Virtue Ethics: Substitute or Complement for your preferred moral theory?

Virtue ethics has often seemed to me to be at cross purposes with other ethical theories. While most moral systems look to set out the rightness of different actions, virtue ethics investigates the moral status of different characters and dispositions. Virtue ethics is usually set out as an alternative to doctrines such as consequentialism or Kantianism. Yet while these rivals to virtue ethics are quite clearly geared towards guiding our action, its proponents find it difficult to participate in the usual philosophical activities of resolving moral dilemmas and thought experiments. The response has usually been either to manipulate virtue ethics so that it can give determinate guidance to action, or to reject the conventional paradigm and to deny that a moral theory should seek to influence actions. However, it seems to me that virtue ethics may not in fact be inconsistent with other moral theories, but complementary to them.

The trouble with virtue ethics is not just its difficulty in influencing our actions, but the fact that it is not clear how it should influence us at all. The reason for this is that the subject matter of virtue ethics consists of things that we do not have much control over. The virtue theorist suggests that we should not agonise too much about individual actions, but seek to reform our character so as to exhibit virtues. The real question of ethics, on this view, is not ‘What should I do?’, but rather ‘What sort of person should I be?’. So, for example, if courage is a virtue, then I should seek to be courageous. The problem is that the sort of person we are is something we cannot do much to change. Courage is mostly something you are born with. The same goes for many other typical virtues, like wisdom and even temper. Indeed, Aristotle describes virtuous acts as springing from “a fixed and permanent disposition of character”, which definitely doesn’t sound like the sort of thing we can control.

To be fair to Aristotle, he does specify that nature only determines our capacity for virtue, and that we have choice over the extent to which we develop these capacities. However, this is the bit of virtue ethics that I have always found a bit unconvincing – the limits set by our capacity for virtue seems far more significant than our conscious efforts at self-improvement.

If we ignore what many take to be the crucial element of virtue ethics – the demand that we maximise our potential for virtue – and take it as a descriptive rather than a normative theory, it seems more plausible to me. The reason that virtue ethics has such difficulty accounting for thought experiments and dilemmas, on my version, is that it is not concerned with informing conscious decisions, but with understanding our unreflective actions.

My spin on virtue ethics suggests that conventional moral theories account for only a fraction of morally significant acts – those that we consciously decide to perform. Virtue theories complement these by observing and evaluating the myriad things that we do without thinking. For example, the tone of voice we use or our body language may not be deliberate, but could still raise someone’s spirits or darken their mood. These are not the sort of things that normative ethics can legislate for, and yet they seem closely related to it.

The interesting question is how these two domains of ethics interact. One plausible virtue[1] is something we might call sensitivity – an ability to pick up on other peoples’ moods and feelings and respond to them. When my father tells me that a good host can always anticipate their guests’ needs so that they do not need to ask for anything, it seems like its sensitivity that he is on about. When my 14-year old brother says everything with an off-putting layer of sarcasm and condescension, it is because he, like many adolescents, lacks sensitivity.

Sensitivity seems to be intimately related to our moral capacity. A sensitive person will simply see more opportunities for good; an insensitive person is likely to harm people without realising it. Both the sensitive and the insensitive person might agree in the abstract that it is good to hold doors open for people or to help them with heavy bags. But in the actual event, it will only occur to the sensitive person to do those things.

Perhaps developing and maintaining virtues is not the object of morality. Maybe virtues are more like the framework that normative moral theory must work around.

[1] A problem with virtue ethics is that there is no clear determinate list of virtues, and whether a given disposition is virtuous or not is always up for debate.

Some Bad Arguments in the AV Debate

One of the features of the Alternative Vote debate – a common element of many modern political arguments – is that politicians (on both sides) keep making the same bad arguments. Despite the fact that these are regularly debunked, they keep resurfacing as if nothing had happened, a clear sign that certain messages are intended to be hammered home, regardless of their veracity. That these counterarguments are so regularly ignored, despite the fact that anybody involved in these debates must have heard them numerous times suggests flagrant cynicism and duplicity. Anyway, these are the arguments that really irritate me:

A. Arguments from the No Camp

AV will help extremist parties like the BNP

Any sort of claim about what will happen under AV is suspect because it involves trying to guess people’s second preferences and how these preferences would affect results in different constituencies. It is possible that AV could help the BNP, I suppose because BNP sympathisers would no longer see supporting them as a wasted vote. However, as numerous people have pointed out it is extremely unlikely that AV would gain the BNP seats in parliament. Under AV, as I have already argued, the winning candidate is the one that fewest hate. In most constituencies, there are more voters who would prefer any alternative to a BNP MP, such is the hatred for the party. As long as this is the case, the BNP cannot win under AV. If it were not true, the BNP would win even under FPTP. Yet under FPTP, the BNP can capitalise on a split vote, and take a seat based on a strong core vote of a minority of constituents. So AV appears to make BNP success less likely.

Even if it were the case that the BNP would profit under AV, this still remains the worst argument in the history of arguments about electoral systems. To show this is the case, just replace ‘BNP’ with any other party name. Arguments like ‘X is bad because it benefits Labour’ or ‘Y would help the Conservatives get in’ are unacceptable because it is fundamentally undemocratic to rig the system to produce a desired outcome. If people vote for the BNP, the BNP should do better. If you don’t agree, you clearly don’t like democracy and have no place debating democratic systems.

AV leads to hung parliaments

This argument is much like the one about the BNP, though slightly less clear cut. Once again it depends on predicting how the AV system will affect electoral results, which involves a lot of guesswork. Once again, the No campaign seem to have got their guesswork wrong. Their prophecy is fairly unambiguous: “AV leads to more hung parliaments, backroom deals and broken promises like the Lib Dem tuition fees U-turn. Instead of the voters choosing the government, politicians would hold power. Under AV, the only vote that really counts is Nick Clegg's. We can't afford to let the politicians decide who runs our country.”

However, as this article points out, it is more complex than that. The Political Studies Association has estimated the results of past elections had they been held under AV: “Contrary to some claims, AV would not lead to permanent hung parliaments and coalition governments. Of the last seven elections, only the most recent would have delivered a hung parliament – just as under FPTP. By boosting the Liberal Democrats, however, AV does increase the likelihood of hung parliaments a little. Some simulations suggest a hung parliament in the close election of 1992.”

