What do you think?
- Is it really immoral to eat meat? Why not?
- How would you feel about continuing to do something you now knew was immoral?
- What other options do we have if we want to continue gobbling up animals for our pleasure?
- What do we really need here?
- Do you have any other thoughts about Law's dialogue?
References
Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast, in The Xmas Files: The philosophy of Christmas. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1. It's probably immoral because we kill and eat them.
ReplyDelete2. I feel a bit guilty
3. pray for them before we eat them all.
4. We need to think will stop eating meat or not.
5. People try to persuade others by giving reasons not to compel them.
I thought Bank's idea that we should pray for the animals we eat was interesting, which is a polite way of saying "What good is that?" How can praying help an animal that we have had someone else kill just so we can eat it? That sounds like we feel bad and just want to make ourselves feel better without really doing anything serious about our own immoral behaviour.
ReplyDeleteIf I kill someone, does praying for them make it better? If someone is a thief, does praying for the victims you steal from make it OK to steal?
In fact, praying in such situations might be even worse than not praying because it sounds like an excuse we can use to continue with our immoral behaviour.
I don't necessarily expect you to address each of the questions I asked. They are just there as some things that Law's dialogue made me think about.
ReplyDeleteThis is a response writing activity, so any response is fine.
May be yes because the animal have their own life.sometime i feel okay but sometime i feel really afraid and guilty when i did something which i knew that immoral. for the option,i think we should treat the animal well when they are alive so we aren't feel so guilty to eat them. After i read Law's dialogue, i think he wants the reader to follow him and change our mind about eating meat. may be he is a vegetarian.
ReplyDeleteI think that Law and the philosopher Peter Singer, who Law refers to, would agree with me and Peach that morality requires that we treat animals well. However, both Law and Singer go further and insist that this is not enough; that we must also abstain from eating animals.
ReplyDeleteI thought the ideas from Singer that Law introduces in "The Mentally Impaired" (pp. 129-130) section of his dialogue might also be relevant to Pong's thesis statement for this week's essay.
I were refered!
ReplyDeleteAbout the topic, I am Buddhist, I believe in the Karma rules(the consequences of our acts, They come from the past life and also follow us to the next life). Personally, it could be easily said "you get what you give(do)", very rational, I think. Buddhism also say that every killing is wrong, whether the killing of bad guys or small animal, they are all wrong.the animal are killed by us at the present because they did something bad in the past to us. So, it's a kinda cycle. If we don't stop killing, this act must yield some bad things to us. It's seperate between good and bad Karma, it can't compensate each other. If we treat the animals nicely, you will get some good news in some ways but it doesn't mean we can kill them later. It's just my believe, it may sounds wrong or non-sensical for many people and that's OK.
I'm still eating meat eventhough I realise it's wrong. I believe I have to pay for my bad Karma. Anyway, it's so delicious! Hope, it's not too hard for me to repay because a lot of people(me, trader, butcher, chef&cooks and etc.)are sharing the dish!
I think it true because the animal have blood and can feel painful when they were killed. I still eat meat sometimes. I says sometimes because I always eat only bakery all day, and I love cake cookies ice-cream more than bread with sausage or ham. I'm rarely eat meat but when I'm eating I don't think about original form of them and I just know it's pork I cannot remember how pig look like. I don't eat beef. I've never test it before because I'm a chinese buddhism and my aunt is vegetarian but I cannot do it completely. If I have a chance to pet food-animals I believe that I will absolutely don't eat meat. About law to allow or not allow I think it's hard to do. My aunt had been vegetarian because her belief and law should let people believe in one religion that the members believe it's immoral to eat meat.
ReplyDeleteI think it’s immoral to be a meat eater, but I still insist to eat them without any shame. We should be noted that human have been hunting animal for meat for thousand years. We just follow the way our ancestors do. I’m not sure whether the first man’s meal is either vegetable or meat. Either answer, I believe human falls to be a meat lover since then. Hundred years after that, I guess, we begin to raise animals in a farm and kill them for food. For those who eat meat then will not need to hunt and just exchange or trade or now, we just use money to buy meat products. It's good to me, and others, as long as we do not directly kill animals, I would not feel comfortable to see them being killed. (Not to mention to some little insects which some times irritate me, such as, mosquito, ant, flies, which I can be a vicious murderer)
ReplyDeleteMy thought now is that, if eating meat is immoral, there are many other things involved in our lives doing wrong thing to animal. Is it wrong to grow a plant, built a house, make a road? People use land for many purpose and many animal have to leave their own territory. Take a dam as an example; it needs an enormous land which impact forests and animals living this area. Most of them get away from one place to another, some drowns to death. People who involve in dam building are immoral? As dam, we can have water management, farmer who use this water are immoral? Dam produces electricity, how immoral the people using electricity in the city is?
