Why It is Probably Okay to Eat Mitchell Saruwatari

8/10/2019 Why It is Probably Okay to Eat Mitchell Saruwatari

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WHY IT ISPROBABLYOKAY TO EAT

MITCHELL SARUWATARI:A BRIEF AND FACETIOUS DEFENSE OF CANNIBALISM

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YOU ARE WHOYOU EAT?

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ESTABLISHING THE RELATIONS BETWEEN

QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE JUDGEMENTS IN

REGARDS TO IDENTITY

By Derek Schimanski


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1. Preface.

I am going to give my best effort to make this essay accessible to the layman. That is, Illtry to spare you of reading anything too technical or dry. After all, what we are concerned with

here is whether or not we can fire up the barbeque and make some Mitch-kebabs without our

moral conscience getting the best of us, not whether or not I can get this sucker published in theJournal of Moral Philosophy. (Although if someone from the Journal of Moral Philosophy isreading this and wants to publish my article, I think we can work something out.) Anyway, on

with it!

2. The Conversation.

As is the case on many days at Canadian Tire, the topic of conversation between myself

and my supervisor had wandered into the territory of the absurd. I do not remember who, nor whatcaused the topic of cannibalism to arise, but never-the-less thats where our deliberation had taken

us. Now, we werent exactly debating whether or not it was morally correct to eat another person.

Rather, we were debating the meaning of a quip that Shane, my supervisor, had said, You arewhoyou eat. I immediately interpreted this line that Shane had uttered in the complete opposite

context of what Shane had intended. Admittedly, Ive been known to needlessly contradict people

from time to time when Im on a warpath. At this point in timeMitchell Saruwatari had arrived at

the office we were having this discussion in, and I asserted, By simply eating another person youdo not assume their identity. If I ate Mitchell I would not suddenly becomeMitchell.

My error in interpreting what Shane had intended to say was that I assumed that the who

in You are who you eat referred to the conscious entity and personality of a person, rather thanthe material meat and tissues that make up a persons body. To which, it is all too obvious that if

I did, in fact, eat Mitchell that the proteins contained within his muscle mass, organs, etc., would

be absorbed by my digestive system and then become a part of me. Meanwhile, the personality

and consciousness of Mitch would cease to exist and not be absorbed by my digestive tract. WhenI realized my error, I voiced that the categorical difference between these distinctions was much

akin, if not analogous, to the quality vs. quantity distinction. As it is, we often think of a person

in terms of their personal qualities and attributes, and less so as a material object that is made upof a quantity of cells, tissues, and organs, etc.

Now, before I go on, it is important to understand that Mitchell is a conceited pile of hubris

who is constantly seeking to justify his imperious nature. So, granted, when I said my train ofthought was in terms of the qualitative in defining what a person is, I was immediately bombarded

with a retort that this is due to my inferior philosophical discourse and that Mitchells superior

empirical scientific discourse led him to the quantitative, material, measurable answer. (Mitchell

is pursuing a degree in chemistry and education, meanwhile I am pursuing a degree in philosophyand political science.) Thusly, I have been left no option but to write this paper in order to sort out

the importance of the quality vs. quantity distinction in terms of cannibalism and personal identity.

Thank you Mitchell Saruwatari.

3. What isa person?

Think of another individual. It can be a friend, family member, cousin, teacher, whateveryou like. If you are like me, you are probably visualizing them in terms of their physical qualities.


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You see how big their stature is, their hair and eye colour, how old they are, you hear how deep

their voice is, etc. That being said, you havent actually established whothey are by visualizing

them, have you? Essentially, we are more concerned with their mental states, their memories, andthe behaviours that result from those mental states and memories. Let me demonstrate that to you

with a thought experiment.

