Question Do we have a duty to strive towards a life without contradiction? Can a person, for example, both eat meat and hold the belief that animals should not be willfully killed for private gain?

Accepted:
May 24, 2012

Comments

Well, one CAN do that, since I myself in fact do (and many, many others) .... But of course what you're asking is more like "is it morally permissible to violate one's own principles?", or something like that ... Assuming that one's principles are correct (i.e. that you are right to believe that animals shouldn't be willfully killed etc.), then it seems clear that the answer must be no, because it's not morally permissible to do that which is morally impermissible! But that seems so clear that I wonder if that really is, ultimately, your question. Weakness of will is a well-known (and much discussed phenomenon), and a paradigm case of weakness of will is precisely that where you cannot bring yourself to do that which is right (and so when I succumb, and eat meat, I condemn myself for not being able to live up to my own standards). But you seem to be getting at a much deeper question, which the weakness of will case is merely a simple case of: is there a moral obligation to avoid contradictions, to seek truth, etc. The possible contradictions in question, here, aren't between your beliefs and your actions (which aren't strictly contradictions, actually, but close enough), but between beliefs -- and here I don't have any clear intuitions about what to say. If we are morally obliged to do the right thing then, presumably, we have some moral obligation to form the correct moral beliefs; but, aside from morality/behavior, do we have any moral obligation to seek truth and avoid error? If that is, ultimately, what you're asking, then it strikes me as a really deep and hard question about which I have nothing substantial to say .... (Would be interesting to explore this question both within, and without, religious frameworks ....)

Question Do we have a duty to strive towards a life without contradiction? Can a person, for example, both eat meat and hold the belief that animals should not be willfully killed for private gain? Accepted:May 24, 2012

Question Do we have a duty to strive towards a life without contradiction? Can a person, for example, both eat meat and hold the belief that animals should not be willfully killed for private gain?

Accepted:
May 24, 2012