[We] surveyed several hundred philosophers and non-philosophers on their opinions about various moral issues; we also asked survey respondents to describe their own behavior on those same issues. … The biggest divergences in moral opinion concerned our question about “regularly eating the meat of mammals such as beef and pork”. 60% of ethics professor respondents rated mammal-meat consumption as morally bad, compared to 45% of non-ethicist philosophers and just 19% of non-philosophers. Opinion also divided by gender and age. … Fully 81% of female philosophers born in 1960 or later said it was morally bad to regularly eat the meat of mammals. To put this degree of consensus in perspective, … only 82% of philosophers endorsed non-skeptical realism about the existence of an external world. …
Natural law favors meat consumption. The human mouth and digestive tract is built for omnivorous eating. Humans are natural hunters and naturally like meat. When economies grow,the cost of food rises partly due to increased meat consumption. No one supports animal cruelty,so let's address this. Non- factory farming does not preclude cruelty. Lack of modern agricultural practice can be cruel. I once visited an Amish Farm,where the animals looked like they were starving.There was obvious over grazing and I am sure many other instances of cruelty and neglect have occurred in the non factory setting. In many poor countries animals provide the only source of good protein. This does not put meat eaters in the same category as child molesters.
Vegans are the product of over affluence, sentimentality and a lack of contact with the land or the world. Farmers and ranchers go out at all hours of the night to care for animals in a flood or storm and buy food for them when needed,These animals essentially lives lives of ease compared to wild animals.
Proper animal breeding can reduce suffering. For instance in a chicken yard the hens compete murderously. The best egg producer pecks the other hens mercilessly in order to get more food. Look on any chicken breeders site and you will see how docile happy chickens are selectively bred so this doesn't happen. You could also breed for chickens that looked forward to being fried. The Japanese and Islamists can already find people ready to commit suicide. Why not chickens and cows?
I envision a similar phase-out from conventional funerals to cryonic preservations. Just because I feel it's immoral to let someone's brain decay does not mean I'm unrealistic about how soon it will happen. There can be gradual steps in the right direction. But of course the sooner the better. I imagine animal rights activists feel the same about getting humans weaned off of meat.
I had a thought, with only anecdotal support, which is that eating meat can be tied to masculinity. You know, the attitude that "salad is for rabbits and meat is man food!" which I have observed occasionally but couldn't say if it really was a prevalent idea in the general population. What is the likelihood that young or old male philosophers are somewhat influenced by that, so that they are less likely than young females to even make the statement that eating meat is unethical?
Animals will rape and assault other animals even if humans didn't exist. So you must think that raping and assaulting animals is morally acceptable, no? That's a very bold position, Mr. Williams.
Might there be different rules for dogs and humans? Or even humans with health conditions that require they eat meat and humans who can live with vegetarian alternatives?
This is what the transition period would look like:
Americans are responsible for consuming billions of animals a year. There is no way in any of our life times that meat-eating will be prohibited. So the animal rights movement (which includes meat eaters and vegetarians and vegans) focuses on reduction of animal consumption. An increase in welfare standards, difficulty in meeting the demand for meat as human population continues to increase and the cost of land, water, etc. increases, and growing ethical considerations are right this moment moving our society to eat less meat. Assume this trend continues. There are more vegetarians and vegans, and the meat eaters eat less meat. Eventually there will come a point a where a large minority of our culture is vegetarian and the people who eat meat also eat a lot of soy and legumes such that meat-eating prohibition becomes viable. At that point, we can have a phase-out period "no meat in five years" to give farmers a chance to shift to meet the new demand for vegetarian food. The "final cull" of livestock is something animal rights supporters will accept. We already make compromises. The Humane Society of the US, for example, praises Burger King (BURGER KING!) for committing to use more cage-free eggs. If we can endorse Burger King for that, I'm sure we can endorse a final cull of livestock. A small fraction will end up on sanctuaries and live on in perpetuity as exotic relics of a livestock past. There will be no magic moment where animal-slaughter is prohibited with billions of animals waiting in the queue to be slaughtered with no idea what to do with them. That's an absurd scenario.
