Veganism and the Ethics and Epistemology of Disagreement: A Neo-Pascalian Approach
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Date
2018-02-22
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
Disagreement is without a doubt one of the most universal, enduring, and oftentimes quite vexing, features of our life in common. This latter aspect, to be sure, becomes all the more evident when the particular disagreement at hand concerns differing ethical beliefs, value-judgments, or deep questions about the nature, and scope, of morally permissible action as such. One such question—also the chief subject of dispute to be taken up in this dissertation—is whether or not human beings are morally justified in killing, eating, wearing—in a word, exploiting—non-human animals for our benefit when doing so is neither required for us to survive or to flourish. Ethical vegans answer ‘no,’ insisting that non-human animals, qua sentient, conscious, experiential selves, ought to be treated with fundamental concern and respect, which, at a minimum, demands that we stop exploiting them as resources and commodities. Unsurprisingly, many disagree.
While I shall have much more to say about (and in support for) ethical veganism in what follows, the guiding aim of this dissertation is firstly to explore certain key questions regarding the ethics and epistemology of disagreement(s) about veganism. In this way, my approach notably departs from that which has long prevailed (and rightly so) in conventional animal rights theory and vegan advocacy, where the emphasis, and aim, has generally been about making the first-order case for animal rights, abolition, and, therein, for veganism itself. While I heartily agree with, and applaud the efforts of, those who have contributed to this task, there is frankly not much else left to say in this regard.
However, I shall argue that there is a compelling ‘second-order’ case to be made for becoming vegan; one that has, to my knowledge, gone largely, if not entirely unnoticed, but which has the potential to be at least as persuasive and effective as its more conventional ‘first-order’ counterpart(s)—perhaps more so. I call this a ‘Neo-Pascalian argument for precautionary veganism,’ and in what follows I shall undertake to motivate, elaborate, and defend this approach as a novel contribution to the theory and practice of veganism and animal advocacy.
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Veganism, Epistemology, Disagreement, Ethics, Animal Rights, Epistemic Peer