Not So Humble Pie
The NYT has just announced the finalists for its essay contest on the ethics of meat eating (here). Alas, my entry is not there, so I may as well stick it up for people to see (here).
This is one of those topics on which people are even more liable to disagree with me than usual, and even potentially to take offence at my opinions, so I should probably add a few qualifiers. The piece is very short (600 words), which is a very small space in which to express an argument. If you think it’s glib, well, that’s the reason. It also makes appeals to a few important notions: action, value, beauty, art, freedom, that I have almost no space to define adequately, though I give it my best shot. They’re all used fairly precisely, so, if in doubt, read it a couple times (it is short after all!). Finally, although I’m arguing for the ethical soundness of eating meat, I’m arguing for a general principle, not for the specifics of its application. There are all sorts of exceptions and qualifications that could usefully be added to what I say, but again, there’s no space for them.
Those points aside, I’m fairly pleased with the piece, and rather enjoyed writing something short for a change. May try more of it once my current standing commitments are out of the way. Till then, enjoy!
April 21, 2012 at 5:56 pm
not so humble at all
April 25, 2012 at 8:07 pm
Great essay. i think i’d say created rather than art, ie a person is created, and I’m not quite sure why value has to be one thing. Can’t pain be bad in one way, and freedom be another source of something different? Can’t it both be better if animals don’t suffer and for it to be ok to kill and eat them? I think so.
By the way, if it had been longer and more precise I wouldn’t have read it.
May 2, 2012 at 9:20 am
There’s an important distinction between different things being valuable for different reasons, which I’m totally happy to accept, and there being different sources of value, which I’m not. So, there might be good reasons to treat animals in certain ways, but I think that they’d be importantly different from the reasons we have for treating persons in certain ways. There are lots of complex arguments to be had here, but my core point is that they shouldn’t be utilitarian ones regarding overall quantities of pleasure or pain. I wrote about this stuff in a bit more depth in a couple posts a while back, but I don’t know if you’d be willing to read them!
In order of length, try:-
http://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/the-rational-animal/
http://deontologistics.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/brandom-and-ethics/