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This is my starter - the essential ingredient in a chicken nugget. Not so much chicken, as it turns out.
Read all about it here.
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
PechaKucha
I've just been invited to a PechaKucha evening. Everyone gets 20 images and 20 seconds per image and presents...something.
This is my starter - the essential ingredient in a chicken nugget. Not so much chicken, as it turns out.
Read all about it here.
This is my starter - the essential ingredient in a chicken nugget. Not so much chicken, as it turns out.
Read all about it here.
Dissertation finished
Pen was put to paper and hey presto! He's my conclusion. I'm not posting the whole thing as it is being published by the University. I may work it into a book at some later date.
‘I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other....’ — Henry David Thoreau
CONCLUSION
It is clear that once we accept that we may use non-human animals as means to our ends, that we may eat them and that indeed many only exist because we eat them, it is very hard to argue against the means by which a particular farmer or industry chooses to operate. It is this acceptance which is morally wrong. There are a number of strong reasons for refusing it, and for choosing a vegetarian alternative to eating meat. The staggering evidence of the cruelty and suffering carried out in the modern factory farm might shame some into accepting that we have overstepped the mark, but does not, per se, provide grounds for a moral obligation. Indirect duties to animals as a result of accepted duties to moral agents may, by the back door as it were, result in a degree of vegetarianism. Appeals to compassion, to caring and virtuous living, may also have an impact on some individual’s choices. Jonathan Safran-Foer exemplifies such a sentiment in his book ‘Eating Animals’, when, after visiting a pig farm in the US, he is offered some ham as he is leaving:
‘I don’t want to eat it. I wouldn’t want to eat anything right now, my appetite having been lost to the sights and smells of the slaughterhouse. And I specifically don’t want to eat the contents of this plate, which were, not long ago, the contents of a pig in the waiting pen... something deep inside me - reasonable or unreasonable, aesthetic or ethical, selfish or compassionate - simply doesn’t want meat inside my body. For me, meat is not something to be eaten.’
If everyone felt and reacted as he did, the search for an ethical argument might be a moot point. Relying upon compassion to counterbalance profit and tradition is not going to work. It is clear that a more fundamental approach is required to provide a sound basis for arguing that we are morally obliged to leave off eating meat and treating non-humans animals as we do today.
Singer’s Preference Utilitarianism and Regan’s Rights View would seem able to offer such a grounding, despite the conflicts between the two. Both Regan and Singer offer plausible and viable means under which we are obliged to be vegetarian, but each opposes the others’ methodology in arriving at a similar stance. As Singer himself says, ‘The practical value of Regan’s book [The Case for Animal Rights] lies in its attack on our social practices of using animals as research tools and as mere lumps of palatable living flesh. On these practical issues Regan and I are in full agreement. Viewed from the perspective of a society which continues to accept these practices, the philosophical differences between us hardly matter.’ However, I would disagree. I think the philosophical differences do matter, because the means by which we arrive at our decisions must be valid and consistent. Ultimately, any form of utilitarianism cannot be so. Both Singer and Regan identify a need to recognise animals as persons, as having an relevant interest in moral decisions and therefore being accorded an equal consideration. The use of any quality we as a species may possess as a means by which to justify discrimination towards those without that quality has been shown to be seriously lacking in moral worth. Ultimately, a rights position, rather than a utilitarian one, provides a rational and logically consistent basis for vegetarianism - and indeed veganism. Only by recognising inherent value, personhood and the basic rights to freedom from captivity, harm and slaughter can we provide a sound ethical theory adequately protecting non-human animals.
In defending a rights view, I have taken on board Regan’s definition that ‘normal mammalian animals, aged one or more, as well as humans like these animals in the relevant respects, can intelligently and non-arbitrarily be viewed as having inherent value.' This of course leads to the question of intrinsic worth of those animals falling outside of this definition. What of a six-month old gorilla, or a one hundred and thirty year old giant tortoise?A sensible discussion of this would entail a further dissertation. It would involve Kant’s assertion that to do damage to a living creature ultimately damages the perpetrator and demeans humanity. It would appeal to the slippery slope and perhaps more to emotion than the preceding arguments. It would have analogies to the treatment of the environment, the ethics of clearing rainforests and the felling of 500 year old trees. In choosing one’s philosophical battles, one takes steps towards a larger goal - in this case a respect for the sanctity of all life. Recognising rights for a large section of non-human animals, as defined by Regan, would also ultimately soften our relationship to the rest of the natural world, and a commitment to vegetarianism or veganism globally would have repercussions beyond the immediate consequences of the arguments put forth in these pages.