Though the link between AV and hung parliaments is more plausible than the link to the BNP, both arguments are invalid for the same reason. It is fundamentally undemocratic to rig the system to produce a desired outcome, whether that outcome is success for a particular party or ensuring a majority.

AV gives some people more influence than others

The argument seems to be that since some people’s lower preferences are counted but not others, those people have more effect on the ultimate result than others, violating the sacred dictum of ‘one person, one vote’. This is clearly nonsense. For a start, if the preferred candidate of those voters whose second preferences weren’t counted had been eliminated they would have supposedly have more influence, so there is no systematic bias.

But the truth is that nobody’s preferences count for any more than anyone else’s. If your first preference wins, that preference is taken into account at every round of voting. In effect, it is as if there is a fresh round of voting every time a candidate is eliminated, and it is presumed (surely uncontroversially) that people would vote for the same candidate if they can. If we consider these distinct rounds as different elections, we see that every person has one vote and one vote only in each round.

B. Arguments from the Yes Camp

AV means all MPs will have the support of over 50% of the electorate

The first thing to point out is that getting a vote from 50% of the electorate is not the same as having their support or confidence. This is obvious when you consider that some of these votes could be people’s fourth or fifth preference. Getting 50% of the final vote under AV means nothing more than that 50% thought that at least one person would make a worse MP than you.

Worse still, there is no guarantee that winners under AV will in fact get over 50% of the voters. If a substantial number vote only for candidates knocked out in early rounds of the count and fail to express lower preferences, then the threshold of victory will be reduced. As an illustration, twelve of 31 Scottish local authority elections carried out under AV have produced minority winners.

AV would have made the expenses scandal less likely

This argument appears to have two premises:
1. There will be fewer safe seats under AV
2. MPs in safe seats are more likely to be corrupt
As far as premise 1 goes, it is certainly the case that MPs who rely on a strong core support of less than 50% of the electorate will have to woo new voters to keep their positions. However, certain MPs may be more secure if they can attract many second preferences. So, for example, many Lib Dem MPs with relatively small majorities may have their position strengthened if they know both Conservative and Labour voters will put them second. Moreover, over 200 MPs already get over 50% of the vote, so AV is unlikely to have any effect on them. On balance, it seems plausible that AV will cut the number of safe seats, but hardly dramatically.

As for the link between safe seats and expenses, Nick Clegg’s claim that “Research suggests that MPs with the safest seats were much more likely to have been exposed by The Daily Telegraph” is certainly true. However, it is misleading because ‘exposed by The Daily Telegraph’ is not the same ‘made excessive expenses claims’. The study that Clegg cites was carried out before the full extent of expenses repayment were made public. More recent research suggests no statistically significant relationship between repaid expenses and the size of an MP’s majority.

Some Thoughts on the Alternative Vote

Much has been said and written already about the 5th May referendum, when British voters will decide whether UK Parliamentary elections should be carried out under the First Past the Post (FPTP) or Alternative Vote (AV) system. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have already summarised the case for and against the change surprisingly well. Here’s my perspective, though, and possibly a different way of looking at the matter.

The first thing to get clear (at least for the purposes of my discussion) is what the AV vote is not about. One of the problems of the British electoral system is that voters are (or at least think they are) being asked three questions, but are allowed to give only one answer. Under the current system, we vote for an MP, an individual to represent our local area in parliament. We do not, in fact, vote on which party should be in government. Nor do we vote on which person should be Prime Minister and run the country. The three questions are constantly conflated, but under FPTP we only have a say on the first.

Certain reforms would address this problem. Proportional Representation would mean that voters are asked at the polls which party they want in government. Mixed Member P.R. would split the questions of constituency MP and national government and ask both separately. A separate Presidential election would allow voters to choose the leader of the country.

Nothing this radical is involved in the switch to AV. AV asks the same question as FPTP: ‘Who do you want to be the MP for your constituency?’ This means that all the discussion about the effects of AV on the proportionality of parliament or the possibility of coalition government seems to me to miss the point. John Prescott has claimed that AV is a good system for electing individuals (it was the system under which he was elected deputy leader of the Labour party), but a bad one for electing governments. But neither FPTP nor AV are about electing governments, they are systems for electing individual MPs. It is on their merits for this purpose that I’ll try and compare them here.

Comparison is difficult, not least because the economist Kenneth Arrow has long since demonstrated that there is no such thing as a perfect electoral system. Under different circumstances, different systems best reflect the popular will. This can be illustrated with a couple of examples.

Example A: Socialist Split

FPTP AV

A. Black (Conservative)              40%               B. Brown     60%

B. Brown (Democratic Socialist) 35%               A. Black      40%

C. Green (Social Democrat)        25%

The left, true to form, has split, dividing almost equally between the Social Democrats and the Democratic Socialists. Their division stems from some obscure point of doctrine, so there is little substantive difference between them. However, the rift is too bitter to be patched up. Nevertheless, the socialists are all adamant that they would prefer a socialist representative (of any stripe) to a dreaded Conservative. In this case, the FPTP seems clearly to misrepresent the views of the constituency, producing a Conservative MP to stand for a majority of socialists. AV, by contrast would allow the social democrats to use their second preferences to keep the Conservative out.

Example B: Genuine Third Party

FPTP AV

A. Butcher (Socialist)             45%                  B. Baker      55%

B. Baker (Conservative)          35%                  A. Butcher    45%

C. Smith (Liberal)                   20%

Suppose that the Liberal supporters are genuinely liberal, with no real sympathy either for the Conservative or the Socialist. On balance, most of the liberals are more scared of the Socialists, and so their second preferences give the election to the Conservative candidate. In this case, it seems that the FPTP result is better, fired by the positive vision of the Socialist supporters rather than the ambivalence of the liberals.

This example is not straightforward, and many people may have a different intuition that the AV result is preferable. However, these conflicting intuitions seem to get to the heart of the dispute. To put it crudely, FPTP gives victory to the candidate that most people like; AV to the one that fewest hate. AV is for those who fear that a vocal minority can sneak someone despised by the others into power. FPTP is for those who reject this conservative line of thought.

FPTP is best when people vote for a candidate they want to get in; AV when they vote against a candidate they want to keep out. The trouble is that we can never know in advance whether more people are casting their votes for or against politicians.

How much weight should we give to Ethics?

