Vegan Ethics
It seems problematic to me that vegan (and possibly vegetarian ethics) hinges on the claim that we don't need to eat meat.
So that if we were carnivores then there could be no moral issue which seems to be quite an arbitrary point at which to invoke ethics.
I can't figure out exactly how to frame my objection though. But it seems to be that behaviour that is essential for survival cannot be subject to the same type of moral claim as non-survival related conduct.
Although that said all conduct to survive could compromise morality. So in a sense the amorality or immorality of nature compromises morality anyway.
So that if we were carnivores then there could be no moral issue which seems to be quite an arbitrary point at which to invoke ethics.
I can't figure out exactly how to frame my objection though. But it seems to be that behaviour that is essential for survival cannot be subject to the same type of moral claim as non-survival related conduct.
Although that said all conduct to survive could compromise morality. So in a sense the amorality or immorality of nature compromises morality anyway.
Comments (240)
Is that true? I am not a student of veganism. On the other hand, as an omnivore, I can understand a moral argument against eating or subjugating animals. Animals, especially the larger ones such as those we raise and eat, clearly have feelings, emotions that are similar to those we have. We, as beings with empathy, can imagine what it would be like to be treated like animals are treated by humans. Some of us decide that is a good reason to stop eating meat.
Makes sense to me, even if that's not the choice I've made.
Who said that? There are lots of positive arguments given in favor of veganism.
That said, my own view is that eating meat is not intrinsically wrong, but indeed unnecessary in today's world. In centuries past and in some parts of the world today, it is necessary for survival, and so can be justified for that reason. But in the industrialized world at present, people eat meat merely out of habit or because it tastes good, which of course are very poor and shallow reasons to justify what even educated omnivores acknowledge is a pretty abusive and corrupt system of animal husbandry.
I can understand a moral argument against abortion, but I continue to support a woman's right to choose. I understand a moral argument for the death penalty, but I continue to oppose it.
I've killed animals. We hunted dove and water fowl when I was a boy. I'd shoot them and, sometimes, if they were still alive, killed them by hand. Then I'd clean them. I stopped hunting when I my family no longer needed me as a pack animal and was happy to do so.
I've killed quite a few groundhogs in my yard because they damaged my wife's garden. I would catch them in a non-lethal trap then drown them in my children's kiddie pool. I'd always stand and watch for the minute it took for them to drown. It seemed fair I should at least watch. After a while, I stopped killing them. It was hard to watch. It wasn't a moral qualm, it was a personal, emotional one.
It's possible I'll decide someday to no longer eat meat. I'm sure if I had to watch the animals die it would happen sooner rather than later.
Yeah, fair enough, but do you have any positive reasons for why you continue eating meat, or it is, as I said in my other comment, simply force of habit?
I could tell you that I have high blood sugar and need to eat a low carb diet, which is true, but that would be disingenuous. I like to eat meat. I like the way it tastes, smells, and feels. I don't have moral qualms about using, killing, animals for human purposes.
It could be that the lamb, pig, chicken, cow, and maybe the cod fish too were all despondent as they contemplated their fate in the last moments of their lives. I don't approve of the way animals are raised (crowded cages, small pens, over-populated feedlots, etc.) and there is no excuse for slaughter methods that are not instant and pretty free of bungling. These methods of raising animals are not only unpleasant for the animals, but they are highly un-ecological and unsanitary.
I don't have a problem with the practice of raising animals humanely and then eating them. So, you chickens, just keep eating and clucking away. You're just about ready for a beheading. Yes, I have chopped the heads off chickens and butchered them. I've seen cows and pigs killed and butchered. It didn't dull my appetite very much.
There is a very, very large problem with raising animals for food that could be, for me, a compelling reason to switch to vegetarianism (not veganism -- the practice of people who basically hate food):
Raising animals for food is environmentally unsustainable. Never mind cattle belching up methane, which is one problem. The bigger problem now, and in the future, is producing enough food of any kind from the available arable soils. As oil becomes more expensive and more difficult to get, and as natural gas is used up for fuel and plastics, there will be much less energy available to manufacture and ship fertilizers, tillage, planting, harvesting, processing, storage and distribution.
This probably sounds far fetched to people who think oil will last forever (it won't--we've already passed peak oil), but in the future we will need to allocate a substantial part of our land to food for horses to raise vegetarian food for ourselves. Prior to the internal combustion engine, about 20% of land was needed to raise oats and hay for horses used for traction. Unlike cattle, horses can't make do on any-old fodder. They aren't cud chewers, and they have 1 stomach which doesn't ferment crude fiber the way cattle do with their 4-chambered stomach. Horses need quality hay and oats to be able to work.
Just compare a cow plop with a pile of horse shit -- there is a big difference. (YOUR TASK: find some fresh bull shit and horse shit; compare and contrast.)
If someone else who was a good cook was preparing my food, and they could do a good job making vegetable food (including milk and egg products) I'd make the switch quite willingly. I know how to make some vegetarian items, which are good, nutritious, and satisfying -- but my repertoire is limited and at this point... can't eat that many bean products.
I don't understand. Why is that problematic? If we couldn't manage without meat, then it could not be a issue, one can only make a moral issue of what is possible. Personally, I have a rule not to eat anyone I haven't been introduced to; it's a matter of politeness.
Because "ought implies can" (Kant). You cannot be morally obligated to do something that you cannot do. If abstaining from flesh would result in your own death, it is plausible to argue that you cannot do so. Or at the very least, that this would be a sacrifice that would be too great to reasonably ask of anyone.
Vegans bring up that argument, however, in response to the persistent and widespread mythology in the general public that eating flesh is a necessity for life, or at least for optimal health.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The consensus among long-term vegans is that they have eaten a greater variety of foods and flavors since becoming vegans than ever before. From the vegan perspective, the omni diet is rather bland and single-mindedly focused on animal-derived proteins and fats.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The argument "I've done x, therefore I do not think x is a bad thing to do" is not very sound. Equally unsound "I haven't morally objected to x so far, therefore x is not a bad thing". Clearly you could have been mistaken, and could still be mistaken.
Just to be a rascal...
"I could tell you that I have high pedophilic urges and need to practice a low abstinence lifestyle, which is true, but that would be disingenuous. I like to eat children. I like the way they taste, smell, and feel. I don't have moral qualms about raping, killing, children for my sexual urges."
But, I do have moral qualms about doing the things you describe, you rascal.
Sorry. You lost me.
I guess it would depend on what one was actually eating, and whether one used strong flavored vegetables and spice. Indian vegetarian items are at least flavorful -- sometimes too much. Stir fries and chutneys, garlic, fish sauce etc. solve the blandness problem The vegan food I've been exposed to was not very good. Not unwholesome, just not attractive to the senses. As for proteins and fats...
I get the largest share of my calories from vegetarian sources (vegetables, grains, potatoes, yams, fruits, dried legumes, nuts) . A substantial chunk of calories are from dairy--milk, yogurt, butter, cheese in that order). I generally eat slightly less than 1 3 oz. serving of meat per day (some days none). I eat very little highly processed food. So most of the sugar I eat, I add myself.
I think the logical thing for meat eaters to do is eat less meat -- one 3 oz. serving per day supplies the nutrition that meat eaters expect to get from meat. 8 or 10 ounces of meat per day supplies more nutrition than usually needed, but also more fat than most people need.
It doesn't compromise it. It just makes it contextual. I would consider it a moral error for me to steal a loaf of bread in most circumstances. But if it was the only way I could feed a person that was starving, I would not consider it a moral error.
