I flippantly mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had been tempted for a split-second to become a vegetarian but that I had never found the arguments for vegetarianism persuasive. Because I don't find them compelling, I need not feel like a moral failure - not that moral shortcoming is necessarily a reason to beat onself up; virtuous behaviour on a full-time basis strikes me as rather dull! Instead, I always felt pity for those missing out on bacon, burgers, braais and other meaty goodies. Yet, these damn veggie arguments are still simmering in my head. What to make of them? Let me set out just one of the arguments that still bother me. Please help me find a response before I go to Kate's braai this forthcoming Saturday...
To cut very crudely to the chase, if it is not ok to eat some sentient creatures, why are others more deserving of landing on my plate? This is of course old hat; it is an argument as stale as a piece of left over braaied meat itself. But truths can be stale - that's an aesthetic problem with them, not a logical one :)
The only response, it seems to me, is that there must be stuff about human beings, besides their capacity for pain/pleasure, that mark them out for special ethical consideration in my moral reasoning such that I can treat non-humans who lack these special traits, differently. But of course it is impossible to figure why the hack Samantha or Simpiwe - I made them up, people - are more special than the sheep outside. Special in a sense that justifies differential moral weight in my ethical reasoning?
Seems the answer must be 'no'. Unless, of course, we simply stipulate that morality is a human enterprise and non-humans by definition do not form part of the moral community. But that sort of ad hoc circularity leaves me cold.
On the other hand, we might try our luck by pretending that the key to why I do not eat humans is that humans have language, intelligence and other human-specific capacities ... well, uhm, not all of us do. So we still have not justified a general law that says, "be kinda nice to ALL other humans...and at the very least don't eat 'em."
How do I avoid the following dillemma? I must either become a vegetarian or in principle accept that humans do not have unique moral value ....indeed in principle I should be open to human burgers, not just beef or veggie ones.
Please tell me I'm simply engaging in bad moral philosophy or else I'd have to take veggie burgers to the braai on Saturday ....
Eish.
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Take a little bit of Richard Dawkin's selfish gene theory. We don't eat those humans that don't display uniquely human qualities because we have an compulsive instinct to preserve any genes we share with others. There you go, canibalism cured (barring of course psychopaths).
ReplyDeleteI don't see the ethical problem with eating meat. It provides us with nutrition - some of which may not be readily available in accessible edible plants. I do see very real ethical problems in how we treat animals we intend to eat - but that's another argument altogether. We are physically able to eat meat and to say we shouldn't seems unnecessarily limiting. The only decent vegetarian argument I've heard is that we could comfortably live of the grain and veg we feed to livestock. Again, that's another argument entirely.
That said, I remember celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall commenting on serving a prepared human placenta to a vegetarian celebrating a birth. She ate it because she said it was the only meat she could moraly eat - and she apparently loved it. Bring on Douglas Adams' suicidal cow. No pun intended.
The most thoughtful meat eaters I know just bite the bullet and accept that if you want to be morally consistent you have to admit that it is morally ok to eat humans, even if in practice you never would! I go for the other morally consistent approach- eating no animals (or animal products) at all :)
ReplyDeleteI think the fundamental difference between vegetarians and their non-veggie counterparts is a desire (however imperfectly practiced) to try and align what they believe/reason to be true about the world with how they act in it.
ReplyDeleteI think you better go hit up Fruit and Veg City.
I would tend to agree with what Richard says. The arguments in favour of vegetarianism are very compelling. The real question is the extent to which we allow that logic to dictate how we behave.
ReplyDeleteI think there are some Philosophical Arguments which may be logically sound, but that doesn't mean I am going to make any real world changes in my life or beliefs as a result (examples may be St Anselm's Ontological Argument, Arrow's Impossibility theorem as well as Sen's Liberal Paradox, or Benatar's Anti-Natalism).
The question then, is when should we care about ethical philosophical arguments? This is where I subscribe to the Feminist Ethics of Care. Which is by no means a sound moral theory. But i think most people won't eat other humans or even their pets because human morality comes from relationships of care. I recall that in undergrad, although everyone understood how convincing the moral vegetarianism arguments were, no-one was about to become vegetarian. Not until the terrible video of animals suffering was shown. Then people started to care, and then they started to act morally (become vegetarian).
