Puppies, Pigs, and
People
Asking the Right Question
First Question:
How can eating anything be immoral?
Asking the Right Question
Simply eating an animal can’t be ethically problematic:
• Death by natural causes
• Accidental deaths
Asking the Right Question
We find the prospect of eating human meat repulsive, but is it
(intrinsically) immoral?
• Donner Party
• Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
• Ritualistic Cannibalism
Asking the Right Question
What seems to matter is how you get the meat you are eating.
Asking the Right Question
Second Question:
Is raising and killing animals for food immoral?
Asking the Right Question
This is a harder question to answer.
• Animals could be raised in a humane fashion and killed in a
painless manner.
• Do animals have a right to life?
• Even if they don’t, they may have other rights.
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Read Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”
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Asking the Right Question
Norcross’ Question:
Is it permissible for us to eat meat given how it is actually
produced?
Asking the Right Question
Norcross argues that our practice of eating meat (given how it is
produced) is ethically problematic.
To be morally good people, we should discontinue the practice.
Fred: Torturer of Puppies
To pump our intuitions, Norcross presents the case of Fred.
Fred: Torturer of Puppies
In Fred’s basement the police find:
“Twenty-six small wire cages, each containing a puppy, some
whining, some whimpering, some howling. The puppies range in
age from newborn to about six months. Many of them show
signs of mutilation. Urine and feces cover the bottoms of the
cages and the basement floor. Fred explains that he keeps the
puppies for twenty-six weeks, performs a series of mutilations on
them, such as slicing off their noses and their paws with a hot
knife all without any form of anesthesia. Except for the
mutilations, the puppies are never allowed out of the cages,
which are barely big enough to hold them at twenty-six weeks.”
(139)
Fred: Torturer of Puppies
Fred claims not to be a sadist.
Tortured puppies are the only source of cocoamone which allows
Fred to greatly enjoy the taste of chocolate.
Fred: Torturer of Puppies
Norcross claims that Fred is clearly immoral and that most would
agree to this.
Fred: Torturer of Puppies
The treatment of Fred’s puppies is precisely analogous to how
animals are treated in factory farms all over the country.
Fred: Torturer of Puppies
The vast majority of the meat, eggs, and milk produced in the US
comes from such farms.
•
•
•
•
•
99.9% of chickens (for meat)
97% egg laying hens
99% of turkeys
95% of pigs
78% of cattle
The Big Question
Is anyone who eats meat just as immoral as Fred and Michael
Vick?
Are there morally relevant differences between us and Fred?
Norcross’ Argument
Norcross reasons as follows:
1. If it is wrong to torture puppies for gustatory pleasure, then
it is wrong to support factory farming.
2. It is wrong to torture puppies for gustatory pleasure.
3. Therefore, it is wrong to support factory farming.
Norcross’ Argument
Buying and eating meat from companies that engage in such
practices is supporting those practices:
• If no one bought such meat, the companies would not exist.
• If sufficient numbers of people refrained form eating meat,
the companies would not continue to engage in such practices
Moral Relevance
There are clearly differences between our case and Fred’s. The
question is whether the differences are morally relevant.
Morally Relevant Difference: A difference between two cases
such that one case has a different moral status than the other.
Difference #1
Fred tortures the puppies himself, we don’t torture farm
animals ourselves.
Just change the case to one in which Fred hires someone else to
do it for him.
Is Fred’s behavior now morally permissible? (Vick)
Difference #2
Ignorance: Fred knew what was going on, but many meat eaters
do not know how bad things are in factory farms.
Fair enough.
But this doesn’t apply to you. You have been told what it is like in
such farms!
Difference #3
Effectiveness
If Fred stopped collecting cocoamone, all relevant puppy
torturing would stop.
If I stop eating meat, there will still be factory farms.
Difference #3
It is simply false that your stopping eating meat does not make a
difference.
Difference #3
• One person ceasing to eat meat won’t make a dent, but
10,000 would.
• If you give up eating meat you are contributing to a general
trend.
• Giving up eating meat can influence others to stop eating
meat as well, contributing even more.
Difference #3
Any large, community based undertaking has this feature.
Each individual person contributes a very little to the whole.
Difference #4
Fred is torturing puppies, not pigs, cows, chickens, or turkeys.
It is hard to see what the morally relevant difference between
puppies and farm animals is supposed to be.
Is Torturing Puppies Wrong?
So far, we have found no morally relevant difference between our
practice of eating meat and Fred’s behavior.
