Richard Ryder created the term speciesism in early 1970 and shared the idea with Peter Singer, who popularised it in his classic work Animal Liberation (1975). A key figure in the modern animal ...rights revival Ryder appeared on the first-ever televised discussion of animal rights (The Lion's Share, Scottish Television) in December 1970. He further promoted the ideas around speciesism in recorded discussions with Bridget Brophy, for the Open University, and in his contribution to the seminal philosophical work Animals Men and Morals edited by the Oxford philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris in 1971. From 1969 Ryder organised protests against animal experiments and bloodsports. He continued to promote his ideas about speciesism in leaflets and broadcasts, culminating in the publication of his Victims of Science in 1975 - a book that provoked debates in Parliament and on television and was described by The Spectator at the time as "a morally and historically important book". Dr Ryder was elected to the RSPCA Council in 1971, first becoming Chairman in 1977. In 1980 he was founding Chairman of the Liberal Democrat Animal Protection Group, and later ran for Parliament, was Director of the Political Animal Lobby and then Mellon Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University. Ryder coined the term painism to describe his wider moral theory in 1990. He has several times broadcast on the BBC's Moral Maze.
People routinely give humans moral priority over other animals. Is such moral anthropocentrism based in perceived differences in mental capacity between humans and non-humans or merely because humans ...favor other members of their own species? We investigated this question in six studies (N = 2217). We found that most participants prioritized humans over animals even when the animals were described as having equal or more advanced mental capacities than the humans. This applied to both mental capacity at the level of specific individuals (Studies 1a-b) and at the level typical for the respective species (Study 2). The key driver behind moral anthropocentrism was thus mere species-membership (speciesism). However, all else equal, participants still gave more moral weight to individuals with higher mental capacities (individual mental capacity principle), suggesting that the belief that humans have higher mental capacities than animals is part of the reason that they give humans moral priority. Notably, participants found mental capacity more important for animals than for humans—a tendency which can itself be regarded as speciesist. We also explored possible sub-factors driving speciesism. We found that many participants judged that all individuals (not only humans) should prioritize members of their own species over members of other species (species-relativism; Studies 3a-b). However, some participants also exhibited a tendency to see humans as having superior value in an absolute sense (pro-human species-absolutism, Studies 3–4). Overall, our work demonstrates that speciesism plays a central role in explaining moral anthropocentrism and may be itself divided into multiple sub-factors.
Recent psychological research finds that U.S. American children have a weaker tendency than U.S. American adults to value humans more than animals. We aimed to conceptually replicate and extend this ...finding in a preregistered study (
= 412). We investigated whether 6- to 9-year-old Polish children (Study 1a) are less likely to prioritize humans over animals than Polish adults are (Studies 1b and 1c). We presented participants with moral dilemmas where they had to prioritize either humans or animals (dogs or chimpanzees) in situations that involved harming (i.e., a trolley problem) or benefiting (i.e., giving a snack). We found that Polish children prioritized humans over animals less than Polish adults did. This was the case both in dilemmas that involved preventing harm and in dilemmas that involved providing snacks. Both children and adults prioritized humans over chimpanzees more than humans over dogs.
While moral concern for animals has become increasingly important for both consumer food choice and food policy makers, previous research demonstrated that meat eaters attribute lower moral status ...and mental capacities to animals raised for meat compared to non-food animals. The current research investigated whether this strategic flexibility in moral concern and mind perceptions also occurs when considering aquatic food animals and animals used for dairy and egg products, and the degree to which these concerns and perceptions are evident in pescatarians and vegetarians. We compared perceptions (mind attributions and moral concern) of land food animals versus aquatic food animals, and of animals in the meat versus dairy and egg industry between omnivores (n = 122), pescatarians (n = 118), vegetarians (n = 138), vegans (n = 120), and flexitarians (n = 60). Pescatarians scored lower than other dietary groups on moral concern and mind attribution for aquatic animals relative to farmed land animals. Unlike the other dietary groups, pescatarians and vegetarians scored lower on moral concern and mind attribution for dairy than beef cows and for layer chickens than broiler chickens. These findings demonstrate that pescatarians and vegetarians were flexible in their moral thinking about different types of food animals in ways that suited their consumption habits, even when the same animal was evaluated (e.g., dairy vs beef cows). This research highlights the psychological barriers that might prevent people from reducing animal product consumption and may need to be addressed in interventions to encourage transitioning towards more plant-based diets.