One of the major points of contention between consequentialism and deontology is the proper domain of ethics. Both, in contrast to virtue ethics, hold that ethics is about guiding and evaluating actions, but they disagree as to which actions are morally significant acts. Deontology, as a system of rules, implies that the only relevant actions are those that contravene these injunctions. So, for example, if you believe the Ten Commandments exhaust the demands of morality, the question of morality only arises if you consider killing, stealing, committing adultery etc. If you steer clear of these proscribed activities, you needn’t think about morality any longer.

Consequentialism, by contrast, insists that doing the right thing involves taking the actions with the best consequences. If you are a utilitarian, your every act must be optimal with respect to maximising happiness. Theoretically, it is possible that a consequentialist theory could allow for a large domain of morally indifferent action. For example, if the ‘good’ to be maximised were gold production, the finite resources of gold on the planet would mean that many people could act without having any bearing on gold production. More conventional consequential goods, such as happiness, are much more demanding to maximise. If we are serious utilitarians, we must face up to the fact that everything we do (and equally significantly, fail to do) impacts on someone’s happiness. This implies that every act is morally significant, and so that the domain of ethics covers all action. Indeed, this colonisation of all domains of life by ethics is one of the strongest motivations for rejecting consequentialism.

However, the mere recognition that there are moral considerations pertinent to all actions needn’t mean that these are the only considerations that guide our action, and therefore that we must be moral saints. What Bernard Williams and so many other critics of consequentialism assume is that moral considerations must trump all others. Indeed, this is what most conventional consequentialists believe.

This perspective is suited to deontological systems of thought with a restricted ethical domain. It seems appropriate that moral considerations outweigh all others in the case of murder. But once we expand the sphere of ethics, it begins to be more plausible that other motivations and projects can weigh against ethical ones. For example, if we already donate a substantial proportion of our income to charity, we may feel we have ‘done our bit’, and that even though it would be morally desirable to give away more, aesthetic (e.g. good food, pleasant surroundings) or intellectual (books, courses) considerations also make strong demands on the rest of our money.

The idea that moral demands need not be absolute, but may be weighed against other reasons for action raises another question, orthogonal to the one about the domain of ethics – how much weight should we give ethical considerations?

This is of a matter of concern to all but the most saintly of consequentialists, anyone who fails to maximise the good in all their actions. It also has significance for deontologists who buy into the idea of supererogation. If there are actions that are morally good but not required (i.e. open to being overweighed by other considerations), how much weight should we give these moral claims?

For a concrete example, take the question of career choice. Within the deontological framework, outright harmful careers, like career criminal, are immoral. Saintly careers, like civil rights martyr are supererogatory. But the vast majority of careers are morally indifferent, simply not the subject matter of ethics. This seems bizarre – how can anyone claim it is morally indifferent whether a brilliant lawyer uses their talents to benefit rich (but morally neutral) corporations or to secure justice for the impoverished? Indeed, the increasing interest in the idea of ‘ethical careers’ reflects the fact that moral concerns are salient to many people’s career choices. But for most people they are just one concern among many.

Most conventional ethical systems will just dig their heels in and insist that ethical duties trump all others. On the other hand, if the moral considerations are supererogatory, orthodox systems give us no guidance. Either way, most moral philosophy has nothing to say about what appears to be a common dilemma: how should I weigh moral and non-moral considerations? Perhaps this silence is because this is not a problem for ethics at all, but an exercise in practical reason. Perhaps the presence of moral considerations doesn’t essentially change the process of weighing up different courses of actions with different advantages and disadvantages, a process that we go through every day. We can choose between healthy-but-boring and unhealthy-but-delicious food; is choosing between careers with different moral implications analogous?

If so, this seems to be a matter of grave concern for ethics. What it implies is that people can give little or no weight to moral considerations because that is what is practically rational for them to do. Just as some people (smokers, for example?) may decide that they have other interests which take priority over being healthy, what can we say about people who decide they don’t care very much about ethics?

Not very much, I think. We can try and convince them that they do care about ethics really. So we might try to persuade our lawyer by demonstrating the good they can do, or inspiring them with tales of the sacrifices of others. But if a person doesn’t care very much about ethics, I’m not sure how this is wrong (as opposed to being bad). It’s not illogical or irrational. This isn’t to say we have to like it – indeed, the fact that someone doesn’t care very much about ethics seems an excellent reason to dislike them and to not be their friend, maybe even to coerce them. But is that enough?

Why give aid to countries with space programmes?

The British government’s Department for International Development’s (DFID) aid budget for the next five years, released last week, has received predictable criticism from a xenophobic rightwing press. While the outrage that foreigners should be getting more money at a time of domestic budget cuts was to be expected, the focus has narrowed on India’s position as an aid recipient. The argument is that a country with nuclear arms, a space programme, more billionaires than Britain and a growth rate approaching 10% doesn’t need or deserve British aid. Stephen Glover’s article in the Daily Mail is fairly typical of the kind of the concerns raised.

The argument that India is too rich to need British aid is either disingenuous or incredibly stupid. Glover claims it is likely “there is an outdated sense that it is our duty to disburse funds to the supposedly less fortunate — rather like an impoverished parent continuing to subsidise children who have grown much wealthier, and are more than capable of getting by on their own” (I’m going to be charitable and assume that Glover doesn’t mean that the notion of helping the actually less fortunate – as opposed to the merely ‘supposedly’ less fortunate – is outdated). Yet India’s growth rate is clearly from a relatively low base: if my income of £10 000 is growing at 10% per year, and your £100 000 income is stagnating, it’s still going to be a long time before my income catches yours (25 years if my maths is correct).

Glover makes a lot of the fact that “According to one measure used by the World Bank, in 2009 India was the fourth- largest economy in the world, significantly bigger than the United Kingdom, which was in sixth place”. I can’t be bothered to go check where he gets this from, but in terms of 2009 GDP, the World Bank has India in 11th place, comfortably behind the UK. Even if the two economies are of comparable size, India’s wealth is shared between a population over twenty times that of Britain’s. Accounting for the size of each country by using the more relevant index of GDP per capita, most measures have India outside the world’s hundred wealthiest nations. Glover does acknowledge this, but continuing to refer to the country as the “fourth- largest economy in the world” hardly presses this point.

More interesting, though, is the apparent claim that since “Arguably India should be spending less on defence, and nothing on its space programme, and be diverting more funds to the alleviation of poverty”, it should not receive British aid. I think this is a serious challenge to those who favour giving aid to India, and as such needs to be addressed. The best I can come up with is this analogy:

Suppose you see your poverty-stricken neighbour’s children going about undernourished and badly clothed. You have the means and the will to help them, and so resolve to buy them some clothes and food. However, you notice that your neighbour, despite struggling to look after the kids, is still paying for a satellite TV subscription. Should you still offer the aid?

