On vegetarianism,morality, and science: A counter reply

I recently took issue with Kathryn George's contention that vegetarianism cannot be a moral obligation for most human beings, even assuming that Tom Regan's stringent thesis about the equal inherent value of humans and many sentient nonhumans is correct. I argued that both Regan and George are incorrect in claiming that his view would permit moral agents to kill and eat innocent, non-threatening rights holders. An unequal rights view, by contrast, would permit such actions if a moral agent's health or life is at stake. I then argued that current nutritional research does not support Professor George's claim that some wealthy adult males (and many fewer wealthy women) are the only persons whose health does not require the consumption of nonhuman animals and their products. In her 1992 response to my critique, George did not address my moral argumentation. She concentrated her entire paper on a wholesale rejection of my discussion of nutrition. Although she now takes a somewhat more moderate position on who can safely contemplate strict vegetarianism, she still believes that most people are not in a position to follow such a diet. In my counter-reply, I argue that her rejection is based upon numerous distortions, omissions, and false charges of fallacy. She even devotes a substantial section of her paper to criticizing me for saying the opposite of what I actually wrote. As I did in my earlier paper, I cite current research, including George's own preferred source on the topic of vegetarianism, to support my view. I conclude that Professor George has still not shown that for most human beings it is dangerous to follow a diet that omits nonhuman animals and their products. Moral agents who take the rights of humansand nonhumans seriously will find vegetarianism well worth considering.     

Obligations to animals are based on rights

Some feminist philosophers criticize the idea of human rights because, they allege, it encapsulates male bias; it is therefore misguided, in their view, to extend moral rights to non-human animals. I argue that the feminist criticism is misguided. Ideas are not biased in favour of men simply because they originate with men, nor are ideas themselves biased in favour of men because men have used them prejudicially. As for the position that women should abandon theories of rights and embrace an ethic that emphasizes care: women who made this choice would not so much liberate themselves from the patriarchy as they would conform to its representation of women as emotional, subjective and irrational. There is, then, no good reason to withhold ascribing rights to non-human animals, based on the criticisms of rights made by some feminists.Some of the material in the discussion of the feminist critique of rights originally appeared in my The Case for Animal Rights: A Decade's Passing inA Quarter Century of Value Inquiry: Presidential Addresses of the American Society of Value Inquiry, edited by Richard T. Hull, pp. 451–455. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1994. These passages are reprinted with the permission of the editor and publisher, whose thoughtful co-operation is gratefully acknowledged.     

We should not allow dissection of animals

This essay argues against routine dissection exercises on animals under three headings. First, attaining goals of general scientific education does not require dissection. The training of specialists, in whose vocations dissection skills are essential, could then be accomplished without killing animals specifically for the purpose of acquiring those skills. Second, killing and dissecting animals for unnecessary exercises teaches students bad attitudes toward animal life. Third, moral principles cannot justify killing and dissecting animals but not humans; consequently, such treatment of animals is prejudiced exploitation of the weak by the strong.     

Who can be morally obligated to be a vegetarian?

Kathryn Paxton George has recently argued that vegetarianism cannot be a moral obligation for most human beings, even if Tom Regan is correct in arguing that humans and certain nonhuman animals are equally inherently valuable. She holds that Regan's liberty principle permits humans to kill and eat innocent others who have a right to life, provided that doing so prevents humans from being made worse off. George maintains that obstaining from meat and dairy products would in fact make most humans worse off. I argue that Regan's liberty principle either contradicts his equal rights view or does not permit the slaughter of another for food. I show that a different view recognizing the moral rights of nonhumans but according them less value than normal adult humans, the unequal rights view, would permit such action if human survival or health depended upon it. However, it would also permit the slaughter of innocent humans in the same circumstances. Finally, I argue that current nutritional research does not support George's contention that most humans would suffer if they ceased eating other animals and their products.     

Utilitarian killing,replacement, and rights

The ethical theory underlying much of our treatment of animals in agriculture and research is the moral agency view. It is assumed that only moral agents, or persons, are worthy of maximal moral significance, and that farm and laboratory animals are not moral agents. However, this view also excludes human non-persons from the moral community. Utilitarianism, which bids us maximize the amount of good (utility) in the world, is an alternative ethical theory. Although it has many merits, including impartiality and the extension of moral concern to all sentient beings, it also appears to have many morally unacceptable implications. In particular, it appears to sanction the killing of innocents when utility would be maximized, including cases in which we would deliberately kill and replace a being, as we typically do to animals on farms and in laboratories. I consider a number of ingenious recent attempts by utilitarians to defeat the killing and replaceability arguments, including the attempt to make a place for genuine moral rights within a utilitarian framework. I conclude that utilitarians cannot escape the killing and replaceability objections. Those who reject the restrictive moral agency view and find they cannot accept utilitarianism's unsavory implications must look to a different ethical theory to guide their treatment of humans and non-humans.     

