The Utilitarian Argument for Ethical Vegetarianism

This is just for Anthony; it is too horrible for the rest of you to see. No Scotus, sorry :(

The Utilitarian argument for ethical vegetarianism is a relatively simple one. The Utilitarian asserts that:

1. The ethical act in any given situation is that which maximizes overall pleasure and minimizes overall pain.

2. The consumption of meat and animal products causes a significant amount of pain for a trivial amount of pleasure.

3. The consumption of meat and animal products is not essential to the survival of human animals.

Therefore,

4. The consumption of meat and animal products is wrong.


Of course, (act) Utilitarianism leaves room for extraordinary cases, but for the vast majority of human persons living in developed nations, it seems that the consumption of meat and animal products is a morally unsound practice. In this paper, I will argue that the argument for ethical vegetarianism is successful, using the flawed arguments against the position in order to demonstrate the truth of the Utilitarian premises. After that, I will briefly discuss Steven Davis's argument for a mostly-vegan diet that includes the meat of some large herbivores, concluding that we have a long way to go in practical terms before the issues Davis brings to our attention become truly relevant to Utilitarian calculations.


The first premise of the Utilitarian argument requires no argument; it is a basic tenet of the ethical theory, and all Utilitarians accept it. It is not within the scope of this paper to argue for Utilitarianism itself, and so premise 1 will be assumed throughout the rest of the paper. The second premise does most of the work for the Utilitarian, and is clearly the most controversial of the premises. I'll deal with the second part of the premise (the consumption of meat and animal products causes a trivial amount of pleasure) first, as its force is much easier to comprehend and digest (pun, unfortunately, intended).


We like the taste of meat, and at least in my own society, it plays a central role in our diet. When both of these considerations are combined, it is easy to overestimate the importance of the pleasure we get from eating meat. After all, it is nearly essential to the way most persons in my society think about food, and we get great pleasure out of eating it. That said, we should understand by now that this is not the only way to think about our diet, nor is it necessarily the best way. The pleasures of eating meat are not necessary (or, perhaps more controversially, sufficient) to the pleasure of eating, and it is entirely possible that, once habituated to an alternate dietary pattern, new, meatless pleasures may even outstrip those of the meat-based diet.


Even if we were to assume that there would be a loss in pleasure, that loss is not in itself decisive. For example, let's imagine that the production of pork involved the treatment of permanently developmentally disabled humans in the same way that pigs are treated on factory farms. We're not eating people when we eat pork, but this treatment is essential to pork production, and so our pork-related pleasure is inextricably linked to the pain of permanently developmentally disabled humans. If this knowledge were to come to the knowledge of the general public, the outcry would be tremendous, and I believe that the pork industry would be devastated. We like the pleasure of eating pork, but almost no one would believe it to be worth that much pain. If this is the case, then the pleasure we obtain from eating meat is importantly trivial, and can be outweighed by a significant amount of pain.


But is the pain experienced by animals in factory farms (by far the main source of animal-related products in developed nations) significant enough to outweigh our pleasure? The Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA) seems to think not, but as we shall see, their arguments are less than convincing. What the AAA calls “modern animal housing” (i.e. factory farms) is “scientifically designed for the specific needs of the animal, such as the regular availability of fresh water and nutritionally balanced feed.” (AAA 237) This is undeniably true; the proprietors of factory farms make every effort to feed their stock. Of course, what they do not say about the conditions is much more revealing than what they do. There's no mention made of the egg hens crammed four or five to a cage, with individual space the size of a sheet of paper, or how those hens cannot stand comfortably (for nearly every moment of their lives) because of the wire floor designed to allow easier elimination of the animals' waste. They do not mention the bare stalls that pigs are made to live in, unable to build a nest or indulge their natural propensity for cleanliness. Nor do they mention the fact that cattle are prevented from eating the grasses and other roughage that their digestive systems are designed to handle because the cattle grow faster and the meat tastes better if they're fed corn and soybeans. These animals are prevented from fulfilling their instinctual desires and are given literally nothing to do but eat. This lack of diversion and inability to engage in instinctual behaviors leads to “vices,” and the AAA provides an attempt to justify their means of dealing with them by stating that “hens may have their beaks trimmed - not removed - to avoid injury to each other as a result of the bird's natural cannibalistic tendencies... with hogs... tails may be docked or shortened to end a natural tendency toward tail biting”. (AAA 239, emphasis mine) Hens don't peck at each other naturally, nor do pigs bite each other's tails – when allowed a “normal” environment, pigs and chickens are not afflicted with the anxiety and boredom that leads to such “vices.” It is only in extreme conditions like those on the factory farm that such undesirable behaviors arise.