Maybe it is the second premise of Norcross’ argument that is
false.
Is Torturing Puppies Wrong?
Norcross’ Argument
Texan’s Challenge
1. If it is wrong to torture
A. If it is wrong to torture
puppies for gustatory
puppies for gustatory
pleasure, then it is wrong to
pleasure, then it is wrong to
support factory farming.
support factory farming.
2. It is wrong to torture
B. It is not wrong to support
puppies for gustatory
factory farming.
pleasure.
C. Therefore, it is not wrong to
3. Therefore, it is wrong to
torture puppies.
support factory farming.
Is Torturing Puppies Wrong?
Norcross’ Argument
Texan’s Challenge
1. If it is wrong to torture
A. If it is wrong to torture
puppies for gustatory
puppies for gustatory
pleasure, then it is wrong to
pleasure, then it is wrong to
support factory farming.
support factory farming.
2. It is wrong to torture
B. It is not wrong to support
puppies for gustatory
factory farming.
pleasure.
C. Therefore, it is not wrong to
3. Therefore, it is wrong to
torture puppies.
support factory farming.
The Rationality Gambit
Claim: Humans have a superior ethical status to animals because
humans are rational and animals are not.
The Rationality Gambit
What does it mean to be rational?
Usually involves some kind of cognitive capabilities (e.g.):
• The ability to reason.
• Introspective capabilities
• The ability to reflect on one’s moral status
• The ability to appreciate the moral status of others
The Rationality Gambit
It is clear that (at least for some of these) humans have these
capacities but animals do not.
The strategy is to deny that animals have a lower moral standing
than humans because of this difference.
The Rationality Gambit
Why should these differences matter?
One reason for thinking that they do is that these kinds of
capacities are what is required to be morally evaluable.
The Rationality Gambit
If a lion kills an antelope, another lion, or even its own cubs we
don’t call it immoral. Why?
• Lions don’t have the capacity to understand moral rules (so
they can’t follow them)
• Lions can’t appreciate themselves or others as conscious
entities (so they don’t understand the suffering of others)
• Lions can’t recognize the moral status of themselves or others
(so they can’t understand the rights of themselves or of
others)
The Problem of Marginal Cases
The main objection to the claim that any capacity is necessary for
full moral standing is that if any subject lacks these capacities,
then they will lack full moral standing.
The Problem of Marginal Cases
The Problem of Marginal Cases
Whatever kind and level of rationality that is required for full
moral status that excludes animals, there will be some humans
who fail to have that status.
The Problem of Marginal Cases
Marginal Cases
• Infants and small children
• Temporarily cognitively impaired adults.
• Permanently cognitively impaired adults (congenital, injuryinduced, illness-induced)
The Problem of Marginal Cases
Consider the ability to understand moral rules and apply them to
others.
It is clear that animals cannot do this.
But neither can small children, the severely senile, or other
cognitively impaired adults!
The Problem of Marginal Cases
If we claim that this difference means that animals do not have
full moral standing, we have to say that the same is true of
infants, and the cognitively impaired!
The Problem of Marginal Cases
Is it permissible to treat children and cognitively impaired
humans as animals are treated in factory farms?
The Problem of Marginal Cases
What these marginal cases show is that if a subject fails to be
morally evaluable it does not mean that we can treat her any way
we choose.
The reason why seems clear: even if such subjects cannot reason
they can still suffer.
Preventing Suffering
The Suffering Argument
(1) Bringing it about unnecessary suffering is morally
impermissible.
(2) Supporting factory farms brings about unnecessary suffering.
(3) Buying and eating meat supports factory farms.
(4) Therefore, it is morally impermissible to buy and eat meat.
Limits of the Argument
Factory farms exist because it is the cheapest and quickest way to
produce large quantities of meat.
Limits of the Argument
Meat produced in other ways cause less suffering among such
animals.
Norcross’ argument may not apply to such methods.
Limits of the Argument
Another limitation is that it is unclear what “supporting factory
farms” amounts to.
If less people ate meat there would be less suffering among
animals.
But it is also true that if people ate less meat there would be less
suffering among animals.
Limits of the Argument
Do considerations such as those raised by Norcross demand that
we don’t eat meat at all, or that we drastically lower the amount
of meat we consume?
A Last Consideration
Is there any way of supporting a large meat-eating culture that
does not cause large amounts of suffering to animals?
Free-range and cage-less farming cause less suffering than factory
farms, but they do not eliminate it completely.