Law v. Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part III

This post is continued from "Stephen Law v. Peter Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part I" (2008, December 10) and "Law v. Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part II" (2008, December 20), below.

________________

In the previous two parts of this now longish essay, I've argued that the most serious problem in Law's support of his thesis that it is immoral to eat meat occurs immediately after his introduction, where he fails to take seriously enough, and fails to answer, both the idea that what matters is the quality of life lived by the animal and the animal's capabilities (2003). When we apply the principle that it ia morally wrong to cause needless suffering, which can be physical, psychological or otherwise, to particular circumstances, it appears, for example, that the Wilson's christmas turkey may be enjoyed with no moral worries: it led a happy life, free of suffering and worry, and was killed painlessly before Mrs Wilson turned it into christmas dinner. Gemma is free to choose not to eat this particular turkey, but it not at all clear that she has any good reason for objecting that it is immoral to eat it. On the other hand, eating mass produced chickens grown in cramped and painful mass production facilities of the type run by companies like CP is immoral: it is morally wrong to eat chicken produced under such inhumane and morally ugly conditions. If you have not already read them, you might like to read, or go back and reread, the first two parts.

At the end of both parts I and II, I suggested that although I think eating meat is in fact morally acceptable, that not everyone who agrees with me on that, and especially not everyone who has agreed with my supporting argument so far, would be so happy when they considered just what their agreement entails.

Ideas, principles and arguments have consequences, and just as you cannot ignore opposing arguments in a persuasive essay, neither can you ignore the consequences of your own supporting ideas. For example, people often argue that smoking must be banned in restaurants because it is unhealthy, in particular, that it harms non-smokers. This sounds plausible, but is really an awful argument. When analysed, it relies on the more general principle that if something is unhealthy or harms other people, then that is a good enough reason that it must be banned: smoking certainly harms others; therefore, it must be banned wherever there are others. The trouble is that smoking is not the only thing that is unhealthy or that harms others. The very tasty kao kha mu (ข้าวขาหมู) that is readily available on the streets of Bangkok is also unhealthy and harmful: it is full of very unhealthy fats and contains approximately zero vegetables, unless you cound some garlic and chillies. If we accept the principle that anything that is unhealthy or harms others must be banned, then all those sellers of that tasty Thai dish must be banned and perhaps thrown into prison! Worse, cars produce pollution that is unhealthy and harmful to everyone in Bangkok, including millions of non-motorists, therefore the government must ban the use of all private cars in Bangkok. These examples might sound ridiculous, and they are. However, they are ridiculous because the general principle is ridiculous. There is nothing ridiculous about the fact that pollution from cars is unhealthy. That is just a well established fact. The problem is in the principle that it is right to ban anything that is unhealthy or harms others. And once we realise that this principle is seriously flawed, it becomes much less obvious that it is right for the government to ban smoking in restaurants. There might still be good supporting reasons for such a ban, but they have to be better than the simple idea that anything unhealthy should be banned.

Similarly, there are consequences elsewhere of agreeing with the general moral principle that I've borrowed from Peter Singer to support the idea that eating meat is not necessarily immoral as Stephen Law argues. Those consequences are so upsetting to many people that Singer received death threats when he published them, which is not so unusual for philosophers. People think that philosophy is a nice, safe sort of occupation messing around with books and words, which is true, but those words have often upset people so much that the writers were either threatened with death or actually murdered. For example, Socrates, often seen as the father of Western philosophy, was murdered by the Athenian mob of democrats in 399 BC because of his ideas. The charges brought by the politician Meletus were that Socrates was corrupting the young and did not believe in the gods (Plato, trans. 1997); perhaps Peter Singer is not in such bad company.

The conclusion of my reason for disagreeing with Stephen Law's thesis that eating meat is immoral is a homework exercise: what are the consequences of the opposing argument I've outlined in parts I, II and III above that so upset people that they wanted to kill Peter Singer? What do you think about those consequences? Do you still think that the argument is right, that it is morally acceptable to eat meat? Feel welcome to share your ideas in a comment.

(I would not advise ending a TOEFL essay with a homework exercise for the marker, although a final question might be OK.)

____________

References

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files (pp.124 - 140). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Plato. Euthyphro. Gallop, D. (trans., 1997). In Plato: Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro, Crito (p. 1 - 23). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Singer, P. (2002). Animal Liberation. New York: ECCO.

Law v. Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part II

This post is continued from "Stephen Law v. Peter Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part I" (2008, December 10), below.

