Is typical human omnivorism ethically defensible?
I've been an on-again off-again vegetarian for awhile, but I recently read an article (the Wikipedia entry, actually) on factory farms, and it REALLY made me want to be a vegan. Unfortunately, it turns out that being a vegan is 100 times harder than being a vegetarian. So, the result is basically me feeling bad at every meal while I stuff more cheese (mmmmm cheese) down my throat.
It seems to me that all of the animal rights arguments against eating meat also apply to not drinking milk, etc. I think we can all agree that A) treatment of "factory farm" animals is, in general, appalling and B) we wouldn't treat pets (dogs or cats) in the same way we treat cows and pigs.
Of course, skinning a live cow serves a purpose that skinning a live dog doesn't serve: it gives us meat, and more specifically, cheap meat. But my hunch is that there are other, less noble reasons for treating farm animals so poorly. First of all, few of us have any kind of emotional connections with cows, pigs, etc. None of us had pet cows growing up, and so we never think "Man, that could be Bessy I'm eating." We also never really see the way farm animals are treated; PETA have turned themselves into a bunch of wackies, and when they show us mistreatment of animals, even I tend to think they've sensationalized it. Few people really have a sense of what goes on in a factory farm, because it's usually presented by extremists on either side. Finally, the concept of meat seems to really have been abstracted. It's tough to reconcile the cute docile cows you see in fields with the brownish substance that LE serves you. Not many people actually eat tongues or eyeballs or anything that looks remotely animal anymore.
So, it seems to me that one of the following is true:
A) We are overly protected of dogs and cats.
B) There is a difference inherent between pets and farm animals that allows us to treat them very differently.
C) Farm animals are a necessary casualty in service of some greater good.
D) We're a bunch of hypocrites who don't care about brutality that we don't see with our own eyes.
My hunch is the answer is D, but I'm really not sure. It could also be A. But I'm pretty sure it's not B or C.
I just realized I just got to something of a coherent point, so now might be a good time to sum up what the hell I'm talking about. It's actually kind of narrow now that I think about it.
My claim: People are apparently willing (as shown by their continued purchasing of cheap meat) to allow a certain amount of violence to be perpetrated against farm animals that we would not allow to be committed against dogs, cats, or the like. Therefore, at least one of the above statements (A, B, C, or D) must be true.
Refutation of B: My problem with B is just that I can't think of any real differences, and I haven't heard of any that anyone else has thought of. Some potential differences that could affect things would be intelligence, feeling of pain, etc. I can't imagine any of these applying to farm animals, however. I hear pigs are pretty smart, and while cows and chickens are probably not all that bright, it seems pretty clear that they possess a desire for life, fear of machines, desire for fresh air, etc. While there is precedent for killing farm animals and not pets, this precedent certainly isn't known to the animals themselves. No cow consoles itself with "Well, this is what I was born for" as an uneducated worker shoots a steel bolt through its head and cuts its legs off while it's still alive and kicking.
Refutation of C: I'm pretty convinced that in America, at least, noone's life is depending on dirt-cheap meat. Especially if we moved to a system where most Americans ate little or no meat, the prices on veggie stuff would drop even further. If it's life or death, then I'm definitely in favor of saving the human at the cost of the animal. I definitely don't think that's the case here in America though.
On A: Sometimes I'm concerned that I'm unfairly emphasizing human goodness. I really don't want to get into the mindset that "humans have evolved past our omnivorous heritage" or something, because I don't want to imply humans are better or more advanced that other animals. When I fawn over my own dog (or see others do similar), sometimes I think that we just have too much time on our hands and our affection for animals is over the top. More often, though, I think that animals are a lot like us ways that relate to killing them: fear, desire for self-preservation, etc. While pigs obviously don't think "Oh God, no, I've got a sow and piglets back home," it's entirely possible, I think, that they can perceive the situation as negatively as prisoners being led down death row. That's a really strong claim, in retrospect, but I don't really know why it wouldn't be true.
