Protect the valuable interest:
P1. If someone has an interest which is worth to protect, then she has a moral right that his interest be respected. [Premise]
P2. An interest which it is worth to protect is the interest to avoid pain. [Premise]
K1. If someone has and interest to avoid pain, then she has a moral right that his interest be respected. [From P1 and P2]
P3. If someone can feel pain, then she has an interest to avoid pain. [Premise, I think true by definition]
P4. Most animals can feel pain. [Premise, undeniable Empirical truth]
K2. Most animals have an interest to avoid pain. [From P3 and P4]
K3. Most animals have a moral right that their interest to avoid pain be respected. [From K1 and K2]
Note that the argument is not necessarily utilitarian. Everybody who accepts premise one can use it in his moral theory.
So, what can we say about the premises?
I think P1 can be pretty much to be hold to be true which mostly follows because it is nearly an analytic truth that an interest which is worth to protect generates a moral claim by the holder of the interest to protect the interest. The question is of course, whether there are interests worth to protect. But that seems obvious.
P2 seems to me also undeniable: That pain is a bad thing and that being which suffer should be relieved from the suffering and that we should abstain from inflicting pain on beings (as far as it is possible) seem all very uncontroversial moral claims.
P3 I also hold to be true and nearly true by definition. I seems to me that the very definition of pain includes that the being who suffers it exemplifies pain avoiding behaviour.
You will surely ask: But what about the masochist? Maybe I would say that he is not in pain. Surely he might have the same qualia, but his reaction on them is totally different. So, maybe we shouldn't describe his mental state as pain in a strict sense, only in a qualia sense. At least it wouldn't be wrong to inflict pain on the masochist, because he prefers pain to non-pain (at least on some occasions), while it is wrong to inflict pains normally, because the avoiding behaviour clearly shows that beings prefer non-pain to pain.
P4 seems to me to be an empirical truth.
Some people might question this premise by saying that we can't know anything about how animals feel, because first they are different from humans and second because they can't tell us what they exactly feel. (I call this the Gunther-Argument)
But, I mean, facing the problem of other minds with regards to humans, how can we tell that a human is in pain? Obviously through his behaviour. So, we infer from certain kinds of behaviour that humans feel pain. But, most animals also exemplify obvious pain related behaviour. So, we have no good reason to think that these animals can't feel pain. And if we accept evolutionary theory, what good reason do we have to believe that animals which are "closely related" to us like mammals, do not feel the same when they show certain kinds of behaviour???
So, maybe one could say something against the premises, but I don't see what. This argument can't really establish vegetarianism in a full sense. This because if we kill animals painless and they didn't suffer before because they serve as our meatproducing facilities and if we can assume that most animals we want to eat can have no concept of what it means to be dead and can therefore have no interest in being not dead, we could eat the meat of such animals and would not violate any of their interest. Still it establishes vegetarianism under circumstances we now live in, because it seems very improbable that the animals whose meat we consume lived under happy conditions and were killed painless. I don't know if cows have a conception of what its like to be dead, but I seriously doubt it.
Another argument which we might bring up is the following:
Shift the burden of prove: It seems obvious that killing animals and inflicting pain on them is morally suspect. We think that killing or being cruel to animals at least needs some justification. So, the non-vegetarian has to give us a good argument why killing and being cruel to animals to get their meat is morally o.k.. This shifts the burden of proof to the non-vegetarian. My further claim would then be to say that there are no good arguments the non-vegetarian could bring up (at least everything I heard so far was crap), so non-vegetarianism is unjustified.
P2. An interest which it is worth to protect is the interest to avoid pain. [Premise]
K1. If someone has and interest to avoid pain, then she has a moral right that his interest be respected. [From P1 and P2]
P3. If someone can feel pain, then she has an interest to avoid pain. [Premise, I think true by definition]
P4. Most animals can feel pain. [Premise, undeniable Empirical truth]
K2. Most animals have an interest to avoid pain. [From P3 and P4]
K3. Most animals have a moral right that their interest to avoid pain be respected. [From K1 and K2]
Note that the argument is not necessarily utilitarian. Everybody who accepts premise one can use it in his moral theory.
So, what can we say about the premises?
I think P1 can be pretty much to be hold to be true which mostly follows because it is nearly an analytic truth that an interest which is worth to protect generates a moral claim by the holder of the interest to protect the interest. The question is of course, whether there are interests worth to protect. But that seems obvious.
P2 seems to me also undeniable: That pain is a bad thing and that being which suffer should be relieved from the suffering and that we should abstain from inflicting pain on beings (as far as it is possible) seem all very uncontroversial moral claims.
P3 I also hold to be true and nearly true by definition. I seems to me that the very definition of pain includes that the being who suffers it exemplifies pain avoiding behaviour.
You will surely ask: But what about the masochist? Maybe I would say that he is not in pain. Surely he might have the same qualia, but his reaction on them is totally different. So, maybe we shouldn't describe his mental state as pain in a strict sense, only in a qualia sense. At least it wouldn't be wrong to inflict pain on the masochist, because he prefers pain to non-pain (at least on some occasions), while it is wrong to inflict pains normally, because the avoiding behaviour clearly shows that beings prefer non-pain to pain.
