Beat The Meat

I've often felt that those who are greatly concerned with certain types of suffering would one day light upon the problem of nature, which can be ugly and unquestionably deadly.  I'm sure others have discussed this issue elsewhere, but we finally have a straightforward solution in The (online) New York Times.

It's in an essay by Jeff McMahan, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers.  His answer:

...it would be instrumentally good if predatory animal species were to become extinct and be replaced by new herbivorous species, provided that this could occur without ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation.

The argument is startling, of course. Perhaps that's the point.  It's also irrelevant since (if he's to be taken seriously) we won't have the knowledge any time soon (if ever) to get rid of carnivores in an acceptably harmless fashion.

The professor predicts his views will not be treated well, and the comments back up this perception.  He tries to paint himself as bravely facing the inexorable logic of his position, but this sounds like preemptive whining to me. I find his argument woefully inadequate.  I don't have time to go into every disagreement, but let me quickly discuss some of my problems.

First, he's sloppy with his language. In describing attempts to make life better for humans, he uses loaded words like "relentless" and "rapacity." He has to prove these things, not assume them.  (Here's a claim he blithely makes:  "We [...] employ professionals to breed our prey in captivity and prepare their bodies for us behind a veil of propriety, so that our sensibilities are spared the recognition that we too are predators, red in tooth if not in claw."  Really?  For most of human history people lived with the animals they slaughtered and ate.  Only recently has this changed, and it was more about sanitation and division of labor.  We also don't see how cars are made, or computers.)

Second, the counter-arguments he discusses strike me as mostly straw men.  He takes on religious and other fairly vague objections some people might have, but doesn't seem as willing to go into other pertinent areas.

Third, a lot of pain comes from sources other than carnivores, including (but hardly limited to) bacteria, and I'm not sure if the professor knows how to deal with these issues.

Fourth, it's not clear how far down on the pain/consciousness scale (which should be central to the argument) he goes.  Do we deal with spiders and flies, for instance?

Finally, he concentrates on predation, but there aren't that many pretty ways to die in nature.  Beyond predation, you've mostly got disease, starvation and wasting away.  I'm not sure if animals (if capable of having a preference) would prefer these.  If the real problem is all that pain out there, what you want to do is get rid of animals that can feel a lot of pain, or perhaps breed ones that don't mind it so much (assuming you can figure that out).  But that sounds ridiculous.