On D: This post is going on really long, so I'll try and make this quick. I think most people don't realize (or fully understand) what is done to the animals that provide their meat. I think this area is ripe for a corporation (hopefully Taco Bell) to step in. I think they should make commercials out of real video taken from factory farms. Something like: "This is where their meat comes from:" [shots of pigs standing knee-deep in shit, of dead cows being dragged out the back of a 110 degree catttle truck, of cows mooing as their legs are hacked off, of little chicks getting their beaks burnt off so they can't go crazy and peck each other, of roosters being thrown alive into dumpsters until they're eventually crushed to death by the roosters above them, you get the idea.] "This is where our meat comes from:" [shots of cows, pigs, chickens running around in a field. Maybe a touching scene where a farmer stroking a happy cow's nose and making sweet promises while his partner shoots the cow in the back of the head.] I really think these commercials can be really effective.
Ok, I'm really sick of writing this so I'm going to stop. I'm going to go on the record that eating octopus makes me more upset than eating other animal. So, I think I'm just a subjective moral judge as I'm accusing everyone else of being.
posted by Nate at 11:29 AM
20 Comments:
I propose an E:
We aren't morally obligated to minimize the suffering of any animals. We should try not to actively harm humans, so that they will treat us in kind and so that society can operate smoothly. That we treat certain animals (those in zoos, those at fairs, those we call pets) nicely is simply swell of us, with regard to the lucky critters. That we treat other animals poorly is the breaks.
It's got everything you love in a theory. It's cold, it doesn't appeal to non-materialistic forces, and it lets you eat cheese.
I tried to talk my uncle from buying land to open a factory chicken farm, because I think they're fucked up. But I eat chicken in pretty much every dinner I cook, and I don't plan to stop.
3:08 PM
But are we morally obligated to minimize the suffering of humans (or, at the very least, to avoid imposing great amounts of suffering on them for morally frivolous purposes, such as suiting our taste buds)? If we are, then why should the suffering of animals be treated differently? To the extent that animals are less capable than humans of experiencing suffering, differential treatment is defensible --but among suffering creatures, why should species membership determine the sort of treatment deserved? Are humans imbued with a special destiny or otherwise essentially different from all other species? What non-materialistic account of human identity supports this view? Unless some non-materialistic premise about souls or something like that is accepted, the theory will continute to suffer from a separate defect: drawing moral distinctions on the morally irrelevant differences.
A response to Nate's post to follow shortly--back to A.D.
CT
5:20 PM
I didn't say we were morally obligated to humans at all. I said we have an actual interest in not harming humans. That we have evolved so that an understanding of this interest is built into us in the form of "compassion" and "guilt" and so forth doesn't make it any less an expression of the desire to do what is best for the individual/gene pool/species/choose your own granularity for selection.
As I see it, humans are special for two reasons.
The first is that other humans have the best ability to harm us. If we agree not to harm each other, we are safer, and we can successfully build things like "societies" to our mutual benefit.
The second is that, as I hinted at above, we're hard-wired with a sense that it is, on some level, inappropriate to harm each other. It's a little circular to call this its own reason, because (again, as I said above) it's really derived from the first reason. But I think it's important to point out that there's no reason that we can't decide in an essentially arbitrary manner how we treat each species.
We (most of us) like dogs, so we (most of us) don't eat them. Way to go dogs, you win the pet lottery. Cows, meanwhile, are tasty. Bummer for cows. No rhyme, no reason (beyond taste, in a broad sense), and no real need for any.
5:34 PM
Todd, you really think we are absolutely devoid of all responsibility towards not harming other animals? Surely you're against just abusing animals for kicks right? I guess I just take it as axiomatic that suffering is bad and to be avoided when possible. The "when possible" part can be argued about forever, but the basic idea just strikes me as a given.
I think your argument of "we shouldn't harm humans because it's better for everyone" is problematic because it's rarely clear whether harming a specific person or group really is bad for society, or the concept of society, in general.
