Topics Animals

Question If Cheese is made of bacteria culture, and bacteria is alive, is it wrong to eat cheese and yogurt? Or plants and anything else that is alive? If so, why do we have laws to protect people, animals, and other multi-organism beings, but not bacteria, which plays just as inportant, or even a more important role, than say a cat?

Accepted:
November 28, 2005

Comments

I think Peter is right that the philosophical answer to your question depends on finding a principled way to make judgments about moral considerability: since our energy and time are finite, we need to decide which things are most worthy of our consideration as we decide what we ought to do.

Suppose that we decided that all living things were equally worthy of moral consideration. Given the sheer number of living things we interact with every day, it would be impossible for us to pay sufficient attention to all of them. In that case, we would either suffer "moral paralysis" or would have to make arbitrary, unprincipled decisions about which beings' moral interests we should care about. This practical problem is worse, of course, if one was inclined to consider non-living things worthy of moral consideration.

So, there is a strong practical need to develop and defend criteria for moral considerability. Environmental philosophers who have investigated this include Richard Sylvan, Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Paul Taylor, and Kenneth Goodpaster; the clearest direct discussion of this is probably Goodpaster's 1978 paper, "On Being Morally Consdierable."

What role? Not the role of my companion. What makes a role "important"? Note that much of the "role" bacteria plays is that of food for other organisms. Like that of Titus Andronicus, some important roles end in suffering and death.

So, I don't think the concept of "important role" will explain laws prohibiting the killing and tormenting of various organisms. For my own part, I look to three features of some organisms that distinguish them from others and justify protections and cultivation: (1) the capacity for conscious suffering; (2) the capacity to engage in projects and practices of value (like writing philosophy, making art, building just societies, sustaining families, advanciing learning and wisdom); and (3) the capacity to contribute to the diminishment of conscious suffering and or the support of projects and practices of value. This set of criteria provides a hierarchy of organisms, but not a terribly clean one (I like that about it). Some bacteria are worthy of protction or cultivation because of 3. Cats share 1 and 3, maybe a bit of 2. Humans 1, 2, and 3 in clear and compelling ways--usually, but not always.