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Why It's OK: The Ethics and Aesthetics of How We Live
Why It's OK to Eat Meat
Vegetarians have argued at great length that meat-eating is wrong. Even so, the vast majority of people continue to eat meat, and even most vegetarians eventually give up on their diets. Does this prove these people must be morally corrupt?
In Why It’s OK to Eat Meat, Dan C. Shahar argues the answer is it’s entirely possible to be an ethical person while continuing to eat meat―and not just the "fancy" offerings from the farmers' market but also the regular meat we find at most supermarkets and restaurants. Shahar’s examination forcefully echoes vegetarians’ concerns about the meat industry’s impacts on animals, workers, the environment, and public health. However, he shows that the most influential ethical arguments for avoiding meat on the basis of these considerations are ultimately unpersuasive. Instead of insisting we all become vegetarians, Shahar argues each of us has broad latitude to choose which of the world’s problems to tackle, in what ways, and to what extents, and hence people can decline to take up this particular form of activism without doing anything wrong.
Key Features
First book-length defense of meat-eating written for a popular audience
Punchy, accessible introduction to the multifaceted debate over the ethics of eating meat
Includes pioneering new examinations of humane labeling practices
Shows why appeals to universalized patterns of behavior can’t vindicate vegetarians’ claims that there’s a duty to avoid meat
Develops a novel theory of ethical activism with potential applications to a wide range of other issues
In Why It’s OK to Eat Meat, Dan C. Shahar argues the answer is it’s entirely possible to be an ethical person while continuing to eat meat―and not just the "fancy" offerings from the farmers' market but also the regular meat we find at most supermarkets and restaurants. Shahar’s examination forcefully echoes vegetarians’ concerns about the meat industry’s impacts on animals, workers, the environment, and public health. However, he shows that the most influential ethical arguments for avoiding meat on the basis of these considerations are ultimately unpersuasive. Instead of insisting we all become vegetarians, Shahar argues each of us has broad latitude to choose which of the world’s problems to tackle, in what ways, and to what extents, and hence people can decline to take up this particular form of activism without doing anything wrong.
Key Features
First book-length defense of meat-eating written for a popular audience
Punchy, accessible introduction to the multifaceted debate over the ethics of eating meat
Includes pioneering new examinations of humane labeling practices
Shows why appeals to universalized patterns of behavior can’t vindicate vegetarians’ claims that there’s a duty to avoid meat
Develops a novel theory of ethical activism with potential applications to a wide range of other issues
- GenresPhilosophy
220 pages, Hardcover
First published November 9, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 25, 2022
I would probably go with 3.5 stars, but rounding it up for the 4th star in part because one of the few reviews thus far allotted it a 1-star, after admittedly watching a youtube video with the author instead of reading the actual book. Hopefully the early, dead weight rating doesn't put people off from considering a genuine attempt at steelmanning the case for personal meat consumption.
The first two thirds of Chapter 4, on the inefficacy objection, are the most valuable parts of the book (presuming readers are already well familiar with the moral atrocities that take place on the scale of tens of billions on factory farms). In this chapter, Shahar does an excellent job building on the work from Mark Budoflson and issues surrounding collective action problems, providing extensive context/references from other authors and academics in this space. This likely could have been augmented by drawing foundations from Derek Parfit's 'Five Mistakes in Moral Mathematics: Share-of-the-total View', but such would also possibly be outside the scope of this book. I also applaud Shahar's impetus for readers to ensure that they are contributing to the improvement of factory farms, or at least other 'equally important' cause areas, as this book could have easily made its case with no such undertone.
My critiques of the book stem largely from the fact that Shahar seems to have an insufficient understanding of how 'moral obligations' emerge/manifest in the world, or at least is unclear on his own understanding of them. The 'pick the way you want to help the world' approach, which he advocates in the end of chapter 4 and throughout much of the latter half of the book, falls short both philosophically and in practice, given how easily our egoistic minds can rationalize just what it is we think we're doing to make a difference, and how satisfied we deserve to be in thinking 'my contribution is enough, I've done my share!'.
I also think that there were a variety of arguments that could strengthen the case made in this book, ranging from issues around the displacement of wild animal suffering (though this is largely due to dairy farms in the Amazon, and this book is mostly about meat consumption), implications of classical (total) utilitarianism ** and the obligation it creates to bring net positive beings into existence (even if used as a means to an end), the profligate use of 'weirdness points' that can undercut other areas of influence one might have in the same or different cause area (like donating to the most effective charities, where one can plausibly make drastically larger difference with respect to farmed animal welfare), the connection of mainstream veganism to the sort of environmentalism that wants to re-wild (plausibly unethical on most utilitarian frameworks), and the thorn that is moral cluelessness, rendering us unable to confidently predict the trajectory of consequences into the long term future, making any given action 'a wash' (ethically). Granted, most of these issues are so niche and esoteric, as shown by the likely look on the face of anyone reading this, that I could accept Shahar's exclusion of them, if she consciously did so :)
All in all, I think it's difficult to find a author/book that genuinely makes a case for meat consumption, let alone one that had a handful of valid points, so this book deserves some extra respect and attention by those who pursue either pathway. I for one still think the arguments overall favor the contrary, and luckily am getting to the point myself (only 14 months in, 29 years of original sin behind me, yikes) where I've found that not eating dead animals (or eggs to the extent practicable) isn't all too difficult.