I think you can mean two things:
1) In our evolutionary past, people who were generally against causing suffering in humans were more reproductively successful than people who weren't. Therefore, their descendants have internalized this notion (perhaps through the Baldwin Effect, which I just learned about and am now eager to apply to things.) We are the descendants of these people, therefore we are generally against causing suffering in people. I think this is a reasonable argument, but it takes any kind of thoughtful morality out of it. You're no longer saying whether this is a right or wrong idea, just that it's the idea we have.
2) You think it's morally good to not cause suffering in humans because they will tend to reciprocate in kind and it's bad for society. I think this has two problems.
A) I assume you're generally against torturing prisoners in Switzerland (I just picked a country.) You may not get in a big fuss about it, but if asked, you would probably say it was bad. It seems likely that the prisoners won't be able to retaliate, so they won't cause any further harm. And I don't see how torturing those prisoners is bad for society. It seems like if you want to say that this kind of activity IS harmful to society, you have to make vague, general claims like "Human on human violence in general causes a society to operate less efficiently and is therefore bad." I think this claim is hard to make, though, and if you do make it, I think it also applies to animals. A society that treats animals with respect will operate more smoothly than one that is built on the skinned bodies of still-breathing cattle (to be hyperbolic.)
B) I think you have to explain why not encouraging other people to hurt you back and having a smoothly flowing society are things to be desired. These seem like two very "egoistic" (as in, trying to rationally maximize your own self-interest) claims to make. Is this what you're intending to do?
7:10 PM
Todd, I realize that you didn't say, in your initial post, that humans are morally obligated to other humans. I was just taking this premise as self-evident--or at least beyond doubt for all but the most devout moral skeptics. Almost everyone seems to agree that we have some minimal moral obligation to treat human beings in decently, or to at least not treat them cruelly for no good reason. This premise can be rejected, of course, but few find this rejection intuitively plausible.
Anyway, I then tried to show that acceptance of that premise, coupled with the wholesale rejection of non-materialistic premises, makes it difficult to maintain that there are no obligations to treat at least some animals at least minimally decently.
The problem with grounding moral obligations purely in self-interest is that it just doesn't seem to work very reliably. Nate's example of the Swiss prisoners, and countless others that come to mind, suggest that the right thing to do (as most people think of it) is not always in one's self-interest. More generally, it's problematic to try and derive the content of our moral obligations from the facts of our evolutionary history. (It's the whole is/ought thing--no time to keep blathering on about it)
Also, I just don't agree with the moral psychological premise that we're "hard-wired" to find it inappropriate to harm other people, but not to inflict suffering on other species. Many people find animal suffering quite heartbreaking, and the fact that many don't could be at least partially explained by the fact that we are intensely socialized to accept our culture of meat consumption.
I really wish I could keep going, and/or be having this discussion in real time, but I haven't even started my goddam homework yet.
The ADs were good. So that's cool
CT
Correction: in my first response where I ask "what non-materialistic account...supports this view", the word should be "materialistic". Not that it likely matters at this point.
7:59 PM
I think (and I'm not certain, because I haven't thought that much about it) that I'm OK with an attempt to dispense with "thoughtful morality," at least in this instance.
I think a society needs rules for certain things (broad things, "Don't rape anyone," and also specific things like, "Don't discriminate based on race when renting apartments"). But I think most, if not all, of these can be derived from some principals which begin with "rights" which every person is assumed to have in equal amount. Rule-making is then just a weighing of rights.
Then, we don't have to appeal to morality, but simply the axiomatic rights. So, whether or not it is "morally right" to torture a person, it is in violation of his most fundamental "right," which is that he not be physically harmed by another.
If you want to argue about whether it's better to physically harm him in order to prevent harm to others, you're just applying the same axioms in different ways. For instance, you could talk about the certainty that he will be harmed, versus the possibility that he has information that is useful in preventing harm to others.