________________

In her reply to her father's idea that there are relevant differences between human and non-human animals that justify humans killing and eating other animals, Gemma suggests, but then fails to follow up, the argument that Peter Singer makes. Certainly, Gemma, and Law with his long quote from Peter Singer (2003, p. 130), do make us think about what the implications of her father's suggestion must be, but they do not in fact show that eating meat is immoral. Law skips over this as though he had fully addressed this opposing argument and shown that it was weak, but he has not. Singer, who is more honest, and courageous, follows where reason leads. In Animal Liberation and his other writings, Singer presents powerful arguments that what an animal, such as a human being, a monkey or a chicken is capable of doing, thinking and feeling are the factors that must be considered to decide what are right and wrong ways of treating that animal; to do otherwise is to be guilty of speciesism, which I think Law presents fairly clearly and shows to be morally wrong.

For living things without any nervous system, such as all plants and some very simple animals, there is no reason to think that they can think or have any feeling, so there can be no moral problem in using them for our purposes. They cannot have any purposes, desires, intentions or any other preferences of their own, so we can not do them any moral wrong by chopping them up for dinner. However, as we come across increasingly more complex animals, that changes. The principle that Singer suggests we use is that we may not cause pain to an animal except for a compelling reason, a reason so strong that not causing the pain would be more immoral than causing it, just as a doctor who refused to give an injection because he didn't want to hurt the patient would be acting wrongly if his refusal put the patient in danger. Singer also points out that pain can be of various kinds: physical, mental and psychological. In the case of less complex animals, the only pain is likely to be physical, although this is a matter for zoologists to tell us by doing the necessary research. Prawns and fish, for example, probably do not have very strong emotions and are therefore unlikely to feel emotional pain, although they probably feel some physical pain: fish certainly react to being caught on hooks as though they are in pain. Chickens have more sophisticated nervous systems, and not only feel physical pain, but also seem to suffer depression, anxiety and other emotional pains when put under stress. More complex still are the nervous systems of the mammals we like to eat: cows, pigs, dogs and other mammals all suffer physical pain as much as we do and for the same reasons; they also clearly display emotions, and can suffer the pain of loss, separation, stress and other psychological pains. I assume that no one is so barbaric as to eat apes these days, but they are so very similar to humans that abusing them for no very good reason would be almost as bad, as morally wrong, as abusing humans. For SInger, it is causing needless pain or suffering that makes eating meat wrong, and the more complex an animal's nervous system, the greater the possibility of such pain and suffering being caused in turning it into our lunches and dinners.

If we take a closer look at chickens, or turkeys, we can see the serious mistake that Law makes even before he introduces the concept of speciesism. Immediately after his introduction, where Law clearly states the very strong thesis he is going to support, Gemma complains about the "miserable life that poor [turkey] led" (Law, 2003, p. 125), to which her mother replies that in fact "it never suffered at all, in life or in death" (p. 125). Law then ends this discussion, and moves on to start supporting his much stronger thesis that eating meat is morally wrong even if no pain is involved, but he has not actually answered Gemma's mother's opposing argument, and the same ideas about quality of life and capacity for enjoying life come up again in the discussion of Peter Singer's ideas and in the section "The Mentally Impaired" (p. 129 - 130). In his work, Singer makes what I think is a strong case for his idea that what matters in determining how we are morally obliged to treat non-human animals is their capacity to feel, think, wish, suffer and have goals. I think that's a reasonable enough proposition that I'm not going to present Singer's arguments any more than I explained them in the previous paragraph. But if you think Singer is wrong about this, please feel welcome to argue - you might think it sounds OK now, but then change your mind when you get to the end of this explanation of why I think Law is wrong. Oddly, Law also says something like this on page 125: "The issue is that it was a living thing capable of enjoying life." And as Gemma's father then tells her, a turkey isn't really capable of very much enjoyment, so if we apply Law's own criteria here, which is consistent with Singer's more explicitly developed ideas, it does appear that it was morally acceptable to kill the turkey that had led a life free of suffering before being painlessly killed, and if the killing was morally right, then it is also morally right for Gemma to eat its dead body.

What has been shown so far? All that I've supported is that it can be morally acceptable to eat meat under certain conditions: that the animal not be caused needless pain in its life or in turning it into dinner. This general principle then needs to be applied to particular cases. Gemma's mother sounds right in saying that a turkey that was raised comfortably on a farm and killed painlessly may be morally eaten. However, most chickens that are eaten are not raised in that way: they are raised in cramped, dark sheds, with little or no fresh air, no exercise and no treatment of any medical problems. That is, they life miserable lives so that they can be killed to needlessly satisfy human tastes for chicken. This would seem to be morally wrong, so we should not eat chicken from mass producers such as the CP Group as doing so causes animals to suffer needlessly. KFC is probably also morally wrong. It is, however, perfectly moral to eat chickens that have been raised under decent conditions and killed painlessly. For people in some European countries, strict laws now make it possible to be assured that the chicken they eat was not produced by causing pain or suffering. Similar analyses can be made for other animals that we like to eat, but as the animal's nervous system and emotional life and goals more nearly approach the human, it becomes more difficult to justify eating them. For an animal as intelligent and emotionally aware as a dog, it could only be acceptable to kill and eat it to actually avoid starving to death, so people who eat dogs today are almost always acting immorally.

to be continued ...