Interestingly, the most noted philosopher that would deny the contextually of ethics, and hence reject that response to the objection, is Kant. At the same time, Kant supplies one of the most telling responses to the objection raised in the OP, which is 'ought implies can' (already quoted above by NKBJ).
I wasn't claiming that my chopping a chicken's head off was a good argument for meat eating. I was simply indicating that I knew, on a first hand basis, what it meant to kill a food animal. It isn't an abstraction if one has beheaded a few chickens.
As W. S. Gilbert said, "a quick chippy choppy on a big black block".
That is true: I could have been, and could be in the future mistaken about the morality of meat eating. But it probably won't be based on the rights of animals, or their needs. My first and most sincere recognition of wrongness would be "eating meat is environmentally unsustainable." It is unsustainable now, (that is, it can't continue without further and increasing harm).
I already have strong doubts about the morality of eating fish when other meat sources are available -- fish and the oceans seem to be in worst shape than cows and grazing land.
Your argument = animal meat tastes good, therefore it is morally permissible to kill and consume animals for their meat.
My argument = human meat tastes good, therefore it is morally permissible to kill and consume humans for their meat.
Now that you're in my trap, you must disprove my claim on its own premise without refuting your own.
Sorry, BB, but no, I don't have to. I'm comfortable letting things stand as they are.
When I was 15, I was temporarily living in the countryside and I witnessed a ram being slaughtered; I watched in horror as it screamed and pulled back and away as the farmer pulled it toward where it was to be killed and such an experience changed my attitude to the treatment of animals. I have been a vegetarian ever since and vegan by default only because I am dairy intolerant, though I eat eggs. There are a plethora of available foods that compensate for any nutritional losses that one would encounter on a carnivorous diet but it is just a matter of looking and/or being guided correctly. Physically, we actually do not need to eat meat and vegetarians are considered to have the most healthiest diet.
There are two reasons why I am not against eating meat but rather would like to evoke conscious eating of meat that promotes better farming practices and avoids mass production through food chains such as McDonalds. This is because the latter practices is having huge environmental impact - particularly with cow meat and fishing - where clear-cutting trees, soil erosion as well as the methane production and greenhouse gases to farm them is fast becoming a serious concern together with the killing sharks and whales that is impacting on the balance of our marine life, not to mention the growing list of endangered species; all this is actually ruining the balance of our ecosystem. We need to make a more conscious effort in how we approach meat-eating and sometimes vegetarianism or even veganism is simply a way of communicating the importance of this consciousness. It does not make eating meat morally wrong, but ignorance to how you eat meat as morally wrong because ignorance is no excuse.
Conscious farming practices are growing as people are now eating meats from farmers that treat their animals properly - i.e. free range and well fed - but are also using regenerative agricultural practices. It simplifies the process or bring it back to 'real' as people are becoming aware of how problematic mass production of meat is to both animal rights as well as our environment.
Why?
If you're comfortable being wrong, then that's fine by me, :snicker:
I'll try something @Sapientia and I have been working on:
Pontoon Boat.
Quoting Thorongil
"Why?" he asks.
I like cooked animal, to start with. I grew up eating meat, milk, and eggs.
The animals we raise for slaughter were domesticated for that purpose thousands of years ago. It's a sensible strategy: domesticated animals can eat plants (grass, small leafed forage plants like alfalfa) that we can not digest and turn into meat, milk, and eggs that we can digest.
What doesn't make a lot of sense is for us to feed animals plants that we could eat just as well--which is what happens in beef and hog feedlots. Animals are fed corn, wheat, soybeans, and various other foods, all of which we could eat directly.
Some animals eat plants, some animals eat other animals. There is nothing superior or inferior about either group, and choosing to be a plant eating animal isn't more moral than being a meat eating animal.
So says an animal who has survived by eating other animals. What might the prey think, though?
It seems to me that you, like T Clark, then fall into BB's trap mentioned earlier.
Let's say I tortured and raped little children and you asked me why I did that. If I replied, "I like torturing and raping children," does that justify my doing so? This is elementary stuff, BC, and I don't know why you and T Clark have adopted such an absurd and easily refutable justification. I guess it goes to show what I said in my first comment, that most people choose to eat meat on crass hedonistic grounds.
The example above is not meant to suggest an equivalency with eating meat, by the way. It's merely meant to expose the rather large hole in your rationale for eating meat.
It must be true because if humans were carnivores we would have to eat meat and there would be no plausible veganism.
I don't see good grounds for vegans to judge us differently than a lion eating meat and why we are the only species supposed to eat with some ethical dimension.
The position seems completely divorced from the reality of nature.I think a morality that separates us from nature is implausible unless you think we can transcend nature in some supernatural way.
Human beings exploit each other profoundly so I don't think we treat people with similar humans characteristics more fairly than the rest of nature.
This dimension is in large measure the very thing that makes us unique as a species, so I don't know why you would wonder that. If you cannot understand that human moral reasoning is completely different not only in magnitude but perhaps in kind from that of lions, then you have somehow failed to see the self-evident. The very fact that you forcefully lament the profound evil human beings incur on one another, and lions don't, is itself evidence of said difference.
Several high profile vegans on YouTube put continuous emphasis on the claim it is unnecessary to eat meat even though acknowledging that it entails taking supplements. I can post links to videos if needs be.
The problem is that killing animals can only start to be deemed being cruel if it is seen as unnecessary. The reality of carnivores, predation and death in nature as an essential part of the life cycle means that humans consuming meat cannot be considered an aberration and I don't know anyone that eats meat just to see animals suffer.
If you wanted to make an animals suffer you could do that without eating them. eating the animal you killed is not really evidence of sadism.
Consuming nutrients is necessary to prevent malnourishment and starvation, however something like rape is never necessary. Killing may be necessary in self defence and theft ,may be necessary to avoid starving but eating and drinking are among the most fundamental things needed for immediate survival.
I am never convinced that vegans have a realistic picture of nature where animals starve en masse, ,drown en masse, get eaten alive and don't retire to Old Persons homes.
But vegans and animal rights activists are eager to stress the similarity between humans and animals as the reason they should have rights and not be eaten.
There is a definite tension between claiming animals are just like us with similar feelings goals and desires and then making is suddenly the only species capable of a profound transcendental moral world view.
The reality seems to be clear that humans and nature are cruel and that there is certainly no inherent tendency in nature for a just world and ethical progress. And even if you think humans make moral progress there is no plausible way of engineering harm out of nature.
Personally I am a moral nihilist, antinatalist and I think all we can have is a bit of hope that life is somehow on an upward trajectory and meaningful. But Nature as we observe it and our human conduct seems to me far removed from an ethical ideal.
It is possible to turn anything into a moral issue.
In the Bible God commanded people to stone a man to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath and as a child my mother made a traumatic scene on the one occasion I shopped on a Sunday.
But I think that to make something a moral issue has to be more careful than just trying to invoke negative feelings in someone about something. Also in my childhood radio and TV were forbidden and while range of other things and I know what it is like to have lots of enforced guilt.
I am only now just racking my brain to think what might make something a moral issue or not. I think (fundamental) lack of necessity might be one attribute.
But to artificially make something unnecessary seems problematic, so for example making a child walk to collect water from a well is not necessarily wrong even if you have taps because it sill has attributes of daily survival.
I would say moral harm would probably involve a desire to harm, or inadequate consideration of harms, or harm for excess personal gain.