** While I no longer hold this view, and find some version of negative utilitarianism to be much more plausible, I think the majority of vegans are closer to the former.
The first two thirds of Chapter 4, on the inefficacy objection, are the most valuable parts of the book (presuming readers are already well familiar with the moral atrocities that take place on the scale of tens of billions on factory farms). In this chapter, Shahar does an excellent job building on the work from Mark Budoflson and issues surrounding collective action problems, providing extensive context/references from other authors and academics in this space. This likely could have been augmented by drawing foundations from Derek Parfit's 'Five Mistakes in Moral Mathematics: Share-of-the-total View', but such would also possibly be outside the scope of this book. I also applaud Shahar's impetus for readers to ensure that they are contributing to the improvement of factory farms, or at least other 'equally important' cause areas, as this book could have easily made its case with no such undertone.
My critiques of the book stem largely from the fact that Shahar seems to have an insufficient understanding of how 'moral obligations' emerge/manifest in the world, or at least is unclear on his own understanding of them. The 'pick the way you want to help the world' approach, which he advocates in the end of chapter 4 and throughout much of the latter half of the book, falls short both philosophically and in practice, given how easily our egoistic minds can rationalize just what it is we think we're doing to make a difference, and how satisfied we deserve to be in thinking 'my contribution is enough, I've done my share!'.
I also think that there were a variety of arguments that could strengthen the case made in this book, ranging from issues around the displacement of wild animal suffering (though this is largely due to dairy farms in the Amazon, and this book is mostly about meat consumption), implications of classical (total) utilitarianism ** and the obligation it creates to bring net positive beings into existence (even if used as a means to an end), the profligate use of 'weirdness points' that can undercut other areas of influence one might have in the same or different cause area (like donating to the most effective charities, where one can plausibly make drastically larger difference with respect to farmed animal welfare), the connection of mainstream veganism to the sort of environmentalism that wants to re-wild (plausibly unethical on most utilitarian frameworks), and the thorn that is moral cluelessness, rendering us unable to confidently predict the trajectory of consequences into the long term future, making any given action 'a wash' (ethically). Granted, most of these issues are so niche and esoteric, as shown by the likely look on the face of anyone reading this, that I could accept Shahar's exclusion of them, if she consciously did so :)
All in all, I think it's difficult to find a author/book that genuinely makes a case for meat consumption, let alone one that had a handful of valid points, so this book deserves some extra respect and attention by those who pursue either pathway. I for one still think the arguments overall favor the contrary, and luckily am getting to the point myself (only 14 months in, 29 years of original sin behind me, yikes) where I've found that not eating dead animals (or eggs to the extent practicable) isn't all too difficult.
** While I no longer hold this view, and find some version of negative utilitarianism to be much more plausible, I think the majority of vegans are closer to the former.
May 31, 2022
This quote from Peter Singer pretty much single-handedly addresses the main argument in this book: "Everyone has a limited amount of time and energy, and time taken in active work for one cause reduces the time available for another cause; but there is nothing to stop those who devote their time and energy to human problems from joining the boycott of the produce of agribusiness cruelty. It takes no more time to be a vegetarian than to eat animal flesh... When non-vegetarians say 'human problems come first' I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for humans that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals."
Why It's Ok to Eat Meat warrants an extra star because it's clear that Shahar is engaging with the arguments for ethical vegetarianism in good faith. I just found his conclusion unpalatable.
The core of his argument essentially boiled down to the fact that there are so many problems in the world today that it's unclear that the issue of eating meat is one that every ethically conscious person is obligated to address. Given that people have limited time, emotional bandwidth, and energy, he argues that people who address other ethical issues aren't obligated to also be vegetarian. I think the issue here is that vegetarianism (a catch-all term he uses to also include veganism) is a negative action. It's something you don't do. It doesn't require one to spend extra time or money. This means that it's fully compatible with other forms of activism.
He addressed plenty of other arguments, and engaged with them all fairly, but the one mentioned above seemed to be his central thesis, and suffice it to say that I was unconvinced by his reasoning.
Why It's Ok to Eat Meat warrants an extra star because it's clear that Shahar is engaging with the arguments for ethical vegetarianism in good faith. I just found his conclusion unpalatable.
