Animals, Eating Meat and Moral Standing

@Thomas,

I don't know why. I was asking bigstew a question, not stating my own position. I assumed that bigstew was taking the Benthamite position that you quoted, but I couldn't be sure because, frankly, I'm not sure what bigstew's position is. That's why I asked.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Two different things. My putting on my left shoe first, qua act, is not morally significant under ordinary circumstances. Your interference in my putting on my left shoe first, however, may be morally significant, but only because you're interfering with me, not because of my choice of which shoe to put on first.

I have no problem going along with this distinction. Fortunately for my analogy, your objection doesn't really affect it. I will simply say that whether or not the happiness of us animals is morally significant by itself, our choice to interfere with other animals' happiness---positively or negatively---definitely is morally significant. Cruelty to nonhuman animals is still immoral. From my perspective, that looks like a cosmetic patch to the argument, not a surgical revision.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

I don't know why. I was asking bigstew a question, not stating my own position.

And I am asking you because I'm interested in your own position, independent of your question to bigstew.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

I have no problem going along with this distinction. Fortunately for my analogy, your objection doesn't really affect it. I will simply say that whether or not the happiness of us animals is morally significant by itself, our choice to interfere with other animals' happiness---positively or negatively---definitely is morally significant. Cruelty to nonhuman animals is still immoral. From my perspective, that looks like a cosmetic patch to the argument, not a surgical revision.

What argument? I was merely pointing out a flaw in bigstew's argument, which was that, if something is "important," then it's morally significant. I think that's bad reasoning, for the reasons that I stated. If you think it's bad reasoning too, maybe you should be pestering bigstew and not me.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:
Two different things. My putting on my left shoe first, qua act, is not morally significant under ordinary circumstances. Your interference in my putting on my left shoe first, however, may be morally significant, but only because you're interfering with me, not because of my choice of which shoe to put on first.

I have no problem going along with this distinction. Fortunately for my analogy, your objection doesn't really affect it. I will simply say that whether or not the happiness of us animals is morally significant by itself, our choice to interfere with other animals' happiness---positively or negatively---definitely is morally significant. Cruelty to nonhuman animals is still immoral. From my perspective, that looks like a cosmetic patch to the argument, not a surgical revision.

I guess the next question is: is it cruel to eat an animal?

Cycloptichorn

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My next question is upon what basis does one assert that "cruelty" or causing suffering is immoral? Is morality in this case assumed to be a universal, objective standard? If the answer to that last question is yes, than from whence morality?

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

And I am asking you because I'm interested in your own position, independent of your question to bigstew.

My position is that non-human animals are not moral agents and do not have rights. Whatever moral obligations we have toward animals are the result of our own ethical choices. In other words, if we have a rule prohibiting cruelty to animals, it is because we view cruelty as wrong, not because the animals view it as wrong.

Furthermore, I believe Bentham is incorrect: the capacity to suffer is not morally significant. For instance, one is not morally free to kill comatose humans who are incapable of feeling pain. Furthermore, we inflict pain quite freely on lower-order animals without any moral compunction. Even a single-celled protozoan will flinch from the sharp tip of a probe, yet I haven't seen PETA stage a whole lot of pro-amoeba marches lately. So either we accord rights to paramecia, or else there is some line in the animal kingdom below which the capacity to suffer is not morally significant.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I guess the next question is: is it cruel to eat an animal?

Not necessarily. But the steaks you would buy at your average grocery store come from animals that were almost certainly raised on factory farms. It's the conditions on those farms that are cruel to animals.

Speaking of which, I think that's why farmerman is so touchy about the issue. By his account, which I have no reason to doubt, the farm on which he raises his future steaks is not one of those industrial hellholes. His cattle's lives are decent while they last, their death quick and painless. Farmerman doesn't like it when meat from his farm is lumped together with meat from those farms. I think he has a point there.

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@Thomas,

Right, I agree. But to me, focusing on ending animal cruelty through a variety of reforms and means is more effective than making the case that it's morally wrong to eat meat at all. This is where I think a lot of advocates on the veggie side go wrong: they are picking the wrong argument with people.

I do eat meat at restaurants, which I can't vouch for the care of the animal. But I buy my meat at home from a local ranching co-op that visits my farmers market; free-range, grass-fed, happy cows. The meat does taste better, though it is much more expensive... it's worth it though.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Thomas,

It is interesting that BSE (bovine spongiform encephalitis, or mad cow disease) seems to have arisen from the practice of grinding up slaughter house offal and mixing it into the feed which is used for feedlots. Almost enough to make one believe in a god . . . (but not quite enough) . . .

