The Morality Behind Being A Oyster-Loving Vegan

To be honest, I’m not quite sure where I stand on this essay by Christopher Cox explaining why he’s a good vegan even though he eats oysters. The crux of the argument, though, is a good one: oysters are okay to eat because they don’t feel pain in a way that makes it wrong and growing oysters in a food farm environment does not reduce their quality of life at all. Yes, they’re animals, but we cannot judge what is right or wrong to eat because they are animals because that does not eliminate the morality of the situation. Indeed, argues Cox, what’s actually immoral about eating animals is the pain inflicted on the animals and the reckless disregard with which people do it. I totally agree with that but, at the same time, I don’t have an urge to stop eating my beloved beef.

–Daniel Strauss

Photo by flydime used under a Creative Commons license.

UPDATE:

My best friend, Ben Rossi, who’s about to graduate from the University of Chicago with a degree in philosophy e-mailed:

The argument that we have an absolute ethical duty not to cause pain is fatuous.
If a doctor causes me pain in the course of treating me, is he behaving
unethically simply by virtue of causing pain? Obviously not. Nor is it the case
that he is behaving somewhat badly, but the good he is doing outweighs that
badness. He is not doing ANYTHING bad, even though he is causing me lots of
pain. This is because his activity is good for me–that is, it promotes my
flourishing. Thus, we may have an ethical duty to promote flourishing, but not
to promote pleasure and reduce pain. But now why shouldn’t we have a duty to
promote all creatures’ flourishing? Because even though the quality of pleasures
and pains may be the same across species, the quality of flourishing is not.
Human flourishing is much better than chicken flourishing.