Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

New Books in November

Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books this month:

Portraits of American Philosophy edited by Steven M. Cahn (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) (intellectual autobiographies by, among others, J.B. Schneewind, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Ruth Barcan Marcus, and Harry Frankfurt).

Hegel's Thought in Europe:  Currents, Crosscurrents and Undercurrents edited by Lisa Herzog (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Help sought for a biography of Richard Montague

Professor Ivano Caponigro, a linguist at UC San Diego, asked me to share the following:

I'm working on a biography of Richard Montague (1930-1971) that aims to reconstruct his intellectual and personal life, his contributions, and his legacy.

Please contact me if you knew him personally (or just met him a few times) or have any material from him or about him (letters, manuscripts, pictures, audio recordings, etc.) or if you know anybody who knew him or may have material about it.

Thanks!

Ivano Caponigro

Associate Professor

University of California, San Diego

Department of Linguistics

[email protected]

http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~ivano

 

Arthur Danto remembered

Gayle Greene, a professor of English at Scripps College, who took her PhD in English at Columbia, shared this charming story about her experiences with Professor Danto:

“Julius Caesar!”  He looked up with genuine astonishment.  He was a philosopher.  Why on earth would anyone ask him to read a dissertation about Julius Caesar?

“Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.”

“Oh.  Right.”  As though that made it clearer.

The young woman who’d cornered him in his office was a complete stranger.   He’d never laid eyes on me, nor I on him.  Doubtless I was wearing a leather mini skirt and high brown boots, my usual garb back then.

My take on the play was vaguely philosophical— very vaguely.  I had ideas about Shakespeare and 17th century nominalism, though no philosophical context to fit them into, nor any other context, actually, self-directed as I was, the usual experience for women graduate students at Columbia those days. The Shakespearean hadn’t liked my topic, said it was “too modern and psychological,” so I approached the Miltonist with the idea, who said, uh, no, it would be awkward for him to direct a Shakespeare dissertation.  I went away and came back a year later with a completed dissertation, throwing myself on the mercy of the Miltonist, who said, okay, okay, he’d try to set up a committee,   there was a theater person who might read it, and a nice young assistant professor who more or less had to say yes since he didn’t have tenure, and he suggested that I talk to Arthur Danto.  And that was my committee.  They more or less smuggled me out the back door, unbeknownst to the Shakespearean (who found out years later, after I was comfortably ensconced on the west coast).     

So that’s what I was doing in Danto’s office that spring morning, with my request. He didn’t have to agree, he was an eminence, even then;  I wasn’t his student, and the dissertation was very long.  But he came through.

After the dissertation defense, I stood outside in the hall, Philosophy Hall, waiting for the verdict.  The committee filed out, shook my hand, congratulated me, handed me a few pages of typed notes, and went away.  

Everyone except Danto.  He stood there, I stood there, an uneasy moment, then  he said,  “By the way, do you have a job?”  

“A job?”  I had, as a matter of fact, just lost the adjunct position I’d been counting on to keep me in New York for the next few years.  It was 1974;  the job market had crashed.  

“Would you like a letter?”

“Like… a recommendation?  Sure, that’d be great.”  It had never occurred to me to ask, I was that clueless.

He needn’t have offered—nobody else did.   And he wrote not just once but many times through the years, as I applied for grants, fellowships, positions.  He wrote a good letter;  I never saw it but I was told it was eloquent. It opened doors.  

Those were the only times we met.  We corresponded when he was writing for The Nation and, for a time, so was I;  we said, the next time I was in New York, we’d get together, etc., though we never did.  But I remember him more fondly and vividly than I do almost any of my Columbia professors, as the one who had a sense that there was a person on the line, a person who might need a job.

I think that’s what we take from our teachers, finally, not so much information imparted as a sense of who they are.   

"the most important questions facing us"

I was struck by this from a short Times piece about Appiah, in which he mentions "the most important questions facing us — gender, the environment, animal rights."  Are those the "most important questions facing us"?  Discuss.

 

Either don't live near pythons...

...or don't get drunk, you can't have it both ways.

UPDATE:  I was afraid this was too "good" to be true!  (Thanks to Alex Parrish for the pointer.)

For philosophers of perception...

...UCL's Michael Martin interviewed by the student philosophy journal at Oslo.

Pope Francis, Marxist?

