This is not a compelling argument. And several of the posts in this thread have strayed into something similar. You’re basically defining ethical behavior to such an extreme that no reasonable person can meet it, then claiming that all people who fail to meet it are ethically equivalent.
But that’s not how people generally think about ethics.
Choosing some other examples: If you think it’s unethical to pollute the environment, is the person who carpools ethically equivalent to the person who drives an H2? He could just walk everywhere, after all. If you think it’s unethical to steal, is the person who takes a few pens from work ethically equivalent to Bernie Madoff? They’re both thieves.
It’s pretty clear that there’s an ethical continuum, and you can move along it.
Here are some of my rational arguments for eating meat:
There is an ethical value to preserving traditions and celebrating the culture of food. Meat-based dishes are part of this culture.
Meat allows us to use marginally productive land better.
Meat production, particularly in poor countries, smoothes agricultural shocks. A herd on the hoof is a valuable commodity because you can feed excess crops that would otherwise go to waste to animals, then eat the animals in a season when there’s not enough food to go around. It’s like a delicious savings account.
Meat production, done right, can lead to happier and healthier lives for animals than they’d get in nature.
None of those really excuse factory farming or the agricultural-industrial complex, but that’s really another topic.
1 and 2 could be used for almost anything though. ‘Shame to lose bear fighting as an ancient tradition’.
And 2 seems to confuse individual ethics with a societal ethic. No-one feels particularly self righteous now that we dont have slavery for instance, its just normal. Its also a somewhat subjective thing what is ‘not a priority’, I suspect many people would argue over-consumption in the west is an extremely important issue.
Oh another thing Ive thought of - if ‘some meat is OK’ but we’re overconsuming at present, a vegetarian diet could be argued as doing as much as possible towards that goal, given society is not moving towards that goal yet, ie it doesnt help to eat 50% meat if noone else is.
The very title of the book as ‘benign extravagance’ suggests there is still some level of lower efficiency than vegetarianism, its just that it can be much better than with current practises. One criticism of the book was it being written pretty specifically for the UK, and it may not translate well on a global perspective.
Seeing other vegetarian responses to the book might be interesting as well - it seems to me to be the start of an argument rather than the end of it.
1 and 2 could be used for almost anything though. ‘Shame to lose bear fighting as an ancient tradition’.
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That’s true. I don’t expect them to carry the day. But they are arguments in favor, to be balanced against the harm of continuing the practice of meat-eating.
I don’t think it confuses them. I’m talking about rational arguments for an individual to eat meat. If they know that not eating meat is a great struggle for them, and that it takes a lot of moral consideration on their part to achieve it, then they may be better off spending their time on an issue they feel is more important.
I’m not saying we all have to agree where the greatest moral value is.
Generally it’s much easier to make progress in a good direction than it is to completely change ones behavior. If you have 7 carnivores, getting them each to give up eating meat on one day a week is going to be much easier (on you and on them) than getting one to give up meat entirely. And it has the same moral outcome (for most ways of thinking about it)
I think the issue of overconsumption is a much broader one. You can eat meat without overconsuming resources. Many fairly poor people in much poorer countries eat some meat.
It’s more of a matter of someone who “only” carpools and “only” steals pens actively going around bragging that he isn’t as bad as an H2-driving Bernie Madoff. That’s nothing to brag about, and as someone who neither drives nor steals (and generally doesn’t hold himself up as a moral paragon), I’ll readily point out the hollowness of such boasts.
Well as has pointed out in other threads - significant progress can be made by consumers of meat being willing pay more for meat produced humanely and sustainably, and in preference to meat produced otherwise. Producers respond to the spending patterns of their customers. Those who are buying no meat at all, no matter how it is produced, those who are not their customers no matter what, do not motivate those production changes. And again, those changes are where the big impacts can potentially come from.
Hmmm if you have 30k customers and it goes down to 15k customers, seems to me production is going to reduce unless you can convince people to eat twice as much meat. In overall terms thats not going to change much from everyone deciding to buy half as much.
And of course businesses will find out why its base is being reduced - people might come back as customers if enough change occurs. So I dont quite agree.
How does that work with cannibalism though? As long as we’re eating less people, thats better than going for complete cessation, as it would be too hard to stop entirely for them.
The argument doesnt seem to work when applied to other moral issues. It might be more pragmatic, but its not necessarily more ethical as an end goal. And even pragmatically, building a population of people who reject the practise entirely also might be better as your way to an end goal if you’re trying to convince society to reject the practise entirely.
Let’s play out some math. And we are arguing the ethical advantage of low meat versus no meat. No question some good to the total numbers can be gained by some giving up completely to offset the gluttons, but not so much.
Per capita anual meat consumption United States: 123 kg. Average worldwide: 47. U.K. 86.
