In reading this Slate articlethis man has made the decision to be be a non-vegetarian, but to keep family peace he has accepted his vegetarian wife’s philosophical position that meat is, in fact, murder.
Per the wiki definition murder is generally thought to apply only to humans. Is it a valid position that the willful killing of animals is a type of murder?
Murder as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent (or malice aforethought), and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide. All jurisdictions, ancient and modern, consider it a most serious crime and therefore impose severe penalty on its commission. The word murder is related, in old English, to the French word mordre (bite) in reference to the heavy compensation one must pay for causing an unjust death.[1]
Generally, all forms of ethical vegetarianism appear to me to be little more than anthropomorphisation, i.e. applying human-made ethical and moral concepts to animals that clearly live by different standards (I mean, they kill each other for food, too), owing to the – somewhat arrogant – assumption that our system is the ‘more just’ one because of our higher reasoning capabilities (and, of course, that there is even a sense in which the ethics of a sentient species are applicable to non-sentient ones).
Not to defend the notion of killing animals being “murder”, but aren’t human ethics already applied in how we treat animals re not being unnecessarily cruel to them, and laws to that effect being on the books? If a man kicks the head of a kitten in because it scratched him is he guilty of “murder” or just cruelty?
Yes, and, to my mind rightly so, because the ‘humane’ treatment of animals can be seen as being ‘on the books’ not so much for the animals’ sake, but rather to make humans act humanly – in my opinion, the punishment can be seen as being exacted for the expression of cruelty, regardless of its object.
Also, it doesn’t curtail my ability to have a nice, juicy steak every now and then too much.
Morally speaking, ending an animal’s life to support your own [supermarkets aside] is survival. Veggies [such as my wife] say, “yes, but we have the choice to go to the supermarket, a lioness does not.”
The strength of that assertion is tenuous at best.
ETA: sometimes I look at my lonely grill and wonder if he would like more flesh upon it rather than tofuu burgers and veggies. I’ve yet to get an answer, so you can see who wins more arguments at the Phlosphr household.
I still don’t understand why meat is murder but vegetables aren’t. No matter what type of “ism” you subscribe to, something has to die or else you starve.
Well, you could eat only things that have died from natural causes.
Actually, I think there’s one strain of veganism (fruitarianism?) that only eat things that have fallen down from trees/bushes, though I suppose to really not disrupt the ‘natural’ circle of life, they’d also have to shit in the woods to disperse the seeds of whatever they’ve eaten. And perhaps it’ll one day be possible to just manufacture food ‘from scratch’, or eat things like lab-grown meat.
I think this “meat is murder” argument is used by a lot of vegetarians to put themselves up on a high horse. Of all the vegetarians I’ve known who subscribed to this philosophy, most had some sort of superiority complex, if only slightly. I suspect that if it were possible to mass produce lab-grown meat, these vegetarians would find yet another “moral” reason to avoid eating this and cast aspersions on those who do.
Well, you cannot just define a moral controversy out of existence. See “Marriage, Gay.” Murder is the wrongful killing of something that has a right to life. Who has a right to life? Sophisticated animal rights advocates like Peter Singer argue that you cannot make the right to life neatly circumscribe the human species because it is morally arbitrary; genetic makeup is no more morally relevant than race or gender. And you cannot make intelligence the arbiter because, among other reasons, some animals are smarter than some people. So the issue is a bit more complicated than you are making it out to be.
Sounds to me like you just tried to define the moral controversy into existence right there. What exactly makes your definition better than Todderbob’s?
See, I can get behind this. There is a debate over what animals deserve protection, and it is fairly arbitrary to divide “Humanity” from “Animals”, since we are animals. Different people draw the dividing line different places. It is worthwhile to have a healthy, honest discussion over this and maybe, just maybe, convince people that it is immoral to draw the dividing line “here” rather than “over there”.
People on their high horse shouting “Meat is Murder!!”, creating a black-and-white issue out of a “multiple lines on a continuum” debate, need to argue in good faith. People in this thread are just giving the silly “Meat is Murder” epigram the derision it deserves.
Because my definition focuses on the rights things have (which is important), not on some irrelevant factor like the number of chromosomes something has. I mean, seriously, if another intelligent species visited earth, would you say it is not murder to kill them because they are not human? That would make the category of ‘murder’ entirely arbitrary from a moral point of view, whereas the focus on rights makes it non-arbitrary.
Fair enough. And I was regrettably snarky in my previous post. But again, if you follow Singer’s argument out to its conclusion, then the right to life doesn’t end at the human species. So killing (most) animals for food is wrongful killing, i.e., murder. Now, the slogan is a little in your face, and from the standpoint of winning hearts and minds it probably does more harm than good. But that’s just a question of tactics; it doesn’t show that the slogan is false. And of course for Singer et al the slogan *isn’t *false.
You cannot argue with this, IMO. At its base, it is a question of what rights we will grant animals who cannot take them for themselves. My answer is, “Preferably, none,” but we aren’t really there any longer in the west. I don’t know how an animal rights supporter views eating meat, so I cannot speak for them.
A “meat is murder” individual has made some fairly radical assumptions about life which are far enough out of alignment with my own that I find discussion quite difficult.