Animals are categorically not humans. This is a scientific fact which you can quantify and measure. Blacks are humans. That is another scientific fact which you can quantify and measure.
blacks being humans didn't stop us from slotting them into an inferior moral category. and back then, we asserted as scientific fact that they were inferior. the apparatus of justification is something which changes over time. it is interesting to me to observe your invocation of our present day apparatus of justification. :)
Yes, but we came to see blacks as equal because they are, in fact, humans, just like whites. Animals will never be humans, no matter what. They will always remain a separate moral category. Here's a simple thought experiment that should illustrate this:
Imagine a scenario in which you can save one of two lives: a human or a dog. You can't pick both. Just one. The question is not, "Which would you save?", but instead, "Would you final moral fault in a person who chose to save the dog?". Almost everybody would hold a person who chose to save the dog morally culpable for the death of the human. But they would not hold them morally culpable for the death of the dog if they chose to save the human.
That will never change. Because animals are not humans.
Why would I be persuaded to change my mind when you A) won't answer a simple question, and B) think it's reasonable to take the position that I am wrong because I won't spend several hours digesting some link you've provided, which you can't be bothered to spend three sentences summarizing?
My premise is simple: almost every single person would find a person who chose to save the life of an animal over a human morally culpable for the death of the human. Whereas they would not find a person morally culpable for the death of the animal if they chose to save the person instead. That asymmetry directly speaks to the different moral stations that animals and humans occupy.
You have yet to level a single actual argument against that premise.