So the question is, how much do you care about cows? I doubt that immoral acts are excused just because you don't care about those it harms. But it does raise questions about objective moral standards. Even reflecting on our moral intuitions doesn't always give us the right answer. You may think that moral consistency is important, and on a logical level it certainly is. But we don't live our lives that way. Mostly our moral lives revolve around moral intuition based on care and relationships? Not sure. I find the arguments against eating meat extremely compelling. I still eat meat though. And although on a logical level it should commit me to say I would also eat humans, I wouldn't also eat humans. I guess that makes me both irrational and immoral?
And, this recent article on vegetarianism in the New York Times was very good since it tried to show why we should care: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11foer-t.html?_r=1
Alex, I find your response admirably honest and sincere.
ReplyDeleteI do not, however, find it satisfying nor compelling. True, not all arguments - philosophical or otherwise - move us to act in accordance with the content of the argument's conclusion, but that is a descriptive pscyhological fact about us, not a moral reason to not bother with aligning one's moral reasoning with one's moral actions, somehow.
Imagine, for example, the parallel case in law, in which a criminal might defend himself by saying, "I certainly did come to the conclusion that killing Mr X would be wrong, Your Honour, but I am simply bad at acting in accordance with my legal reasoning. Kinda like humans knowing it is bad to eat meat but unable to change their ways? Sorry Your Honour."
That would not cut it.
IF - and ONLY IF - we were pscyhologically *determined* to act contrary to the outcomes of our moral reasoning could we escape blame for immoral behaviour.
The reality is different. Becoming a vegetarian, I suspect (not tried yet), is probably not much more challenging than being a smoking addict and trying to give up smoking - damn tough, but certainly not SO difficult as to constitute a reason to not do so.
So while your honesty about the gap between normativity and behaviour is admirable, and an observation with which anyone must agree, you know full well that we can - and often do - do better than throwing our hands in the air and exclaiming with a sigh, "It's just too tough to do the right thing!"
Mac says -
ReplyDeleteI think you are faced with a trade-off of whether you want to embrace as many potential experiences (for example eating meat) as possible or whether you're going to curtail your possible experiences. Eating meat makes me happy so it is an experience i would like to repeat. In fact if it came to it, i would be prepared (perhaps not joyfully) to kill an animal to provide meat for me to eat, as a bonus it is good for me, and not particularly harmful to society.
With regards to human beings, i don't think i'd be happy eating it (probably mainly the thought of it which would turn my stomach and this could be an interesting argument in itself) and there is a fair chance that it wouldn't be particularly good for you either (myriad medical reasons), and finally it would be crap for society (see Dawn of the Dead). So i would imagine that despite the circular argument you mentioned that you weren't particular fond of in your opening piece UB, i don't really see animals as part of the same moral community, or at least not on the same level as humans.
Not sure if that is particularly helpful or convincing
The logic is simple. Harming/killing a human being is considered wrong because humans are sentient creatures, that is, there is something it is like to be a human being. Poke him in the eye, it hurts. Take his life and you have unfairly deprived him of his right to continued existence. If animals are also sentient, and many if not most are (certainly the vast majority of those that we eat are), then we ought not to harm/kill them either. Unless logical consistency means nothing to you, though of course it should, since the practice of reasoning itself is rendered void if logical consistency can be thrown out whenever it suits us.
ReplyDeleteOf course, like any moral judgment, context is key. So, ceteris parabis, Samantha and Simpiwe are no more special than the cow in the pasture from the point of view of the moral obligation you have not to harm/kill them.
The primary difference from what I have learned is that humans have a moral capacity that is absent in other animals. So a lion mauling a sprinbok is not a moral matter. A human mauling a bull, however, is. As is a human mauling a human, precisely for the same reason.
How to avoid your dilemma? You can't. Either be happy with cannabalism or stop eating animal flesh. Or, as a last resort, stop giving reason and logic important roles in your life.