Do I have a moral obligation not to eat meat?
I believe that I have no such moral obligation. I am free to eat meat if eating meat is what I choose to do. Still, I don’t eat meat.
Why do I choose not to eat meat? Because I don’t want to do what’s bad for others.
It would almost always be the case that another animal must be killed so that I might eat the meat of its body. I believe that to be killed wouldn’t be good for any of us animals, and I don’t often wish for what isn’t good for anyone of us. I could, perhaps, choose not to care as much about what is good or bad for others, but I do care and I care such that I don’t want others to be killed just so I can eat meat.
To say that to be killed wouldn’t be good for us animals is not to to say that eating meat is all bad. Surely, being killed would be bad for the animal whose meat I would eat, but what would be good or bad for the animal are not the only things that count. There would be goods for me that I would get from eating meat and what would be good for me counts too.
Meat is tasty, filling, a good source of protein, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients, and meat is easily available everywhere in convenient ready-to-eat meals. Meat is also part of the tradition of eating that goes with many celebrations, festivities, holidays and other rituals. Cooking steaks on a grill, a turkey in an oven, or a chicken in a pot of soup are all parts of what most of us share, in one way or another, with those we love and whose histories we cherish. If I ate meat, sometimes it would be good for me. Still, I don’t eat meat.
I don’t eat meat because, as good as eating meat may sometimes be for me, I know that eating meat would almost never be any good at all for the animal who had to be killed just so that I could eat it.
Harming and killing other animals is bad for them. It doesn’t matter whether the other animals are human or nonhuman, harming and killing them is bad for them. Would harming or killing a pig be as bad for that pig as harming or killing a human child would be for that child? No, it wouldn’t be as bad. But neither would harming a frog be as bad for that frog as harming a pig would be bad for that pig. Some of us animals, compared to others of us, can experience more of what is good for us and more of what is bad for us.
Frogs experience less of what’s good for living beings than pigs experience. Pigs experience less of what’s good for living beings than humans experience. Snails and slugs haven’t got much capacity to experience any of what’s good for living beings; they may not have the capacity to experience anything good or bad for them at all. But neither do trees and flowers have any capacity to experience what’s good and bad for them. Nevertheless, either things can be good for trees and flowers or things can be bad for them. Cutting down a healthy tree isn’t good for it; crushing the life out of flowers isn’t good for them. I don’t deliberately and needlessly harm or kill trees and flowers, nor do I deliberately and needlessly harm or kill snails and slugs; it wouldn’t be good for any of them if I did.
So, the reason that I choose to avoid harming and killing others has nothing to do with whether there is some moral obligation upon me such that I must so choose. There is no such obligation. I am free to choose as I will. I choose to avoid harming and killing others because harming and killing other living things isn’t good for them; harming and killing living things is bad for them. I don’t want to do what’s bad for others.
Even though you are free to choose to eat meat, and even though you’re under no moral obligation not to, if you care about what’s good for others, you won’t eat meat.
If you agree with me that harming and killing others is bad for them, and if you’re like most people who don’t want to do what’s bad for others, then you won’t eat meat.
Don’t worry about what you should do. Just do what you will do because you want what’s good for others.
*
Please read Richard Kraut’s book What is Good and Why: The ethics of well-being (2007) for a full treatment of the idea of what is “good for” others.
30 Comments
This is excellent… thank you very much, I enjoyed reading this, and completely agree with you!
“Some of us animals, compared to others of us, can experience more of what is good for us and more of what is bad for us.”
How important do you think potential lifespan is in this regard? All other things being equal as far as ability to appreciate and enjoy life, would you say it’s more harmful to kill a newborn being who could have lived to 100 than to kill a newborn being who could have lived to 15?
For instance, if we assume that it’s just as enjoyable to be a turtle as to be a Galápagos tortoise — but the tortoise’s genes give it a shot at a much longer life — is it causing more harm to kill the tortoise on its first day in the world than than to kill the turtle on its first day? (Not to the parents, but the baby turtle and tortoise themselves.)
If so, what about destroying a turtle egg before it hatches and destroying a tortoise egg before it hatches? Is there a difference in harm there?
Hi Tim, could you give some examples of moral obligations you have?