That isn't the claim. Vegans, or at least I (as a vegetarian), don't say that it's aberrative. It clearly isn't. We rather affirm that meat eating is unnecessary, irrational, immoral, or some combination thereof. Just because something is common does not make that thing right. Slavery used to be common in the Southern US. Does that make it right? No.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Right, neither do I. Here we're talking about ignorance. I don't condemn people for eating meat when they don't intend to see animals suffer. But again, that doesn't positively justify eating meat.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Maybe others don't. I do. I used to be an antinatalist myself and am still heavily sympathetic to the view. The horrors of existence have always been clear to me and never whitewashed.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Ah, now we come to the origin of your confusion! If it's true that you're a moral nihilist, then your problem isn't with vegan moral arguments against eating meat but with moral arguments per se.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
A funny thing for a moral nihilist to say. Methinks you don't know what that term refers to.
Eating meat is a legal, long-standing, socially approved, culturally familiar, doctor recommended, popular dietary behavior. There is no reason why enjoyment is not a full and sufficient justification for doing it. If some people think there is a moral problem with eating meat, that is their problem, not mine. I am under no obligation to agree with their minority view that eating meat is immoral.
Western society has long deemed it moral, reasonable, and appropriate to eat various meats if it was available, along with all sorts of other things.
Maybe vegans just don't like meat and feel they need to disguise their deviant preferences as moral superiority. Maybe their wretched quinoa burger tastes better with with a hot judgmental sauce. Perhaps their ideas about eating meat are skewed by sentimentality about furry or feathered animals.
Omnivores have default moral justification.
Slavery was a legal, long standing, socially approved, culturally familiar, doctor recommended, popular institution. So I guess that makes slavery okay, right? Let it be known: Bitter Crank finds nothing wrong with slavery.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes there is. I have shown why with two very simple counter examples.
I don't care. I disagree with you about the morality of eating meat.
True enough, slavery has been considered a moral institution -- by a good deal more cultures than the various southern states of the US. Slavery was ubiquitous in ancient societies that we revere (Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the children of Abraham. Eventually these empires and practices crumbled under various circumstances and slavery faded (more than disappeared) from the world). Cultures changed their positions about slavery. Eventually slavery became viewed as a moral evil.
That some vegans think that meat eating is immoral isn't normative for everyone, it's only normative for vegans, at this point. Perhaps at some point in the future vegetarianism or veganism will become morally normative, and then eating meat will be seen as immoral.
I prefer to view dietary habits as healthy, unhealthy; affordable, unaffordable; convenient, inconvenient; sustainable, unsustainable. There are consequences to eating meat that may be consequentially unacceptable at some point in the future, and then we can all stop eating meat.
I'm not ceding the role of moral leadership to vegans. If they find it morally appropriate and uplifting, whatever, bully for them.
I think it is hard to defend the claim that anyone ought to do anything whether or not they can do it.
I could take swimming lessons in case I needed to save a drowning person or I could train to be a medic to save lives. I think there are things we can and can't do easily and things we can learn to do or not do.
I think if you have to artificially adapt your behaviour then you are going beyond an immediate "can" to an obligation to transcend nature. Some people do want to alter nature to be less a harmful but that kind of ideology seems highly unrealistic (people have advocated genetically modifying carnivores) So you can end up with a real but somewhat absurd utilitarian stance that we should wipe out life to end out harm because we can.
The whole moral quagmire is what we can be obliged to do.
I am not saying it is common but rather an innate part of the life-cycle where everything gets eaten at some stage and recycled.
Quoting Thorongil
I do have a problem with any moral claim but I think moral claims become more implausible the more at odds with nature they are.
I don't really believe mass adherence to veganism would improve the world think there are other moral debates that could take precedence. We may just have to be stoical about suffering or take an extinctionist position like antinatalism.
Most climate scientists would disagree. My understanding is that one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas accumulation is animal agriculture. Even if one had a Cartesian position that animals are automata that do not suffer at all, one would need to acknowledge the benefits of reduced meat consumption in terms of reduced human suffering from climate change.
Is smoking just a habit? It actually can be accurately described in such lesser terms as more of a habit or an inclination for me, but I think that I'm atypical in that regard - only smoking on occasion at the odd social gathering. It would be much harder for me to give up eating meat, and even harder than that to give up consuming animal products altogether, than it would be for me to give up smoking. But if I were addicted to smoking, then I think that they'd be comparable.
Quoting T Clark
Yeah, me too. I like it a lot.
Ah, poor things. Glad you stopped. I'd much rather have groundhogs coming and going in my garden than a pristine garden.
Anyway, on to the main topic, which I'll address by way of the quote above. I agree with the gist of that - in short, that it's not problematic - but with the caveat that, even if it were otherwise, i.e. if we needed to eat meat in order to survive, then, strictly speaking, it would still be possible, with enough determination, to refrain from eating meat. It would just lead to a horrible death, which is a path that most people, myself included, would understandably opt against pursuing.
It's not problematic, in a sense, because it's part of a reasonable argument. We don't need to eat meat, yada yada yada, therefore we ought not to.
That's a good example of why issues like this are not just about morality, but significance, which is relative, in a sense. Moral error or not, I would find it utterly insignificant if I were to steal a loaf of bread from a supermarket.
Similarly, although I can see the significance, upon contemplation, of the ethics against eating meat and consuming animal products, it hasn't so far been compelling enough for me to drastically change my lifestyle, and that's not the end of the world. You only live once.
Would you eat ugly black cats for breakfast on toast with vegemite? I mean, you only live once.
#YOLO! :rofl:
What a joker :joke:
Probably not, knowingly. But that's only because I think about ugly black cats differently, and because, in any case, I don't think that I'd like the taste. Maybe in a parallel universe where ugly black cats were like chickens, and chickens were like ugly black cats, I'd have an ugly black chicken as a pet, and I'd eat cat burgers with some regularity.
Note that I did not say you are obligated to do all things that you in theory can do. I only said you are not obligated to do the things you cannot do. However, for the things you can do, you have to come up with other reasons why they aren't moral obligations, if that is the position you are defending. If you could learn CPR, but choose not to, what is the defense? Are there scenarios in which you could be obligated to learn it? Same thing with veganism--since almost anyone CAN abstain from eating non-human animals (especially in the industrialized parts of the world), they have to give other reasons for not doing so.
You haven't given any good arguments so far for that claim.
But you haQuoting Bitter Crank
I think that is a mistake you are making throughout this discussion--talking about your personal life and experiences (I'm not trying to say your life and experiences are uninteresting). Your experiences with killing and your dietary habits don't add much to the question at hand. Talking about them just makes it harder to address the issue objectively.
Quoting Bitter Crank
You could be wrong about that also. I haven't seen you directly address their moral status so far, but you do seem to insist they don't matter--on what basis other than you personally didn't feel qualms about killing them?
Drawing attention to what has been left implicit is not the same thing as exposing a large hole.
Early in this discussion thread I stated that...
Quoting Bitter Crank
That is the basis for my statement that carnivores should eat less meat. It may at some point be necessary for carnivores to become vegetarians, again because of sustainability.
Quoting NKBJ
The food we enjoy is going to be a subjective issue no matter how you slice it. The only reason I mentioned that I had killed and slaughtered some chickens was to address the issue someone had raised about separating meat eating from the details of killing animals for food.
Quoting NKBJ
I haven't decided what the moral status of animals is. I'm favorably disposed toward animals, wild or domestic, but that isn't the same as determining their moral status.
