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Ruairi comments on Arguments Against Speciesism - LessWrong
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"If all nonhumans truly weren't sentient, then obviously singling out humans for the sphere of moral concern would not be speciesist."
David Pearce sums up antispeciesism excellently saying:
"The antispeciesist claims that, other things being equal, conscious beings of equivalent sentience deserve equal care and respect."
If one takes "other things being equal" very seriously that could be quite vacuous, since there are so many differences in other areas, e.g. impact on society and flow-through effects, responsiveness of behavior to expected treatment, reciprocity, past agreements, social connectedness, preferences, objective list welfare, even species itself...
The substance of the claim has to be about exactly which things need to be held equal, and which can freely vary without affecting desert.
Any speciesist is happy to agree with that. She simply thinks that species is one of the things that has to be equal.
Larks, all humans, even anencephalic babies, are more sentient than all Anopheles mosquitoes. So when human interests conflict irreconcilably with the interests of Anopheles mosquitoes, there is no need to conduct a careful case-by-case study of their comparative sentience. Simply identifying species membership alone is enough. By contrast, most pigs are more sentient than some humans. Unlike the antispeciesist, the speciesist claims that the interests of the human take precedence over the interests of the pig simply in virtue of species membership. (cf. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226647/Nickolas-Coke-Boy-born-brain-dies-3-year-miracle-life.html :heart-warming yes, but irrational altruism - by antispeciesist criteria at any rate.) I try and say a bit more (without citing the Daily Mail) here: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pearce20130726
I don't see how this is relevant to my argument. I'm just pointing out that your definition doesn't track the concept you (probably) have in mind; I wasn't saying anything empirical* at all.
*other than about the topology of concept-space.
Larks, by analogy, could a racist acknowledge that, other things being equal, conscious beings of equivalent sentience deserve equal care and respect, but race is one of the things that has to be equal? If you think the "other things being equal" caveat dilutes the definition of speciesism so it's worthless, perhaps drop it - I was just trying to spike some guns.
If we drop the caveat, anti-speciesism is obviously false. For example, moral, successful people deserve more respect than immoral unsuccessful people, even if both are of equal sentience.
There are plenty of people who would disagree with that. But what do you mean by "respect", and on what grounds do you give it or withhold it?
Surely the antispeciesist claims that nothing else needs to be equal?
By the way... what the heck is "equivalent sentience", exactly?