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One common approach to debating the ethics of meat is to argue within the context of utilitarianism.
Put is simple terms, for the utilitarian, an action is right if it creates more utility for the morally relevant beings than disutility. A key part of the debate for the utilitarians is the moral status of animals: are they morally relevant or not?
If animals are not morally relevant, then their treatment would not be morally significant. If animals are morally relevant, then their treatment would be relevant to the moral assessment of actions.
Of course, it is possible to accept that animals are morally relevant, but to argue that humans count more than animals. For example, Mill argues that sentient beings count morally but he also argues that humans have higher faculties. This can be used to argue that humans count more than animals and this can, in turn, be used to justify treating animals worse that humans.
One way to argue that animals count is to argue (as Mill did) that pleasure is of positive value (utility) and pain is of negative value (disutility). Since animals feel pleasure and pain, they would play a role in the calculation of utility and hence would be relevant beings.
The template for arguing on utilitarian grounds has the following steps:
1) The utility generated by the practice is assessed.
2) The disutility generated by the practice is assessed.
3) If the disutility outweighs the utility, then the action is immoral.
4) If the utility outweighs the disutility, then the action is moral.
As an example, consider the following argument about veal: Humans enjoy eating veal and gain some pleasure from this. The creation of veal involves imprisoning a calf in a stall that is too small for movement, force feeding the calf which causes the calf to have various problems, and then killing the calf. The horrible treatment of the animals creates more pain than the eating of veal generates. Therefore the treatment of the animals is morally wrong.
Of course, the utilitarian approach can also be used to argue for treating animals not so well. For example, humans test important medicines on animals and develop treatments for serious health conditions. The animals involved in the testing suffer from these experiments. However, the animals are treated as humanely as possible and the medicines significantly increase the patients’ quality of life and even permit them to keep on living. The benefits of such testing outweigh the suffering of animals, therefore the testing is morally acceptable.
Getting back to the matter of meat, utilitarian arguments can be given for eating meat. One argument can be based on pleasure: while the suffering of animals creates pain, the enjoyment that people get from eating meat outweighs this suffering. Therefore the eating of meat is morally acceptable.
Of course, this sort of argument could be used to justify any sort of seemingly wicked activity. This would be done by merely showing that those committing the apparent misdeeds enjoy their misdeeds more than their victims suffer. This problem is not specific to meat, but rather a general concern with utilitarianism.
A second sort of utilitarian argument can be based on need: humans need to consume meat in order to remain healthy. While animals suffer from being killed for food, the need of humans outweigh the needs of animals. Therefore eating meat is acceptable.
This argument can, of course, be challenged. There is considerable debate over whether humans actually need meat or not. The best evidence seems to be that humans can do fine without meat, provided that they have access to foods that can replace meat. Naturally, in some contexts, people do not have an alternative to meat. Of course, this line of reasoning can also justify cannibalism, at least in survival situations. However, just as cannibalism is unacceptable when there are alternatives, it would seem that eating animals is also unacceptable when there are alternatives.
The other half of the argument is that you are equating dieing early and suffering.
All animals die, the only variable that eating meat has to bring into the equation is that they die on a schedule convenient for their subsequent consumption.
It could even be argue that an animal growing up on a farm with high standards and destined to be eaten suffers less, as it is killed humanely before it can suffer any disease or injury.
I think the first flaw in regard to utility and moral reasoning is believing that utility can be discerned. Objects/ideas/etc. deemed useless can become very valuable when circumstances beyond one’s control or comprehension change. This is, of course a completely different topic, but it seems to me that Mill’s argument is starting on shaky ground.
More to the point of general morality, I would also argue that morality is defined by the sustained values of societies that survived after coming into conflict with other societies. By studying history, we can sift through the ashes of past societies in an attempt to discern what they did wrong in order to adopt social (moral) and legal constraints so that we avoid those mistakes. Granted, a society would also be tempted to try to be a bit proactive in adopting constraints to avoid potential disasters, but such moves should always be mindful that one never knows what the future holds and thus should avoid being needlessly restrictive of potential innovation. E.g. some have argued that research into DNA is “playing God” and inviting disaster, yet DNA research over the last 50 or so years has yielded far more benefits than problems. Of course, that situation is currently fluid and will likely remain so. And this is also off the topic of morality specific to meat eating, but I think the underlying fundamentals have been lost in the process.
To bring this back, somewhat, to the subject at hand, have societies ever gone into decline as a significant result of their diet or their relationship in regard to animals? I do recall an argument that Rome went into decline due to lead poisoning from their cooking utensils, but I believe this was later discredited.
Mill argued that pleasures could somehow be classed into “higher” (classical music) and lower (frozen burritos). If he was right, then it seems probable that the highest pleasure a cow feels is still lower than the lowly pleasure a human would get from eating the cow. Of course, this can still be used to justify cannibalism . . .
Dave,
People have argued that meat animals that are raised well are better off than their wild compatriots. On utilitarian grounds, that could be a good argument for eating such animals to be okay. In fact, I wrote about that in a blog on eating the happy dead.
WTP,
The problem of sorting out value is a challenge for utilitarians. Mill addresses this at length-the gist is that we would rely on “competent judges” to sort out such matters. However, there is still the question of whether this is a proper assessment of utility or not.
Pat,
True. Mammals with more capacities than cows would probably be better of. For example, the highest pleasures of monkeys or dogs would probably exceed the pleasure that a human gets from eating a monkey or dog. Of course, this does raise the question of how we measure these pleasures and weigh them out against each other.
It seems to me that utilitarian arguments cannot be applied universally unless there are a priori assumptions (for example, that there are ‘higher faculties’ and these can be known objectively). Despite this problem, I think utilitarian appeals are often used in contemporary contexts, and are most effective (I mean this pragmatically) when they are context-sensitive.
Mike,
“competent judges”, kind of like “deus ex machina”? Was he speaking in a philosophical sense or was he considering institutionalizing this approach? I thought he was a bit of a libertarian type, though some of his other views that I see on wiki make that a bit suspect. He seems kind of wishy-washy.
Mill actually goes into some detail about the standards for the competent judges. Put a bit simply,a competent judge of pleasures would need to have fully experienced both pleasures in order to make the assessment. Mill also places conditions on weighing pleasures.
Mill took this approach, I believe, because of his empiricism. After all, if you want to empirically determine the greater pleasures, then such a method would seem to be a plausible approach.
The problem with that idea is obviously that there will be no human being who have experienced any form of monkey, cow, dog or rat pleasure, and thus no human being who could make the required assessment.