First, "animal" covers a lot of territory -- 986-celled nematodes on up to whales and elephants. Environmentally, all animals are important and do not require moral justification for their existence. A healthy environment requires the full panoply of plants and animals. The health of the forest, for example, has been shown to be dependent on salmon, bears and wolves. Trees, the understory plants, bears, salmon, wolves, elk, moose, and deer have complex relationships. Remove the bears and the forest deteriorates.
Deer, in the upper midwest at least, have reached large populations and have become foraging pests with refined tastes -- leaving aside corn for garden flowers, vegetables, and plants in hanging pots. They'll stand up on their hind legs and clear cut a $50 planter hanging from the eves--and this is in small cities, not out in the country. Food is so abundant for them that they have become gourmets - preferring potted impatiens to dandelions.
City rabbits breed like rabbits, and are clearly over-populated, with large die-offs in the fall. Ditto for squirrels.
I happen to like all these animals--raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, elephants, ants, whales, grasshoppers, bees, baboons, bonobos, birds, bats, and bison. With adequate natural predation (hawks, owls, eagles, snakes, bats, wolves, fox, etc.) the small gnawing biting stinging little animals are kept in balance. The megafauna like elephants, rhinoceros, hippos, wildebeests, zebras, lions, tigers, etc. are central to African ecology. Whales are critical for ocean ecology, as are all the other creatures in the oceans.
I value elephants; I may be willing to grant them moral status and the protection due intelligent beings. The problem I find is working out moral status for the rest of the animal kingdom. The moral value I see in my loving, faithful, intelligent dog I can't automatically extend to voles, moles, or rats, and gnats.
What is YOUR solution?
"Does "Ought" imply "Can"? And Did Kant Think It Does? (R.Stern)
"[i]In a recent book and associated articles, Griffin has argued for what might be called a greater degree of realism in ethics, in the sense that we should begin by understanding ourselves and our capacities, as
a necessary first step to thinking about moral issues. He claims that moral theories have too often neglected facts about human nature and society, and as a result have become distorted and inadequate to our real needs: We have theorized in a vacuum, and so have failed to do so successfully[/i]."
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/298/1/sternr1.pdf
"A particular example here, Griffin thinks, is utilitarianism.Utilitarianism has a commitment to impartiality, in the sense that it tells us that the right thing to do is whatever maximizes general utility. But, Griffin says, the reality of human life is that we usually cannot either calculate or act on what this maximization demands, because of our natural partiality to family, our interests and other commitments. Griffin therefore claims that human limitations mean that utilitarianism cannot play a genuine role in our lives, and as a result the moral norms it proposes should be rejected as spurious"
As I said earlier, I think it is good that some vegans advocate their values to others, seeking to persuade more people to become vegan, or just to eat less meat. It is crucial though, to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If it is argued that somebody is morally heinous if they occasionally eat meat or fish, regardless of what care they took to ensure it was humanely raised and slaughtered, then that just drives people who might otherwise be persuaded to eat less meat, to give it up and write off vegans as extremists, and ethical eating as too unattainable to bother about.
Everyone must make their own ethical decisions. It is not for any individual to judge any other, unless they are employed by the state to do that. If public discourse about the ethics of what we eat leads to an overall reduction in the number of animals that are factory-farmed or otherwise inhumanely treated and killed, that is a good thing. At least we will have somewhat less suffering in the world and less greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
Let she who is morally perfect cast the first stone.
This is just-in-time capitalism at it's worst. "Why, killing animals is even good for the animal!". Try to find a single entity with a large carbon footprint than humans. Hell, even 1/1000th of our footprint. You won't. If killing animals is even good for the animal, then killing humans is the Supreme Good for human beings.
Kant seems to make a pretty clear cut distinction between persons and animals, with animals having only relative value.
The state of the animal industry: pig, chicken, cow and other large industrial complexes is disgusting but it is part of our culture, and as such it can be changed towards more humane treatment of our food. I realize that this is demeaning inhumane treatment of our fellow creature and as such it diminishes me, yet I do enjoy a nice steak once in awhile.
I limit the amount of meat I eat, I eat a lot of fish.
Can I have a clear conscience eating meat? The concept of eating meat does not bother me. It is the way it is done that I do not like. The way the animals are raised and suffer is troubling. The animals are also depersonalized to me. Obviously I value my pets much more than stranger animals. If I had to actually watch the animals get raised and see the suffering, let alone be the one to kill, then my opinions might be completely different. However there's also the possibility that I become desensitized to it, especially if I was doing it from a young age.
When I go to the store and eat meat, this is not something that crosses my mind. It is normalized in society. When I take the time to think about it though, I know what is going on. However, I rationalize it because I know that if I don't eat the meat, it'll either go bad and be thrown out, or someone else is gonna eat it anyways. Realistically, if I stop eating meat the food industry isn't gonna produce less.
I primarily eat seafood, only other meats sometimes when I'm out and there's not as many options available (America is big on meat). I like to think that the different conditions for seafood means the animals probably don't suffer the way cows, pigs, etc. do because of their conditions. Although I acknowledge I don't really know the details about this.
It would still be a moral issue, although the conclusion would be different.
The fact that you are actually able to debate what kind of protein you want to consume says that me and my trigger pulling ancestors did something right; your'e welcome.
Now onto the real question is eating flesh okay; yes it is. The method of production I feel is certainly worth debate as raising a living being in a squashed in cage and using your credit card to pay some bloke to play executioner seems a little less than ethical. I'd prefer you killed your own food and owned it, recognized it for what it is and were okay with it.
You're free to believe whatever action is morally right but don't assume everyone agrees with you, or is grateful of your actions.
Quoting Sid
I don't see the connection:
Quoting Sapientia
In what way?
I am beginning to think that making something a moral issue is always arbitrary because hypothetically we could try and make everything a moral issue.
The public appear to have some crude notions of morality. For instance a lot of people would except the claim "Killing is wrong".
But then when you investigate deeper it turns out killing in self defence is okay, killing to eat is okay, killing in war is okay, abortions okay, the death penalties okay and so on.
In the the end the actual "Thou shalt not kill" becomes far more specific, lengthy, subjective and contextual.
Something like "Thou shalt not kill except on these 20 occasions (consult list and essay for further details)"
In the end you might want to just say it is preferable to try not to kill when you can reasonably avoid it. But I consider this kind of statement not a command and less morally motivating.
I just see no place for a moral ideal although I suppose in the past religion claimed to have moral exemplars or moral law givers. But even the conduct of religious or mythical figures is subject to moral condemnation.
How would it not be? The question would be about evaluating one's own life against another sentient being's. Is deciding who lives and who dies not a moral dilemma?
Whether you prefer apple or blueberry pie might be subjective; I'll agree to that extent. But after that, your food choices have real life consequences for the rest of the world. How much you eat, what you eat, and where you get your food from all impact others directly and indirectly. Since eating meat directly involves the life of another being (not to mention all of the other problems with the practice), you cannot say it is just a subjective choice--not until you have proven that this other life is negligible.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, it's totally irrelevant which animals you personally like or dislike. So why even go there?
Quoting Bitter Crank
This is a more fruitful approach--the answer is that the voles, moles, and rats have all shown to be highly intelligent and sentient beings. The verdict on gnats is still out, and so the default position in cases where we are uncertain should be to leave them alone when reasonably possible.
My solution is fairly simple: assess on which basis we give humans moral value and then see which animals share those traits. Seems to me Bentham was right: the ability to suffer is the deciding factor.
As to deer overpopulation etc., it seems fallacious to claim that we have to have found all the answers to problems that arise from giving animals moral status, before recognizing we ought to give them moral status. We ought to solve world hunger, have world peace, and give all human babies loving and nurturing homes, but we haven't found perfect solutions for those either.