In an essentially arbitrary move, I assume that humans have these rights, but animals do not. Neither do trees, or rocks, or the ocean. The test, in my book, is humanity. Not kingdom, consciousness, or color. You can disagree with this, if you like, but I'm not sure that either can be derived from first principles. We have to draw lines someplace, and I think this is a nice, clean line, around everyone capable of voting.
In regard to B, I suppose I do take "smoothly functioning society" to be a good thing by definition. But I think that, whatever reasonable definition you want to provide for the parameters to be maximized by an ethical system, we can show that they will be well served by the same. The odds that you will be happy will be greater, the average happiness will be greater, reproductive rates will probably go up, suffering will go down, etc.
Anyway, yes, my stomach is turned by malicious cruelty to animals. But I think that this is because I am repulsed by sadists in general. And I probably should be repulsed by sadists if I want society to function smoothly.
But, sadists aside, I'm willing to put the interests of animals well below those of humans.
So, if you want to feed a pigeon an Alka-Setzer because it looks cool when it explodes, I think you're sick. But if you want to put a canary down a hole to test the oxygen, or if it were the 1700's and you wanted to use a bird in an experiment, then you and I would have no beef.
(The painting doesn't make my point any stronger. I just like it.)
So then my stance on causing pain to animals in order to have cheap meat is: If there's a better way to do it, I'm for that. If there's not, I think that sucks. But not enough to stop eating eggs, or milk, or chicken.
Also, I think the "people are only OK with it because they're ignorant" thing is potentially bogus. I think the test is: are there abnormally many vegans in the meat production industry? My guess is, no.
8:11 PM
I think people finding cruelty to animals heartbreaking is accounted for largely by anthropomorphism and the desire to weed out unsavory characters from the human population.
For instance, see Gould on the fact that we are most sympathetic toward animals that resemble babies -- those humans who require the most protection.
8:15 PM
Also, yes, I know that there is possibly some self-selection at work: If you are among the section (minority or majority) of the population who is OK with cruelty to animals, you are more likely to work in the industry and less likely to be vegan to begin with.
But still, I think that -- on the average -- a person who answers a random job ad will keep the job, rather than turn vegan.
8:24 PM
Fair enough, three quick points:
1) I don't think a regime of human rights gets rid of morality; it's just another kind of moral framework.
2) If "humanity" is the test--why? Would aliens with human capabilities be eligible for rights? What about infants or the mentally retarded? The best argument I can think of for making humanity special is going to be theological, which I know (Nate at least) wouldn't want. If the move is simply arbitrary, and that's that, then that's that. I respectfully disagree.
3)I actually agree that the interests of humans will often trump the diminished rights of animals. Actually, I don't think that most animals have "rights" per se--I just agree with Nate that suffering is intrinsically bad, even if an animal is doing the suffering. Generally, I think animals have no right to live, so killing them is fine--I am just against causing them unjustified suffering while they're alive.
I'm Nate's friend Brian from DePauw by the way. Assuming you're the Todd who worked with Nate one summer, I think we met once.
Best,
CT
9:03 PM
1) I think that most talk of "morality" presupposes some fundamental truth to the right or wrongness of an action. That is all I hope to avoid.
2) Aliens who are very similar to humans would be an interesting case, as would suffiently convincing AI's.
I think the test comes down to: could you kill the thing and sleep OK at night. Infants and invalids are human, so I probably could not. Fetuses I don't regard as highly, so I certainly could. Dogs I like, but I think I'd get over it. Same with most other pets, and I think I could kill most any animal I planned to eat.
If an alien were to look at me and start in with "If you prick me, ...," that would make things difficult. Certainly more difficult than puppy-dog eyes.
Also, I suppose Nazis slept OK, which is also problematic. Not sure what to do with that one.
3) I don't really understand the argument regarding pain versus death. Particularly not when taken in conjunction that animals aren't fundamentally different from humans.
How much pain is it ok to inflict on an animal in what circumstances, and why is it ok to kill an animal in more circumstances than it's ok to cause it pain?
