 because you talk about social progression and the only examples people give are historical ones, women's rights, you know, the abolishment of slavery, this kind of stuff. It's more difficult when that tide of progress is ahead of you to make those kind of comparisons. It can be seen as quite distasteful, in fact, to make a comparison to the liberation of animals to something like the liberation of slaves or the liberation of women or anything like that. What's your take on making those kinds of comparisons? Yeah, well, I guess the problem comes in when you're pairing the victims, when you're saying, you know, this human slave here in this pig. But I think when you compare the action and you share what we have in common with the animals, like look, the reason animals deserve moral consideration and the reason that they're enslaved as well, you know, is because they desire their life of freedom and they desire their sentience and we shouldn't rob that from them and cause them suffering. And if you look at what we do to animals, we subjugate them and murder them on mass, 74 billion land animals a year and one between one and three trillion marine animals per year. And now that adds up, that adds up, like that suffering adds up. Now, if you focus, if you start comparing two victims, I think that's when you might get into a bit of trouble. Like, you know, I've seen people juxtapose like a human and an animal and going, what's the difference? But the action of enslaving a sentient being is what should be focussed on and the action of murdering the sentient beings is what should be focussed on. Now, if you're saying, like I understand, like saying a human woman is the same as a cow is going to cause some offence and because we're different in many ways, obviously, you know, intelligence and sentience arguably and, you know, complexity of thought and, you know, people that care about that woman and, you know, the cow might just be an individual no one sort of knows. But focusing on what we have in common with those animals and what these injustices have in common is a good thing. I just think there's a way of saying it that could come across as offensive. Yeah, you say that people are offended when we're trying to say that a cow is the same as a woman and it's like, well, we're not saying that. That's never been said. Nobody has ever made that claim. Most animal rights cases philosophically, at least, begin with the differences between humans and other animals. That's where the analysis begins. But I think that's a key point and I hadn't really thought of it in these terms before, but we compare the action, not the victim. That's the comparison that's being made, right? Because the whole point of making the comparison is saying, if your action can be justified to do this, then let's see what else that action justifies. It's like saying, look, if you have this principle that you're using to justify action X, you should be aware that that could also justify action Y if you applied it to action Y. And someone then says, are you saying that X and Y are the same? How can you compare X and Y? It's like, that's not what we did. These are totally separable events. X could be much worse than Y. X could be much better than Y. All I'm saying is that the justification applies to both. But I think it's important to make that clear. This is another instance where we have to be careful because the point we're making may be legitimate, but because of the way that people are interpreting what we're saying, it's interpreted in an illegitimate way and therefore the point lacks force. Strength. Yeah, and if we'd have tailored our language to the person listening to, although we shouldn't have to, as it were, that might have been a positive thing to do. But I guess it's about finding a balance between how much you should tailor your language without actually losing the essence of truth that lies behind the point. Also, Alex, I want to make a point that the mentality that led to humans enslaving other humans, are they lesser than they are animals? That mentality that women are below men, and that mentality that gay people don't deserve, the equal right to marriage and all of these things, that mentality is the same mentality we use to subjugate, abuse and kill animals. Although I might talk about how racism is discrimination, and baseless discrimination which has led to oppression. And I might make the comparison to speciesism being discrimination which has led to oppression. Although they're different issues with different victims, the mentality which leads us there is dangerous and the same. And we could argue that the result of speciesism, just mathematically the sentience of suffering, the result has been much worse. Like just obviously not on an individual basis like, you know, cow versus human, but the mathematical result of speciesism. In terms of the number, yeah. In terms of its number, it's much worse. And it's happened during all of these human injustices and continues to happen today in modern civilised society where we claim to be civilised. Yeah, it's a good point to make that even though the case might not be worse but it might be better on an individual basis. You have to also add up to numbers, right? And I remember making this point with Peter Singer as well. We were kind of stuck on this question and the point was this, like, look, I'm not entirely sure or most people