The purpose of the earlier blog post, "Meaty Matters: Must We Obey Law?" was to invite initial responses to Law's main idea that it is morally wrong to eat meat, which is controversial and therefore interesting. That blog post did not assume that you had read anything more than page 124.
Now, in contrast, we know Law's arguments and can judge them. Are they strong enough? Has Law given sufficiently persuasive reasons to support his main idea? Should we stop eating meat if we want to be morally decent people, or is there a flaw, a weakness, somewhere in Law's support?
- If Law has not persuaded you, why not? Why do you think his main idea is wrong?
- If Law has already persuaded you that moral people do not eat meat, can you answer your classmates' opposing ideas? Does Law answer them? How might Law reply to the reasons against his main idea?
__________
Reference
If you want to cite Law's ideas, whether for paraphrase (in your own words) or quotation (Law's exact words copied and pasted), it's enough to give the page number. You do this as either: page xxx or (p. xxx).
ReplyDeleteThat is,
- if it's part of your sentence, write: page xxx
- if it's in parentheses, write (p. xxx)
Both are correct ways that academic English cites the source of an idea that is not our own.
i agree with law in many aspects.
ReplyDeletefirst, i agree that every life is equal, either big or small animals, smart or impaired.
second, i agree that to kill any life are morally wrong, although it's not a cruel kill.
there are other some aspects which Law has discussed in his work, but i think the reasons that those have been taken into consideration just because he want to support his idea about the first two reasons -- every life is equal and it's wrong although it's not cruel -- so, just these two reasons are enough to convince me that eating meat is morally wrong, on a regular basis.
however, as i mentioned in "Meaty Matters: Must We Obey Law?", i think there is a unregular basis which is about artificial meat. in my opinion the most interesting issue which other Wilson faimily members raised to argue Gemma is "heath and design" (p.138). to me, it's obvious that eating artificial meat isn't wrong at all, and eating meat because of necessity isn't wrong as well. so, although Gemma claim that "there are millions of people across the world living healthy lives without meat, countless Budhdhists, Jains and Hindus..." (p.138), i think this claim isn't definitely strong, if you think of people live miserably without meat in Africa. Budhists who live healthy without meat, whom Gemma mentioned, may be the rich who have enough money to afford another kinds of food which aren't meat but can completely replace meat, as nutrition and perhaps taste. so, do you think, is it wrong if impoverished African eat meat to avoid diseases?
so, to me, even though nowadays mankind has enough potential to produce artificial meat, its price my be very high and poor people are blocked to access it by the market. so, if the poor are forced to eat real meat because of its essential nutrition, it's okay to me. but it's different for the rich who can afford artificial meat as well as another food which contain protein like bean, nut, and so on, but they deny to eat it because its bad taste, this may be wrong, i think.
I like P's clearly explained argument, also his well-chosen quotation, properly cited, to present Law's idea that he is opposing here.
DeleteHow strongly does P's argument counter Law's main idea? How do you think Law would likely respond?
I think that P has presented the strongest case against Law so far. How strong is it?
DeleteBefore having some exam tomorrow, I think that it would be better if I do some discussion here.
ReplyDeleteActually I like Law’s main idea, the argument in his article is quite solid and supports of his argument strong enough to persuade people. Nevertheless, it isn’t enough for me. I still have some questions and some counter examples that I think that they are really interesting.
First thing that I came up with is if Law’s idea is true and widely accepts, why people don’t become vegetarians. According to How many vegetarian people around the world? [1], vegan around the world are only 10-15% of the overall population. This proportion can imply that most people think that it’s ok to eat meat because if they though that it’s morally wrong, they would not do it, but they still do it, so it can conclude that they accept it that it’s not morally wrong. Then considering definition of “moral”, “concerned with principles of right and wrong behavior” [2], by this meaning the moral can interpret as what are people think about topic whether it’s right or wrong. In general, the same society will have the same moral. By the number of people who are vegan around the worlds, it’s less than people who eat meat a lot. Therefore, it can conclude that it’s right based on morals of social norms that at least 85% of global population agree with.
Although we cannot argue with Law’s solid argument about the equality, it seems like we don’t take the fact into account. The fact is human was designed to eat both meat and vegetable. According to Meat eating is an old human habit reported by the NewScientist [3], there are concrete evidence demonstrates that human are meat-eaters. The teeth of human evolve to eat meat because the teeth shape of human sharper than relative species. One of examples that support the right side of eating meat is ecology scenario. Since we are part of ecology, if we deny this fact, it might cause the problem for our ecology. Consequently, our ecology system might be destroyed and cannot be recovered it because the food chains have not been worked due to our ignorance if we don’t eat meat. To balance the ecology, we therefore need to eat meat.
