vegetarianism
Lately, I've been reading Can Animals and Machines Be Persons. It was suggested to me as a kind of introduction to epistemology and what philosophy-folks call "the zombie problem", though it turns out I've actually dealt with most of the same problems in computer science before.
Unexpectedly, though, thinking about it is making me question the morality of eating meat, which is not at all the thrust of the book.
I've long said that I don't have a problem with vegetarianism nor with non-vegetarianism, but that I do have a problem with people not caring about what they eat. It's entirely too common in American society, in my opinion, for people to be completely divorced from the process by which we get food. I'm okay with having a hamburger, and I'm even okay with the idea of, were I a farmer, having to butcher a cow or chicken myself. I'm not okay with the actual process of how McDonald's gets its meat, nor with how little most people know and care about that process. (As most people know, if you actually knew what was in a hot dog, you'd never want to eat it, and most ground beef isn't much better.) But I've had this attitude for a while; it's nothing new.
What's bothering me is the application of 'personhood' to animals. For example: cattle are dumb. Slaughterhouses traditionally kept a trained goat, which the cattle would happily follow into the slaughter pens. (This is the origin of the phrase 'Judas goat'.) In contrast, pigs are much smarter. A friend of mine once lived near a slaughterhouse, and he told me the worst day of the week was the day that the pigs were delivered. They were smart enough to know that something awful was about to happen to them, and he said he could hear them squealing in terror at his house over a mile away.
At what point does it become wrong to kill something for food?
I'm not saying I'm becoming a vegetarian, at least not yet. But people today generally recognize that the institution of slavery is wrong, even though it was accepted a few hundred years ago. I just wonder if, a few hundred years from now, people might not feel the same way about eating animals.
Unexpectedly, though, thinking about it is making me question the morality of eating meat, which is not at all the thrust of the book.
I've long said that I don't have a problem with vegetarianism nor with non-vegetarianism, but that I do have a problem with people not caring about what they eat. It's entirely too common in American society, in my opinion, for people to be completely divorced from the process by which we get food. I'm okay with having a hamburger, and I'm even okay with the idea of, were I a farmer, having to butcher a cow or chicken myself. I'm not okay with the actual process of how McDonald's gets its meat, nor with how little most people know and care about that process. (As most people know, if you actually knew what was in a hot dog, you'd never want to eat it, and most ground beef isn't much better.) But I've had this attitude for a while; it's nothing new.
What's bothering me is the application of 'personhood' to animals. For example: cattle are dumb. Slaughterhouses traditionally kept a trained goat, which the cattle would happily follow into the slaughter pens. (This is the origin of the phrase 'Judas goat'.) In contrast, pigs are much smarter. A friend of mine once lived near a slaughterhouse, and he told me the worst day of the week was the day that the pigs were delivered. They were smart enough to know that something awful was about to happen to them, and he said he could hear them squealing in terror at his house over a mile away.
At what point does it become wrong to kill something for food?
I'm not saying I'm becoming a vegetarian, at least not yet. But people today generally recognize that the institution of slavery is wrong, even though it was accepted a few hundred years ago. I just wonder if, a few hundred years from now, people might not feel the same way about eating animals.