Wednesday 18 August 2010

Carving the Roast Beast

Every year in the UK, more than 25 million turkeys are killed for our Christmas dinner. Is this mass slaughter justifiable merely to satisfy our preference for a certain kind of meat? Shouldn't we be carving nut cutlets instead?

The Wilson family are sat around the Christmas dinner table. Dad is carving the turkey when he glances a little apprehensively at his eldest daughter, Gemma.
MR WILSON: Some turkey, Gemma?
GEMMA: Of course not. You know I'm a vegetarian.
MRS WILSON: Only since last week. And it's Christmas. Can't you join in just this once?
GEMMA: No. It's morally wrong to eat meat. I'm not going to do something morally wrong just to make you happy.

Much the same conversation will be familiar to parents around the world. Teenagers are increasingly becoming vegetarians, often on moral grounds. It can be irksome for the parents: special meals have to be cooked and time and effort put into making sure that their offspring get a balanced diet.
Still, while Gemma's views might be inconvenient, that doesn't make them mistaken. And in fact Gemma does have some rather good arguments up her sleeve (Law, 2003). 
 ______________________ 

The above excerpt is the introduction to our next class reading, which is a 16 page essay by philosopher Stephen Law, written largely as a dialogue between the members of the Wilson family. 
  1. What is the topic of the 16 page essay? 
  2. What is the writer’s main idea about that topic? 
    Now, in a comment, respond to the following two questions. 
  3. Do you agree with Law? Why or why not?
  4. What do you think he will do in the next 15 pages?
__________
References
Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast, in The Xmas Files (pp.124 - 140). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

22 comments:

  1. I agree with Law that eat meat is morally wrong because if you eat meat, you will kill animal that have life same to human to eat so it is morally wrong for buddhist but I think eating meat is make people to addict it. It is very hard to make people that eat meat everyday to don't eat meat.So you may know that it a wrong but you can not stop eating it.

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  2. I strongly disagree with this Law, because I have no idea why eating meat is morally wrong. Some lives born to be preys, some lives born to be hunters, so this is how the world is.

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  3. Peter,
    I disagree with Law, eating meat don't make me feel bad with my moral. They, the meat, are fed to be food.

    Net (August 18, 2010 2:24 PM),
    I agree with you, in this world, the strongest dominates others.

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  4. I don't agree with Law too. In natural, lots of animals were killed to be another's food. In my opinion, it is a usual thing for one creature to get others creatures as food. Like we have learned in the ecosystem. These use to balance the number of each kind of animal. If our meats come from farms, it won't effect to our ecosystem for sure.

    And another reason is the meaning of immoral "not considered to be good or honest by most people" (ref:http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/immoral) . If you still see lots of people eat meats, it won't be immoral.

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  5. Golf (@ August 18, 2010 2:07 PM),
    I like your idea of relating it to Buddhist teaching on moral questions. The first precept of Buddhism does seem to suggest that most meat eating is wrong, yet many Buddhists seem to eat a lot of meat that they don't need.

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  6. Wut (@ August 18, 2010 3:26 PM),
    Your idea of defining the term was a good one, but should we accept the dictionary definition you have quoted? Do you really think that is a good definition of the word immoral? Following Golf's lead (@ August 18, 2010 2:07 PM), is that how Buddhists would want to define immoral?

    And now that Wut has very sensibly raised the question, you might also like to share your ideas on the very important question of just what words like moral and immoral mean. Do you favour Wut's dictionary definition, or do you think that is a bad definition for some reason? What is a better definition?

    My thanks to Wut for bringing these important questions to our attention.

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  7. My sister is a vegan. When she met a vegetarian gypsy group in Australia, she decided to be a vegetarian and she is vegan, now. I'd like to be vegetarian oneday. Even though, I'm not a vegetarian,I don't use any leather products. Just imagine if any aliens hang a bag made from human's skin. i could not bear it. It's so cruel.From my sister's teaching, i absolutely do not even look at the leather products.
    Last year, korea got a unfair trade with US. korea was forced to import a large amount of beef from US. There was a rumor that the United States sold diseased cows and we could see the diseased cow on the TV. The sick cow in American Ranch were looked really horrible.But The funny thing was Korean people didn't care about the cow. They just think about if they have those beef or not. That was it. How selfish human beings is.I think we should think about the natural world. We should care about animal's world.
    i hope to live in moral!

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  8. I agree with Law because if you want to be vegetarian you should do what the vegetarian people do otherwise you can't say that you are a vegetarian.

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  9. Because this is pre-question and I'm a bit curious about what "meat" stand for. So I wiki about meat and make a decision.
    I agree with Law but on a conditioned that fish must have been excluded from meat. If the condition fail, I switch side.

    Reference
    Meat. (2010, August 18). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:38, August 18, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meat&oldid=379541986

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  10. Pong (@ August 18, 2010 7:49 PM),
    Wut has got us thinking about what moral and immoral mean (@ August 18, 2010 3:26 PM), and now you've suggested we also need to define the word meat.

    I just had a look at the rather sloppy Wikipedia entry on the topic. I think the definition we need to consider is what does Law take meat to include in his essay. Clearly, he thinks that poultry, such as chicken, is meat. We can't really say from the very short excerpt I've quoted in the post what he might think about fish, but he would probably go along with something like Wikipedia's first definition that "meat is animal flesh that is used as food" (¶ 1), which would make fish meat.