Hi Rhys,
Thanks for your questions. I’d have to think more about them to even hope to be satisfied with the answers I come up with, but I’ll a take a chance at something only having thought a little about them. I’m guessing that doctors who perform life-saving transplant operations take into account the expected life-spans of those they are trying to save. Faced with a choice of transplanting a heart into the body of a 15 year-old who would be likely to live another 50 years, or into the body of a 60 year-old who would be expected to live another 5 years, it wouldn’t seem like a bad choice to save the 15 year-old, all other things being equal. So, the potential life expectancy of those we may have a choice to save seems relevant. However, there’s a wrinkle in this assessment. I think it’s not the case that we’d believe that the life of 10 week-old fetus should be saved over the life of a 15 year-old’s if that was the choice we had to make. So, there’s something more than simply the life-expectancy that matters. That something more has to do, I believe, with what Jeff McMahon calls the “Time Relative Interest Account” (in his book The Ethics of Killing). Basically, as a being is more psychologically connected through time to its own past and future, there is more reason to think that death is a harm for that being. A 10 week old fetus isn’t psychologically connected to anything, so if we had to choose between saving it and saving a 15 year-old (or a 60 year-old) it seems we not be making a bad choice in choosing not to save the fetus.
I think there’s no difference in harm between destroying a turtle’s egg, a tortoise’s egg, or a 10 week-old fetus – I believe those things can experience harm. Since the relative harms caused by destroying any one of them couldn’t be part of any reasoning about which one of the three to save, we’d have to appeal to some other reasons in choosing. In that case, the potential life expectancies may matter, but the potential goods for each may matter more. I suppose that the goods for a human child would be more than the goods for a turtle or a tortoise, even if the child was expected to die at age 6 and the tortoise was expected to live to 100. Between the turtle and the tortoise, what’s good for them is probably about the same, and since the tortoise would be expected to live much longer than the turtle, then choosing to save the tortoise over the turtle wouldn’t appear to be a bad choice.
Hi Ed,
Thanks for your question. I may change my mind about this after thinking about more, but for now the answer is no, I can’t give some examples of moral obligations I have.
Thank you Maritha.
Hi Tim, thanks for replying, do you think moral obligations exist?
No. I think moral obligations do not exist.
Hi Tim, thanks again for replying. Why is that? Do you think morality exists?
Ed,
I think morality doesn’t exist. There are no moral laws, rules or obligations such that a person must act in only particular ways. People are free to do whatever they please. I believe that when most people have a clear understanding of what is good for others and bad for others, and when they understand the costs involved in doing what’s bad for themselves and others, then, all other things being equal, they will want to avoid doing what’s bad for them. But that’s got nothing to do with what they should or must do.
Hi Tim, do you think morality is different to assessing what is good or bad and acting accordingly? If so what is the difference?
Ed, morality is supposed to tell us what we ought to do. For example, a utilitarian would say that we ought to do whatever increases the overall good in the world. That means that (according to the utilitarian) we must do whatever increases the overall good or act immorally. But where does this “ought” come from? What is there to say that we “must” do such and such? Philosophers have looked for this “ought” and “must” for thousands of years and haven’t found them. No one can say what others ought to do, or what others must do. So, yes, morality is different from assessing what is good for others or bad for others and acting accordingly. The difference is that without morality to tell us what we ought to or must do, we will be able rely only on our own ability to make sense of the world – only on what we value. Why should anyone value what is good for others? I can’t say. I value what is good for others and I believe that most normal people do as well. That’s just how things are. It’s got nothing to do with how things ought to be.
Hi Tim, do we not then decide what we ought to do based on our own assessment of what is good or bad? If we act in a way that we view as bad is this not immoral by our own values?
Hi Ed, I believe that there are things that are good for others and that it’s not a matter of our own assessment whether those things are good for others. For example, in normal circumstances, some amounts of both water and sunlight are good for tomato plants. To prevent tomato plants from getting any water or sunlight would be bad for tomato plants. How you or I assess the needs of tomato plants won’t change these facts. In the same way, there are things that are good for cows and things that are bad for cows and none of those depend on how you or I assess them. So, if you and I were serious about not doing what’s bad for cows whenever we can avoid doing what’s bad for cows, then we can avoid doing those things that we can know are bad for cows. Whether we would want to avoid doing those things is another question. The answer to that question is going to depend on how serious we are about wanting not to do what’s bad for cows, and with what goods for others we’d be willing to give up in order not to do what’s bad for cows.
If a person wants to say that when they act in ways that violate their own standards that they are acting immorally, they are free to say it. I believe that saying so isn’t necessary, but that saying so does make it easy for others to understand one’s intent.
Hi Tim, do you think then that morality is based on an external “must” and set of rules and assessing good or bad and acting accordingly is based on our internal “must”?
Why would the existence of a good or bad which is independent of our assessment, matter to our assessing if it is good or bad and our actions based on this assessment? If an action was bad but we thought it was good then won’t a person who is serious about doing good actions carry out this action? Has this person acted badly or even immorally if we choose to use this term?
Hi Ed,
I think actions aren’t simply good, or simply bad, but that actions are good for or bad for someone or something. I believe that we can easily tell most of the time when something is good for someone or bad for someone. If a person thought that whatever they were doing was good for someone when in fact it was bad for someone, then they’d be mistaken. They wouldn’t be acting badly, they be doing what’s bad for someone.
