Animal suffering is a pervasive moral dilemma. Specifically, the question is whether the death and suffering of animals in factory farming to fuel a non-vegan diet is morally justified.
Most people offer a practical reason for not being vegan. They admit that the death and suffering of animals is bad and should be avoided when possible, but they don’t feel obligated to stop eating meat, usually because they feel they couldn’t change the industry
This justification is unsatisfactory because people should act in line with their principles. However, the question arises of whether animal suffering is actually out of line with personal principles. This article argues that an intuitive truth exists regarding whether consuming factory-farmed meat is justified, and concludes that a non-vegan diet is morally satisfactory for an individual.
The argument can be formally provided as follows:
1. The power of intuition
The most widely accepted method of moral deliberation is a process called reflective equilibrium. This process takes our prima facie judgments and intuitions, revises them through self-reflection, and then attempts to match both our judgments and revisions into a coherent set of moral principles to live by.
At first glance, most people would think that reflection is the most valuable step in the reflective equilibrium process. Of course, like with anything, there is a deeper understanding and therefore a greater likelihood of reaching the truth when it is critically thought about and tested. In the case of morality, this does not hold up under closer examination.
Imagine what seems to be a morally abhorrent act, like incest. If the siblings use protection, both consent without coercion, and no one is harmed, it seems that self-reflection seems to make incest a morally neutral action.
But can you genuinely believe that? Does the feeling of disgust go away when you reflect? It seems our revisions are only as strong as the initial judgments that shape how we feel about an act.
A similar example can be made in cases external to morality, such as epistemic judgments of belief. If I told you I have a flying pig in my house and sent you videos or photos, it wouldn’t matter. You aren’t going to believe me. The way you already feel about whether flying pigs exist is going to influence how you approach my evidence.
It is only with an intuition that someone can actually adhere to a belief about the world. Self-reflection either acts as justification for it or serves to make us wonder why exactly we believe the judgment, but it rarely changes the way we feel.
Because of this, intuition seems to be the most important part of the reflective equilibrium process. Therefore, one should note it with utmost importance when morally deliberating on a problem like animal suffering.
2. Vegan intuition
Since only 1% of people are vegan, it is clear that being vegan isn’t a widely held moral intuition, despite some negative feelings toward consuming meat. This is largely because of the disconnect between farming and eating animals. The idea of slaughtering cows on a farm seems morally reprehensible, but when I pick up a burger, I don’t feel that culpability.
As informal as it sounds, a disconnect exists between animal suffering and my experience that makes me care less about it. This seems likely to result from the fact that our intuitions only speak about other human experiences.
If someone is stabbed, I can imagine what it would be like to be stabbed. I can almost put myself in their place and attempt to gauge how I would feel if it happened to me. This is what we understand to be empathy.
Even for humans who lack proper functional capacity, I can speak to their mental potential and what it would mean for them to share my critical thinking skills. They are human like me and have inherited traits atypical for a standard person. In the same way, a human with six fingers can speak to what it would mean to have five fingers, as they are speaking about a human experience.
From this, the central question forms: What can I say about an animal’s experience?
Well, my intuition can’t say anything about it because the idea of a phenomenal experience for an animal is almost incoherent. If you put yourself in the position of a pig to replicate empathy, you are merely replacing the pig’s brain with your own because it’s all you know. You cannot understand the phenomenal experience the pig is having.
Because of this inability to speak meaningfully about animal experiences, humans tend to lack concern for them and therefore have no problem continuing to kill and eat them.
3. Moral judgement
Until a way exists to meaningfully understand animal experiences such that my intuitions adjust how I approach animal suffering, it seems no real moral intuitions are opposing the individual ability to eat meat under factory-farming conditions.
Many have attempted to create pro-vegan moral arguments, most notably the Name The Trait argument, but they seem to fail in the aspect of moral deliberation that matters most. These arguments, whether sound or not, do not change minds
It seems that, in the same way you can pick up that burger tomorrow and eat it with no shame, something intrinsic to eating a non-vegan diet makes shaming seem unwarranted, no matter how logical the argument.
The conclusion is that justification exists for not adopting a vegan diet. This is because the most valuable tool of moral analysis (intuitions) doesn’t adequately track animal harm. Instead, it allows for a non-vegan diet that does not find animal suffering relevant to the idea of human responsibility.
Logan Walters is a Management Information Systems major at Florida State University and a Staff Writer for the Views section of the FSView & Florida Flambeau, the student-run, independent online news service for the FSU community. Email our staff at contact@fsview.com.Â
This article originally appeared on FSU News: The case against vegan moral arguments
Reporting by Logan Walters, Staff Writer, FSView / FSU News
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