Naturalness: Beyond Animal Welfare

There is an ongoing debate in animalethics on the meaning and scope of animalwelfare. In certain broader views, leading anatural life through the development of naturalcapabilities is also headed under the conceptof animal welfare. I argue that a concern forthe development of natural capabilities of ananimal such as expressed when living freelyshould be distinguished from the preservationof the naturalness of its behavior andappearance. However, it is not always clearwhere a plea for natural living changes overinto a plea for the preservation of theirnaturalness or wildness. In the first part ofthis article, I examine to what extent theconcerns for natural living meet ``theexperience requirement.' I conclude that someof these concerns go beyond welfare. In thesecond part of the article. I ask whether wehave moral reasons to respect concernsfor the naturalness of an animal's living thattranscend its welfare. I argue that the moralrelevance of such considerations can be graspedwhen we see animals as entities bearingnon-moral intrinsic values. In my view the``natural' appearance and behavior of an animalmay embody intrinsic values. Caring for ananimal's naturalness should then be understoodas caring for such intrinsic values. Intrinsicvalues provide moral reasons for action iffthey are seen as constitutive of the good lifefor humans. I conclude by reinterpreting,within the framework of a perfectionist ethicaltheory, the notion of indirect dutiesregarding animals, which go beyond andsupplement the direct duties towardsanimals.     

Agriculture,ethics, and restrictions on property rights

The argument in this essay is twofold. (1) Procedural justice requires,in particular cases, that we restrict property rights in natural resources, e.g., California agricultural land or Appalachian coal land. (2) Conditions imposed by Locke's political theory and by dense population require,in general, that we restrict property rights in finite or non-renewable natural resources such as land. If these arguments are correct, then we have a moral imperative to use land-use controls (such as taxation, planning, zoning, and acreage limitations) to restructure land ownership and land use in a far more radical way than has ever been accomplished in the past.     

Pluralism,The Ethical Matrix,and Coming to Conclusions

The ethical matrix approach was developed by Prof Ben Mepham and his colleagues at the University of Nottingham in the early 1990s. Since then the approach has received increasing attention and has been used by several researchers in different projects related to assessing ethical impacts of different food production technologies and other policy options of societal concern. The ethical matrix is sometimes understood simply as a checklist of ethical concerns, but might also be seen as a guide to coming to conclusions on moral questions. The problem I discuss in this paper relates to how using the ethical matrix method as a decision guide can be combined with respecting pluralism. The aim of the paper is to suggest a framework making it possible to – at the same time – enhance public justification of judgments and respect pluralism. I argue that pluralism is fundamental to the ethical matrix approach; I distinguish between intuitionist principled pluralism and societal value pluralism; and I show how both kinds of pluralism imply restrictions on how conclusions can be made. No substantive moral decision principles can be allowed. Still, I argue, decision principles of a more epistemological or procedural character can be acceptable even within pluralism. The pragmatist principle of inquiry is defended as an account of moral problem solving compatible with both principled pluralism and value pluralism. When an ethical matrix is used within such a participatory inquiry process substantive conclusions can be drawn.     

Norton’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Sustainability</Emphasis>: Some Comments on Risk and Sustainability

Bryan Norton’s 2005 book Sustainability describes a pragmatic approach to environmental philosophy that stresses philosophy’s role as one of mediating between scientific and ordinary language. But on two topics, Norton’s approach is not pragmatic enough. In the case of his discussion of risk, he accedes to a scientific notion that fails to acknowledge the way that ordinary usage of the word risk involves pragmatic links to human action and moral responsibility. With respect to the word sustainability, his analysis fails to acknowledge important scientific work that characterizes the functional integrity of system cycling, opting instead for usage grounded either in economic accounting or in an even less substantive sense of a broad social movement for environmental improvement. On each of these topics, adherence to the pragmatic orientation of Norton’s philosophy results in a different analysis of the concepts in question.     

The Moral Philosophy of Automobiles

The ethics of technology use has tended to arise from the theory of the role of technology in human life and society and thus introduces a bias into moral assessment of such use. I propose a dialectical method of morally assessing a technology use without such a preset notion. Instead the assumption is that the moral agent is as responsible for use of a technology as for any other moral action of the agent, that is, the individual’s use of a technology is a moral action that can be morally assessed. I apply this outlook to automobile use, weighing its moral pros and cons, such as in terms of autonomy, environmental degradation, land use, health hazards, and other moral drawbacks arising from the technology’s use or non-use. Although the conclusion leaves the final moral assessment undecided, the method points to a way fairly to assess morally the use of technologies in terms of human betterment and environmental and health concerns, minimizing biases from assumptions of the role or nature of technologies.     

