Singer, Scruton debate ethics of eating animals

Philosophers Peter Singer and Roger Scruton engaged in an hour-long debate yesterday evening about the ethics of eating animals.

Singer, a professor of bioethics at the University Center for Human Values, has long lobbied against eating animals. When he found out that Scruton, currently a visiting professor at the University of Buckingham, would be on campus to speak to the Humanities Council about Wagner's "Ring Cycle," he invited him to participate in a debate on a matter important to both.

Yesterday's event, sponsored by the University Center for Human Values and held in McCosh 10, marked the first meeting between the men.

After an introduction by Singer, Scruton began the lecture with a discussion — titled "Eating Your Friends: A Carnivore's Credo" — of the process involved in considering such ethical debates.

"An aspect of human nature left out of account in the treatment of ethics, which I have a strong urge to place at the center, is piety," Scruton said, "by which I mean a certain disposition to ... face the surrounding world with due humility."

Scruton's principal argument involved the distinctions between animals and persons, primarily that the latter are endowed with moral judgment. He also spoke about livestock farming conditions, which he argued provide livestock with the highest level of pleasure they are able to experience.

He concluded by encouraging a return to the "traditional Sunday roast," at which the eating of meat is made ceremonial and imbued with a piety that Scruton argues should pervade the entire process.

"[We should] re-moralize eating habits by incorporating them into human loving relationships," he said.

In his response, "Can Eating Animals Be Justified?," Singer projected pictures of factory conditions to show that Scruton's conceptions of livestock farming were largely a "fantasy."

But even pleasant living conditions, he said, do not morally allow us to kill animals — a practice people justify by what he called "speciesism," which places humans on a higher level than nonhuman animals simply because of the difference in species.

"You don't have to be a person to enjoy life or feel pain," he said. "Do we give the same weight to suffering of nonhuman animals that we give to human nonpersons?"

Singer said that while Scruton emphasized a return to the Sunday-dinner tradition, he valued breaking with tradition to put the condition of animals on a par with one's own species.

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"Speciesism is something we ought to recognize and combat the same way we combat racism and sexism," he said. "I think the analogy is a legitimate one to make at this point."

After a brief rebuttal by Scruton, the two fielded questions, which included hypothetical situations such as the eating of human placentas.

During this time, a list was passed around the audience asking for interest in a "conversation envisioning the optimal food system here at Princeton." It was unclear where the document originated.

After the discussion, Scruton reflected on the debate's different sides.

"We have a lot of common ground, but we come from completely different positions," Scruton said. "Peter is utilitarian, while ethics for me is ... about the good life and living that life correctly."