Not really, superficial similarities notwithstanding.  When he endorses the theory of ideology and non-teleological historical materialism, that will be different.  Right now he's at the moralizing utopion socialist stage.

The "aristocracy of sex" in philosophy

Jonathan Wolff (UCL) comments.  At the end of the column, he runs together two issues that should be kept separate:  the combative nature of philosophy and how one should treat students.  Professor Ishiguro's approach on the latter seems the right one, but that is independent of whether philosophy as practiced among peers should, or should not be, combative.  Insofar as truth is at stake, combat seems the right posture!

Appiah from Princeton to NYU

Anthony Appiah (ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of race) at Princeton University has accepted a senior offer from New York University, to start in 2014.  According to the university press release, "He will spend half the year in New York teaching in the Department of Philosophy and School of Law; the other half of the year he will teach and lecture at NYU’s other global sites, principally Abu Dhabi."

Darby from Kansas to Michigan

Derrick Darby (social & political philosophy, African-American philosophy), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he will start in fall 2014.  With Darby and Elizabeth Anderson, Michigan will now be one of the very top choices for students interested in philosophy of race.

Univ College Dublin's Brian O'Connor interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Wash U's John Heil to be inaugural editor of JAPA...

...which will be published by Cambridge University Press. That's a very good choice, though the inaugural editorial board is yet to be announced, and that will tell us more about interest group "capture" and about whether JAPA will be like the Eastern Division program or a consistently high quality professional journal.

(Thanks to Joe Hatfield for the pointer.)

Putting drafts of work on-line?

A graduate student writes:

What do people think of grad students making their work available online early in their careers? It seems pretty common for students still doing coursework to post paper drafts on Academia.edu, even when the drafts are far from publishable, and I'm not sure if the potential advantages outweigh the potential costs. Having your name known is probably good, as are generating interest in your research, starting conversations with people working in the same area, and maybe showcasing your potential; on the other hand giving people a preview of your immature work might cut the other way if rather than recognizing in it scholarly potential they just see bad grad student papers. Having early drafts online also means that reviewers for a journal can google the title of your paper and see who wrote it, thereby removing anonymity. I recently had a paper of mine show up in a collection of links on a blog I'd never heard of and suddenly Academia.edu was informing me of dozens of views per day. For a moment I was excited, but then I remembered that people were reading a hastily-composed workshop draft. I think the ideas and prose represent me well but there are sections missing and the argument needs substantial work (as I learned when certain parts of it got shredded at the workshop). I thought about taking the paper down and leaving just an abstract, or removing it altogether, but I never made it past worrying. Did I err in leaving it up for public scrutiny?

We did touch on aspects of this topic briefly once before, but these questions are more specific.  I'll note that this is a major issue in academic law because of the substantial use of SSRN.  The question there is when junior faculty or job seekers should put their work on-line; my advice is not to put anything on-line until they think it's ready to be submitted for publication.   The reason is simple:  first impressions are sticky, and if you put a half-baked piece of work on-line, you're unlikely to get a second chance with that reader.  I think the same advice applies to grad students--great to put work on-line that's at a stage where you and the faculty you work with think it's ready (or very close to ready) for submission to a journal, otherwise not.

What do readers think?   Faculty, please use your name; students may use a distinctive pseudonym, but must include a valid e-mail address, which will not appear.

The criminal underclass is scary...

...almost as scary as the criminal over-class.

Plutocracy watch: one-party state edition

This is apt:

In the past, the U.S. has sometimes been described sardonically — but not inaccurately — as a one-party state: the business party, with two factions called Democrats and Republicans.

That is no longer true. The U.S. is still a one-party state, the business party. But it only has one faction: moderate Republicans, now called New Democrats (as the U.S. Congressional coalition styles itself).

There is still a Republican organization, but it long ago abandoned any pretense of being a normal parliamentary party. Conservative commentator Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute describes today's Republicans as "a radical insurgency — ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition": a serious danger to the society.

The party is in lock-step service to the very rich and the corporate sector. Since votes cannot be obtained on that platform, the party has been compelled to mobilize sectors of the society that are extremist by world standards. Crazy is the new norm among Tea Party members and a host of others beyond the mainstream.

The Republican establishment and its business sponsors had expected to use them as a battering ram in the neoliberal assault against the population — to privatize, to deregulate and to limit government, while retaining those parts that serve wealth and power, like the military.