Very often, the "green" solution has many, many benefits which may not immediately be recognized. Conservation tillage and eschewing chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides makes rivers and lakes more ecologically healthy. Range grazed livestock and genuine free range chickens reduce or eliminate the need for antibiotics, which both makes the meat healthier and reduces the evolutionary effect by which we unintentionally breed "superbugs." Just as no good deed goes unpunished due to unintended consequences, good stewardship of our resources seems to yield unintended benefits.

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@Cycloptichorn,

There is now a brand of (rather expensive) meat available in some stores in Ontario which has a picture of the farm couple on the label, and tells you who they are and where their farm is located. I've often wondered if anyone ever goes to visit them to see just how "green" their operations actually are.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

My position is that non-human animals are not moral agents and do not have rights.

I don't understand the logic of this sentence. I agree that animals are not moral agents. I would agree if you concluded that because they are not moral agents, it follows that they can't have moral duties. (They couldn't possibly know how to comply with moral obligations, so there's no point in imposing any on them.) But why would moral rights, as opposed to moral duties, necessarily derive from moral agency?

joefromchicago wrote:

Furthermore, I believe Bentham is incorrect: the capacity to suffer is not morally significant. For instance, one is not morally free to kill comatose humans who are incapable of feeling pain.

This example does not test Bentham's theory, because we humans can suffer from envisioning future events. Bentham was very aware of this. Just before the passage I quoted from his Principles earlier, he talks about "those long-protracted anticipations of future misery which we have". (Animals do not have those, so killing them is okay with Bentham, as long as we don't inflict pain in the process.) Because humans would experience anxiety about a future in which they could become comatose patients, and in which doctors were free kill them at will, you have not presented an example of an immoral action that involves no suffering.

joefromchicago wrote:

Furthermore, we inflict pain quite freely on lower-order animals without any moral compunction. Even a single-celled protozoan will flinch from the sharp tip of a probe, yet I haven't seen PETA stage a whole lot of pro-amoeba marches lately.

Pain as we know it is a neurological phenomenon. Experiencing it requires a central nervous system to do the experiencing. Since amoebae don't have central nervous systems, I don't wee why I should accept your premise that the probe inflicts pain on them.

joefromchicago wrote:

So either we accord rights to paramecia, or else there is some line in the animal kingdom below which the capacity to suffer is not morally significant.

In addition to my last objection, I also don't see why there needs to be a line. Why can't an animal specie's ability to suffer be a matter of degree? And why can't the extent of its rights that we recognize be proportionate to that degree?

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

My position is that non-human animals are not moral agents and do not have rights.

One more question about that one, involving the comatose patients you mention later in your post: If their brains are so damaged they can't experience any pain, they can also be too damaged to be moral agents. So on what theory would they retain their rights?

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@Thomas,

Im sensitive because Im hearing most of the people herein have no idea what the word "Factory farm" even means. I want to know how"non factory farm" vegetables are brought to mass markets in quantities that are sufficient to support the customer needs and the producers needs?
I want to know what a non factory farm livetsock operation looks like. ASHow me a non factory farm sheep ranch and Ill show you an operation with maybe 20 animals, same thing with cattle. All these animals MUST be grown in masses to be profitable and efficient.

SO this entire morality issue cuts a number of ways. If someone really cares how their onions are grown and how much pollution a lettuce farm spits out, then that pwerson must go off and live off their own land. Otherwise , everything is a factory farm operation.I pride myself in being a responsible and caring steward of livestock. However, Im not an idiot who is running a pet farm. AS my neighbor says there are two kinds of farming
"There are those who farm FOR their money and then there are farmers who farm WITH their money".
The biggest complement is when another farmer says that"You are no longer farming with money" SUch people are, in my mind, people who raise show animals, those who raise and keep horses, and exotic food and fibre animals. We started our ops in that realm but learned quickly that we MUST show profits or get out. THAT , my friends , is simple economics.

I think big Stew exemplifies this naive sense of how food is raised. Being a vegetarian as a statement of environmental concern or some moral twinge about animal cruelty needs to be braced with some education by visiting a mushroom farm or fruit farm or any vegetable truck farm. The support facilities for such opeartions include some very toxic substances that are applied in ten thousand gallon tanks and low sprayers or "big wheel" direct applicators. You need to spend as much time (if you wish to become "food activists") concerning yourself with all mthods of food production. To make it an "US V THEM" discussion that is a feel good for veggies, then you just dont know as much as you think about how veggies are farmed , delivered, and marketed.

I never saw a "mixed vegetble farm"

Some garden stands try to grow all they can sell but they sell a commodity by going to regional produce auctions where they stock up on the majority of what they sell.

