Cora Diamond on eating meat

Some 40 years ago, Cora Diamond wrote a paper titled 'Eating meat and eating people'. 

Discussions of vegetarianism and animals' rights often start with discussion of human rights.

But such discussion is useless if it is not admitted that rights are only effective if there is a corresponding incentive-compatible remedy under a bond of law. 

Pretending otherwise is like saying everyone can be a net borrower to any extent. Resources will appear by magic to ensure such borrowing can be spent on scarce products.

The fact is, some animals do have rights in some places- e.g. elephants in a safari park- which are enforced by coercive means. Indeed, poachers may get shot. This is a case where the animal has a superior right to a human being in a particular jurisdiction. The reason this happens may be because the 'safari park' earns the Government valuable foreign exchange. But some animals may have rights for religious reasons- e.g. monkeys and peacocks and cows in Hindu India.

 We may then be asked what it is that grounds the claims that people have such rights,

What 'grounds' a right is an incentive compatible remedy- i.e. it is in the interest of the obligation-holder to enforce that right. It is foolish to pretend some fucking philosopher grounded anything useful.

 and whether similar grounds may not after all be found in the case of animals.

Anybody can talk any type of shit- till they are beaten or killed because their right to life was ineffective. It is perfectly possible, that what sheep say as they are led to the slaughter house 'baa, don't violate my right to life, baa!' But that doesn't change anything.

 All such discussions are beside the point. For they ask why we do not kill people (very irrational ones, let us say) for food,

Some people do, but they may be arrested or lynched. 

 or why we do not treat people in ways which would cause them distress or anxiety

this woman was a pedagogue. She caused distress and anxiety to her students who all wanted to get a first class degree so as to get a well paid job doing something sensible. Fear of a bad grade from her, was a big motivating factor in their lives- or so we hope.

 and so on, when for the sake of meat we are willing enough to kill animals or treat them in ways which cause them distress. 

We also kill animals for sport or so as to protect crops or for other reasons. I kill plenty of flies. I don't eat them.

This is a totally wrong way of beginning the discussion, because it ignores certain quite central facts- facts which, if attended to, would make it clear that rights are not what is crucial.

 Cora is ignoring the fact that moral philosophy is utter shit.

 We do not eat our dead, even when they have died in automobile accidents or been struck by lightning, and their flesh might be first class. 

Nor do we eat all sorts of other carrion.

We do not eat them; or if we do, it is a matter of extreme need, or of some special ritual- and even in cases of obvious extreme need, there is very great reluctance. We also do not eat our amputated limbs. (Or if we did, it would be in the same kinds of special circumstances in which we eat our dead.) 

Now the fact that we do not eat our dead

is not a fact. It is a generalization which has some known exceptions.

 is not a consequence- not a direct one in any event- of our unwillingness to kill people for food or other purposes.

Yes it is. People who are reluctant to eat people or to skin them so as to make a jacket do not eat or skin people as a direct consequence of their reluctance.  It is true that they may eat or skin people for some reason strong enough to overcome their repugnance in this respect- e.g. if they are contestants on a Japanese game show or they are seeking the Republican nomination. 

 It is not a direct consequence of our unwillingness to cause distress to people.

It may be. We can imagine a member of a cannibal tribe saying 'I now realize that when our victim said 'you have bested me in war. I invite you partake of my flesh so that I may be assimilated to your victorious spirit'- he was just following a convention. Actually, he didn't want to be eaten at all. He was simply putting a brave face on things so that his clan could maintain its claim to valor and good breeding. Inwardly, he was shitting himself. Henceforth I will abandon cannibalism. Please vote for me- your Republican candidate- in the forthcoming election.' 

 Of course it would cause distress to people to think that they might be eaten when they were dead, but it causes distress because of what it is to eat a dead person.

Get cremated. Don't let the maggots snack on you. I think people get distressed if they think their body will not be properly disposed of. They hope their loved ones or neighbors will show them respect in death. 

