In a civilized society of the future, will speciesism be viewed in the same way as slavery, racism and sexism are viewed in today's society?
A resounding Yes.Looking at humanity's past I notice a trend towards inclusion. Different races were not really "people", they were "others" for the longest time. But then something shifted and with toil, effort, interaction and many years of adaptation, we started to include other races into our own concept of people. Then came women and people with diverse sexual inclinations, and each change came faster than the last one. Now we finally have several organizations advocating for apes' rights.Most people even recognize their pets as "people" by including them in their family. By being considerate to its own wishes as far as they understand them. They'd be horrified to eat their beloved pet. They care and worry if their pet is sick, they buy things it will like, they want them to be well kept and happy as best as they can understand its desires. Yet they just can't (yet) bridge the mental gap, that oh-so-human bias that prevents us from seeing the obvious, that just because you know and love another being it makes it any more or less intrinsically valuable.Cows can be as smart as dogs, they have preferences, friends, loyalties, social hierarchies, can be taught to fetch, tag and follow. But they happened to land on the human cultural zone that rendered them as "food" instead of "potential family member".So yes, I believe animals will be the next minority to come forward as "people". They just don't have the power of fighting their own battle, but the tide is slowly but clearly starting to shift. I see more vegetarianism and veganism going around, more people concerned for animal welfare, more animal protection rights, more "free-range" products...A definite yes. It's just a matter of time. Hopefully within our lifetime.
Why does everyone say if we find another planet with life or humanoids, they'll be so much more intelligent than Humans?
The precise way the is phrased is very important. If there EXISTS some extraterrestrial place with animals of similar complexity to humans, they may or may not be more intelligent than humans. (Of course, as some here have argued, there may be good reasons to think they would soon advance far beyond us, so that the chances of finding them in the early, dumb phase would be small. Maybe. But that’s somewhat of a tangent to what I’m going to say). But for us to DETECT them, they would almost have to be much more advanced than us. Either they can come here, and to do that they would have to be much more advanced to do intersteller travel; or we would need to detect them by their activities—their radio activities, optical signals, or the building of huge structures that we could see at great distances.The third possibility is that we go there, in which case we might find something resembling, say, bonobos or chimps. But that’s so much harder to do that, for now, we can ignore it, since so far we’ve barely managed to get our bodies as far as our own Moon, and our probes to the edge of our solar system.
Where did ethics of life come from?
Meaning of Ethics:Systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct.So, if we know what is Right and wrong and where it came from, we can understand the remaining.What is right/wrong?Right is what gives you happiness, that's it. For example: For a hungry man stealing bread from baker is right but as soon as his hunger is satiated, he may think that what he had done was wrong because other hungry man can steal his leftover stolen bread. So, we can infer right or wrong is relative.Right and wrong are most of time defined according to societal values. For example Commies are wrong for American but are absolutely right for North Korean. So, societal right or wrong is also relative.So, right or wrong is what makes society and individual happy.Ethics is just collection these rights and wrongs. Where does right and wrong come from?It is rooted in the basic human nature called self preservation (positive selfishness) or giving importance to self. Most of the right and wrong are derived from the amplification and simplification of individual self preservation and care for self on a societal scale. Like fairness or meritocracy because it tends to provide equality to all the individuals and simple way to achieve one's own goal. Those whose goals are or can't be achieved these; perceive these as unethical and unjust.Other form of right are rooted in secondary nature of human called guilt. Guilt occurs when someone can do something but isn't doing because of laziness or due to negative form of selfishness(not caring for other because it's not you). But, human are emotional and social creature, so humans can feel or empathize with others feeling and emotion just by looking/talking etc. This creates guilt inside everyone. So human have also define right and wrong in this respect for reducing guilt. An example for clarity: It is right to kill traitor but it is wrong to kill a puppy.In conclusion right and wrong is rooted in basic human nature of self preservation that has been compartmentalized for relative ease of society and individual for reducing Guilt.Ethics is Systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of these right and wrong conduct.