Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder (born 3 July 1940) is an English writer, psychologist, and animal rights advocate. Ryder became known in the 1970s as a member of the Oxford Group, a group of intellectuals loosely centred on the University of Oxford who began to speak out against animal use, in particular factory farming and animal research.[1] He was working at the time as a clinical psychologist at the Warneford Hospital in Oxford, and had himself been involved in animal research in the United Kingdom and United States.[2]
In 1970, Ryder coined the term speciesism to describe the exclusion of nonhuman animals from the protections available to human beings. In 1977, he became chairman of the RSPCA Council, serving until 1979, and helped to organize the first academic animal-rights conference, held in August 1977 at Trinity College, Cambridge. The conference produced a "Declaration Against Speciesism", signed by 150 people.[3]
Ryder assisted in achieving the legislative animal protection reforms in the UK and EU between the years 1970 and 2020.[4] He is the author of a number of books about animal research, animal rights, and morality in politics, including Victims of Science (1975), Animal Revolution (1989), and Painism: A Modern Morality (2001). Since 2020, Ryder has been president of the RSPCA.[5]
Background
Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder was born at The London Clinic, Marylebone, on 3 July 1940,[6][7] to Major Douglas Claud "Jack" Dudley Ryder, and his second wife, Vera Hamilton-Fletcher (née Cook). Jack Dudley Ryder was the great-grandson of the Honourable Granville Ryder (1799–1879), second son of Dudley Ryder, 1st Earl of Harrowby (1762–1847). Ryder was raised on the family estate, Rempstone Hall, in Corfe Castle.[8]
Ryder was educated at Sherborne School, in Dorset, England.[9] He obtained his bachelor's degree in experimental psychology from the University of Cambridge (1960–1963), followed by a period of research into animal behaviour at Columbia University, and a diploma in clinical psychology from the University of Edinburgh. After Edinburgh, he worked as a clinical psychologist at the Warneford psychiatric hospital in Oxford.[2] In 1983 and 1987 he ran unsuccessfully for Parliament, and founded the Liberal Democrats' Animal Protection Group. He later went back to Cambridge, and was awarded his PhD in Social and Political Sciences in 1993.[10] He held an Andrew W. Mellon visiting professorship at Tulane University in New Orleans in 1996.[11]
Ryder married Audrey Jane Smith in 1974; they had two children together and divorced in 1999.[7]
Ryder first became involved with animal rights in 1969, when he protested against an otter hunt in Dorset.[10] He was working at the time in the Warneford psychiatric hospital, and in April and May that year had three letters to the editor published in The Daily Telegraph, the first one headed "Rights of Non Human Animals," in which he criticised experiments on animals based on his own experiences in universities as an animal researcher.[12] There was an increase in interest in animal rights during this period, following the publication of Ruth Harrison's Animal Machines (1964), a critique of factory farming, and a long article, "The Rights of Animals" (10 October 1965), by the novelist Brigid Brophy in The Sunday Times.[13]
Brophy saw Ryder's letters in the Telegraph, and put him in touch with three philosophy postgraduate students at Oxford—Roslind Godlovitch, Stanley Godlovitch, and John Harris—who were editing a collection of essays about animal rights, published as Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans (1971).[12] Ryder became involved with the group—which he later called the "Oxford Group"—and became an activist for animal rights, organising meetings and printing and handing out leaflets. He also became a contributor to the Godlovitches/Harris book.[3] He was interviewed several times on the radio, and in December 1970 took part in a televised debate in Scotland on animal rights with Brophy.[10]
Ryder first used the term speciesism in a privately printed leaflet by the same name, which he distributed in Oxford in 1970 in protest against animal experimentation;[14] he wrote that he thought of the word while lying in the bath in the Old Manor House in Sunningwell, Oxfordshire.[15]Paul Waldau writes that Ryder used the term in the pamphlet to address experiments on animals that he regarded as illogical, and which, he argued, a fully informed moral agent would challenge. Ryder was also addressing the general attitude that excluded all nonhumans from the protections offered to humans, now known as the anti-speciesism critique. Waldau writes that this original definition of the term – in effect, human-speciesism – has been extended by others to refer to the assignment of value to any being on the basis of species membership alone, so that, for example, prioritising the value of chimpanzees over other animals (human-chimpanzee speciesism) might be seen as similarly illogical.[14]
Ryder used the term again in his contribution to the Godlovitches/Harris book, in an essay called "Experiments on Animals" (1971). He wrote in the essay that animal researchers seek to have it both ways: they defend the scientific validity of animal experiments on the grounds of the similarity between humans and nonhumans, while defending the morality of it on the grounds of the differences.[16] He argued that speciesism is as illogical as racism, writing that "species" and "race" are both vague terms, and asked: "If, under special conditions, it were one day found possible to cross a professor of biology with an ape, would the offspring be kept in a cage or in a cradle?"[16]
The book was reviewed by Peter Singer in 1973 in The New York Review of Books, in which he argued that it was a call for the foundation of an animal liberation movement. The article led the New York Review to commission a book from Singer, published as Animal Liberation (1975). Singer used the term speciesism in the book, attributing it to Ryder, and included it the title of his fifth chapter – "Man's Dominion ... a short history of speciesism". Writing that it was not an attractive word, he defined it as "a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species", and argued that it was a prejudice similar to racism and sexism. Singer wrote:
Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favouring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allows the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.[17]
Singer's use of the term popularised it, and in 1985 became an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, described as "discrimination against... animal species by human beings, based on an assumption of mankind's superiority".[18]
