Applied ethics - EATING ANIMALS Flashcards
act utilitarian view (BENTHAM)
Bentham: utilitarian principles should be extended to animals becayse animals can feel pleasure and pain just as humans can.
“The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?”
act utilitarian view (SINGER)
To priviledge human pain and pleasure over animals is speciesist.
Kant’s view
Kant’s categorical imperative (act according to that maxim which you can at the same time will become universal) is only intended to apply to rational beings, so animals are excluded. and theres no contradiction of will/conception about eating them
BUT!!! he does argue that being cruel to animals violates a duty we have towards ourselves- to develop morally. According to Kant moral develop involves developing compassion for other human beings but being cruel to animals weakens these feelings, so even thoguh we dont have duties direclty towards animals, we do have duties in regards to them.
potential 25 marker
how could you evaluate kants view of eating animals
he says it violates our perfect duty to ourselves to develop morally but eating animals in the modern day does not actually involve cruelty direclty to them (at least not that we are aware of) BUT on the other hand it makes us remove ourselves from them emotionally to be able to eat them
Aristotlelian view
Animals have no share in eudaimonia because they are incapable of either practical or theoretical reason.
What do more recent virtue theorists say about eating animals?
Cora Diamond, for example, argues that eating animals is wrong – but acknowledges degrees to which different practices around eating animals are good or bad:
what does cora diamond say about eating animals?
- Diamond argues that animals are a different kind of being to humans and so we shouldn’t treat their happiness as equal like Singer suggests.
- However, animals are nevertheless living beings that can have good and bad lives.
- To completely ignore this, as some factory farming practices do, demonstrates the vices of callousness and selfishness.
- In contrast, rearing your own chickens and treating them humanely – even if you do ultimately eat them – demonstrates the virtues of sympathy and respect.
also being vegetarian demonstrates respect, but perhaps too much of it?
Metaethical view (Naturalism)
“eating animals is wrong” is true if eating animals has the natural property of wrongness (eg because wrongness is a natural property such as pain) utilitarianism
Antirealism views
error theory- ‘eating animals is wrong’ is false bebacuse the property of wrongness doesn’t exist
emotivism: ‘eating animals is wrong’ just means BOO! eating animals! (and so is not capable of being turned or false)
prescripvism: it means ‘don’t eat animals!’ so is not capable of being true or false
