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Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2016; 7(3): 12-22 

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Original Article 

 

Special Relations, Special Obligations, and Speciesism 

 

Eric X. Qi  

PhD Candidate, Philosophy Department, Rice University, U.S.A. 

Email: xqi@rice.edu 

 

Abstract: This paper develops a general account of special relations and special obligations, 

and uses it as a framework to argue for a modest form of speciesism – mitigated speciesism – 

based on an understanding of species co-membership as a thick concept. Mitigated 

speciesism steers a middle ground between anti-speciesism and crude speciesism. Unlike 

anti-speciesists, I maintain that species co-membership is a morally relevant special relation, 

which indeed grounds special obligations among the members of the same species. But unlike 

crude speciesists, I argue that our special obligations to our fellow human beings do not 

warrant that we should always count their interests more than comparable interests of non-

human animals. Instead, special obligations based on species co-membership are subject to 

three constraints. 

 

Keywords: special relations, special obligations, speciesism, animal ethics 

 

Introduction: In the ethics of marginal cases literature, special relations and special 

obligations often occupy an important place. Two types of special relations figure in the 

debate most prominently: family relations and species relations. Few scholars deny that 

family relations warrant special obligations to our family members, but they are divided on 

whether species co-membership should also ground special obligations which would give 

greater moral considerations to the interests of its members. One group, by understanding 

species co-membership in a certain way, gives an affirmative answer to that question; and the 

other group answers it negatively. The second group often accuses of the position of the first 

group as speciesism. According to Peter Singer, speciesism “refers to discrimination on the 

basis of species, not to discrimination on the basis of cognitive capacities”1. If x and y are 

members of the same species, that would count as a special relation between them and ground 

a special obligation to one another. That is, x has special obligations to y simply because Y is 

a member of X’s species. 

 

This paper attempts to shed new light on the debate about speciesism by taking a close look 

at the propositions that each group is committed to. I distinguish between two forms of 

speciesism– crude speciesism and mitigated speciesism, and argue for mitigated speciesism 

and against both crude speciesism and anti-speciesism. My arguments build on the general 

account of special relations and special obligations that I will develop in the first two 

sections, in which I claim that one’s special obligations to others who share a group 

membership with him or her are subject to three constraints. Crude speciesism is wrong in 

neglecting the three constraints, and anti-speciesism is unacceptable in its overly narrow 



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interpretation of species co-membership and its denial that group co-membership can count 

as a special relation which ground special obligations. Mitigated speciesism, on the other 

hand, avoids the problems facing crude speciesism and anti-speciesism, and steers a middle 

path between them. 

 

Special Relations: How we should define special relations turns out to be surprisingly 

complicated. We stand in a relation with almost everything. For example, everyone stands in 

a biological relation with his parents and siblings; every school child has schoolmates. When 

we go to work, we have colleagues. When we live in a place, we have neighbors. We also 

make friends with others. We share membership of the species Homo sapiens with other 

people. We share the same planet with all things on earth. After we have purchased a thing, 

we stand in an owner-property relation with it.  

 

But what makes a relation special in the moral sense? There are at least two components of 

such kinds of relations: the specialty component and the moral relevance component. On the 

first component, we need to know what makes a relation special. One necessary condition for 

a relation to be special is that X stands in a relation with Y but not with Z. A special relation 

is a three-place relation: X stands in a special relation with Y only in comparison to Z. The 

comparative part grounds the “special” part of the special relation. X and Y have a relation, 

and X and Z could also have a relation. But what makes the X-Y relation special is that there 

is something in the X-Y relation that is not shared in the X-Z relation. In this case, we would 

say that X bears a special relation with Y relative to Z.  

 

The other necessary condition for a relation to be special is the hierarchical structure of it. An 

adult man stands in a father-son relation with his son, which is not shared in his relation with 

his colleagues, so the father-son relation is a special relation for him. But his relation with his 

colleagues is not shared in his relation to his son either, meaning that his colleague relation is 

a special relation for him, too. But which one is more special when it comes to moral 

obligations? It seems that relations as characterized by group membership are different in 

intimacy and emotional attachment. Family relations are relations among family members, 

and family membership is more important than friend membership. Similarly, friendship 

seems to be a closer and more intimate relation than colleague relations, which are closer than 

relations with strangers.  