There are a number of relevant considerations here. Obviously there is a need for sensitivity. You wouldn’t want to embarrass your neighbour or make them feel inadequate. But suppose you know they would be grateful. Most people would disapprove of the decision to maintain the TV subscription. But surely it would be unfair to penalise the children for the irresponsibility of their parents.

We might believe that if the neighbour doesn’t receive help they will be so embarrassed by the state of their children that they will cancel the subscription. If this is the case, then we are not actually doing the children any favours by giving them the gifts. Rather, their parents will continue to keep up their satellite subscription with the money they would otherwise have been shamed into spending on their kids. In effect, we are paying for the satellite subscription.

In development parlance, this is the problem of fungibility: even if aid is targeted directly at the poor, it may simply allow the government to divert the money they would otherwise have spent on the poor to other projects, like a space programme. Fungibility seems to me to be the only argument against giving the aid, either to the TV watching family, or to the Indian government.

I’m sceptical as to whether fungibility genuinely is a problem in this case, as it suggests there is a minimum threshold of poverty relief that the Indian government is motivated to supply, and that if this is met, however it is met, they do not care about poverty any longer. Given the uncertainty, I suspect it is best to just take the risk.

An objection to this analogy is that India is a democracy. Its citizens aren’t therefore ruled in the same way as children are by their parents. The situation is more like an impoverished group of adults communally agreeing to put satellite TV above nourishing food. We should therefore respect their decisions. As Glover says, “the country is a democracy, and its government will be held to account for the decisions it makes. It is hardly our business if India wants to spend so much money on a space programme”. Even if this were so, there would still be a case for paternalistic intervention.

However, this seems to take the mandate conception of democracy too literally. This view implies that either by voting for a government proposing a certain set of policies or by having the ability to eject a government whose policies they disapprove of, an electorate consents and is responsible for all that government does. This is simplistic at the best of times, given the lack of choice, vagaries of electoral mechanisms, absence of full information, and profusion of cross-cutting issues. In this case it implies something absurd: that the Indian people, so many of whom are desperately poor, given the choice between reducing poverty and starting a space programme, opted for the latter.

Admittedly, this isn’t Glover’s view – he acknowledges that the government’s choice may well be out of step with popular opinion. Hence his emphasis on the government being held ‘accountable’. Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t understand why this is an argument against giving aid to India. It could take the same form as the ‘mandate’ argument, which his talk of ‘India’ as a unified actor deciding to pursue a space programme implies. Or it could be the claim that British aid could lead to the Indian government not being held accountable for its decisions. I don’t see how this follows. Surely the Indian people will see that the money spent on a space programme could have been directed towards poverty relief, and cast their votes accordingly, independent of what DFID does. If the suggestion is that DFID will do so well in fighting Indian poverty that the space programme will then seem reasonable, that is clearly preposterous.

I’m not sure if this deals with all the problems of giving aid to India, but I think it might be a helpful way of thinking about the problem.

Comeback Kings

Sometimes we just need reminding. Most people who know and love sport do so because of the sheer dramatic unpredictability, the fact that nothing is ever certain. And yet we forget. Enough time elapses since the last miracle that we start to lose our faith. Sport is life in microcosm, and both sport and life seem to serve up inspirational examples to kindle the flame of hope when it is in danger of being extinguished.

The last few weeks have provided a couple of stunning reminders that in sport the apparently impossible rarely is. Earlier this month, Newcastle scored four times in 19 minutes to overcome a seemingly unassailable 4-0 deficit against Arsenal, the greatest comeback in Premiership history. And then yesterday England tied with India in the Cricket World Cup, despite being set a target of 338, finishing one run short of the third highest run chase in history.

These events bring back memories of an incredible eighteenth months in the middle of the last decade when on three separate occasions I felt like I was witnessing sporting history, epic comebacks, the likes of which I had never seen before and haven’t since. The first was the 2004 American League Championship Series, where the Boston Red Sox were an inning away from a 4-0 whitewash to their hated rivals the New York Yankees before recovering to win the series 4-3. In the process, they became the only side in Major League Baseball history to overturn a three game deficit. The second (of course) is the ‘Miracle of Istanbul’: the 2005 Champions’ League Final, where the fifth best team in England triumphed over AC Milan despite being 3-0 behind at half-time. Finally, the following March South Africa saw Australia score more runs than any cricket team had ever done before, and then went four better, in officially the greatest one-day international ever.

All of these occasions were incredibly tense and suspenseful, swinging one way then the other. In each of them, the identity of the victor was in doubt until the very end. Arsenal could have scored a winner in the dying minutes; the Yankees took game 5 to extra innings; the Champions’ League final went to penalties and both cricket matches involved nail biting final overs where all three results were possible. Yet such sporting drama is hardly uncommon: this season will have seen hundreds of last minute goals, and Twenty20 cricket matches almost inevitably end unpredictable last overs.

In a discussion of Twenty20 cricket, David Mitchell (of all people) hit upon the key point, the reason that Arsenal-Newcastle and India-England are so significant, and will live on in the memory beyond most of the other sporting action this year:

Sport is, in essence, the earliest and best form of reality TV (obviously it predates TV - before that, it was just "reality stuff you watch"). It's compelling because it's really happening and no one knows what the outcome will be, and whether it will be exciting and satisfying, a dull anti-climax, or maddeningly unjust

So when sport is thrilling, it's much more so than a Bourne film or an episode of 24, purely because it might have been boring; you've made the investment of time, you've taken the risk, so when the outcome is worth seeing, you're reaping the emotional reward. And there is simply less of that investment involved in Twenty20 than in Test cricket so it can't be as exciting - end of story. It may be a percentage choice for something relatively entertaining but it'll never hit the heights of the climax of an Ashes series because there haven't been five five-day matches over which the campaign has been waged - and that's without counting the hundred years of rivalry, and the literal years of total time spent actually playing over that period, which raise the stakes even more

The best sporting drama is the best sporting drama because it could so easily have been otherwise. Going behind 4-0 to Arsenal means that you will almost certainly lose, as does conceding 338 runs against India. The fact that many spectators left St. James’ Park after half an hour demonstrates this fact, and the implausibility of Newcastle’s recovery.

