Great review of utilitarian theory and an interesting approach to the ethics of meat eating. I also read and enjoyed @alexbenjalbert 's post "In Defense of Meat".
As a vegetarian, I can imagine finding many ways to twist the hedonistic calculus to support animal liberation and I could also imagine further utilitarian evidence that meat eating is acceptable. It's a by product of utilitarian ethics that a certain level of subjective judgement goes in to deciding whether something will be moral. You can't actually sort out whether something was right or wrong from a pure utilitarian standpoint until after the event. Then you can complete the calculus. There are rule based forms of utilitarianism as well, but they will also be plauged by value judgements about what is suffering, what is pleasure, and what actions promote pleasure over suffering.
I could go on and on, and I will when I write my own follow up ;)
I enjoyed your piece and included it in today’s #philosophy-review. Keep up the great posts!
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@aaanderson/the-philosophy-review-12-6-2016
Exactly! At some point, you have to make underlying definitions,. As some people are more concerned with animal welfare than others (and I am not one of those), the suffering of animals carries more weight in those judgements.
Well said, and followed