CPHL406 Contemporary Moral Issues II

1
CPHL406Contemporary Moral Issues II

• Vegetarianism

2

• We can conceptually distinguish between at least
  three vegetarian positions
• Compassionate Vegetarianism The view that we
  ought to refrain from eating animals due to the
  harm it causes animals.

3

• Dietary Vegetarianism The view that we ought to
  refrain from eating animals due to its harm to
  human health.
• It is now well-established that humans can live
  quite healthily on a vegetarian (or even vegan)
  diet. Indeed multiple studies have found that
  vegetarians tend to be healthier than meat
  eaters benefits included lower rates of coronary
  heart disease, type II diabetes, hypertension and
  several forms of cancer.
• For example, The Oxford Vegetarian Study, a
  12-year study of 6000 vegetarians and 5000
  meat-eaters, found a 28 lower incidence of
  coronary heart disease mortality among
  vegetarians than among matched omnivores.

4

• Environmental Vegetarianism The view that we
  ought to refrain from eating animals due to its
  harm to the environment.
• In the U.S., more than half of all water consumed
  is used for raising animals for food. It takes
  2500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat,
  but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat.
• The meat industry is the greatest polluter of
  U.S. waters, producing nearly 90 000 pounds of
  excrement every second
• The worlds cattle consume food equivalent to the
  caloric intake that would feed nine billion
  people.

5
Background facts

• We are directly concerned with position (i), but
  the three positions are closely connected.
• For example, compassionate vegetarians often
  support their view by appealing to the fact that
  humans at least do not require meat to be
  healthy thus, given the suffering that meat
  consumption causes to animals, it is immoral.
• And many vegetarians appeal to all three
  positions in making their case.

6
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• A1 Humans are naturally meat eaters. We have
  evolved to eat meat, and we naturally take
  pleasure in eating meat. Thus it is morally
  permissible to eat meat.

7
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• Objections
• O1A1 First, if the claim Humans are naturally
  meat eaters is supposed to mean that humans
  are biologically unsuited to a purely
  vegetarian diet, then it is surely false. It is
  probably true that historically we have largely
  been an omnivorous species, and that
  biologically we are quite capable of consuming
  meat but it is also true that we can survive
  quite healthfully on a vegetarian diet.

8
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• O2A1 The mere fact that we are able to do X and
  / or enjoy doing X does not make doing X morally
  acceptable.
• We have many natural inclinations - such as
  those to selfishness, violence and sexual
  promiscuity - that we are often morally
  obliged to suppress. Meat eating may or may not
  be one of those suppression-worthy inclinations,
  but we cant simply assume that since it is
  natural it need not be suppressed.

9
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• A2 Eating meat is part of the Circle of Life,
  the cycle of life and death that pervades the
  natural world.

10
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• O1A2 The Circle of Life in the broad sense
  - the interaction of life forms with their
  environment and each other, and their coming
  into and out of existence - is certainly a
  wonderful, mysterious, valuable thing worth
  participating in. But
• (i) causing animals to suffer and die
  seems a lousy way of maintaining a
  connection with them and
• (ii) we are part of the life cycle (in the
  broad sense) whether we want to be or not,
  whether we eat animals or not.

11
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• O2A2 The Circle of Life in a narrower sense
  seems to mean something like predation. In
  this sense it is not clearly in itself a good
  thing. In fact it seems prima facie to be a
  very bad thing, one that we ought to avoid if
  possible. Predation is certainly common
  throughout the natural world, but this does not
  entail that it is morally acceptable for humans
  to participate in it when they have the choice
  not to.

12
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• A3 Millions of people (e.g. farmers,
  slaughterhouse workers) depend for their
  livelihood on the meat industry.
• O1A3 That a persons sole source of income is
  from activity X is clearly not sufficient reason
  for us to conclude that activity X is morally
  acceptable. Example slave trade

13
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• O2A3 It is not clear that anyone depends, in a
  deep sense, on the meat industry for their
  livelihood
• First of all, in large industrialized societies
  it is rarely if ever the case that an individual
  has only one means available to him of generating
  income.
• Second, a societal switch to vegetarianism (if it
  were to occur) would involve a gradual loss of
  meat industry jobs, probably offset by gains in
  related industries (e.g. the processed soy
  industry).