 

Some types of special relation warrant special moral obligations, other types do not. If they 

do, they are morally relevant – they are special relations in the moral sense. Family relations 

may be the most typical examples of morally relevant special relations, as most of us agree 

that one has special obligation to one’s family members just in virtue of the fact that they are 

members of one’s family. More generally, if X stands in a morally relevant special relation 

with Y compared to Z, i.e., X stands in a closer relation with Y than she does with Z, then X 

has special obligations to Y compared to Z. If X has a morally relevant special relation with Z 

relative to W, then X has special obligations to Z compared to W. Like special relation, 

special obligation is also a comparative concept. 

 



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Special Obligations: There is little controversy that special relations warrant special 

obligations, but it is crucial for our purposes to understand what the scope and content are of 

special obligations that special relations warrant. If X has special obligations to Y compared 

to Z, does it mean that X should give priority to Y’s interests over Z’s, as commonly 

believed?  

 

I believe the unrestricted version of special obligations cannot be justified. If an evil person 

chose to murder his neighbor’s wife over his own wife, for instance, his wrongdoing is 

equally blameworthy as it would be had he chosen to murder his own wife instead, even 

though technically he was favoring the interest of his wife as a member of his family. He has 

equal obligation not to murder his wife as he does to his neighbor’s wife, and his special 

relation with his wife does not make a difference in this case. So special relations warrant 

some kinds of special obligations, but not all kinds, and we need to impose some constraints 

on the scope and content of special obligations that special relations legitimately justify.  

 

The first constraint concerns the scope of interests of relevant parties. If X has special 

obligation to Y relative to Z, X may have reason to give priority to X’s comparative interests 

over Y’s comparative interests, but it is not the case that any interest of Y counts more to X 

than any of Z’s interests. For instance, when my child and a stranger’s child have equal 

cravings for a piece of chocolate cake, my special relation with my child gives me a reason to 

prioritize his interest in getting the chocolate cake over the stranger’s child’s if the piece of 

chocolate cake could satisfy only one child’s. However, at least in some situations, if the 

piece of chocolate cake could only satisfy my well-nourished child’s cravings but can save 

the life of a starving stranger’s child, morality seems to require the chocolate cake be given to 

the stranger’s child2. This constraint shows that special relations do not give lexical priority 

to all interests of the person to whom we have special obligations. Some of his less important 

interests can be outweighed by more significant interests of others who do not stand in 

special relations with us, as in the cravings-starvation case. Lexical priority applies to 

comparative interests, but may not apply to cases where the interests of relevant parties are so 

different that morality requires special obligations be overridden. I will call it the comparable 

interest constraint.  

 

The second constraint on special obligations is that special obligations are legitimate only in 

the private domain, but not in the public domain. By public domain I mean cases where 

public decisions are being made that involve or have an impact on public resources. Private 

domain refers to cases where decisions are only private, i.e., involve resources that are 

privately owned by the decision maker. The most typical type of public domain is public 

offices. Officeholders are morally (and legally) forbidden to distribute public resources in 

favor of those who stand in special relations with them compared to others. For instance, it is 

morally wrong to offer a job to one’s adult child who is less qualified than other job 

candidates. Only privately owned resources could be subject to special obligations. I have 

reason to spend my own money on my child rather than others’, but there is no moral reason 

for me to distribute public resources in my child’s favor if I manage public resources. Special 

obligations are subject to the constraint of public justice.  



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The third constraint is the positive obligation constraint. Special obligations are positive 

obligations, as opposed to negative obligations. Positive obligations are obligations to do 

what is morally praiseworthy, and negative obligations are obligations to refrain from doing 

what is morally forbidden. For instance, our special obligations to our beloved ones should 

not be met at the cost of unjustly frustrating others’ comparable interests. If a father could 

only save his starving child’s life by robbing an equally starving stranger’s child of her food, 

which will cause the latter to die of starvation, he would do the morally wrong thing if he 

robs her. This is different from the drowning case. When the two children are drowning and 

the father could only save one, his special obligations to his child warrant that he saves his 

own child rather than the stranger’s child. His positive obligation to the stranger’s child is 

overridden by his special positive obligation to his own child since both cannot be met.  

