CCHU9005 Food and Values

L4 – Eating meat (2)

Joe Y. F. Lau
Philosophy Department
HKU 2024
REMINDERS
Watch video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko

Problem set #1 due 9 Feb.

WHERE WE ARE
Wrong to cause suffering without a good reason.
Animal farming causes terrible suffering.
Most arguments for eating meat are weak.

What about arguments against eating meat?

“SANCTITY OF LIFE”
ARGUMENT
1. Life is sacred.
2. If life is sacred,
then we should not eat animals.
3. So, we should not eat animals.

But plants are also living things.

Fruitarians: Yes, we should not eat plants
too.
ONLY SENTIENT LIFE
CAN SUFFER
Only conscious creatures experience pain & suffering.
Requires nervous system, sensory receptors.
Where to draw the line? Sharp or matter of degree?
Mammals, birds, fish (probably), insects (?),
nematodes (?), plants (unlikely), bacteria.
All sentient life is sacred?
Killing sentient life is not always wrong.
Consider: abortion, self-defence, pest control.
So how should we decide?
 THE TROLLEY PROBLEM

Do nothing
 UTILITARIANISM
1748-1832
A theory about what is morally right to do.
Defended by Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill.
A form of cost-benefit analysis.
Utility = net balance of happiness over pain
Utilitarianism: The right action in any situation is to
choose the option that will bring the highest utility.
Example: water chlorination.
UCL
SINGER’S UTILITARIAN ARGUMENT FOR VEGETARIANISM

1. The right thing to do is to maximize

utility.
2. Vegetarianism will maximize utility.
3. So, vegetarianism is the right thing to do.
4. So, we should give up animal farming.

1975
COMMENT #1: IS UTILITARIANISM
CORRECT?
Objection: Utilitarianism ignores rights.
- Not OK to violate rights to maximize utility.
- Example: Organ-transplant through murder.
- Example: Discrimination against the minority.
Replies:
- Exploitation bad for society in the long run.
- A system of legal rights might maximize utility.
- Irrelevant if animals have no rights.
COMMENT #2: DOES VEGETARIANISM
MAXIMIZE UTILITY?
Positive utility Negative utility
Huge reduction of animal suffering Some unemployment
Better health for humans Less eating pleasure
Fewer epidemics
Better environment
 COMPLICATIONS IN
CALCULATION
Difficult comparison: animal pain vs human gustatory pleasure / culinary culture
Some grazing land might be unsuitable for crops.
Farm animals can provide income and nutrition for poor farming communities.
But it seems plausible that eating less meat will bring more utility.
Better for animal welfare, human health, and the environment.
Agree: vegetarianism >> industrial animal farming
But: vegetarianism >> reducitarianism?
= Reducing (not eliminating) meat & dairy consumption.
WHAT ABOUT “HAPPY” MEAT?
Intensive animal farming is very bad.
But what if we raise and kill animals humanely?
“Cruelty-free”, “animal friendly” farming.
The animals will produce lots of positive utility.
Maybe we ought to eat meat?
Jeff McMahan: “benign carnivorism”
Problem 1: Unrealistic given the demand for meat.
Problem 2: Deceptive advertising, eg. “free range”.
DO ANIMALS HAVE RIGHTS?
Most people would reject “benign cannibalism”.
Many vegetarians reject utilitarianism.
Tom Regan
- People and animals have rights.
- They are not instruments to promote utility.
- Wrong to eat animals even if they live a happy life.
 Crows can think

