Thinking Through Food

Alexandra Plakias is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton College.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSINTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: THE METAPHYSICS OF FOOD

Introduction
1. What Is Food?

1.1 Food as a Natural Kind?
1.2 Food as a Functional Kind?
1.3 Food as Nutrition: Why Not Eat Pets?
1.4 Socially Constructed Kinds
1.5 Social Construction and Normativity
1.6 Social Construction and Subjectivity


2. What Is Flavor?

2.1 Flavor and Taste: Some Background
2.2 What Is Flavor? The Case of Chloe
2.3 Flavor as a Secondary Quality


Conclusion: Taste, Flavor, and Objectivity

CHAPTER TWO: THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF FOOD

Introduction
1. Epistemology and Food
2. Empiricist vs. Rationalist Approaches to Knowledge
3. Knowledge of Taste and Subjective Experience
4. Taste and Testimony

4.1 Knowledge, Justification, and Testimony
4.2 Testimony and Food
4.3 Testimony, Vulnerability, and Epistemic Justice
4.4 Testimony and Trust


5. Labels, Lies, and Bullshit
6. Knowing Food: Knowing That or Knowing How?
7. Skill, Virtue, and Food Choice
Conclusion

CHAPTER THREE: AESTHETICS

Introduction
1. Taste and Philosophy: A Tendentious Relationship?
2. The Nature of Aesthetic Experience
3. Hume and the Standard of Taste
4. Food as Aesthetic Experience
5. Defining Art

5.1 Traditional Characteristics of Art: Form, Expression, Representation

Form
Expression
Representation


5.2 Institutional/Conventional Definitions of Art
5.3 Aesthetic Definitions


6. Food as Art: Objections
7. Food: The Art and the Artwork
8. Food as Art, Recipes as Property?
9. Cuisine and Cultural Appropriation
Conclusion: Food as Art, and as Cultural Artifact

CHAPTER FOUR: THE ETHICS OF EATING ANIMALS

Introduction
1. Eating Animals: The Problem of Suffering
2. Utilitarianism

2.1 Factory Farming: Some Facts and Figures
2.2 Animal Suffering and the Causal Impotence Objection
2.3 Critiques of the Argument from Suffering: Happy Meat, Engineered Animals?


3. Deontological Objections to Eating Animals

3.1 Animal Rights
3.2 Contractarianism and the Moral Status of Animals


4. The Moral Status of Animals

4.1 Animal Equality and the Argument from Marginal Cases
4.2 Speciesism


5. Value Pluralism
6. Feminist and Care Ethics

6.1 Feminist Critiques of Traditional Discourse
6.2 Feminism and the Ethics of Care


7. Practical Implications: Ought We Eat Animals?
Conclusion

CHAPTER FIVE: AGRICULTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Introduction
1. Environmental Impacts of Food Production: Some Facts and Figures

1.1 Pesticides and Pollutants
1.2 From Land to Sea
1.3 The Problem of Waste


2. Environmental Ethics: Anthropocentric vs. Ecocentric Approaches

2.1 Ecocentrism: Arguments and Interpretations
2.2 Ecocentrism and the Last Person Argument
2.3 Ecocentrism and Holistic Ethics

Deep Ecology
The Land Ethic


2.4 Ecofeminism


3. Environmental Ethics, Agricultural Ethics

3.1 Stewardship: Towards an Agricultural Ethic?
3.2 Stewardship and Future Generations


4. Environmental Ethics through Traditional Approaches

4.1 Utilitarianism and Environmental Ethics
4.2 Deontological Approaches
4.3 Virtue Ethics and Agrarian Ethics


Conclusion: Reconciling the Views—Pluralism Again?

CHAPTER SIX: FOOD AND TECHNOLOGY

Introduction
1. The Green Revolution
2. The Debate over GM Foods
3. GM Crops: Background and Uses
4. GM Crops: Objections

4.1 Extrinsic Objections to GM Foods

Objection 1: GM Is Bad for the Environment
Objection 2: GMOs Threaten Biodiversity
Objection 3: GMOs Perpetuate Social Injustice
Objection 4: Safety, Risk, and Precaution


4.2 Intrinsic Objections to GM

Objection 1: GM Food Is Unnatural
Objection 2: GM and the Yuck Factor




5. Disgust and Technology

5.1 Disgust, Rationality, and Labeling


Conclusion: An Irreconcilable Moral Disagreement?

CHAPTER SEVEN: FOOD, HEALTH, AND FREEDOM

Introduction
1. Liberty and Liberalism: The Harm Principle

1.1 Deontological and Rights-Based Defenses of Liberalism
1.2 Consequentialist Defenses of Liberalism


2. Liberty: Positive and Negative Conceptions
3. Food, Freedom, and Failures of Will
4. Paternalism: What and Why
5. Cognitive Biases, Weakness of Will, and Paternalism

5.1 Akrasia and Weakness of Will
5.2 Libertarian Paternalism and Weakness of Will


6. Food Environments and Freedom
7. Paternalism Revisited

7.1 Coercive Paternalism
7.2 Objection: Whose Values?


8. Stigmatization, Moral Panic, and the Social Policing of Bodies
9. Health and Food: Whose Responsibility?
10. Advertising, Autonomy, and Trust
Conclusion

CHAPTER EIGHT: FOOD JUSTICE

Introduction
1. Global Hunger and Malnutrition
2. The Utilitarian Argument for an Obligation to Aid

Objection 1: Demandingness
Objection 2: Unrealistic Psychological Demands?
Objection 3: A Right Not to Aid?


3. The Lifeboat Objection—An Argument against Aid
4. Food: A Basic Right?
5. Hunger: Beyond Scarcity

5.1 Sen’s Entitlements Theory
5.2 When Enough Isn’t Enough: Food Sovereignty Movements


6. Food Access, Food Production, and Distributive Justice

6.1 Distributive Food Justice
6.2 Food Justice as Social Justice: Critiques of the Distributive Paradigm
6.3 Food Justice as Participatory Justice
6.4 Food Justice and Environmental Costs
6.5 Labor and Food Justice


7. Food “Deserts” and Food Access
Conclusion