The core of his argument essentially boiled down to the fact that there are so many problems in the world today that it's unclear that the issue of eating meat is one that every ethically conscious person is obligated to address. Given that people have limited time, emotional bandwidth, and energy, he argues that people who address other ethical issues aren't obligated to also be vegetarian. I think the issue here is that vegetarianism (a catch-all term he uses to also include veganism) is a negative action. It's something you don't do. It doesn't require one to spend extra time or money. This means that it's fully compatible with other forms of activism.
He addressed plenty of other arguments, and engaged with them all fairly, but the one mentioned above seemed to be his central thesis, and suffice it to say that I was unconvinced by his reasoning.
January 14, 2022
This was a worthwhile read, but ultimately unpersuasive for me. The main argument is that there are lots of things that are simply "nice to do", like volunteering or picking up litter: while they may benefit others, they are just one out of a menu of options we have for improving the world. The book presumes that vegetarianism is one of these nice-to-do things, but it doesn't spend much time explaining *why* vegetarianism is this kind of optional good thing, and not an obligatory good thing such not being complicit with the Nazis. The book details some of the horrors of meat, egg, and dairy production, and acknowledges the immense suffering that comes with intensively farming and killing billions of animals a year, but then proceeds to argue that this is actually no big deal. You can choose to be complicit in this great evil, or not. It doesn't matter any more than whether you choose to spend your next weekend volunteering or going on a trip.
Many of the arguments around efficacy, collective action / game theory, and complicity, if applied to other topics, could be used to justify never voting, purchasing child pornography, or cooperating with institutions engaged in genocide or slavery. He skirts around the idea that there are some things that we should do, or should not do, regardless of what other people are doing or whether our choice in the matter has any material impact on the world.
Many of the arguments around efficacy, collective action / game theory, and complicity, if applied to other topics, could be used to justify never voting, purchasing child pornography, or cooperating with institutions engaged in genocide or slavery. He skirts around the idea that there are some things that we should do, or should not do, regardless of what other people are doing or whether our choice in the matter has any material impact on the world.
September 30, 2023
I think almost everything said in this book is incorrect, but will give it 2 stars rather than 1 since it is clearly and logically written. I also have to give the author credit for not rehashing the same debunked arguments against veganism that are brought up (like "plants might feel pain" or "it is necessary to eat meat to be healthy") and instead brings up his own novel arguments, which unfortunately also fall flat. In fact, this is a good book for vegans/vegetarians who are interested in an exercise in spotting bad/fallacious arguments, which is what I will do here.
"In Principle" Objections
In the first section of this book, Shahar gives his objections to the arguments that it is wrong to eat animals in principle, even humanely raised ones, since without taking down these arguments he would not be able to justify eating factory farmed meat as he does later.
Objection to Marginal Case
His first objection is to the marginal case argument, which argues that it is impossible to find a distinguishing human characteristic, like intelligence or reasoning ability, between animals we eat and all humans. Finding this distinguishing characteristic which would allow us to eat animals but object to eating humans, since animals lack this characteristic. However, the vegan argument is that we aren't able to find any characteristic that can be attributed to all humans but not animals. For instance, if we point to intelligence or reasoning ability, we find that severely cognitively disabled humans often lack this characteristic like intelligence or reasoning. Because this is the case, vegans argue we must bring up the status of animals to deserving the same right to not be eaten as these cognitively disabled humans.
To object to this, Shahar gives the example of how in the past, certain people we treated as royalty and others were not (pg 29). In this case, the status of these royals was brought down to those of normal people, which is unlike our case with animals, where vegans attempt to bring the status of animals up to severely these disabled humans. To Shahar, it is not clear why we would bring up the status of animals, rather than bringing humanity or these disabled humans down to being able to be eaten.
This conclusion doesn't make sense for numerous reasons. For one, similar logic might cause Shahar to be unsure if freedom won by slaves, or rights won by women, are a good thing. In both these cases, a marginalized group gains rights and elevates their moral status, but Shahar might conclude the opposite in which all people become marginalized as equally possible to be a good outcome. Additionally, Shahar strangely ends up dismissing the whole argument based on the conclusion: "it would seemingly recommend a view toward disabled humans that most of us find repugnant-and I think rightly so" (pg 39). Instead of examining both possible conclusions: that animals should be treated as severely cognitively disabled humans, or these humans should be treated the same as animals, he simply rejects the first conclusion and dismisses the second as repugnant, and then moves on. If Shahar has no objection to the premises that lead to these conclusions, then he needs more justification to simply dismiss them.
Partiality to Humans is OK
Shahar's next objection is to "speciesism", which is treating humans as superior solely because they are human. He objects to this by claiming that humans have a certain "dignity" to not be eaten. For instance, if we see a human being mauled by a lion, we would see it as something tragic. However, animals don't possess this dignity, since we do not feel the same way for animals. This claim is quite strange since it identifies our current moral understanding of wild animals, which is that they can be eaten due to ecological necessity, and uses that to justify farmed animals being eaten. Just because our current moral understanding points a certain way doesn't mean we shouldn't scrutinize it. For instance, it might be that wild animal suffering is an issue that should be tackled, or that just because wild animals die, doesn't mean that we are justified in intentionally causing more animals to die by farming them. This would be analogous to saying "there are humans that die in car accidents, so humans dying in car accidents is normal. Therefore, I am justified in driving my car into anyone I see".
