Should the debate about the ethics of meat consumption focus around sentience and the ability to suffer?

Question

I have been reading a little bit about the problem of consuming meat ethically.

As much as I find the ethical argument compelling I have some reservations regarding the inconsistency with which it is often applied. Imagine we decide all to go vegan, and soon enough a new scientific consensus is reached that plants can also experience pain. What do we do then?

In this scenario, consuming plants would be incompatible with the principle of trying to avoid unnecessary suffering given our current agricultural practices.

So the ethical argument for stopping meat consumption seems to me an example of sentiocentrism. Do we need to reframe the debate to include non-sentient beings?

Perhaps focus on the stability of the ecosystem?

Answer 1

In this scenario, consuming plants would be incompatible with the principle of trying to avoid unnecessary suffering given our current agricultural practices.

If consuming plants caused suffering, such suffering wouldn't be unnecessary, at least not to staying alive and healthy for the consumer. We know that we can live long, healthy, happy lives as vegans. We likely cannot do the same if a significant portion of edible plants are also forbidden. Thus your thought experiment provides a false analogy.

In any case, the aim is to reduce suffering, not necessarily to reduce it to zero. Veganism clearly achieves that goal, even if plants suffer, for two reasons:

1. A non-vegan diet causes the death and suffering of many more plants than a vegan diet, since growing animals requires feeding them many plants.
2. It is extremely unlikely that the ability of a plant to suffer would be the same as that of an animal, so it makes sense to focus on animals more.

Answer 2

This is my first contribution to philosophy stackexchange - I hope I comply with community rules, please do let me know if I should edit my answer.

You suggest at the end of your post that ecosystem stability could be an alternative focus. I would suggest that the debate has already partly shifted in this direction with a growing focus on the associated carbon emissions of a meat based diet. (One example - a 2012 UN report on this issue)

So certainly some of the debate on the ethics of eating meat will be strongly related to the ethics of climate action. [not an area I am familiar with, perhaps someone else can provide a reference?]

However, from the wording of your question I think you might be more interested in sentiocentrism and ecosystem stability as a framework for ethically deciding what plants should and shouldn't be eaten by humans.

This is not a direct answer to that but there has been research on different methods of farming and the associated benefits to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. I am thinking specifically of organic farming and the permaculture movement. This might be a good place for you to start thinking about this further.

Answer 3

See here re: Animal Minds and a counter-example to Hume's Guillotine then formulate desire-independent reason(s) for action based on an argument you can advance. Lastly, you'll want to use Rawl's Veil of Ignorance and apply it to those animal minds. I've heard that even plants have feelings...

Perhaps focus on the stability of the ecosystem?

The environmental consequences from industrial meat production is a great subject to investigate as it pertains to your position. You might even figure out a better way, just like Temple Grandin.

So the ethical argument for stopping meat consumption seems to me an example of sentiocentrism.

In short order, as it seems that way to you how will you analyze this idea? Will you examine and articulate sentiocentrism then argue against or in favor of it? Will you argue for or against your own position as informed by your investigation which explicitly states the case of sentiocentrism? Will you argue your case by simply articulating your feelings or expressing your feelings in a poem? Will you limit your examination to examining the merits of sentiocentrism only as you understand the term, or will you reference others that have written regarding related concepts? Will you counter the positions you are unsure of by supposing the impossible and hyperbolic for counter-examples? Will you examine policy? Will you express the conclusions of your investigation by using the language of should and ought instead of simply stating the case of what is, or by simply stating the case you are arguing in support of?

Note the form of question you've asked "should the dialogue about what we should do be..." Get out of the "should" business.

Do we need to reframe the debate to include non-sentient beings?

