I have not given a reason why torturing babies or racism is bad or wrong. I’m hoping that the vast majority of people will share that intuition/value of mine, that they want to be the sort of person who would have been amongst those challenging racist or sexist prejudices, had they lived in the past.
In the past, the arguments against sexism and racism were things like “they’re human too”, “they can write poetry too”, “God made all men equal” and “look how good they are at being governesses”. None of these apply to animals; they’re not human, they don’t write human, God made them to serve us, and they’re not very good governesses. Indeed, you seem to think all these are irrelevant criteria.
Speaking as a 21st century person in a liberal, western country, I believe sexism and racism are wrong basically because other people told me they were, who believed that because … who believed that because they were convinced by argumentum ad governess. But now I’ve just discovered that argumentum ad governess is invalid. Should I not withdraw my belief that sexism and racism are wrong, which apparently I have in some sense been fooled into, and adopt the traditional, time-honoured view that they are not?
In the past, the arguments against sexism and racism were things like “they’re human too”, “they can write poetry too”, “God made all men equal” and “look how good they are at being governesses”. None of these apply to animals; they’re not human, they don’t write human, God made them to serve us, and they’re not very good governesses. Indeed, you seem to think all these are irrelevant criteria.
Speaking as a 21st century person in a liberal, western country, I believe sexism and racism are wrong basically because other people told me they were, who believed that because … who believed that because they were convinced by argumentum ad governess. But now I’ve just discovered that argumentum ad governess is invalid. Should I not withdraw my belief that sexism and racism are wrong, which apparently I have in some sense been fooled into, and adopt the traditional, time-honoured view that they are not?
Where was the argument for that? Non-humans attaining rights by a different path does not erase all other paths.