The Republican establishment has had some success, but now finds that it can no longer control its base, much to its dismay. The impact on American society thus becomes even more severe. A case in point: the virulent reaction against the Affordable Care Act and the near-shutdown of the government.

"Salt of the Earth," a blacklisted 1954 movie...

...though apparently well-known in other parts of the world.  Based on an actual strike by Mexican-American workers against a zinc mining company, it is set in New Mexico, and uses actual mineworkers and their families in most of the main roles (including the male lead, Juan Chacon--his wife was played by a professional actress, however).   The movie is strongly pro-union, unsurprisingly, but much more  surprisingly, it has a strong pro-feminist twist, that wouldn't have been surprising in 1975, say, but is remarkable for 1954 (I won't spoil that part, you'll have to watch it).  The main writers and directors were blacklisted for refusing to cooperate with the fascist McCarthy Committee, but like other communist sympathizers at the time, they were, in ethical sensibility, well ahead of their time.  (At the end, the movie reveals which actors were "professionals" and which locals--there are several surprises.)

JFK: Worse than Obama

Longtime reader Ruchira Paul calls my attention to these reasonable observations by Professor Chomsky.

Evans from Michigan to Texas

Matt Evans (ancient philosophy, ethics), currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, to begin next fall.  That's a significant boost for ancient philosophy at Texas, which should help re-establish it as among the top North American programs.

The fetishism of procedures: on filibusters and voting

Mark Lance (Georgetown) comments.

The American right and the shadow of slavery

Interesting piece by Michigan's Elizabeth Anderson.

Religious exemptions to the law

A short opinion piece at the new Al Jazeera America site, drawing on some themes from my book.

Famous philosophical, mathematical, and scientific ideas...

...in 60 seconds.

(Thanks to David Livingstone Smith for the pointer.)

Ludlow from Northwestern to Rutgers

Peter Ludlow (philosophy of language, mind, cognitive science, & linguistics), Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, where he will also have an appointment in and serve as Director of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science.  (No word on whether his avatar will also be moving, however!)That's a signinficant loss for Northwestern, though I would expect them to remain solidly in the top forty even without Ludlow.  (I am told they will also be doing a senior search.) 

The FBI files on Sartre and Camus

Your secret police at work.

In Memoriam: Edward McClennen (1936-2013)

MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 7--UPDATED

He was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University at the time of his death, and had also taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Bowling Green State University and the London School of Economics at various points in his career.  He was well-known for his work on the foundations of decision and game theory, and their application to a range of issues in social and political philosophy.  I will post links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  Dr. Anthony Fisher, a recent Syracuse PhD, asked me to share this obituary prepared by him and Prof. McClennen's wife, Ellen:

McClennen, Edward Francis II, aged 77, died November 2, 2013. Professor of Philosophy, Edward F.  McClennen was a passionate thinker and an unrepentant liberal. He contributed foundational work to the field of decision and game theory with over fifty articles and the highly influential book Rationality and Dynamic Choice: Foundational Explorations (Cambridge University Press, 1990).  He was truly an original philosopher who defended an unorthodox conception of rationality in the face of traditional theories of decision and game theory. He was a "maverick" in his field, as he would say. Ned believed that people could achieve extraordinary things by cooperating and devoted his later years to integrating economics and political philosophy in the service of a theory of a just civil society and government--a Rational Society, the title of his book manuscript. 

Born in Cambridge MA, Ned received a BA in philosophy from The University of Michigan in 1959 and a PhD from The Johns Hopkins University in 1968.  He taught at Purdue University, Lehman College CUNY, Washington University, Bowling Green State University, The London School of Economics, and Syracuse University and was a visiting professor at Harvard University, The University of Pittsburgh, Rutgers University, The University of Rochester, The University of Western Ontario, and The University of Amsterdam.  At Bowling Green as the Ohio Board of Regents Eminent Scholar in Moral and Social Philosophy, he was co-developer of a program funded by UNESCO, the Kennan Institute and others that brought young Central and Eastern European scholars to the US after the collapse of the Soviet Union as a means helping them understand the relevance of new institutional economic theory for their reemerging nations.  As Centennial Professor of Philosophy at The London School of Economics, he designed and administered a highly successful interdisciplinary Masters Program in Philosophy, Policy and Social Values.  From 2005-7 he participated in a group of international scholars who were brought to Libya by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi to help in the writing of a new Constitution, for which Ned drafted the Bill of Rights.  As many would attest, Ned was a gracious host who loved company.  He enjoyed cooking fine food to share with others over long evenings of spirited conversation.  He also loved art, a legacy from the George De Forest Brush side of the family, and he treasured the view of Pleasant Bay from the McClennen family home on Cape Cod. He is survived by his wife Ellen Esrock and his children, Nathaniel Esrock McClennen and Sarah Pearmain McClennen.

