David Hume said that reason is and ought to be a slave of the passions. Hume should not be interpreted as favoring our rational assent to those irrational sentiments, beliefs or emotions that consume us as a species. But rather, as Bernard E. Rollin writes, "he was pointing out the fact that arguments alone do not move people; one must have an emotional pull toward actualizing the results of one's reasoning."
For Hume, then,
"the ultimate basis of morality was feeling: we act on our moral positions because we are born with a psychological predisposition toward empathy or fellow feeling with other persons, because we are made uncomfortable by their suffering."
As a vegan, the most common response I have when discussing our slaughter of 9 billion plus feeling animals for food is the following statement: "I don't want to hear about this...It will ruin my dinner." Doesn't this suggest that people do in fact feel uncomfortable because of the suffering that characterizes these processes, or about the way we treat animals more generally? Indeed, doesn't this reponse imply the validity of Hume's argument? I think yes.
Gary Francione has argued that a refusal to be informed indicates an awareness of our moral schizophrenia when it comes to nonhuman animals. Moral schizophrenia can be characterized as follows:
"Many of us live with dogs, cats, or other animals and regard them as family members. Yet we stick dinner forks into other animals who are no different from the ones we consider family members. This is odd behavior when you think about it. And on the broader social level, nearly everyone would agree that it is immoral to impose unnecessary suffering on animals -- which, by any definition of the term, means that it can't be right to impose suffering on them for human amusement, pleasure, or convenience. After all, a rule that says it is wrong to impose suffering on animals unless we find it pleasurable and amusing would sound silly. And yet, 99.9 percent of our use of other animals cannot be justified by any reason other than human amusement and convenience...No one maintains that we need to eat meat to lead an optimally healthy lifestyle. Indeed, an increasing number of health care professionals warn that eating meat and dairy is detrimental to human health. And animal agriculture is an ecological disaster...Our best justification for eating meat is that it tastes good. Our best justification for rodeos, circuses, zoos, hunting, and so forth is entertainment. In short, western culture claims to take animal interests seriously, and we all claim to eschew unnecessary suffering; yet we impose suffering and death on animals in situations that cannot be described as involving necessity of any sort (see Francione)."
Francione argues further that this response (i.e., "Don't tell me because it makes me sad") is an open invitation to continue the discussion further and try to educate the person.
Paul and Linda McCartney said "If all the slaughterhouses were made of glass we would all be vegetarians." I think they were correct in so far as this statement appeals to the replacement of our unfamiliarity with knowledge, which if Hume is correct, will help to resolve our moral blindness in regards to various totally immoral practices. I wrote once, expanding on the McCartney's' statement:
"If slaughterhouses and animal testing laboratories, circuses, fur farms, puppy mills, zoos, factory farms, hunting events, etc. were made of glass (metaphorically) we would all be vegans."
I believe this is correct. One need not accept the philosophy of animal rights to decry unecessary, abject, suffering. I've argued that this is (or should be) the purpose of those well-funded organizations such as P.E.T.A. or the Humane Society of the United States: exposing all these animal abuse industries and distributing the message throughout the public sphere. (Spare us the self-defeating "happy meat" campaigns and show us the videos!)
Make the videos, show people what is occuring and trigger that empathy that we have psychologically hard-wired into us. It's there just waiting to be found, or how else could we possibly explain the feeling that Francione's insight is premised on: the love we feel for our dog and cat companions.
We must appeal to our collective passions, which as I see it, is the only method to bring this discourse down from the abstract to the real - the concrete.
Consider the outcome for a moment: If someone views a video of a flailing chicken going into a scalding bath of water - to be boiled while conscious of the experience - due to the speed and inaccuracy of the process, and yet finds nothing morally objectionable therein, they are implicitly approving of cruelty. They are as a matter-of-fact saying that such acts of cruelty are perfectly acceptable; "we are okay that this is happening," indeed, so okay "I'm going to continue to purchase and eat chickens that were possibly boiled to death."
Who's going to say that, either implicitly or explicitly?
And people believe that animal rights activists are "crazy," radical," "nuts," etc. Really? Who is the dangerous group here - those who say No! to slitting open the throat of a conscious hog who has been suspended upside down, or those who say Yes! and purchase their perfectly packaged ham?
Will be crossposted @ Vegan Soapbox
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