#342 — Animal Minds & Moral Truths

It's my pleasure, Sam.

So you have, um, two books, uh, two newish books. One is, um, a revision of your classic animal liberation. Animal liberation now is the current title. Um, and then you have a new book coming out which I haven't read, uh, the buddhist and the ethicist. And we can talk about. I want to talk about both of those. But let's jump into animal liberation now, because it's, um, remind me, the book first came out in 70.

119. 75.

75 came out.

Yeah, that's right. So it's not quite 50 years for the book. It's 50 years since I first actually published something on this topic, which was an article called Animal Liberation in the New York Review of Books in April 1973.

Right. Okay. Well, that has been. You tell me, uh, you're often credited as being the real father of the animal rights movement. Um, you detail in the book some of the history of our callousness toward animals and how we made some moral progress, however incremental. What was your experience as a philosopher writing a book of such compelling social importance? And that's not the common experience of academic philosophers. So tell me, what happened to your life when you wrote that book? Yes.

Well, it was very interesting because I really had no idea what it would do to my philosophy career at that stage, which was really just beginning. And philosophy was just on the cusp of coming out of this ordinary language mode of philosophy, as it was sometimes called, or, uh, linguistic philosophy. And some of the leading philosophers in that area had expressed the idea that philosophy really has nothing to say about what is right or wrong, doesn't, um, give advice and ethics. A. J. Eyre, who was a very prominent philosopher at the time, said, uh, that's the business of the politician or the preacher. We should leave it to them. But what I was trying to do was to write something that would be both intelligible to ordinary people, but still of philosophical interest. And I wasn't really sure whether that was possible. But I was so, uh, compelled by the need to write this book. That, in a way, if it had harmed my career in philosophy. Well, I could see myself having had a career as an animal activist, I suppose. But fortunately, the reaction was actually very good from philosophers. At least a few of them, I don't know the ones who wrote about it mostly welcomed it. Uh, there were a couple who ridiculed it. But most of them said, yes, this is important, and philosophy should get back on track. In the 1970s, as I say, it was on the cusp of change. Because there were other philosophers who wanted to discuss, for example, the war in Vietnam, the right to civil disobedience. And, of course, the civil rights movement. Which had been unfolding in the United States for more than a decade prior to that point.

And what was your experience know, subsequent to your publication of this book? You have been, um, no stranger to a, um. Unlike almost anyone else in your line of work. You are often noticed by the wider public. In terms of how your arguments brush up against concerns about public policy. And things like euthanasia. And we'll get into some of the reasons why, and we'll talk about the foundations of your ethics. But what has been the experience of being an academic philosopher. Whose work is so often cited. To resolve. Or to, uh, confound questions of public policy?

Well, I've certainly enjoyed it. Um, I felt it was important, if you're writing in ethics. To contribute to some of the deeper ethical questions. That underlie our decisions about life and death. For example, about what we eat, about what we do with our, uh, spare cash. Those are all important questions. And to some extent, they're novel questions. In that they're being asked in a different world. From the world of a, uh, century or two ago. So, to me, it's been, in a way, the stimulus to work hard in ethics and philosophy. That I can have an influence. And that these are important questions. I'm not just writing for my fellow philosophers to read and ponder and write replies to. I'm, um, also trying to change the world for the better. And that's a huge motivating factor.

Yeah, well, um, I share that aspiration. And I should say that your work has been very influential in my life. Both directly and also as a result of the other people you have influenced. Who have, in turn, influenced me. People like will McCaskill. So you're also credited with being, uh, in some ways the father of the effective altruism movement, uh, which has suffered some pr wounds of late. Uh, we can talk about mean Sam Bankman. Fried was also on this podcast, uh, back in the day. So, um, I'd, uh, love to get into all that, but let's talk about the revised book, animal liberation now. And your central argument against what you describe as speciesm. Just, uh, kind of make the case here over the course of a few minutes. What is our current prejudice, as you see it, and what do you think would be ethically normative and how do we get there? Right.

Well, I think our current prejudice still is that members of our species, members of the species homo sapien, have automatically, and just being in virtue, just in virtue of being a member of that species, have a higher moral status than any other beings. And that. That means that we are entitled to use other beings for our own ends, even when those ends are not absolute necessities, even when