I'd also like to address your second argument: "what if eating a chicken makes a persons life more decent." You need to take a broader perspective here. Permitting a child molester to victimize children might make the molester's life more decent but we don't permit that. Why? Because we value the child's interest of "not being molested" more than the molester's interest. The same logic should apply to animals. The question is not "will eating the chicken make a human's life more satisfying?" The question is "does the human's satisfaction in eating the chicken outweigh the chicken's interest in not being raised as it was for food?" I can't think of many situations short of self-defense where torture and death are justified. Certainly they can't be justified to satisfy a craving for food! Maybe they could be justified if the person needed the meat for health reasons (although this would limit meat intake to a fraction of the population and for only a few times a week, if at all). Furthermore, I implore you to at least consider that "a human's satisfaction in eating the chicken may outweigh the chicken's interest in it's life but certainly not the chicken's interest in avoiding a battery cage in a factory farming system!" Can we at least compromise and admit that if a human's interest in eating a chicken outweighs the chicken's interest that we should at least give the chicken a good life and painless death?
Would it be okay to justify breeding human slaves with that argument: "they wouldn't have existed if we didn't breed them to be slaves!"
No.
Although humans and livestock share fundamentally important traits like the ability to love, suffer, enjoy, and fear, I do concede there are some differences. As far as I know, most animals don't wrestle with the concept of their own mortality. So maybe killing animals is okay. But even if I concede that, our farming system today is a far far far cry from acceptable. Look up battery cages, sow gestation, or cattle corn feed on Google. The animals have short, miserable lives in our modern farming system. I would rather not exist at all then go through what they do.
If we moved back to the traditional model of agriculture (respecting the animals' needs for daily sunshine, roaming, foraging, socialization, comfort) then you might have a justification.
As a vegetarian of five years recently turned vegan I might have some insight on this issue. You'd be surprised how many people agree in principle that eating meat (especially factory farmed meat from "intelligent" animals like pigs) is wrong. I've long speculated that there are two reasons why people might believe it is wrong in principle but still engage in the practice.
The first reason (I speculate) is that people are not confronted with the horrors of the meat industry when they choose to buy or consume meat. A pack of pepperoni looks the same whether it's meat or soy based. You don't have to look into the eyes of the animal, confront its life of suffering, or witness its terrible slaughter.
The second reason (again, speculation) is that people are biologically and socially trained to both eat and crave meat. If one night you decided that eating meat was wrong, yet all of your friends and family (and indeed your own self up until that point) eats meat on a regular basis, then it seems easy just to go with the flow. Biologically speaking, when you get hungry, your brain will automatically start craving food you are used to such as meat. Not soy.
A good anecdotal example of the disparity in this research is Al Gore. It's fairly well established that a vegetarian in a hummer has less of a carbon impact than a meat eater on a bicycle. (Think of all the resources that go into raising an animal for several months before slaughter). Yet Al Gore -- a middle-aged man immersed in meat-culture who grew up on a Tennessee ranch -- cannot give up animal products even though it makes him a glaring hypocrite. Why? Surely he must know eating meat is bad for global warming. Ergo, the circumstantial evidence indicates that there are irrational forces at work such as the cognitive, social, and biological ones I set forth above.
I have tried to use that argument with vegans. I doesn't work. They are not pro- life for pigs and chickens but anti- suffering for animals. Chicken genocide is OK. I don't know what the transitional period would be like if society bought their plea. There would be a lot of petting zoos for a while. If not, what would you do with all that chickens.The same attitude is held for humans. Abortion is OK since there is little suffering. Once born, humanity owes all humans a decent life as specified by the United Nations. I sympathize ,but somehow it all seems incoherent. For example, what if eating a chicken makes a persons life more decent. If that is conceded,what is the vegan's fallback position?
