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Why I'm Not a Vegetarian, Part 2

The Arguments for Vegetarianism

In my last post, I presented two arguments for vegetarianism, both loosely based on arguments given by my professor at NIU, Mylan Engel.¹ To recap, the Consequentialist Argument says that we would decrease the overall amount of pain and suffering in the world if we became vegetarians, and that, for that reason, we are morally obligated to become vegetarians. The Argument from Moral Individualism takes a different approach. It says that we are justified in eating animals only if we are justified in discrimination based on group membership; since we aren't justified in discrimination based on group membership, we aren't justified in eating animals.

In this post and the next few, I'm going to say why I find these arguments unconvincing. To save words, I'm going to refer to the Consequentialist Argument as "CA" and the Argument from Moral Individualism as "AMI." Because AMI seems to apply more generally than CA, I'll start there.

Attacking a Straw Man?

Before I start, though, let me address a complaint some of you are probably making. It goes like this: CA and AMI are not representative of the best reasons to become a vegetarian. So, by addressing CA and AMI, I am making vegetarianism look less defensible than it really is. In other words, I am just attacking a straw man.²

This complaint is legitimate, I think. In some ways, I really am attacking a straw man. But this is OK, given that I make the following things clear. First, CA and AMI are neither the only legs vegetarianism has to stand on, nor the strongest legs vegetarianism has to stand on. (Engel's actual arguments, for example, are more compelling than CA and AMI.) So, a successful critique of vegetarianism will have to do more than knock out CA and AMI.³ Second, I'm using CA and AMI as springboards for conversation. I want to know how we should understand our place in God's creation, and I think wrestling with CA and AMI can help us gain insights here. That said, let's take a look at AMI.

The Relevant Premises in AMI

AMI is a deductive argument, and that means that, if any of its premises is false, it fails.⁴ I have several reservations about AMI, but I want to focus specifically on the premises that I numbered (9) and (10) in my last post. In case AMI is not fresh in your minds, premises (9) and (10) go as follows:

(9) If we treat individual A better than individual B, and if we do so simply because A is a member of our group (our race, our sex, our club, or whatever) and B is not, then we are not morally justified in what we are doing.

(10) We treat people better than we treat animals, and we do so simply because people are members of our group and animals are not.

Doubts about Premise (10)

At face value, premise (10) reads like a claim about our motives. A better way to take it, however, is as a claim about our justification. Read this way, (10) says that our only reason for treating people better than animals is that animals aren't members of "our group." But is this true?

I'm inclined to say no. To see why, consider two far-fetched scenarios. Here's the first:

Spy Team

You're a former Olympic diver and are now a Secret Service operative. Your job is to assemble a team of 50 spies who will sneak into a highly secure building and steal information. The only way into the building is through a small hole in a fence, so each member of the team must be very slim. You have 100 people to pick from. Unbeknownst to you, these people have been selected from two groups: former Olympic divers and former Olympic shot putters. The sole basis for your decision is the height/weight ratio of the individuals you are considering. You form your team by picking the slimmest 50. As it happens, you pick only individuals from your group — namely, former Olympic divers.

This scenario is ridiculous, but everything that makes it ridiculous is beside the point. What it illustrates is the fact that we sometimes treat individuals in our group systematically better than we treat individuals in some other group, but don't do so on the basis of the groups they are members of.

Now, bearing this in mind, consider another far-fetched scenario. This one is a bit grotesque, but it should help us see what's wrong with (10).

Psychological Experiment

You are a prisoner, and you are being subjected to a perverse psychological experiment. You get one meal a day, and, for each meal, you have to eat one of two individuals: either the individual in room A or the individual in room B. You are never told what groups these individuals are members of. Instead, your captors tell you about the character traits of the individuals in rooms A and B. Every day for 30 years, you hear descriptions like this:

The individual in room A is highly rational and capable of performing complex inferences. It values truth and beauty and lives accordingly. It's able to give and receive love. It's self-aware and willing to sacrifice itself for love and other higher causes. Most importantly, it's capable of entering into intimate relationship with God. Right now, it's watching the news and wondering what it would be like to be a soldier in Iraq. In contrast, the individual in room B is highly irrational and seems incapable of even the simplest inferences. It values neither truth nor beauty, and it lives accordingly. It isn't self-aware, it doesn't give or receive love, and it wouldn't sacrifice itself for anything. Needless to say, it seems incapable of relationship with God. Most importantly, it doesn't even have the potential for any of these virtues. It seems forced by its very nature to stay in the vicious state it is in. Right now, while the individual in room A is watching the news, the individual in room B is wallowing in its own feces.

Your captors always put a person in one room and pig or a cow in the other room. And as it turns out, every day for 30 years, based on nothing but descriptions like these, you eat the cow or pig instead of the person.

In this scenario, you systematically treat people better than you treat animals, but you never once reason, the individual in room A is a member of my group while the individual in room B isn't. So, I'm going to treat the individual in room A better than the individual in room B. At every step, your decision is based on considerations about the individuals involved.

The point of "Spy Team" was that we sometimes treat individuals in our group systematically better than we treat individuals in some other group, but don't do so on the basis of group membership. The point of "Psychological Experiment" is that, even if we completely ignored the question of group membership and, instead, focused solely on the virtues and vices of individuals, most of us would still treat people better than we treat animals. This would be because, when we focused on the virtues and vices of individual animals and individual people, over and over again, we would discover good reason to treat individual people better than individual animals.

But what about Racism and Sexism?

But wouldn't a similar line of reasoning license racism and sexism? Couldn't the racist replace every instance of "person" in the argument above with "white person," and every instance of "animal" with "black person," to get the racist conclusion he wants? And couldn't a sexist replace every instance of "person" with "man," and every instance of "animal" with "woman," to get the sexist conclusion he wants?

C O F F E E  S H O P

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In what ways do you think this argument differs from racism and sexism?

Join the discussion!

Clearly not. Neither of the sexes, nor any of the races, is better than any other. This is why, when we focus on the virtues and vices of individual men and women, or the virtues and vices of individuals from different races, we do not discover good reason to treat individuals from one sex or individuals from one race, better than individuals from another. But exactly the opposite happens when we compare the virtues and vices of individual people to the virtues and vices of individual animals.

In any case, racism and sexism take us right to the heart of premise (9), so I'll save all of the questions I've just raised for my next post.