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Warburton, and me, David Edmonds.
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In the 1970s, the australian philosopher Peter Singer popularized the phrase speciesism.
You may think that human suffering is more important than animal suffering because humans are more intelligent, say, than animals.
But suppose you insist that the suffering of a human matters more than the suffering of a cow, merely in virtue of it being human suffering.
Well, that, says Singer, is speciesism.
It's similar to racism and sexism, and to be condemned.
I've always been convinced by Singer's arguments.
The Yale philosopher Shelley Kagan used to be convinced.
Shelley Kagan, welcome to philosophy bites.
Glad to be here.
The topic we're going to focus on is speciesism.
What is speciesism?
The term speciesism was introduced by Richard Ryder, but was popularized by Peter Singer in an incredibly important and influential book, Animal Liberation, published in 1975.
And the basic idea is that speciesism is a kind of prejudice.
At least that's the evaluation that those who introduced the term wanted to make.
They wanted to make an analogy to racism or sexism.