Extrinsic and Intrinsic Arguments: Strategies for Promoting Animal Rights (original) (raw)

benefits for animals and the planet. But what is truly needed to free billions of animals is a qualitative transformation in people's thinking. Without a moral paradigm shift, the public may never be motivated to overcome either its own self-interest in using animals or governments' aggressive protection of animal-abusing industries. Types and Sub-Types of Argument In making this case I discuss, among extrinsic arguments, appeals to authority, the linkage of human and animal rights, and appeals to expediency. In relation to intrinsic arguments, I address appeals to compassion and attacks upon speciesism. The critique of speciesism has two main components: the assertion of moral equality, and the exposure and repudiation of the power-ethic. Of the myriad forms of animal exploitation and abuse, I treat only vegetarianism and anti-vivisectionism because they affect the greatest number of animals and thus are the most important areas to target. In practice, extrinsic and intrinsic arguments are usually combined. The campaigner might wish to make an intrinsic point, but feels that it is inadequate and needs extrinsic supplementation. Lewis (2004) gives an example of the complications campaigners get into as a result: It would seem to follow … that animal rights activists would want to argue that the similarities between humans and fellow animals make animal experimentation unjustified. Nevertheless, when they employ scientific arguments, they claim just the opposite-animal experiments are wrong because other animals are different from us! … they are reduced to making the argument that "We're all similar, but not too similar. This is a tenuous rhetorical position in which animals are just enough like us to merit a ban on experimentation while they are just different enough to make experimentation 100% inapplicable to humans. While this may or may not be true, it does not make for a strong, coherent argument. In reality, this is the reverse image of the vivisectors' own confused claim, namely that animals are different enough to make vivisection morally acceptable, but similar enough to make the results reliable. Instead of exposing such confusion, some abolitionists unwittingly copy it. Yes, we are both like and unlike animals, but to the uncommitted and conservative public the argument sounds like a desperate attempt by abolitionists to profit from conflicting claims. Extrinsic points may have their place within an intrinsic framework, for example as reassurance that vegetarianism or (vivisection) abolitionism can promote better health or medicine, but if these points are not assigned a clearly subordinate role, they can distort the real argument, which is intrinsic and moral. In any case, for the purpose of analysis, I treat the types and sub-types separately. Extrinsic arguments Appeals to authority Campaigners often point to people like Leonardo da Vinci, Perce Shelley, George Bernard Shaw, and Mohandas Gandhi, not to mention pop stars and actors, who were or are vegetarian.