Ultimately these sorts of ethical systems draw an arbitrary line between the animal kingdom, and all other forms of life, oftentimes based on the concept of intelligence or pain, which is very murky. This line is arbitrary because some animals are much less complex than some plants that are harvested for food. Who is to say that placazoa, sponges, or starfish are more worthy than a tree or a venus flytrap? The naturalistic fallacy that a more complex organism is better or worthier is rooted within many moral systems. In summary of this article, I argue the following positions:

Eating food for survival and Ahimsa pose a deep conflict that has not yet been resolved, and which needs to be resolved. “Harm,” “unnecessary killing,” and “number of senses” are fundamentally imperfect moral measurements. They can never be quantified perfectly. However, there do exist perfect moral measurements for eating. One of them is this principle of “symbiosism” that I introduce in this article: Make sure that the living organism does not die! (And make sure you are treat it well while it is alive, to foster a respectful and symbiotic relationship with the organism). This principle can be adopted very quickly by making small, but nonetheless morally significant, changes to vegetarian and vegan diets.

In the discussion on Dharma-open, which spurred this article, Vikram made some excellent points. First, his model of moral “measures” and “limits” clarifies things a lot. A measure is a type of moral standard, such as the amount of harm we are willing to cause an organism. The limit is the boundary value that we decide to be acceptable, such as 50 out of 100. Anything less than 50 would be too much harm, and the person would fail the test. Anything above 50 would be a passing score. Just like on school exams, this test offers a variety of scores, and a score of 90 is better than a 70, even if it is not a perfect score. I agree with Vikram that just because a test is not perfect does not mean that it should be thrown out; there is still some meaning to the grades of 90 and 70.

My argument is based on the fundamental need to find “perfect measures” for ethical eating, and not the commonplace argument against seemingly arbitrary “limits” on those measures. There must be some perfect measures in the foundation of our morality, (even if they are perfect only by our belief that their perfect), otherwise we would end up with an abhorrent lack of moral standards. I agree at the same time, that morality is a continuum, and people can be considered as getting various grades based on their actions. Hinduism may not have space for anyone with a lower score than say a score of 50, but may tolerate other people who “pass the test,” even if they do not live up to the Hindu standards of ahimsa, or other morals (eg meat-eaters).

I wondered why we should settle for a second-rate standard when we can have a perfect standard. This is sort of a long article, so I broke it up into three parts, which hopefully makes following my argument a bit easier.

Part 1: Eating food for survival and Ahimsa pose a deep conflict that hasn’t yet been resolved, and which needs to be resolved.

To address comments about pluralism and tolerance of all behaviors, in the plural framework of Hinduism, there is certainly room for meat-eaters. But as Vikram has also said, there is a paradox between ahimsa and any violence involved in the eating process: “If you think nonviolence is a tenet of Hinduism, then you do have to reconcile that with meat-eating.” If you accept ahimsa, then you need to find a balance between the violence of killing to eat. I feel that being OK with certain immoral acts is a mistake. A “polytheist” still must still oppose certain immoral things, eg killing unnecessarily, even if he is much more open to other ways of thinking. Otherwise, he dilutes his morality into nothingness.

Therefore, we must figure out a way to reconcile the paradox between the ideal of nonviolence and the necessary violence associated with eating. It is a deep problem, I feel, and it is something that Hindus and other religions have been thinking about for centuries. As Vikram said, [hopefully] everybody has a standard on what they would eat, and no religion lacks a standard for what should not be eaten. I think considering the new knowledge and tools we have at our disposal, thanks to modern biological understandings of life, we may have a way to reconcile this inherent paradox, which Hindus or Jains or Buddhists of the past did not have.

Part 2: “Harm” or “unnecessary killing” or “number of senses” are all fundamentally imperfect measures. They can never be quantified perfectly.