 Hence we cannot elucidate what (if anything) is wrong -if that is the word-with eating people by appealing to the distress it would cause, in the way we can point to the distress caused by stamping on someone's toe as a reason why we regard it as a wrong to him. 

This is nonsense. Stamping on a paralytic's toe is still wrong. Damaging another's body has medical consequences even if they do not experience hurt. 

Now if we do not eat people who are already dead and also do not kill people for food,

and if we face punishment or reputational and other loss if we do

 it is at least prima facie plausible that

the reason is fear of punishment or other loss. After all, laws and norms evolved for the specific purpose of giving a 'stronger' reason for an action than could be arrived at by ratiocination of a silly type. 

 our reasons in the two cases might be related, and hence must be looked into by anyone who wants to claim that we have no good reasons for not eating people which are not also good reasons for not eating animals. 

But we have a 'stronger' reason to short circuit this entire discussion. The thing to do is to say to these nutters 'you have good reason for fucking stray dogs in the street. Surely, that good reason should force you to fuck your wife instead of leaving her so sexually frustrated she is constantly raping the milk-man and the pizza delivery boy and so forth.' 

The fellow may deny he fucks dogs. You just say 'look, I understand why you don't want to poke your wife. But you needn't pretend you are not fucking dogs just so as to get out of your conjugal duty.'

It is possible, of course, that the guy isn't married. In that case, you harp on about his fucking dogs should be a good reason for him to try to find some human to fuck. 

Anyone who, in discussing this issue, focuses on our reasons for not killing people or our reasons for not causing them suffering quite evidently runs a risk of 

being considered either a sociopath or a professor of an utterly worthless subject.

leaving altogether out of his discussion those fundamental features of our relationship to other human beings which are involved in our not eating them.

Sadly, 'fundamental features of our relationship to other human beings' exist even in cannibalistic societies. Thus Cora's argument is false.

It is in fact part of the way this point is usually missed that arguments are given for not eating animals, for respecting their rights to life and not making them suffer, which imply that there is absolutely nothing queer, nothing at all odd, in the vegetarian eating the cow that has obligingly been struck by lightning.

Vegetarians, by definition, do not eat meat. In India, the rule is that those who dispose of a 'fallen cow', may consume its meat and skin its hide. Sadly, for many centuries, such people were stigmatized even though leather is vital to the village economy. Interestingly, some Hindus will only wear leather sandals which are known to be from 'fallen cows'. 

 That is to say, there is nothing in the discussion which suggests that a cow is not something to eat; it is only that one must not help the process along: one must not, that is, interfere with those rights that we should usually have to interfere with if we are to eat animals at all conveniently. 

The Indic religions probably banned cow slaughter to put a stop to cattle raiding and the ostentatious practice of providing a feast for a guest by killing an animal vital to the rural economy.

But if the point of the Singer-Regan vegetarian's argument is to show that the eating of meat is, morally, in the same position as the eating of human flesh,

then scrap laws forbidding cannibalism. Actually this had already happened. R v Stephens & Dudley (1884) clarified that killing is wrong but eating human flesh is okay. Stephens & Dudley, who killed a cabin boy, got six months in jail. A third who ate, but did not kill, the boy was not charged. 

Currently, most jurisdictions will prosecute on some other charge- murder, offence against public decency, preventing lawful burial, etc- not cannibalism.

 he is not consistent unless he says that it is just squeamishness, or something like that, which stops us eating our dead.

The fact is, there is a legal offense- e.g. preventing lawful burial- as well as a reputational effect which provides a 'stronger' reason (in Sanskrit this is called 'mastyanyaya'- the big reason eats up the little reason just as the big fish eats the little fish)

If he admitted that what underlies our attitude to dining on ourselves is the view that a person is not something to eat, he could not focus on the cow's right not to be killed or maltreated, as if that were the heart of it

It is for the 'heart of it' for many Hindus, Jains etc. The Japanese, at one time, went further. They banned the meat of all four legged animals. Then, emulating the West, they tried to get their people to eat beef. Who knows? This time, it may be the West that takes the lead in getting humanity to view meat as murder.