I used to live near vacaville calif and there were all kinds of veggie stands that sold all kinds of goods. The majority of these stands werebuying in wholesale from farms that produce only one or fewer than say, 5 different vegetables . ALL are grown for soil similarities, chemical fertilizer needs and pest management (IPM uses the least amt of pesticisdes but even these styles of farming are chemical intensive). Back east, stop at a :farm stand" and ask how many of the things they sell are actually grown there. Youll find that you are part of the same chain of produce that serves any supermarket.
Buying veggies in New York city is no different than what we buy in our huge "FArmers Central MArket" in Lancaster City. The only diff is that we buy from folks all costumed as rural-lifestyle Conservative Christians.

ITS mostly all marketing , meat and veggie. THose of us who eat meat DO YOU really think that there is a big taste difference between ANGUS cattle and any other breed? (Thats marketing if you swaid yes). ARe your chickens displaying a healthy orange glow in their meat?(thats done with marigold extracts in thweir feed, its like a shoot of crocus stamen powder).
The only meats that you can really dreop out of a health conscious diet re heavuily processed meats like balonies or hot dogs .

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They really push the Angus beef thing here in Canadia. I've never known any difference in taste in beef, other than that between ground chuck and ground round when buying hamburger, and that's a function of the higher fact content of the chuck. At the local "farmer's market" held at a local park, there's a beef producer who drives up in his customized RV with the refrigerators and the grills and sells "organically grown" Angus beef products. I've looked at his stuff, but i'd never buy it. Much of it is twice the price of the grocery store. The fact that he shows up every week suggests to me that he doesn't lack for customers.

When you get the highway robbery prices like those, i don't buy unless they actually show me the gun.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

I don't understand the logic of this sentence. I agree that animals are not moral agents. I would agree if you concluded that because they are not moral agents, it follows that they can't have moral duties. (They couldn't possibly know how to comply with moral obligations, so there's no point in imposing any on them.) But why would moral rights, as opposed to moral duties, necessarily derive from moral agency?

How would they assert those rights?

Thomas wrote:

This example does not test Bentham's theory, because we humans can suffer from envisioning future events. Bentham was very aware of this. Just before the passage I quoted from his Principles earlier, he talks about "those long-protracted anticipations of future misery which we have". (Animals do not have those, so killing them is okay with Bentham, as long as we don't inflict pain in the process.) Because humans would experience anxiety about a future in which they could become comatose patients, and in which doctors were free kill them at will, you have not presented an example of an immoral action that involves no suffering.

As philosophers would say, that's a stretch.

There are many problems with theories that base moral rights on things like suffering or consciousness or the ability to reason because they don't take into account comatose people or infants or people with various diminished capacities. If Bentham is arguing that we can't kill comatose people because they once had the capacity to suffer, that pretty much disproves the notion that suffering, in itself, has any kind of moral quality. He'd be much better off arguing that it's inutile to kill comatose people because it sets a bad example rather than trying to craft a rather weak exception to his rule on suffering.

Thomas wrote:

Pain as we know it is a neurological phenomenon. Experiencing it requires a central nervous system to do the experiencing. Since amoebae don't have central nervous systems, I don't wee why I should accept your premise that the probe inflicts pain on them.

So it's not suffering that's morally significant, it's just suffering as we know it that is morally significant. That's speciesist. Who's to say that paramecia don't suffer in their own way? And if they do, why wouldn't that merit moral consideration?

Thomas wrote:

In addition to my last objection, I also don't see why there needs to be a line. Why can't an animal specie's ability to suffer be a matter of degree? And why can't the extent of its rights that we recognize be proportionate to that degree?

The rights that we recognize? Are you saying that we get to decide which rights animals have? How do the animals feel about that?

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

One more question about that one, involving the comatose patients you mention later in your post: If their brains are so damaged they can't experience any pain, they can also be too damaged to be moral agents. So on what theory would they retain their rights?

There are plenty of ways one can argue that the comatose are entitled to moral consideration without arguing that the capacity to suffer is morally significant. A Rawlsian, for instance, might argue that, from a neutral position, it is better that people be accorded moral standing even when they're comatose than to allow open season on all comatose individuals. Indeed, a rule utilitarian would probably make the same argument -- and without the need to resort to any Benthamite circumlocutions about the capacity to suffer.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Thomas wrote:
I don't understand the logic of this sentence. I agree that animals are not moral agents. I would agree if you concluded that because they are not moral agents, it follows that they can't have moral duties. (They couldn't possibly know how to comply with moral obligations, so there's no point in imposing any on them.) But why would moral rights, as opposed to moral duties, necessarily derive from moral agency?

How would they assert those rights?

The same way your comatose patients would. The same way Black Americans asserted their right to no longer be slaves: Through competent and conscientious agents who could change things. What source of rights that is available to comatose patients is unavailable to animals?

joefromchicago wrote:

If Bentham is arguing that we can't kill comatose people because they once had the capacity to suffer, that pretty much disproves the notion that suffering, in itself, has any kind of moral quality.

