I have to say, I'm rather disappointed with Dawkins in this interview. But at least he has the intellectual integrity to admit that he's just lazy and conformist when it comes to eating meat, and doesn't try to offer an elaborate justification for ignoring the moral legitimacy of the animal rights argument.
The closest he comes is to compare meat-eating with slave-holding, in the sense that many obviously moral people during slavery days held slaves out of social convention, even though they knew it was wrong. The problem with that argument, though, is that meat-eating is far less of a socio-economic "necessity" than slavery arguably was for some slave-holders. Slave-holders faced (or reasonably believed they faced) real economic consequences for themselves and their families by emancipating their slaves. Meat-eaters have no such obstacle in their way; aside from farmers and ag-business types, no one's livelihood depends on meat-eating. So, Dawkins' argument here is even lamer than it sounds at first.
Singer is spot-on, I think, that Dawkins (and by implication, most other "evolutionists") clings to vestiges of religious belief about the specialness of humanity as a way of justifying the eating of animals to himself. I wish he had pushed Dawkins a bit more in this point, but it was Dawkins' show, not his.
On the whole, though, this is a fascinating interview. Pencil it in.
About Me
- The Humane Hominid
- I am a politically-progressive, ethically-herbivorous anthropoid pursuing a paleontology education in the Los Angeles Basin. I am largely nocturnal, have rarely been photographed, and cannot thrive in captivity.
"But at least he has the intellectual integrity to admit that he's just lazy and conformist when it comes to eating meat, and doesn't try to offer an elaborate justification for ignoring the moral legitimacy of the animal rights argument." - Exactly!
ReplyDeleteI have posted the video to Facebook for a second time, I think everyone needs to watch it.
As Peter Singer wrote in Practical Ethics: "Our custom is all the support that factory farmers need. The decision to cease giving them that support may be difficult, but it is less difficult than it would have been for a white Southerner to go against the traditions of his society and free his slaves; if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure those slaveholders who would not change their own way of living?"
Yeah, I saw this interview a while back. Its pretty good, I think it would be great for folks who aren't that familiar with Singer but are fans of Dawkins to watch. Over-all Im glad that Dawkins is able to admit the problem of species rather than try to brush it aside. I still don't understand whats really holding him back, the whole social courage thing is a poor excuse. Is he really concerned he will be shunned for going vegan? Does that mean that we are more courageous than Dawkins...?
ReplyDeleteCome on Dawkins, GO VEGAN! I'll buy you a veggie burger and some soy cream.
Sam Harris's whole Moral Landscape thing seems to me to show that the atheist/science crowd are pretty primed for this step. Dawkins's own reasoning brings him frustratingly close: there's several discerning chunks about speciesism in his books. Shame he seems reluctant to commit to doing what I'm pretty sure he knows he ought to do. I absolutely expect that such thinkers will sooner rather than later routinely be almost all vegans.
ReplyDeleteBut the whole premise of "eating meat is bad" is that somehow animal lifeforms have more right to life than plant life forms. Any which way you slice it, humans and indeed all animals consume other living things in order to keep living.
ReplyDeleteI think your comment regarding the "specialness" of humanity is more exacerbated by the vegan viewpoint; we absolutely evolved to the point we are at through eating meat and being very effective hunters; there is no doubt in my mind that a diet high in animal products is the ideal and natural diet for human beings from a nutritional sense. The "humans are special" part comes when you look at that fact and say "but it is immoral and we as vegans can make the special human decision to say no, we will no longer do that".
Theres nothing immoral per se about eating animals, because that implies an absolute morality. Are lions immoral? No. They're lions. We're humans. Eating other animals is how we grew the huge brains we have now which allow you to even consider the morality of your actions...
To MezzoPiana - It's a pretty awful logical leap to say "anyone who can think will become vegan". Personally I like my body and brain to run optimally. I'm not more important than a cow, but nor is the cow more important than me. I won't be angry or upset either if I am eaten by a shark.
mightyhead,
DeleteThere's no such thing as your body running optimally. Like all creatures, you have built-in design flaws that you can only mitigate, but never overcome. There's also no such things as one "natural" diet for humans. Your body doesn't care where its nutrients come from.
Further, I think you should take a longer look around this blog. Your nonsense about big brains and meat eating has been debunked several times already, and was never actually the hypothesis in the first place.
Finally, you probably don't actually care about plants, so you should stop using their "rights" as an argument. But for what it's worth, ponder this: most plants that humans eat are angiosperms, whose ability to reproduce depends on getting partially eaten by animals. If we don't eat them, they have no chance to pass on their genes. Thus, perhaps it is a violation of their rights for us not to eat them.
I challenge you to find any animal of whom this is true.