The reasoning here seems to be that rational beings will follow something like Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative—don’t eat meat unless you could will it as a universal law that everybody should eat meat, including space aliens who wanted to eat you.
My understanding is that Kant did regard following the categorical imperative as a requirement of rationality. But many will have doubts on that score. It’s true that if everybody robbed banks, nobody would be able to borrow money. But if you had the opportunity to rob a bank and go scot free, would it really be prudentially irrational to do so? By the same token, if I can eat animals and the rest of the universe won’t in fact copy me, how is it against my self-interest to do so?
Even if we grant that it’s prudentially rational to follow Kant’s Formula of Universal Law, it’s not clear that there would be anything contradictory or self-defeating in willing that everybody, including space aliens, should eat meat. There might be no space aliens. Or if there are, they might live too far away to pose much of a threat.
The reasoning here seems to be that rational beings will follow something like Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative—don’t eat meat unless you could will it as a universal law that everybody should eat meat, including space aliens who wanted to eat you.
My understanding is that Kant did regard following the categorical imperative as a requirement of rationality. But many will have doubts on that score. It’s true that if everybody robbed banks, nobody would be able to borrow money. But if you had the opportunity to rob a bank and go scot free, would it really be prudentially irrational to do so? By the same token, if I can eat animals and the rest of the universe won’t in fact copy me, how is it against my self-interest to do so?
Even if we grant that it’s prudentially rational to follow Kant’s Formula of Universal Law, it’s not clear that there would be anything contradictory or self-defeating in willing that everybody, including space aliens, should eat meat. There might be no space aliens. Or if there are, they might live too far away to pose much of a threat.