Final Paper

The following is my final paper for this class. Comments are welcome and encouraged.

Vegetarianism is morally obligatory for most humans because the inherent value of non-human animals is great enough to warrant treating them better. This better treatment includes the continuance of their lives and the cessation of our practices that intentionally cause them pain. Their inherent value comes from a variety of different sources – chiefly from sentience and self-valuation - and is incremental in nature.

            The incremental nature of inherent value does lead us to the conclusion that some lives are worth more than others. While this may be true, all sentient beings have value significant enough to grant them the positive right to life, and the negative right of freedom from harm. The nature of incremental value is useful in situations in which one is weighing different options. For instance: it is immoral to kill or contribute to the killing of adult humans and pigs (because they are both sentient and have reasonably high capacities of cognition among other factors), but in a situation where one must kill either a pig or a human in order to survive, one should choose to kill the pig, since the pig has less inherent value (it has a lower levels of sentience and capacity of cognition). It is still immoral to kill a pig, but with no other choice, it is justified.

 Humans are overwhelmingly omnivores, meaning that they can process both plant-based and animal-based nutrients. Humans are also overwhelmingly not obligate-omnivores, meaning that most humans do not need to eat both plant-based and animal-based foods to survive. In fact, most humans are nutritionally obligated to eat plant-based foods; humans can survive eating an exclusively plant-based diet, but they cannot survive eating an exclusively animal-based diet. Most people, therefore, will not encounter a situation where there are justified in killing or contributing (financially or otherwise) to the killing of a non-human animal. Instead, most humans can and should choose to survive and thrive on plant-based foods.

Additionally, since value comes from many sources, it is impossible to determine the exact sum of values that could warrant a small difference in treatment; our estimates of value are only approximate.

            The argument from marginal cases provides a decent comparison to consider when we think about how we ought to treat non-human animals. Most humans and non-human animals share capacities in varying degrees; both have the ability to perceive, adapt, and learn. Most non-human animals have a value that is comparable to the approximate value of human infants. So, we ought not to treat non-human animals any worse than we treat human infants. The inconvenience of not being able to eat readily available infants when we are hungry even though we really like how they taste is not enough to outweigh the inherent value of human infants. Similarly, the inconvenience of not being able to eat readily available non-human animals when we are hungry even though we like how they taste is not enough to outweigh the inherent value of non-human animals.

            These same arguments extend to veganism; veganism, under the current conditions, is morally obligatory for most humans. Self-defense, as in the cases of obligate-omnivores and people who severely lack resources, can allay the obligation of vegetarianism and veganism. However, such restrictions do not give people free-reign to eat whichever animals they want as often as they want.

            While it is morally best to refrain from eating meat altogether, it is better to reduce meat consumption than to continue eating it with the same frequency. It is also better to eat animals with lower inherent value than to eat animals with higher inherent value. If one is an obligate-omnivore, if one needs animal-based nutrients to survive, one should choose to eat the animals with the lowest inherent value at the lowest frequency that one can.