If I said, "I have a Swiss prisoner. I'm either going to cut off his testicles, stick him with a hot poker, and then let him go, or I'm going to kill him with a painless gas. And you get to decide which," my guess is you would go with the torture. Because you assume he would rather experience pain than die.
Do you think that animals, given a voice, would argue that the ones on death row should be treated better, rather than that they should not be killed for food at all? If not, what is your grounds for doing so?
4) Yes, I am the same Todd. There was also a Tod there that summer; I am the shorter of the two.
9:37 PM
Here's my not-entirely-worked-out view of the distinction:
I think there is a significant distinction to be drawn between physical and psychological suffering, on the one hand, and violations of rights or assaults on one's dignity on the other. For example, if the government denied X his right to vote, it could be said that it violated his rights, even if doing so caused him no suffering (say he wouldn't have voted anyway, and would have voted stupidly if he did). Rights violations often cause suffering, but I think these are distinct sorts of wrongs.(The scope and content of rights are debatable, but I think the basic idea of them is plausible) Well, although many animals are capable of suffering, I doubt that any are capable of making moral judgments or acting morally. They are incapable of forming relationships with moral content, wherein they could be blamed for failing to meet their obligations. A chimp can bite you and cause you suffering, but it can't "wrong" you--that idea just makes no sense.(Demented pet owners may disagree). Basically, I think the concept of rights (understood as restrictions on "wronging" or "being wronged") is completely foreign to animal life. Since death is not inherently more painful than continued existence--and may be quite peaceful--something like rights must account for proscriptions on killing per se. Since rights are inapplicable to animals, they possess no right to life. Since suffering is intrinsically bad, however, our obligations to prevent human suffering should be extended to animals who suffer.
How much suffering is allowable? I agree that's a difficult question, but there are obvious cases, I think ,where it isn't. Torturing pain-experiencing animals for laughs, for example, is morally wrong. Killing them in a somewhat painful manner for some social benefit is going to be more questionable, I think. Also, I should point out that killing animals can implicate human rights: I can't rightfully kill your dog, for example.
As a final point, I'd note that any animal with the capacity to argue about human or animal rights would almost certainly be a moral actor, and thereby eligible for rights.
This is probably it for me for the night.
Nate, any thoughts? It's your world; we're just living in it. (I realize Todd and I have now had several exchanges in a matter of hours--this blogging is faster and more furious than I'm used to)
Night,
CT
11:10 PM
My first reaction is: that is kind of a weird argument. I'm not sure why, but at first I found it odd.
On second thought: some of it makes sense. The need for a notion of what you "should do" which is distinct from the notion of what you "can do" is a reasonable one.
To that end, it makes sense to have laws against, say, training dogs to fight for people to gamble on.
And, if you're going to have that law, why not one against throwing live roosters in dumpsters?
I think Nate is right to argue that, because Americans would probably survive if a five piece McNuggets cost $3 instead of $1, we can't really get by on "The _needs_ of the humans outweight the interests of the roosters."
7:32 AM
Hey, sorry, I meant to introduce you two.
Brian, Todd is the cool Todd from that summer, the good CS guy from Bard. I don't know if you met him or not. We got drunk in the DX foyer with another guy, Kevin. Todd is working for a year and then going to CS grad school (that's still you're plan, right Todd?)
Todd, Brian is one of my best friends from DePauw. He was a philosophy major and is now at Duke getting his J.D. and a masters in philosophy.
God, looking back at those two introductions made me realize that we have three really smart people arguing here (I'm going to take the initiative of including myself in your two's mental league.)
