i know this is a hot take, but i don’t, personally believe in any rights at all.

Not surprising at all… In order to be so committed to an anti-vegan/anti-animal rights position and have thought so much about how to justify the senseless violence, manipulation & oppressive domination & massacre we commit on other animals/sentient beings (rather than reaching the more positive conclusion that we shouldn’t, & should instead evolve morally as a society & expand our circle of moral consideration once again after doing so with various groups of humans in history), it often does require or lead to softening down & compromising on one’s stance on human rights (& sometimes being ok with things done to humans that most humans aren’t), or abandoning it entirely, or perhaps never holding one in the first place. That’s why when a class of individuals exist who are so heavily oppressed as the non-human animals are, that injustice anywhere is always a threat to justice everywhere, because it serves as a model for how humans could be treated if anyone with the ability wanted to deliberately lower their status, rights, freedoms & power (& the treatment of victimized humans has been based on the treatment of non-human animals all throughout history, where if “oppressed humans are treated like [non-human] animals”, we can logically conclude that the non-human animals are treated much like oppressed humans). All injustice is connected and systems of oppression and domination and exploitation strengthen and uphold each other. A good example of this is how human slaughterhouse workers are exploited in the meat industry that exploits non-human animals. And there is substantial psychological research showing high and consistent associations between more meat consumption & rationalizing behaviors/justification methods, and higher prevalency of “dark triad” & “dark tetrad” personality traits, as well as belief in the morality of social domination & inequality in society in general, and even more conservative/right wing views.

“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” - Emmanuel Kant (who I don’t agree with on a lot of things, but this is a good and true quote).

i would ask if “right” is the correct term for the motivation to treat animals well. i’d say it’s more about doing the right thing, not respecting a right.

That’s neither here nor there. While I don’t agree with your concept of individuals (including humans) not having rights (I think rights are a crucial element in both expressing a preference for and enforcing the protection & security of individuals’ interests), and others simply being expected to do the right thing somehow (and I’m not sure how well that would work in a legal or moral framework), presuming you aren’t okay with humans for example enslaving each other, and you would want them to be stopped and have those humans be protected from enslavement and the actions of others who would seek to harm them, then it could theoretically manifest in the same systems & actions anyway. You can hold that view and it should lead to the same conclusions about your actions regarding both humans and other animals.

So if you don’t think humans or other animals have rights, but you still think it’s immoral for humans to for example farm and kill other humans, but not other animals, then the tension remains between finding that action morally unacceptable to one species and not to others. Sentience can’t be the reason/morally relevant difference, since most animals, and all the ones we’re exploiting & killing, possess it.

so? sentience isn’t the basis of the axiom of being compassionate to creatures.

In my opinion, it is. What is axiomatic to someone can be different for someone else. But I also think that sentience is actually the fundamental reason why most humans care about each other, and to a degree about certain other animals (like dogs or cats) too, even if they don’t know it. That’s pretty clearly revealed when you remove all other factors and isolate the qualities that actually matter morally to people. Sentience gets to the bedrock of moral consideration. We can go beyond it, I’m not saying we can’t, but certainly the presence of sentience does confer moral import for most humans, when being consistent, and renders an entity as deserving of moral consideration. It makes no sense to try to argue that non sentient entities deserve moral consideration while simultaneously arguing that sentient entities don’t, in order to conveniently justify your actions in an illogical manner since more non sentient and sentient entities are harmed by them compared to the alternative actions proposed by vegans/animal rights advocates.

distinction between people and animals

The reasons why this phrasing itself is speciesist are twofold, because it both implies that humans are not animals, and it also implies that non-human animals lack personhood : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personhood#Non-human_animals “Those who oppose personhood for non-human animals are known as human exceptionalists or human supremacists, and more pejoratively speciesists.[87]”

i’d admit its speciesist

Good to hear some honesty

speciesism is necessary for correct action.

Can you elaborate? What do you mean by correct action? Morally correct? Or just what serves the species you care about (humans)? [Though it doesn’t - it’s negative to all life on Earth what we’re doing, and we’ll be one of the worst affected by it - but let’s entertain the hypothetical that it did.] Because that’s ingroup-outgroup bias and the same logic could be be used to say “racism is necessary for correct action - when defining correct action as what benefits my race the most”. In other words, racism is necessary for racism, and speciesism is necessary for speciesism. It’s essentially using the form of discrimination to justify itself, which is again question begging/circular reasoning.

you shouldn’t treat lions like cows, or dogs like fish. and you shouldn’t treat animals like humans.

Your last sentence is a contradiction because humans are animals, and you can’t treat all animals differently from some animals (only most from some or some from others), so you likely mean non-human animals. But anyway, this is vague and it depends on what you mean as to whether I agree with you or not. There are differences between these species of animals, as well as differences between individuals within those species, as well as the circumstances they’re likely to be in, that would confer different needs, abilities, interests, etc. depending on the exact nature of the individual and also on the situation. These are all factors that I think we should take into account when considering the ethics of actions to different individuals and their circumstances and what treatment is most appropriate, ideal or optimal. But these aren’t arbitrarily based on species, these are actually acknowledging and addressing the underlying trait differences, and circumstantial differences, which are either entailed by or contingently related to species. The purpose of Name The Trait, again, is not to argue there are no trait differences, but that these differences don’t constitute morally relevant differences such that/in the sense that they would render it morally permissible to devalue one & treat them with a lower standard of respect, or especially to do harmful actions to them. But that doesn’t mean these traits of individuals (& circumstances) don’t have any relevance at all, since for example a human child has different needs than a human adult, based on the traits that are entailed by the age difference, but we wouldn’t use the age difference itself to arbitrarily justify exploiting & killing children but not adults. We should use these traits to infer how we can best manage a situation so that it balances everyone’s interests fairly & equitably, not use them as excuses to discriminate harmfully/oppressively.

So, what you’re describing isn’t exactly speciesism (though I obviously don’t know what you meant by how we should treat those animals differently from each other, in what specific ways, and why, but let’s pretend it was positive). The differential treatment - which is not stemming from a motivation to justify harmful actions to them, but rather to help them, while balancing others’ interests as well (in a situation where that was actually the goal) - is not indexed to species but to whatever other trait differences convinced you that variation in recommended actions was acceptable or ethical or beneficial. Antispeciesism rejects the moral import of species membership & doesn’t arbitrarily discriminate based on species; holds moral considerability to either supervene on sentience or at least to be guaranteed/entailed by sentience (even if there are other avenues to moral considerability), and values the differences in individuals’ interest, needs, abilities & circumstances instead.

However, saying for example “we should treat lions, cows, dogs, fish, and humans with different levels/standards of respect”, is usually going to be speciesism, and arbitrary/incoherent, since the trait differences that people would turn to to try to justify it would lead to contradiction or absurdity. That said, it’s important to remember that we aren’t asking you to immediately view all sentient beings as your equals. You can still be a human supremacist, and think humans matter a lot more than other animals, but also believe that other animals matter enough and are deserving of moral consideration in such a way that it’s not moral for us to exploit/harm/kill them unnecessarily (or that their interests not to have those actions done to them matter more than your trivial desire to do them, despite alternatives) even if you would sacrifice them over a human if you had to choose.