The RSPCA Reform Group was founded in 1970 by members of the British RSPCA. Their aim was to change the direction of the RSPCA from an organisation that dealt mostly with companion animals into one that would oppose what the reformers saw as the key issues: factory farming, animal research, hunting, and bloodsports. They sought to secure the election of reformers – including Ryder and Andrew Linzey, the Oxford theologian – to the RSPCA's ruling council. As a result, Ryder was elected to the council in 1971, became its vice-chairman in 1976, then chairman from 1977 to 1979.[19]
Painism
Ryder coined the term painism in 1990 to describe his position that all beings who feel pain deserve rights.[20] He argues that painism can be seen as a third way between Peter Singer's utilitarian position and Tom Regan's deontological rights view.[21] It combines the utilitarian view that moral status comes from the ability to feel pain with the rights-view prohibition on using others as a means to an end. He has criticised Regan's criterion for inherent worth, arguing that all beings who feel pain have inherent value. He has also criticised the utilitarian idea that exploitation of others can be justified if there is an overall gain in pleasure. He wrote in The Guardian in 2005: "One of the problems with the utilitarian view is that, for example, the sufferings of a gang-rape victim can be justified if the rape gives a greater sum total of pleasure to the rapists." Ryder argues that this is a problem because "consciousness ... is bounded by the boundaries of the individual. My pain and the pain of others are thus in separate categories; you cannot add or subtract them from each other. ... In any situation we should ... concern ourselves primarily with the pain of the individual who is the maximum sufferer."[20]
Ryder was featured in the 2012 speciesism movie, The Superior Human?, in which he describes his coining of the word speciesism and the principle of painism.[22]
Oxford animal laboratory
Ryder is a supporter of VERO (Voice for Ethical Research at Oxford), a group of Oxford members and graduates formed in 2006 to protest the construction by the university of a new animal laboratory, the Biomedical Sciences Building, completed in 2008.[23]
1 2 Ryder, Richard D. (1971). "Experiments on Animals", in Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris. Animals, Men and Morals. Grove Press, Inc.
↑ Singer, Peter (1990) [1975]. Animal Liberation. New York Review/Random House, pp. 6, 9.
↑ For Singer's attributing the term to Ryder, see Singer, Peter. (1990) [1975]. Animal Liberation. New York Review Books, p. 269, footnote 4.
For the OED, see Wise, Steven M. (2004). "Animal Rights, One Step at a Time," in Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum. Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions. Oxford University Press, p. 26
That Singer popularized the term, see Diamond, Cora (2004). "Eating Meat and Eating People," in Sunstein and Nussbaum, op cit, p. 93.
↑ Ryder, Richard (2009). "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) Reform Group," in Bekoff, op cit, p. 307–308.
↑ Ryder defines pain as "any form of suffering or negative experience, including fear, distress and boredom, as well as corporeal pain itself. Such things as injustice, inequality and loss of liberty naturally cause pain": see "Painism"Archived 28 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine , richardryder.co.uk.
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian moral philosopher who is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer's work specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He wrote the book Animal Liberation (1975), in which he argues for vegetarianism, and the essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", which argues the moral imperative of donating to help the poor around the world. For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarian. He revealed in The Point of View of the Universe (2014), coauthored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian.
Speciesism is a term used in philosophy regarding the treatment of individuals of different species. The term has several different definitions within the relevant literature. Some sources specifically define speciesism as discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an individual's species membership, while other sources define it as differential treatment without regard to whether the treatment is justified or not. Richard Ryder, who coined the term, defined it as "a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species." Speciesism results in the belief that humans have the right to use non-human animals, which scholars say is pervasive in the modern society. Studies from 2015 and 2019 suggest that people who support animal exploitation also tend to endorse racist, sexist, and other prejudicial views, which furthers the beliefs in human supremacy and group dominance to justify systems of inequality and oppression.
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is, in some sense, to maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility thus:
That property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness ... [or] to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.
Brigid Antonia Brophy, was a British author, literary critic and polemicist. She was an influential campaigner who agitated for many types of social reform, including homosexual parity, vegetarianism, humanism, and animal rights. Brophy appeared frequently on television and in the newspapers of the 1960s and 1970s, making her prominent both in literary circles and on the wider cultural scene. Her public reputation as an intellectual woman meant she was both revered and feared. Her oeuvre comprises both fiction and non-fiction, displaying the impressive range of Brophy's erudition and interests. All her work is suffused with her stylish crispness and verve.
Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals is a 1975 book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. It is widely considered within the animal liberation movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas. Singer himself rejected the use of the theoretical framework of rights when it comes to human and nonhuman animals. Following Jeremy Bentham, Singer argued that the interests of animals should be considered because of their ability to experience suffering and that the idea of rights was not necessary in order to consider them. He popularized the term "speciesism" in the book, which had been coined by Richard D. Ryder to describe the exploitative treatment of animals.
