The term ‘speciesism’ was once coined to name discrimination against nonhuman animals (Ryder 1975) as well as the bias that such discrimination expresses (Singer 2009 [1975]). It has sparked a debate on criteria for being morally considerable and the relative significance of human and nonhuman animals’ interests. Many defenses of the preferential consideration of humans have come with a denial of the normative meaning of the term ‘speciesism’ itself (e.g., Cohen 1986, Kagan 2016). In fact, defenders of the moral relevance of species membership and their critics alike have often used ‘speciesism’ as a merely descriptive technical term for classifying positions in normative ethics. This paper argues that this terminological choice severely impoverishes our ethical vocabulary and moral conceptual scheme. It obscures the considerable common ground among theorists with differing views on the relevance of various properties for moral consideration. It is often overlooked that even most defenders of the preferential treatment of one’s fellow species members have good reason to hold on to the normative notion that ‘speciesism’ was originally meant to be. Two distinct types of concepts are involved when differential treatment along species lines is addressed in a normative and a descriptive way, respectively. The term ‘speciesism’ should be reserved for the normative concept and kept apart from the descriptive term ‘speciescentrism.’ Attempts to redefine speciesism as something that is not wrong by definition are shown to be epistemically and morally harmful for the same reasons attempts to redefine racism and sexism in this way are.

“物种主义”一词曾被用来命名对非人类动物的歧视（Ryder 1975）以及这种歧视所表达的偏见（Singer 2009 [1975]）。它引发了关于在道德上具有重要意义的标准以及人类和非人类动物利益的相对重要性的辩论。对人类优先考虑的许多辩护都否认了“物种主义”一词本身的规范含义（例如，Cohen 1986，Kagan 2016）。实际上，捍卫物种成员道德相关性的捍卫者及其批评者都经常使用“种属主义”作为对规范伦理学立场进行分类的仅仅是描述性的技术术语。本文认为，这种术语选择严重削弱了我们的道德词汇和道德概念方案。它掩盖了理论家之间相当大的共同点，他们对各种特性与道德考虑的相关性持不同意见。人们常常忽略了，即使是大多数对同胞物种成员给予优惠待遇的捍卫者，也有充分的理由坚持“物种主义”原本应为的规范性观念。当分别以规范性和描述性方式解决沿物种线的区别对待时，涉及两种不同类型的概念。“物种主义”一词应保留给规范性概念，并与描述性术语““物种主义””区分开。由于种种尝试以这种方式重新定义种族主义和性别歧视的相同原因，试图将种上主义重新定义为在定义上没有错的东西，这在认识论上和道德上都是有害的。