A propos of yesterday’s unhinged screed about meat-eating, today via Practical Ethics I see Jeff McMahan has a piece at The Stone about the ethics of carnivores - only McMahan isn’t just talking about humans. In his imaginative piece, he explores the idea that the suffering caused by one animal preying on another isn’t something that we have reason to prevent, if we can do so without creating other negative consequences that outweigh the relative good. Although it comes up quite a bit, McMahan isn’t so interested in the question whether we ought not to cause animals harm by eating them ourselves, rather taking for granted that we should aim to avoid that suffering.

McMahan acknowledges both that the position he takes is heretical, and anyway that genetically engineering vegetarian tigers is implausible. He does note that this would have a practical upshot if, as is the case, we are reducing the number of species and may have some choice in which ones we choose to preserve (i.e., herbivores v. carnivores). But by and large we already see this playing out, again and again, in favor of herbivores, and then we’re left with the situation (which McMahan, again, does point out) of herbivores without natural predators dying of starvation (deer in the Northeast United States where I’m writing, but repeated again with regional variations around the world). This leads me to wonder whether there’s more to be said for the “against Nature” objection McMahan considers and rejects. In its simplistic form it assumes the way things are in Nature so valuable as to leave the suffering of animals not worth our consideration. I think McMahan’s right to press this point, and it raises some questions he doesn’t even get the chance to explore. For example, people of the ethical vegetarian camp are often inclined to talk about the unnatural conditions of the feedlot and slaughterhouse, but are natural conditions to be favored? What if we found that animals who are prey spend their lives in nature stressed out from the frequent threat of being caught and killed?

Ultimately, I’m also skeptical that there’s something inherently wrong with eating another animal. It’s not that I’m firmly opposed to the idea that there is. I’m just not ready to set my flag in any camp right now. But I’m happy to see someone like McMahan boldly venturing out into the ethical landscape, and forcing us to consider difficult questions.

X-posted at tonguebutnodoor