Suppose your mother was in a horrific car accident. The severe trauma has rendered herboth an amnesiac and a quadriplegic. However, time is of the essence. A neurosurgeon hasapproached you and says that if he acts immediately, he has time to cure one of the two conditions

that has afflicted your mother. He could repair the spinal cord damage and give your mother the

use of her body again, however all of her memories would be lost. Her personality would beforever changed as well. Had she been sweet and endearing, or malicious and cruel, it may or may

not be the case anymore after the procedure was complete. On the other hand, the surgeon could

reverse the amnesia and preserve both her memories and personality. However, she would be

forever restricted to beds and wheelchairs with a very limited lifestyle.I know, this thought experiment is grim, but it demonstrates some key distinctions in how

we perceive ourselves as individuals. Suppose that you were onlyconcerned with preserving who

your mother is. If the primary means of establishing her identity was through assessing herphysical attributes, such as her height, facial features, how she moves about, etc., then surely we

would opt to fix the spinal cord and alleviate her of being a quadriplegic. After all, whether or not

she had her memories and personality would be of no concern if we only identified her by assessing

how she looked and physically functioned. However, it is quite obvious that we are not solelyconcerned with her appearance. In fact, that might seem as the more superficial component of

defining who your mother is. Once again, if we are onlyconcerned with preserving whoshe is,

then it seems we ought to save her memories and personality. For those who disagree, I direct youto the many individuals who have loved ones who have succumbed to Alzheimers disease. It is

not uncommon for those who care for the afflicted individual to say that they have lost their loved

one already as the person in the body is not reminiscent of the individual who used to occupy that

body. As such, it seems that if we are concerned with saving your mother, we ought to reverse theamnesia. Otherwise, we will simply have your mothers body walking around with a new

individual occupying it.

Now, some may retort that this thought experiment is fundamentally flawed. This is dueto the fact that our respective psychological and mental states are entirely dependent on the

physical structuring of the brain and neurological chemistry. As such, to afflict our physical

components, such as our neural pathways is one and the same as afflicting our psychological andmental states. Likewise, vice versa, to afflict our psychological and mental states means to change

how we are physically wired. To which, my response is that in order to recognise the changes

in structure we are actually performing an exercise in qualifying how these structures work as

opposed to measuring them quantitatively. Allow me to expand this point.

4.

Burlap sacks, cars, and containers of gas.

When assessing an object, individual, or action in terms of their qualities we are essentiallyrecognising that there is a certain criteria that defines what that object, individual, or action is. As

such, we are not only concerned with what the object is composed of, but also its design. Let me

give you an example. Think of your car. (If you dont have a car, humour me, pretend you ownone.) What makes it a car? Is it the fact that it has a radiator, a steering wheel, engine,


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transmission, seats, etc.? Or is it the fact that we have taken all of those components and arranged

them in a particular way such that, combined, they act as a means of transportation? That is,

suppose I took your car and broke it down into its core components. Every screw unscrewed,every sprocket removed, and every wire, tube, and manifold disconnected. I then gather all these

parts and throw them into a giant burlap sack. If I handed you the burlap sack and told you, Here

is your car, would you agree that I gave you back the same object? Would you simply hop inand drive away? Of course not. A car is a functional object that performs certain tasks that a pileof parts cannot. You would, more than likely, be furious that I took apart this complex piece of

machinery and deprived it of its capacity as a vehicle. The salient point here is that if you were

simply concerned with your car in terms of its quantitative properties, then you have taken novalue in it being assembled into a vehicle. I would have handed you the burlap sack and you would

have recognised the car to be of the exact same value as when it was assembled.

Furthermore, these notions of how we qualitatively define objects, people, or actions

permeate through scientific discourse as well. Say I were to hand you a sealed container that wasfull of two parts hydrogen gas to one part oxygen gas. (This mixture is often referred to as

oxyhydrogen.) Would itbe valid for me to say that I handed you a container full of water? Any

competent chemist would say, No. Despite the fact that it contains the correct atomiccomponents, the atomic structures have not been arranged into the molecule, H20. As such, the

quantifiable components, while they play a significant role, do not permit you to identify the object

that is in the container. In order to make that identification, you need to be able to make judgements

in terms of the qualities of said object. Thus, even within the scientific discourse we cannot dismissthe value of identifying objects in terms of their qualities.

As an important side note, there is a question of whether or not we can treat a quantitative

value as a quality. To which, while it would not be incoherent to do so, it would not provideanything meaningful in terms of identifying an object. For instance, what it means to have 3 of an

object is quite simply for there to be 3 of said object. Is it a quality? Yes, but a self-explanatory

one.

