Are All Species Equal Summary

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Human beings categorize other living entities by human vs. non-human beings. However, in the category of “non-human beings” two different and larger groups of living beings are joined: animals and plants. Even though animals and plants are both non-human beings, they do have differences that divides them into two separate intrinsic values that should be owned. The aim of this paper is to answer to the question, “Should a carrot be morally equal to a cow?” from “Are All Species Equal?” by David Schmidtz. Plants and animals should not be treated or considered as living beings with same moral values. In “The Ethics of Respect for Nature,” Paul Taylor argues that every living thing (human, animals, and plants) that are pursuing its welfare are…show more content…
Fishes and meats are sometimes eaten raw, but the cut tissues of fish are dead. Materially it is perfectly good-looking cell tissue but the flow of energy stops as it cut off from the body. In the case of humans and animals, they are living organics, so tissue cutout arbitrarily loses its functionality. When you eat the flesh of animals, humans would take only a physical component within it. However, plants are still alive and contains energy that they generated, and eating vegetables gives other living entities an energy. The plants do not get killed, but they keep alive and give off its energy to other bodies. Furthermore, human and animals are different from plants because human and animals hunt other living beings as food while plants make their own food. in “Being Prey,” Val Plumwood argues that food chain affected human’s superiority over the nature: “We act as if we live in a separate realm of culture in which we are never food, while other animals inhabit a different world of nature in which they are no more than food.” (Plumwood 270) Animals hunt animals and we hunt them. However, plants do photosynthesis, which is the process of absorbing solar energy and transforming into the chemical energy in order to make food from CO2. If we treat a cow and a carrot in a same way, a cow will die while carrot will survive by

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