Killing Animals Isn't Bad
Next, Shahar objects to the argument that killing animals is bad because it deprives them of future pleasure. He handles this by saying killing and eating animals is analogous to person A doing a positive experience that would cause person B to miss out on another positive experience, which wouldn't be a bad thing to do by person A. This is because to Shahar, animals only experience the world moment to moment since they lack the ability to set goals far into the future and have them thwarted by death like humans can, which is the characteristic that causes death to be a negative experience for the human. Since they live in an "eternal present", we can kill the animal at any time, because at most they would lose some future positive experiences, which according to the analogy drawn above doesn't matter.
There main issue with the way Shahar presents the vegan argument is that it strawmans a stronger argument, which is that unnecessarily killing an animal is immoral because it violates their right to life. This argument is similar to the marginal case argument mentioned above that Shahar dismissed, as similarly to how you wouldn't kill a severely cognitively disabled human without good reason, you wouldn't do the same for an animal, as in both cases this would be a violation of their rights. Shahar considers this, but rejects this because the cognitively disabled humans are "someone's sibling, cousin, or neighbor" and "are loved and honored members of their families" (pg 37). However, this claim is speciesist, since clearly animals are also able to feel communal bonds, and suffer when these are broken, such as when a dairy cow's calf is taken from her.
Shahar attempts to amend to this that "cognitively disabled humans live in intimate relationships with non-disabled people" (pg 37), which is to say that having a relationship with a human is what gives one the dignity to not be eaten, and since farmed animals only have relationships with each other, they can be eaten. However, we can simply imagine a hypothetical situation where this cognitively disabled human was an orphan with no familial ties. This exact point is brought up in Peter Singer's Animal Liberation to contend with the point Shahar attempts to make, as despite this cognitively disabled human lacking familial ties, we do not think it is acceptable to eat it. It confused me why Peter Singer's objection wasn't brought up by Shahar, since he references Animal Liberation in his book, yet he once again attempts to object to a weaker version of an argument to make his point.
The argument that animals have a right to life also is supported by "controversial claims about animal cognition" (pg 46) which Shahar dismisses. This is because Shahar wants to claim that the only thing an animal loses by dying is their potential pleasurable experiences, but doesn't suffer by having any future plans/goals foiled as it would be for humans. However, it is reasonable to think that animals can think to some extent into the future, even if only for a few minutes or seconds, and if so, this is worth consideration. For instance, it would be strange to think that our closest common ancestor, the chimpanzee, has no future planning capability whatsoever despite us being so closely related.
Additionally, I think even most meat eaters would likely disagree with Shahar's premise, that the death of their pet is not only bad because their pet lost on their future happiness, but instead think that the death is something intrinsically bad for the pet itself. Otherwise, anyone might be justified to go breed and kill their own pets at any moment so long as it dies instantaneously. If one contends that this isn't ok because we don't eat the pet that is killed, you might simply say that rather than taste pleasure, you might derive a similar level of sadistic pleasure from this act which makes it justifiable.
Because Shahar doesn't properly tackle the strongest version the argument on why animals shouldn't be unnecessarily killed, he has not found the interesting objection to the argument he claims he has.
"In Practice" Objections
After arguing why he thinks humane farming is OK, Shahar begins to tackle what he sees as the more difficult issue, which is that eating factory farmed meat is OK. To begin, the author gives us some information on factory farming, to which he concludes that the horrors of the modern day meat industry are real and something that should ideally be solved.
The Inefficacy Thesis
However, Shahar thinks that even if the way meat is produced in practice is bad, we can still eat meat. This is because the first objection he has to the vegan "boycott" of animal products is that individual consumer actions don't actually affect anything. He agrees that while collective action can spark change, he thinks that one person as an individual changing their eating habits will never save any particular animal life (which he calls The Inefficacy Thesis), because the scale at which the industry operates is so vast. This section was pretty baffling, and made me begin to think the author wasn't really serious about this position he is arguing for, since anyone can see that this argument can easily be applied to a slew of other things to justify them, such as not voting or buying child pornography.
During this portion of the book, I started to play a game where I substituted a different issue in Shahar's argument, such as on page 120: "As individuals, ourconsumption decisions paying taxes generally make no difference to how the meat industry government operates. Thus, if the idea is that meat-eating avoiding your taxes is wrong because when a person eats meat doesn't pay taxes, they cause bad things to happen, that argument won't go through on factual ground." Unfortunately, Shahar never addresses any of these other possible applications of his argument. The argument is also an example of the decision point fallacy, where since we can never tell the exact point when a number of small actions become impactful, the small actions are never impactful. For instance, if 1 person doesn't eat meat, Shahar would say this has no impact, but if we make it 2 people not eating meat, then 3, etc., Shahar would still have to say the n+1th person eating meat still has no impact.