‘I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other....’ — Henry David Thoreau
CONCLUSION
It is clear that once we accept that we may use non-human animals as means to our ends, that we may eat them and that indeed many only exist because we eat them, it is very hard to argue against the means by which a particular farmer or industry chooses to operate. It is this acceptance which is morally wrong. There are a number of strong reasons for refusing it, and for choosing a vegetarian alternative to eating meat. The staggering evidence of the cruelty and suffering carried out in the modern factory farm might shame some into accepting that we have overstepped the mark, but does not, per se, provide grounds for a moral obligation. Indirect duties to animals as a result of accepted duties to moral agents may, by the back door as it were, result in a degree of vegetarianism. Appeals to compassion, to caring and virtuous living, may also have an impact on some individual’s choices. Jonathan Safran-Foer exemplifies such a sentiment in his book ‘Eating Animals’, when, after visiting a pig farm in the US, he is offered some ham as he is leaving:
‘I don’t want to eat it. I wouldn’t want to eat anything right now, my appetite having been lost to the sights and smells of the slaughterhouse. And I specifically don’t want to eat the contents of this plate, which were, not long ago, the contents of a pig in the waiting pen... something deep inside me - reasonable or unreasonable, aesthetic or ethical, selfish or compassionate - simply doesn’t want meat inside my body. For me, meat is not something to be eaten.’
If everyone felt and reacted as he did, the search for an ethical argument might be a moot point. Relying upon compassion to counterbalance profit and tradition is not going to work. It is clear that a more fundamental approach is required to provide a sound basis for arguing that we are morally obliged to leave off eating meat and treating non-humans animals as we do today.
Singer’s Preference Utilitarianism and Regan’s Rights View would seem able to offer such a grounding, despite the conflicts between the two. Both Regan and Singer offer plausible and viable means under which we are obliged to be vegetarian, but each opposes the others’ methodology in arriving at a similar stance. As Singer himself says, ‘The practical value of Regan’s book [The Case for Animal Rights] lies in its attack on our social practices of using animals as research tools and as mere lumps of palatable living flesh. On these practical issues Regan and I are in full agreement. Viewed from the perspective of a society which continues to accept these practices, the philosophical differences between us hardly matter.’ However, I would disagree. I think the philosophical differences do matter, because the means by which we arrive at our decisions must be valid and consistent. Ultimately, any form of utilitarianism cannot be so. Both Singer and Regan identify a need to recognise animals as persons, as having an relevant interest in moral decisions and therefore being accorded an equal consideration. The use of any quality we as a species may possess as a means by which to justify discrimination towards those without that quality has been shown to be seriously lacking in moral worth. Ultimately, a rights position, rather than a utilitarian one, provides a rational and logically consistent basis for vegetarianism - and indeed veganism. Only by recognising inherent value, personhood and the basic rights to freedom from captivity, harm and slaughter can we provide a sound ethical theory adequately protecting non-human animals.
In defending a rights view, I have taken on board Regan’s definition that ‘normal mammalian animals, aged one or more, as well as humans like these animals in the relevant respects, can intelligently and non-arbitrarily be viewed as having inherent value.' This of course leads to the question of intrinsic worth of those animals falling outside of this definition. What of a six-month old gorilla, or a one hundred and thirty year old giant tortoise?A sensible discussion of this would entail a further dissertation. It would involve Kant’s assertion that to do damage to a living creature ultimately damages the perpetrator and demeans humanity. It would appeal to the slippery slope and perhaps more to emotion than the preceding arguments. It would have analogies to the treatment of the environment, the ethics of clearing rainforests and the felling of 500 year old trees. In choosing one’s philosophical battles, one takes steps towards a larger goal - in this case a respect for the sanctity of all life. Recognising rights for a large section of non-human animals, as defined by Regan, would also ultimately soften our relationship to the rest of the natural world, and a commitment to vegetarianism or veganism globally would have repercussions beyond the immediate consequences of the arguments put forth in these pages.
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