 

The private domain constraint is relatively uncontroversial. When one in charge of public 

resources uses them in favor of those who stand in special relations with him, he is acting 

against public justice. No special relations could ever justify misusing public resources for 

the interests of those with whom he has special relations. The widespread policy on conflict 

of interests gives voice to this constraint.  

 

The comparable interest constraint may be controversial. Some may deny that morality 

requires us to forgo insignificant interests of ours and our beloved ones for the sake of more 

significant interests of others to whom we do not have special obligations. If the comparable 

interest constraint is legitimate, then we would not even be permitted to spend 20 dollars on a 

movie to entertain ourselves or our children, which would otherwise save a life of a starving 

child somewhere in the world. This is a familiar objection that morality delivered by this 

constraint is too demanding. In response, I would say that morality does not require us to 

sacrifice all of our own insignificant interests (and those of our family members) for the sake 

of charity under all circumstances. When one is in a position that his benevolent action will 

have singly decisive and direct effect on a stranger’s significant interests, as in the craving-

starvation case, morality does require him to forgo his special obligation to the insignificant 

interests of those who have special relations with him. Imagine a child has a toy that could 

only be used by her father to save a stranger’s child from drowning to death. Nobody else is 

around to help, and if the father does not act, the stranger’s child would surely die. Despite 

his child’s resistance to having his father take her toy, the father should act against her 

interest in keeping her toy and use it to save the stranger’s child. Similarly, let’s revise the 

20-dollar movie case this way. Suppose you are on your way to buy a movie ticket for your 

child and run into a dying stranger who needs food and water to survive. Should you use your 

20 dollars to buy food and water to save his life instead of moving on to get a ticket? There is 

little controversy that you should. If so, then the comparative interest constraint is indeed 

justified.  

 

The negative obligation constraint seems also controversial. Isn’t the case that we have more 

special obligations to those with whom we have close relations even in the negative sense? 

The answer is no. It seems equally forbidden for a person to harm those to whom he has 



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special obligations and those to whom he does not. If a man considers whether to murder his 

wife or his neighbor’s wife and decides to murder the latter, the moral wrongness of his 

action will not be lowered by his choice. His neighbor’s wife’s interests are not less (and no 

more) protected than his wife’s. Every morally capable agent has an equal obligation not to 

violate anyone’s interests. When it comes to negative obligations, special relations do not 

seem to matter.  

 

A more complicated case regarding special obligations involves the mix of positive and 

negative obligations. Since our positive special obligations to those who are closer to us can 

be overridden by our positive obligations to others, can our negative obligations to others be 

overridden by our positive special obligations to those closer to us? This is an issue that 

deeply divides traditional deontologists and classical consequentialists. Traditional 

deontologists insist that our negative obligations can never be overridden even if this would 

bring about better outcome. The trolley problem, organ transplant case, and similar thought 

experiments are all designed to reject classical consequentialism. It is not my intention to 

settle the dispute here. Rather, I merely want to point out that traditional deontological 

approaches face similar problems as classical consequentialism, because it does not seem 

right to say that our negative obligations to others should never be overridden by desirable 

consequences. In cases of moral catastrophe, it seems right to violate our negative obligations 

to others for the greater good. For example, if an individual has a highly contagious deadly 

disease and there is nothing we can do about it except quarantining him (and hence violating 

his rights to freedom of movement), we would be justified in doing that3. 

 

However, even we accept the consequentialist principle that our negative obligations can be 

overridden, it does not mean that they can be overridden by our special obligations to those 

who are closer to us. Special relations and positive special obligations do not play a role in 

overriding our negative obligations to others. That is, our negative obligations to others can 

be overridden not because it will produce greater good to those who stand in special relations 

with us, but because it will produce greater good for anyone who will be potentially affected. 

Again, this is an issue related to public justice. If the basis for violating our negative 

obligations to others is built on our special relations with those who will benefit from that 

violation, morality would have a shaky foundation. This is actually the requirement of the 

private domain constraint on special obligations. We have no moral reason to violate our 

negative obligations to others merely because that will bring about greater good to those to 

whom we have special obligations. What matters are the interests of all those who will 

potentially be affected: whether they have special relations with us or not is not a morally 

relevant factor.  

