Some people use this reductio ad absurdum argument against veganism that goes like this: if animal lives are worth saving from the slaughterhouse blade or hunter's bullet, they are also worth saving from wild predators. Since the idea that we should try to save animals in the wild from being killed by predators is absurd, veganism is absured.
These people say that if a human were about to be eaten by a lion, we would be obligated to save the human from the lion if we were able, but we would not be obligated to save an antelope from the lion, because animals' lives aren't morally significant.
So why are we more morally obligated to other humans over lions or antelope? Is it just intraspecies loyalty, by which I mean loyalty to your own species? If that is the reason, what if it is a bad person, like Hitler? Is it still moral to be loyal to your own species and immoral to be disloyal to your own species in that case? We have a certain moral obligation to lions to not interfere with their hunting, and if their prey happens to be a human, our moral obligation to the lion is outweighed by our moral obligation to the human, and this obligation is apparantly due to intraspecies loyalty. But this seems like a really weak reason to me, if it can be negated by the poor character of a person. And to me, someone having a poor enough character seems like a good reason to be disloyal to my own species and let the lion eat. I don't think it would be moral to shoot a lion to save Hitler, for example.
These people say that if a human were about to be eaten by a lion, we would be obligated to save the human from the lion if we were able, but we would not be obligated to save an antelope from the lion, because animals' lives aren't morally significant.
So why are we more morally obligated to other humans over lions or antelope? Is it just intraspecies loyalty, by which I mean loyalty to your own species? If that is the reason, what if it is a bad person, like Hitler? Is it still moral to be loyal to your own species and immoral to be disloyal to your own species in that case? We have a certain moral obligation to lions to not interfere with their hunting, and if their prey happens to be a human, our moral obligation to the lion is outweighed by our moral obligation to the human, and this obligation is apparantly due to intraspecies loyalty. But this seems like a really weak reason to me, if it can be negated by the poor character of a person. And to me, someone having a poor enough character seems like a good reason to be disloyal to my own species and let the lion eat. I don't think it would be moral to shoot a lion to save Hitler, for example.