tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7827026400015685408.post7513288295414455686..comments2011-06-01T09:57:14.390-07:00Comments on The Curious Vegan: A Hard Question for My Readers and MeNathanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10198651950757571613noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7827026400015685408.post-59463061763519600202011-05-30T06:01:21.457-07:002011-05-30T06:01:21.457-07:00Thank you for your comment. I try to address some...Thank you for your comment. I try to address some of your topics in today's blog.Nathanielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10198651950757571613noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7827026400015685408.post-42528223302456211982011-05-29T18:24:57.880-07:002011-05-29T18:24:57.880-07:00I think that this post goes back to the question t...I think that this post goes back to the question that Jeremy (who is a terrific philosopher, who holds a chair in Environmental Philosophy at Case Western) asked you: what are the underlying values that you really want to defend, after having done all this reading? Is it freedom from suffering on the side of the animal? In that case, we should be preventing not just deliberate killings, but also the accidental, insofar as we can, and we should also be preventing animals from inflicting suffering on one another, just as a good system of criminal law will protect the rights of all, not just fail to inflict damage through its own agents. (But it's possible that one might exempt insects, if one thinks they don't suffer pain.) Is the value, instead, one of doing no harm oneself? In that case, one might try to say that it's ok to allow harms to occur so long as one does not inflict them, especially deliberately. But can this distinction between doing and allowing really be sustained? One philosopher's favorite is the "trolley problem": if a trolley is going along the track and about to run over five people, and you can switch it onto a track on which it will kill just one person, shouldn't you do it, even though then you are doing and not just allowing? What do you think about that? Finally, for the true vegan it's really not just about suffering, it's something more abstract about non-domination, which I confess I do not really understand or sympathize with, given that I think nature is a cruel place, so I see nothing wrong with intervening to make it better. I'm very curious about what you are thinking about these big issues by this point in your project.martha_nussbaumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15827994983608408189noreply@blogger.com