14
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• A4 We have natural dominion over all other
  animals.

15
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• O1A4 If this claim is simply an appeal to the
  authority of the Bible, then it is weak in the
  ways that most such claims are
• (i) it is subject to intra-religious conflict
  over interpretation (e.g., domination or
  stewardship?)
• (ii)it is absolutely irrelevant for those who
  do not already subscribe to the
  Judeo- Christian tradition and
• (iii) It seems to involve selective reading of
  the Bible, since the Bible commands us to do
  many things that Jews and Christians today
  ignore and would find morally abhorrent.

16
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• O2A4 It is probably true that we are the most
  powerful species on the planet, but might does
  not make right we are able to use animals for
  our own ends, but that does not show that it is
  morally acceptable to do so.
• Analogy Imagine a powerful alien species,
  whose religion gives them dominion over all
  the species of the universe, who raise humans
  for meat. Would that be right?

17
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• A5 The life of an animal on a farm is better
  than it would be in nature so we do not make
  it worse off than it would otherwise be by
  raising it and killing it for food.
• O1A5 If were talking about animals on factory
  farms, it is highly unlikely that their life is
  better than animal life in the wild.

18
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• O2A5 The farm animals in question wouldnt even
  exist if we didnt want them for food nor does
  vegetarianism demand that they ought to be
  released into the wild. The real issue is
  whether we are permitted to bring them into
  existence in the first place.
• Thus the choice isnt between a wild existence
  and domesticated one it is between existence
  and non- existence, or perhaps between varying
  qualitative levels of domesticated existence.
• Well postpone discussion of O2A5 to our
  critical analysis of Peter Singers position.

19
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• A6 There is too much human suffering in the
  world to waste our time and energy worrying
  about animal rights.
• O1A6 To end the suffering of farm animals we do
  not need to do anything we simply need stop
  doing something, namely, eating meat.

20
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• O2A6 Vegetarianism is not an alternative to
  caring about humans. An increased concern for
  animals is a natural expression of ones
  increasing sensitivity to suffering in all
  forms, part of a pattern of moral development
  whose end point is full compassion for all
  sentient beings.

21
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• O3A6 Increased vegetarianism helps people
  directly by its positive effects on the
  environment, human health, and the global
  distribution of wealth.

22
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife
  by the millions in order to protect his domestic
  animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic
  animals by the billions and eats them. This in
  turn kills man by the millions, because eating
  all those animals leads to degenerative --
  and fatal -- health conditions like heart
  disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man
  tortures and kills millions more animals to look
  for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere,
  millions of other human beings are being killed
  by hunger and malnutrition because food they
  could eat is being used to fatten domestic
  animals.
• Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad
  laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so
  easily and so violently, and once a year sends
  out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."
• - C. David Coats

23
Common Arguments in Defense of Eating Meat

• "As long as Man continues to be the ruthless
  destroyer of lower living beings he will never
  know health or peace. For as long as men
  massacre animals, they will kill each other.
  Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain
  cannot reap joy and love."
• - Pythagoras

24
Kant, Our Duties to Animals

• Kants view on animals is part of a long Western
  tradition that excludes animals from the realm of
  moral concern
• Western philosophy has often tied the moral worth
  of a being to its rational capacities, and by
  that measure, animals have been thought to fall
  short.
• Aristotle, in ancient Greece, and Descartes, in
  the 17th century, believed that moral worth is
  linked to the power of thought, expressed in
  language, and that animals, without linguistic
  ability, are therefore without intrinsic moral
  worth.
• For Descartes, animals are mere biological
  machines without any sort of consciousness

25
Kant, Our Duties to Animals

• According to Kant, we have only indirect duties
  to animals our treatment of animals is morally
  relevant only insofar as it affects our treatment
  of people

26
Kant, Our Duties to Animals

• Remember Kants 2nd Categorical Imperative Never
  treat a person as a mere means to an end.
• People are rational, autonomous beings and
  therefore of intrinsic worth, according to Kant.
  