You seem to be saying, because there are exceptions to certain rules, that makes both the rules and the exceptions arbitrary. I don't think that is sound. You may turn right at a red stoplight, unless cars are coming, pedestrians are walking, and unless there is a sign saying otherwise. That's not arbitrary. Same with moral claims.
Exceptions in morality help us navigate situations in which two or more moral claims are at odds with another.
You might also be here typing because of your ancestors raping others, having slaves, stealing, murdering, and so on. None of these are justifiable despite leading to your current existence. They are merely sad facts about how we got to where we are now. Facts that do not require repetition.
All of your lifestyle choices, in all areas of life, have real life consequences for the rest of the world. Do you drive a car? Do you wear polyester clothing? Do you live in a sprawled suburban area or in a dense city? Do you use a lot of energy heating and cooling your home? Do you take medications which pass from you into the waterways? Do you use electronic devices (pads, pods, laptops, etc.)? Do you eat food that was not locally grown -- like eating a blueberry in January that was picked in Chile two weeks ago?
Eating meat does have significant consequences -- as do all of our lifestyle choices and practices. Just take microfibers: they are a relatively "new" mass merchandise product; they have useful features. They are shed in laundry and pass through waste treatment systems into rivers and oceans. So also do many of the medications we take for our health. Microfibers (among other fibers), plastic particles, and pharmaceutical chemicals all have negative consequences on animals.
I'll here grant you this point: For the sake of the world, meat eaters should first eat less meat, and humanely raised meat if they can, and over time they should make the cultural adaptation to being vegetarian (a term I like better than vegan, which is much more restrictive).
Meat eaters' transition to eating plants will be helpful. It will help solve some of the extremely serious ecological crises the planet is undergoing. But having become a vegan or vegetarian, people living in industrial societies are still contributing to the ecological disaster by their very existence as consumers of industrial goods and services.
The 6th extinction isn't happening because people are eating too many pork chops. It's happening because industrial exhaust is heating the atmosphere, disrupting ecologies, killing off species, and so forth. More death and destruction is occurring because of plastic wastes--including those microfibers. Over population, even if it is 12 billion vegans, is a catastrophe.
Quoting NKBJ
Liking animals is most likely a stronger motivation to change diet than abstract morality about animals. You are an ideologue (which is not a slander) and you've staked all your arguments on morals. Other people will approach the problem differently. If you can't tolerate that, tough.
Your point being? You're just proving me right: almost all of your choices have moral consequences and cannot simply be justified with "personal preference". That includes what you eat.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Ummm... This is a philosophy forum, is it not? Some people are here to actually talk philosophy
That would not be you. You're just proselytizing.
What way would you like animals to die?
I have mentioned that I am a moral nihilist. I don't think reality is moral and how you feel about something is personal preference.
I thought we were discussing whether eating meat was a moral issue for obligate carnivores?
I am saying that the contextual shift is not sufficient enough to transform the behaviour into a moral issue. Animals will die whether or not we eat them. We didn't invent death or eating or predation.
I am puzzled about morality anyway because it seems in conflict with nature There is no clear moral guidance from nature or human nature about what we should aspire to if anything.
It's also not enough to make it a non-moral issue.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Can we apply the same to murdering people?
I think the problem is definition. Killing is wrong is a weak statement because it clearly never adhered to completely if even partially. So I think the moral rules need become obscure and have a very precise specific meaning and be more about personal preference. I don't like killing and death but it is an inherent part of nature.
I don't think we can improve nature because suffering appears in all domains. I think that if there was an innate rule that we should not kill it would come from a deity or some much force and transcend nature.
It would be a command for us to reject nature and I think some esoteric/religious views see the whole of nature as in a fallen state.
? I don't want animals to die unless they must.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
How old are you?
The puzzle I am getting at is that nature has provided a means to get food which requires death and predation, it includes plants who also eat dead organisms.
So if we were obligate carnivores we would have to except that we have to kill animals just like carnivores do (and even most herbivores have been seen eating animals) See this deer eat a bird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQOQdBLHrLk
Murdering someone is a legal term for unlawful killing so it is not a helpful term. But I think killing someone would only be natural if it was to ensure your own survival. Killing for fun might be a carnivore strategy to gain hunting skills but just torturing something for fun is not something that seems to be a natural strategy.
I don't think you can go from people killing animals to eat them for nutrition to a comparison with torture for fun because one is innately natural. I don't know if morality is supposed to be what is natural or transcending nature and bettering it. But the closer something is to a natural survival mechanism the less it seems coherent to call it immoral.
Anyway first of all I think we have to ensure that we have resolved the debates as whether humans can be natural herbivores. I think taking essential supplements would be like depriving ourselves of something in our nature to be moral exemplars (for what purpose I don't know).
I feel that sentiments about harm in nature lead t a rejection of life because it is full of harm, my brother has been paralysed by M.S. which he has had for 20+ and I have suffered a lot since childhood now from anxiety and depression. I think antinatalism is the only way to eradicate human harm. But if we tolerate some harm to promote life then I think food is the wrong kind of harm to target.
You could advocate reducing the population so humans eat less food and more humane slaughter methods and animal husbandry or more promotion of veggie meal/alternatives. I think any progress in reducing harm will come from other areas of life if at all and I do think mindless procreating is one of the most irresponsible things.
Every animal must die.
In the wild animals either starve to death are eaten (alive) or die of disease. How do you cope with death in a nature?
For example here is some pictures of hundreds+ of wildebeest that drowned and this happened before this occasion with 10,000 drowning previously.
https://africageographic.com/blog/hundreds-wildebeest-found-dead-tanzania/
Don't click on this link if you are squeamish but it is footage of a Deer being eaten alive by Komodo dragons and there are lots more videos like this on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmwC9HzcWbQ
This is so clearly the statement of a person who has no logical leg to stand on, but wishes to cling to his own ideology (and hamburger). :smirk:
All humans must die too--does that give us the right to kill them?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
What's the point of these examples? Are you implying we ought to take lizards as our moral role models? Alligators eat their own young--is that something we ought to emulate as well?
Two things:
1. That is called the naturalistic fallacy.
2. We only recently in history started eating larger animals--we did spend most of our existence eating grubs, termites, and ants to supplement our mainly plant-based diets. The more natural thing for us to do would be to eat insects--have fun with that.
All living things do die, eventually, so in that sense, yes, every animal must die.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
The lion that hunts the gazelle does so out of survival. In order to live, life must consume itself. Most ethics understand this fundamental truth.
:fire: :ok: :eyes:
Quoting NKBJ
Well, depending on how much tin foil rests atop your head, perhaps we should take lizards as our moral role models, :snicker:
I am saying that there is no comparison between torturing an animal for fun and killing it to eat. I am not saying whether one is good or bad.
I don't think nature is either good nor bad but if I had to choose I would say nature was bad.
I have been stressing how carnivorous behaviour is essential in nature not whether it is good and saying it is pointless to moralise about these things.
I don't agree with the concept of a naturalistic fallacy because... where else but nature can we get moral guidance from? I think all asserting a naturalistic fallacy does, is lead to moral nihilism. It could only be sustained by a supernaturalistic morality.
The idea that harming animals is wrong is also derived from nature and passing value judgement on natural occurrences.
I am not sure what this means. I have been pointing out that life involves eating life.
I am questioning why a human killing an animal for food is therefore wrong and why animals dying brutally and arbitrarily in nature is not also an evil.