"Need"?? What, to include the rights of grass not to be mowed? The rights of mosquitos to be put before a jury of their peers whence they've transgressed the bodily fluids of another sentient being? The rights of remora to get a free ride? The rights of voles to tear up my garden? Knock yourself out but consider that the only things life needs to survive are air, water, food, shelter from inclemental weather and a modicum of community. Lastly, who would draw the line between sentience and non-sentience? The Dalai Lama? Ted Nugent? You??

the problem of consuming meat ethically.

Ever been hunting or fishing? Just remember: if you kill it, you eat it. Ever seen the environmental impacts from overpopulation? Abatement happens. Did you know that lolcats are destroying our planet? Ufortunately lolcat tastes terrible.

Answer 4

A person may sometimes enjoy feeling pain. For example, a person might eat spicy food despite knowing he will feel a burning sensation in his mouth. So the idea that we should minimise pain is false. There is something badly wrong with your whole approach to this issue if it gives the wrong answer in such a simple case.

Your idea that the ecosystem should be granted rights is even worse. I can see why people often think animals should have rights. They superficially bear a strong resemblance to people. But the ecosystem is an abstraction: a word written down a piece of paper. The ecosystem not an agent, nor does it resemble an agent in any important respect. So you're sacrificing the interests of people to an abstraction with no preferences.

Neither of the positions you offered is any good. A better position is explained here.

Answer 5

So far I have to say that the argument to reduce suffering is the one that resonates the most with me. I personally have no problem eating meat per-se, it is the mistreatment of animals that bothers me.

I have not heard a convincing argument for making sentient beings the center of moral concern but maybe it's just my lack of understanding. What I see is that nature is full of examples in which different species feed from each other in a way that's mostly stable and conserves the ecosystem.

In the case of meat consumption -- and more generally agriculture -- it's pretty clear that the ecosystem is actually being destroyed which is another very good reason to find a solution where we can preserve the ecosystem. I don't think this implies the absolute need to stop consuming meat.

I believe that the idea of plants being able to have experiences is not a far fetched idea since I have seen the progression of the sciences telling us very unintuitive things like: plants have parts that exhibit synaptic-like behavior, plants communicate, plants have a notion similar to that of the self. All of this is expected and predicted by the theory of evolution, namely that we would find many of the features from one species in other species at different stages of development depending on how relevant such feature is to its fitness.

I think seeing all organisms as information processing systems reveals the idea that what we call "response to negative stimuli" when talking about plants is nothing more than what we call "the ability to experience pain" in other species. Of course this is not yet a scientific consensus but it looks like it's going in that direction.

The fact that all living organisms we know about share a common ancestor makes them equally deserving for the right to exist, thrive and evolve. This is of course independent from us recognizing them as sentient beings.

Related links:

• The quest for plant cognition in plant neurobiology
• Recognizing the right of plants to evolve

Answer 6

Suffering involves having preferences and not getting them – basically not getting what you want (which requires wanting something). A rock has no preferences about what happens, so it can't suffer. (A rock doesn't want anything, so there's no opportunity to be disappointed.)

The debate about animals should focus on whether or not they have minds involving preferences, rather than on mixing up physical pain nerves with mental suffering.

Pain nerves could easily be included in a robot that (that is, we could make a robot with sensors to detect damage and send information about the damage to the software running the robot). Despite the word "pain" in the name, it has nothing more to do with suffering that sensors to detect pressure or light or sound.

What people usually do is take attributes of animals that we see in today's video game enemies and then say "see! animals learn! animals are just like people!"

An indication that animals do not have preferences is their inability to create new knowledge such as philosophies. This shows they are not universal knowledge creators like people. (Universal knowledge creator = able to create any knowledge that any knowledge creator can create. Think generic knowledge creator rather than specialized within some limits.)

So an animal would have to either be a special case knowledge creator that somehow creates preferences but not philosophies, or else it can't suffer. There are no reasonable proposals for how this would work. The underlying problem is the people debating this topic largely aren't familiar with the key concepts like preferences, universality, and knowledge creation.

If you want to understand universality better, and how knowledge is created, the best place to start is http://beginningofinfinity.com