It’s easy to tell whether something is alive or not. All living organisms, regardless of their complexity or number of senses are equally alive, because life is easy to define accurately. Wikipedia has a great set of definitions, from either a biology or physics point of view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Definitions.
Jainism uses one-sensed organisms as an acceptable measure of killing. Still, there exists arbitrariness to the number-of-senses as a measure of worthiness, particularly in the context of evolution and modern biology. The same goes for harm, or intelligence. Similarly, vegetarians and vegans must realize the flaws in the choice of measures. I think vegans and vegetarians are alike in that both make a blunder when it comes to killing plants and thinking that it is OK. It seems ludicrous to consider plants on a similar level as animals, but I think this is more a product of cultural desensitization, or misunderstanding of scientific knowledge, than inherent moral accuracy.

“Do not harm” and Ahimsa are great principles, but they are not as objective as “do-not-kill,” because they involve other value judgments that are at least somewhat subjective. An analogy might be why many people would say torture is OK in some circumstances, even if they say killing is not ever OK. The number-of-senses argument is a heuristic to approximate the worthiness of an organism. But I am confused, at least to some degree, at these attempts to measure the worthiness of a life. Is it not fundamentally a subjective measurement? On the other hand, whether or not something is alive is an objective measurement. If we accept for practical reasons that it is OK to kill a plant, why not kill animals also? The slope appears to be slippery for me, unless we try to strive against killing on all levels (if we truly value the philosophy of “ahimsa” or nonviolence as Hindus/Buddhists/Jains/vegans/etc).

I feel that the Jain concept of senses may have been an acceptable heuristic in the past, but it is not an acceptable measurement nowadays, at least for the sake of consistency. Furthermore, it may appear that a simple recategorization of complex plants as multi-sensed organisms may solve the problem, but when they eat plants, Jains (as well as Hindus and Buddhists) appear to condone the killing of simple organisms, such as certain plants, for practical reasons. “Do not harm” is necessary but not sufficient, because it allows one to say: I can kill plants out of practical necessity, and that’s OK, because they do not feel as much pain as animals do. The quantification of pain is a subjective measurement. This is the same argument used by many meat-eaters, who do not consider their food to be worthy of living.

Part 3: Potential “perfect measurements” for eating.

The solution to this problem is the dietary consumption of the products (eg fruits or milk) of plants and animals, not the plant or animal itself. The consumption of a plant product is not the same as the consumption of a plant, because the plant is allowed to live. The consumption of an animal product like dairy or eggs is similar, because the animal likewise is allowed to live, that too, live well, if people are following the principle of symbiotic living. This type of diet is certainly possible nowadays. Let me list the moral grades in a straightforward way:

Killing no organisms, even bacteria: 100 (impossible or suicidal)
Synthetic-meat eater, who is otherwise equal to the Ethical vegetarian: 80
Ethical Vegetarian who eats milk/eggs doesn’t kill plants: 80
Fruitarian who only eats nuts and fruits: 80
Ethical Vegan who still kills plants: 70
Regular lacto-ovo vegetarian who buys organic, free range eggs and milk: 70
Regular meat eater who avoids endangered species: 55
Indifferent meat eater who “kills anything:” 45 (failing score, and one that shouldn’t be tolerated)

The solution of being a vegetarian who doesn’t kill plants is not as fantastical as it may seem. As I stated above in the summary, just make sure that the organism does not die! (And make sure you treat it well when you are keeping it alive). We should strive to minimize both killing and harm, and so we should abstain from practices such as consuming dairy and egg products procured from factory farming methods. When we think that killing a plant is okay, because we feel that it lacks the same worthiness as an animal, we are making the mistake of species-ism (think racism). I have heard this analogy being proposed by various Harvard professors, such as lawyer Alan Dershowitz and philosopher Christine Korsgaard. This symbiotic solution is certainly possible nowadays, and in the future, perhaps possible for everybody, even meat-eaters.