I think the idea that killing life for food in one context is lovely nature in all its glory and then killing life for human food is savagery is an unconvincing sentiment.
There is no lovely beneficent nature to contrast human conduct with.
These kind of points need to be subject to expert scrutiny. Where did the term hunter gatherer derive from and why do ancient cave murals depict hunting?
Also have you ever seen any supermarket fruit and veg growing in the wild? Most of it is artificial creations. I saw a strawberry in the wild once and it was about 1/4 the size of a shop bought one.
Overall though I am not defending meat eating or slaughterhouses but questioning whether food and related areas are suitable moral issues.
I was exploring the ways in which animals die because someone used emotive examples of how animals are killed in abattoirs and I am pointing out there is no nice natural alternative.
An animal can (hypothetically/occasionally is) live longer in captivity and be treated nicely and then killed swiftly but I think most vegans object to just the taking of an animals life but considering there is no nice way to die in nature its seems incoherent.
Only fairly recently animal rights activists have started to raise the issue of natural suffering it still is an area with much less interest and concern than veganism and human on animal cruelty.
But if someone says they are not concerned with starvation in nature and animals being eaten alive then I can't take their ethical objections seriously.
Why would they not be?
What makes something a suitable moral issue?
Quoting Andrew4Handel I don't know anybody that says that. Let's not confuse acceptance that one cannot do anything to prevent X with indifference to X.
I am a moral nihilist so I don't know the answer to that question.
I think it is a good topic though and one I may have raised before.
It could be self interest that makes something a moral issue or allegiances or sentiment, empathy. I don't know. In my childhood moral issues were decide by God and nowhere else.
I am not sure how secular society defends it's moral claims if it does. There is a massive moral philosophy literature going nowhere.
It's not going nowhere. I became a vegetarian and started giving significant amounts to Oxfam and similar organisations after reading Peter Singer's 'Practical Ethics'. I know others that have been similarly influenced by philosophical literature to change their lives to do less harm and be more helpful to others,
There is no consensus in the literature and certainly no consensus on Singer. His views are controversial. The fact you were swayed by Peter Singer is no more convincing to me than if you were swayed by reading the Bible.
For a moral argument to be authoritative it would have to receive almost universal agreement.But far from that there is huge literature with no consensus.
Personal I think having children fatally undermines any moral claim in terms of consent, not harming others and so on.
We are not talking about 'authoritative'. To wish for a moral argument to be authoritative is to wish for the impossible. You said the literature was 'going nowhere'. I gave examples of where it has led to a reduction of the suffering in the world, thereby contradicting that claim. There are such examples everywhere for those that care to look. Heavens, the ending of slavery was based on moral arguments. Who cares that such arguments were not authoritative, and that it did not have near universal agreement? What matters is that they ended slavery.
Again: so because humans must die (and death is never "nice") it is therefore okay to kill them?
We get morality from reason and empathy. Not from emulating nature. If we did, we'd be allowed to eat our own babies (like alligators do), kill our mates (like black widows), gang rape (like dolphins) and so on.
The naturalistic fallacy is a well-established logical fallacy in the discipline. You can't just dismiss it, because it's caught you in a wrong-headed argument.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That's fairly recent in human history. Before the invention of agriculture and weapons we lived much longer as herbivores and insectivores.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Nope. Again, empathy and reason. I feel bad if I step on my dog's tail; there is no moral difference between my dog and a cow; therefore I don't participate in the harming of cows. It's simple really.
This is a red herring or straw man or whatever. Where have I said we can kill animals because they are going to die anyway?
I have specifically pointed out they are being killed for food and not for fun. It is not wrong to kill another species for food. Humans even eat each other in famine as a means of survival.
It doesn't follow that if you accept one form of killing you accept all. The point is that by not killing animals for food we are not preventing their death. It is not an act of benevolence because as I have pointed out they have horrible deaths naturally.
Why would someone who kills animals for food feel the need to randomly kill another human? I don't see how you are making that leap. I already pointed out that the idea it is wrong to kill is flawed and actually we only think killing is wrong in very specific situations not as a rule.
Are you saying these things are not natural? Are you not selecting natural attributes you are assuming are good?
I don't think reason and empathy lead anywhere near a moral society or Utopia. I think reason and empathy are more likely to lead to antinatalism, nihilistic view points and a negative view of the essential cruelty and arbitrariness of life.
If you are rejecting carnivore behaviour and death then you're rejecting life imo. I think( as was discussed in an article I linked to earlier ) a better goal is to have a more pragmatic morality based on a realistic view of human attributes. Unfortunately I am not convinced we can morally reason our way out of our dilemma and become Utopian or anything near.
I don't have to accept an alleged fallacy if I can prove to myself it doesn't make sense. In the literature I have read it is usually accepted that this idea of G. E. Moore leads to moral non naturalism which as I say is puzzling because I can't see any other source for moral claims.
People only use the most trivial version of the fallacy without realising it is just an extension of Hume's Is-Ought problem and the idea that you can't get values from nature.
So it's only right to be a cannibal when there's a famine? How more arbitrary can you get?
There are all sorts of other possible sources of moral guidance, reason for one. To argue that you know of no alternatives to nature as a source of moral guidance and that therefore, nature is a reliable source of moral guidance and is the only source, is rather problematic. A lack of imagined alternatives doesn't establish the one thing you can think of as the correct or only one.
Consider a simple and common alternative, one that is flawed for sure, but often accepted: What maximizes pleasure and minimizes suffering is good. This criterion of goodness is quite different from the naturalness criterion and seems a possible contender. It could be that the natural state (simply the way things are or have been?) is full of suffering and that some unnatural state ought to be pursued as it might well mean the betterment of ourselves or the world in general. But then why is pleasure necessarily good and suffering necessarily not good? And then there is the question of higher and lower pleasure, or suffering that serves a higher pleasure, and so on. And if there is higher and lower pleasure, what determines the higher and the lower? Surely something other than pleasure!
And in what way is nature a source of moral guidance? How ought we to read its commandments? If something is demonstrated by nature, should we feel free to follow that example? Is what is natural for any living thing perfectly okay for us? Should we take sharks as role models? Is that a state we want to aspire to? Similarly, should we take our primitive ancestors as role models? How about even our recent ancestors? If they did a thing, does the very fact of their having done it make it good and something we ought to do as well? If not, why not? And what are we appealing to when we make our evaluations here? Nature? Something else?
Why is the naturalistic fallacy a fallacy? Basically, it isn't at all clear that X is good necessarily follows from X is natural. Something needs to fill that gap and show why the natural is always good.
Can we find counterexamples, something that is arguably natural but yet is generally considered evil? What about rape? What about war? What about pain? Suffering? Death? Cancer? Migraines? Male domination of women? Basically anything that has actually happened that is bad?
How do we decide what is natural? Historical precedence? If we have some criterion of naturalness, we should dispense with naturalness and then look at that criterion more directly. Suppose we say that what has been done for at least a thousand years is what we should consider natural, or that what we did "back when we were still animals" is what we should consider natural. Then to say that what is natural is what is good is to say that what has been done for at least a thousand years or what our animal ancestors did is what is good for us to do always. See where this is likely to go? We are headed for trouble, aren't we?
People often talk about such things as our tooth structure as evidence of what we should be eating. To show that we "evolved to eat meat" or otherwise is simply to show that at some point in the past, our species did such and such and managed to survive and propagate the species while doing this or partly by means of this practice. So would we then be wise to argue that whatever aided the survival of our ancestors is automatically okay for us?