Our relationships with other animals are governed by how we view their capacity for sentience and suffering. However, there is currently little agreement as to whether people's beliefs about animal ...minds are largely accurate or inaccurate. We used an innovative task to examine how people update their beliefs in response to noisy but informative clues about animal minds. This allowed us to compare participants' posterior beliefs to what a normative participant ought to believe if they conform to Bayes' theorem. Five studies (four pre-registered; n = 2417) found that participants shifted their beliefs too far in response to clues that suggested animals do not have minds (i.e., overshooting what a normative participant ought to believe), but not far enough in response to clues that suggested animals have minds (i.e., falling short of what a normative participant ought to believe). A final study demonstrated that this effect was attenuated when humans were the targets of belief. The findings demonstrate that people underestimate animal minds in a way that can be said to be inaccurate and highlight the role of belief updating in downplaying evidence of animal minds. The findings are discussed in relation to speciesist beliefs about the supremacy of humans over animals.
Archaeology is a field of research that relies largely on the remains of past humans and nonhuman animals and the traces of their interactions within a range of material conditions. In archaeology, ...as in sociocultural anthropology, the dominant analytical perspective on human-animal relations is ontologically anthropocentric: the study of the human use of nonhuman animals for the benefit of human beings, and scholarly inquiry that is largely for the sake of elucidating what nonhuman animals can tell us about the human condition. This review outlines the historical trajectory of Anglo-American archaeology's encounters with animal remains, and human-animal interactions, within this framework and considers recent attempts to move beyond anthropocentrism.
Este artículo examina la octava Elegía de Duino de Rilke, enfocándose en la distinción entre animales y humanos y su relación con lo Abierto. En primer lugar, se resalta la importancia de esta ...diferencia y se introduce una contribución de Leopardi para establecer conexiones con Rilke. En segundo lugar, se explora la afinidad entre ambos autores, considerando la relevancia ontológica del animal. Luego se discute el comentario de Heidegger sobre la Elegía, destacando una diferencia en la definición de lo Abierto. Finalmente, se reflexiona sobre Heidegger a través de la perspectiva de Derrida.
Is the tendency to morally prioritize humans over animals weaker in children than adults? In two preregistered studies (total N = 622), 5- to 9-year-old children and adults were presented with moral ...dilemmas pitting varying numbers of humans against varying numbers of either dogs or pigs and were asked who should be saved. In both studies, children had a weaker tendency than adults to prioritize humans over animals. They often chose to save multiple dogs over one human, and many valued the life of a dog as much as the life of a human. Although they valued pigs less, the majority still prioritized 10 pigs over one human. By contrast, almost all adults chose to save one human over even 100 dogs or pigs. Our findings suggest that the common view that humans are far more morally important than animals appears late in development and is likely socially acquired.
We argue that recent advances of artificial intelligence (AI) in the domain of art (e.g., music, painting) pose a profound ontological threat to anthropocentric worldviews because they challenge one ...of the last frontiers of the human uniqueness narrative: artistic creativity. Four experiments (N = 1708), including a high-powered preregistered experiment, consistently reveal a pervasive bias against AI-made artworks and shed light on its psychological underpinnings. The same artwork is preferred less when labeled as AI-made (vs. human-made) because it is perceived as less creative and subsequently induces less awe, an emotional response typically associated with the aesthetic appreciation of art. These effects are more pronounced among people with stronger anthropocentric creativity beliefs (i.e., who believe that creativity is a uniquely human characteristic). Systematic depreciation of AI-made art (assignment of lower creative value, suppression of emotional reactions) appears to serve a shaken anthropocentric worldview whereby creativity is exclusively reserved for humans.
•AI-made art poses an ontological threat to anthropocentric worldviews that artistic creativity is uniquely human.•Humans perceive the same artwork as less creative and awe-inspiring when it is labeled as AI-made (vs. human made).•The bias is more pronounced among people with stronger anthropocentric creativity beliefs.
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