Finally, the AAA attempts to make a distinction between what an animal “wants” and what an animal “needs.” They maintain that an animal may “want” to explore and wander freely, but that is not always in the animal's best interests. Though such a list is not provided, I'll assume that such things as food, water, protection from the elements, and human supervision are “needs.” If this is the case, then such frivolous things as maternal deprivation, the inability to interact in a natural way with members of an animal's species and the animal's environment, and the inability to partake in a natural diet (indeed, one that does not consist in unknowing cannibalism) are all merely denials of “wants” that the proprietors of factory farms can and do deny their stock. It seems clear that the mental and physical pain of the factory farm is non-trivial, and outweighs the pleasure of the consumption of meat and animal products, supporting premise 2.


Premise 3 should be non-controversial as well; many, many human animals have survived and thrived on a diet that does not partake in the consumption of meat or animal products. The vitamin B12 deficiency that may arise in some vegans can be avoided through careful dietary planning, or simply through a supplement, and vegetarians do not even have this issue to worry about. Many of us may not like the idea of a meatless diet, but that does not mean that such a diet would kill us. Indeed, abstaining from the fat and cholesterol that is rife in meat products may do wonders for those partaking of the Western diet, reducing the risk of heart disease and the need for medication of those with already-high cholesterol levels. I must repeat, simply because the idea of such a diet may not be attractive does not mean that we cannot take it up.


We have found the premises to be true, and the conclusion follows from the premises, so we ought to accept the conclusion of the argument, and accept ethical vegetarianism. There remains but one (rather unexpected) objection left. Steven L. Davis argues quite persuasively that if a vegan diet were universally adopted, the unnecessary pain of many animals would continue. Small birds, reptiles, and mammals such as rabbits, raccoons, sparrows, mice, and many others all live in the fields in which we grow crops, and the massive machinery that we use to sow, care for, and harvest these crops kills vast amounts of these animals. Because no one actually tracks the deaths of these animals (unlike, say, those of cattle), it is impossible to do more than estimate the amount of animal pain and death caused by a wholesale adoption of the vegan diet, but the numbers are large (almost two billion/year). While this number pales in comparison to the amount of animals slaughtered yearly, Davis suggests that we may significantly reduce the amount of animal pain and death by using large ruminant animals (i.e. cows) to reduce the machinery used to tend and harvest the crops, as well as provide an additional food source. Even with the adoption of the consumption of these animals (note that these animals are not raised nor do they live in factory farm conditions), the amount of animal pain and death drops dramatically, and what's important to the Utilitarian argument is the total amount of pain, not which animals are enduring it.


The two major problems for Davis's view, are a lack of data, and practical concerns. Until accurate data on animal deaths as a result of farm equipment is obtained, all we have are rough estimates, and such estimates make for weak and perhaps dubious calculations. On the other hand, we are nowhere near a universal vegan diet, and so the current problem is not “does the vegan diet maximize utility?” but rather “does the average human diet maximize utility?” The problem, while interesting and potentially important, is not of primary concern at this moment in history. Once Utilitarian ethical vegetarianism is adopted on a wide scale, then debates like the one that arises from Davis's insightful paper can come to the forefront of the discussion.



Works Cited


Animal Agriculture Alliance. "Animal Agriculture: Myths and Facts." The Animal Ethics Reader. Ed. Susan J. Armstrong. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. 236-42. Print.


Davis, Steven L. "The Least Harm Principle May Require that Humans Consume a Diet Containing Large Herbivores, Not a Vegan Diet." The Animal Ethics Reader. Ed. Susan J. Armstrong. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. 243-47. Print.

Treatise Chapter 1, Paragraphs 9-12

1.9 – The Second Division of essential order divides the order of dependence based on the cause of the dependent. The dependent can rely exclusively upon that which it depends for its existence, or both the dependent and that upon which it depends can both rely on some other thing for their existence - the latter merely closer on the “chain” of causes to this other, prior cause, while the former is further away.

1.10 – That the first part of the second division falls under the order of dependence is rather obvious: in such a case, both the dependent and that on which it depends are clearly known, and it is also clear that the two are necessarily related through the relation of dependence, as defined in 1.8.

For example, if I throw a brick and it breaks a window (assuming those are the only events), my throw is the cause of the effect of the broken window. It is clear that the breaking of the window depends on my throw – without it, the window would never have been broken.

1.11 – The second part of the second division could use some further clarification. If one cause produces multiple effects (for simplicity's sake, we'll consider two effects, though the concept could easily work with more), and one of those effects could be caused before the other (by the nature of the two causes, rather than mere chance), while the second can only be caused if the first effect has already occurred, then the second is posterior to the first on the order of essential dependence.

