I recently re-read this very good short article at Slate.com by the always though-provoking William Saletan, on an extremely important topic that is capturing more and more public thought and attention:
The Conscience of a Carnivore - It's time to stop killing meat and start growing it.
By William Saletan
http://www.slate.com/id/2142547/I've also now finally written, below, a statement of my personal moral philosophy, and thoughts on how it applies to entire topic.
Definitions:
RIGHT: maximizing good
WRONG: minimizing bad
GOOD: scarcity of suffering
BAD: prevalence of suffering
Suffering: the subjective experience of pain
If an entity is capable of suffering, then it is deserving of moral consideration (a "moral patient" as defined by Aristotle).
Aristotle also conceived of "moral agents," entities with the capacity of doing right and wrong. This is an important distinction because there is not a perfect overlap between moral patients and agents; realizing this clarifies many moral issues and confusion based on inadequate reasoning.
But what constitutes a moral agent?
Non-human animals can and do certainly hurt each other. But, they lack the autonomous will and ability to reason that are necessary to conceive of the suffering of others and to thus behave morally. As humans, we appear to be the only organisms on this planet, so far, that are capable of choosing to act for purposes other than our own survival and the perpetuation of our genes. This, I argue, makes us moral agents as well as moral patients.
As you can see, this distinction helps clarify, for example, that the argument that "eating meat is only natural and thus okay" is bullshit. That is, it's a logical fallacy: the Naturalistic Fallacy.
First, if something is taken to be "natural" (and interpretation of what constitutes natural is subject to debate), it simply does not follow that it is also morally right. Second, this particular argument ignores the fact that we humans alone have evolved the intelligence that makes us moral agents, and thus morally responsible for inflicting suffering and death on other beings.
Eating meat was crucial for survival of our distant ancestors, who were hunter-gatherers. For humans today, is not needed for survival or even health. As Saletan writes: "In the past two centuries, we've identified the nutrients in various kinds of meat, and we've learned how to get them instead from soy, nuts, and other vegetable sources. Meat has made us smart enough to figure out how we can live without it."
So eating meat is a mere preference, a satisfaction of an obsolete instinctual hunger, a trivial want.
By definition, all moral patients (i.e., all animals, humans and non-humans) have a
fundamental need to exist, and with minimal suffering. In satisfying our desire to eat meat, we routinely violate this need. It is wrong to value the trivial wants of one entity above the most fundamental needs of another.
We can reify this view, for the moment and just for illustration, by limiting our scope of consideration to the specific phenomenon of physical pain. Pain is a capacity that evolved to guide behavior of living a organism in response to damage and/or danger that threaten its existence and/or perpetuation (i.e., passing on of its genes via offspring and close relatives). Pain occurs via an organism's nervous system. Thus, a functioning nervous system is a necessary requirement for direct moral consideration.
(In a more general view, a nervous system would not be necessary, but merely sufficient. This would extend the scope of consideration to entities such as plants and, probably more importantly, artificial life-forms (AIs, robots, etc.). Consideration for the latter will become more and more relevant almost certainly sooner than most humans would imagine.)
Furthermore, the capacity for subjective experience of physical pain, which is the basis for moral consideration, exists on a
continuum, not as a dichotomy. Organisms with even very rudimentary nervous systems can experience pain. Moreover, organisms with very complex nervous systems—for example, highly intelligent animals such as humans, chimps, dolphins, parrots, etc.—are capable of a greater amount and variety of suffering, and thus deserving of greater moral consideration.
The point is that, with this view, the moral status of entities is an empirical question. That is, the capacity for and experience of suffering can be objectively observed and/or measured (e.g., neural structure and activity, behavioral responses). Thus, the power of science (a way of knowing) can be brought to bear to inform our morality.
Not only that, but we can use the power of our science to understand that, thanks to our evolutionary heritage, our species will still feel the desire to eat meat even after we have recognized that it is wrong. And finally, science will enable us to create solutions that work WITH our instincts AND do what is morally right (cease causing other animals to suffer and die). Namely: growing meat.
There's no sound reason to flinch at the idea of lab-grown meat. Simply imagine: once the technology is good enough to allow us to grow a complex of animal cells (in a lab, with no full organisms and thus no nervous system involved) that looks and tastes the same as meat culled from full organisms, what's the difference? If two hamburgers look, smell, and taste the same, then what reason would there be to choose the one that caused suffering and death over the one that did not?
Furthermore, above and beyond directly reducing widescale suffering and death of organisms that are moral patients, growing meat in vitro will eliminate (or at least drastically reduce) the enormous toll that is taken on the entire environment by raising animals to eat (e.g., massive amounts of grains grown and harvested, fossil fuels used, pollution). Slate.com now has some thoughtful articles on the purely environmental aspects of lab-grown meat, and of meat-eating vs. vegetarianism:
Will Lab-Grown Meat Save the Planet? Or Is It Only Good For Cows And Pigs?
By Brendan I. Koerner
http://www.slate.com/id/2191705/(Koerner notes the the technology still has a long way to go, but I think things may well develop faster than he predicts.)
Vegans vs. Vegetarians: What Kind Of Diet Is Best For The Environment?
By Brendan I. Koerner
http://www.slate.com/id/2176420/I'll end with two quotes from Saletan's article, which began with a contrast between widespread reaction in 2006 to the death of Barbaro (a racehorse) versus our consideration of the other animals we eat.
"...300 years from now, when our descendants look back at slaughterhouses the way we look back at slavery, they won't remember the benefits to us, any more than they'll remember our dried-up tears for a horse. They'll want to know whether we saw the moral calling of our age."
Saletan (re: the solution of lab-grown meat): "Our aspirations transcend our nature, but they have to respect it. To become what we must become, we have to work with what we are."
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