This is a follow-up guest post from UWT Alum Lucas Waggoner

On February 28, Ed Winters, or Earthling Ed, gave a talk here at the University of Washington Tacoma. He spoke on veganism and ethics.

Winters discussed how animal rights are about the acknowledgment of rights related to non-human animals. He argued that non-human animals are “deserving of applicable and relevant rights” directly related to the nature of animals, rather than simply applying broad human rights to animals.

One of the more compelling points Winters raised was the way in which broad categorization is employed to alter the reactions people have to animal suffering. He explained that we “assign traits” to make it appear that all animals of a certain kind “are the same.” That way, we don’t think of an animal on an individual level, even if interacting with that animal. We deny animals the right to be viewed or perceived as individuals, despite the fact that no two animals are truly the same.

This act of categorizing animals and denying them individuality helps make their suffering more “palatable” to humans. Despite humans lacking the capacity to truly know what any given animal experiences in life or how it experiences events, distinctions are made regarding consciousness. And the distinctions between which animals it is moral to harm, or under what circumstances harm is accepted, quickly become — according to Winters — arbitrary.

One example he offered was how people tend to respond to animal abuse. A person kicking an animal is typically met with disdain, regardless of a person’s stance on either animal testing or animal consumption. However, when people subject animals to similar levels—or often drastically worse levels—of suffering for animal testing or animal consumption, the responses are not as overwhelmingly against the actions. And the “arbitrary distinctions” people are left with, he argued, lack any coherent moral distinction.

Lucas Waggoner is a UWT alum, writer, and English teacher at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland