http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7047926.ece

And, on that cryptic note I shall now return to officially not talking about the meaning of life. 

Why does anyone care? Why does anyone think it is any of their business? Hanging on every word of his show trial confession: was his contrition sincere, or wasn't it. How many of Joe and Jane Q Public had a camera stuck in their face and asked precisely this. And they all had any opinion. They all cared. Was his confession 'staged"? Well, of course it bloody was: there were cameras for God's sake. Contrary to what he said, Woods let no one down except his wife. She's the only one to whom he promised, presumably, to forsake all others. Consequently, it's the business of nobody except Woods and his wife. This fascination, this faux moral outrage, is really all about power. For a little while at least, we can look down on, and feel superior to, someone who is, so I'm told, a rather good golfer, and consequently, in this world gone mad, extraordinarily rich. The ape in us likes seeing the powerful suffer since it makes us feel better about our own little lives. Is he sincere? Let's decide he's not and make him suffer some more.

This brings me to what really puzzles me. Why does Woods cooperate? Why not simply tell everyone to f**k off and mind their own business? I can understand when some sleazy politician feels the need to confess his numerous extra-marital sins and beg for forgiveness. His livelihood rests on getting people to like him. Or at least vote for him. That's why the wronged better half usually plays ball too. But Tiger doesn't need anyone to like him - he just needs to be better at golf than they are. The sponsors won't touch Tiger now, I hear. And Elin will take vast swathes of his fortune in the divorce settlement, I'm told. But even after all of this, he'll still be rich beyond the wildest dreams of most of us (and I can have some pretty wild dreams). How much money do you actually need in a single lifetime? And, if short of a little pocket money, he can always go back to beating everyone on the golf circuit and pocketing the prize money (or at least a portion thereof established in the divorce courts). I always thought the best thing about having money - once you get above a certain threshold practically the only good reason really - is so that you don't have to give a crap what people think about you; and don't have to indulge their petty jealousies and desire to seek revenge on you for whatever is wrong in their lives. Tiger has lost the plot in more ways than one.

But I will say one final thing about this issue: specifically, about the question. That was the hard part - I was sweating blood trying to work out what the question is. In fact, I actually had to work out the answer before I could work out the question. Sometimes that's how things go.

When someone says: "What is the meaning of life?' What do they mean?

Words and sentences have meaning. Life is not a word or sentence. Therefore, life doesn't have meaning. I learned that growing up in the merry old hey-day of linguistic analysis. This shows that ‘meaning' as deployed in ‘the meaning of life' does not mean the same as ‘meaning' when used for words and sentences. So what does it mean?

It could mean ‘purpose'? Could, but doesn't. Defence of this postponed until late 2011.

It might mean ‘value'. What is the value of life? But, if so, then if a life had no meaning it would have no value. For various obvious reasons, I don't want to say this. If someone's life is meaningless, it does not mean their life has no value.

This gets us a bit closer to what the question is: ‘How should I live?' Or, then same thing: ‘What should I value?'

But ‘should' is a funny word, and has at least three different meaning: logical, prudential and moral. Forgot the logical sense; it's not relevant here. The moral and prudential sense of should are basically, restrictions on how I should act. ‘How should I live?' interpreted morally, means: ‘What moral requirements should I recognize and act upon?' These requirements would be moral exigencies.

The thing about exigencies is that we have to act on them, whether we want to or not. Prudentially, I should work. This is unfortunate. Morally, I should try and alleviate suffering when I can. This is unfortunate in another way. It is unfortunate that there is so much suffering. Exigencies don't reveal the meaning of life, they distract us from it.

Suppose there were no prudential or moral exigencies in your life. You live in a world where you can get whatever you need or want at the push of a button, a world where there was no suffering that you should try to alleviate. Morally and prudentially, you're off the hook. Then ask yourself: in this situation, how should I live? This is another sense of should - neither a moral nor a prudential sense. If we can answer this question, we have answered to the question of the meaning of life.

There: clear as mud. 

http://castroller.com/podcasts/CbcRadioThe2/1324112

Imagine being put in a cage no bigger than you are. You can turn your head, in order to access food and water, but that is the limit of your movement. Now imagine being there for fifteen or twenty years. In fact, if you get out after fifteen or twenty years, you're one of the lucky ones - you got out early. Chances are, you'll be there until you die. There is a catheter inserted into your liver, and from it drips the bile that is the reason you find yourself in this cage.

If you find yourself in this position, you are a bear, harvested for your bile, which is highly prized in Chinese medicine.

I know I've been bashing China a lot this week. Just celebrating the Year of the Tiger that starts on Feb 14th. I'm sure I'll find some other country to knock soon.

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/chinese-legal-experts-propose-ban-on-eating-cats-and-dogs/

Although some are tempted by the compromise position of merely not cooking them while still alive:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1246454/Cat-dog-meat-soon-menu-China-animal-abuse-law-edges-closer.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canada/6933888/Canadian-familys-dog-saves-11-year-old-boy-from-cougar.html

(I should point out however: wolves hardly ever do this sort of thing).

We humans hate to be inconvenienced. Actually doing something to counter global warming, or, in my opinion, the even more worrying (given its irreversibility) acidification of the sea:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6781789/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Britain-will-suffer-as-seas-become-more-acidic.html

Well, that's just a lot of bother really - let's not believe in it instead.

But what we forget in all the inconvenience what these animals, particularly the dangerous ones, add to the world. Because of the rather Draconian leash laws of Miami-Dade County, I go running with my dog Hugo on some waste ground that MDC hasn't got around to properly policing. Neither of us like running with him leashed - it messes up our rhythm. There are lots of snakes. We follow certain protocols - he stays at my heels unless I say its OK, etc. I'm not a big fan of snakes - they make me distinctly twitchy to say the least. The snakes are inconvenient. But at the same time they add something undeniably valuable to the run. I can't quite put my finger on what. But it certainly makes the run a lot more interesting and challenging. It's actually a privilege to be out there with these slithery, fanged little bastards.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6960592.ece

For those of you mystified by the Chinese interest, I suspect it has a lot to do with the couple of gazilliion copies sold of the book Wolf Totem (which, unfortunately, I didn't write).

'Now, at any moment, the bush will break and tear off, and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveler sees that and knows he will inevitably perish; but while he is still clinging, he sees some drops of honey hanging on the leaves of the bush, and so reaches out for them with his tongue and licks the leaves. Just so I hold on to the branch of life, knowing that the dragon of death is waiting inevitably for me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand why I have fallen on such suffering. And I try to lick that honey which used to give me pleasure, but now it no longer gives me joy, and the white and black mouse day and night nibble at the branch to which I am holding on. I clearly see the dragon, and the honey is no longer sweet to me. I see only the inevitable dragon and the mice, and am unable to turn my glance away from them. This is not a fable, but a veritable, indisputable, comprehensible truth.' (9)

The ‘drops of honey' that he formerly found sweet were his love of family and writing. But realization of death results in a certain attitude that he can't shake: Why? Well? and Then? (7) Basically - what's the point?

Science, Tolstoy argues, cannot supply us with a point. Science describes life - what it is - but it cannot identify any meaning to this life. Science can describe what things are, and what things are possible. But it can't describe what things mean. It cannot identify the significance of things.

Tolstoy finds the answer in faith.

'No matter what answers faith may give, its every answer gives to the finite existence of man the sense of the infinite - a sense which is not destroyed by suffering, privation and death. Consequently, in faith alone could we find the meaning and possibility of life ... faith was the knowledge of the meaning of life, in consequence of which man did not destroy himself but lived.' (14)

What is faith? Roughly: belief not based on logical or empirical evidence.

I think the question we should ask is: what is the content of the faith of which Tolstoy speaks? There are two ways of thinking about this.

One the one hand, there is a generic form of faith, which seems to amount to the idea that everything is going to be OK. As my grandmother used to say - falsely - everything happens for the best. Here is Tolstoy:

'I looked around at the enormous masses ... I could not recognize them as not understanding the question because they themselves put it and answered it with surprising clearness ... It appeared to me that all humanity was in possession of a knowledge of the meaning of life.' (12)

But is it really true that in adopting the generic version of faith you have put to yourself the question of the meaning of life? Or is it that you have simply refused to think about the question? If you are a hopeless optimist, have you solved the question of the meaning of life? That seems implausible: Hopeless optimism may be the result of refusing to address the issue of life's meaning, but it is doubtful that it results from solving the issue.

In any event, Tolstoy ultimately relies on a more specific form of faith: it's all going to be OK because ... You can, he thinks, fill in the dots in various ways, but all involve, as he puts it, the ‘sense of the infinite'. This can take various forms, and Tolstoy lists a few of them at the top of page 14.

'No matter how I may put the question, "How must I live?" the answer is "According to God's Laws." "What real result will there be from my life?" "Eternal torment or eternal bliss." What is the meaning which is not destroyed by death?" - "The union with infinite God, paradise."' (14)

These are all more specific versions of faith, ways of filling in the dots, and in them we can identify at least two themes:

A. God Laws - God's purpose more generally. The meaning of life is to be found in the fact that God has a purpose for us.
B. Eternal bliss, paradise (or the opposite). The meaning of this life is a matter of its being preparation for the next life.

We can't - at least not effectively - object to Tolstoy on these grounds: ‘How do we know there is a God who has a purpose for us?' ‘How do we know there is an afterlife?' We can't do this, because he would just reply: ‘Well it's faith, innit!. That's the whole point. If we were trying to convince Tolstoy that he was wrong, we can't just object to his faith - because he wouldn't care.

How do we argue with someone who bases their account of the meaning of life on faith? Give them what they want, and show that their view still doesn't work. The strategy is to show that faith, even if true, doesn't establish what it is supposed to establish.

So, consider the afterlife, which, following Tolstoy, we can accept on faith if only to hang him with this faith (i.e. for the purposes of argument). Is the meaning of this life to be found in its being a preparation for the next? Then we simply run into the problem of how the next life can have meaning? We wanted to solve the problem of how one life has meaning, and we now have to solve the problem of how another life has meaning. In other words, we haven't solved the problem of the meaning of life; we have merely pushed it back a step.

How about the other option? Suppose there is a God who has a purpose for us. Our purpose derives from God's purpose. So, the meaning of our life derives from the meaning of God's life. Here's the rub: in virtue of what does God's life have meaning? Is it purpose? Happiness? Something else? What? In other words, precisely the sorts of problems we run into trying to work out how our life has meaning - we are going to find those problems reiterated when we examine God's life. The appeal to God's purpose, like the appeal to an afterlife, doesn't solve the meaning of life for us - it simply pushes that problem back a step.

First, if you think there is a real issue about life's meaning, then you are committed to the idea that values are objective. (David Wiggins made this point a long time ago, in a paper called ‘Truth, invention and the meaning of life'). In the first meaning of life post I distinguished between subjective and objective interpretations of the question ‘Does life have meaning?' According to the subjective interpretation, the question means: ‘Does my life seem meaningful to me?' (Or ‘Does your life seem meaningful to you?' etc). But, if that's all the question means, then it can be answered by a simple empirical fact: ‘Yes it does' (or ‘No it doesn't' - delete as appropriate). That's not a philosophical question. It's not even a particularly hard question.

So, if we think there is a genuine question here, one that can't be answered by empirical investigation of my (or your) state of mind, that is because we must be assuming that the subjective interpretation does not do justice to the question. What's the alternative? The objective interpretation: ‘Does my life have meaning independently of how I happen to feel about it?' If it does, then its meaning does not reduce to my feelings, opinions, etc. But then, the question is: what could this meaning possibly be?

This brings me to my second point - and here the connection between the meaning of life and the objectivity of value becomes clear. Here, I think, is the best way of interpreting the question: ‘What is the meaning of life? It means: ‘What sorts of things should I value?' or, alternatively: ‘How should I live?'

Note: the question is not: ‘What do I value?' or ‘How do I live?' These are straightforward empirical questions. The question of the meaning of life is not one of these. It is, ‘What should I value? How should I live?' If you allow there is a distinction between what you do value and what you should value, between how you in fact live and how you should live, then you are committed to the idea that values are objective in the sense, roughly, that they do not reduce to our feelings, opinions, preferences, etc.

So, if you think there is a real issue about the meaning of life, you cannot be a subjectivist about value. Conversely ...

Anyway, to unfinished business: problems with Richard Taylor's argument concerning the meaning of life (see The Meaning of Life Part 1, for context).

Taylor's argument seems to go like this:

(1) The meaning of life cannot be found in purpose (the dilemma - see The Meaning of Life Part 1)
(2) Therefore, it must be found in something else.
(3) To see what, we should revisit the reworked version of the Sisyphus' myth.

In the reworked version, the gods instill in Sisyphus an irrational desire to roll rocks up hills, so that he is condemned to do just what he wants to do more than anything else.

Taylor concludes:

'A human being no sooner draws his first breath than he responds to the will that is in him to live. He no more asks whether it will be worthwhile, or whether anything of significance will come of it, than the worms and the birds. The point of his living is simply to be living, in the manner that is his nature to be living. He goes through his life building his castles, each of these beginning to fade into time as the next is begun; yet it would be no salvation to rest from all this. It would be a condemnation ... What counts is that one should be able to begin a new task, a new castle ... It counts only because it is there to be done, and he has the will to do it.' (141-2)

I have three worries with this argument:

First, is this argument a form of false dilemma? That is, Taylor sets up the discussion around two possibilities: either meaning a function of purpose, or it is a function of acting according to your will. Since it can't be the former, it must be the latter? Is this is a fair way of representing Taylor's argument? If so, then how can we rule out: (a) the meaning of life is a third, as yet unidentified possibility, or (b) the conclusion that the meaning of life is neither purposes nor acting according to your will because there is no meaning of life?

Second, does Taylor's ‘solution' simply collapse into the subjective interpretation of the meaning of life? That is, does ‘doing what you will' simply amount to ‘doing what you regard as significant'? But it we want to reduce the question of the meaning of life to this, then we already know the answer. Who would want to deny that life has meaning in this obvious sense?

Is it easy to differentiate what counts as acting according to one's nature from what does not? I strongly suspect this is going to rear its ugly head later ...

BTW, in case anyone is interested, page numbers refer to Klemke and Cahn, The Meaning of Life (Oxford University Press)

Animal Rights

Most importantly: this time it's in paperback, so people might actually be able to afford it. 

Also, a belated hello to readers in China. The Chinese translation - simple characters- was apparently published in April by Jinghua. A Chinese translation in complex characters will be published in November by Rye-Field.

Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to roll a rock up a hill, for all eternity. When he gets to the top, the rock rolls back down, and Sisyphus has to begin again. Taylor sees in this an example of "repetitious, cyclic activity that never comes to anything." This he takes to be the epitome of meaningless. What makes the gods punishment so nasty is not the pain or difficulty involved, but that his activity is devoid of meaning.
He then goes onto argue that human life is, in important respects, like one of Sisyphus's journeys up the hill. This invites an obvious response. There is a clear difference between our lives and Sisyphus' journeys up the hill: in our lives we can achieve things. This idea is, in effect, the primary target of Taylor's paper. Taylor's argument takes the form of a dilemma:

Our achievements are either pathetic or they are not. If they are pathetic, then cannot give meaning to our lives. If they are not, then we must make sure we never achieve them.

The first horn of the dilemma. Why might our achievements be thought of as pathetic? Taylor's argument seems to be: they are pathetic because (or in the sense that) they don't last very long. No matter how great our achievements seem to us, on a cosmic time scale they are gone in the blink of an eye. The medieval philosophers referred to a certain perspective we can adopt towards ourselves and our achievements: the view sub specie aeternitatis (roughly, under the gaze of eternity). Taylor doesn't need to invoke anything quite so drastic - any sufficiently long term view will do (it doesn't need to be the view from eternity).

So, for example; you are Sophocles, and write a few tragedies that people are still reading a couple of thousand years after you have shuffled off the mortal coil. So what? On a cosmic time scale, a few thousand years is nothing. We could make the same point about the spatial extent of Sophocles' fame: so a few million apes living in an unfashionable part of a backwater galaxy have heard of him. So what?

There is a famous poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that nicely makes Taylor's point. It's called Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away

If we think too much of our achievements, then we are like Ozymandias. In other words, we are absurd. Ozymandias's absurdity consists in his overinflated sense of his achievements - that is, in the dissonance between his perceived value of his achievements and their actual value (more on absurdity later in the course when we look at Camus and Nagel).