Veganism isn't Obligatory
Shahar next says that despite individuals having no impact by not eating meat, collective movements do have the power to make an impact. However, despite conceding that the amount of vegans/vegetarians today has made an impact, he says that being vegan/vegetarian specifically isn't obligatory, because there are a large number of issues out there and it is impossible to tackle them all. This remains as his main argument for the rest of the book.
He makes the comparison of adopting veganism to the prisoners dilemma. The prisoners dilemma has a few possibilities, one is where everyone "cooperates" and becomes vegan, second is where nobody cooperates and nobody is vegan, and the third is where someone cooperate and become vegan and the rest don't. He thinks that ideally, 100% of people would be vegan, but the world we live in is closer to the third world, where we have some cooperators and some that don't. However, Shahar makes the strange point that if everyone else was vegan (the first world), then he would become vegan too. But since we are in this situation where some people cooperate and some don't, it's not really necessary that we cooperate.
This argument is flawed for many reasons. Firstly, it is another example of the decision point fallacy, where Shahar seems to think that unless everyone is vegan, being vegan is optional, but when everyone cooperates to be vegan, it is then an obligation. Additionally, we can once again take Shahar's argument and substitute a different issue in it to see if it holds up: "Even for those who accept the seriousness of themeat industry's slave trade's problems and would readily cooperate in a social arrangement that eliminated them, it might not be obvious why it's obligatory to avoid meat buying slaves when the vast majority of people continue doing it" (pg 140). With this argument, Shahar denies that anything that exists outside of the current moral status quo, like how antislavery once was, could be obligatory.
Complicity Doesn't Matter
He also rejects that veganism is specifically important because you are complicit in animal suffering by eating meat, since your action is directly causing the propagation of suffering. He gives the example of everyone in a city polluting it to such a large amount it caused health issues to those living in it, with only an expensive upgrade to your car to prevent your own emissions. In this case, Shahar thinks that if someone doesn't get this upgrade, but instead does some other good in the world, this would be fine. However, another analogy one could consider (I'm taking this from Doing Good Better by William MacAskill) is if you cheated on your spouse, but then did some other good things including becoming a marriage counselor which prevented others from cheating, saying that is fine you cheated since you did other good things in return. The difference between the city pollution and this is that in the latter, a single individual (the spouse you cheated on) was directly harmed by your action.
Shahar would reject the cheating analogy because of his Inefficacy Thesis described above. Since he thinks an individual's choice doesn't change anything in the meat industry, he would say that eating meat doesn't directly cause harm to an animal. However, I've explained above why the Inefficacy Thesis is false, and even most meat eaters would likely agree with the sentiment that each time they eat meat, they have basically paid for the killing of the animal they eat. Because of this, Shahar's analogy to the smog pollution seems weak, since it takes away how eating meat makes one complicit in harming an individual being.
We Shouldn't be Disgusted by Meat
He argues it is not good to feel disgust every time we ate meat, since there are many positive benefits to eating meat like culinary merit and tradition with loved ones, and it's ok to enjoy these things. However, this justification once again fails when compared to a different moral issue: "as with countless other areas of life, sustaining conflicted emotional attitudes towardmeat dogfighting would be burdensome, impairing meat-eaters' dogfighters' ability to enjoy activities they value." (pg 166). He fails to mention how this disgust might be beneficial since it would cause people to eat less meat, since he himself notes as one of the high costs of going vegetarian is changing one's lifestyle from eating this food they currently enjoy. Similar to how people now react to dogfighting with feelings of disgust, causing them not to do it, having feelings of disgust to meat will likely make it easier to not eat it, which Shahar himself says would be a good thing.
Conclusion
Shahar's arguments presented are extremely dubious, and hopefully this review has shed some light as to why. While I disagree with almost every argument in this book, the arguments presented are interesting enough that it was still worth spending a day to read this book and contending with them in this review, so it might still be a worthwhile read for those interested in the topic.
"In Principle" Objections
In the first section of this book, Shahar gives his objections to the arguments that it is wrong to eat animals in principle, even humanely raised ones, since without taking down these arguments he would not be able to justify eating factory farmed meat as he does later.
Objection to Marginal Case
His first objection is to the marginal case argument, which argues that it is impossible to find a distinguishing human characteristic, like intelligence or reasoning ability, between animals we eat and all humans. Finding this distinguishing characteristic which would allow us to eat animals but object to eating humans, since animals lack this characteristic. However, the vegan argument is that we aren't able to find any characteristic that can be attributed to all humans but not animals. For instance, if we point to intelligence or reasoning ability, we find that severely cognitively disabled humans often lack this characteristic like intelligence or reasoning. Because this is the case, vegans argue we must bring up the status of animals to deserving the same right to not be eaten as these cognitively disabled humans.