 

We have seen that our negative obligations and some of our positive obligations to others are 

not grounded in our special relations with them. And in the public domain, special obligations 

should not even be allowed a space. If there are moral obligations that are not grounded in 

special relations, where are they grounded? This is a contested issue, and I am not committal 

on any specific theory. However, I do think that there is at least one necessary condition for 

the grounds of non-special obligations – the capacity to suffer. I am using the word “suffer” 



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in a broad sense. Sufferings include pain, frustration, and other kinds of negative attitudinal 

states. As long as an entity possesses this capacity, there will be a reason not to impose 

avoidable sufferings on it, whether it bears a special relation to morally capable agents or not. 

Our positive special obligations to our beloved ones can be overridden by our positive 

obligations to prevent avoidable sufferings from happening to those with whom we do not 

bear special relations. The basis for our overriding positive obligations to them also lies in 

their capacities to suffer. The reason that every morally capable agent has for respecting an 

entity’s interest in avoiding unnecessary sufferings is agent-neutral.  

 

Mitigated Speciesism: The above account of special relations and special obligations 

provides a useful framework to think about the issue of speciesism. There are at least three 

propositions that are relevant to the speciesism debate:  

 

(P1) Species co-membership is understood as saying nothing more than being 

members of the same species; 

(P2) Species co-membership is a morally relevant special relation, which grounds our 

special obligations to our fellow human beings; 

(P3) Our special obligations to our fellow human beings justify us always giving 

greater moral weight to the interests of our fellow human beings than to the similar 

interests of other animals. 

 

Anti-speciesists accept (P1) and reject (P2) and (P3). (P1) represents the anti-speciesist 

interpretation of species co-membership in the context of animal ethics. It seems to 

understand species membership in a minimalist way; that is, say, a being is a member of 

human species if and only if it possesses the biological features that are characteristic of a 

human being. This minimalist interpretation of species co-membership leads to the anti-

speciesist rejection of both (P2) and (P3). For them, X’s merely being a member of the 

human species in virtue of its biological features does not constitute a morally relevant 

special relation and entitle it to greater moral considerations of its interests. We do not give 

greater moral consideration to its interest simply because it is a member of human species. 

Speciesism in this sense is analogous to racism and sexism, which base the strength of moral 

considerations merely on one’s skin color and gender, respectively. 

 

Crude speciesists reject (P1) and accept (P2) and (P3). They reject the minimalist 

interpretation of species co-membership and read it as a thicker concept instead. Usually, 

they do not think that we give greater moral considerations to human interests simply because 

they are co-members of the same species in the minimalist sense. Rather, co-membership in 

the human species in the context of animal ethics can be understood as a misleading label for 

a thick notion such as personhood, human dignity, or communal relationship4. If human 

interests count more, that is only because of their personhood, dignity, or communal 

relationship that lower animals do not possess. Once they adopt a different conception of 

species co-membership, their arguments are no longer vulnerable to the charge of speciesism 

in the minimalist sense that anti-speciesists use5. 

 



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I believe both anti-speciesists and crude speciesists get things wrong. Anti-speciesists get it 

wrong when they reject (P2) and the thick concept of species co-membership. If they were 

right, our giving more considerations to the interests of our family members would hardly 

ever be justified. But crude speciesists are wrong to accept (P3). Even if we do have special 

obligations to our fellow human beings in virtue of their unique qualities or their special 

relations with us, this does not entail that we should always count their interests more in all 

circumstances.  

 

Mitigated speciesists reject (P3) as well as (P1), and accept (P2). Like crude speciesists, 

mitigated speciesists view species co-membership as a thick concept: it means the sharing of 

qualities such as rational autonomy and self-consciousness, and some common values, 

commitments, emotional attachments, and social bonds, actual or potential. However, the 

main strength of mitigated speciesism lies in its rejection of (P3) by subjecting special 

obligations to the three constraints introduced in the second section. By rejecting (P3), it 

retains the plausible part of anti-speciesism; but unlike anti-speciesism, it does not reject 

(P2), which leaves it space to accommodate familism. I will spell out what mitigated 

speciesism is like by discussing each constraint in turn.  

