SPECIAL CONSIDERATION FOR HUMANS

Abstract

Recently there has been a reaction against racialism and patriotism, and a tendency to substitute the whole human species as the object of our fellow feeling. This humanist broadening of the target of our altruism has an interesting corollary.... The feeling that members of one's own species deserve special moral consideration as compared with members of other species is old and deep. Killing people outside war is the most seriously regarded crime ordinarily committed. The only thing more strongly forbidden by our culture is eating people (even if they are already dead). We enjoy eating members of other species, however. Many of us shrink from judicial execution of even the most horrible human criminals, while we cheerfully countenance the shooting of other harmless species as a means of recreation and amusement. A human foetus, with no more human feeling than an amoeba, enjoys a reverence and legal protection far in excess of those granted to an adult chimpanzee. Yet the chimp feels and thinks and-according to recent experimental evidence-may even be capable of learning a form of human language. The foetus belongs to our own species, and is instantly accorded special privileges and rights because of it.... The muddle in human ethics [is] over the level at which altruism is desirable-family, nation, race, species, or all living things....