What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with Law? Is it morally OK or not OK to eat meat?
In a new comment, share your initial responses to Law's thesis.
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Reference
Thursday 20 August 2015
Is Law right? Is it morally wrong to eat meat?
As we have just seen in our quick reading of the introduction to his essay "Carving the Roast Beast," Stephen Law's thesis is that "It's morally wrong to eat meat" (2003).
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with Law? Is it morally OK or not OK to eat meat?
In a new comment, share your initial responses to Law's thesis.
Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files: The Philosophy of Christmas [Kindle Edition] (pp. 124 - 140). Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with Law? Is it morally OK or not OK to eat meat?
In a new comment, share your initial responses to Law's thesis.
14 comments:
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I love eating meat. In fact, I eat meat every day - duck, fish, beef, prawns, chicken, squid, pork and so on. In Australia, I like to have kangaroo. I haven't tried elephant yet, but in Chiangrai I've had dog a couple of times - it seems popular in the north of Thailand around Chiangmai.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Law makes a strong argument to support his main idea that it is morally wrong to eat meat, and I want to think of myself as being a person with good morals. If Law is right, then there might be something seriously wrong with my morals: they might bad morals.
I personally think that eating meat is not morally wrong, because when we talk about morality, it means that you kill someone or do anything else which majority feel that it's totally wrong.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's hard to say that eating meat is morally wrong, if it depends on people's beliefs. Although there are some people think it's about moral, but I believe it's not.
I think that it is depend on the environment which people can eat plants or animals. It is not really kindness for kill animals, but it is not complete morally wrong that it is just a way for living. There are many animals kill each other too. In my opinion, it is not related to moral that just a choose.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally disagree with Law for many reason. First, moral is just the concept, establishing by human, of how people should act in society. In other words, other animal generally don't think this is morally wrong. We eat it in order to survive and get enough nutrient. Maybe different people have different aspect, but you can't just say this is wrong because you believe it's wrong.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason is that meat provide human plenty of nutrition that we needed. Although some will argue that you can just eat particular kind of vegetable to gain protein needed. I think it's different.
I agree that eating meat is morally wrong when we eat for celebration. Actually, our bodies require protein from animals that we may eat nuts or grain instead; however, that's not enough. As my knowledge protein will be degraded to amino acids which some of them our bodies cannot produce automatically. We need to eat meat for that necessary reason but not for celebrate. Regarding to killing other lives for happiness, I absolutely don't agree with.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I do not agree with Law since killing animals for food should be acceptable activity. Even animal like lion, shark etc. also kill a lot of prey which are animals to survive. Therefore, to ban food made from animals due to wrong morality seem too extreme; however, the law could be done for conserving some endangered animals. Everyone has his/her own rights to decide whether to eat meat or not and some never kill animal at all.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with the law because it's natural circle that people have to eat meat for survival, but I understand that killing animal is immoral if we consider it from religion and many will argue that we can get protein from other sources like nuts: however, there are many different type of protein that we cannot find in nuts, and that why human need meats, even lack of meat does not make people die. As a result, some people should to be a vegetarian to avoid meats from pig and beef but eat fish instead.
ReplyDeleteAs I am a meat eater, I enjoy to eat meat and it is delicious, so I disagree with the law that eat meat is morally wrong. Human body cannot digest vegetables for energy, but it can digest meat for energy.Kill animals for food, in my opinion is not the morally wrong because we need to survive. By the way, god make us to be an Omnivore which can eat meats and plants, why we need to change to be Herbivore.
ReplyDeleteYou give some great reasons for disagreeing with Law.
ReplyDeleteAs you read his essay,
- 1. Does he discuss your opposing arguments?
- 2. If he does, how well does he answer (reply to and deal with) your opposing arguments against his main idea?
- 3. Can you answer (prove not strong) Law's supporting arguments for a main idea you initially disagree with? (Most of us seem to disagree with Law.)
- 4. Can you think of any stronger arguments to persuade Law to change his mind?
- 5 Any other responses are welcome.
This essay remind me of the book named "Sophie's world" - philosophy fiction book which the professor ordered us to read at university. From my point of view "moral" is subjective can we can not judge other person opinion if they are right or wrong just because we think so. That's why I'm quite agree with Poon about it depends on what the majority of people in "that" society feels with that situation.
DeleteTaking eating people's meat as an example, from our perspective we can tell without second though that it's totally morally wrong. But what about people in the cannibal tribe deep in the forest, maybe they feel it's normal daily life. Since human usually used the own perception to measure and judge everything around us. I think it's hard to tell what is universally morally wrong and what is not.
A thoughtful and thought provoking comment by Ice.
DeleteI haven't read Sophie's World, so I don't know what it might say or what reasons it might give. If it says that moral opinions are unlike opinions about whether the Sun circles the Earth because moral statements cannot be true or false, right or wrong, then most philosophers think that book is wrong.
What reasons are presented to support the claim that moral beliefs cannot be true or false? That murder is the same as saving lives except that people might have different subjective emotional responses? And what about the emotional responses to the question of whether the Sun circles the Earth of the other way round? That led to people being executed and imprisoned by the powerful Christian churches of the time.
What are the reasons for thinking that moral beliefs are not like beliefs about the causes of lung cancer?
The ideas presented by Law seemed to show that no matter what reason we eat meat, it is still morally wrong. And it is quite hard to rebut against such ideas, but it does not mean he is totally right.
DeleteIndeed, I understand that morals are usually derived from different human’s belief, culture and religion to judge what is right or wrong. Thus, I am not sure that if we eat meat without killing by myself—meat bought from a market, meat given by someone or even meat from animals that died by natural causes—is it also morally wrong? To answer this question clearly, I think it is necessary to firstly answer what the real definition and scope of morals are. Also, it would be a good idea to help support my argument for Law’s reasons.
One thing I noticed reading our initial comments is that a few people give a definition or explanation of what morality is to support their disagreement with Law.
ReplyDeleteDo you agree with the proposed understanding of what morals, or ethics, means? Why or why not? (I think this understanding of that morality is is a common one in some groups, but as we have often seen, being popular does not make an idea right.)
I thought that you might make connections between this and some of the questions on the fact v. opinion, true v. false survey we did.
DeleteA couple of people appear to argue above that things like murder, rape and so on are all perfectly OK if a majority of people in a society think that those things are OK.
If I've misunderstood what you think moral means, please correct my misunderstanding.