UPDATE:  An informative and evocative remembrance from Adrian Piper.  (Thanks to David Gordon for the pointer.) 

Dretske's Last Interview (February 2013)

Mikkel Gerken kindly called to my attention this interview with Fred Dretske that was conducted by the students, named below, for an undergraduate philosophy publication, Tanken, at the University of Copenhagen; the students kindly gave permission to publish the interview.

Interview with Fred Dretske 

By Tanja Tofte Bøndergaard and Linda Fønss

Duke campus is beautiful and, to a newcomer, seems like a quiet place. Forbes has ranked this tranquil spot 7th on its list of “power factories”, but it is probably better known for its basketball team and its fierce rivalry with University of North Carolina. This is where Fred Dretske, internationally acclaimed philosopher, has his office and where we have set out to meet him. It wasn’t written in the stars that Fred Dretske would become a philosopher. In fact he was only a year away from completing a degree in electrical engineering when he decided that it was not the field of study meant for him.

“I was an engineer, when I decided I didn’t want to spend my life talking to engineers. I would go to the coffee shops and overhear conversations and say: “Oh, that sounds very interesting.” People talking about literature and sometimes philosophy. I didn’t know these people, but I thought it all sounded fascinating.“

It was a basic introduction to philosophy at college, which got Fred Dretske so hooked that he decided to scrap four years of college and start over with the uncertain prospects of becoming a philosopher.

“I was so excited about the problems that I knew I wanted to do that for the rest of my life.I think it is an advantage to keep your career options open as long as you can, because you’re going to spend 40-50 years doing this and you want to make sure you get it right. I never regretted the decision I made; I know it was the right decision, because I’ve had fun my whole life. But had I stayed in engineering, I think I would have been miserable. You have to make a career decision at some time, of course, but put it off as long as you can.”

When Dretske had finally made his decision and, after two years in the army, entered the academic world of philosophy, he was talked into writing his PhD. on the nature of space, time and substance. However, he quickly abandoned this field and instead fixed his attention on the subject of perception in relation to epistemology, a topic he was far more dedicated to.

“My first book, 'Seeing and Knowing', was about perception; what it takes to see something and how seeing is transformed into knowing. Well, once you start looking at all the ways we talk about seeing and the various ways we use perceptual verbs, there are enormous complications there that you have to sort through to make headway.My claim was that there was something called non-epistemic seeing, so that I can see the book on the table without knowing that it is a book, without even knowing what a book is: simple seeing. Then there is seeing what it is, seeing that it is a book, that’s epistemic seeing. This distinction, I think, is - once you understand it - pretty obvious.It doesn’t seem to me, though, that psychologists and neuroscientists are much interested in such distinctions. What they want to know is: “If you do something here, does it affect what’s there?”.It seems to me that philosophers have something to contribute here. Seeing what is on the table is ambiguous between “seeing what it is that is on the table” and “seeing that thing which is on the table”. That’s a big difference and a philosopher has to be sensitive to such verbal differences, or he’s going to get confused and not be of much help to anyone. Scientists aren’t particularly interested in these subtleties of language. They just get bored. Philosophers are fascinated by them ... I am anyway.”

More on the humanities

Speaking of the importance of the humanities, this program features, among others, philosopher Debra Satz from Stanford, where 45% of the faculty are in the humanities, but only 18% of undergraduates are humanities majors.

(Thanks to Dirk Felleman for the pointer.)

"The Truth is Terrible" at Davidson

The video of the Epes Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities, including a few remarks in praise of the humanities.

