Should we be vegetarian?

[Robert Charleston <rc3673@student.open.ac.uk>]

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Provocations Online has been postponed until next term, when things are 
busier on the list. In the meantime, we thought we'd put a couple of 
debates that have started within BUPS onto the list to see if anyone is 
interested.

The first of these is: Should we be vegetarian?

I don't think that the issue is clear-cut. The debate is often set up in a 
particular way. The question often asked by those who believe we should 
not eat meat is something like: 'How can you justify eating meat?' This 
seems one step too far already.

Most people (at least in British society) do eat meat. Without getting too 
heavily into empirical evidence (this is supposed to be philosophy, after 
all), we appear to have done so for much of our recent evolutionary past. 
This is not an argument about nature equalling rightness. But it does seem 
fair to say that meat-eating is the default behaviour for many people.

At the same time 'How can you justify eating meat?' seems to imply that I 
must be able to justify doing something if I'm going to do it. Or perhaps, 
more weakly, if some other set of propositions about meat-eating are true 
(it harms animals, it is unnecessary for my survival) I would need to be 
able to justify doing it to be morally correct. But is that true?

I don't think it is. If we could only morally-acceptably do things that we 
could justify, I think we would end up having to sit in a corner all day. 
There are serious flaws in our epistemological and logical theories if 
they are construed as complete justifications. We are still arguing over 
Descartes and whether I can be certain of my hand being in front of my 
face. With David Lewis, Jacques Derrida et al., we have seen that even our 
system of logic may not be as uncontroversial as we hoped (transitivity 
and bivalence, respectively). If we cannot justify even the basics, it 
seems unlikely I could justify something as complex as going for a walk 
today, let alone eating meat. Practically we must be able to do 
unjustified things (especially our default behaviours), with the immediate 
proviso 'unless there is a clear reason to not do so'. Otherwise it seems 
unlikely we could do very much at all.

So the question is not one of whether we are justified in eating meat, but 
whether there is any clear reason *not* to do so. The reason required is a 
reason to change default behaviour - whether that set of propositions 
about meat-eating constitute a morally sufficient condition for us not 
doing it. (Pace, Hume's is-ought dilemma).

The main proposed reasons I am aware of are the principle of equality and 
utilitarianism in Peter Singer's work, the rights-based theory of Tom 
Regan, and the qualified egalitarianism of Mary Midgley.

What kind of argument do people find the most convincing? Is there 
anything more to be said on the framing of the question?

Rab.


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