| | Veggy Casuistry, Part 1
Dustin,
From your response to me, I would condense your position to this statement: “I have come to find the abuse of animals personally abhorrent. I don’t believe that animals are the equivalent of humans or that there are no circumstances under which I might either kill or eat one. But by practicing vegetarianism I not only feel better physically, I am less troubled morally. I know others whom I would expect to agree with my choice of vegetarianism, given their respect for animals, yet they do not. I believe it would be a better world if people followed my views, yet I do not feel that I would be justified in using force to compel them.” It is implied that you wish to change the way animals are treated, and want to know how this can be accomplished. I hope that does not misrepresent you.
I shall respond with this preliminary statement now, given the time my response is taking.
Casuistry is the art of finding an ethical justification for an act which one has committed or wishes to commit. Objectivism holds that an individual’s life, proper to his nature, is the standard from which a proper morality is derived. One might assume that a person’s value system should thus be derived by reasoning from the abstract to the particular. For example, one might follow a thread from life, to nutrition, to protein, to legumes, to soy beans. This begs the question: is it by reasoning from the abstract that tofu should taste good? Of course not. By nature, all higher animals have inborn mechanisms of reward and avoidance that drive them to pursue various actions. We can simplify this by speaking of a pleasure/pain mechanism – although the mechanisms that underlie sensations such as sweetness, pleasurable touch, arousing aromas, craving certain foods, satiety, soreness of wounds, the need to defecate, etc., are mediated by very complex neurological systems of input, output, and feedback. These systems are very far from being understood in their entirety; the cannabinoid receptor system was only discovered last decade, and our understanding of even long known receptor systems is incomplete. The brain is about as well understood as the seafloor ecology.
Yet one fact is very well known. Genetic variation causes different individuals not only to vary in their responsiveness to sense stimuli, but also in their higher level processing from the sensory level upwards. Although any pronouncements here will have to be unsupported and the science is incomplete and not free from to controversy, intelligence in all its manifestations, sexual orientation, the prevalence of prodigious skills and tragic defects are all biologically mediated, if not determined. (This is not a claim for genetic determinism; environment and the feedback of choice -– volition all too often being ignored – are equally potent or overriding depending upon the circumstance being considered.) In any case, human nature, while sharing essential commonalities among normal people, varies greatly in its specifics, and one’s needs, pleasures and joys arise from the bottom up, not from the top down. We are all born as actors and we come to learn actions that we wish to commit – values that we act to gain or keep – long before we come to question the nature of our values or feel the need for their validation. And so, to find a justification for our actions, and to harmonize our actions, we resort to ethics as an art to guide our lives. We bring certain values to the table, and through casuistry or criticism we integrate those values as we can, develop new ones as necessary, and when justified, modify or abandon others.
If we love animals and nature, are there grounds coherent with rational self interest to support our desire to protect nature and forgo eating meat? In what way, if ever, is there a political justification for enforcing any limits on the treatment of animals? These questions cannot merely be dismissed by mentioning that by eating the wrong vegetables one may suffer from a dietary deficiency, or by saying that since animals don’t have political rights per se there are no legal issues involved in their treatment. Issues of nutrition differ based upon one’s age, sex and medical condition, and addressing them is more properly a medical than an ethical issue. One doesn’t go to an ethicist to discuss the merits of eyeglasses versus contacts or laser surgery. It is mere sophistry to forbid one’s child from having contacts because they may cause eye infections – when one really wants one’s child to learn to bear up under teasing for having glasses. If one doesn’t like vegetarianism for oneself there is no need to justify that based on the mere dietary need to vary one’s diet and possibly seek supplements which are readily available at little cost. Certain traditional ethnic diets will be deficient if one omits the meat and makes no adjustments. Many immigrants from third world countries to the West see their children grow to much larger sizes than those foreign born. But then they also see obesity, heart disease, and colon cancer in higher levels among those who have adapted a Western diet. And some foreign traditional diets, like that from the vegetarian Indian south, are practiced in the West with no ill consequences. Adducing the mere possibility of malnutrition among vegetarians as a reason to forbid it as an option is as valid today as forbidding long sea cruises for fear of scurvy. Grapefruit are available. Political questions remain.
End Part One
Ted Keer 09/09/2006 NYC
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