December 1, 2022
City Tech Adjunct Associate Professor of Philosophy Dr. Carlo Alvaro recently published a paper on cultured meat in Nature, a British peer-reviewed scientific journal.
The paper, titled “A virtue-ethical approach to cultured meat,” discusses how the benefits of cultured meat fail to track our moral intuitions because they are focused on the practical aspect of cultured meat production and consumption.
There is currently significant debate regarding the ethics of cultured meat, considerations Prof. Alvaro began to explore in previous scholarship, and continued in his Nature article.
"In my recent piece I show that in evaluating the moral status of cultured meat, most scientists limit their ethical imaginations to the deontological/utilitarian dichotomy. That is, if it respects people's rights and does not treat people as means to an end, cultured meat is morally permissible (deontology). Or, if it maximizes aggregate utility, cultured meat is morally permissible (utilitarian). In my view, such a dichotomy is misguided and lacking foresight. My novel approach is a virtue-oriented perspective according to which the question we must ask is whether the practice of producing lab-grown meat is consistent with fundamental human virtues that enable us to flourish” says Dr. Alvaro.
Dr. Alvaro is an American philosopher and writer. He is the author of four monographs and several peer-reviewed articles in international academic journals. He has published on philosophy of religion, metaphysics, animal ethics, food ethics, and metaethics.
His current projects include a monograph that defends the existence of metaphysical free will, a book chapter (forthcoming) with Taylor & Francis on the ethics of plant-based meat substitutes, a book chapter with Oxford University Press on virtue ethics and animals, an article on God’s relation to time, and an article on moral objectivism.
Dr. Alvaro is an alumnus of City Tech, holding an Associate degree in Law and Paralegal Studies from the College. He also holds a BA with a major in philosophy from the City College of NY; MA with a major in history and science from Queens College; and an MA and Ph.D. with a major in philosophy from the New School for Social Research, NY.
To read Dr. Alvaro’s paper, visit https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00601-z.