Animals & Nature,
Short Takes
Seb Alex is an animal rights activist, lecturer, photojournalist and author who runs the Middle East Vegan Society and has given animal rights advocacy workshops to over 1300+ activists across Europe, the Middle East and Australia. He is the author of the free e-book When Logic and Animal Rights Meet, which explains how logical fallacies are used to justify animal exploitation and how you can detect them.
Q: Why do you recommend animal advocates study logic and argumentation?
Alex: The reason why I believe it’s important for people to understand how arguments work in order to discuss animal welfare issues intelligently is because I strongly believe that we have reason, logic and ethical consistency on our “side” of the argument. Although emotional approaches also work with some people, an appeal to emotion isn’t always as powerful as a simple logic-based argument that someone can’t build an answer against. Ultimately, the cause we fight for is one where the suffering or exploitation of other animals depends on how well we fight for them. Given the importance of this issue, I believe every advocate should understand how to build strong arguments for animal rights.
Q: What’s an example of the kind of logical thinking you’re talking about?
Alex: A simple example is the ‘’naming the trait’’ question that we can ask a person, which says: ‘’Can you name the trait that is true of other animals that if true of humans would justify treating humans the way we treat other animals?’’ In other words, what is the morally relevant trait that these animals we exploit and/or kill don’t possess? How can we justify doing what we do when in all morally relevant ways, we are similar to them?
The question aims to test their logical consistency, by extending the notions that human rights are based on to other animals. This is because, despite being very different from each other, in so many different ways such as looks, skin color, intelligence, etc., we have agreed that all humans are equal due to the fact that none of these traits are morally relevant. The same applies to other animals.
There are many arguments for animal rights. Advocates should be careful to not use logical fallacies such as appealing to nature in order to try to make our case for animal rights.
This Q&A, along with dozens more, is published in the special "Animals Issue" of Current Affairs.