To object to this, Shahar gives the example of how in the past, certain people we treated as royalty and others were not (pg 29). In this case, the status of these royals was brought down to those of normal people, which is unlike our case with animals, where vegans attempt to bring the status of animals up to severely these disabled humans. To Shahar, it is not clear why we would bring up the status of animals, rather than bringing humanity or these disabled humans down to being able to be eaten.
This conclusion doesn't make sense for numerous reasons. For one, similar logic might cause Shahar to be unsure if freedom won by slaves, or rights won by women, are a good thing. In both these cases, a marginalized group gains rights and elevates their moral status, but Shahar might conclude the opposite in which all people become marginalized as equally possible to be a good outcome. Additionally, Shahar strangely ends up dismissing the whole argument based on the conclusion: "it would seemingly recommend a view toward disabled humans that most of us find repugnant-and I think rightly so" (pg 39). Instead of examining both possible conclusions: that animals should be treated as severely cognitively disabled humans, or these humans should be treated the same as animals, he simply rejects the first conclusion and dismisses the second as repugnant, and then moves on. If Shahar has no objection to the premises that lead to these conclusions, then he needs more justification to simply dismiss them.
Partiality to Humans is OK
Shahar's next objection is to "speciesism", which is treating humans as superior solely because they are human. He objects to this by claiming that humans have a certain "dignity" to not be eaten. For instance, if we see a human being mauled by a lion, we would see it as something tragic. However, animals don't possess this dignity, since we do not feel the same way for animals. This claim is quite strange since it identifies our current moral understanding of wild animals, which is that they can be eaten due to ecological necessity, and uses that to justify farmed animals being eaten. Just because our current moral understanding points a certain way doesn't mean we shouldn't scrutinize it. For instance, it might be that wild animal suffering is an issue that should be tackled, or that just because wild animals die, doesn't mean that we are justified in intentionally causing more animals to die by farming them. This would be analogous to saying "there are humans that die in car accidents, so humans dying in car accidents is normal. Therefore, I am justified in driving my car into anyone I see".
Killing Animals Isn't Bad
Next, Shahar objects to the argument that killing animals is bad because it deprives them of future pleasure. He handles this by saying killing and eating animals is analogous to person A doing a positive experience that would cause person B to miss out on another positive experience, which wouldn't be a bad thing to do by person A. This is because to Shahar, animals only experience the world moment to moment since they lack the ability to set goals far into the future and have them thwarted by death like humans can, which is the characteristic that causes death to be a negative experience for the human. Since they live in an "eternal present", we can kill the animal at any time, because at most they would lose some future positive experiences, which according to the analogy drawn above doesn't matter.
There main issue with the way Shahar presents the vegan argument is that it strawmans a stronger argument, which is that unnecessarily killing an animal is immoral because it violates their right to life. This argument is similar to the marginal case argument mentioned above that Shahar dismissed, as similarly to how you wouldn't kill a severely cognitively disabled human without good reason, you wouldn't do the same for an animal, as in both cases this would be a violation of their rights. Shahar considers this, but rejects this because the cognitively disabled humans are "someone's sibling, cousin, or neighbor" and "are loved and honored members of their families" (pg 37). However, this claim is speciesist, since clearly animals are also able to feel communal bonds, and suffer when these are broken, such as when a dairy cow's calf is taken from her.
Shahar attempts to amend to this that "cognitively disabled humans live in intimate relationships with non-disabled people" (pg 37), which is to say that having a relationship with a human is what gives one the dignity to not be eaten, and since farmed animals only have relationships with each other, they can be eaten. However, we can simply imagine a hypothetical situation where this cognitively disabled human was an orphan with no familial ties. This exact point is brought up in Peter Singer's Animal Liberation to contend with the point Shahar attempts to make, as despite this cognitively disabled human lacking familial ties, we do not think it is acceptable to eat it. It confused me why Peter Singer's objection wasn't brought up by Shahar, since he references Animal Liberation in his book, yet he once again attempts to object to a weaker version of an argument to make his point.
The argument that animals have a right to life also is supported by "controversial claims about animal cognition" (pg 46) which Shahar dismisses. This is because Shahar wants to claim that the only thing an animal loses by dying is their potential pleasurable experiences, but doesn't suffer by having any future plans/goals foiled as it would be for humans. However, it is reasonable to think that animals can think to some extent into the future, even if only for a few minutes or seconds, and if so, this is worth consideration. For instance, it would be strange to think that our closest common ancestor, the chimpanzee, has no future planning capability whatsoever despite us being so closely related.
Additionally, I think even most meat eaters would likely disagree with Shahar's premise, that the death of their pet is not only bad because their pet lost on their future happiness, but instead think that the death is something intrinsically bad for the pet itself. Otherwise, anyone might be justified to go breed and kill their own pets at any moment so long as it dies instantaneously. If one contends that this isn't ok because we don't eat the pet that is killed, you might simply say that rather than taste pleasure, you might derive a similar level of sadistic pleasure from this act which makes it justifiable.