On a side note, what is 'non-skeptical realism ', alternatively what is skeptical realism?
Natural law favors meat consumption. The human mouth and digestive tract is built for omnivorous eating. Humans are natural hunters and naturally like meat. When economies grow,the cost of food rises partly due to increased meat consumption. No one supports animal cruelty,so let's address this. Non- factory farming does not preclude cruelty. Lack of modern agricultural practice can be cruel. I once visited an Amish Farm,where the animals looked like they were starving.There was obvious over grazing and I am sure many other instances of cruelty and neglect have occurred in the non factory setting. In many poor countries animals provide the only source of good protein. This does not put meat eaters in the same category as child molesters.
Vegans are the product of over affluence, sentimentality and a lack of contact with the land or the world. Farmers and ranchers go out at all hours of the night to care for animals in a flood or storm and buy food for them when needed,These animals essentially lives lives of ease compared to wild animals.
Proper animal breeding can reduce suffering. For instance in a chicken yard the hens compete murderously. The best egg producer pecks the other hens mercilessly in order to get more food. Look on any chicken breeders site and you will see how docile happy chickens are selectively bred so this doesn't happen. You could also breed for chickens that looked forward to being fried. The Japanese and Islamists can already find people ready to commit suicide. Why not chickens and cows?
Exactly the answer I had in mind. To "hard-headedness," I would also add "ruthlessness."
I envision a similar phase-out from conventional funerals to cryonic preservations. Just because I feel it's immoral to let someone's brain decay does not mean I'm unrealistic about how soon it will happen. There can be gradual steps in the right direction. But of course the sooner the better. I imagine animal rights activists feel the same about getting humans weaned off of meat.
Yes that's the ticket! Eat human corpses from people who died anyway!
I disagree with that position, and that Wikipedia quote.
I had a thought, with only anecdotal support, which is that eating meat can be tied to masculinity. You know, the attitude that "salad is for rabbits and meat is man food!" which I have observed occasionally but couldn't say if it really was a prevalent idea in the general population. What is the likelihood that young or old male philosophers are somewhat influenced by that, so that they are less likely than young females to even make the statement that eating meat is unethical?
Here is a video on meat: http://meat.org
They are likely antinatalists.
Animals will rape and assault other animals even if humans didn't exist. So you must think that raping and assaulting animals is morally acceptable, no? That's a very bold position, Mr. Williams.
Might there be different rules for dogs and humans? Or even humans with health conditions that require they eat meat and humans who can live with vegetarian alternatives?
This is what the transition period would look like:
Americans are responsible for consuming billions of animals a year. There is no way in any of our life times that meat-eating will be prohibited. So the animal rights movement (which includes meat eaters and vegetarians and vegans) focuses on reduction of animal consumption. An increase in welfare standards, difficulty in meeting the demand for meat as human population continues to increase and the cost of land, water, etc. increases, and growing ethical considerations are right this moment moving our society to eat less meat. Assume this trend continues. There are more vegetarians and vegans, and the meat eaters eat less meat. Eventually there will come a point a where a large minority of our culture is vegetarian and the people who eat meat also eat a lot of soy and legumes such that meat-eating prohibition becomes viable. At that point, we can have a phase-out period "no meat in five years" to give farmers a chance to shift to meet the new demand for vegetarian food. The "final cull" of livestock is something animal rights supporters will accept. We already make compromises. The Humane Society of the US, for example, praises Burger King (BURGER KING!) for committing to use more cage-free eggs. If we can endorse Burger King for that, I'm sure we can endorse a final cull of livestock. A small fraction will end up on sanctuaries and live on in perpetuity as exotic relics of a livestock past. There will be no magic moment where animal-slaughter is prohibited with billions of animals waiting in the queue to be slaughtered with no idea what to do with them. That's an absurd scenario.
