Topic 1: The Moral Significance of Species
On the one hand, a number of the authors whose arguments we have considered this term have claimed that species-membership is irrelevant to moral status. Peter Singer, for example, goes so far as to characterize differential considerations on the basis of species-membership as a moral transgression on a par with racism and sexism; he calls it “speciesism.” On the other hand, many believe that there is something morally significant about being a human being, regardless of whether that human being meets John Locke’s or Mary Anne Warren’s criteria of personhood, or is a potential person, or has a future of value. On this view, human beings deserve special consideration and/or treatment simply in virtue of being human. In other words, many believe that species membership is itself morally significant.

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