1. Be mindful of your feelings
Speciesism as a moral illusion
Stijn Bruers, IARC, Esch, sept-2012

2. Overview What are moral illusions? Analogy with optical illusions
How to detect moral illusion?
Do moral illusions exist? Yes: the trolley problem
Can speciesism be a moral illusion?

3. Moral illusions
Moral illusions are obstinate but incorrect intuitive judgments, comparable to the famous optical illusions.
Method to detect them:
Coherentism (reflective equilibrium): mutual support of intuitions and principles
Universalism: translating strong moral intuitions into universalized ethical principles
Consistency
Knowledge about moral psychological mechanisms

4. Coherentism More than merely consistency
Crossword puzzle (white boxes = situations)
Universalism: words (=universal principles) instead of separate letters (=situational intuitions/rules)
Consistency: 1 letter per box

5. Optical illusions
Translation-invariance: measure sticks never change length when shifted in any direction

6. Optical illusions Translation-invariance
Context-independence: influence of environment is arbitrary, artificial, fuzzy: never important

7. Optical illusions Translation-invariance Context-independence
Optical mechanism
3D->2D perspective adaptation (heuristics, D.Kahneman)
Lateral inhibition (contrasts)
Coherent

8. Moral illusions: the trolley problem

9. Moral illusions: the trolley problem

10. Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Action allowed: 90% of people A

11. Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Action allowed: 50% of people B

12. Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Action allowed: 10% of people C

13. Moral illusions: the trolley problem
A versus B and C: victim is not used as merely means
A and B versus C: victim is not send to threat
What distinguishes B from C? The locus of intervention (at victim or at threat):
“throwing bomb on a person or throwing person on a bomb?”

14. Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Translation invariance
All individuals have
Right not to be killed
Right not to be used as merely means
Moral status of individual is independent from locus of intervention

15. Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Context independence: erase irrelevant details B C

16. Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Psychological mechanism
Intervention myopia: “people who are evaluating the morality of options may give victims in the background less weight than victims in the attentional spotlight.” (Waldmann & Dieterich, 2007)
Moral heuristic: attribute substitution (Kahneman, 1982; Sunstein, 2005)

17. Can speciesism be a moral illusion?
5 arguments against speciesism (context independence)
5 arguments pro sentience (translation invariance)
Essentialism and heuristics (psychological mechanism)

18. Against speciesism Who am I? I am: white (population),
a Homo sapiens sapiens (subspecies),
a Homo sapiens (species),
a Homo (genus),
a great ape (family),
a Hominoid (super family),
a simian (infraorder),
a dry nosed primate (suborder),
a primate (order),
a placental (infra class),
a mammal (class),
a vertebrate (phylum),
an animal (kingdom)
Too arbitrary

19. Phylum of chordata and vertebrates
Kingdom of animals
Phylum of chordata and vertebrates
Class of mammals
Infra class of placentals
Order of primates
Suborder of dry nosed primates
Infraorder of simians
Super family of Homonoids
Family of great apes
Genus Homo
Species of Homo sapiens
Subspecies of Homo sapiens sapiens
Population of whites

20. Against speciesism What is a human? What about humanzee hybrids?
human-animal chimera?
ancestors (Homo habilis, Australopithecus,…)?
genetically modified humans,…?

21. Against speciesism
How is a species defined? Interbreeding and fertile offspring?
All species are connected into one “temporal ring species”.
Is the accidental death of intermediates relevant?
Cfr. context independence: speciesism is arbitrary, artificial, intrinsically fuzzy

22. Against speciesism
Genes and bodily properties are not relevant in situation A (e.g. racism), so should not be relevant in situation B (speciesism).
Speciesism is a violation of the merit principle

23. Sentience
Well-being and impartiality. Cfr. consequentialist (Singer) and contractualist (Rowlands) ethics: veil of ignorance
Empathy is a virtue to be developed (virtue ethics and ethics of care)
Cfr translation invariance, using empathy or the veil of ignorance to put yourself into the position of the other

24. Sentience
Rights ethics: the connection between feelings, interests and rights is not farfetched
Feelings detect interests (e.g.: pain -> bodily integrity)
Rights protect interests
Consciousness is special (complex, vulnerable,…) and should be protected
Sentience is the only mental capacity that mentally disabled humans share with us

25. Essentialism The psychological explanation
Children and adults (from different cultures and backgrounds) intuitively describe biological entities in essentialist terms. They think that biological categories have invisible essences (Gelman, 2003; Bloom, 2010)
Studies about racism also demonstrates that racists think of races or ethnic groups as being essentialized natural groups (Gil-White, 2001)
But essentialism is in contradiction with Darwinism and current biology

26. Speciesism as a moral illusion
Moral status of animal
Moral status of human
(Morally) irrelevant properties
The ten arguments are coherent with each other
There is no “essence” related to lines with inward pointing arrowheads

27. Speciesism as a moral heuristic
Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein
Attribute substitution
Target attribute: rationality, self-consciousness,…
Heuristic attribute: human
Based on
Pattern recognition skills: a human is easier to detect than a rational being
Most humans have the target attribute
Heuristic ‘misfires’ at mentally disabled humans
Should people keep this heuristic?