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    What Philosophers Have To Say About Eating Meat

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    Roger Arc
    The document discusses the philosophical arguments for and against eating meat. It summarizes that ancient Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato argued that eating meat was immoral because animals have souls like humans or that it would lead to an unsustainable society. Later philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer developed the idea that it is wrong to cause animals suffering through factory farming practices. However, philosophers like Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant believed that animals do not have equal moral status to humans due to a lack of reasoning, language, or personhood. More recent evidence shows that animals can feel pain, have emotions and relationships, which challenges the justification for excluding them from moral consideration. The author believes the suffering of

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    What Philosophers Have To Say About Eating Meat

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    Roger Arc
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    The document discusses the philosophical arguments for and against eating meat. It summarizes that ancient Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato argued that eating meat was immoral because animals have souls like humans or that it would lead to an unsustainable society. Later philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer developed the idea that it is wrong to cause animals suffering through factory farming practices. However, philosophers like Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant believed that animals do not have equal moral status to humans due to a lack of reasoning, language, or personhood. More recent evidence shows that animals can feel pain, have emotions and relationships, which challenges the justification for excluding them from moral consideration. The author believes the suffering of

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    What Philosophers Have to Say About Eating Meat

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    The document discusses the philosophical arguments for and against eating meat. It summarizes that ancient Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato argued that eating meat was immoral because animals have souls like humans or that it would lead to an unsustainable society. Later philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer developed the idea that it is wrong to cause animals suffering through factory farming practices. However, philosophers like Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant believed that animals do not have equal moral status to humans due to a lack of reasoning, language, or personhood. More recent evidence shows that animals can feel pain, have emotions and relationships, which challenges the justification for excluding them from moral consideration. The author believes the suffering of

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    45 views5 pages

    What Philosophers Have To Say About Eating Meat

    Uploaded by

    Roger Arc
    The document discusses the philosophical arguments for and against eating meat. It summarizes that ancient Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato argued that eating meat was immoral because animals have souls like humans or that it would lead to an unsustainable society. Later philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer developed the idea that it is wrong to cause animals suffering through factory farming practices. However, philosophers like Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant believed that animals do not have equal moral status to humans due to a lack of reasoning, language, or personhood. More recent evidence shows that animals can feel pain, have emotions and relationships, which challenges the justification for excluding them from moral consideration. The author believes the suffering of

    Copyright:

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    Academic rigor, journalistic flair

    What philosophers have to say about eating meat


    August 7, 2018 6.40am EDT

    Is it ethical to eat meat? Ewan Munro, CC BY-SA

    What philosophers have to say about eating meat


    August 7, 2018 6.40am EDT

    WeWork, a co-working and office space company, recently made a company policy not to Author
    serve or reimburse meals that include meat.

    WeWork’s co-founder and chief culture officer, Miguel McKelvey, said in an email that it was
    the company’s attempt at reducing its carbon footprint. His moral arguments are based on
    the devastating environmental effects of meat consumption. Research has shown that meat Joan McGregor
    Professor of Philosophy, Arizona State
    and dairy production are among the worst culprits when it comes to the production of green- University

    house gases and the loss of biodiversity. WeWork estimates the policy will save 445.1 million
    pounds of carbon dioxide emissions by 2023, 16.6 billion gallons of water and 15,507,103
    animals.
    Indeed, for centuries philosophers have argued against consuming animals.

    Why hurting animals is immoral

    Ancient Greek philosophers made their arguments based on the moral status of animals themselves.
    Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras made the case against eating animals on grounds of
    their having souls like humans.

    Philosopher Plato, in Book 2 of the “The Republic,” thought of meat as a luxury that would lead to an
    unsustainable society, filled with strife and inequality, requiring more land and wars to acquire it.

    Two thousand years later, in 1789, Jeremy Bentham, father of the theory of utilitarianism, pointed to the
    animal suffering as morally concerning and therefore implicated meat consumption.