Now, this argument, in turn, invites an obvious response, one with which, if my memory serves me well, Simon Blackburn has made somewhere or other (Please let me know if you know where he said it). Taylor's argument works only if we accept that the view sub specie aeternitatis (or rather the truncated form of this view that Taylor needs to assume) provides a legitimate stance from which to assess our achievements. But why assume this? Can we say anything in favor of Taylor's adoption of this stance?

Maybe we can. First of all, we need to distinguish two different interpretations of the question: ‘Does life have a meaning?' I like to tell my students that if we can answer this question in a satisfactory way, we can finish this course early. Ending the course in the third week of September is, of course, something that appeals to them greatly. And so there is a lot riding on the distinction between these interpretations.

According to the subjective interpretation, this question means: does my life seem meaningful to me? And the answer to this is: Yes, duh! - Unless you're ill, severely depressed, etc it probably does seem meaningful to you: all this means is that what you do, and what happens to you, matters to you. So, if the question, ‘Does life have meaning?' means on this, then the answer is yes, and we can finish the course now.

So, if there is any genuine issue here, there must be a somewhat more robust way of interpreting the question, ‘Does life have meaning?' Roughly: does my life have meaning independently of how I happen to feel about it? And if so, what? This is the objective interpretation of the question of the meaning of life. If there is a genuine problem concerning life's meaning it must be based on the objective interpretation (for there is no problem on the subjective interpretation).

With this distinction in mind, we might respond to Blackburn (on behalf of Taylor) as follows: there is an important connection between the objective value of an achievement and the relative permanence of that achievement. Ozymandias's achievements no doubt seemed important to him. But when looked at from a longer term perspective, they seem to be largely inconsequential. In other words, that an achievement still looks impressive when looked at from a longer term perspective is the hallmark of an achievement that has objective value as opposed to one that merely has subjective value. That is the source of the validity of the long term perspective assumed by Taylor.

The second horn of the dilemma. Most - probably all - of our achievements are inconsequential when viewed from a sufficiently long term perspective. But suppose we could find an achievement - hence a goal - so monumental that even the ravages of time failed to diminish it. Then, Taylor argues, we must make sure we fail to achieve it:

"Let us suppose that, without having any interest in rolling stones ... Sisyphus did nevertheless have a deep interest in raising a temple, on that would be beautiful and lasting. And let us suppose he succeeded in this, that after ages of dreadful toil, all directed at this final result, he did at last complete his temple, such that he could now say his work was done, and he could rest forever and enjoy the result. Now what? What picture presents itself to our minds? It is precisely the picture of infinite boredom."

If there is an interest so monumental that it can, plausibly, be thought as giving our lives meaning, then we must make sure we don't achieve it: as soon as we do, our lives would, in effect, lose their meaning. Some achievements are transient because they are events (someone wins the Superbowl every year). Some are permanent in the sense that they consist of a standing state of affairs rather than an event - the (permanent) elimination of poverty. That's presumably why Taylor employs an example of a permanent one - a temple that will endure for ever. Even the permanent achievements are subject to the second horn of Taylor's dilemma: achieve them, and they can no longer provide your life with meaning.

I'm not as convinced by this as I used to be. And if/when I work out why, I'll let you know. I don't think he needs it - he could rely on the first horn of the dilemma, and supplement this with the impossibility of identifying a purpose so monumental that it could give meaning to your life.

In any event, Taylor thinks he has established that the meaning of life can't be understood in terms of purpose. He then uses this to support his own preferred account of the meaning of life.
More on that to follow ...

Singer's charge seems to be one of hypocrisy. So, let's assume - because he needs this in order for the argument to work - that people who eat factory farmed chicken, eggs, pork or veal are aware of they way their food is produced. If they are not aware then they are not hypocrites - although they may be culpably uninformed (or they may not, depending on the case in question). The assumption is, of course, false. But let's make it and see where it leads. Underlying the charge of hypocrisy seems to be the following line of argument.

1. Smith is (knowingly) engaged in morally outrageous activity A.
2. Jones is (knowingly) engaged in morally outrageous activity B.
3. Since Smith is engaged in morally outrageous activity A, he/she is ‘in no position' to be outraged at Jones engaging in B.