As P mentioned about artificial meat, it’s quite interesting. However, I’m also wondering that people would like to have some artifact or not. I think that most people might prefer the thing that came from nature, isn’t it?, so artificial meat might not be the solution as well.
Sorry for my quick reference format.
Reference
1. https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101229075502AAAyGcy
2. http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/moral_1
3. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4122-meat-eating-is-an-old-human-habit.html#.U3tbHfmSxik
I agree that discussion here is an excellent preparation for a test on the reading.
DeleteAnd on Ball's opposing arguments, which like P's, are clear and seem solid:
Delete1. Does Law have an answer? What is that answer?
2. If Law does not give an answer to the objections, is there one?
I think that it is unclear about the ecology problem that I talked about. I will give more detail. For example if we have a lot of primary consumer so the amount of primary producer might not be enough for the primary consumer and then primary producer might also become extinct. After the primary produce became extinct and the primary consumer will become extinct and then the secondary consumer will become extinct and then the tertiary consumer will become extinct and so on. That’s obviously cause a huge problem for our ecology. As a result, we might become extinct.
DeleteMost interesting of all, I thought, was:
DeleteDo we agree with the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD) definition of the word moral that Ball quotes?
Is the OALD definition right or wrong? Is it a good or bad definition? (I think it's common, and seriously bad. What do you think? Why?)
And that raises the questions of what good dictionaries do, and what their limitations are.
DeleteI think the OALD is a very good dictionary, which is also why it cannot help much to in an argument against Law's main idea.
For your questions Peter,
DeleteFor my first argument, I cannot find Law’s argument yet. But I have some reasons to argue myself that the statistical numbers do not directly reflect what people think. It can merely represent what I imply based on that number. In fact, people who eat meat might agree with Law’s idea. Therefore, it’s hard to clarify that point.
For the second argument, Law’s support his idea about the teeth by giving counter example about the naturalness of human staring wars with others that are different. However, I also counter with the ecology problem that he didn’t discuss yet. By the way, I think that the ecology problem is far away from real at the present because the ecology is robust enough for the little change of human in short term but in long term I’m not sure.
For the dictionary problem, I also think that OALD is good enough for us. Therefore, I think the problem is my interpretation because I might interpret the meaning of the word in the bias way that can support my argument.
DeleteI hope that our discussion here can help me tomorrow because I don’t finish reading the article yet.
DeleteAlthough I strongly recommend the OALD, I also think we need to be clear about what good dictionaries do, and what they do not do, what they cannot do.
ReplyDeleteI also like the Oxford Dictionaries website, which is a bit more sophisticated than the OALD. It's the one I'd hoped to show on the TV this morning when we were caught up in sorting out exactly what the word business means.
I have to admit that law has some good points. I like his idea about equality, some of his reasons are so strong that I can hardly argue with them. But after all of that, it doesn't seem to persuade me. I still insist my own supporting reason that human is made to eat meat, and if our ancestor didn't eat meat, we would be living in caves now. And that leads to another question, if we, all the humans, didn't eat meat from now on, would our mental and physical abilities we gained through the million years, be reduced? Could that acceptable?
ReplyDeleteAccording to "Early Meat-Eating Human Ancestors Thrived While Vegetarian Hominin Died Out", our human ancestors were omnivorous, but afterwards they divided in two groups of different dietary strategies, one chose meat, and the other chose more plant. As a result, the latter died out. It has a strong scientific evidence that human can't live by eating only plants and nuts although you might acquire some proteins from it.
I also heard about artificial meat from P, too. If the artificial meat had all of the nutrition we need, not eating meat would be acceptable for me. This project still needs a lot of time. First, we can synthesis the meat, but we can't do it in industry. Second, you'll have to test this meat on human, to find out if they had side effects or not, at least 2 or 3 generations, and that requires a few lifespans. Sound troublesome, right? I think the best solution for now might be eating meat, and then develop ourselves to have better intelligence, so we can find the way to not eat meat.
And as I just commented there, I think Leo's new post "Joss Stone death plotters win appeal" might include in it's fourth paragraph a usefully relevant idea to Petch's worries here.
DeleteI like Petch's cited source, which gives useful information that is reliable. But does the author, Katherine Harmon Courage, agree with Petch's conclusion that the facts given are "a strong scientific evidence that human can't live by eating only plants and nuts"? (para. 2)
DeleteLaw presents and responds to the argument that eating meat is natural and therefore morally OK. His answer is not to deny that eating meat is natural. Instead, he argues that ...
Sorry, I meant to also give the reference citation for Petch's very useful source. It is short and well-worth your spending a few minutes reading.
DeleteReference
Courage, K, H. (2012, August 8). Early Meat-Eating Human Ancestors Thrived While Vegetarian Hominin Died Out. Scientific American. Retrieved from http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/08/08/early-meat-eating-human-ancestors-thrived-while-vegetarian-hominin-died-out/