Besides, "evolved to X" or "are made to do X" or "meant for X" all imply some kind of teleology. There is an implicit "in order to" or "so that" involved. This implies some kind of mind with intentions and aims and a plan behind these things, in which case, we might be half-consciously appealing to God as being the hidden link between goodness and naturalness, as God surely wouldn't disapprove of what he made us to do. Isn't this really the hidden idea or feeling behind the naturalness justification of meat eating or abstention? "That we have teeth shows that we are meant to/supposed to/made to eat meat." "If God gave us X, surely he can't justly condemn us for using it!" In a nature without God where the physical is causally closed, there is no "meant to" or "should" implied in our physical structure, is there? Is it clear that we always ought to do what is suggested by the structure of our bodies, which resulted presumably from selective pressures and circumstances to which we are no longer subject? If our hands originally evolved while we lived in an arboreal environment and selective pressures drove us into the trees, does that mean we should live in the trees still? Is there anything wrong with dispensing with that and using our hands for other things? If we can survive in other ways, is there any reason we shouldn't?
Is the mere fact that we can survive in a certain way justification for living that way? Does can imply ought? Or is it at least the case that can implies no ought not? If we were able to survive in a certain fashion in the past, does that mean that we should never say no to that behavior?
And if what is natural is good, is what is unnatural then evil or at least never good? That opens a pandora's box, doesn't it? Isn't that how some people argue for the condemnation of homosexuals, among other things?
Is it impossible for something unnatural to be good? If something unnatural can be good, then how we evaluate it as good must be independent of whether or not it is natural. Consider modern medicine. Should we continue to practice it? Why or why not? Is nature your only guide in considering this question?
And what does it mean for something to be natural anyway? Perhaps one could say that anything that actually happens is by definition natural. In that case, if what is natural is what is good, then everything that can and does happen is therefore good. Surely you can think of things that actually happen that you feel are bad.
Is it possible for anything unnatural to actually exist?
If everything that does happen is good, any question of goodness seems completely pointless, especially if we accept ought implies can, which would rule out any goods that don't happen. Everything you do would automatically be good, no matter your choices, no matter the consequences.
Or is it the case that humanity marks a break with nature? Can humans do things unnatural? If so, what is the source of this power? If we have any such powers, perhaps you might look there for other sources of moral guidance, since nature then isn't the only thing at work.
You could also say that while it might be natural for humans at a certain level of development or with a certain level of awareness to eat meat, it might be unnatural for humans to eat meat under other circumstances, perhaps at higher levels of development. Or it might simply be natural for certain kinds of people to reject eating meat.
It isn't clear to me at all why it would be the case that if something is natural, it is therefore necessarily good. That's why it is fallacious reasoning. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.
I think the concept of nature itself is a rather problematic one to begin with. So is the concept of goodness or value. Both of these are issues that require much examination. So to say that what is natural is therefore good cries out for a whole lot of deeper examination.
Also, to accept that what is natural is therefore good implies that you accept the idea of the natural and also the idea of the good, presumably an objective good. In order to predicate the goodness of the natural, you have to accept that nature has this property of goodness. Where does it get that property? How do you know that nature is good? Aren't you then appealing to something outside of nature in order to answer the question of whether or not nature is good? I am reminded of the question in Euthyphro. Is it good because God wills it or does God will it because it it is good? Is it good because nature produces it or does nature produce it because it is good? Give that one some thought!
And isn't saying that something is good because it is natural sort of along the lines of saying that this is the way it always has been done in the past and is therefore the way it should always be done in the future? Why can't it be a good thing in some cases for traditions to be rejected and for people to change their ways? For one thing, we don't have a fixed nature, do we? Aren't we continually changing? Notice the word nature in there. If our very nature is malleable, how does this affect the consideration? Or is the way we were the way we always have to be? If we are malleable in nature, should our past nature be used as a guide for evaluating where we ought to go in the future? Is there no other possible consideration? Such a guiding principle would seem to recommend against change period. Might not new ways be better ways? Is moral progress impossible? If it is, we must look outside of descriptions of our past behavior for advice about how we ought to live.
I hope you aren't implicitly making the argument that because asserting that the natural fallacy is a true fallacy would lead to moral nihilism, it is therefore not a fallacy. It could be that moral nihilism is the correct position! That can't be ruled out right off the bat, can it?
Also, why does it necessarily lead to moral nihilism? All we are doing when we assert that the naturalistic fallacy is a proper fallacy is denying that something's being natural necessarily establishes its being good. We haven't ruled out other ways of estimating value. To establish moral nihilism, wouldn't you need to rule out the possibility of any objective value? It isn't clear that a lack of necessary connection between the natural and the good also necessarily negates the possibility of value being in some sense real.
If what is natural is indeed what is good, why is there a necessary connection between these things? Why is nature good? Or, at least, why is it the case that what is natural cannot be bad?
I think that until someone can demonstrate a strong connection between naturalness and goodness, we can safely dispense with the idea that the naturalness criterion can be used to justify eating meat or abstaining from eating meat.
That naturalistic fallacy has been used in relation to homosexuality because people said homosexuality is bad because it is unnatural.
But then due to the naturalistic fallacy you can't argue homosexuality is good just because it is widespread in nature.
So invoking this fallacy helps neither side of the argument. I think the fact that homosexuality is found in other animals solves disputes about it such as the claim that it's a choice and the discovery of a gay gene (complex) would further prove it wasn't a choice. So you just have to turn to nature to resolve a moral dispute.
So referring to that actually happens in nature is really the only realistic referee to what is the case. Because there is no other further, ideal moral dimension we have found to arbitrate moral claims. I don't see reason as a moral or non natural domain either. Reason is limited by what is the case.
I consider natural just to refer to anything that happens in nature as opposed to a supernatural realm that we either have no access to or doesn't exist
It is not the case that everything that is natural is good but that things that are good are natural processes.
For example if you enjoy being alive then there are a vast amount of natural process like bio-mechanisms in each cell that are keeping you a live. So it seems crazy to value being alive yet place no value on these countless natural things keeping you alive.
I don't think you can value anything without placing value on the nature that allows it to happen, even our minds and reason are argued to be a product of nature so we are reasoning within the limitations of a natural framework.
I think once you consider improving nature you enter a black hole as there are so many things you might want to improve and conflicting desires. There is no objective way to improve reality for everyone.
It would be nice if carnivores didn't exist but that would mean Lions etc would cease to exist. Lots of things would cease to exist or be greatly altered if we tried improving everything.
Personally I'm not having children I don't endorse life and have had lots of horrible experiences so I have no reason to have a positive outlook or seek to continue and progress this game of life.I think we need to confront our own morality and hope something better is on the side. It would be a real slap in the face for me if this was the only life I got to lead.
Finally I think the reason there are factory farms is because people are having lots of offspring and the general endorsement of procreation is the source of most "moral" evil.
That argument stems from an inability to realize that evolution is on going and does not stop. For whatever reason it is challenging for some to understand that our species can evolve away from a dependence on meat. I've been vegetarian for about five years, but after some months when I started I mistakenly ate some chicken soup and was dying for the next day as though I had food poisoning. On an individual basis and a short period of time, that sort of biological response is a product of a body that changes itself over the time. And I think it is a testament to our bodily limits that obesity is such an issue in much of the Western world where red meat in particular is so available in the market. Our body isn't built for excessive consumption of fatty meats, and I think many vegetarians and vegans would argue that we aren't built for any consumption of meat.
It's not supposed to help either side of the argument--you're supposed to avoid trying to derive an ought from an is altogether no matter what side you're on....