Equally significant is the likelihood that none of those fans will leave a football game early again. For the mere realisation that these things are possible means that every other game is imbued with the potential for shock and awe. It doesn’t matter how many goals/runs/points your team concedes, how dismally they play: anything is possible. This realisation shelters and protects hope against any number of unpleasant realities. And should hope’s defences weaken, the chances are that another improbable escape will occur to bolster them.

Yet for all their improbability, the events of the last month do not come close to eclipsing the big occasions of 2004-06. While they exemplified drama and scarcity, both lack a third crucial element of truly momentous sporting landmark: a climactic place in a broader narrative. That’s why each of the three events has a dedicated Wikipedia page with a whole section devoted to their background contexts. The Red Sox’ victory was as broad a narrative as they come, prefaced by 86 years of Bostonian failure. The more immediate context was the hurt endured by the Red Sox at the hands of the Yankees a year earlier, succumbing to a last-gasp defeat at the same stage. Liverpool’s Champions’ League story began with the damning departure of Michael Owen, a clear signal that the club’s hopes of major success were too slim to hold on to (then) one of the world’s best strikers. And yet, within nine months, one of the worst teams in the club’s history had claimed the biggest prize in club football. South Africa’s victory was an exorcism too, as the perennial ‘chokers’ overcame the burden of their 1999 World Cup semi-final defeat to beat the world champions.

By contrast, India and England’s match formed part of a group stage explicitly designed to ensure both will progress, and so is of little significance in greater scheme of the tournament. Similarly, Arsenal were likely to finish second before the Newcastle game, and are likely to finish second after it. Even if the two dropped points do eventually cost them the title, there is so much left of the season that the link is unlikely to be widely made. So while the two ties gave caused much excitement, and been a powerful reminder of the wonder of sport, they are unlikely to join the canon of truly great sporting occasions.

What are the ethical implications of eating meat?

An essay I wrote for Ethics about a year ago that you might find interesting

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Few, if any, ethical issues polarise views the way vegetarianism does. There are certainly other questions that are more vociferously debated – but this is exactly the point. What is unusual about this debate (and perhaps the question of ‘animal rights’ in general) is that only one side consider it a debate at all.

The majority of people appear to believe that deciding what to eat simply isn’t an ethical consideration. Yet many of those who favour vegetarianism insist that eating meat is as abhorrent as condoning racism or slavery in past centuries. Indeed, the parallel of speciesism to racism is commonly drawn in the course of discussions about our treatment of animals, the implication being that future generations will look upon our actions with the same distaste and incomprehension we feel towards slave-owners and racists. To take just one example of this view that our moral progress is far from complete, W.E.H. Lecky writes:

“At one time the benevolent affects embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world”.[1]


The purpose of this essay is not to argue directly either for or against vegetarianism. Rather, it is to examine the accusation that we are morally inconsistent in failing to consider the ethical claims of animals, and its corollary, that this implies we ought to change the things we eat.

This is a two stage process. The first stage is identifying and sketching out different moral positions that advocates of vegetarianism might appeal to. The second stage is to draw out and evaluate the arguments defending and rejecting the consumption of meat for each ethical position. However, because many of these arguments are applicable to multiple positions, they are grouped together in the second section to avoid repetition. The first section of this essay therefore describes the four moral positions discussed: contractarianism, Kantian deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics, and gives a summary of the pertinent considerations of these philosophies relevant to animals. The second stage assesses different arguments in turn, examining the salience and persuasiveness to the different doctrines.

A. Theories

Contract Theories

“The moral theory of contractarianism claims that moral norms derive their normative force from the idea of contract or mutual agreement”.[2] In other words, contractarians believe that our moral duties are nothing more and nothing less that the obligations that rationally self-interested beings would agree to. Contractarianism is usually traced back to Hobbes, who argued that the only way for man to escape the state of nature, an anarchic situation of brutal war of each against all, was for such moral norms to develop.

On this conception of ethics, then, the only reason we have for avoiding wrongdoing is the tacit understanding that this will ensure others do not wrong us either. So, for example, we do not think it is morally permissible to murder another person, because we would not like to live in a society where people are free to murder one another. Similarly, we have a moral reason not to make false promises to one another, because a society where we could not trust people to keep their promises would be a society where it would be considerably more difficult to engage in cooperative activities.

Animals cannot participate in the social contract. They are not capable of making such explicit reciprocal agreements, and are not bound by moral convention in the same way that humans are. The contractarian is only interested in extending moral consideration where it is mutually beneficial, and so has no reason to confer moral status on aminals. As Regan puts it, “As for animals, since they cannot understand contracts, they obviously cannot sign, and since they cannot sign. Like children, however, some animals are the object of the sentimental interest of others”.[3] Contractarians may agree that we are morally obliged not to harm pets, as in doing so, we indirectly harm their owners. But given that the owners of farmed animals willingly give them up for slaughter, this point does not seem relevant here.

Contractualism, in contrast with contractarianism, requires a degree of impartiality: it is grounded in moral equality, rather than self-interest. “According to contractualism, morality consists in what would result if we were to make binding agreements from a point of view that respects our equal moral importance as rational autonomous agents”.[4]

Contractualism, like contractarianism, has been conventionally wary of granting moral status to animals, simply because they are not the sort of rational autonomous agents capable of forming a contract. In Rawls’ words, “It does seem that we are not required to give strict justice to creatures lacking the capacity (for a sense of justice)”.[5]

Nevertheless, there are a couple of reasons why contractualists may be more amenable to the idea of animal rights than contractarians. Firstly, Rawls’ work is primarily a work of political, not moral philosophy, focusing on just one of many ethical considerations, justice. Therefore, it is plausible that contractualists may believe that animals are outwith the scope of justice, but not that they have no ethical significance.

The second thing to remember is that Rawls’ ‘original position’ thought experiment is intended to abstract away from ‘morally arbitrary’ characteristics. Therefore, if we believe that our species is a morally arbitrary attribute, we can use a Rawlsian framework while rejecting Rawls’ own intuition about the moral status of animals.[6]

Kantian/Deontological Theories

Kantian theories do not traditionally admit we have any duties to animals, either. According to Kant, the moral law is binding on all rational creatures. However, since he refused to credit animals with rationality, they exist outwith the scope of Kantian morality. Kant explicitly argues “so far as animals are concerned, we do not have any direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man”.[7]

However, this perspective has been rejected within the Kantian framework by philosophers who disagree with the claim that rationality is a prerequisite for moral consideration. Most notably Tom Regan has argued that all ‘experiencing subjects of life’ are due certain moral rights. The issue of what (if anything) separates humans from animals will be discussed below, but what is important to grasp here is what achieving moral status means within a deontological moral philosophy.