The principle of symbiosism both encompasses the argument of “do not harm,” and also “do not kill.” This does not mean that we throw “do not harm” out the window. Rather, we should be careful how much weight we give to such inaccurate measures. In the above numbers, I don’t drop the measurement of “do not harm” from the equation; I am just giving “not killing” much more moral weight, because “harm” is a controversial and inaccurate measurement. As a result, theoretically, vegans and the lacto-ovo-pesco vegetarian would score a 70 on the test, if they both kill the same number of organisms, and simultaneously strive to prevent harm or suffering in those animals/plants.

In addition, perhaps a scientist in the future can invent a method of growing food powered by sunlight or some other renewable energy source. Plants do it every day, but what if we could build an efficient machine that could grow synthetic tissues, packed with nutrients, at almost the same cost as a bag of rice? In fact, PETA supports this sort of a measure, and has recently made a fund for anyone who can grow synthetic meat. In that sense, this future carnivore who would rather eat synthetic chicken could score a 80, but the vegan who eats a killed plant still is stuck at 70. This certainly feels like a weird conclusion, but it is reasonable because we are measuring how the food is acquired.
As a result, this way of thinking allows nuts, fruits, but not necessarily harvesting vegetables (eg potatoes), which may end up killing the plant. This also allows dairy, eggs, but not meats, unless they were generated artificially without killing of any animal. I am too culturally ingrained in my love for vegetables to give them up, but do you see how this system is fundamentally better than the others? Slight shifts in diet could lead to a future that truly maximizes the moral good of eating, in a way that does not involve double standards, or imperfect measurements.

In conclusion:

I hope this article clarifies why I feel that there is a paradox in the philosophical arguments in traditional veganism/vegetarianism of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, and proposes a not-too-difficult solution to this problem. On a practical level, we may have to settle for just minimizing unnecessary killing, but that does not justify killing. Necessity of killing is a fundamentally imperfect measure, just like harm or intelligence. The only perfect measure is “not killing,” because there is a universally acceptable definition for life. There is no such consensus on other measurements, such as suffering or nonviolence. Even nowadays, we can avoid the killing of organisms by purchasing foods that were harvested without killing of plant/animal, and this would be a much more moral solution than other, cruder approximations based on imperfect measures.

On a practical level, I am not trying to say everyone must stop eating plants or even meat altogether; I am just saying that if we want to avoid eating a slice of ham, then why not avoid eating a vegetable that was produced by killing a plant? And on a stricter level, shifting to a completely symbiotic diet is not impossible. This diet would be considerably easier than fruitarianism, which is similar in that it proscribes anything that kills a plant, as well as dairy and eggs. My gut feeling is that if a person can make the effort at being a vegan, then he can easily be a practitioner of symbiosism, “a symbiosan.”

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1. Reflection of nature. A defense of the multiple gods of Hinduism as a representation of different forces or aspects of the universe.
2. Power of idol worship. That idol worship allows a very tangible, and perhaps more personal, connection with the deity, contrasted with more internalized or abstract forms of prayer.
3. Not polytheistic. An argument that Hinduism is not polytheistic, but actually monotheistic, monist, or perhaps henotheistic, with one supreme Brahman.

These are solid points, yet I notice that, like me, many Hindus, and particularly my peers, choose not to debate. I do not know why. These questions of faith, in my opinion, are open and unresolved, in that there is no right answer or no absolutely correct faith. By remaining quiet, though, Hindus convey the message that the other side is correct. If Hindus respect their own traditions, they cannot remain apathetic on these issues.

We need to go further. None of the above points directly address the intolerance of Hindu beliefs in other belief systems, whether explicit or implicit. But how do you debate against a position that essentially states “I believe this is correct, therefore you are wrong?” I feel that Hindu beliefs are neither superior nor inferior to those of other religions; they are different, and luckily also, compatible with and accepting of other faiths, which is why I feel Hinduism should be defended more powerfully in these situations. Yet it seems that other faiths are not so accepting of Hinduism. Therefore, my question to you is: why do Hindus seem to tolerate intolerance of Hindu beliefs by other religions? How can we better deal with this intolerance in a constructive manner?

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