Because Shahar doesn't properly tackle the strongest version the argument on why animals shouldn't be unnecessarily killed, he has not found the interesting objection to the argument he claims he has.
"In Practice" Objections
After arguing why he thinks humane farming is OK, Shahar begins to tackle what he sees as the more difficult issue, which is that eating factory farmed meat is OK. To begin, the author gives us some information on factory farming, to which he concludes that the horrors of the modern day meat industry are real and something that should ideally be solved.
The Inefficacy Thesis
However, Shahar thinks that even if the way meat is produced in practice is bad, we can still eat meat. This is because the first objection he has to the vegan "boycott" of animal products is that individual consumer actions don't actually affect anything. He agrees that while collective action can spark change, he thinks that one person as an individual changing their eating habits will never save any particular animal life (which he calls The Inefficacy Thesis), because the scale at which the industry operates is so vast. This section was pretty baffling, and made me begin to think the author wasn't really serious about this position he is arguing for, since anyone can see that this argument can easily be applied to a slew of other things to justify them, such as not voting or buying child pornography.
During this portion of the book, I started to play a game where I substituted a different issue in Shahar's argument, such as on page 120: "As individuals, our
Veganism isn't Obligatory
Shahar next says that despite individuals having no impact by not eating meat, collective movements do have the power to make an impact. However, despite conceding that the amount of vegans/vegetarians today has made an impact, he says that being vegan/vegetarian specifically isn't obligatory, because there are a large number of issues out there and it is impossible to tackle them all. This remains as his main argument for the rest of the book.
He makes the comparison of adopting veganism to the prisoners dilemma. The prisoners dilemma has a few possibilities, one is where everyone "cooperates" and becomes vegan, second is where nobody cooperates and nobody is vegan, and the third is where someone cooperate and become vegan and the rest don't. He thinks that ideally, 100% of people would be vegan, but the world we live in is closer to the third world, where we have some cooperators and some that don't. However, Shahar makes the strange point that if everyone else was vegan (the first world), then he would become vegan too. But since we are in this situation where some people cooperate and some don't, it's not really necessary that we cooperate.
This argument is flawed for many reasons. Firstly, it is another example of the decision point fallacy, where Shahar seems to think that unless everyone is vegan, being vegan is optional, but when everyone cooperates to be vegan, it is then an obligation. Additionally, we can once again take Shahar's argument and substitute a different issue in it to see if it holds up: "Even for those who accept the seriousness of the
Complicity Doesn't Matter
He also rejects that veganism is specifically important because you are complicit in animal suffering by eating meat, since your action is directly causing the propagation of suffering. He gives the example of everyone in a city polluting it to such a large amount it caused health issues to those living in it, with only an expensive upgrade to your car to prevent your own emissions. In this case, Shahar thinks that if someone doesn't get this upgrade, but instead does some other good in the world, this would be fine. However, another analogy one could consider (I'm taking this from Doing Good Better by William MacAskill) is if you cheated on your spouse, but then did some other good things including becoming a marriage counselor which prevented others from cheating, saying that is fine you cheated since you did other good things in return. The difference between the city pollution and this is that in the latter, a single individual (the spouse you cheated on) was directly harmed by your action.
Shahar would reject the cheating analogy because of his Inefficacy Thesis described above. Since he thinks an individual's choice doesn't change anything in the meat industry, he would say that eating meat doesn't directly cause harm to an animal. However, I've explained above why the Inefficacy Thesis is false, and even most meat eaters would likely agree with the sentiment that each time they eat meat, they have basically paid for the killing of the animal they eat. Because of this, Shahar's analogy to the smog pollution seems weak, since it takes away how eating meat makes one complicit in harming an individual being.
We Shouldn't be Disgusted by Meat
He argues it is not good to feel disgust every time we ate meat, since there are many positive benefits to eating meat like culinary merit and tradition with loved ones, and it's ok to enjoy these things. However, this justification once again fails when compared to a different moral issue: "as with countless other areas of life, sustaining conflicted emotional attitudes toward
Conclusion
Shahar's arguments presented are extremely dubious, and hopefully this review has shed some light as to why. While I disagree with almost every argument in this book, the arguments presented are interesting enough that it was still worth spending a day to read this book and contending with them in this review, so it might still be a worthwhile read for those interested in the topic.
Read
May 28, 2023Eka kuuntelemani äänikirja BookBeatilla. Olisi varmasti toiminut luettuna paremmin.
