Richard Dawkins on Animal Rights

Someone posted this on the infamous sceptical discussion group I'm part of, I think its really very good:

"Peter Singer: Richard you, perhaps you've been set up a little in this, but in discussing things, I wanted to try and link what I said in my session, which I know you and I had a discussion about earlier today, with what you've been saying, because we share a Darwinian view of the world, and one of the claims I made in my session is that the Darwinian view undermines the basis for some of the distinctions we draw between ourselves and animals, undermines the idea that we're special because we were made in the image of God, or that God gave us dominion over the animals. And that if we get rid of these preconceptions, we would take a different view of the moral status of animals. That it would require us to treat them in very different ways from the idea that they're simply things for us to use as we see fit. So I wondered if I could ask you as a Darwinian, whether you share that view?

Richard Dawkins: Yes, let's not say animals, let's say non-human animals.

Peter Singer: Okay, I'd be very happy to do that.

Richard Dawkins: That's consciousness raising, by the way. That's a good example, it's just like what the feminists did with consciousness raising about sex-biased language. It is a logical implication of the Darwinian view that there is continuity between all species, at least theoretically continuity. I am very fond of pointing out that it's an accident of history that the evolutionary intermediates between ourselves, and for example chimpanzees, or actually between any species and any other species, it's an accident that they happen to be extinct. If they were not extinct, and thought experiment would be, suppose we discovered relic populations of Australopithecus, Lucy, in the jungles of Africa. And relic populations of a continuous series of intermediates from ourselves back to the common ancestor with chimpanzees, and a continuous series from that from chimpanzees to the common ancestor with chimpanzees. And let's say that the series is sufficiently continuous, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be, that we could actually mate and reproduce all the way along the chain. So I could mate with a female in the jungle, who could mate with a male, who could mate with another one and we could link all the way in a chain, all the way to chimpanzees.

Now, it is pure historic accident that we actually can't do that. If only all the intermediates had survived we could literally do that. And if that were the case, then the only way we could maintain our present speciesist morality, which draws an absolute wall around homo sapiens, and distinguishes us from every other species on the planet, the only way we could maintain that, under the conditions of the thought experiment that I've I have advanced, would be to have courts exactly like the apartheid courts in South Africa which decided whether so-and-so would pass for white. And when you put it like that, we all of course shrink back in horror from such a prospect, and yet most of us accept without question the presumption that we are a completely unique species. Well in many ways we are a completely uniques species, but lots of other species are that. The point I'm making with the thought experiment is that there is a continuum. I've thought about it, and I mentioned this to you this morning about possibly writing a science fiction novel in which this thought experiment is realized, or another way to do it would be to hybridize humans and chimpanzees to produce a natural hybrid. And the point of the novel would be to explore the implications.

What effect would that have on society? What effect would that have on moral philosophy? What effect would that have on religion? It would be dynamite. And I would love, in some ways, not in all ways, but in some ways I would love to see that actually done. It shouldn't be necessary to do it in actuality, because the thought experiment is clear. I mean, nobody could possibly deny, unless they deny evolution of course, but as long as we're evolutionists, as long as we're Darwinians, nobody could possibly deny that. Which means that all of us, who are meat eaters, including me, are in a very difficult moral position. We are, at least speaking for myself, what I'm doing, is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm. And it requires a level of sort of a social courage, which I haven't yet produced, to break out of that. It's a little bit like the position which anybody, not everybody, but many people would have been, a couple of hundreds of years ago, over slavery, where lots of people felt kind of morally uneasy about slavery, but went along with it, because, I don't know, the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery. "Of course, none of us like the idea of slavery, but you can't seriously contemplate doing away with it, I mean, you know, the economy would collapse."

So, I find myself in something like that situation. I think what I'd really like to see would be a mass consciousness raising movement, so that we all become vegetarian, and then I mean it would be so much easier for those us who find it difficult to go along with that. And quite apart from that, you'd then have brilliant chefs making wonderful recipes and you wouldn't have to …

Peter Singer: Thank you very much for that.