Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1 hour / session

Recitations: 1 session / week, 1 hour / session

Prerequisites

None

Course Description

Our choices about what to eat are, more or less universally, expressive of some sort of value. Some are expressive of our aesthetic values: of our judgments about which foods are or are not tasty, appealing, delicious, revolting, etc. Some are expressive of our moral values: of our judgments about which foods we are permitted, obligated, or forbidden to eat. Some are expressive of cultural or religious values: of our judgments about which foods are culturally or religiously permitted or forbidden, high-or low-status, the sorts of things that we eat or the sorts of things that they eat, etc. All of these sorts of values are tremendously important to the ways we live our lives, and it's worth having a careful look at the sorts of values that inform our food choices.

This will involve us in a number of important moral issues. We'll investigate such questions as:

• What are the environmental and social consequences of various sorts of eating habits? E.g., how do food choices contribute to environmental degradation and social injustice?
• To what extent does the presence of those sorts of consequences generate moral obligations to adopt (or to abandon) the relevant eating habits?
• How does science—and media representations of science—contribute to or distort our understanding of nutrition, health, and well-being?
• What sorts of moral obligations, if any, do we have toward non-human animals?
• What's the moral (and policy) significance of the cultural importance of particular culinary traditions, and the importance of cultural group membership to individual well-being?

We'll look at questions both about individual food choices and about food policy—at questions both about what we should, as individuals, decide to eat, and at what actions we, as a society, ought to take in order to influence how our food is grown, processed, marketed, sold, and consumed.

Course Objectives

The course is designed to improve students' ability to:

• Identify moral and political issues and interpret arguments relevant to food choices and policies.
• Gather and evaluate information relevant to these issues.
• Become familiar with normative frameworks for making moral decisions, and apply them to food choices and policies.
• Develop a more sophisticated moral perspective on their own food choices.
• Communicate information and engage in moral discussion about controversial topics.

Texts

Most readings for the course will be articles, which can be found in the Readings section. Others will come from the following books:

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The Penguin Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780143038580.

Singer, Peter, and Jim Mason. The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. Rodale Books, 2007. ISBN: 9781594866876. [Preview with Google Books]

Other Resources

Rutgers University Libraries' Philosophy page.

(Note that some links are only available to Rutgers students.)

Course Requirements

Reading, discussing, and writing about the assigned readings are the central activities of this class. There is a reading assignment for each lecture. Some are quite difficult and demand careful study. You should complete the assigned readings before each lecture, as the lecture will often presuppose familiarity with the material in the texts.

Attendance at all lecture and all recitation sections is required. Lectures will introduce important material not in the readings. As mentioned above, one goal of the course is to help students develop their critical and argumentative skills. Because of this—and to meet the requirements for a Communication-Intensive course—participation in section is an especially important component of the course.

Grading Policy

There is no final exam for the course.