Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[James2014]

My first instinct is to say simply "because they are human". It's not really any specific property or quality of humanity which makes me think we're special, it's just the species to which I happen to belong. I think one has to draw the line somewhere or one would grieve as much for the cockroach one steps on as for the lamb one slaughters, as for the person in hospital. Just that side of people like me seems about right.

I would argue firstly again on the basis of logical consistency. A petri dish of human cells, such as those that experiments are performed on, are human, but we would not accord them the same rights as a person. So to be consistent one either not base ethics on species, or believe that human cells are worthy of ethical consideration.

Secondly, I would argue against species as criteria relevant to ethics because it is a category without any real boundaries, but is merely useful to describe evolution. When in evolution did humans become humans? Lets say we define species as animals that can breed together to produce fertile offspring. Now you would not be able to breed with some early hominid, and we could therefore say you are of different species. But if we go back in evolutionary time to the transition between early hominids and humans one will find intermediate hominids that can breed both with humans and early hominids. This is how evolution progresses, through small steps and not abrupt changes. Because of that one could argue that those intermediate hominids were just another "race" of humans, and if that is so the early hominids that can breed with the intermediate hominids are also just another "race" of humans. One can do this same process all the way back for to the common ancestors of all sexually reproducing animals. So are therefore all sexually reproducing animals "human", and if so do not all animals deserve ethical consideration? It sounds nonsensical, but is really just a problem with the ambiguity of the word "species".