WHY ANIMAL
and use tools to
solve problems

RIGHTS?
Animals have complex minds.
- Consciousness, feelings, reasoning.
They are “subjects of a life”.
- They possess “inherent value”.
- Not purely an instrument.
We have a duty to respect them.
They have the right to life.
So, we should not eat them.
OBJECTION #1
The duty to respect might not entail
that animals have the right to life.
Maybe it only means we should kill
animals humanely and not waste food.
But factory farming might fail this test.
TWO MORE OBJECTIONS
Objection #2: If animals have rights, we cannot use them to conduct
medical research. Many people will die.
Replies: (1) Utility of animal experiments exaggerated.
(2) It is unfortunate but why treat humans differently?
Objection #3: If animals have rights, we should stop tigers and lions
eating other animals. But this is crazy.
Reply: Not crazy. Suffering is bad and should be avoided. But we need
to consider resource allocation and ecological consequences.
HUMAN RIGHTS > ANIMAL
RIGHTS?
Not all rights are applicable to animals, eg. religion.
Maybe animals have the right to humane treatment.
But no right to rescue, no right to life.
Thought experiment: If we can save only either a
human or an animal in a fire, who should we save?
Reply:
- In this example, both rights and utility are relevant.
- Saving Einstein instead of an ordinary person does
not mean that Einstein has more rights or that the
other person has none.
AGAINST UNEQUAL
BASIC RIGHTS
Regan: It is dangerous to regard animal rights
as less important than human rights.
This might mean:
- Smart and strong people have more rights.
- Leads to sexism, racism, slavery, genocide.
- Superhumans will have more rights.
THE THRESHOLD REPLY TO REGAN
Can we avoid the dangerous consequences if having rights depends on reaching a
threshold mental capacity (eg. IQ)?
Animals above the threshold all have the same value, the same right to life. But it is
morally acceptable to eat anything below the threshold.

Intrinsic
threshold
value can eat cannot eat

IQ
plants most animals gorillas humans superman
PROBLEM WITH THE THRESHOLD
THEORY
Not all humans have the same mental capacity, eg. babies.
No threshold can include all human beings and exclude other animals.
Reply #1: Babies belong to the human species.
Why focus on species and not individuals? Question-begging.
Reply #2: Babies have the potential to develop. But:
(1) Not all babies have this potential.
(2) Same for people with incurable Alzheimer’s.
(3) Animals can have the potential too with the right technology.
ARGUMENT
FROM ANALOGY

Animals are like babies.

It is wrong to eat babies.
So, it is wrong to eat animals.

(or replace with cats & dogs)

 WHAT IS JUSTICE?
Aristotle: “Treating like cases alike”
X discrimination = treating people differently based
on X without good reason.
Examples: sexism, racism.
Singer: We should also reject speciesism.
Physical & physiological differences shouldn’t
matter.
(as far as being used as food is concerned)
Psychological features: animals overlap with humans.
EVOLUTION &
MORALITY
Not easy to reject argument from analogy.
- But most people don’t want to accept it.
- Why?
Perhaps evolution gives us the instinct to
value babies more.
- Helps our species reproduce and survive.
- But instincts can be wrong.
- They can also be overridden.
DUTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
CONSUMER
Maybe the current system of industrial animal farming is wrong.
But does it follow that it is wrong for me to eat meat?

 I am not responsible for the system.

 Most people still eat meat.
 I did not kill the animal.
 My decision has no effect on the system.
SOME RESPONSES
Little effect ≠ no effect (on other people, companies)
Social change relies on individual action.
Compare: slavery, gender equality.
Progress has been made:
- More stringent animal welfare laws.
- Better practices (gestation crates, antibiotics).
- More consumer awareness.
- Vegetarianism becoming more mainstream.
THINS WE CAN DO
1. Give up the bad arguments for eating meat.
2. Learn more and share your knowledge.
3. Reduce meat consumption.
4. Engage in social activism.
5. Avoid moral grandstanding: showing off, shaming
others.
IT IS NOT JUST ABOUT
CONSEQUENCES
We often admire people who stand by their beliefs, even when they know
they cannot win. Moral integrity is an important value.
If we agree that something is wrong, shouldn’t we limit our participation,
even if our actions have little effect?

You can resolve to live your life with

integrity. Let your credo be this: Let
the lie come into the world, let it even
triumph. But not through me.
- Famous Russian writer & dissident,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Q&A