Summary
Human exceptionalism is, in primatologist Christine Webb’s words, “the belief that humans are fundamentally separate from and superior to the rest of nature”. The term is used by defenders as well as critics: psychologist Gregg Henriques, for one, argues that our capacity to justify what we do warrants special moral value. Webb, in her book ‘The Arrogant Ape’, calls it a myth so widespread that it is rarely named.
Her case that it’s learned draws on developmental and cross-cultural psychology. In American and European studies, adults overwhelmingly put one human life above many animals’; children often didn’t. And many Indigenous and non-Western knowledge systems recognise animals, plants and rivers as kin.
Rationale
‘Anthrosupremacy’ is Part 1’s word for this. Webb says it hides by being everywhere, which is our point too: dispositions are “most influential precisely because they’re largely invisible to us”.