sums up antispeciesism excellently saying: “The antispeciesist claims that, other things being equal, conscious beings of equivalent sentience deserve equal care and respect.”
If one takes “other things being equal” very seriously that could be quite vacuous, since there are so many differences in other areas, e.g. impact on society and flow-through effects, responsiveness of behavior to expected treatment, reciprocity, past agreements, social connectedness, preferences, objective list welfare, even species itself...
The substance of the claim has to be about exactly which things need to be held equal, and which can freely vary without affecting desert.
If one takes “other things being equal” very seriously that could be quite vacuous, since there are so many differences in other areas, e.g. impact on society and flow-through effects, responsiveness of behavior to expected treatment, reciprocity, past agreements, social connectedness, preferences, objective list welfare, even species itself...
The substance of the claim has to be about exactly which things need to be held equal, and which can freely vary without affecting desert.