Animal Slavery

[Angrboda]

I don't have a false dichotomy, as I'm not insisting on the initial dichotomy presented at the beginning of Part II.

Okay.

If, as your argument goes, it is in our interest as a biological species to maximize the utility of non-human resources to increase our odds of survival, it does not follow that god has an equally rational basis for his behavior because he is not a biological being whose interest is defined by his biological nature.

It could be argued that human slavery could be structured to increase the odds of survival of humanity. Are you arguing that such slaveru would be ethical?

As indicated in my last post, that it is pro-survival is a necessary but not sufficient condition to make something moral. What the other conditions which are also necessary is left unspecified, and at this time can only be grappled for with intuition and philosophy. In that vein, our intuitions about empathy may have some role to play in determining a necessary condition for moral behavior, but not necessarily in the way the animal rights advocate suggests.

The existence of species which do not enslave other species indicates that such behavior is not necessary for survival.

Ethics based on evolutionary principles do not transfer across species. What's 'moral' for another species is irrelevant to what's moral for us.

The existence of humans who do not enslave other animals indicates that such behavior is not necessary for human survival.

That something be 'necessary' for human survival is different from something being conducive to human survival. You've altered the framework.

Humans don't act as a whole for the benefit of the species.

While true, I'm not sure this is a strong objection. Humans don't procreate for the benefit of the species, but if they all stopped, it would be a bad result for the species.

Biological evolution produces slavers and rapists and all the other bad things we see in humanity. Do you really think it's a good source of ethics?

This was answered in my last post. Being consistent with evolutionary principles is a first bar an ethic must pass, not the last.

What do you base species-centrism on?

Because evolutionary psychology and biological evolution operate at the level of species due to genetic compatibility. Altruism towards a chicken will, in the general case, reduce the resources that go to the benefit of those I can breed with. Benefiting the chicken will never benefit my species in the same way that benefiting another human will, because of biology. Thus, acts which benefit the chicken (or harm it) have drastically less moral significance than those which help or harm a human. My argument is that these ethical judgements evolved to serve species-centric purposes, so it would be against our self-interest as humans to put the welfare of other species above our own. Perhaps someday, when we have chimpanzees who can work as EMTs saving human lives, a chimpanzee's suffering may acquire moral significance, but only second hand from the perspective of humans.