Articles That Make Me Want to Tear My Hair Out

Here's one, from the New York Times, entitled "No Face, but Plants Like Life Too," which argues that "formulating a truly rational rationale for not eating animals, at least while consuming all sorts of other organisms, [is] difficult, maybe even impossible." The idea is that plants engage in similar-looking defense mechanisms as animals when attacked, and so the difference between eating the two isn't really all that great:

But just like a chicken running around without its head, the body of a corn plant torn from the soil or sliced into pieces struggles to save itself, just as vigorously and just as uselessly, if much less obviously[,] to the human ear and eye.

I eat meat (and should probably get one of these), so it's not like I have a dog in this fight. But Yoon's argument is, well, totally nuts.

The most obvious response to Yoon's assertion is to have her read Peter Singer. The difference between plants and (some) animals is that (some) animals feel pain--they're able to suffer. There's a subjective experience brought about when you stab a pig that doesn't occur when you cut into an asparagus. Yoon, perhaps not surprisingly, is aware of this argument: "The differences that do seem to matter are things like the fact that plants don’t have nerves or brains. They cannot, we therefore conclude, feel pain." But she goes on to reject the idea that subjective suffering can serve as a basis for morally distinguishing eating animals from eating plants because "[s]lavery and genocide have been justified by the assertion that some kinds of people do not feel pain, do not feel love — are not truly human — in the same way as others."

I'm not totally sure how to respond to such a ridiculous argument, but here's my best shot: neither slavery nor genocide were based on the argument that particular groups of people don't feel pain. I don't have a history Ph.D., but somehow I don't see slave owners saying to themselves, "It's a good thing our slaves don't have any subjective experiences. They're, neurologically speaking, exactly the same as inanimate objects." But let's pretend that somehow, somewhere in the world, there was a person who justified slavery or genocide on these grounds. What could we say to them? How about, "Dear crazy person, please read a high school biology textbook. You have a view about neuroscience that is utterly, hopelessly wrong." To say we should reject a moral theory because some people don't understand basic science and therefore apply the theory incorrectly is just ridiculous.

This isn't to say that I think Singer's argument is right: I don't believe that moral obligations derive solely from the existence of subjective suffering. But it certainly isn't an irrational view.