Use and abuse revisited: Response to Pluhar and Varner

In her recent Counter-Reply to my views, Evelyn Pluhar defends her use of literature on nutrition and restates her argument for moral vegetarianism. In his Vegan Ideal article, Gary Varner claims that the nutrition literature does not show sufficient differences among women, men, and children to warrant concern about discrimination. In this response I show how Professor Pluhar continues to draw fallacious inferences: she begs the question on equality, avoids the main issue in my ethical arguments, argues from irrelevancies, misquotes her sources, equivocates on context, confuses safety with morality, appeals to fear, confuses correlation with cause, fails to evaluate scientific studies, draws hasty conclusions from insufficient data, ignores a large amount of data which would call her views into question, does not follow good scientific or moral argumentation, objectionably exceeds the limits of her expertise, and resorts to scapegoating. I also argue that Professor Varner fails to make his case because he offers virtually no evidence from scientific studies on nutrition, relies on outdated and fallacious sources, makes unsupported claims, ignores evidence that would contravene his claims, draws hasty conclusions based on weakly supported hypotheses rather than facts, employs a double standard, appeals to ignorance, does not evaluate arguments from his sources, and makes anad hominem attack on a respected nutritionist when his focus should be on evaluating the evidence and arguments from the scientific studies themselves. Neither Varner nor Pluhar have responded sufficiently to the real issue in my arguments, that of discrimination and bias in the vegan ideal.     

Is there a morally relevant difference between human and animal nonpersons?

It is commonly believed that we humans are justified in exploiting animals because we are higher beings:persons who have highly complex, autonomous lives as moral agents. However, there are many marginal humans who are not and never will be persons. Those who think it is permissible to exploit animal nonpersons but wrong to do the same to human nonpersons must show that there is a morally relevant difference between the two groups. Speciesists, who believe that membership in a species whose normal adults are persons is sufficient for a right to life, attempt to do just this. As the failure of the best arguments which can be marshalled on their behalf indicates, they are unable to justify their view. I conclude that, although there is a morally relevant difference between human nonpersons and most animal nonpersons, this difference is not an indication of superior moral status. We would do better to abandon speciesism and the assumption thatpersonhood is morally paramount for a view which implies that both human and nonhuman nonpersons are morally considerable and have a right to life.     

Vegetarianism,morality, and science revisited

Professor Kathryn George's Use and Abuse Revisited does not contain an accurate assessment of my On Vegetarianism, Morality, and Science: A Counter Reply. I show that she has misrepresented my moral and empirical argumentation.     

The foundations of planetary agrarianism. Thomas Berry and Liberty Hyde Bailey

The challenge of pursuing sustainability in agriculture is often viewed as mainly or wholly technical in nature, requiring the reform of farming methods and the development and adoption of alternative technologies. Likewise, the purpose of sustainability is frequently cast in utilitarian terms, as a means of protecting a valuable resource (i.e., soil) and of satisfying market demands for healthy, tasty food. Paul B. Thompson has argued that the embrace of these views by many in the consumer/environmental movement enables easy co-optation by agribusiness. It also reflects a critical weakness in this movement: a lack of commitment to philosophical principles that depart from the utilitarian premises of the industrial model of agriculture. This paper draws on the writings of Thomas Berry and Liberty Hyde Bailey to identify the philosophical principles of what we call planetary agrarianism. From the perspective of planetary agrarianism, the pursuit of sustainability is a broad and challenging moral, educational, and political task. Berry helps us see that it is fundamentally a project of worldview transition, which requires a new cultural narrative that must rival, in form and appeal, the mythic power of the utilitarian industrial vision. Liberty Hyde Bailey, author of The Holy Earth (1915) and a leader in the land-grant education and nature-study movements, took up the project of worldview transition in his life work. While in some ways dated and flawed, Bailey’s writings are a valuable source of guidance for developing and pursuing a viable philosophy of agriculture for the 21st century.     

