Letter to the New York Times: The Ethics of the Ethicist ~ James McWilliams

[Billy L]

What follows is a letter signed by 59 scholars, artists, writers, and physicians (including me) who disagree with the motivation and spirit of the New York Times Magazine’s “Defending Your Dinner” contest. Please spread this letter far and wide. We very much hope it will be published.
http://eatingplantsdotorg.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/letter-to-the-ne...

[red dog]

Well said!

[Carolyn Bailey]

I disagree with this. When I heard about this contest I saw it as an excellent opportunity for vegan education. I fully intended to submit an essay myself, but unfortunately time got away from me. 

The people who have signed this letter had every opportunity to submit an essay as well. I don't understand why others didn't view this as an opportunity to write an essay similar to one of the finalists who speaks about eating "meat" again after 40 years.  

I would like to see the evidence that supports the following claim, as the studies that I am aware of indicate something else. 

"and other facts have led a majority of contemporary moral philosophers who have studied the question to conclude that killing animals in order to eat them is not a morally defensible human interest".  

[Tim Gier]

Hi Carolyn,

I also am not aware of any evidence that would support McWilliams' claim that "a majority of contemporary moral philosophers who have studied the question...conclude that killing animals in order to eat them is not a morally defensible human interest".  What I believe the evidence shows is that a majority of the philosophers of ethics who have been surveyed indicate that the eating of mammals is at least somewhat morally bad, but that the majority of those philosophers eat mammals at the same rate as other professors surveyed.  This evidence seems to indicate that even though a well-informed person may consider something as at least somewhat morally bad, they may also consider it morally defensible.  (For example, one may consider that, on the whole, buying fresh produce that poorly treated migrant workers have picked is somewhat morally bad, but that buying such produce is morally defensible on the grounds that such workers would have no other opportunities for employment if not for the sale of that produce. I'm not defending the use of migrant workers here, it's just an analogy!)  Another possibility is that it may be that even though philosophers of ethics (and others) do consider eating mammals at least somewhat morally bad, they just do it anyway, without worrying about whether their actions are morally defensible.  I suppose that the answers vary from person to person and that they are not simple ones.  

Eric Schwitzgebel has done lots of study on the ethical behavior of ethicists: 

http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2009/05/do-ethicists-eat-less-...

In any case, I believe that McWilliams is incorrect about how inquiry into ethics generally proceeds for most people. 

I believe that almost every human inquiry begins with an assumption about how things are.  I find it incredulous to think that most people who are currently vegan or vegetarian came to live that way without first deciding that there was something wrong with the practices of using and killing other animals.  It is not the case, I believe, that most people who are vegan or vegetarian decided to live as they do because the asked of themselves "How should I live?" or "What should I do about X?" Rather, I believe that most people have feelings about what they do, feelings that are for the most part inexplicable to them, and then they build rationalizations to support and justify those feelings.  I believe that most people who are vegan decided first that using and eating other animals was wrong, and only after that did they look for arguments to support that decision (assuming that they did look for such arguments; very many people never do).  In other words, vegans and vegetarians are just like the people that McWilliams is complaining about, in that, for many of them, veganism or vegetarianism is a "predetermined conclusion".