• They are not mere things to be used, but
  independent centres of value .
• Since animals are not self-conscious (Kant says)
  it is morally permissible to treat them simply as
  means to an end. They are, in a sense, mere
  things.

27
Kant, Our Duties to Animals

• But Kant also argues that animals have
  analogies to human nature for example, a dog
  can serve its master long and faithfully.
• For this reason our interaction with animals is
  good training ground for our interaction with
  humans for example, by rewarding the dogs
  loyalty with kindness, we develop a general
  capacity for kindness that we then express in our
  dealings with people.
• Hogarths Four Stages of Cruelty, to which
  Kant refers in the reading, can be seen here
• http//bugpowder.com/andy/e.hogarth-cruelty.html

28
Kant, Our Duties to Animals

• A couple of potential problems for the Kantian
  view
• If animals are indeed analogous to humans in what
  seem to be morally relevant features (e.g. their
  love of their young their loyalty their
  capacity for suffering), why do we not have any
  direct duties towards them?
• 2. Is our treatment of animals really as
  influential on our treatment of humans as Kant
  argues? Surely there are many slaughterhouse
  workers, vivisectionists, deer hunters, and fans
  of bull fighting who are compassionate and
  respectful in their dealings with humans.

29
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Anti-vivisection societies were formed in England
  and the U.S. in the at the end of the 19th
  century. But the animal welfare and rights
  movements more generally are usually thought to
  have gained widespread prominence in the 1970s.
• One important event in the recent rise to
  prominence of the movement was the publication,
  in 1975, of Peter Singers book Animal
  Liberation, sometimes referred to as the bible of
  the animals rights movement.

30
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Singers position is in conscious opposition to
  that Aristotelian-Kantian Western philosophical
  tradition of identifying rationality to be the
  hallmark of moral worth.
• He is also consciously opposed to any claim,
  theologically grounded or otherwise, that makes
  membership in the human species a necessary
  condition of moral worth. He is thus opposed to
  speciesism, which, he claims, is just as
  arbitrary and unethical as sexism or racism.

31
Singer, Animal Liberation

• For Singer, if a being is conscious in a way that
  makes it capable of feeling pleasure and pain, of
  suffering and enjoying, then we ought to take
  that beings interests into consideration when we
  are determining how we ought to act with regard
  to it.
• With this principle Singer follows Bentham, the
  founding father of utilitarianism, who famously
  proclaimed
• The question is not, Can they reason? nor,
  Can they talk? but rather, Can they suffer?

32
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Singer elaborates on Benthams dictum as follows
• If a being suffers there can be no moral
  justification for refusing to take that suffering
  into consideration. No matter what the nature of
  the being, the principle of equality requires
  that its suffering be counted equally with like
  suffering - insofar as rough comparisons can be
  made - of any other being. If a being is not
  capable of suffering, or of experiencing
  enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be
  taken into account. So the limit of sentienceis
  the only defensible boundary of concern for the
  interests of others. To mark this boundary by
  some other characteristic like intelligence or
  rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary
  manner. Animal Liberation, 1975

33
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Singers argument is clearly utilitarian.
• In deciding what we ought to do, we must
  consider the interests of all those beings who
  may be affected by our actions, and then choose
  that course of action that brings about the
  greatest satisfaction of interests.

34
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Let us call the following The Singer/Bentham
  Interest Principle
• A necessary and sufficient condition of an
  individuals having interests is that
  individuals capability of suffering or enjoying.
• Singer believes that this principle is one
  which most of us will intuitively recognize as
  plausible, but he gives the following
  illustration to make its plausibility vivid

35
Singer, Animal Liberation

• It would be nonsense to assert it was not in the
  interests of a stone to be kicked along a road by
  a schoolboy.
• A stone does not have interests because it cant
  suffer. Nothing we can do to it could make a
  difference to its welfare.
• But it would absurd to say that a mouse has no
  interest in not being kicked along the road.
• It has said interest because it will suffer if it
  is kicked along the road.

