Oscar Horta

Career Horta has been active in vegan and antispeciesist advocacy since the mid-1990s.

From 2005 to 2009, Horta was a lecturer in the Department of Logic and Moral Philosophy at USC. He was a visiting researcher at Rutgers University from 2009 to 2010 and held a research fellowship at the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology from 2009 to 2011. He returned to USC in 2011 as a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Anthropology, becoming a professor in 2018.

Horta co-founded the animal advocacy organisation Animal Ethics in 2012. He has also acted as an organiser and spokesperson for the Spanish animal rights organisations Derechos para los Animales ("Rights for Animals") and Alternativa para la Liberación Animal ("Alternative for Animal Liberation"); these organisations later merged to form Equanimal.

Horta is a member of the advisory board for the Sentience Institute, UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics, and Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering.

Philosophical work

Speciesism

Horta has defined speciesism as discrimination against those who do not belong to one or more species, understanding by discrimination an unjustified unequal consideration or treatment. This is a normative account of the concept. According to Horta, if treating animals of different species in different ways is justified, then it cannot be considered discriminatory and is not an instance of speciesism. Horta's account also denies that speciesism is confined to discrimination on the basis of species alone. It regards as speciesist all forms of discrimination against those who are not members of a certain species, whether the reason is species membership or another criterion, such as the possession of complex cognitive abilities. He argued for this position by analogy to sexism or racism, which can include discrimination based on alleged capacities as well as gender, sex, ancestry, or physical traits. Horta's account of speciesism is similar to Joan Dunayer's but unlike Paul Waldau's in that he also argued that discrimination against nonhuman animals is only one instance of speciesism. He referred to this as anthropocentric speciesism, because it is also possible to discriminate against some nonhuman animals in comparison to others in ways that are speciesist.

Wild animal suffering

Horta argues that, contrary to what he describes as an idyllic view of the wilderness, animals suffer in nature from disease, predation, exposure, starvation, and other threats. Horta rejects speciesism, and argues that there is reason to intervene in natural processes to protect animals from this suffering when this can be done without causing more harm. Current ways of helping include rescues of animals during natural disasters, centres for orphaned, sick, and injured animals, and vaccination and feeding programmes. Horta argued that such initiatives could be expanded, and that pilot programmes could start with wild animals living in urban, suburban, or agricultural environments to avoid conflicts with environmentalists who oppose intervention in nature. He also argued that one line of work is to develop more knowledge about the conditions that cause wild animal suffering and about measures that could improve the situation of animals affected by natural causes, or by natural causes combined with indirect anthropogenic causes. Jeff McMahan, whose work on wild animal suffering, "The Meat Eaters", appeared in The New York Times, attributed his interest in the subject to Horta.

Personal life Horta has been vegan since the 1990s. He has commented that "the reason why I decided to go vegan was that I was presented with what I saw as strong arguments to do so, not that I was feeling empathy towards nonhuman animals."

Publications

Horta has published philosophical works in Spanish, Galician, Portuguese, English, Italian, French, and German.

Horta, Oscar. Faria, Catia. 2019. "Welfare Biology", in Fischer, Bob (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics, New York: Routledge, Horta, Oscar. 2019. Na defensa dos animais, Rianxo: Axóuxere Editora. Horta, Oscar. 2018. "Discrimination against vegans". Res Publica 24 (3): 359–373. . Horta, Oscar. 2018. "Concern for wild animal suffering and environmental ethics: What are the limits of the disagreement?". Les ateliers de l'éthique 13 (1): 85–100. Horta, Oscar. 2018. "Moral considerability and the argument from relevance". Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (3): 369–388. . Horta, Oscar. 2017. "Animal Suffering in Nature: The Case for Intervention". Environmental Ethics 39 (3): 261–279. . Horta, Oscar. 2017. "Why the concept of moral status should be abandoned". Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (4): 899–910. . Horta, Oscar. 2017. Un paso adelante en defensa de los animales, Madrid: Plaza y Valdés. Horta, Oscar. 2017. "Population Dynamics Meets Animal Ethics", in Garmendia, Gabriel and Woodhall, Andrew (eds.) Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues: Towards an Undivided Future. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 365–389. Horta, Oscar. 2015. "Speziesismus", in Ferrari, Arianna and Petrus, Klaus (eds.) Lexikon der Mensch/Tier-Beziehungen, Bielefeld: Transcript, 318–320. Horta, Oscar. 2014. "The scope of the argument from species overlap". Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2): 142–154. . Horta, Oscar. 2014. Una morale per tutti gli animali: al di là dell'ecologia, Milano: Mimesis. Horta, Oscar. 2013. "Zoopolis, Intervention and the State of Nature". Law, Ethics and Philosophy 1: 113–125. Horta, Oscar. 2010. "The Ethics of the Ecology of Fear against the Nonspeciesist Paradigm: A Shift in the Aims of Intervention in Nature". Between the Species 13 (10): 163–187. . Horta, Oscar. 2010. "Debunking the idylic view of natural processes: Population dynamics and suffering in the wild". Telos 17 (1): 73–88. Horta, Oscar. 2010. "What is speciesism?". Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (3): 243–266. .