That's not Bentham's argument. As I understand him, the reason we we can't kill comatose patients is different: Those of us who aren't comatose today fear that we may become comatose in the future. And the prospect that doctors will kill us then frightens us today. The prohibition against killing comatose patients today serves to prevent the fear of us non-comatose people today that we, too, might be killed in the future.

joefromchicago wrote:

So it's not suffering that's morally significant, it's just suffering as we know it that is morally significant. That's speciesist. Who's to say that paramecia don't suffer in their own way? And if they do, why wouldn't that merit moral consideration?

Analogous problems occur in every school of ethics. For example, future research may well reveal that animals do, indeed act as moral agents---only in a form we haven't recognized yet. Then your argument from moral agency falls apart just as well.

Thomas wrote:

The rights that we recognize? Are you saying that we get to decide which rights animals have? How do the animals feel about that?

I mean "recognize" in the sense of "understand", not in the sense of "concede". And, you're evading my question. Why can't different kinds of non-human animals have different amounts of rights, depending on their ability to suffer as best we can know it?

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

A Rawlsian, for instance, might argue that, from a neutral position, it is better that people be accorded moral standing even when they're comatose than to allow open season on all comatose individuals.

And how is the same argument unavailable for according rights to nonhuman animals? Although, to the best of my knowledge, Rawles didn't publish on animal rights, it's trivial to adapt his framework so it can address the issue. All it takes is an obvious and straightforward tweak to his original position: Simply allow for the possibility that each of us might be born either as a human or a nonhuman animal, and we don't know which kind. Why wouldn't it be better, from that original position, to accord at least some rights to nonhuman animals?

joefromchicago wrote:

Indeed, a rule utilitarian would probably make the same argument -- and without the need to resort to any Benthamite circumlocutions about the capacity to suffer.

With respect, I think you need to re-read your Bentham as much as I needed to re-read my Kant.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

What source of rights that is available to comatose patients is unavailable to animals?

The ability of those non-humans to assert their own rights.

But then I'm not sure why you're even interested in discussing rights. There's always a beyond-the-looking-glass kind of quality to any discussion of "rights" with a utilitarian. After all, there are no "rights" in utilitarianism, just rules that are more or less utile.

Thomas wrote:

That's not Bentham's argument. As I understand him, the reason we we can't kill comatose patients is different: Those of us who aren't comatose today fear that we may become comatose in the future. And the prospect that doctors will kill us then frightens us today. The prohibition against killing comatose patients today serves to prevent the fear of us non-comatose people today that we, too, might be killed in the future.

That's fine. All we have to do, then, is knock out the animals and then we can do anything we want with them, since, although they have the capacity to suffer, they don't have the capacity for anxiety. That's a rather odd position, but I suppose it can be defended.

Thomas wrote:

Analogous problems occur in every school of ethics. For example, future research may well reveal that animals do, indeed act as moral agents---only in a form we haven't recognized yet. Then your argument from moral agency falls apart just as well.

I'm far more confident that paramecia suffer than that they act morally. The first one that asserts that it is entitled to moral consideration will, however, have my undivided attention.

Thomas wrote:

I mean "recognize" in the sense of "understand", not in the sense of "concede". And, you're evading my question. Why can't different kinds of non-human animals have different amounts of rights, depending on their ability to suffer as best we can know it?

If animals have rights, where do they get them from? If they get them from their innate ability to suffer, then why should they calibrate their suffering to our own to determine just how much right they receive? If those rights are their rights, then why the comparison? And if you assert that humans surpass animals in their capacity to suffer, upon what do you base that?

Thomas wrote:

And how is the same argument unavailable for according rights to nonhuman animals? Although, to the best of my knowledge, Rawles didn't publish on animal rights, it's trivial to adapt his framework so it can address the issue. All it takes is an obvious and straightforward tweak to his original position: Simply allow for the possibility that each of us might be born either as a human or a nonhuman animal, and we don't know which kind. Why wouldn't it be better, from that original position, to accord at least some rights to nonhuman animals?

Why stop there? We don't know if we're going to be born as a tree either, so we might as well accord rights to plants.

Factoring in the possibility of being born a dog rather than a human doesn't make much sense, since, if you were born a dog, you wouldn't be talking about morality -- you'd be talking about squirrels. You can't say "if I were a dog, I'd want rights," because, if you were a dog, you wouldn't know what rights were. So it's pointless to speculate about the possibility of being something that is non-moral when you're talking about morality. Moral rules are designed for human societies.

Thomas wrote:

With respect, I think you need to re-read your Bentham as much as I needed to re-read my Kant.

That's certainly not out of the question.

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Animals, Eating Meat and Moral Standing

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