    Why would you agree if fish is excluded from being a meat, but disagree if fish is included? What is so special about fish that makes an important difference to you?

    Your response was thoughtful, which is what such a controversial (and it is controversial, as we can already see from the range of opinions here) issue might require. I don't know what your reason is, but it might be right to argue that eating fish is morally OK, whilst eating other meats is morally wrong.

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  11. I agree with Law. I think moral of Buddhists is a good logic to make balance in this world. We could survive in this world without eating meat, whereas we can save the ecosystem by not to be a hunter. To define moral or immoral, we could judge it from teaching of Buddhism.

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  12. Peter (August 18, 2010 9:34 PM),

    In my opinion that argue about excluding fish from meat because I love eating fish, that’s all. Ahh! I think you won't be please with my answer so I will try to clarify academically .

    We knows that water covers 2/3 of the earth and we can get a vast amount of food source from water, the fish-- to scope about this I will mainly focus on the Ocean. In food chain fish is secondary consumer because they diet of living organism such as plankton which is the lowest level, a producer. But they still categorize in the low level because they are prey for the upper level such as carnivore fishes, birds, and reptiles etc., these fish eating creatures become our food sources later. Because, human is placed on the top level in food chain, someone says, “human can eat everything, we eat every movable creatures—I think it not depends on movable or not; if it is edible, we eat.” A few advantages of eating fish are: fish is a source of protein and it is easily to digest, fish provided Vitamin B-12 which does not exist naturally in any non-animal forms, and fish is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. That’s why I prefer eating fish and want to exclude these from meat.

    Anyway, if I could exclude the fish from meat, I will agree with Law. But as you have refered from Wikipedia (¶ 1), I think the table has turned.

    Reference
    Vitamin B12, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, retrieved, 2010, August 18 from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vitamin-B12/NS_patient-vitaminb12

    The Food Web, Mindfully.org,retrieved, 2010, August 18 from http://www.mindfully.org/Food/Food-Web-Simply.htm

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  13. Peter (@August 18, 2010 9:34 PM)

    Just to let you knows, why I have got an idea to excluding fish from meat is stated in Wikipedia (Paragraph 2), Etymology, thay says "One definition that refers to meat as not including fish developed over the past few hundred years and has religious influences" and "The Catholic dietary restriction on "meat" on Fridays also does not apply to the cooking and eating of fish."

    I split this to prevent of confusion -- or this doesn't help.

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  14. Firstly, I need to clarify question before answering.

    If the question is that “Do you agree with Law’s idea that eating meat in everyday life is immoral?
    My answer is that I disagree because nature tries to balance this world with the predator and prey rule. People need to eat meat to survive like the other creature.
    Therefore, eating meat to survive is moral.

    While if the question is that “Do you agree with Law’s idea that eating special meat menu in special occasion is immoral?
    My answer is I agree because we eat for fun and celebration, not for making a living. Therefore, it is immoral.

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  15. I disagree with Law. Humans are omnivores, nobody know why humans are created to be these. It is nature. And lots of animals are always killed by other animals to live in this world. It is nature too.

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  16. I disagree with Law that state about morally wrong to eat meat because normally naturally of a life-cycle of some animal must be killed by hunter such as Lion kill deer for food in order to control population of each and balancing the resource.
    In the next 15 pages, writer will talk about why meat is moral wrong and give support detail.

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  17. Do people have right to choose, don't they? I disagree with Law about eating meat is immoral. There are reasons why human were created and why we consume meat as daily meal, only god knows why. I think Law will do stands by his thought against meat-lover in the rest 15 pages.

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  18. I disagree with Law. In my opinion, Eating meat is not immoral, by nature,human can eat all edible thing. it depend on personal believe. in the rest 15 pages there are supporting details to describe why eating meat is morally wrong.

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  19. Several people have rightly suggested that in the following 15 pages, which we will start to read tomorrow, Law will both "talk about why meat is moral wrong and give support detail" (Job, August 19, 2010 7:32 AM).

    "Talk about" is, as always, a bit vague. What might he do, what do you think he must do in that discussion?
    "Support detail" also seems to me a bit vague. When we look at the very good ideas that have been put forward in teh comments here, what does Law need to do in order to provide the strong support that might convince those of us who disagree with him?
    If you were writing the essay to support the thesis that eating meat is morally wrong, how would proceed?

    And in case you're wondering, I eat meat every day, and disagree with Law, although not 100%. As Aon (August 19, 2010 12:45 AM), along with Pong and a others, has suggested, the issue might not be so simple that a straight Yes or No answer is the best to cover every situation where human beings eat meat. Perhaps we need a more complex thesis statement to precisely state our ideas about the morality of eating meat.

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  20. One more question has just occurred to me: whether you agree or disagree with Law, do you agree or disagree with the various arguments that people have put forward as reasons?

    Although I don't agree with Law's thesis as stated, I'm not sure that I agree with any of the reasons that have been put forward so far. How about you? Which reasons do you think might be solid and which not so solid?

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  21. Peter,"people" in your post is mean people in this blog or people in Carving the roast beast?

    ReplyDelete
  22. Golf (@ August 23, 2010 10:22 PM),
    In my comment at August 20, 2010 1:07 AM, "people" means everyone in our class who has has been taking part in this discussion.
    In your own comment at August 18, 2010 2:07 PM, "people" clearly means people in general. As always, the context is essential to understanding what the writer means by the word.

    ReplyDelete

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