The animal rights (AR) movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries.
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth independent of their utility to humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the same consideration as similar interests of human beings. Broadly speaking, and particularly in popular discourse, the term "animal rights" is often used synonymously with "animal protection" or "animal liberation". More narrowly, "animal rights" refers to the idea that many animals have fundamental rights to be treated with respect as individuals—rights to life, liberty, and freedom from torture that may not be overridden by considerations of aggregate welfare.
Animal ethics is a branch of ethics which examines human-animal relationships, the moral consideration of animals and how nonhuman animals ought to be treated. The subject matter includes animal rights, animal welfare, animal law, speciesism, animal cognition, wildlife conservation, wild animal suffering, the moral status of nonhuman animals, the concept of nonhuman personhood, human exceptionalism, the history of animal use, and theories of justice. Several different theoretical approaches have been proposed to examine this field, in accordance with the different theories currently defended in moral and political philosophy. There is no theory which is completely accepted due to the differing understandings of what is meant by the term ethics; however, there are theories that are more widely accepted by society such as animal rights and utilitarianism.
Women have played a central role in animal advocacy since the 19th century. The animal advocacy movement – embracing animal rights, animal welfare, and anti-vivisectionism – has been disproportionately initiated and led by women, particularly in the United Kingdom. Women are more likely to support animal rights than men. A 1996 study of adolescents by Linda Pifer suggested that factors that may partially explain this discrepancy include attitudes towards feminism and science, scientific literacy, and the presence of a greater emphasis on "nurturance or compassion" amongst women. Although vegetarianism does not necessarily imply animal advocacy, a 1992 market research study conducted by the Yankelovich research organization concluded that "of the 12.4 million people [in the US] who call themselves vegetarian, 68% are female, while only 32% are male".
Contemporary debates about animal welfare and animal rights can be traced back to ancient history. Records from as early as the 6th century before the common era (BCE) include discussions of animal ethics in Jain and Greek texts. The relations between humans and nonnhumans are also discussed in the books of Exodus and Genesis, Jewish writings from the 6th or 5th century BCE.
The concept of moral rights for animals is believed to date as far back as Ancient India, particularly early Jainist and Hindu history. What follows is mainly the history of animal rights in the Western world. There is a rich history of animal protection in the ancient texts, lives, and stories of Eastern, African, and Indigenous peoples.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) Reform Group was founded in 1970 by members of the British RSPCA who were frustrated by the organization's inability, as they saw it, to deal effectively with the issues raised by factory farming, animal testing, and hunting. The group was particularly concerned that pro-hunting members were attempting to prevent the society from expressing opposition to bloodsports; several of them had said they would lobby to have the RSPCA's charitable status removed if it campaigned against hunting.
Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans (1971) is a collection of essays on animal rights, edited by Oxford philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch, both from Canada, and John Harris from the UK. The editors were members of the Oxford Group, a group of postgraduate philosophy students and others based at the University of Oxford from 1968, who began raising the idea of animal rights in seminars and campaigning locally against factory farming and otter hunting.
The Oxford Group or Oxford Vegetarians consisted of a group of intellectuals in England in the late 1960s and early 1970s associated with the University of Oxford, who met and corresponded to discuss the emerging concept of animal rights, or animal liberation.
Raymond G. Frey was a professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, specializing in moral, political and legal philosophy, and author or editor of a number of books. He was a noted critic of animal rights.
Sentiocentrism, sentio-centrism, or sentientism is an ethical view that places sentient individuals at the center of moral concern. Both humans and other sentient individuals have rights and/or interests that must be considered.
Carnism is a concept used in discussions of humanity's relation to other animals, defined as a prevailing ideology in which people support the use and consumption of animal products, especially meat. Carnism is presented as a dominant belief system supported by a variety of defense mechanisms and mostly unchallenged assumptions. The term carnism was coined by social psychologist and author Melanie Joy in 2001 and popularized by her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2009).
Gary Edward Varner was an American philosopher specializing in environmental ethics, philosophical questions related to animal rights and animal welfare, and R. M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism. At the time of his death, he was an emeritus professor in the department of philosophy at Texas A&M University; he had been based at the university since 1990. He was educated at Arizona State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison; at Madison, where he was supervised by Jon Morline, he wrote one of the first doctoral theses on environmental ethics. Varner's first monograph was In Nature's Interests?, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1998. In the book, Varner defended a form of biocentric individualism, according to which all living entities have morally considerable interests.
The Universal Kinship is a 1906 book by American zoologist, philosopher, educator and socialist J. Howard Moore. In the book, Moore advocated for a secular sentiocentric philosophy, called the Universal Kinship, which mandated the ethical consideration and treatment of all sentient beings based on Darwinian principles of shared evolutionary kinship, and a universal application of the Golden Rule; a direct challenge to anthropocentric hierarchies and ethics. The book was endorsed by Henry S. Salt, Mark Twain and Jack London, Eugene V. Debs and Mona Caird. Moore expanded on his ideas in The New Ethics, published in 1907.
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