In Defense of the ‘Human Prejudice’

Those who favor genetic enhancement of human beings (‘trans-humanists’) tend to hold that there is nothing special about being human, if by ‘human’ people mean ‘being member of the species homo sapiens’. They reject the arguments of bio-conservatives as prejudicial toward the concept of humanity, and they argue that species-membership in general is morally irrelevant. In ‘The Human Prejudice’, Bernard Williams defends what he calls ‘humanism’ (and what others call ‘speciesism’) and argues that species-membership is a morally relevant fact about us. Williams’s argument has been criticized by many, and in this paper, the author, focuses on the most thorough attack by Julian Savulescu. They provide a diagnosis of why accounts such as his seem to be so misguided to trans-humanists (like Savulescu) and the author then defend Williams’s account. In short, the paper argues that there is nothing obviously wrong with being a speciesist.