This is not a good argument because it does not establish what it is supposed to establish. In particular, it does not establish that Smith should not be (legitimately) outraged at Jones. Smith should be outraged at what Jones is doing if Jones' activity is, in fact, a morally outrageous one. That is what a morally outrageous activity is - one at which you can justifiably be morally outraged. The fact that Smith should also be outraged at him/herself in no way detracts from this. Any apparent plausibility the argument has turns on the ambiguity of the expression ‘in no position'. It might mean (a) one can't be outraged without being a hypocrite, or it might mean (b) one can't be legitimately outraged at Jones. The inference from (a) to (b) is unsound. A hypocrite has justification for his/her outrage if what he/she is outraged about is, in fact, outrageous.

So, Vick's actions were, I maintain, outrageous. I am outraged, and not simply because I don't eat factory farmed chicken, eggs, pork or veal. Even if I did, I could still be legitimately outraged - it's just that then I would also be a hypocrite. Being the latter does not undermine the possibility of the former.

I didn't get much sleep last night, so this argument may be pants. If so, I'd be grateful for some kind soul to point out why and I can get the post down!

First of all, I'm not one of those people who really buys in to the ‘athletes are role models' idea. Parents are role models; teachers can be too. As many of you know, I even once had a wolf as a role model of sorts. So, I'm pretty flexible on what can count as a role model. But I suspect athletes should just be left to being athletes. They're really not very good at the role model thing. If we really do think athletes should be role models, that says a lot about our society on so many different levels - and it isn't very flattering.

But what says a lot more, I think, is a willingness to watch, indeed pay to watch, someone who, in addition to running an illegal dog-fighting (and gambling) ring, routinely murdered dogs with whom he was displeased - by hanging, electrocution, or drowning - and even threw his own pet dogs into the into the pit to be torn apart by the fighting dogs.

If someone disgusts us, we sometimes say, ‘Get out of my sight!' That's how I feel about Michael Vick. I want him permanently out of my sight. That's no problem for me - I simply won't watch any games involving the Philadelphia Eagles. But I can't understand how anyone could want him in their sight. It is this lack of disgust where disgust is so clearly warranted that is the biggest indictment on our society. Sometimes, whether we have or don't have a given visceral reaction in a given situation says more about us than words ever could. This, I suspect, is one of those situations. Our moral instincts are shot.

I realize that there are several reasonable lines of response my position: he's paid his debt to society, everyone deserves a second chance, etc. I'll discuss these in upcoming blogs. But let's get a stupid response out of the way first. No: I'm not racist. If Tom Brady did what Michael Vick did, I would feel exactly the same way about him.

The Festival's website is at:

www.edbookfest.co.uk

With Edinburgh and Sydney, that's the first and third biggest annual book festivals in the world, respectively. Now if I can only figure out why those bastards at Hay-on-Wye - in my own effing country, by the way! - don't like me, I'll have the trifecta.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2009/2640128.htm

The interview was broadcast last weekend and can be heard at:

http://wwww.wamu.org/programs/the_animal_house/2009/07/25/

In a week when we have learned that H1N1 hits the airways harder than standard seasonal flu, penetrating deeper and so more likely to cause pneumonia:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8148709.stm

I think the most important thing for us all to do at this time is to pull together and, of course, apportion blame.

So: I blame meat-eaters.

Pigs are lovely animals. In terms of intelligence, they're on a par with dogs, for whom, as I believe everyone knows by now, I have the utmost respect. I wouldn't eat a pig any more than I would eat my dog. But they are also breeding grounds for viruses that can easily mutate into ones capable of human-to-human transmission. This is well known and has been for a long time.

So, when you have intensive farming of pigs - like Smithfield's facility near La Gloria, Mexico, reputedly the ground zero of the current outbreak - then it really is only a matter of time.

Hindsight is 20/20. Yes it is. But I also predicted something similar in my 2002 book, Animals Like Us.

There really is no need to eat meat. We don't need to. The animal husbandry industry is the largest single producer of greenhouse emissions, outstripping all forms of transport combined. If you don't want to take my word for it, take the word of a 2006 United Nations report:

http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm

The current outbreak is the result of two things. We eat meat - hence the farming of animals used for meat. There are too many of us - hence the intensive farming of animals used for meat

What is it going to take for us to change our ways? Pigs developing Ebola and passing it on to humans? Oh wait, that's already happened ...

http://www.virology.ws/2009/01/26/ebola-in-pigs-nipah-redux/