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate
passed ‘The Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection
Act’, approving the funding to expand the capacity of Chimp Haven and
other chimpanzee sanctuaries, thus allowing the transfer of almost all
of the apes owned by the federal government to live in a more natural
and group environment than in the laboratory. The transfer is expected
to take five years when all but 50 chimpanzees, which will remain with
the NIH, will be ‘retired’.
Germany
The
Great Ape Project achieved many of its goals in its early years: New
Zealand completely banned invasive experiments on great apes in 1999, as
did the Balearic Islands (an autonomous region of the monarchy of
Spain) in 2007, deciding to implement certain fundamental rights for
great apes in their code of law. However, the project entered a long
period of political stagnation in Europe. All hopes that the
achievements on the Balearic Islands would spark off further steps on
the mainland of Spain and from there to other European countries proved
to be futile. Efforts in Spain were largely curtailed due to the
influence of the Catholic Church, obstructing the project's goals. In
2011, however, the project was given an official relaunch in Germany,
supported by the Germany-based Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung.
Great Ape Project
Germany filed an official law initiative in spring of 2014, to have the
aforesaid fundamental rights for great apes implemented into the
constitutional law of the Federal Republic of Germany. The goal was
(and still is) to have the animal welfare law extended to specifically
grant the great apes the rights needed, to give them the chance, to have
legal guardians representing their interests. In analogy to infants or
of people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer disease, who cannot speak
for themselves, legal guardians could file lawsuits against anyone
violating the fundamental rights of the apes. Right now there are only
have animal protection laws, giving the animals no active
legitimization.
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