The thing I have against the advocacy is that it is based on utilitarian grounds. In my view, utilitarian can lead to a host of other problems, in that it generally degrades the worth of a human - if the body thus is not neccessary to be respected, why then the mind? Where does one quite draw the line? The danger is the loss of respect for humanity, which can lead to degradation of general morals in the living.
I was itching for somebody to say that. You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! (The most famous, is never get involved in a land war in Asia...)
As you probably knew, I'm not a utilitarian. I tend to stay away from that sort of logic as a main form of argument. The utilitarian angle of cannibalism--that it would provide a more efficient way to dispose of the deceased--is only a supporting observation...icing on the cake, if you will. Social conservatives, especially when motivated by their religious beliefs, have fought against almost every advance in technology, medicine, and socially acceptable behavior since religion was invented. I drew a line in my reply by saying that we'll presume no humans are to be killed for their meat. You're telling me that line will not hold, that once we have committed to cannibalism, we will commit to the slaughter of human beings for the purpose of consuming them. That's the slippery slope logical fallacy. And not only is it logically wrong; it is
factually inconsistent with how social and technological advances have played out. When medical science achieved the ability to carry out organ transplants, religious conservatives said that we'd soon be killing people to harvest their organs. That never happened. When the United States justice system swept down laws banning interracial marriage, religious conservatives said that beastiality was right around the corner. That never happened. When researches created a new vaccine that has the effect of preventing HPV and therefore most cases of cervical cancer, religious conservatives said it would encourage women to become promiscuous whores. They backed down from that claim, because people had gotten tired of listening to them.
If we legalize cannibalism but not the slaughter of human beings for the purpose of cannibalism, that's where the line will be.
And in the meantime, the main logic in my argument has nothing to do with the utilitarian angle. It has to do with the fact that we're tabooing a civil practice for no good reason. Show me a good reason as to why this liberty of cannibalism is unjustified to the point that it must be illegal, and we'll argue. RD and I have already touched on the most likely topic: the quality of the meat. For one thing, the flesh of people who have died by sickness, trauma, and age is certain to be lower in quality than we may be willing to accept. I don't know; there'd have to be a study. And, likewise, we're so high up the food chain that we've got all sorts of contaminants in our bodies. How much poison is too much? Again, I don't know; there'd have to be a study. And, what RD pointed out in particular, to his credit, is that germs in other animal flesh aren't necessarily a threat to us, but germs in our own flesh are far more likely to be. But I still don't know that that'd ruin the deal; there'd have to be a study. And while you might tell me that the Israelites of ages past "knew better" and developed a stringent dietary code, I'm here to tell you that you're several millennia behind the times, and modern technology has rendered the laws of kashrut so obsolete as to be a joke.
So, in conclusion, "the thing you have against the advocacy" is
not that it is utilitarian, because what's
really the argument is that the advocacy is on
your side, for maintaining this ban in the first place, even though there is no good evidence to show that, absent further inquiry, cannibalism is a Bad Idea.
