Bramble's Ramble

                Introduction: For my third and final paper, I have chosen to focus on Ben Bramble’s essay the Six Pillars of Meat Eating.

                Author’s Argument: The objection that Bramble is answering to in Section 3 goes as such “The benefits conferred on us by the pleasures of meat-eating are not trivial. Without these pleasures, our lives would be much worse for us.” Bramble begins building the foundation of his argument against this particular defense of meat-eating, by granting the fact that we greatly benefit from social situations which often consist of meat-eating.  But Bramble reject that meat-eating is a necessary condition in the enjoyment of these social situations; rather Bramble acknowledges the reality that most American restaurants have a lousy vegetarian selection as a result of the prevalence of meat consumption. Bramble further suggests that if vegetarianism was as prevalent as meat consumption then restaurants would accommodate that demand with a robust and flavorful vegetable based menu, without diminishing the benefits of our social interactions.

                Bramble then moves on to the so-called “desire based theory” which states that getting what one wants determines their level of welfare. Bramble replies to this claim with a modification of this theory to be termed “idealized desires”; which means the desires an agent would have if they were fully informed on the implications of their desires. Bramble believes that if people made their eating choices in full awareness of the methodology of procurement for their meat, that most would chose not to eat that meat. With these premises established it leads Bramble to set up the argument which will be the center of my focused objection to his essay. Because Bramble feels he has sufficiently established meat-eating at best as a trivial benefit to humans, Bramble further suggest that eating meat actually does harm to humans. Bramble suggests that meat consumption causes “unconscious pain” by turning us into people who cannot experience more important pleasures like the love of animals. By neglecting our love for animals we cause ourselves to feel sad, guilty, or live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance; which begs us to re-evaluate our decisions. Therefore the argument I object to is laid out as such:

(1)    If something causes unconscious pain, then we are harmed by that act.

(2)    Meat consumption causes unconscious pain.

(3)    Therefore, meat consumption harms us.

(4)    Thus, we should not eat meat.

Focused Objection: My focused objection to Bramble’s argument above against eating meat, can be properly described as a generalization objection. I do not deny the logical progression of the first three steps but his move from meat eating harms us to we should not do it is objectionable. I object to the move because he seems to imply that eating a vegetarian diet is not subject to the same logical progression. In my dissection of the flaws of this particular move I will begin with practices which are considered to be just as, if not even more inhumane than meat-production practices associated with vegetarianism down to even how strict veganism cannot escape the logical progressions of Bramble’s argument.

In Vegetarianism dairy products and eggs are permissible. However, many animal rights activists assert that not only is the way we generally produce these eggs and milk products just as horrid as the meat production in many ways they are even worse. Eric Dietz Goldberg even asserted that cows subjected to a life of milking are repeatedly raped and have their calves either aborted or removed from their care as they stand in small confines of their own feces and waste. Furthermore, animals used for these purposes often live a drawn out life of suffering to extract every drop of milk or every last egg; as opposed to animals used for meat production which live a shorter brutish lifestyle.

Bramble may then respond and say that only eating vegetables grown from the Earth could avoid this objection. However, that reply would entirely overlook the conventional farming technique by which we get most of our vegetables. With these conventional systems of farming, farmers will use large heavy machinery which indiscriminately kills an untold amount of insects and rodents in a gruesome manner similar to that of the much-maligned conventional meat production systems.  Continue further down the line and it is well known that the practice of using pesticides in or on crops is widespread. In fact, 90% of the corn produced in the United States is genetically modified; these GM ears of corn are specifically designed to produce their own pesticide known as Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT). The studies on BT corn have shown that when bugs try to eat it their stomachs literally explode! This is yet another example of gruesome and painful death via vegetarianism.

It seems inevitable that this discussion would lead to the suggestion that veganism and more specifically strict vegan farming methods are the solution. In theory, strict vegan farming would be able to avoid my criticism; for by definition strict veganic farming does absolutely no harm to animals. The question I then raise is; in practice, is strict veganic farming even attainable? If even one ant’s leg were broken or one fruit fly got a stomach ache it would by definition not fit strict veganic farming criteria. Furthermore, the definition of Bramble’s notion of “unconscious pain” would be pain that you are not aware of causing or having; and deductively speaking again we do not know what we do not know. So it is possible that someone pursuing strict veganic farming could not ever truly know if they were living up to that incredibly high-standard.

As a final consideration of this generalization objection let us suppose that someone were able to attain a truly veganic farming system; my question would be, what evidence do we have that plant life cannot be harmed? Remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Furthermore, if we go by the assumption of that which can be benefitted can also be harmed we see there is a wealth of evidence to support plant rights. Everyone agrees that plants are living organisms; humans regularly engage in the activity of watering plants because it is known that doing so is in their best interest (benefit). However, we are also well aware that too much water can literally drown and kill the plant (harm).
Within the last few years across the United States there has been the widespread phenomenon of once healthy trees dying; this has been due to the high concentration of aluminum in the soil. The tree senses the toxin in the soil and instead of taking it in and compromising its long-term genetic structure, these trees altogether stop gathering nutrients from the soil and in-essence starve themselves to death; just  further evidence that plants can be harmed and seek out their benefit, but not evidence that we should not eat them.