I suppose that if we want to use shorthand and say that actions that are bad for someone are ‘bad acts’ or even that they are ‘immoral acts’, we can do that. However, acts aren’t bad in and of themselves, so they can’t be immoral either. Acts can be bad only insofar as they are bad for someone.
So acts are really only bad *physically* and i guess psychologically *for* someone.
Even so, if they’re bad for someone else, they can still be ‘good’ for me, so there’s nothing really to ‘outweigh’ the bad for others – is there?
In that case, we can say something is ‘bad for others’ in a purely objective sense, but it has no value beyond that assessment.
Of course, you may not want to harm others, but presumably that’s no ‘better’ than wanting to harm others but gain a benefit.
So does that mean people who wilfully decide on harming others in order to gain a benefit for themselves are no ‘worse’ than those who choose try to avoid harming others?
Hi Rico, thanks for your comments.
You say “Of course, you may not want to harm others, but presumably that’s no ‘better’ than wanting to harm others but gain a benefit.” That’s not how I see it. If, since I don’t want to do what’s bad for others, I avoid doing what’s bad for others, then that’s better for others. If other people choose to do what’s good for themselves despite causing what’s bad for others in the process, that’s worse for others. There will be times, of course, when in order to do what’s good for some it will be necessary to what’s bad for others, but that doesn’t mean that doing so wouldn’t be worse for those others than would be the alternatives.
Hi Tim
Clearly if *you* don’t want to do bad for others, you avoid doing bad for others, and that’s better for them.
But if people choose to do what’s good for themselves – but bad for others – that’s worse for the others, but if they’re not concerned with the others, it’s no different, or ‘worse’, than not doing bad to others.
Again, people who wilfully want to harm others in order to gain a benefit for themselves are no ‘worse’ than those who aim to avoid harming others, are they?
To put it another way, if i was the leader of a country that wanted to have a war with another country to annexe it to mine and subjugate the people there, and i wasn’t concerned with the harm i caused others, there would be nothing really wrong with that, would there?
Rico,
If the leader of one country conquered the neighboring country and subjugated the people there (against their will and to their detriment) then that would be bad for those people, whether or not it would be good for the leader or anyone else. Whether the leader was concerned about the bad for others he caused wouldn’t change the fact that what he caused was bad for them. They would be worse off than before. Of course, the leader may not care that he’s made others worse off by causing what’s bad for them, but what can be done about that? Does anyone believe that by telling that leader that he had a moral obligation not to subjugate others that he wouldn’t subjugate others? Is it necessary, in order for a third country to come to the aid of the subjugated country to claim that some moral wrong had been committed? The answers to both those questions are, it appears to me, no. IF we were to judge that the bad that leader had caused was bad enough, we’d invade and get rid of him. I don’t see what the point of talking about moral obligations is.
Tim
Yes, if an invader conquered a country and subjugated the people there it would be bad for them in a physical/psychological sense, regardless of what was good for the leader.
However, as what the leader did has nothing to do with morality, we can’t say that it’s ‘wrong’. His act is on par with, for instance, crossing the street.
Doesn’t this follow from your article?
The point isn’t really that if the leader had morality explained to him that he’d stop subjugating others, but that if morality existed, people would have a reason to object to certain behaviour.
In the scheme this article outlines, there is no morality, so every act is necessarily as ‘good’ as the other.
One act may be bad for others, another beneficial, but there’s nothing to say that either act is anything we should object to.
You say, ‘IF we were to judge that the bad that the leader had caused was bad enough, we’d invade and get rid of him.’
Why would we bother to make that judgement since all we’d have are different acts, none ‘better’ than the others?
Why would *anyone* object to *anything* if all acts have the same weight?
Rico,
What does it matter if we say that something is “wrong” in addition to it being bad for others? I don’t know that it matters. If we care about others then we won’t want to see what’s bad for them happen to them. If a person causes what’s bad for others and we have the ability to stop him, if we care enough about others then we will stop him. Whether or not we call what he’s doing “wrong” won’t change that, I don’t believe.
It doesn’t follow from what I’ve written that doing things that are very bad for others is the same as doing something benign such as crossing the street.
Acts that are bad for others are worse for them than either acts that are good for them or that are benign for them. We will bother to stop some from committing acts that are bad for others because we don’t want what’s bad for others. Why else would we?
Hi Tim, what is your definition of morality or who’s definition do you most follow?
Hi Ed,
I could write a long reply about what I understand morality to be, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that I think that are no moral facts or moral truths. I am doing my best not to talk in terms of what I or others *must* or *should* do, but in terms of what we will do and why. I am not sure that the label is appropriate for me, but “anti-realist” with respect to morality may describe me – there’s nothing that actually is “morality”.