 

Firstly, our special obligations to our fellow human beings are legitimate only in the private 

domain. That is, only when it comes to the distribution of resources that are ‘privately’ 

owned by individual human beings, one is entitled to give priority to the interests of his or her 

fellow human beings over the interests of animals. In the public domain, on the other hand, 

there is no reason for us to distribute public resources in favor of our fellow beings to which 

we have special obligations. For example, it would be immoral if we destroyed all natural 

habitats of animals for the benefit of humans. The natural habitats and environment are 

‘public resources’ for all species on earth.  

 

Even in the private domain, our special obligations to our fellow beings are not unrestricted; 

they can be overridden by greater interests of non-human animals. Not all human interests are 

more significant than animal interests. Our interest in not getting wet may be outweighed by a 

cat’s interest in surviving the drowning in a river. Sometimes it can be a difficult issue to 

compare the relevant importance of interests between human beings and other animals. For 

instance, it is hard to know whether we should forgo our special obligations of feeding a 

slightly hungry human child over our obligations of giving the food to a dog that would 

otherwise die from hunger, as the two interests are not easily comparable. However, this issue 

need not worry us too much. As a principle, our positive special obligations to fellow beings 

can be overridden by our positive obligations to animals.  

 

We have negative obligations to both human beings and other animals. But the positive 

obligation constraint shows that our species co-membership does not give a boost to our 

negative obligations to our fellow humans. Our negative obligations and some positive 

obligations to humans and other animals are grounded in the fact that they have the capacity 

to suffer. This capacity gives us agent-neutral reason not to impose avoidable sufferings upon 

them.  



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These constraints show that our species co-membership only justifies the priority of our 

interests over animal interests when (1) our interests are comparable to animal interests, (2) 

the resources we are distributing are ‘private’, and (3) our species-bounded special 

obligations are positive. Under these conditions, if both a non-human animal and a human 

being are starving to death, our special relation with the human being gives priority to his 

interest. This is even true for cognitively severely impaired human beings. Since they possess 

the capacity to suffer, their interests of, say, being well nourished should be given priority 

over the comparable interests of animals, even if their cognitive levels are only comparable to 

those of animals.  

 

Mitigated speciesism steers a middle path between anti-speciesism and crude speciesism. 

Unlike anti-speciesism, it maintains that under the three conditions, species co-membership 

understood as a thick concept warrants the priority of human interests over animal interests. 

This captures our intuition that a human being, whether he or she is cognitively severely 

impaired or even in vegetative state, has dignity that should be respected. They have certain 

interests that require to be given priority over comparable animal interests in the positive 

obligation sense. This intuition is what Bernard Williams calls “the human prejudice”6. 

 

Unlike crude speciesism, however, mitigated speciesism holds that beyond the three 

conditions species co-membership does not matter; the human prejudice is not justified in all 

circumstances. When it comes to negative obligations, for example, species co-membership 

as a special relation plays no role in deciding whether human interests or animal interests 

should be given greater moral consideration. Rather, all that matters is how human interests 

are compared to animal interests. For instance, we have negative obligations to not impose 

pain on a person with the intention of doing harm to her; we also have similar obligations to a 

non-human animal. But isn’t it more morally forbidden to harm her than to harm the animal? 

The answer is yes, but that’s not because she bears special relations to us, but because her 

relevant interest is greater than the animal interest. Given the fact that a person’s mental life 

is richer than an animal’s, the harm intentionally caused to her is greater than the harm 

intentionally caused to the animal. The aggregate amount of the physical and mental pain and 

the post-trauma stress on her may well exceed those on the animal7. Therefore, the reason for 

us to favor her interest over the animal interest is independent of her species co-membership 

with us.  