Deontological ethical theories, of which Kant’s is the most prominent, conceptualise ethics as the process of determining the moral rules which set out our obligations and the restrictions on our action. Depending on the theory in question, the rights secured by having moral status may differ, but it seems unlikely that on any deontological conception, it is morally permissible to slaughter and consume a moral agent. For example, the Kantian notion of never treating a moral agent as a means, but always respecting them as an end in itself would seem to preclude eating meat.

The central issue at stake seems therefore to be whether animals are worthy of moral respect, and if so, does the concept of moral respect entail non-consumption.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the most conceptually simple of ethical theories. The rightness of an action depends solely on its consequences, by which is meant the net change in pain or pleasure it brings about. The right action is the one which maximises utility.

Unlike Kantians, utilitarians make only one consideration in determining the moral status of a being: its ability to feel pain or pleasure. Consequently, utilitarians have traditionally always been sympathetic to the moral claims of animals. This attitude can be traced as far back as Bentham, who used utilitarianism to argue for ‘animal rights’ (in the loosest sense): “The question is not, Can they reason? Nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?”.[8]

This may appear to be a rhetorical question, but a surprising number of people have sought to deny that animals feel pain, or at least in the same way that humans do. If it were true that animals were incapable of suffering, this would of course mean that they carry no weight in utilitarian moral calculation. Singer responds to this suggestion with the observation that “Nearly all the external signals that lead us to infer pain in other humans can be seen in other species”: writhing, facial contortions, moaning, yelping, attempts to avoid the source of the pain and the appearance of fear.[9] Moreover, they have nearly identical nervous systems to ours, with the same evolutionary function. Singer quotes pain expert Richard Sarjeant as insisting, “Every particle of factual evidence supports the contention that the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations at least as acute as our own”.[10]

Of course, it is absurd to class all animals as alike, and it seems possible that mammals, birds and fish all have different capacities for pain. But this does not imply that their pain is incommensurable. The only animals that are plausibly incapable of feeling pain are some molluscs, such as oysters and scallops (but not squid and octopi). In the name of consistency, Singer accepts that may be morally acceptable to eat them.[11]

Once utilitarians have admitted that animals are worthy of moral consideration, the issue is then whether the action of eating meat on balance increases or decreases aggregate utility. Initially, this seems clear-cut. The utility from eating meat is relatively small. Many humans do get a lot of pleasure from eating meat, but it is far from an essential interest. We can certainly survive without eating meat, and indeed it is often suggested that a vegetarian diet is healthier. On the other hand, there is a large degree of suffering involved in (most) processes of meat production. Farmed animals are herded into cramped, unsanitary conditions, which lead to psychotic, neurotic and repetitive behaviour from madness to cannibalism. To avoid the death and disease such awful conditions would usually entail, they are force fed growth hormones and antibiotics. A number of painful surgical procedures are performed on them without anaesthetic to stop them harming themselves or others (usually out of frustration at their unnatural environs): beaks, toes, tails and teeth are removed, they are castrated and branded without a second thought. Of course, not all farms are as cruel as this, depending on legal restrictions and the type of meat. Yet even the best meat can still be criticised on humanitarian grounds: for example, the legal requirement to stun all chickens before slaughter involves a process that is only 95% successful.[12] Thus, at first blush, at least, it seems the utilitarian ought to be committed to vegetarianism.

Virtue Ethics

The doctrine of virtue ethics posits that ethics ought not to be about judging action, but rather that we should focus on characters. Living a moral life, on this conception, is not a case necessarily of performing right acts, but rather of developing virtuous tendencies and dispositions. The definition of virtue is controversial, but it is usually conceived of in one of two ways. Virtues can either be seen as character traits necessary for a flourishing, eudaimonic life, or as attributes which are generally aretaic (admirable).

When debating the rightness of actions, such as eating meat, virtue ethics usually conceptualises the problem thus: “An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would do in the circumstances”.[13] The question a follower of virtue ethics needs to ask themselves is whether eating meat is a virtuous or vicious act. Gruen suggests that vegetarianism displays virtue: “in eating animals or using them in other harmful ways, we do not display the traits of character that kind, sensitive, compassionate, mature, and thoughtful members of a moral community should display”.[14] Similarly, Shafer-Landau appeals to aretaic conceptions of virtue: “seeking and deriving satisfaction from ‘products’ that are known to derive from cruel practices diminishes one’s admirability”.[15]

Initially then, virtue ethics and utilitarianism seem to favour vegetarianism, which deontology and contract theories do not.

B. Arguments against eating meat

Arbitrariness of human-animal distinctions

The first line of argument against eating meat questions why we are justified in eating non-human animals, but not humans (assuming, of course, that it is morally repugnant to eat humans). What feature of humanity justifies granting humans greater moral status? It cannot merely be the fact of being human, since this is as morally arbitrary as the feature of being black, or of being a woman. We cannot consistently condemn racism and sexism, and embrace speciesism.

A number of candidates have been proposed, but none of the characteristics have been uncontroversially human. Humans are not the only animal to develop familial ties: for instance, orang-utan mothers stay with their young for eight years, and maintain relationships after parting. Most animals are capable of social coordination, from packs of dogs to birds with their ‘pecking order’. Any dog owner will be able to tell you that humans are not alone in expressing emotions.

As we have seen, both social contract theorists and Kantians honed in on rationality as the key trait of human beings. Yet this argument draws the marginal cases objection, spotted by Bentham when he wrote:

“What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversible animal than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old”.[16]

Bentham’s point was that for every suggested distinguishing feature between human and non-human animal (such as reason), there are some members of the human species, namely babies, that do not possess that trait. While it may be objected that babies have the potential to develop reason, this is not the case of certain severely disabled individuals.

Cohen attempts to wriggle out of the marginal cases objection by insisting that “The capacity for moral judgement that distinguishes humans from animals is not a test to be administered to human beings one by one…What humans retain when disabled, animals never had”.[17] This does not seem plausible – it is stereotyping of crudest form. It is analogous to preventing a woman from taking a manual job because in general men are stronger than women. If rationality is so important a distinction, why should the distinction not be made on an individual basis, but across the generalities of species?

