According to “Carving the roast beast” of The Xmas Files, the philosopher Stephen Law presents the ideas that humans should not be treated to other animals. Law shows his ideas through Gemma and her family. Gemma thinks it is a prejudice for the separation of black and white and man and woman, but Mrs. Wilson opposes that it is not prejudice. Like children, they are not clever enough to do or decide something. Gemma debates her why we not kill babies that have a problem with brain because they not smarter than turkeys? Mr. Wilson says that because babies are human that is sacred. These make Gemma think they are prejudices. Mr. Wilson agues that human have the social relationship and animal can enter into. Furthermore, human have an obligation or duty to care their children. Ellen support her father that turkeys is not socially bonded to us, so it dose not matter to kill and eat it. Grandmother claims that in Bible “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you” (p.137). Gemma contradicts that Bible is not always true such as the slave owners that everyone disagree with it. After that, Mr. Wilson says protein need for heath, but Gemma argue that Buddhists, Jains and Hindus have perfectly healthy with out eat meat. In finally, Ellen support his father with the fact that animal kill and eat animals, so the killing and eating turkeys is fine. Gemma contradicts to Ellen for 2 reasons. First animal have to eat each other to survive, some animal can’t survive on grass such as, the tigers. Seconds, animal have no sense of right or wrong. They can not be blamed for what they do like the children do. Overall, Gemma does not eat meat. In the contrary, other members in her family still eat it.
From this dialogue, I agree with some Gemma’s reasons and I also agree with other members in her family. And I also eat meat because I think human need protein for repair or improve some parts of body that are damaged. Protein is an importance substrate for cell and brain. Protein is the source of energy for body burning. You do not kill animal by yourselves, but you can buy it from the market. Overall I prefer to receive protein from meat than other sources because the test is very delicious and I think if I do not have to kill them by myself, it is fine to eat them.
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Reference:
Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast, The Xmas Files. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Tuesday 26 August 2008
9 comments:
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I don't agree with Gemma but there are no way to rebut her arguement because it's so logical. However, I believe that there is another low which rebut her and support my position even though I cannot do myself. I Love eating meats and I heard that protein from vegertable and protein from animal are different. In order to keep good health, people need protein from meat, I believe stongly.
ReplyDeleteMaybe everybody know the food chain. It can't support that it's morally right. But, accoring to this law, animal eat food in order to live even another animal which is weaker than them, people eat them to live. Are we wrong eating meat to live?
If you don't have any good reason to oppose Gemma's argument, doesn't that mean you can not say she is wrong? How can you say something is wrong if you have no strong reason for saying that? You can wish it were wrong, and hope it were wrong, but I don't think that wishing and hoping are strong reasons for or against something. I wish and hope a lot of things, but on the whole my wishing and hoping does not things true or false, or good or bad.
ReplyDelete________________
I'm glad that J has seen the need to present another argument against Law's thesis that eating meat is immoral. It sounds like a variation of the argument Mrs Wilson puts forward, that eating meat is natural. But of course, that would mean accepting that anything natural, such as murder, was also morally acceptable! The idea that we need to eat meat is just false, as Gemma reminds us. We can get all the protein we need from non-animal sources, at much less cost to the environment.
"I believe strongly" does not sound like a very strong argument either, unless the strong belief is supported by strong evidence. Many people strongly belief they will win the lottery, but the evidence is that those strong beliefs are almost always false.
So, is there any good reason why it is morally acceptable for humans to eat other animals?
(I'm also glad the Gus chose to summarize Law's dialogue, which she has very well, as it raises questions that provide good practice in defending a position.)
In her comment after the summary, Gus also said something I don't agree with: "I think if I do not have to kill them by myself, it is fine to eat them."
ReplyDeleteI think this is a common idea, and it sounds wrong to me. If paying someone else to do something wrong makes you innocent, doesn't that mean that a criminal god father who pays other people to commit murder for him has also done nothing wrong? It seems to me that a person who pays or tells someone else to do something wrong must be as guilty as the person who did the act because it is the person who pays or tells who is the real cause of the act: when a big boss tells his servant to shoot someone, it is the boss's order that causes the shooting, the man who pulls the trigger is only doing what he was told to do, he is just a tool the boss uses to kill his enemy, like the gun is a tool. The real intention to kill is the boss's. Similarly, when we pay butchers to kill animals for us, we are the real cause of the killing, which not occur if we did not tell and pay the butcher to kill for us.
Gus's ideas are very thought provoking, and that is a good thing for us: they encourage careful critical thinking.
I don't want to say Gemma is wrong as Peter said I can't opposing argue. However, I don't think it's morally wrong to kill and eat meat. Even after I read this article, I don't feel guilt and I've never think about it's wrong. I think it's matter of personal taste, preference or culture. If someone feel guilt or is vegetarian, they don't kill and eat meat. In my country, there is no blame to someone who eat meat and I've not see anyone. Even vegetarian don't criticize and accept someone's taste.
