A sound moral argument requires both factual and moral premises. Yet there has been little intelligent dialogue at either level. The mumbling of slog… - Richard D. Ryder

Consciousness is of paramount importance to all of us. By definition it is the universe of our awareness. On the assumption that many other species are conscious or sentient I have suggested that our morality is based upon a concern for all sentients-which I have called sentientism, although I could equally have called it consciousism (but that is even more horrible as a word!). Pain and pleasure are the two great poles of consciousness, between which all sentients swing ... .

The 1960s revolutions against racism, sexism and classism nearly missed out the animals. This worried me. Ethics and politics at the time simply overlooked the nonhumans entirely. Everyone seemed to be just preoccupied with reducing the prejudices against humans. Hadn’t they heard of Darwin? I hated racism, sexism and classism, too, but why stop there? As a hospital scientist I believed that hundreds of other species of animals suffer fear, pain and distress much as I did. Something had to be done about it. We needed to draw the parallel between the plight of the other species and our own. One day in 1970, lying in my bath at the old Sunningwell Manor, near Oxford, it suddenly came to me: SPECIESISM!

Idealism itself can become dangerous. But going too far in the other direction, towards relativism, amoral expediency and opportunism, is equally perilous.