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This is the class blog for Phil 3377, Animal Rights, at SMU. Visit often to find material presented during class, including lecture notes, visuals, links to videos, etc.

10.09.2026

The argument for vegetarianism

NO OFFICE HOURS TODAY

FIELD TRIP ADJUSTMENTS

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What about seafood? 
  •     Animal welfare issues here

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James Rachels, "The Basic Argument for Vegetarianism" (2004)

DIET TERMINOLOGY
  1. Omnivore -- literally means "eat everything"
  2. Conscientious omnivore--no factory farmed animal products 
  3. Reducetarian--Meatless Mondays, "vegan before 6" 
  4. Pescatarian -- vegetarian with an exception for fish
  5. Vegetarian/Ovo-lacto vegetarian--mostly plant based, diet includes dairy and eggs, no meat
  6. Vegan/Strict Vegetarian--plant based diet, no animal products
HEALTH
Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diets  
Marion Nestle, "Are vegetarian diets ok?"
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RACHELS 

THE BASIC ARGUMENT (p. 70)
  1.  "It is wrong to cause pain unless there is a good enough reason...justification is required"
  2. "In the modern meat production business, animals are made to suffer terribly." 
  3. "We could just as easily nourish ourselves in other ways" 
  4.  We prefer an animal-based diet for the taste.
  5. The taste of meat is not "a good enough reason to justify the amount of suffering that the animals are made to endure" THEREFORE,
  6. "We should stop eating the products of this business. We should be vegetarians instead."

THE ARGUMENT IN PICTURES

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LIMITED APPLICATION
  • Says nothing about "animals raised on old-fashioned family farms"
  • Says nothing about "animals killed in hunter-gatherer societies" (for survival)
  • Applies to people "in industrial countries"
SUPER SIMPLE
  • Nothing about value of life, rights, nature of morality
  • Doesn't presuppose utilitarianism or any other theory about ethics
  • Derives from simplest possible principle
SOURCES OF RESISTANCE
  1. Don't want to accept because they want to eat meat
  2. Other people they know don't accept -- hard to be an outlier
  3. Tendency to stress human-animal differences
  4. Focussing on borderline animals like snails and leeches
  5. Other: Republicans accusing Democrats of being vegans

RACHELS' ADVICE
  • Becoming a vegetarian needn't be "all-or-nothing"
  • Start with the foods that cause the most misery