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Kagan on Speciesism and Modal Personism
Author(s) -
Smolkin Doran
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of applied philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.339
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5930
pISSN - 0264-3758
DOI - 10.1111/japp.12287
Subject(s) - modal , argument (complex analysis) , prejudice (legal term) , object (grammar) , sort , epistemology , sociology , philosophy , psychology , social psychology , computer science , linguistics , biochemistry , chemistry , polymer chemistry , information retrieval
Shelly Kagan argues in his ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’ for four provocative claims: 1. speciesism is not necessarily a mere prejudice; 2. most people are not speciesists; 3. ‘modal personism’ more closely reflects what most people believe, and 4. modal personism might be true. In this article, I object to Kagan's account of what constitutes a ‘mere prejudice’, and I object to the sort of argument he uses to show that most people are not speciesist. I then attempt to motivate, and defend what I take to be the best version of modal personism; answer several problems for the view; and raise other problems that I think are harder to answer.