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Im hungry.

On to the topic at hand. We have established that we are concerned with our respectivepsychological and mental states when it comes to identifying whoa person is. As these mental

states are abstract constructs, it is preferable to treat them as qualifiable entities as opposed to a

quantifiable entities. That is, while I could measure certain behaviours, or even stick a person intoan MRI and watch the brain light up in certain areas, all that this will demonstrate is the

mechanics of how a mental state is formed or the results of a mental state in the form of an action.

These quantitative measures do not describe the mental state itself. To describe a mental state we

talk in terms of its qualities.So, keeping in mind all of these notions of mental states, their qualitative aspects, and how

we use those to identify a person, is there anything morally abhorrent about eating Mitchell

Saruwatari? (I should also note, that for the sake of this paper, we are going to assume that

murdering people is morally wrong.) It seems that out of the definition of a person being aconstruct of mental states, there is a greater problem in regards to eating Mitchell. I dont know

how to eat mental states. Never mind whether or not it is morally correct to do so, the pragmatic

issue does not allow me to access the ethical one. That is, we are back the conversation between


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myself and Shane. As long as the whoin You are who you eat, refers to the psychological

and mental aspects of a person, it seems that there is nothing to eat and absorb.

But, what of the parts that we can eat and absorb? Since we pragmatically cannot eatmental states, can we at least comment on the morality of eating someones body? At face value,

it might seem morally acceptable to consume someones body, given that we have defined a person

as a psychological construct, and not as a physical one. Thus, seemingly we can go ahead andconsume their organic components as it will not compromise them as a psychological being.However, I cannot ignore the fact that these physical organs, nerve tissues, etc., are hosting the

mental faculties that an individual will possess. Thus, the destruction of these physical

components through the act of consumption will be causally connected to the destruction of themental faculties of an individual. With enough consumption, and destruction, we may end up

destroying the psychological assets of a person. To which, this would constitute killing a person.

As such, on moral grounds, it seems we cannot allow this.

Now, on what grounds couldwe allow the eating of a human body? It would seem thatunder my view, as long as we take the criteria of identifying a human as a psychological construct,

that if we came across a body that was absent of any psychological or mental states, then there

would be nothing morally wrong with consuming said body. Thus, if we came across a recentlydeceased Mitch, then we can, without any kind of moral grievance, chow down. Think of this

as the Soylent Green defense for cannibalism.

6. So we arent going to eat him? I just fired up my BBQ.

Now, if you look at the title for this paper youll notice it says Why it is probablyokay to

eat Mitchel Saruwatari. I have laid out a fairly straight forward defense of why it is not morallycorrect to eat Mitchell Saruwatari. However, I also must remind you that Mitchell is a conceited

pile of hubris who is constantly seeking to justify his imperious nature. Knowing this, and the

fact that I arrived at the conclusion that eating people, even Mitchell, is morally wrong through the

use of my inferior philosophical discourse, I can only assume that Mitchell will invariablydisagree with the arguments I have laid out. We make this assumption through basic inductive

reasoning. That is, in more cases than not, Mitchell has disagreed with me. Therefore, it is

reasonable to assume that he will disagree with my arguments made here. Further, he has evenmade a point of disagreeing with me when he knows I am correct, just simply for the satisfaction

of disagreeing with me. He has blatantly, and proudly, admitted this on multiple occasions. As

such, there is a probabilistic tendency towards my postulations and arguments being disagreedwith by Mitchell.

As such, supposing that we respect this decision to disagree with my sentiments and

arguments against eating people due to the fact that we identify people in terms of their respective

qualities, then it seems that we are only left to identify people as quantitative beings. As such, Ihave a proposal. If people are, in fact, quantitative beings then Mitchell should have to give his

body up to feed starving children in Ethiopia. After all, like the car parts in the sack, if we identify

ourselves as quantitative beings then there is no value in Mitchell being assembled as a human

being. He would be of the same worth in the stomach of a child as he is as a fully formed human.Alternatively, Mitchell can beat the odds,defying probability, and agreewith my arguments

against eating people as they are qualitative beings. In the end, it is up to him.

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Why It is Probably Okay to Eat Mitchell Saruwatari