 

In mixed cases of positive and negative obligations, species co-membership does not matter 

either. In those cases, we often find ourselves in a situation where animal interests will have 

to be sacrificed for human interests. If the only way to advance our medical knowledge is by 

performing animal experiments, sacrificing animal interests while causing minimalist 

sufferings seems to be justified8. It is justified not because animal experiments promote 

greater benefits for human beings as members of a special species, but simply because they 

promote greater benefits no matter whoever the beneficiaries would be. Imagine that many 

animal species come down to an unknown disease and are dying, and suppose that the only 

way to save them is by doing animal research. Most of us would agree that it is morally 

permissible to sacrifice some animals in order to save much more of them. If this is the case, 



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then what matters is the greater good, not species co-membership in the minimalist sense. It 

makes no difference whether the beneficiaries are human beings or animals. 

 

It should be noted that while the utilitarian principle plays an important role in overriding 

cases involving negative obligations, it is not the only decisive factor. We do not want to say 

that whenever violating an animal’s or a person’s interests produces greater benefits, it will 

be morally permissible to do so. There must be more requirements of moral permissibility 

besides the greater utilitarian gains. For instance, one additional requirement could be that if 

entity x has more interests than y, which are contextually equally available for the 

unavoidable violation of their interests produces the same amount of benefits, it would be 

morally wrong to violate x’s interests for greater benefits. Yet another additional requirement 

could be that the unavoidable violation of y’s interests must be kept at the minimum; it would 

be morally wrong to impose more sufferings on y than necessary.  

 

A possible anti-speciesist objection to mitigated speciesism is this: if species co-membership 

grounds special obligations, as mitigate speciesism maintains, then wouldn’t race co-

membership or sex co-membership also ground special obligations? If so, then we would 

have mitigated racism and mitigated sexism, which do not seem to be justified9. I do not want 

to say that mitigated racism or mitigated sexism is a correct or defensible view; rather, I 

would like to point out that within the scope of the three constraints, mitigated racism/sexism 

might not be so bad. In the domain of purely private resources which one has positive 

obligations to allocate to others on a voluntary basis, it does not seem so objectionable for an 

individual person to allocate them based on race or sex membership understood as a thick 

concept. For instance, an adult woman might choose to save a drowning girl’s life and let the 

drowning boy die, if she can save only one. In this scenario, her “sexist” choice does not 

seem so blameworthy. I think our strong intuitions against racism and sexism are based on 

issues that go beyond the scope of the three constraints. But once we understand race co-

membership and sex co-membership as thick concepts and restrict them to those constraints, 

racism and sexism in mitigated form no long seem so objectionable.  

 

Conclusion: Special relations occupy a legitimate place in ethics, but their scope is limited to 

the private domain, positive obligation, and comparable interests. Both family relations and 

species relations are subject to these constraints. Crude speciesists mistakenly neglect one or 

more of the constraints when they defend the priority of human interests, and anti-speciesists 

unacceptably reject the plausible thesis that we have special obligation to our fellow beings 

within the scope of the three constraints. Mitigated speciesism, by understanding species co-

membership as a thick concept, maintains that species co-membership warrants special 

obligation to our fellow human beings by giving priority to their interests over equal interests 

of other animals when it comes to private decisions on how to distribute ‘private’ resources. 

But our special obligation to respect the interests of our fellow human beings could be 

overridden by our obligation to respect the interests of other animals if the latter are far 

greater than the former. If some non-human animals’ interests have to be sacrificed for far 

greater benefits of human beings or animals, that’s not because species co-membership 

matters, but because of the greater good this will produce10. 



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Author Contribution: Author developed the conceptual idea and wrote the manuscript. 

 

Conflict of Interest: Declared none. 

 

Acknowledgement: I thank Baruch Brody, Jeanine Campsall, Rainer Ebert, and especially 

an anonymous referee for the Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics Special Issue on Animal 

Ethics for very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Rainer Ebert and Jeanine 

Campsall also helped to correct spelling and grammatical errors in an earlier version, and I 

am very thankful for that. I bear the responsibility for remaining errors, if any. 

