"Tonight, we're discussing the moral rights of bacon". "Of bacon?" "Yes, of bacon".

Hi again, everyone. As promised a couple weeks ago, this entry will focus on one of the silliest and most trivial philosophical discussions I can recall from last year--but, before you get too eager about hearing of the moral standing of strips of fat, I'll dissipate some questions that may come to mind. Can bacon think? Well, no. Is bacon alive? Uh....no,no, bacon is an inanimate, lifeless object that we consume (and, frankly, if you think bacon can understand you when you tell it it's "yummy", in the morning, perhaps you shouldn't be reading my blog and should be talking to your psychiatrist--or your strips of bacon, whichever you prefer). However, are pigs living, sentient beings? Ah! Now we are getting somewhere. As you've probably already guessed, my friends and I were not discussing whether we should treat food morally or not, but were arguing about the moral standing of animals.

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It was around one a.m. when we decided to have our usual nocturnal discussion, this past February. My friends and I were exhausted that evening, but were able to muster enough energy to discuss a topic we'd recently been lectured on in Ethics class. First, I set out my argument: Animals should not be treated morally (should not be treated as equals to humans) because they are not sentient beings--by "sentient" I am referring to the belief that animals cannot engage in meta-cognition; they cannot think of their own thoughts. My suite-mates agreed with this, but proposed that if animals are not sentient, then how are they able to decide when to eat?  I suggested that the answer was obvious: animals are driven purely by instinct and by the need for immediate gratification of primordial needs. Hence, an animal will not "decide" when to eat, but will simply eat when it feels hungry; it was at this point that the conversation got a bit out of hand, so to speak, and I began to think my friends never gave much thought to what they posited. Without making the slightest effort to oppose my position, they asked if farm pigs could acknowledge the purpose of their existence: to be consumed by a jolly diner.They obviously were not considering my argument, since this implies pigs can think--don't worry, your trip into the world of philosophy gets better, and our conversation got worse. Thereafter, one of my friends thought it'd be "worth considering" if bacon-fed-pigs could understand they were being cannibals...So on, and so forth, "we" came to the conclusion that pigs were savages for eating their own "people" and that the Trinity cats talked students into forming the "Cat Alliance" on campus.

My loving compadres are not insane, I promise, just a tad bit goofy, that's all.

Next time, on "The Thinkers who Should not be Thinking, but Should Rather be Sleeping, or at Least Forming Sensible Opinions on Topics We're Actually Talking Time to Discuss" I'll fill you folks in on a more recent discussion. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Until then!

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