Fall 2016, University of Vermont (PHIL 010)

Office Hours: Tues 1pm-2pm; Weds 3:10-4pm in Room 209, 70 S. Williams St.

This course provides an introduction to ethics through the lens of food systems. It also includes modules on the ethics of killing, and on sustainability.

This course will explore the different ethical issues that arise in the context of our food choices both at the level of personal decision-making and at the level of public policy. We will address questions such as: what sorts of ethical obligations do we have to those who produce our food? Are the food choices we make ethically constrained by our obligations to preserve the environment or to preserve our own health and, if so, how are they constrained? Is it ethically permissible to eat meat? Is the government ethically permitted or even obligated to regulate our personal food choices (e.g. by regulating the volume of single serving soft drinks)? To what extent is a government like ours obligated to ensure that people have adequate access to food?

This course has two, related educational aims (goals, objectives). The first is to prepare you to begin developing and defending your own answers to these and other questions in the domain of food ethics. The second is to equip you with a certain set of skills. Both in preparing for class, in your writing, and through class discussion and group work, you will develop your ability to (1) communicate clearly and concisely, (2) reconstruct arguments for a position or view from a piece of text, (3) critically evaluate arguments, (3) construct persuasive arguments of your own in defense of a position or view, and (4) anticipate and address potential objections to arguments that you find persuasive. Although deploying these skills will be crucial in your effort to advance your own thinking about the questions in food ethics that we will discuss in this class, developing these skills has independent value as they can also be usefully applied in a variety of different domains outside of philosophy.

Textbook

Anne Barnhill et al., Food, Ethics, and Society, Oxford UP, 2016 (Readings below are marked 'T' if they are in this textbook.)

August 30: Business Ethics

Optional: Milton Friedman, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" (not in T)

September 1: Intensive Industrial Animal Agriculture

1. Introduction to Chapter 1: The Ethically Troubling Food System (T)

2. Jonathan Safran Foer, "The Truth About Eating Animals" (T)

3. Humane Society of the United States, "The Welfare of Animals in the Meat, Egg, and Dairy Industries" (T)

September 6: Status Quo Bias

1. Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord, "The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics" (not in T)

Optional: selection from Gilovich et. al., Social Psychology, 1st ed. (introduction to social psychology textbook) (not in T)

September 8-15: Killing Innocents

1. Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion" (not in T)

2. USAID factsheet on the importance for food security of water, sanitation, and hygiene, 2013 (not in T)

Note: these public health sources agree that proper nutrition requires more than adequate intake of food; on this basis, USAID claims that food security should be understood as requiring more than reliably adequate dietary intake; nonetheless, global and national definitions of 'food security' that guide policy typically take only dietary intake into account -- for example, see FAO and USDA.

SECOND PAPER ASSIGNMENT: due Sunday, November 13 at 11:59pm via email

November 3: Importance of Early Childhood Nutrition (and other factors) for Future Life Outcomes

2. Douglas Almond and Janet Currie, "Killing Me Softly: The Fetal Origins Hypothesis" (not in T) (feel free to skip 158-160)