Three decades later, defending any essential difference between humans and animals has become deeply unfashionable, but Kenan Malik has been unusually forthright in doing just that. In his book Man, Beast and Zombie he follows the great philosopher Immanuel Kant in arguing that animals are mere things that can be treated as means to an end.
When we brought Malik and Ryder together to debate the ethics of animal experimentation, we began by asking Ryder what he thought the strongest argument against vivisection was.
Richard Ryder: The strongest reason that I'm opposed to at least unnecessary testing on animals is that I don't really see that the species difference makes any moral difference, any more than differences in race, class or gender. Just as racism attaches a lot of moral importance to racial differences, so speciesism attaches a lot of moral importance to species differences. I think it's very hard to find a rational explanation of why this should be.
Kenan Malik: The analogy between speciesism and racism is invalid. Racists discriminate against people who are fundamentally the same. So-called speciesists assert something that is factually true: that there is a fundamental moral distinction between humans and other animals - which is that humans are what we would call subjects: rational, autonomous beings who are capable of being moral and creating moral systems. We recognise right and wrong, we recognise we're able to act upon such judgments, accept responsibility and apportion blame. Animals do not live in such a community and it would be cruel to treat them as if they did. Animals are objects in that sense; they do not posses self-consciousness and agency as we do.[Read on]
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