Terminal vs. non-terminal MA Programs

The PGR recommends a number of terminal MA programs with strong faculties (as an important sidenote:  financial aid varies quite a bit among these programs, and does not correlate at all with the relative strength of the faculties--in general, I would advise students *not* to take out loans to earn an MA in philosophy).  Often students wonder about MA programs at the PhD-granting programs.  I want to emphasize the advice in the PGR:

Many Ph.D. programs also admit M.A. students.  Students should be more wary of the M.A.  programs at schools in roughly the top 25 that grant the PhD:  often M.A. students take a back seat to the  Ph.D. students (in terms of faculty attention), and students with weak  philosophy backgrounds may find the pace and level of seminars geared to Ph.D.  students daunting.  Students considering  M.A. programs in top-ranked Ph.D.-granting institutions should investigate the  situation of M.A. students at the school carefully before enrolling.  However, some PhD programs that are less  highly ranked, but still have strong faculties, may in fact turn out to be very  good choices for the MA. 

A student who can get a funded MA at a top 25ish PhD program should probably pursue that over an unfunded or only partially funded MA at one of the terminal MA programs.  While some of the terminal MA programs would no doubt rank in the U.S. top 50 if they had a PhD program, and while all of the recommended ones have serious, research-active faculty, their main advantage is usually that when it comes to graduate education, the faculty's entire focus is on the MA students.   But PhD programs vary quite a bit, based on anecdotal reports, in terms of how they integrate their MA students into the program, and what kind of faculty supervision and mentoring they receive.   In general, a high-powered PhD program with terrific PhD students is going to be one where the PhD students command most of the faculty's time--hence my general note of caution about those programs which also offer an MA.  But I've also heard good reports from MA students at ranked PhD programs, which is why that option should not be wholly neglected by prospective students.

I'm opening comments so that students or faculty might post links to PhD programs that fund their MA students.

Chomsky should read more Foucault...

...since he doesn't seem aware that Foucault's skepticism is directed at the human sciences, not the natural sciences, which he tends to view much as a logical positivist would!  See my discussion here, esp. pp. 4-5 (and the footnotes).

"Death of an adjunct," revisited

A more detailed story about the former adjunct French professor at Dusquesne, whose death generated substantial national attention.  As one might have suspected, the story had more complexities than the original report suggested, though the complexities make it more, not less, tragic.  One thing not in dispute:  Dusquesne has resisted efforts by its adjunct faculty to unionize.  Shame on the university!

Lying to Nazis, during and after the War

Jerry Dworkin comments.

Live like a Stoic!

At least next week!

"The Calibrated Cosmos"

An interesting essay for a general audience by Tim Maudlin (NYU).

(Thanks to Daniel Fogal for the pointer.)

Political theorist Howard Williams interivewed...

...at 3AM.

Open-access textbooks

Here's one in logic, that will be familiar to many readers.

M.A.P.

"Minorities and Philosophy," the website with links and resources.

Hawthorne from Oxford to USC in 2015

John Hawthorne, Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University, who had last year moved his part-time appointment to the University of Southern California, has now acccepted a full-time position in the Department of Philosophy there, effective September 2015.   That's a rather significant hire for USC, and will likely put the department solidly in the U.S. top ten (the next surveys will be in early fall 2014).

Philosopher biographies for the holidays?

A former law student of mine writes:

As gift-giving season comes around I find myself looking for a good biography of a philosopher to give a friend. When I saw the Christian Science Monitor quote that appears in the Amazon description of Ray Monk's Wittgenstein book ("Great philosophical biographies can be counted on one hand. Monk's life of Wittgenstein is such a one."), I figured I'd toss the thought over to you as a potential blog discussion topic. 

So, readers, what would you recommend and why? Signed comments preferred, but all comments must include a valid e-mail address, which will not appear.

Houston's Tamler Sommers blogging...

...at Flickers of Freedom.

Interfolio costs

A job seeker writes:

I hope that you can find the time in the coming days to blog about the current state of the academic job market vis-a-vis the exorbitant rates that interfolio charges for uploading letters vs emailing them. This problem would seem to have a rather easy solution though a consensus on the problem itself would be needed before it could be implemented. 

The problem, in short, is this. Interfolio charges 4$ per letter to upload letters to application websites. This means that a typical student who has 5 committee members and one teaching letter is paying 24$ to send out a single application in most cases. Multiply this by the 50 or so applications a student will send out and the price of uploading letters alone costs 1200$. Given that you have written about the high costs of traveling to the APA this issue would appear to be on par with that one.