For example, imagine I am enthusiastically debating about the existence of free will, and my arm hits my cup of coffee. The cup falls, and the coffee then spills all over the floor. One cause (my arm hitting the cup) causes two effects (the cup falling, and the coffee spilling). The coffee could not spill without the cup first falling, and so the spilling depends upon the fall – even though both are effects of the same cause. If the spilling depends on the fall in this way, then it is posterior in the order of essential dependence.

1.12 – That the second part resides within the order of dependence is demonstrated in three ways:

1. The second effect cannot exist without the first. To return to the previous example, if the cup did not fall, the coffee would not spill.

2. The causality* possessed by the initial cause affects both of the effects according to their order. These effects, then, are ordered essentially through their separate relations to the initial cause.

3. The first effect can be discussed as the immediate cause of the following effect. Without the first effect, the initial cause can only be regarded as “remotely” responsible (as there is no direct connection between the cause and its effects) for the rest of the effects that result from it. With the first effect in place, the initial cause can be regarded as the “proximate” cause of the later effects, as the connection between the cause and its effects is, if not obvious, at least available for discussion. Obviously, no effect can result from a remote cause alone, so the second effect depends on the initial cause's giving existence to the first effect – thus the second effect essentially depends on the first.

*This is the word Scotus uses to argue for the second demonstration, and its meaning is not very clear to me. Apparently there is some debate among the scholarly community about what exactly Scotus means by 'causality', and his lack of definition is a strike against him here. However, it is not a critical strike, as the gist of the second demonstration seems rather clear, and even if the second demonstration fails, there are still two others for Scotus's argument to fall back on.

Treatise Chapter 1, Paragraphs 6-8

1.6 – The First Division of essential order is the division of this ambiguous order into the more concrete orders that constitute it: those of “eminence” and “dependence.”

1.7 – In the order of eminence, what is more perfect is prior to that which is less perfect. To illustrate this, Scotus cites Aristotle's proof (Metaphysics, Book IX, Part 8) that action itself is more perfect than the potential for action. A contemporary example: a computer programmer has the potential to write code. But the programmer is not fulfilling her function as “computer programmer” unless she is actually coding. A computer programmer is someone who programs computers, not someone who just has the capacity for programming them. She is thus more perfectly a programmer when she is actually coding, because she is exercising her function, rather than merely having the potential to do so. This sort of order (and any others that involve varying scales of perfection) is an order of eminence.

1.8 – The order of dependence places that which is dependent posterior to that upon which it depends. It should be noted that the prior in this order can exist without the posterior, but the reverse is not true, even if the posterior proceeds necessarily from the prior (so that there are no possible instances of it without the posterior). This is because the existence of the posterior without the prior is contradictory - to go back to an example from earlier, it is a contradiction to have a child without a parent. The existence of the prior without the posterior is bound by no such restrictions, and is not a contradiction, even if the two are necessarily paired. There is no law of nature that prevents a parent from existing without a child; the child needs the parent for existence, but the same does not work in reverse. This requirement is what Scotus calls dependence.

Note: In my attempt to make Scotus's definition of essential order more plain in section 1.5, I used the terms 'causer' and 'caused'. These terms do not fully reflect what is meant by "essential order", in fact, they only reflect one possible view of the term - in the form of the "order of dependence" - as (hopefully) demonstrated in this post. Though for precision's sake, I probably should have just maintained Scotus's use of 'prior' and 'posterior', I believe that 'causer' and 'caused' do help to make the definition more vivid and perhaps a little bit easier to understand. So I'm not editing it out - a bit of imprecision in the beginning for the sake of a little bit of ease of understanding on a difficult work seems to be the proper sacrifice to make, especially since the imprecision is noted (and hopefully eliminated) here.

Treatise Chapter 1, Paragraphs 1-5

1.1 – This is a pretty typical invocation of God-as-First Principle to allow Scotus to understand what he already believes – in this case, God's existence. While it may be interesting to look at in terms of the medieval view on the place of philosophy (or the extent to which it can reach), this does not really concern the current exercise, and is not unique to Scotus.

1.2 – Scotus outlines the aim of the Treatise – to discover as much as he can of God's nature using the information we can glean from God's name, “I am who I am” (Ex 3:14). God is what it means to exist, the essence of existence, and though Scotus believes this, he wishes to discover it through a philosophical demonstration in order to understand it.

1.3 – In order to discover the nature of existence, Scotus decides to dig into the source of the “essential order” (defined in 1.5). Though there are many other properties of existence, Scotus believes that this essential order is the most basic one, and thus the best place to start in his investigation. The rest of the chapter is devoted to the four divisions of order – defining and understanding them – in order to discover how many types of essential orders there are.