So someone just below the world average, say 40 kg/y, going meat free would roughly do the same good as a typical American just coming down to U.K. levels (not exactly a vegan country), and about half as much good as the typical American coming down to the world average.
Extremity in the vegan direction does less good than reducing the extremity in the other.
And sure, the producers will want to know why their base is reduced. “Oh. It’s because of these people who won’t eat meat no matter how we produce it. The people who do eat meat don’t care about sustainability or humane slaughter, both of which costs us more. Okay then. We need to lower production costs to make up the difference .” (Either by more profit or by lower price and more sales to those who do eat meat).
Okay, so I did a quick Google search on “ethics,” and came up with as many different definitions for it as links I clicked on. Which strengthens the case I’d like to (tentatively) make: That there is no universal ethic. Several sites I read claimed there was, and gave examples of universal goods like concern for others and honesty. But while these may (may) be two qualities that all societies agree are positive, the concensus is far less concrete when it comes to what these mean and how they are employed. Not to mention how we should behave when the values are in conflict (e.g. You’re the victim of a home invasion and, though honesty is a good thing, your concern for your children asleep upstairs causes you to lie to the perpetrator and say you live alone).
This thought was prompted by the person who said something like “unless your friend is a Buddhist monk, he’s not truly, fully ethical either.” This places Buddhist monks at the top of the ethical totem pole, but my first thought was that that’s a far from universal assessment. How does anyone decide who is ethical and who is not? Anyone here who can explain ethics to me, especially as it is independent from personal morality?
Anyway, to the OP: My thought is that you just tell your friend that you two simply don’t subscribe to the same ethical standard. He is ethical by his own standard, and you are ethical by yours. I mean, that could work, right??
Except that there’s nothing immoral about eating meat. Just liek there’s nothing immoral about pre-marital sex, porno, gambling, and many other things that some people think are immoral but others don’t. There are some dudes who think that sex is immoral unless it is within a Church marriage and only for procreation. That doesn’t mean that I need to cut back on my sex.
Now, 'good for the environment" is different than “moral vs immoral”. Eating less meat is good for the environment. That doesn;t make it a moral question, it’s a science issue.
Im talking about it from the perspective of people who do view it as immoral obviously. Some will see it as a personal choice, others see it as something everyone should be doing.
The discussion is from the perspective of trying to convince them that reduction is as good or even better than the cessation they’re currently doing. I dont think they’re going to find it very convincing, particularly given it ends up basically trying to argue that they’re doing better for society to actually start eating meat rather than continuing to not eat it themselves.
Well in the terms of the friendly debate that the op was talking about a statement that it is ethical because eating meat is immoral would rightly get roll eyes.
The debate as I understood it was whether eating any meat was unethical: does someone who eats a modest amount of meat have any ethical compunction to go meat free? And I was understanding your response to that to be that indeed there is a reasonable level of global meat consumption that is sustainable even with a growing world population and which would present no environmental hazard but that since some eat more than their sustainable share others have an ethical imperative to eat none - to attempt to even them out.
And I don’t buy that.
It strikes me to be like someone who rides his/her bike everywhere (who never drives, takes a bus or a train, or flies) stating that someone who bought and drives a Nissan Leaf is being unethical because they are using some energy likely produced by natural gas or coal and thereby contributing to greenhouse gases. Instead of acknowledging that not only was decreasing his or her emissions an ethical act, but that helping develop a market for EVs and public acceptance thereof may even cause greater good over time than one person riding a bike exclusively.
Would that argument get a non-driving cyclist to buy an EV? Of course not. Nor should it. Truth be told the choice to cycle is probably not being primarily driven by environmental concerns. Maybe it is affordability. Or getting in the exercise. Or because cycling is fun. Helping the environment is likely just gravy for something they were going to do for selfish reasons anyway.
Likewise with our op’s friend. He is meat-free because that is how he was raised. And let’s face it, lots of vegetarian choices are really tasty and often more interesting than many meat courses. He also likely believes that it is healthier for him to eat like that. For food he craves he has no problem not being vegan. He is already doing it for selfish reasons and claiming that such demonstrates ethical superiority rings hollow.
I think it works fine. Eating fewer people is less bad than eating more of them.
I think that pragmatism should be part of moral consideration. It’s no good to hold such an extreme position that you can’t move the moral calculus of society. Focusing on an achievable reduction in immoral behavior is better than advocating for a complete cessation that won’t actually happen.
Are Vegans more moral than Vegetarians? Fruitarians more moral yet? These have been argued (mostly by Vegans and Fruitarians), but anyone with two brain cells agrees that Breatharians are just plain stupid fucks. Not to mention *dead. *
So, it’s not true that the more extreme = the more moral. In fact that’s the proof that it isn’t.
