Species Membership Should Not Carry Instant Right to Life

October 14, 2019

(The Australian) – Discussions with rational beings of another species are science fiction, of course. But such an imaginative exercise is necessary because in the absence of beings other than humans, the claim that we have rights by virtue of our species membership is not likely to meet with strong opposition. Once we imagine meeting members of another rational species, however, it becomes easier to see that an appeal to species membership is no better an argument for superior moral status than the once common, but now fortunately discredited, appeal to membership of a particular race.