Tim
How does it matter if we say something is ‘wrong’? Well, it’s not just that you’re saying it, but saying it does make it clear.
Without being clear, it’s like expecting everyone to drive 60kph without a sign. Even with signs, people disregard speed limits, so how do you expect them to follow certain actions when you leave the issue to individual judgement?
When i said that you’re not *just* saying it, i meant you’re also assigning an action value.
Your scheme says that it doesn’t value anything on the one hand – yet also suggests that harming others is somehow ‘worse’ than not harming them.
In effect, saying you don’t value anything is like saying we don’t need laws, since everyone will do what they consider is ‘beneficial’ – whether that harms others or not. Do you think that the place you live would have the same level of violence – or even less – than it does now, if we did away with all laws?
After all, why do we need laws telling us something is ‘wrong’?
‘If we care about others then we won’t want to see what’s bad for them happen to them. If a person causes what’s bad for others and we have the ability to stop him, if we care enough about others then we will stop him.’
This is true, but you’re not saying that harming others is a bad thing per se, just bad for them. You seem to be vacillating between two poles: on the one hand, there is no such thing as morality; on the other hand you suggest that some things – those which are ‘bad for others’ are somehow worse than other actions.
Maybe you consider that the negative effect of harming others is common sense or a ‘self-evident truth.’ If so, why do people have such varying views? Presumably you’re not ‘right’ – you’re just presenting your view – one among many – since why would we need anyone telling us what’s ‘wrong’? Alternatively, if harming others is so self-evident, why do we need anyone to tell us about it?
Hi Rico,
If you believe that there are actions that are wrong, in and of themselves, then please explain to me which actions those would be. If instead you think that there is some value in saying that some actions are wrong, perhaps because to say so is a sort of convenient way of saying why we disapprove of some doing what’s bad for others, then I won’t disagree with you, although I would argue that talking about things being “just wrong” or “wrong per se” will lead to unnecessary confusion.
Tim, before i answer your question – which i’m happy to do – would you answer the questions i asked in my comment?
Nowhere am i suggesting things are *just* wrong or wrong *per se*. There are distinct reasons why things are wrong.
Hi Rico, I didn’t ask you any question, but I will be happy to answer yours.
I think we say something is wrong as a convenient way of expressing our disapproval of what others do, and of expressing our wish that they’d do something other than what they do.
Speed limits signs express the collective decision of a society about what behavior they will allow. Speed limit signs don’t have anything to do with what’s “right” or “wrong” per se. I don’t argue that speed limit signs are unnecessary, and I don’t argue that it would be better for us to leave it up to individual judgment how fast people drive (although we actually do leave it up to people how fast they drive, we just punish them when they drive faster than what we’ve agreed is the safe limit).
I believe that most people do not commit violent acts because most people recognize how bad for others violent acts would be. I suspect that the number of laws there are in a society plays little causal role in suppressing violence. In any case, nothing I’ve said leads to the conclusion that we will abolish laws.
We don’t need laws telling us something is wrong. Laws are written in order to state what behaviors will be tolerated within a society.
I don’t “consider that the negative effect of harming others is common sense or a self-evident truth”. I’ve argued the opposite. I’ve said that people have varying views because 1) we don’t fully realize how bad for others our actions can be and 2) we don’t always value the lives and well-being of others as much as we value our own.
No, either I am right or I am wrong – that is, either the account I favor accurately represents the actual state of affairs in the world or it doesn’t. That there aren’t any “moral facts” doesn’t mean that there are no facts at all. Of course, I can’t say that other “should” accept the account I favor – that would depend on them and on what they value.
I’ve not argued that it is.
Tim, I’ve been thinking along similar lines for a little while (though maybe not as in depth), and I think the reason you provide above might be a better reason to become vegan–and a better way to live in general–than anything having to do with “morality” and “right and wrong.”
That is, wouldn’t we have a better world if people didn’t harm others, or lie, cheat, and steal, not because those acts are “immoral” or “wrong” in some objective sense, but because they genuinely cared about others? Because they could and did in good faith try to put others’ well being and happiness above their own?
As much as I think ideals are great, I think they can sadly make one delusional. The cold reality, of course, is that this is not the case. People are biologically programmed/wired to be selfish, which is something few people ever overcome, if even fully realize and have a desire to change.
About what you wrote about “morals” and “right and wrong,” nowadays I always find people who call an act immoral to be somewhat naive. I can’t help but wonder whether the individual making that statement has ever wondered whence do morals come?
Hi Pranav,
I agree with you. I no longer think it’s helpful to tell people that actions are “right” or “wrong” when people don’t acknowledge what matters is the good and bad they cause for others. I also believe that most people who talk about “morality” have no clear idea of what they’re talking about.
Post a Comment