might not be entirely sure if there is a number of cows, for instance, that's worth one human life. Like, it's a hard thing to measure. But what we do know is that if there is such a number, we've crossed it. The amount of animals that are being killed is just so unfathomably high that it bears not thinking about. I'm interested in the point that you just made about the mentality because the thing to note is that, for instance, you say that the same mentality was used to justify something like slavery. Well, what was said, it was these people are less intelligent. These people are less capable of producing things for society and therefore we enslave them. Now, people began to argue they're not less intelligent. They can produce a society. But here's the interesting point is that that's irrelevant anyway because even if they were less intelligent, even if they weren't contributing to society, that's not a justification to enslave them, right? So the mindset is the same because the comparison you make there, the reason I bring this up is because somebody might say, yeah, but Joey, yeah, the same mindset was being used, but it was right to use it with animals and not right to use it with slaves because slaves are not less intelligent than masters, yet animals are less intelligent than human beings. But the point that we're trying to compare here is whether the mentality justifies what we're doing to them. Is the fact that this animal is less intelligent? Let's just concede that. Is that got any bearing on their moral worth? This is something that Thomas Jefferson wrote about. Of course, Thomas Jefferson was a man who owned slaves, but he also wanted to get a clause to abolish slaves, slavery into the Declaration of Independence. Kind of in his heart of hearts, he was an abolitionist of a sword, I suppose. But there was this book written about the intellectual and artistic achievements of black people. And the idea, it was kind of written in the abolitionist spirit. It was kind of like, look at the contributions that these people are making. And Thomas Jefferson wrote a review of the book and said, look, this is great. I love to see this. I love the fact that you're showing that these people are just as intelligent as we are and they can contribute just as much as we do, but it's got nothing to do with their rights. If this is supposed to be a piece of abolitionist literature, then you're missing the point because who cares? And he says, because Isaac Newton was more intelligent than a serf, doesn't mean that he's master of the serf or it has more rights or is lord of the serf or whatever, the issue of morality needs to be the same there. I think that's a good takeaway from what you've said. It's like the more vulnerable, how does it go? The more vulnerable the victim, the greater the crime. Like animals don't have these defenses from us and we do have a higher complex intelligence, but we're using that to subjugate vulnerable beings. Now, you could use the marginal case argument where there are marginal case human beings, intellectually challenged or disabled and small children, but we wouldn't deny them of their rights because of those disabilities or because of their lack of intelligence and their vulnerability. But we do use that to justify attacking these animals or breeding these animals and taking away their right to life. And when we talk about rights and the people will use this, they'll say animals can't contribute to society, but there are obviously those marginal case human beings that can't contribute to society as well. That doesn't mean that we can't give them basic moral consideration to the right to life and not to be turned into jackets and food when we have alternatives. Yeah, and the very thing that a lot of people use to justify a differential treatment, the fact that we're more intelligent, is also the very thing that commits us to being in a position where we should be treating these animals better. It's like we say, look, we have a kind of stewardship over these animals because they can't talk for themselves. How long would it have taken for the abolition of slavery if slaves couldn't have spoken for themselves? How long would it have taken for women to get the right to vote if they couldn't have made the noise for themselves and they had to rely on men to make it for them? And how long will it take for people to abolish the animal exploitation industries of the world if the animals can't talk for themselves? Well, the answer is it will never happen, right? Because they can't talk for themselves and we need to speak on their behalf. And yes, we are different from animals. We are more intelligent, right? We are moral agents, right? We don't judge the lion for dining on the gazelle. But the reason we don't is because our higher intelligence and our higher moral capacity not just gives us moral worth but gives us moral agency. It means that not only do we have worth that needs to be respected, we have responsibilities towards other people and other animals. And so the very thing that people try to use to justify our supremacy over animals is the very thing that should justify our efforts to eliminate that prejudice from the way that we eat and the way that we entertain ourselves and the way that we dress ourselves to. I think that's a summary of the vegan philosophy in a nutshell. I don't know if you'd agree. That was very beautifully said, Alex.