    He asked,

    “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the
    law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? … The time will come when humanity will
    extend its mantle over everything which breathes … ”

    The doctrine of utilitarianism states that actions that bring about the most good and reduce the suffering
    in the world are the right ones. Utilitarians focus on reducing suffering and maximizing pleasure or
    happiness.

    Modern-day utilitarian Peter Singer thus asks whether we are justified in


    considering our pleasure and pain as more important than that of animals.
    In being willing to subject animals to the suffering of industrial farming for
    meat production, he questions whether we are just being “speciesists.”
    Much like racists, he argues, speciesists favor the interest of their own
    species.

    Other philosophers reject the attention to just the suffering of animals and
    argue that it is simply wrong to treat animals as our resources whether or
    not it involves suffering. Just as it would be wrong to treat humans as
    resources for harvesting organs, it is immoral to raise animals for meat.

    Greek philosophers thought that hurting animals was


    Animal rights philosopher Tom Regan, for example, argued that animals
    immoral. Mercy For Animals MFA, CC BY
    are “the subject of a life,” just as humans are. What he meant was that they
    too – like humans – are beings who have rights, with their own preferences, wants and expectations.

    Making factory farming more humane misses the point of immorality and injustice of the use of animals
    as resources.
    Human exceptionalism

    Indeed, there are those philosophers who believed that animals do not have moral status equal to
    humans.

    Human exceptionalism is based on the premise that humans have superior abilities compared to other
    animals. For example, humans can have social relationships, in particular family relationships; they also
    have the ability to use language; they can reason and feel pain.

    Sixteenth-century French philosopher Rene Descartes, known for his dictum, “I think, therefore, I am,”
    thought that animals were not conscious, did not have minds and, consequently, did not experience
    pain. They were, according to Descartes, “automata,” just complex machines. Indeed, his views were
    later used to justify the practice of vivisection on animals for many centuries.

    German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that it was personhood that distinguished humans from
    animals. For Kant, humans set their own moral rules based on reason and act upon them. This is some-
    thing that animals cannot do.

    The moral case against meat

    More astute observations and scientific studies, however, have shown that animals do experience pain
    analogous to humans and have feelings. For example, elephants have complex emotional lives, including
    grieving for loved ones, and complex social and family relationships.

    Orca carries dead calf for a week during ‘deep grieving’ process

    A mourning orca carries her baby.

    Animals can reason, communicate with one another, possibly use language in some cases and behave
    morally.
    Thus, excluding animals from moral consideration and eating animals cannot be justified because they
    lack these characteristics.

    Even Kant’s idea that it is the rational autonomy of humans that makes them superior does not work.
    Infants, Alzheimer’s patients, the developmentally disabled and some others might also be considered
    lacking in rational autonomy. And personhood, in any case, is not the defining criterion for being treated
    as an object of moral consideration. In my view, the question to be considered is whether Kant is just
    being a speciesist, as Singer has charged.

    Finally, there are those philosophers who object to eating meat not based on whether animals have
    rights or whether their suffering should be included in the calculus for assessing moral actions. They
    focus on the virtues or vices of eating meat.

    Virtue theorist Rosalind Hursthouse argues that eating meat shows one to be “greedy,” “selfish,” “child-
    ish.” Other virtue theorists argue that the virtuous person would refrain from eating meat or too much
    meat out of compassion and caring for animals’ welfare.

    A vegetarian meal. Can Pac Swire, CC BY-NC

    As a moral philosopher, I too believe the suffering of animals in the production of meat, particularly
    modern industrial meat production, cannot be morally justified.

    Thus, in my view, WeWork’s position has a moral basis and powerful philosophical allies.

    Editor’s note: This piece is part of our series on ethical questions arising from everyday life. We would
    welcome your suggestions. Please email us at ethical.questions@theconversation.com.

     Peter Singer Animal rights Immanuel Kant plato carnivores Greek philosophers Vegetarian Ethical question

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