If we have to stop being immoral, I think human should go back to the old age where we live in the forest and are vegetarian by eating no meat. We should be noted also that growing a plant and use pesticide will cause termination to the nature and animal can be affected. Wow, we need to live and die instead of eating meat and vegetable and proud to ourselves that we are “moral”
Although Law makes a strong case, and certainly forces us to think carefully about the issues, I don't think it is immoral to eat animals. First, the argument from Singer that he introduces in the section "The Mentally Impaired" is not so strong as it appears. Despite the objection that we have to eating babies or the mentally impaired, it remains true that there are very real and significant differences between human beings and animals, the sort of differences that Gemma's family also think matter. Animals, at least not the ones we usually eat, are not capable of the same self-awareness, self-determination or conceptualisation of rights that humans regularly display, and that does seem the sort of thing that matters when we decide what sort of rights a being might or should have.
ReplyDeleteThat sort of argument, combined with a revised version of Midgely's ideas about emotional bonds, seems to me to suggest that it is, or certainly could be, morally acceptable to eat animals. I don't think I'm doing anything immoral when I enjoy the lamb shank with white beans at my favourite French restaurant.
However, before you feel too much relief about the morality of eating your favourite roast animal, you might like to consider some of the other consequences that follow from the argument I've very briefly outlined here. Peter Singer is one of the worlds great currently writing philosophers, and his ideas are strong and very well supported. But if you take the approach I've suggested (Singer does notthere are other consequences that you might not like, as Law hints at in his dialogue, and which Singer very explicitly examines in his work.
I also wonder about a point that Nont has raised in his last comment: Does it really matter whether we kill them direcly or not? If we have a butcher kill the pig because we want to eat it, doesn't that mean that we, not the butcher, are the real killer? After all, the butcher is merely acting as our agent and would not kill teh pig if we did not pay him to do it. If a mafia boss orders a murder, who is really responsible, the real cause of murder, the mafia boss who orders it, or the hired gun man who pulls the trigger because he was told to? It seems to me that the boss is at least as much the cause of the killing as the gunman. Similarly, when we pay butchers to kill animals for us, I think we are teh real cause of the animals's death; we, not the butcher, are the killers.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that means it's immoral, as I suggested in my last commment, but I do think we should be honest with ourselves about what we are doing.
I'm glad Nont raised the point. I like it, and also his other ideas, about tradition, and the spread of responsibility. (That doesn't mean I agree completely, but it does mean I think the ideas are worth more thought. I don't agree with Law either, but I found his short dialogue challenging.)
Next week we will have a challenging new reading to think about. Law was philosophy, I think we will do some economics next, and save Peter Singer for another term.
Every philosophic debates are difficult to argue. Also,Philosophic reasons in Law's dialogue cannot be contradicted. I think after reading everyone who usaully eat meat have to agree that it's immoral to eat meat; however, only some of them can completely abstain eating meat. I agree with Pong that this is the life cycle which no one can avoid. No kinda organisms can leave out of food chain. Physicists may give the reason that this is because energy cannot vanish but can change its position(into other organisms). Although we can receive protein from other sources like soy. However, soy is also living thing like animals!
ReplyDeleteAlso, If it's immoral to kill every living things (with some reasons/ purposes), I (as scientist)did and do and also will do immoral things all my life in laboratory. I modify DNA of bacteria, yeast, mouse, frogs and other organisms aim to study mechanisms related to humans. My goal is to help human being but unfortunately I am a murder everyday!(killing bacteria, yeast, mouse, frogs and other organisms).... So, I think the purpose to do something wrong is also important as philosophic reason.
Although I agree with New that Law's arguments are strong, I don't agree that they cannot be contradicted. For example, as I suggested in a previous comment, Singer's argument as presented by Law can lead to a very different conclusion, one which does contradict Law's thesis.
ReplyDelete