Published Defenses of Eating Meat Fail: Part 2

Replying to Hsiao

A being whose being set on fire isn’t bad according to Timothy Hsiao.

I’ve previously written a reply to Hsiao’s absurd defense of eating meat, which involves claiming that eating meat is not wrong at all, because animal suffering isn’t bad. But that reply involve very fine analysis of every line in his article. I thought it would be worth just generally laying out the problems with his post.

Hsiao argues that the only reason that animal cruelty is wrong is because it causes harm to one’s character or is indicative of bad character in some way. But this is clearly absurd. Several things should make us skeptical of his conclusion—a few of these are from my earlier article.

1. It implies that caring about animals is a type of foolish sentimentality—just like caring about plants or bacteria. If that’s true, then torturing dogs wouldn’t be indicative of evil disposition, just as torturing plants is not. It’s only if one has a vicious character which causes them to torture dogs that they’re doing something wrong.

2. It gets the wrong result in Norcross’ case. Suppose that you could torture a puppy to make chocolate taste better—however, this would be out of sight, out of mind, and not foster vicious disposition. His position entails that this is fine, however, it obviously is not.

3. It implies that it’s not wrong to inflict vast amounts of suffering for trivial reasons.

4. Suppose that Mr. Hsiao gained knowledge that a trillion animals were slowly having their skins ripped off by razors, inflicting profound agony on them, before eventually killing them. He could prevent all of it by pressing a button. However, doing so would cost 20 dollars, thus harming humans slightly. If the only reason harm to animals is bad is because of how it affects us, then he’d be under no obligation to push the button. In fact, he’d be wrong to push the button, because he’d be harming humans to benefit animals. This is, however, implausible.

5. Suppose additionally that there were two children torturing cats. One of them was torturing a real flesh-and-blood cat. The other one was torturing a robot that looks like a cat but is not conscious. Hsiao can prevent one of those from happening. On his view, given that cats don’t matter at all, he should just flip a coin. They have the same effect on people. However, this is implausible. Part of what’s bad about setting a cat on fire relates to the harm to the cat.

6. A forest fire kills a cat in a very painful way—it burns to death, crying out all the way. On Hsiao’s view, that isn’t bad at all.

7. It implies that the reason why it’s wrong to torture a severely mentally disabled person is that they have a rational nature. It has nothing to do with their current capacities or what the experience is like—it only has to do with the fact that their nature is rational, despite this not affecting their experience at all. Such a result is implausible.

8. Hsiao thinks that mistreating animals is wrong because it’s often cruel and cruelty is wrong. But eating meat is very plausibly cruel, on exactly these grounds.

Not very plausible, I don’t think.