Taking Humanism Seriously: ``Obligatory' Anthropocentrism

Humanism – in the sense that humans alonehave moral standing, or else a surpassing degree of it– has traditionally dominated all of ethicaldiscourse. However, its past formulations havesuccumbed to the temptation merely to stipulate sucha criterion, such as rationality, which nonhumans areoften deemed (without sufficient argument) to failwithout exception. Animal liberationistarguments do exist in counterpoint to traditionalhumanism, but one current difficulty seems to be asimple clash of basic assumptions, with an indecisiveresult. Although the author of this paper is anonanthropocentrist, he attempts to further the moraltheoretical debate by constructing a more powerfulversion of humanism, based in a pursuit of the good,per se. The theory is premised upon viewing humans asgenerally having and leading lives of greater value,in some relevant sense. This essay prefigures theauthor's refutation of humanism, more generally, inthe understanding that such a world view cannot trulybe refuted unless its best version is answered.Whatever the status of this paper's offering of``Obligatory' Anthropocentrism, the theory can be seento have a great deal more success than itspredecessors in parrying, and apparently outdoing,contemporary animal liberationist philosophies.     

Norton and Passmore on Valuing Nature

Norton argues on pragmatic “Deweyan” grounds that we should cease to ask scientists for value neutral definitions of “sustainability,” developed independently of moral and social values, to guide our environmental policy making debates. “Sustainability,” like human “health,” is a normative concept from the start—one that cannot be meaningfully developed by scientists or economists without input by all the stake holders affected. While I endorse Norton’s approach, I question his apparent presumption that concern for sustainability for the future is at odds with and ought to trump concern for enhancement in the present of public opportunities to access the goods nature represents. I argue that the two are not separable in practice. I argue for Passmore’s position that unless we take care to enhance equitable access to the good and services nature represents in the present, we cannot succeed in promoting sustainability for future generations.     

Discrimination and bias in the vegan ideal

The vegan ideal is entailed by arguments for ethical veganism based on traditional moral theory (rights and/or utilitarianism) extended to animals. The most ideal lifestyle would abjure the use of animals or their products for food since animals suffer and have rights not to be killed. The ideal is discriminatory because the arguments presuppose a male physiological norm that gives a privileged position to adult, middle-class males living in industrialized countries. Women, children, the aged, and others have substantially different nutritional requirements and would bear a greater burden on vegetarian and vegan diets with respect to health and economic risks, than do these males. The poor and many persons in Third World nations live in circumstances that make the obligatory adoption of such diets, where they are not already a matter of sheer necessity, even more risky.Traditional moral theorists (such as Evelyn Pluhar and Gary Varner whose essays appear in this issue) argue that those who are at risk would beexcused from a duty to attain the virtue associated with ethical vegan lifestyles. The routine excuse of nearly everyone in the world besides adult, middle-class males in industrialized countries suggests bias in the perspective from which traditional arguments for animal rights and (utilitarian) animal welfare are formulated.     

Sentience,Rationality, and Moral Status: A Further Reply to Hsiao

Timothy Hsiao argues that animals lack moral status because they lack the sort of higher-level rationality required for membership in the moral community. Stijn Bruers and László Erd?s have already raised a number of objections to this argument, to which Hsiao has replied with some success. But I think a stronger critique can be made. Here I raise further objections to three aspects of Hsiao’s view: his conception of the moral community, his idea of root capacities grounded in one’s nature, and his explanation of why cruelty is wrong. I also argue that sentience is a more plausible candidate for the morally salient capacity than rationality.     

Affected Ignorance And Animal Suffering: Why Our Failure To Debate Factory Farming Puts Us At Moral Risk

It is widely recognized that our social and moral environments influence our actions and belief formations. We are never fully immune to the effects of cultural membership. What is not clear, however, is whether these influences excuse average moral agents who fail to scrutinize conventional norms. In this paper, I argue that the lack of extensive public debate about factory farming and, its corollary, extreme animal suffering, is probably due, in part, to affected ignorance. Although a complex phenomenon because of its many manifestations, affected ignorance is morally culpable because it involves a choice not to investigate whether some practice in which one participates in might be immoral. I contend further that James Montmarquet’s set of intellectual virtues can provide a positive account of what it means to act as a responsible moral agent while immersed in a meat eating culture; they also represent the moral and epistemic framework for the kind of public discourse that should be taking place.     

Transferring Moral Responsibility for Technological Hazards: The Case of GMOs in Agriculture

The use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture makes great promises of better seeds, but also raises many controversies about ownership of seeds and about potential hazards. I suggest that owners of these seeds bear the responsibility to do no harm in using these seeds. After defining the nature of this responsibility, this paper asks, if ownership entails moral responsibility, and ownership can be transferred, then how is moral responsibility transferred? Building on the literature on use plans, I suggest five conditions for a good transfer of moral responsibility for genetically modified seeds. I also look at the Monsanto Technology Use Guide and Technology/Stewardship Agreement, as an examplar of a use plan, to explore the extent to which these conditions are present. I conclude that use plans can play a role in the distribution and transfer of moral responsibility for technologies with high benefits and potential harmful uncertainties.