Affected Ignorance And Animal Suffering: Why Our Failure To Debate Factory Farming Puts Us At Moral Risk |
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Authors: | Nancy M Williams |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, Wofford College, 429 North Church Street, CPO 82, Spartanburg, SC 29303, USA |
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Abstract: | 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. |
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Keywords: | affected ignorance animal suffering cultural membership factory farming intellectual virtues meat eating moral ignorance responsibility |
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