36
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Any animal presumably has an interest in not
  suffering and dying so that we can eat it.
• We have a competing interest in nourishing
  ourselves, and in enjoying the taste of meat and
  the traditions surrounding its consumption (e.g.
  Christmas ham).
• But in this case the utilitarian case seems to be
  overwhelmingly against meat consumption. Our
  interests in eating meat are trivial in
  comparison to the animals interest in not
  suffering and dying.

37
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Singer argues that the animal liberation
  movement is part of our more general moral
  evolution that has in recent decades extended
  goods and rights to women, non-whites, and
  homosexuals.
• One might think that the animal liberation
  movement is disanalogous with those other
  movements because while humans deserve to be
  treated equally - since they are in fact
  equal to each other - animals are not equal
  to humans, and thus we are not obligated to treat
  their interests on par with our own.

38
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Singer agrees that humans are superior to animals
  in a variety of significant ways but so are some
  humans superior to other humans in a variety of
  attributes such as strength, intelligence and
  even moral integrity.
• Thus if we give preference to human interests
  over animal ones because we are (for example)
  more intelligent than them, we should also give
  preference to more intelligent humans over less
  intelligent humans. But clearly we should not
  give preference to more intelligent humans, says
  Singer.
• The moral imperative to treat beings equally has
  nothing to do with the relevant beings
  abilities, apart from their abilities to suffer
  and enjoy.
• The essential aim of morality is the minimization
  of suffering and the extension of well-being
  thus the only sensible criterion for inclusion in
  the realm of moral consideration is a beings
  capacity to suffer and enjoy.

39
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Thus Singer does not simply claim that animals
  are equal to humans his position is more
  complex than that.
• An animal interest is, taken in isolation, as
  equally worthy of moral consideration as a
  similar human interest for example, a chimps
  pleasure from quenching its thirst is, in itself,
  of a moral value equal to a humans equivalent
  pleasure.
• But because humans generally have a greater
  capacity for good-maximizing, it is often morally
  preferable to prefer humans over animals for
  example a typical human life is usually more
  worth saving over a typical animal life.
• Of course meat-eating involves giving preference
  to trivial human interests over the fundamental
  interests of animals, and hence is unjustified.

40
Singer, Animal Liberation

• Lets call Singers position AS
• O1AS Utilitarians actually have a duty to consume
  meat, so long as the lives of slaughtered
  animals are, on the whole, of greater utility
  than 0. For without the meat industry they
  would never have existed their existence
  contributes to the greater happiness more
  than their non-existence would.
• Something like this objection is advanced by
  Roger Crisp in Utilitarianism and
  Vegetarianism, International Journal of Applied
  Philosophy, 4.1 41-49.

41
Singer, Animal Liberation

• R1O1AS One might respond that at present meat
  consumption is not justified by this sort of
  objection since in modern factory farming
  conditions it is very unlikely that the animals
  lives are of greater value than 0 their
  suffering far outweighs their enjoyment.
• Even if their lives are of greater value than
  0, we might still have (from a utilitarian
  perspective) an obligation to dramatically
  improve their condition.

42
Singer, Animal Liberation

• R2O1AS By this logic we have a utilitarian
  obligation (it at least is morally permitted by
  utilitarianism) to bring any beings into
  existence whose lives would, on balance, be of
  more utility than 0. For example, it would seem
  to permit the scenario envisioned in the movie
  The Island, where certain humans live
  comfortably but only (unbeknownst to them) to
  provide organs for others. Thus either
• (i) Utilitarianism has morally absurd
  implications and should be dropped (Singer
  wouldnt argue this way) or
• (ii) We have misapplied utilitarianism the
  vast amount of time and resources required to
  comfortably raise and slaughter billions of
  animals could be better spent on improving the
  condition of beings already in existence.

43
Singer, Animal Liberation

• R3O1AS A hybrid utilitarianism which seeks not
  simply to maximize utility but also a good ratio
  of happiness to unhappiness, might respond that
  meat consumption probably creates a situation
  where the overall ratio of happiness to
  unhappiness is much worse than it is without
  meat consumption, even if it maximizes utility.