Anyways, Todd, nice paint-dropping. That painting is super great. I read the Gould essay, and being the good Dawkinist I am, didn't find it super convincing. I believe he's saying (in apparent agreement with Lorenz) that puppies, kitties, etc. co-opt our evolved desire to take care of babies by sharing baby features (big eyes, etc.) I don't know if I really buy this, because dolls can look extrememly baby-like but provoke no emotional response. I don't think it's just a living / dead thing, either. A dead puppy is infinitely more emotionally affecting than a lifelike moving doll. It's possible, I guess, that socialization could have provided us with a special case of not caring about dolls, but you know me, I hate to attribute anything to socialization. It also strikes me as an extremely unaccurate evolved characteristic. We can notice assymetries on the order of magnitude of a millimeter, evidence is mounting that we can determine to some extent where a woman is on her menstrual cycle, and I'm supposed to believe that we're "fooled" by puppies because they look so human? I think that's pretty tough to swallow. I mean, we can tell the difference between identical twins after being around them for five minutes; it seems unlikely that a duck, even one with big eyes and a big cranium, could trigger a response evolved for human babies. I don't have a reason for why baby animals are cute, but I find it hard to believe Gould's reasoning.
I don't think I like the idea that humans have rights that other animals don't, because it says that "having rights" is a binary proposition. Humans have them, and other animals don't. Everything else is really analog, though: it seems that on some level, fetuses, australopitheci, and perhaps the severely brain-damaged qualify for a fraction of humaness. Furthermore, binary rights seems to imply that in our evolutionary past, there was a pair of rights-less parents who had a child with rights and counted as a moral actor. This seems screwy to me. But I don't see any way to make a spectrum of rights. Do animals have the rights to the pursuit of happiness but not life or liberty?
So, if there is no good way to make a scale of rights, it seems like it would be good to get rid of the idea of rights entirely. This seems like a pretty tough proposition, though.
I don't know, my thinking is becoming muddled on the whole subject. I think I need a break.
3:04 PM
I haven’t read all the other posts, being lazy and wanting to play Rome: Total War but I noticed the rather sticky issue of individual nonparticipation as a form of fighting momentous injustice. If tornados were evil, would it be good to blow at it really hard and wave a paper fan at it if it were bearing down on your unprotected community?
By paying taxes to your government you are supporting a whole slew of injustices perpetrated on a global scale. The one that I always came back to is the fact that starvation is an avoidable result of self-interest and real-world capitalism. Our government buys up farmers (used loosely, as corporations count as farmers here) crops and burns them in order to limit supply and drive up food prices so farmers can make a living. Not having exact numbers at my disposal, but figuring we can put a man on Mars in a couple years if we tried and all sorts of other magical feats, I would guess if all the food we produced was distributed to all those in need, few people would die of starvation.
Instead, to combat hunger, charitable organizations buy into an artificially high market and ship what food they can afford to those who are starving. Can you imagine how this would go over if it happened on a small enough scale that people could witness it? It’s distant enough though that, like factory farming, people are willing to put it out of their minds and pretend they aren’t part of something terrible.
No real solutions to offer here save the observation that being a conscientious objector doesn’t make an iota of difference unless Kant is right, and you don’t believe in God so he probably isn’t in your eyes. For the most part, unless you become part of a mechanism for change greater than yourself, your individual actions don’t matter. And even then. There are two exceptions to this. One, if you blow shit up and kill people pretty well. That makes a difference. Not particularly constructive though. The other is if you’re an exceptional individual, smart AND charismatic. A leader. Or a hero. Then you can generally get other people to follow you and imbue the future with your vision. Sadly the Illuminati killed off most of these guys at the end of the sixties in an attempt to make fate more predictable. There are only two running around that I know of at the moment. Karl Rove and Barack Obama.
By the way, solution to the farm thing is the same as the solution to global poverty. If all farms were family farms and subsidies didn’t exist then third world farmers could compete globally. Agricultural profits would be widespread and global employment would increase, lessoning global violence and improving everyone’s standard of living. Planned inefficiency.
In any case, my plan is to continue to eat steak, McDonalds and throw as much as I can at charities until such a time as the pointlessness of human existence catches up to me and I opt to kill myself.
Our Hero
1:17 AM
In a semi-related developement, sportswriter Frank Deford is on Morning Edition this week saying he thinks it's sad that French people eat horses raised in America.