Obviously there are issues of justice here as well. Those with deep pockets can afford to send out more applications and upload a greater number of letters than those without who must be more judicious. The result is two tiered system that favors the already fortunate.

Frankly, I don't see how Interfolio justifies charging 24$ and up for pressing 'send' but this issue has ben cropping up again and again on my FB feed and in conversation. Further there seems an easy solution. Job posters could use interfolio for the application procedure thus minimizing costs or they should be encouraged to include an email in the ad where letters can be sent for far less than the upload fee. 

Thoughts from readers?

Ordinary Language Philosophy on the BBC

Here.

(Thanks to Dirk Felleman for the pointer.)

Memorial for Ned McClennen

Ben Bradley (Syracuse) asked me to share this:

Memorial Gathering for Ned McClennen

August 1936- November 2013

to recall & celebrate his life, friends, family & work

Saturday, November 23, 2013

at his home  5 Norwood Drive  Albany NY 12204

From 2:30 to (no later than) 4:00

Refreshments will be served after the memorial through 5:30.

The memorial will be freely structured.  Individuals are invited to
share their thoughts or to express themselves in other ways, such
as song or music, whenever the spirit moves them.

We will be creating a memory book for Ned's children, Nat and Sarah.

If you would like to contribute a story or thought to the book, it
would be most welcome.  These reminiscences can be emailed or brought to the gathering.

Ellen Esrock (McClennen) can be reached by email at [email protected]  

Charitable contributions should be directed to

Common Cause, The Southern Poverty Law Center, or The Union of Concern Scientists.

30% of college admissions officials downgraded an applicant's file...

...based on his or her on-line presence, including tweets.  (Earlier foray into the topic.)  Whether this generalizes beyond the case of college admissions is an unknown.  

A hopeful sign in the American plutocracy

Here.

CUNY's Omar Dahbour interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Many thanks to Thomas Nadelhoffer...

...for guest-blogging over the last week.  You can see his contributions here.

Law & Philosophy Fellowship at Chicago for 2014-15

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 26, 2013

Here's this year's ad.  Note that, as with last year, these Fellowships are now open to more advanced faculty who would like to combine it with a sabbatical.  This year's Fellow is Sarah Conly from Bowdoin.  Last year's Fellow was Justin Coates, now in a tenure-track job at Houston.  Feel free to e-mail me with questions (I'll be teaching next year's Law & Philosophy Workshop with next year's Fellow:  the two likely topics are "Free Speech and Its Critics" or a survey of current issues in general jurisprudence.)

Meat Eating and the Moral Burden of Proof

For starters, this will be my final post here at Leiter Reports (at least this time around). Thanks again to Brian for the opportunity to stir the pot a bit. Thanks as well to the readers who have participated in the discussion threads (especially the threads about open access philosophy). For my last hurrah, I thought I would take things in a different direction. So, my parting shot across the philosophical bow is about one of Brian’s favorite subjects--namely, vegetarianism!  Let me know what you think.

Shifting the Moral Burden of Proof

In the animal rights literature just as in everyday discourse and the popular press, nearly all parties to the debate about meat-eating seem to have collectively assumed that it is the vegetarian who owes us a positive argument for why meat-eating is morally impermissible.  Unsurprisingly, vegetarians are often happy to rise to the challenge.  Consequently, arguments against meat-eating are common-place while positive arguments explicitly for the moral permissibility of meat-eating are markedly scarcer—especially in the animal rights literature.  In short, moral omnivorism—i.e., the view that eating meat is morally permissible—is usually simply assumed from the outset to be the default position both amongst applied ethicists and the public more generally.  In this post, I am going to briefly suggest that this common dialectic gets things precisely backwards. 

On my view, the default moral rule is always to either do no harm or, if doing harm is lamentably unavoidable, do as little harm as possible.  Since I believe that causing harm is minimally prima facie (and perhaps even pro tanto) bad, morally speaking, I believe that actions and practices that cause harm require justification.  So, while it is clear that there are cases wherein the prima facie duty not to cause harm and suffering is trumped by more important moral considerations—e.g., when doctors cause pain and suffering with chemotherapy in the short term in order to save patients’ lives in the long term—it does not seem to me that meat-eating (at least in advanced countries) is one of these morally exceptional cases. 

 

Soldiers can be morally culpable for fighting in unjust wars

The Pentagon, as I understand it, is not going to hire Jeff McMahan (Rutgers).