Still to come in part III: the consequences that I think those who have agreed with me so far might not like. Can you guess what they are yet?

I didn't realise this would be quite so long when I started. I'm trying to keep it as short as possible, but there also needs to be enough support for my ideas.

Continued at "Law v. Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part III" (2008, December 22), above.

____________

References

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files (pp.124 - 140). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Singer, P. (2002). Animal Liberation. New York: ECCO.

New house

I so glad to see new house peteraep.blogspot.com. First time I saw, it was nothing difference. But, next time I found there were a little bit different.
I really like new comment text field. it's more convenient to post comments and easier to understand for new users.

second, mini email icon, we can send email easily. And... I found only 2 new features.

If someone found more, tell me please!!!

Stephen Law v. Peter Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part I

In his dialogue "Carving the Roast Beast", the philosopher Stephen Law both presents strong arguments to support his claim that eating meat is immoral and effectively addresses the strongest opposing arguments to his thesis (Law, 2003). There is, however, a weakness at the beginning of his dialogue which he does not address and which refutes Law's main idea. Because of relevant differences between most humans and the non-humans that we normally eat, it is morally acceptable to kill and eat animals, although the reasons that support that have further consequences that Law does briefly touch on.

First, Law is right to point out that religious teachings are not relevant. Religions are not, and cannot be, a reliable guide to what is moral. As Law notes, the Christian bible clearly endorses eating meat, but it also endorses slavery and other clearly immoral behaviour. Buddhism's first precept does suggest that Buddhists today should not normally eat meat, but that does not mean it is immoral, just that Buddhists break their first precept if they eat meat. Law is right to repeat the point made by Plato more than 2,000 years ago in the Euthyphro, also a dialogue, that the teachings of religions and gods do not make things moral or immoral, but that such teachings require solid reasons to support them (Law, 2003, Appeals to the Bible sect., p. 136-7; Plato, trans. 1997).

So, why is Law wrong about the morality of eating meat? In the section titled "The Mentally Impaired", Law includes a long quotation from the philosopher Peter Singer, whose argument appears to support Law's answer to the argument presented by Mr. Wilson that the mental and other differences between humans and the animals that they eat is what makes it morally acceptable to enjoy eating them (2003, p. 128 - 130). However, in Animal Liberation, Singer actually uses the example Law quotes as part of a larger argument that is very different to Law's (2002, p.1 - 23). Singer was the first major philosopher to make a powerful argument that presents and argues against speciesism, which Law explains at the beginning of his dialogue; however, Singer acknowledges that there can be, that there must be, very real differences between humans and other animals, and that those differences are both relevant to, and do in fact justify, treating human animals differently to non-human animals, even though it is the relevant differences that justify the different treatment, not the mere fact of being a human or a non-human animal. That is, Singer would object right at the start of Law's dialogue, where Gemma's parents accept that there are no relevant differences between the numerous different types of animals: humans, apes, pigs, dogs, cows, chickens, and so on. There clearly are very substantial differences, and some of those differences are the kind that do justify different treatment of and moral distinctions amongst the various types of animal that inhabit the Earth. As Mr Wilson tells us: "turkeys are, frankly, pretty dim," whereas human beings are "highly intelligent creature[s]" with "a highly sophisticated range of emotions" (Law, 2003, p. 128). Gemma does not deny these facts about humans and turkeys, but instead answers her father's opposing argument with Singer's idea in the long quotation on page 130. It's a good answer, but not good enough.

to be continued... Can you guess where this argument might be going? Why do I think most people might dislike this answer to Law even more than they dislike Law's ideas?

Continued at "Law v. Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part II" (2008, December 20), above.

____________

References

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files (pp.124 - 140). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Plato. Euthyphro. Gallop, D. (trans., 1997). In Plato: Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro, Crito (p. 1 - 23). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Singer, P. (2002). Animal Liberation. New York: ECCO.

To response immediately!!!

Hi everyone!! I'm Mark. Today I gonna answer a famous question that you wanna know after I haven't updated this blog for long time. That question is .... the question is.... is... how Peter can response emails nearly immediately! how peter know the email is sended to him.

Actually, There are many way to do, but now I will give you particular way to do like Peter. I guarantee it's very easy!!

Let's Start!!
1. Go to this site http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_windows.html
2. Download it
3. Install it
4. During install, there is a dialogbox. you enter your Email and Password into text boxes.
5. Done!! You can see this icon like this.

if there is someone sent email to you, you will see the popup like this!!

see? Very easy! and useful. You can use it on your computer.

You will know when homework is sended to you!! Arrr!!!

requirement
1. Your computer must have Windows XP or Vista.
2. Your computer must have the internet.
3. You must have a Gmail Account.
4. You can install some program on your computer.