Animal Slavery

[Angrboda]

What shared interest do I have with conducting experiments on people who are conscious but mentally disabled from birth? They have no chance of recovery and are also familyless and friendless, so no-one to care for them. We could make a whole load of medical advances. I will never be mentally disabled from birth, yet I care for their welfare none-the-less. I can explain that this might be because I have evolved to value humans. But this is very different from a justification.

I justify giving this person rights because they are conscious, and on this basis animals too must be given rights.

In what way does your giving anything that is conscious rights rest on a rational basis? And how do you know what is and isn't conscious? Is a rat conscious? An octopus? A bacterium? A squid? A tree? Gaia?

Illicit major is a formal fallacy committed in a categorical syllogism that is invalid because its major term is undistributed in the major premise but distributed in the conclusion.