Filosofi Dan C. Shahar argumentoi, että lihan syöminen on OK eikä suuri vääryys. Ajatuksina on jotakuinkin ja esim. että yksilön lihansyönnin vaikutukset ovat sillä tavalla miniskulaariset, että se ei ole suuri vääryys, vaikka lihantuotanto on monella tavalla ongelmallista. Keskeinen pointti on, että ihmisillä on velvoite toimia korjatakseen maailman ongelmia, mutta lihan syömättömyyden vaikutus ei ole suuri ja se ei riitä täyttämään henkilöiden eettisiä velvoitteita maailman ongelmien korjaamiseen. Kirjoittaja peräänkuuluttaa proaktiivisempaa otetta ongelmien korjaamiseksi sen sijaan, että minimoi omaa vaikutustaan maailmaan. Asiaan liittyy yksilön energian ja ajan allokointi järkevällä tavalla: Kaikkiin ongelmiin ei voi puuttua, joten on järkevää puuttua niistä osaan ja antaa henkilökohtaisten motiivien vaikuttaa näihin valintoihin. Sinänsä ihan järkeenkäypiä ajatuksia noin äänikirjana englanniksi kuunneltuina.
Filosofi Dan C. Shahar argumentoi, että lihan syöminen on OK eikä suuri vääryys. Ajatuksina on jotakuinkin ja esim. että yksilön lihansyönnin vaikutukset ovat sillä tavalla miniskulaariset, että se ei ole suuri vääryys, vaikka lihantuotanto on monella tavalla ongelmallista. Keskeinen pointti on, että ihmisillä on velvoite toimia korjatakseen maailman ongelmia, mutta lihan syömättömyyden vaikutus ei ole suuri ja se ei riitä täyttämään henkilöiden eettisiä velvoitteita maailman ongelmien korjaamiseen. Kirjoittaja peräänkuuluttaa proaktiivisempaa otetta ongelmien korjaamiseksi sen sijaan, että minimoi omaa vaikutustaan maailmaan. Asiaan liittyy yksilön energian ja ajan allokointi järkevällä tavalla: Kaikkiin ongelmiin ei voi puuttua, joten on järkevää puuttua niistä osaan ja antaa henkilökohtaisten motiivien vaikuttaa näihin valintoihin. Sinänsä ihan järkeenkäypiä ajatuksia noin äänikirjana englanniksi kuunneltuina.
August 24, 2022
Even if you accept all of the (wrong) arguments in this book, the conclusion you would come to is fairly moderate position that *if* vegetarianism is very difficult for you to do, than it would be acceptable to do some other form of world-bettering instead. The author seems to think the conclusions are a little stronger than that but they aren't. If you eat meat and are looking to assuage your guilt about that, this may be the book for you.
The author did a surprisingly good job over-viewing the abuses if the meat industry, given the relatively small number of pages available. The author also makes a decent effort to refute ethical vegetarianism but basically fails in the end.
For one example of bad arguments in this book, consider the following: the author brings up an article which argues that we should view animals as Not The Sorts Of Things That Should Be Eaten. This is basically the right take on the issue. Humans simply shouldn't be eaten. Animals simply shouldn't be eaten. He tries to argue that this is not a tenable position because animals eat each other in the wild which is totally irrelevant and basically comes down to the naturalistic fallacy that he dismisses at the beginning of the book.
He also repeats the criticisms of vegetarians/vegans that meat eaters like to pull out their asses. Towards the end he said something like "a lot of vegetarians think all they have to do is eat vegetables to be morally pure" which is not something anyone thinks. I have literally never come across a vegan who thinks avoiding meat exempts them from "no ethical consumption."
The author did a surprisingly good job over-viewing the abuses if the meat industry, given the relatively small number of pages available. The author also makes a decent effort to refute ethical vegetarianism but basically fails in the end.
For one example of bad arguments in this book, consider the following: the author brings up an article which argues that we should view animals as Not The Sorts Of Things That Should Be Eaten. This is basically the right take on the issue. Humans simply shouldn't be eaten. Animals simply shouldn't be eaten. He tries to argue that this is not a tenable position because animals eat each other in the wild which is totally irrelevant and basically comes down to the naturalistic fallacy that he dismisses at the beginning of the book.
He also repeats the criticisms of vegetarians/vegans that meat eaters like to pull out their asses. Towards the end he said something like "a lot of vegetarians think all they have to do is eat vegetables to be morally pure" which is not something anyone thinks. I have literally never come across a vegan who thinks avoiding meat exempts them from "no ethical consumption."
February 20, 2022
From listening to Dan explaining his arguments in an interview, I don't think they hold up to any serious moral scrutiny. The argument of individual inefficacy is shown, by countless historical examples, to be useless in moral discourses. Furthermore, Dan shows a cruel lack of cultural awareness by addressing vegetarianism (abstaining from meat) instead of veganism (abstaining from animal products altogether).
Surely, the prospect of getting published at Routledge early in one's career makes it easier to write shaky and dubious arguments...
Surely, the prospect of getting published at Routledge early in one's career makes it easier to write shaky and dubious arguments...
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