Home / K. Effectiveness and individual responsibility / Part IND
"I don't kill; I just eat."
it's outsourced morality. Whoever pays for an act takes part in it. Slaughter happens because someone buys the meat, and the slaughterhouse worker does, to order, what the consumer doesn't want to see. Among humans, no one accepts that commissioning a harm is innocent just because someone else carried it out.
Short answer
Whoever pays for an act takes part in it. Slaughter happens because someone buys the meat; the slaughterhouse worker does, to order, what the consumer doesn't want to see. Among humans, no one accepts that commissioning a harm is innocent just because someone else carried it out. And if you couldn't kill the animal yourself, perhaps that says something about the act you're paying for.
For children
Imagine someone pays another person to break a classmate's toy. The one who paid is to blame too, right? Meat is similar: whoever buys it pays for the animal to be killed, even without seeing it.
"If you wouldn't kill the animal with your own hands, why pay for someone else to?"
Como pode aparecer
"I don't kill; I just eat."
"I just buy it."
"The butcher is the one who kills."
"I have nothing to do with slaughter."
"Moral responsibility belongs to the direct agent."
"The animal is already dead." (which is K2)
The strongest version
"I just buy it. The butcher is the one who kills."
Strongest version (steelman):
- P1Those who kill the animals are the slaughterhouse workers.
- P2The consumer doesn't take part directly in the slaughter.
- P3Moral responsibility falls on whoever performs the act.
- CSo those who only eat meat aren't responsible for the animals' deaths.
P1 and P2 are true. The problem lies in P3: moral responsibility isn't limited to whoever carries out the act; it includes whoever commissions and funds it.
The argument is valid. Its soundness fails at P3.
Full answer
- a
Reconstruction and diagnosis
The argument separates the act from the order:
Role What they do Responsibility Slaughterhouse worker Carries out the slaughter Direct, but under economic pressure Company Organizes production Large Consumer Pays and creates the demand Real: they place the order - b
Where the argument breaks
1. Paying is taking part.
Moral responsibility includes whoever commissions and funds an act, not only whoever carries it out.
2. Slaughter exists because of the purchase.
Without demand, there'd be no slaughter (K2).
3. The worker does what the consumer doesn't want to do.
Slaughterhouse work is dangerous and grueling, and it's delegated to others precisely because it's hard to face.
4. Distance makes denial easier.
Psychology shows that people dissociate meat from the animal and the slaughter to reduce discomfort.
5. Among humans, outsourcing doesn't absolve.
Commissioning a crime is a crime.
- c
Data and sources
Source What it says Note Benningstad and Kunst, 2020, *Appetite* People dissociate meat from its animal origin to reduce discomfort A systematic review Kagan, *Do I Make a Difference?* (2011) Each purchase has a real expected effect on production Also used in K1 and K2 - d
The strongest counter-reply: one purchase has a minimal effect
The most serious version grants that whoever buys takes part in some sense, but says the effect of an individual purchase is so small that the responsibility is practically nil.
- e
Why the counter-reply doesn't reach the conclusion
The expected effect is real.
As chapter K1 shows.
Responsibility doesn't depend only on effect.
Taking part in a harmful practice counts too.
Small contributions add up.
The slaughter of billions of animals is made of individual purchases.
- f
Back to the moral question
The argument tries to shift the responsibility onto others. But the animal dies because someone paid for it. The moral question is for whoever pays: what justifies commissioning the death of another being?
Reasoning errors
Moral
Is the criterion coherent?
Outsourced morality
Epistemological
Does the evidence support it?
Dissociation
Logical
Is the form valid?
False distinction
Biases
Diffusion of responsibility
The blame seems to belong to others
General literature on diffusion of responsibility
Omission bias and perpetrator bias
Only whoever kills seems responsible; whoever pays, not
Extrapolations
The principle being tested is: "if someone else carries out the act, whoever pays bears no responsibility".
If it applied to…Commissioning a crimeTap to see
It would be innocent
It's a crime
If it applied to…Buying products of slave laborTap to see
There'd be no responsibility
No one accepts this
If it applied to…Buying meatTap to see
There'd be no responsibility
The same error
Contradictions
Which suggests they see something wrong in the act.
And buys.
What the argument gets right
What is true
It's true that consumers aren't directly present at the slaughter, and that companies and the system bear great responsibility. It's also true that slaughterhouse workers face hard conditions and deserve attention.
But
But distance doesn't erase participation. Slaughter is done for those who buy, and those who buy are part of the chain that decides the animal's death.
Connections
Usually comes before
Usually comes after