P4 seems to me to be an empirical truth.
Some people might question this premise by saying that we can't know anything about how animals feel, because first they are different from humans and second because they can't tell us what they exactly feel. (I call this the Gunther-Argument)
But, I mean, facing the problem of other minds with regards to humans, how can we tell that a human is in pain? Obviously through his behaviour. So, we infer from certain kinds of behaviour that humans feel pain. But, most animals also exemplify obvious pain related behaviour. So, we have no good reason to think that these animals can't feel pain. And if we accept evolutionary theory, what good reason do we have to believe that animals which are "closely related" to us like mammals, do not feel the same when they show certain kinds of behaviour???
So, maybe one could say something against the premises, but I don't see what. This argument can't really establish vegetarianism in a full sense. This because if we kill animals painless and they didn't suffer before because they serve as our meatproducing facilities and if we can assume that most animals we want to eat can have no concept of what it means to be dead and can therefore have no interest in being not dead, we could eat the meat of such animals and would not violate any of their interest. Still it establishes vegetarianism under circumstances we now live in, because it seems very improbable that the animals whose meat we consume lived under happy conditions and were killed painless. I don't know if cows have a conception of what its like to be dead, but I seriously doubt it.
Another argument which we might bring up is the following:
Shift the burden of prove: It seems obvious that killing animals and inflicting pain on them is morally suspect. We think that killing or being cruel to animals at least needs some justification. So, the non-vegetarian has to give us a good argument why killing and being cruel to animals to get their meat is morally o.k.. This shifts the burden of proof to the non-vegetarian. My further claim would then be to say that there are no good arguments the non-vegetarian could bring up (at least everything I heard so far was crap), so non-vegetarianism is unjustified.
4 comments:
The notorious commenter is here again...
In my opinion, vegetarianism is an excellent applied ethics question. Many interesting arguments. And it also forces one to consider the internalism of moral judgements.
I have two questions regarding your text:
1) What about the interest of future generations? If we go 100 % vegetarian, there will not be any cows in the future. Assuming cows under non-vegetarianism at least have a life worth living, will this not be bad?
2) I think one of the most pressing questions the debate on vegetarianism brings up is the responsibility of the consumer. Is the market a morally-free zone? We often talk about the responsibility of the consumer, and implicitly we defends the producer when we say "it is all driven by consumer demand". I would propose a shift of responsibility to the producer. The people who actually treat animals bad are the ones who ought to change their behavior - not the single meat eating consumer. This might seem like a weak and cowardly response, but I think it is important. The market has to be regulated from the top, not from the bottom, otherwise adverse selection will be impossible to overcome. (this point needs more spelling out than I have room for here). However, this last objection has of course no real force for non-vegetarianism today, since in the present world most animals are de facto not being treated as they morally deserve.
Hmm
1) I don't see why there shouldn't be any cows anymore: First, eating cheese and drinking milk might still be o.k., though there might be good points against it. Second, I don't see why we should allow a species to die out, only because we don't want to eat them anymore. We think that whales and elefants should be in the world, without wanting to eat them. If it would be bad to have no cows, then surely morality would demand that if we stop eating them, we should still preserve a sufficient number of them.
Then there are other questions: If the only options where "the world is as it now is" or "everybody is a vegetarian", then the second option might still be preferable, because the life of cows in the first option might be so miserable.
2) I agree that there should be a lot of responsibility on the side of the producer. I think that is actually what animals rights organisations campain for. But, I don't see how this should free the consumer from any responsibility himself: Sure, it would be nicer if the producers dealt with the thing, but as long as we live in a world in which producers don't do so, the best course of action for the consumer seems to me to abstain from meat (or at least from meat from "immoral producers"). The same surely holds in other areas: If a company is knows to seriously violate human rights, then surely there should be regulation from the top. But, it would still be the best action from the consumers point of view to abstain from buyinf products from these companies. On my point of view this is the minimal share the consumer can bear in this issue.
I'll leave the whole responsibility-in-the-market debate aside, since I think it is too big.
However, you missed the crucial point of my first question. It is not about preserving the spieces or not. Surely there will still be some cows left in a vegetarian society. But there will absolutely not be nearly as many. So, on face of it we have to choose between a future population of "a few" very happy cows, or "many" not so happy cows. The choice is not at all straight forward (as long as the not so happy cows have lifes worth liviing).
Making this point regarding cows may be a bit silly, but since this is a philosophy blog, I hope the general point is carried through.
Finally, regarding your last point in 1) "If the only options where ...", I do not think these are the only options. As you pointed out; it is possible to be a non-vegetarian and an animals rights proponent at the same time.
Hey this is Don from PPP.
Nice blog!
If animals have a right to avoid pain and suffering, how should the carnivores in nature be dealt with? There seems to be a conflict of rights because a carnivore has the right to avoid pain and suffering from starvation, and the only way to protect this right is to eat flesh.
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