Students from the Philosophy Society debated the moral
The Morality of Food Community Building Event was hosted by the Philosophy Society on Monday, March 21.
“We wanted to have an event where the philosophy minors can get together and develop some sense of community, and do the things that philosophers do,” said Jay Valentine, assistant professor of history.
The event took two weeks to prepare, and with the help of Joungbin Lim, assistant professor of history, Valentine and the Philosophy Society, it was made possible.
“It took a couple hours a week for the past couple of weeks,” Valentine said. “The students who are going to do the presentations put in several hours of work as well.”
The event was a time for students to discuss whether they believed eating meat was OK, or if meat should not be eaten at all.
“The notion here is to have a public debate on something, and one of the students felt passionately about food ethics, so we decided to go with that,” Valentine said.
The event began with a video that discussed the morality of eating animals, which led into a discussion between two sides for and against the eating of meat.
“We do have people who are not vegetarians arguing on the behalf of vegetarianism, and we have someone who is a vegetarian arguing on behalf of meat eating,” Valentine said. “You’re not just always representing the view you believe in.”
After the discussion, people who attended the event had the opportunity to ask questions to the presenters. Afterwards, food was provided to those in attendance.
“I don’t know what my favorite part tonight was, but it would probably have to be the food,” said Rebecca Reid, a freshman mathematics major from Eclectic.
“I thoroughly enjoyed the event tonight,” Reid said. “I liked the different perspectives on the whole subject.
“I found it interesting that the argument for vegetarianism was not about how it is morally wrong to eat animals, but more so on if people are going to eat animals, they should do it more humanely.”
“I think the food was good. The presentations could have been done a little better,” said Liz Nowling, a sophomore anthropology major from Ashford.
“The arguments were decent. They did not really talk about being a vegetarian; it was more about animal rights and inflicting pain on people.”
Once the event was over, people could stay and talk to those who presented and continue the discussion.
“My favorite part about tonight was the discussions afterwards,” Nowling said.
The philosophy minor was established this year, and with the help of the event, there are hopes to have more people consider the minor.
“This is the first year of this minor, but we are actually changing the name of it to a minor of philosophy and religion starting next year,” Valentine said. “This encompasses what we do, which is the study of philosophy and the academic study of religion as well.”
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