ReplyDeleteFrom Peter post, I agree with him that is a weak reason to against Gemma because Gemma's reasons are very strong. In my opinion, I don't feel guilt when I eat meat such as, chicken, pork, fish, or crustacean. I don't think to try and never been ate beef, venison, lamp, or the other big animals. My conscious force me feel guilt, if I think to eat them. It likes a psychological ideas about animals that have size larger than me. I always feel guilt, if I have to eat them, but I don't know why I think like that.
ReplyDeleteGus and Micelle's ideas seem to have something in common: that if you don't feel bad or guilty about something, then it is morally OK to do it. You might not feel quilt for cultural reasons, or perhaps other reasons, but both Michelle and Gus appear to suggest that moral right and wrong depends on how a person feels about something. That sounds dangerous to me because it would mean, for example, that if some people felt that slavery was OK, as some still do in parts of Africa, that it really would be morally OK for those people to own and buy slaves, and sell their slaves to people in other countries who personally think it's OK to buy them. Perhaps worse, if someone came to believe that murdering taxi drivers was OK, perhaps because they learnt that from playing a video game, would that mean that it really was morally right for that person to murder a taxi driver because he did not feel guilt?
ReplyDeleteIn this case, base on the most people. Most people think this is common, we can kill and eat meat. it is not morally wrong,like person who have the psychology problem or abnormal behavior. Most people believe if they have the behavior different from the majority, they are abnormal person. Same way, Most people in the world don't feel guilt when they kill and eat chicken, beef or pock(exept Hindus). Humans have the abilities to develop themselves, they have own ideas and always believe in his thinkings or reasons. Like me, I have the belief same as most people. In case slavery and murdering taxi drivers, Most people think these are morally wrong, so many people and I also feel low-spirited when these evens happen and damn them.
ReplyDeleteGus,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you have continued to defend your position with a thoughtful argument.
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My own reasons for thinking it is morally acceptable to eat meat are to reverse the two conclusions that Law draws at the beginning of his dialogue. First, he dismisses whether the animal had a life of pain or not as unimportant. I think that's wrong. Causing pain, or not causing pain, does matter morally, and it is an important point, especially when we come to Law's main idea about speciesism, which is my second point of disagreement. I think that the criteria Mr. Wilson suggests, that we can treat animals differently to humans because they are less intelligent and less capable of feeling, wanting, planning and other mental activities should not be dismissed simply because some humans also fail to be better than animals in those respects.
I would agree with Gemma's mother: if the turkey enjoyed a pleasant life and was killed without pain, then there is nothing wrong with eating it with pleasure.
In his dialague, Law cites and quotes from the philosopher Peter Singer, and Singer, who is a much stronger philosopher (from Australia, he's currently a professor of philosophy at Princeton University), gives an account of speciesism that makes pain a very central issue, along with the mental abilities I mentioned above.
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Although I like the way you have put forward a new argument to rebut my last opposing argument, I also think there is a weakness with your new argument, because it would make morality a matter of what most people think, and that sounds wrong - we don't usually want to say that something is morally right simply because most people think that. That would mean it was impossible for the majority to be immoral, so that, for example, Hitler was morally right to murder millions of Jews because in fact a majority of Germans did approve at teh time. Perhaps worse, any moral change would have to be immoral because it was against the majority. For example, when people in Thailand, the US and elsewhere began to oppose slavery, they were in a minority, and therefore morally wrong according to your idea, but I think it was always the majority who were morally wrong, not the initial minority that has now become the majority. Nonetheless, you were thinking about the issue, and you put forward the right sort of argument in a professional and academic manner, and for the purposes of the course, that's the most important thing. Like all the other readings and writing we do, the most important thing is to practice the skills used in reading and writing in teh academic world. The actual answers are less important, and it doesn't worry me if you don't agree with my ideas - and at university, students often disagree with their professors' ideas. I had constant arguments with the head of my philosophy department for five years. I didn't always agree with my thesis supervisor, either.
I was just rereading Gus's first comment, and something she said there struck me as worth another comment. Gus made a distinction between large animals such as cattle, sheep and deer, and small ones such as fish, chickens and crustacea.
ReplyDeleteI think the relevant difference is intelligence: most of the smaller animals are less mentally capable, and perhaps also less capable of pain, than the larger ones. That's why when I made my lists above, I did not include pigs with the smaller ones. I think pigs are very intelligent, so we should feel the same about eating them as do about eating cows, and perhaps even dogs, which are also small.
Tukeys are definitely not very bright, and I believe that the larger they are, the less intelligent they are bred to be.