First Things: A Call to Arms in Defense of Human Exceptionalism
By Wesley J. Smith
Thursday, July 5, 2007

Tearing humans off the pedestal of exceptionalism is all the rage today among academics, philosophers, and other assorted members of the intelligentsia. The war against unique human worth—of which many remain unaware—is being mounted on many fronts:

• “Personhood Theory” in bioethics claims that granting humans unique moral status based simply on being human is “speciesism,” and hence membership in the moral community should be based on being a “person”—for example, possessing certain cognitive capacities (whether animal, human, space alien, or machine), such as being self-aware over time.

• The animal rights/liberation movement also seeks to knock us off the pedestal in the cause of elevating animals to equal moral worth with people. Thus, many liberationists urge that we base a being’s value on “painience,” that is, the capacity to experience pain. Since cows feels pain just as humans do, bovines are people too, and hence ranching cattle is as evil as slavery. the rest