I want to know if the following argument makes sense. Let me know what you think.
In case there is any suspicion, I am absolutely not writing a Philosophy paper.
Suppose an individual is confronted while eating meat, and the morality of his activity is questioned. The carnivore defends himself by pointing out that the being he is consuming obviously does not have mental experiences that even remotely compare to his own. The chicken might feel some “fear” and even some affection for other chickens, but the chicken’s mental life is probably less sophisticated than our mental lives are during our dream states. The chicken can’t feel deep love, deep anguish, etc, and therefore, so the carnivore argues, its concerns really don’t match up with his own. So it’s alright if he eats his chicken sandwich.
Now, suppose the existence of a being whose mental relationship to human beings is just that of a human being to a chicken. The depth to which it can feel love and sorrow vastly outstrips those of any human. Its ability to appreciate art is vastly greater - Beethoven’s 9th would seem like a tired cliche to this being.
And this being has an appetite. It shows up in the restaurant and makes clear his desire to consume the very carnivore we have been discussing.
By the meat-eater’s own logic, there is no problem with this super-being consuming him. How can this mere human’s concerns be compared with those of the magnificent creature I have suggested?
Edit: The title of my thread is deceptive. I meant to ask whether my rebuttal is valid, not whether this is a knock-down argument against meat consumption.
Justifications for not caring about “lesser beings” are cheap. The fact is, if you care one whit about it, you don’t kill it and eat it - assuming you care about it as something other than a source of protien, that is. And if you don’t care about it, and its suffering and/or death serve a sufficiently compelling purpose for you, then no further justification is necessary.
If the carnivore felt it necessary too defend his collection of food resources with an extravagant reason that called into play existence, and mind and greatness/lesserness i would think that he maybe had a bit of a self doubt complex. You eat what you eat. We don’t eat plants because they are lesser, we eat them because they are food. The same goes for chickens. Feeling guilt about it is kind of ridiculous IMO.
The constructs of guilt and innocence are social concepts that do not apply to food webs, as near as i can figure, in any meaningful way.
Holy crap, I’m a superior being ?! I always suspected. Form a tidy buffet line, Earthlings.
OK, more serious answer : when I’m eating my steak, I don’t bask in my superiority to cows. I praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster that cows are tasty, nutritious and easy to obtain. If lions or superior beings were both tasty and practical to domesticate, I’d probably be eating them. Just as I expect lions or superior beings would eat me, if I had any meat on my bones, that meat was tasty and I was easy to domesticate.
The last bit is likely to be the deal breaker, though. Healthy humans are a bitch to keep in pens - even humans have a hard time doing it.
Ah, but there’s nothing in the OP that suggests the hypothetical organism has better technology than us, just that it’s some kind of alien super-emo, in which case I can always hide in the blind spot created by the dyed-black bangs hanging over its eyes.
As far as the morality of eating other beings, I would not eat my cat because I have a personal relationship with her. However, if cats were delicious I would have no problem eating someone else’s.
To answer the OP; the superiority or lack of, a species has no bearing on whether I find it consumable. If chickens where highly intelligent but could not defend themselves any better than they do now, they would still be dinner. Their appreciation for fine art would have no bearing upon my need for survival and nutrition. And if there were a more emotionally advanced being who wanted to eat me, it is still up to me to survive. It’s not the responsibility of the higher being to change diets.
You seem to be refering to a sort of ‘survival guilt’ where a being might deprive itself of food for emotional reasons.
Let’s bear in mind that if you didn’t catch and kill the chicken personally, you’re not a “carnivore,” you’re a scavenger: it’s just well-preserved carrion.
Also, in this day and age, it turns out you do not need chickens for either survival or nutrition. You’re eating them for other reasons.
I find it truly obscure that a few of those who have responded to my post have essentially invoked a “just world” theory of eating. If such people would like to reject normativity and believe that whatever happens is whatever happens, so be it. But I’m talking ethics here.
And at least one person suggested that the consumption of meat is about feeding yourself. Given that meat is a very expensive way to gain nutrients in our society, there is just about nobody who really needs to eat meat in the first world.
Eating isn’t solely about “gaining nutrients”. If it were, we’re be eating the optimal nutritional meal, every day, three times a day, without variation. Or better yet, we’d hook up a glucose IV drip and pop protein & vitamin pills.
Also, if you believe farming doesn’t involve killing animals, you’re kidding yourself. They’re just not the cute kind of anthropomorphizable animal. And in any case, considering plants are living creatures as well, I don’t see how eating them and only them gives anyone a moral high ground.
If I’m out swimming in the ocean and a Great White Shark mistakes me for a sea lion and eats me, that’s sad for my family, but not a great ethical or moral dilemma for the shark. If that shark is, hypothetically very intelligent, like in that movie with Samuel L. Jackson with the genetically enhanced sharks with super intelligence, that still doesn’t make it a problem to bemoan for us humans or for the sharks. It’s lunch time. Pure and simple.
Now, if you want a very interesting mediation on this very subject, I’d suggest carefully reading Moby Dick because it is very much about your hypothetical. And it has the added bonus that it can be interpreted to agree with your OP’s general tenor.
Lastly, I’d like to point out that we are all subject to being eaten every day by the trillions of bacteria on and in us. It really isn’t a moral quandary. It’s life. At the end of it we get eaten. All of us. No exceptions.
Superior intelligence or greater emotional capacity is a very weak argument upon which to hang the validity or invalidity of eating meat. You don’t even need to invoke aliens to prove this; if this was the only reason for or against eating meat, it’d be perfectly valid to eat Irish babies… erm, I mean anyone less intelligent than you personally.
Actually, you’re both incorrect. “Carnivore” and “scavenger” are words describing animal eating habits. Humans who get their meat from stores or restaurants don’t fall into either category, or any other category from ecology.
I don’t think your rebuttal is valid, because it invokes the existence of imaginary being. We human beings live in a single, physical reality, and must make moral decisions based on observations of that reality. Arguments from a fictional “being whose mental relationship to humans is just that of a human being to a chicken” have no bearing on it.
Or compare your argument to this argument. Imagine a plant whose mental relationship to humans is just that of a human being to a carrot. From this fictional plant, can we argue that humans shouldn’t eat plants?
(For the record, I’m not some snarky ‘I’ll eat animals because I want to dammit’ type. I was a vegetarian for many years and still eat meat only about once a week, I acknowledge serious ethical issues to be dealt with, and I have great respect for vegetarians.)
The line between predator and scavenger is, at best, indistinct. For example, lions will consume carcasses that they find or that they can commandeer from other carnivores like hyenas.