Against Moorean Defences of Speciesism

Abstract

In a central variant, moral fictionalism is the view that we should replace our moral beliefs with make-beliefs, that is, be disposed to accept some moral propositions in everyday contexts and to reject all such propositions in more critical circumstances. It is said by its opponents to face three significant problems: in contrast with a real morality, a fictional morality would not allow for deductive inferences; moral make-beliefs would lack the motivational force that is typical of moral beliefs; and moral make-believers could not genuinely disagree with one another about ethical matters nor, consequently, articulate their practical conflicts in moral terms. This chapter argues that all three objections rest on a misconception of the kind of attitudes recommended by fictionalism. Once misleading analogies are dismissed and the nature of moral make-beliefs is clarified, it becomes clear that a fictional morality would preserve deductive inference, moral motivation, and ethical disagreement. Some philosophical issues are fairly remote from the concerns of ordinary people-few non-philosophers have an opinion on the existence of universals, a conception of numbers, or an account of personal identity. On other topics, however, laypeople have philosophical beliefs, to which they are sometimes deeply attached. And these beliefs happen to clash with views that are dominant among professional philosophers. A case in point is the moral status of animals. The common-sense view on this issue is that animals count less than humanssince this view is analogous to the racist claim that people of colour count less than white people, we can call it "speciesism." 1 While speciesism is popular among laypeople, many animal ethicists reject it. Not that these philosophers agree in all other respects: some think that certain humans count less than others (e.g. McMahan, 2002), while others believe that certain animals count as much as all 1 This is roughly how the term is defined by Peter Singer, who popularized it in his book Animal Liberation (1975). A more accurate definition would allow for nonanthropocentric forms of speciesism-one suggestion along these lines is to define speciesism as discrimination according to species (Horta, 2010). As I am going to focus on anthropocentric speciesism in what follows, I will stick to Singer's notion for the sake of presentation.