Some may accept this criticism, and pull up the moral drawbridge. Moral status is not a question of humanity, on this conception, but a question of personhood, where person is defined as a “rational and self-conscious being”.[18] By contrast, a human is a biological member of the species homo sapiens. Those humans who have not reached a rational and self-conscious state have no greater moral status than animals.

However, in the same way as Kant grants that we have indirect duties to the owners of pets, it could be argued that we have stronger obligations not to harm human non-persons because of the affection their families feel for them. This is a tenable philosophical position, but it seems terribly callous. In effect, what it implies is that a person who sets a cat on fire, or who rapes a coma victim does no wrong to the being they harm, but rather the wrong is to the people who care about them. And if the cat is a stray and the coma victim has no family, then apparently it is morally permissible. Clark damns the paradoxical nature of this position: “We are absolutely better than the animals because we are able to give their interests some consideration: so we won’t”.[19]

Deontologists and contractualists are therefore forced into a position where they must choose between affording equal moral status to animals (which would presumably render eating them immoral) or reducing non-persons to the status of animals. Of course, reducing non-persons to the status of animals could also be interpreted as raising the moral status of animals to that of non-persons. The pertinent question is whether this status substantively rules out being eaten. The indirect duties we have to the families and loved ones of non-persons seems to account for why we should not eat humans that are non-persons. However, given that the farmers who raise animals voluntarily give them up for food, the same argument seems to work for relatively few animals.

Hardening of Emotions

There is another argument which may persuade the deontologist not to eat non-persons. It is an argument used by Kant to promote consideration towards animals:

“If a man shoots his dog because the animal is no longer capable of service, he does not fail in his duty to the dog, for the dog cannot judge, but his act is inhuman and damages in himself that humanity which it is his duty to show towards mankind. If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men”.[20]

The point is that if we treat animals cruelly, than this cruelty will inevitably begin to show in our dealings with humans. It is for this reason that the citizens in Thomas More’s Utopia are vegetarian: “Killing, unless it is done as a merciful act, must involve a deliberate withholding of sympathy from the victim. Done repeatedly, it results in a hardening of the emotions”.[21]

Notice that this is almost identical to the virtue ethics argument in favour of vegetarianism: “Becoming caring and compassionate about animals invariably seems to have ‘trickle down’ positive effects for the rest of one’s life”.[22] The difference is that virtue ethicists are interested in the virtues humans develop in their dealings with animals intrinsically for their own sake, whereas Kantians are only interested in them insofar as they indirectly influence the agent’s dealings with humans.

How plausible is this connection between hardness of emotions towards animals and a dereliction of moral duty to humans? It assumes that we see animal suffering and human suffering in the same way, such that if we can make an animal suffer we can do the same to a human. This is not obviously true, in the same way that people who enjoy hitting balls with bats have no necessary predilection towards hitting people with bats. A Welsh farmer, on leaving to fight in Spanish Civil war is reported to have said “If I can shoot rabbits, then I can shoot fascists”. But the words seem naïve and hollow. There is a world of difference between being a farmer and a soldier, and the latter are far more likely to be negatively affected in their dealings with humans.

The causal connection is even weaker in the case of ordinary people whose only encounter with meat is on the supermarket shelves. They do not kill their own meat, they probably barely think if it as ever having lived, so it seems implausible to suggest there is any heartlessness being displayed. However, the virtue ethicist can object to a person who, understanding the cruelty involved in farming practices, persists in eating meat.

C. Arguments in defence of eating meat

Why stop at animals?

One response to the arguments for the extension of moral status to animals is to ask why these arguments are not applicable to plants, attempting to drive the argument to absurd conclusions. The onus is then on the advocate of animal rights to explain the morally relevant difference between plants and animals.

The utilitarian has a ready-made answer. The morally relevant quality is just the one Bentham identified: the ability to feel pain. However, it has been suggested that some plants can feel pain. Clark observes that some plants emit ‘galvanic twitches’, which have been interpreted as a sign of distress. The evidence for this interpretation is sketchy, and given that plants lack a central nervous system, it is certainly not pain in any recognisable sense. Even if it is demonstrated that plants are capable of feeling pain, this need not be a persuasive point for the utilitarian. The absurd consequence the line of reasoning is supposed to lead us to is that we cannot eat any once-living thing. But this would only be implied if the utilitarian were committed not to eating the produce of processes involving pain. This is not the case – the utilitarian’s only moral commitment is to maximising utility. So if it were to be demonstrated that plants do have the capacity to feel pain, utilitarians would have to seek out food sources that involved minimal suffering – most likely to be plants, which probably feel less pain than animals.

Deontologists, such as Regan, employ slightly different terminology for a similar notion. While denying pleasure and pain have the moral significance granted to them by the utilitarian, Regan holds that the true condition of moral equality is to be an ‘experiencing subject of life’. According to Regan’s definition, subjects of life:

“want and prefer things, believe and feel things, recall and expect things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasure and pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our continued existence or our untimely death—all make a difference to the quality of our life as lived, as experienced, by us as individuals. As the same is true of … animals … they too must be viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own”.[23]

While this is a definition which may well lead to problem marginal cases within the animal world, it seems highly unlikely that any plants will fit Regan’s definition of a subject of life. Consequently, Regan can escape the absurd consequences objection.

‘If we were all Jews, there would be no pigs’

Another objection to vegetarianism points out that farming leads to the creation and continued existence of numerous animals, who would not have been alive otherwise. If we believe that life is a good thing, the argument runs, surely farming is good because it brings into existence animals that would not otherwise be.

The force of this argument for the utilitarian depends on whether they agree that a farmed animal’s life is better than not existing. The utilitarian has no a priori commitment to the sanctity of life. If a life, on balance, involves more pain than pleasure, the utilitarian is perfectly consistent in arguing it would be better had it never happened. Given the extreme suffering involved in many farming processes, it seems highly likely that many animals would (on the utilitarian conception) be better off never having been born.

Deontological, rights based arguments here enter the murky world of the rights of unborn creatures. It seems most plausible to say that potential creatures have no rights, at the very least until the point of conception. Otherwise, we risked being dragged into absurdity, with every sperm and egg having rights and moral claims.

