Argument over ethics

Question

I had a class on ethics and morality in which we were discussing about free will and ethical subjectivism etc. One of my fellow classmates argued about how humans speak about being ethical but kill animals mercilessly. He spoke against non-vegetarians and how non-ethical their behaviour was.

I thought about this in my head and came to the conclusion that most farm animals are a product made by man himself through domestication. Suppose we stopped eating chicken and other animals. Then, who would look after these animals?(We rear them because we profit from selling them and also satisfy our hunger) Also, domestic chickens and cows cannot be expected to live in the wild.

I want to know how to reply to an argument like this in a philosophical and convincing manner (when someone calls non-vegetarians and their practices as unethical).

Answer 1

Hmph. Interesting question. Let's try this:

1. Everything that is (biologically) alive, dies.
2. Everything that lives causes death in other things:
   • many entities are predators that kill for sustenance
   • many entities defend themselves against predators, parasites, and diseases, which causes death in those entities
   • many entities compete for scarce resources, strangling or starving other entities to death
3. The decision to kill (within humans) is a moral choice, which ought to be evaluated and wrestled with. Humans (unenlightened as they may be) generally draw a line at some measure of sentience:
   • Vegans eat only (presumably) non-sentient plants
   • Pescans assert that fish and other seafood are not sentient enough to worry about
   • Lactans do not eat the meat of land animals, but are willing to consume animal byproducts like milk
   • Carnivans (to keep with the nomenclature) eat the flesh of land animals on the belief that lower animals (wild or domestic) are not sentient enough to worry about.
4. Humans (unenlightened as they may be) are generally willing to kill as a function of moral necessity. Self-defense, war, social control, religious imperatives, political dominance, cannibalism in certain tribal cultures, etc are all rationalized as grounds for killing, because the alternatives are perceived as death, deep misery, or deep loss.
5. No entity can exist for long without causing death.
   • A tree must kill off (by starving them of light) grasses and undergrowth that would sap the nutrients and water from its soil
   • A sea sponge must kill algae and floating larvae for food
   • A cow must kill grass in large quantities
   • A human must kill something on a daily basis or starve to death

The point is that the absolutist argument — in which humans should choose to avoid killing anything — is suicidal. One must (arbitrarily) draw a line delineating what one is willing to kill for survival, and arbitrary lines are always negotiable. In this case, the negotiation centers on respect for the thing that is killed and consumed. An animal that is consciously and conscientiously raised to be consumed, and both cared for and respected in that regard, lives a better life (in many ways) than many humans, and suffers no worse death. Should we worry about the fate of this coddled animal before we address the plight of the starving, uneducated, unsettled masses?

This is not a complete argument: there are lots of good and interesting points to be made about the inefficiency and environmental impacts of raising meat animals. But it will get one past knee-jerk "kill animal bad!" positions.

Answer 2

In Islam, it's recognised that humans are omnivores and so also meat-eaters. The meat that they eat are halal which means a certain prayer is said over them whilst they are killed. And this prayer recognises the sancity of life and that the killing is done for food. Thus, the killing is not 'merciless'. I'd also add that this implicitly recognises that anthropic climate change is not sanctioned by Islam because of its effect on the biosphere.

If the entire globe went vegetarian then I expect the populations of domestic animal would become drastically reduced via natural attrition. After all, the life-span of a chicken is not long and nor that of sheep or cattle compared to humans.

Answer 3

Our modern understanding of biology means the sharp line we have drawn between humans and animals, historically justified in religious terms, just can't be maintained any more - as covered by Peter Singer's analysis of moral progress as widening the 'circle of moral concern'. We have to consider future capacities of other species, and their potential to develop into full moral agents and subjects. I don't think there's an answer to that, that wouldn't also justify human slavery eg of specially bred humans like in Cloud Atlas.

The meat industry has already wiped out many breeds of animals, with for instance wild boar wiped out in the UK (until recently reintroduced), and tougher more self-reliant but less meat producing breeds allowed to go extinct (like Lincolnshire curly coat). So it's hard to argue the problem is breeds going extinct, when modern farming does this more. Nearly all US dairy cows come from 2 bulls, with inbreeding risks, and such strong selection for milk that they have much lower intelligence than most cattle, and can't be left on grass overwinter because of large size - it's happened in recent times, and could be reversed. It's not that the current system looks to their wellbeing, it doesn't, it actively decreases it.

The current situation is part of a high productivity but high resource use system that contributes massively to climate change eg with methane (food emissions are 30% of total and alone unaddressed could prevent reaching targets).

Many places like grasslands and mountainous Tibet, are very difficult to grow enough crops for a balanced diet, but can raise animals. Plus getting through winter in Northern climates was difficult without animals, and preservative fats. In the developed globalised world we don't face these issues now, but that's pretty recent, and there's certainly an equity issue for already poor people living in areas that can't produce non-animals foods.

Vegans argue for animal autonomy, ie not that there should be no carnivorous animals. We don't need to eat meat anymore is the issue. Vegans seriously consider issues of transition to a non-meat-eating world, and generally look toward rewilding and allowing the mixing of domestic and wild animals in conditions with initial extra support until evolution does it's work.

Wider discussion of the ethics here: Is 'veganism' a settled issue in Philosophy and Ethics?

A more interesting subjective ethics case you might be interested in, which reveals more about how ethical systems are part of culture:

Is artificially generating images of minors in sexual positions unethical?

Answer 4

I have never seen a philosophical argument for the permissibility of animal torture. This goes against the traditional conception of virtues, and even Kant would say that those mean to animals are bound to be mean to men.

I think what you want to defend is the permissibility of killing and eating some animals. As a Kantian, it is clear that most animals (but not all) are mere objects, they are not subjects so do hold respect like most humans do. What i mean is that they have no legislative wills for us to respect so they can be used. Animals have no direct obligations on us, just indirect duties like not to torture (those that hurt animals are more likely in character to do so to humans). So we can enslave them as pet but not work them too hard, eat them but not too much it becomes harmful to health, etc.