7:54 AM
Yeah, but in this case, individual nonparticipation is a sensible concommitant of participating in efforts on a larger scale. If you believe factory farms are unjust and that electing to support them is immoral, then that seems like sufficient motivation to abstain from eating meat that comes from them. You can still participate in large-scale campaigns--and may find that it is your duty to do so. Individual nonparticipation is of course not THE means of fighting momentous injustice--any vegan who fancies himself a hero simply for abstaining is full of shit--but it is way of not perpretrating more injustice.
You don't need to agree fully with Kant to accept the above; you just need to reject extreme forms of consequentalism (i.e. utilitarianism) which hold that only outcomes matter, there being no constraints of the maximization of the greatest good for all (i.e. that there are no inherently wrongful acts or individual rights).
Anyways, abstaining from meat is no less futile than voting.
On a practical level, there may be all sorts of reasons to abstain from meat while take part in the greater fight. First, you'll just come across as more legitimate--not a total hypocrite. Second, your sense of actively doing your part to prevent injustice may motivate you to advocate more strongly for the cause and be more effective as a foot-soldier in Hero Leader's army.
CT
10:28 AM
Correction: in the above comment it should read "no more futile than voting." However, it is probably accurate as written. Abstaining from meat is no more or less futile than voting. The two acts are equally, utterly futile as a means of changing much of anything.
10:32 AM
I think your post is really interesting, Jason. (I'm sorry, I just can't use Our-Hero as a name. Perhaps you'd prefer Doc Manhattan?)
My own thoughts about trying to maximize my good in the world and act on the things I say I believe inevitably leads my to decide that I'm a worthless worthless person.
Here's a typical train of thought:
"I like animals, and think factory farms are shitty. Therefore, I will spend more money to buy products--milk, eggs, cheese, etc.--that were not produced by a factory farm. These items cost more, but I am willing to spend the extra $50 or so dollars a month to support this cause. These animals are more important to me than the fifty dollars. But aren't humans more important to me than animals? Wouldn't it be a clearly better action to take the fifty dollars that I would've spent improving farm animals' life and donate it to a charity working to improve human lives? Clearly. But aren't humans also more important to me than eating out, videogames, new clothes and Arrested Development DVDs? Wouldn't all of my disposable income be obviously better used by donating it to a charity? Yes, I think clearly. But, I have no intention of doing that. Thus, I don't care about people as much as I said I did. Thus, I'm an asshole."
The other train of thought begins the same "...animals are more important to me than fifty dollars. But wouldn't animals be better served by me participating in marches and animal-rights protests? By me writing my senator? By me talking to everyone I know about the benefits of a vegan lifestyle? I think it's obviously yes. But again, I have no intention of doing that. Thus, it's not that I'm really against animal cruelty; it's that I'm against animal cruelty just enough to buy more expensive cheese and eggs, but not enough to do anything that would actually make a difference in an aggregate number of farm animals' lives. Thus, I'm really just a spineless, idly rich American who has lost his stomach for any kind of killing and wishes to become subsumed in the unmarried-but-committed-T-shirt-and-jeans-wearing-organic-food-buying-soon-to-be-Volvo-driving grad student culture. Thus, I'm an asshole."
11:33 AM
I used to have a lot of thought processes like that, only mine were about choosing a career such as writing or research instead of one spent trying to help people.
That's really where I get to most of the ideas I put forth here. Derivation goes like this:
1) Any moral system which supposes that we are obligated to minimize the total pain in the world will result labelling everyone in the world an asshole.
2) A legitimate moral system must be practicable.
3) No practicable moral system can lead to the conclusion that everyone in the world is an asshole.
.: No legitimate moral system can suppose that we are obligated to minimize the total pain in the world.
Next time, I'll prove I'm the queen of England and 2 = 1.
12:55 PM
http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1972----.htm
I don't know if any of you guys are familiar with this famous essay by Peter Singer (a philosopher who is utterly reviled by legions of people who don't understand his arguments one bit), but it basically confirms the suspicion that we are all living deeply immoral lives--or, if you like, being total assholes.
CT
1:25 PM
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