The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat
Ben Bramble and Bob Fischer
Abstract
Is it morally wrong to eat meat? If so, what follows from this? This volume brings together twelve chapters, each confronting one question or the other. The book has three parts. The first part features chapters by philosophers who are running against the grain, arguing that meat-eating is sometimes morally permissible, and perhaps even in certain cases morally required. This part includes discussions of roadkill, environmentalism, and the badness of death. The second part features chapters that attempt to improve or build upon existing arguments for vegetarianism or respond to some of the maj ... More
Is it morally wrong to eat meat? If so, what follows from this? This volume brings together twelve chapters, each confronting one question or the other. The book has three parts. The first part features chapters by philosophers who are running against the grain, arguing that meat-eating is sometimes morally permissible, and perhaps even in certain cases morally required. This part includes discussions of roadkill, environmentalism, and the badness of death. The second part features chapters that attempt to improve or build upon existing arguments for vegetarianism or respond to some of the major arguments against vegetarianism. The focus is on the causal impotence problem, but contributions also discuss a Moorean strategy for defending meat-eating and the personal costs of meat consumption. The final part of the book features chapters that consider the significance of the debate over eating meat. Suppose, for example, that the arguments succeed. What would this mean for the sort of people we ought to become? What labels should we adopt for ourselves, and how flexible should we be with those who continue to eat animals? Alternately, suppose the debate is intractable. Might it be valuable anyway? If so, how?
Keywords:
vegetarianism,
meat-eating,
causal impotence,
environmentalism,
badness of death,
moral permissibility
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199353903 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199353903.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Ben Bramble, editor
Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, University of Vienna
Bob Fischer, editor
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Texas State University
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