I'd also like to address your second argument: "what if eating a chicken makes a persons life more decent." You need to take a broader perspective here. Permitting a child molester to victimize children might make the molester's life more decent but we don't permit that. Why? Because we value the child's interest of "not being molested" more than the molester's interest. The same logic should apply to animals. The question is not "will eating the chicken make a human's life more satisfying?" The question is "does the human's satisfaction in eating the chicken outweigh the chicken's interest in not being raised as it was for food?" I can't think of many situations short of self-defense where torture and death are justified. Certainly they can't be justified to satisfy a craving for food! Maybe they could be justified if the person needed the meat for health reasons (although this would limit meat intake to a fraction of the population and for only a few times a week, if at all). Furthermore, I implore you to at least consider that "a human's satisfaction in eating the chicken may outweigh the chicken's interest in it's life but certainly not the chicken's interest in avoiding a battery cage in a factory farming system!" Can we at least compromise and admit that if a human's interest in eating a chicken outweighs the chicken's interest that we should at least give the chicken a good life and painless death?
Would it be okay to justify breeding human slaves with that argument: "they wouldn't have existed if we didn't breed them to be slaves!"
No.
Although humans and livestock share fundamentally important traits like the ability to love, suffer, enjoy, and fear, I do concede there are some differences. As far as I know, most animals don't wrestle with the concept of their own mortality. So maybe killing animals is okay. But even if I concede that, our farming system today is a far far far cry from acceptable. Look up battery cages, sow gestation, or cattle corn feed on Google. The animals have short, miserable lives in our modern farming system. I would rather not exist at all then go through what they do.
If we moved back to the traditional model of agriculture (respecting the animals' needs for daily sunshine, roaming, foraging, socialization, comfort) then you might have a justification.
As a vegetarian of five years recently turned vegan I might have some insight on this issue. You'd be surprised how many people agree in principle that eating meat (especially factory farmed meat from "intelligent" animals like pigs) is wrong. I've long speculated that there are two reasons why people might believe it is wrong in principle but still engage in the practice.
The first reason (I speculate) is that people are not confronted with the horrors of the meat industry when they choose to buy or consume meat. A pack of pepperoni looks the same whether it's meat or soy based. You don't have to look into the eyes of the animal, confront its life of suffering, or witness its terrible slaughter.
The second reason (again, speculation) is that people are biologically and socially trained to both eat and crave meat. If one night you decided that eating meat was wrong, yet all of your friends and family (and indeed your own self up until that point) eats meat on a regular basis, then it seems easy just to go with the flow. Biologically speaking, when you get hungry, your brain will automatically start craving food you are used to such as meat. Not soy.
A good anecdotal example of the disparity in this research is Al Gore. It's fairly well established that a vegetarian in a hummer has less of a carbon impact than a meat eater on a bicycle. (Think of all the resources that go into raising an animal for several months before slaughter). Yet Al Gore -- a middle-aged man immersed in meat-culture who grew up on a Tennessee ranch -- cannot give up animal products even though it makes him a glaring hypocrite. Why? Surely he must know eating meat is bad for global warming. Ergo, the circumstantial evidence indicates that there are irrational forces at work such as the cognitive, social, and biological ones I set forth above.
I have tried to use that argument with vegans. I doesn't work. They are not pro- life for pigs and chickens but anti- suffering for animals. Chicken genocide is OK. I don't know what the transitional period would be like if society bought their plea. There would be a lot of petting zoos for a while. If not, what would you do with all that chickens.The same attitude is held for humans. Abortion is OK since there is little suffering. Once born, humanity owes all humans a decent life as specified by the United Nations. I sympathize ,but somehow it all seems incoherent. For example, what if eating a chicken makes a persons life more decent. If that is conceded,what is the vegan's fallback position?
Think of all the cows, pigs and chickens that would never have lived at all if we didn't like meat! Doesn't that count for anything?