1.4 – There are three requirements of a clear division within any subject of discussion:

1. the different parts that result from a division must be known and shown to be held within what is divided. For example, when dividing books into the species of “prose” and “poetry”, we've first got to acknowledge that these are the species we will divide the books into, and then we've got to show that both of them are species of the genus “book.”

2. the different parts must be known to be mutually exclusive. We have to know that prose is not a part of, contained within, nor overlaps with poetry, and vice-versa.

3. the classification must be exhaustive – there must be no thing within the genus that is not contained within the divisions. If there were a third type of book that did not fall into the species of prose and poetry, then our divisions would be inadequate, and would require another species of book in order to be a complete division of the genus “book.”

Scotus goes on to say that the first chapter is dedicated to the first requirement, while the others will be dealt with in the second, and so the rest of the first chapter is dedicated to defining the divisions.

1.5 – “Essential order” is a relation which can be asserted of both the causer and caused of each other, equally. “Causer” and “caused” (or, as Scotus puts it, “prior” and “posterior”) are enough, essentially, to divide up anything ordered. For example, look at the relationship between a parent and a child. The pair is an ordered one, with the parent as the causer and the child as the caused. Parent X is prior to child Y, and child Y is posterior to parent X. We speak of the relationship between the two equally, at least when speaking of both the causer and caused – such a relationship requires the both of them as participants. There cannot be a parent without a child, nor a child without a parent. But were child Y to have a child (call her Z) herself, she could not be spoken of as a parent/causer with regard to her own parent – Y's relationship with X regards her only as child/caused, and only the new relationship with Z will allow Y to be ordered as parent/causer.

This view of essential order is presented in opposition to the view that what is caused is ordered, and what is a causer exists beyond the order. This view of essential order is much more strict than the one Scotus proposes, as the only “causer” could be a being like God, who is uncaused and thus outside of the causal chain. As noted in the example of the last paragraph, every parent is a child in relation to some other parent, and so they are a part of the causal chain, within the order. In essence, Scotus is allowing essential order to have much more scope than the more rigid view proposed here, and avoiding circular logic in his proof of God's existence. If he were to choose the strict view of essential order, he would need to posit some sort of “uncaused cause” - a necessarily God-like being - just to get his proof started. Instead, he defines essential order without recourse to a being outside of the causal chain of existence, avoiding the assumption of his conclusion in the early stages of his proof.

Welcome to Not Easily Satisfied!

Not Easily Satisfied is a philosophy blog devoted to interesting philosophical problems that I feel the need to tackle, but do not really have anywhere else to address them. I (probably) won't be an expert in anything I tackle here, but close reading and analysis should carry the day where extensive knowledge cannot tread. The format should change slightly from project to project, but will generally consist of a close reading of that argument in question, a presentation of the strongest possible form of the argument (which will come out through such a reading), followed by the conclusions I draw from my presentation of the argument. If nothing else, it should be a fun attempt to figure out some of those problems that nag just about everyone “when we are caught without people or drink.”

I encourage reader participation (if, indeed, anyone feels the need to read this awkward little blog), as everyone misses something or other, and it's difficult to know if my explanation of a passage is as clear as it can be without someone else reading it! Besides, philosophy is a social activity, and if we all can come to a greater understanding of the issues at stake, then so much the better.

Before I wrap this up, I'd like to give a few introductory notes about my first project, an analysis of John Duns Scotus's Treatise on God as First Principle. I decided to open with this one for two major reasons: first, it is probably the strongest proof of God's existence that I have encountered (even if my experience with it is minimal), and second, Scotus is often a tough nut to crack – he was known as “The Subtle Doctor” for a reason! So while picking apart the Treatise will no doubt be difficult, it seems like the best way to go about both discovering whether or not a proof for God's existence can work, as well as improving my skills at interpreting dense philosophical texts at the same time. Hopefully I'll be able to assist someone trying to parse Scotus on their own, as well.

As the Treatise follows a convenient Chapter-Paragraph numbering system, I will be following it rather strictly. What this means is that I will be analyzing each individual paragraph with a paragraph (or more, as required) of my own. While this may seem tedious, it is very easy to refer back to the original text this way, and allows for the most thorough investigation possible.

I will be working with the Allan B. Wolter translation of the Treatise. Though it's a bit old, and there's no doubt that there is a more contemporary translation available somewhere, this is the one I have access to. In the most ideal situation, I'd use my own translation, but sadly my Latin skills are not yet up to task, and I don't have the time to both translate and philosophize!

Anyway, I've rambled for far too long. Thank you for reading Not Easily Satisfied, and hopefully with a lot of work, we can come to a sort of satisfactory conclusion to some of the most interesting problems the philosophical world has to offer.