A scholar of animal studies and feminist philosophy spoke at Quinnipiac University’s 38th annual Alfred P. Stiernotte Lecture on Feb. 26 to discuss the complex relationship between humans and animals.

Lori Gruen — a William Griffin professor of philosophy at Wesleyan University who has authored dozens of books about animal ethics, the ethics of captivity and environmental philosophy — presented the lecture, titled “Empathy and Justice Beyond the Human.”

The event, sponsored by the Stiernotte Fund, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Albert Schweitzer Institute and the Department of Philosophy and Political Science, is named for Stiernotte, who initiated teaching philosophy at Quinnipiac.

“(The Stiernotte Lecture) is a celebration of philosophy within the University and is a special point of pride within the College of Arts and Sciences,” said Wesley Renfro, senior associate dean for academic affairs in strategic initiatives.

Gruen addressed the hierarchy of beings that humans have conceptualized, one where humanity sits at the top of the food chain, and everything else is considered inferior.

This concept — known as speciesism or human exceptionalism — considers the suffering of some beings more important than that of others. In other words, the suffering of animals is less important than humans.

She attributed part of this to “sameness bias,” when we “empathize with people that are like us, as opposed to people or animals that aren’t like us,” Gruen said.

“Individual human beings typically have different and greater interests than other animals,” Gruen said. “Humans have been insisting on their superiority to animals for millennia.”

But she also noted that humans often apply a similar hierarchy to other humans. That is, dominant groups use the same conceptualization of superiority to marginalize groups they deem inferior.

“There are deep connections between conceptualizing nonhuman animals as disposable (and) insignificant and treating other human beings as disposable and insignificant,” Gruen said, relating the connections to racial inequality, gender violence and climate injustice.

Humans have a tendency to elevate humanity and delegitimize animals, Gruen said, because they can control animal environments in a way animals cannot control human environments.

“(Humans) are the only animals that manipulate our environments to destroy them,” Gruen said. “Most other animals don’t do that.”

The production of pollutants and other environmentally toxic materials serves as a prime example of this uniquely human power, she said.

Case in point, the increasing demand for global production of palm oil, a vegetable oil found in most household products, is the leading cause of wild orangutans being critically endangered, according to Orangutan Foundation International.

The habitat loss caused each year by the expansion of palm oil plantations kills off an estimated 1,000-5,000 orangutans each year, and the Orangutan Conservatory notes that many experts believe the critically endangered species may be extinct in the wild within the next half-century.

“It’s very difficult to avoid palm oil,” Gruen said. “It’s in virtually everything.”

Roughly 50% of the packaged products found in supermarkets — from pizza, doughnuts and chocolate, to deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste and lipstick — use palm oil, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Species extinctions damage humanity’s ecological relationships, Gruen said, and have an impact on what she termed “entangled empathy.”

Entangled empathy, Gruen explained, is essentially the philosophical concept of “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” — imagining yourself in someone or something else’s position and judging how their conditions contribute to their current state of mind and well-being.

Entangled empathy is a newly introduced ethic for improving humanity’s relationships with animals and other humans. Entangled empathy is different from regular empathy because it attends to the other’s needs, interests, vulnerabilities and sensitivities.

Gruen’s theory of entangled empathy stood out to Satine Berntsen, a graduate student in cinematic production management studies.

“It’s quite interesting because it brings up the idea of who we are and our knowledge and aspects of personality being built upon to create something more that we may not even understand yet,” Berntsen said.

Other students were disappointed that Gruen failed to highlight the importance of plants.

“I thought it was interesting that the speaker brought up the concept that you can’t really connect to plants because we still have importance and value within plants and larger ecosystems,” said Elizabeth Connelly, a first-year environmental science major.