 

References: 

 

1 Peter Singer, quoted in Rosamund Raha, Animal Liberation: An Interview with Professor 

Peter Singer, The Vegan 2006, 18-19. 
2 It might be debatable whether we should donate a substantial amount of money to famine-

affected children in a poor country: Peter Singer (1971) argues that we should and some deny 

that (e.g., Kekes, J., On the Supposed Obligation to Relieve Famine, Philosophy 2002, 77 

(4):503-517). I will address this issue shortly. Before that, I am just adding the qualification 

“in some situations” here. I will specify what those situations amount to shortly after.  
3 In response to the challenge of moral catastrophes, some deontologists (Moore, M., Placing 

Blame: A General Theory of the Criminal Law, Oxford University Press, 1997, ch. 17; 

Alexander, L., Deontology at the Threshold, San Diego Law Review 2000, 37(4): 893–912; 

Ellis, A., Deontology, Incommensurability and the Arbitrary, Philosophical and 

Phenomenological Research 1992, 52(4): 855–875) endorse threshold deontology, according 

to which deontological principles apply below the threshold but they may be overridden by 

consequentialist considerations above the threshold. I am neutral regarding the plausibility of 

threshold deontology. What I am trying to do here is merely pointing out that traditional 

deontological absolutism is untenable due to moral catastrophes. For a good brief review of 

the threshold deontology literature, see Alexander, Larry and Moore, Michael, 

"Deontological Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), 

Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/ethics-

deontological/, section 4. Thanks to the anonymous referee for suggesting to me the threshold 

deontology literature. 
4 See Kagan, S., What’s Wrong with Speciesism? Journal of Applied Philosophy 2016, 33 

(1):1-21; Kittay, E. F., At the Margins of Moral Personhood, Ethics 2005, 116 (1):100-131. 
5 Since such a move rejects the minimalist reading of speciesism in favor of an alternative 

reading, writers who make the move are not really crude speciesists in the standard (i.e., 

minimalist) sense. Singer (Why Speciesism is Wrong: A Response to Kagan, Journal of 

Applied Philosophy 2016, 33 (1):31-35) points this out explicitly in his response to Kagan’s 

criticism of his arguments. Therefore, the label of crude speciesists might be not a good 

choice. However, readers should bear in mind that this not-so-good label should not mislead 



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them into thinking that those writers support speciesism in the standard minimalist sense. 

Rather, they are not against speciesism only in the alternative sense that they stipulate.  
6 Williams, B., The Human Prejudice, in A. W. Moore (ed.), Philosophy as a Humanistic 

Discipline, Princeton University Press, 2006. 
7 There is a complication here. Many philosophers (Singer, P., Practical Ethics, Cambridge 

University Press, 2011, 52; Rollin, B. E., Animal Rights & Human Morality, Prometheus 

Books, 2006, 89; Linzy 2009, 17; Scully, M., Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of 

Animals, and the Call to Mercy, St. Martin's Press, 2002, 7) point out that a lack of rationality 

often makes suffering worse, as animals without rational capacities cannot anticipate an end 

of suffering, and pain without understanding is even more blunt. In response, I’d like to point 

out that understanding what is going on may add mental stress to the upcoming physical pain. 

Even if understanding could reduce the intensity of pain by anticipating it in some cases, the 

prolonged psychological stress based on understanding might outweigh the benefit of 

anticipated pain, which makes suffering overall worse. For instance, when one knows that 

one’s illness is incurable and one will die in 10 days, the feeling of desperation could be 

tremendous. Also, it does not seem to be the case that anticipated pain will always have lower 

intensity than unanticipated pain. For example, the bodily pain caused by a surgery with 

knowledge of it does not seem to be less intense than without knowing it. Thanks to the 

anonymous reviewer for pointing out this issue and referring me to the relevant literature that 

I have cited in this footnote.  
8 It is controversial whether using animals in medical research is the necessary means to 

advance medical knowledge. I remain neutral on this issue. I am just using the hypothetical 

sentence here to make my argument.  
9 Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for raising this objection.  
10 In addition to the literature mentioned earlier, I also consulted the following three 

publications during the preparation of this article: Brody, B., Defending Animal Research: 

An International Perspective, in Jeremy R. Garrett (ed.), The Ethics of Animal Research: 

Exploring the Controversy, The MIT Press, 2012; Linzey, A., Why Animal Suffering Matters: 

Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics. Oxford University Press, 2009; and McMahan, 

J., Our Fellow Creatures, Journal of Ethics 2005, 9 (3-4):353-380. 

 