The more general claim, that species are better off under farming, is highly contentious. As Clark observes, “Species have vanished in historical time, but few have done so because man did not interfere with them”.[24] In any case, if the conservation of species were the real aim of farming, it seems that there are far more humane ways of achieving the same goal.

Causal Impotence

Another major objection to vegetarianism is what Norcross calls ‘causal impotence’.[25] This is the claim that, even if we agree that the treatment of animals in meat production is morally wrong, there is no point in adopting vegetarianism, since the actions of one individual will have no effect on the overall quantities of meat being produced. This objection holds with equal force for both the utilitarian and the deontologist, since it claims that forgoing meat will prevent neither the suffering of animals nor the loss of their lives.

Norcross admits that incremental conversions will have no impact on meat production, but argues that large shifts in demand will.[26] So, for example, if it takes 10 000 people stopping eating meat to save 100 000 chickens a year, there is a 1 in 10 000 chance that you will be the individual whose conversion crosses that threshold. Thus, the expected effect of your decision is to save 10 chickens a year, and so from either the utilitarian or the deontological standpoint, the decision is a rational one. The numbers are, of course, illustrative, but the point holds.

The causal impotence objection does not appear to have any force against virtue ethical arguments for vegetarianism, which argue that vice is shown merely by association with meat production. Nobis argues that to continue to eat meat simply because you believe your actions will not influence the farming industry is as distasteful as buying a lamp carved from the bones of concentration camp victims, and defending yourself with the knowledge that there is nothing you could have done about the holocaust.[27]

D. Arguments for Demi-vegetarianism

There is one final position which we ought to consider before concluding our discussion. We have looked at arguments suggesting we give up meat entirely, and arguments insisting there is nothing wrong with the status quo, but what about the third alternative? Hare’s response to the arguments for and against vegetarianism is to propose a diet which involves reduced and carefully selected meat consumption.[28]

Hare’s argument is premised on the belief that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the consumption of meat. This would seem to put him at odds with absolutist deontological theories which, if they accept the moral status of animals, would see their slaughter as morally repugnant. Hare, on the other hand, believes that if farm animals are reared in comfortable conditions, and slaughtered humanely, it is permissible to eat them. Indeed, Hare argues that such an existence is even better than the animals would enjoy in nature, and so it would increase overall utility to have more, rather than fewer, of these ‘ethical’ farms. He points out that the only way to encourage such farming methods is with the consumer’s market power: the power that vegetarians relinquish. Consequently, Hare concludes that the optimal action is to eat only ethically produced meat.

Hare’s case is impeccably argued and perfectly consistent with the utilitarian perspective. It may also have appeal for those virtue ethicists who agree that to ensure farm animals have a good life and to slaughter them humanely is to act compassionately. However, Hare’s empirical claim that such ethically produced meat is available is a debatable point. This appears to be Singer’s objection to demi-vegetarianism: “the important question is not whether animal flesh could be produced without suffering, but whether the flesh we are considering buying was produced without suffering”.[29]


E. Conclusion

The question posed at the start of this essay was whether it is morally consistent for us to eat meat. The answer, unsurprisingly, depends on your moral convictions. Contractarians have little reason, on their conception of morality, to give any thought to the suffering of animals, and so are not inconsistent in eating meat. However, such a nakedly egoistic moral philosophy seems unpalatably callous and selfish. The verdict contractualism, if it is a complete moral theory (and not just a political philosophy), rests on the question of whether animals are to be considered moral agents. Given its focus on rationality, this seems unlikely. However, if it were possible that you might emerge from the veil of ignorance an animal, it seems unlikely that you would be willing to undergo the present-day farm experience, so a few contractualists may be amenable to vegetarianism.

Deontologists must also resolve the issue of the moral status of animals. The problem of marginal cases makes it difficult for the deontologist to reject the moral claims of animals, and deontology makes it difficult to countenance the eating of a moral agent (this seems the epitome of using them as a means, not an end in themselves). However, a few deontologists may be comfortable with the belief that certain non-rational humans are of lower moral status, and equivalent to animals. These few are consistent in their consumption of meat.

The position of utilitarians seems to rest decisively on the empirical question of whether any current farming methods are humane enough to ensure that farmed animals are better off than had they never been born. If they are, it seems the utilitarian’s duty to support such farms. Yet environmental concerns would seem to suggest that excessive consumption of meat is also bad. If farming methods do not reach this standard, the utilitarian ought to be a vegetarian.

It is difficult to make out the virtue ethics position in all this. It seems compassion is the chief virtue at stake. Insofar as virtue ethics has anything to say on this, it is that it is probably better to support more humane farms. The idea that the consumption of meat in itself is an act of vice seems rather implausible.

[1] Quoted in Singer (ed.), In Defence of Animals, 9.
[2] Cudd, Ann, "Contractarianism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
[3] Regan, ‘The Case for Animal Rights’, in Singer (ed.), op. cit.
[4] Ashford, Elizabeth, Mulgan, Tim, "Contractualism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
[5] Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 512.
[6] See Clark, The Moral Status of Animals.
[7] Quoted in Hursthouse, Ethics, Humans and Other Animals, 75.
[8] Quoted in Singer, op. cit., 5.
[9] Singer, Animal Liberation.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Singer and Mason, Eating.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Hursthouse, ‘Virtue theory and abortion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1991, 225.
[14] Gruen, Lori, "The Moral Status of Animals", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
[15] Quoted in Nobis, ‘Vegetarianism and Virtue: Does Consequentialism Demand Too Little?’, Social Theory and Practice 2002.
[16] Quoted Singer (ed.), op. cit., 5.
[17] Quoted in Norcross, ‘Puppies, Pigs and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases’, Philosophical Perspective 2004.
[18] Hursthouse, Ethics, Humans and Other Animals, 51.
[19] Clark, op. cit., 108.
[20] Quoted in Hursthouse, Ethics, Humans and Other Animals, 75.
[21] Quoted Schliefer, ‘Images of Death and Life: Food Animal Production and the Vegetarian Option’, in Singer, In Defence of Animals, 67.
[22] Nobis, op. cit.
[23] Regan, ‘The Case for Animal Rights’, in Singer, In Defence of Animals.
[24] Clark, op. cit., 48.
[25] Norcross, op. cit.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Nobis, op. cit.
[28] Hare, ‘Why I am only a Demi-vegetarian’, in Jamieson (ed.), Singer and his critics
[29] Quoted in Hursthouse, Ethics, Humans and other Animals.