It's not supposed to help either side of the argument--you're supposed to avoid trying to derive an ought from an is altogether no matter what side you're on....
I don't think it makes sense to argue that anything is good just because it is widespread in nature. It isn't at all clear why there would be any necessary connection between frequent occurence and goodness. For one thing, I think we can all find counterexamples to the argument that X occurs widely and is therefore good.
You can use fallacious argument if you like for pure rhetorical purposes. This is common practice. But if you want to get closer to truth, fallacies must be avoided. It doesn't matter whether you like the conclusions of a fallacious argument or find a fallacious argument useful in persuasion. If the conclusion doesn't clearly follow from the premises, the premises simply cannot be used to justify the claim. If you allow arguments where conclusions don't obviously follow from the premises, pretty much any conclusion could be claimed to be a consequence of pretty much any premise.
:up:
premise 2: X is A.
conclusion: Therefore, X is B.[/i]
This is a valid argument form. The conclusion follows.
[i]premise 1: What is natural is good.
premise 2: X is natural.
Conclusion: Therefore, X is good.[/i]
This is valid in form. The problem is in premise 1. It isn't clear that what is natural is good. Is this premise true? Why should I believe it? Another argument is needed to show the connection.
[i]premise 1: What is A is good.
premise 2: Everything natural is A.
conclusion: Therefore, everything natural is good.[/i]
What is A? That's the missing connection. Why is what is natural also good? In order to show that natural things are good things, it seems to me that you are going to have to appeal to some principle other than naturalness to show why the natural is good. And before we can decide whether or not natural things are good, we need to know what goodness is! Do you know what it is?
Okay, so all A are B, but not all B are A. That's fine. All dogs are mammals, but not all mammals are dogs. All good things are natural, but not all natural things are good. This last seems to be what you are saying. But first of all, if some natural things can be not good, then you can't say that something is natural and that it is therefore good, since not all natural things are good things. If your position is instead that all good things are natural, this won't help make the case that any X is good. It is backwards. Here is what that argument might look like:
[i]What is good is natural
Eating meat is natural
Therefore, eating meat is good[/i]
Even if the premises are true, the form of this argument is not valid. Here is the form in question:
[i]All A are B
X is B
Therefore, X is A[/i]
This is invalid. Let's plug some other things in there, with true premises, to show this more clearly. We get an absurd conclusion.
[i]Every dog is a mammal.
Elephants are mammals.
Therefore, elephants are dogs.[/i]
If it is the case that all good things are natural, but not all natural things are good, it is completely pointless to talk about whether or not something is natural when trying to show that it is good, since some natural things might well be non-good, and this something in question might well be one of these natural but non-good things.
Also, if you claim that all good things are natural, can you not think of any good things that are unnatural? Does anything actually happen in reality that is unnatural in the way that you understand nature? Some people consider what humans do to mark a break with nature, so for example, they say that plastic is unnatural or C-sections are unnatural or brain chip implants are unnatural. Do you agree with that line of thinking? If you do, are no such unnatural things good? If there are unnatural good things, they would be exceptions to your claim that all good things are natural. If everything that actually happens is natural, well, then, everything humans do is natural, no matter what that might be, and it is pointless to try to show that it happens elsewhere in nature.
If you do accept that common idea that what humans do can be unnatural, and you also accept your claim that all good things are natural, then since unnatural things are not good, then all unnatural human activity would have to be non-good.
When people argue about whether or not meat-eating or homosexuality or whatever is natural, this seems to always implicitly involve an understanding of the concept of the natural that allows that some things that humans do can be unnatural. If not, then what are they talking about? In the other case, so what if something is unnatural? Even if eating meat or abstaining or practicing homosexuality or something else is unnatural, I don't see why that automatically makes it bad. I don't see any reason to believe that just because it is unnatural, it must therefore be non-good. In other words, I don't see why I should accept your claim that all good things are natural. Why can't some unnatural things also be good?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
First of all, it seems tautological or circular to say that what is natural is what happens in nature. What is nature? Does anything happen not in nature?
Do you see yet how all this talk of whether or not something is natural is basically irrelevant to the question of its goodness?
I think that it is arbitrary what you define as natural. I don't think the phrase natural picks out a concrete concept but then I didn't coin the naturalistic fallacy.
I am not claiming eating meat is good because it is natural because at this point we are just discussing where goodness comes from. The only point I want to make here is that there is not another realm for goodness (or pleasure to come from)
I don't see the point of having a morality that doesn't reference the real world. I think harm might be a more objective property than the good but I don't think reality can be wrong because there appears to be no right way to act in nature and that is to say no teleology.
I believe unnatural often means man made and/or deviating from natures supposed purpose. The point then is that some things originated solely from humans and we can be held accountable for them.
It is obviously a tricky and lengthy topic but I think a lot of these labels can reflect personal or social ideologies and biases.
My reasoning is that if something is a necessary part of nature there is no reason to alienate ourself from it. On the other hand if we try and radically alter our environment and minds and bodies then that to me is a rejection of nature. I don't think veganism is a rejection of nature but its morals are. I believe vegans have a distorted and sometimes anthropomorphic view of nature(biology etc) partly because I think nature is innately harmful and cannot be improved.
I can see no reason why we should alter our bodies and use supplements to make ourselves as if Herbivores. To me that is an unnecessary sacrifice. (To an imaginary moral standard/realm)
But as I have said from near the beginning I am a moral nihilist and I find no moral claims convincing.
If I was looking for someone to ultimately blame for harm it would be whatever force created life.
It is the equivalent to the support any minority gets to discover they are not alone or alien or not an aberration but just a part of nature, your own normal.
Quoting NKBJ
I am not sure I accept the idea that an ought can never derive from an is. Let me explain. It is hard to see why an ought would follow from an objective state of affairs. But what if we take seriously the idea that subjective experience is real? I think part of the problem stems from the fact that many over the years have acted as though what is objective and third-person verifiable is real and what is subjective is somehow not real. When we say that something is objective, we seem to mean that it is "really out there", beyond our imaginations, beyond our dreams, beyond our hallucinations, or in other words, beyond the seemings or appearances in our subjective experience. This is problematic. It opposes the subjective to the real.
My subjective experience is as real as anything. I really do experience pain and so on. My pains are real. And they really do hurt. We need be careful though. To say that my subjective experience is real is not to also say that appearance equals reality. For example, I can hallucinate that there is a tiger in my room. My hallucination doesn't correspond to the reality beyond my mind. In other words, there is no real tiger in my room. But my experience is real in the sense that there really is an experience of having that hallucination. My experiences might not reflect reality, but the experiences themselves are really happening and are part of reality. And in a sense, they are objective. Joe really does feel pain. Joe's pains are real. Joe really does dream of winged rhinos. The experience is real. And Joe's experiences are happening beyond the appearances in my mind. They are in that sense, along with rocks, "out there" in the real world.
What does all this have to do with morality? What are we to do with a situation where, for example, someone is torturing a child? We tend to say that this is bad and that this child's suffering matters. Why? Is there really no more to this than my distaste for it, or maybe an evolved, instinctive response of mine to the sound of a child screaming? No, I tend to think that this child's suffering matters regardless of whether it bothers me or not. It would matter even if nobody existed but the torturer and the child. Even if I feel nothing when witnessing it, it is still bad. The badness of it simply doesn't rely on my feelings about it. It seems that the fact that the child's well-being matters to the child, beyond my concern, is possibly a factor. That child's suffering is real. It is not an illusion that the child is suffering. There seems to be something about such suffering that intrinsically involves badness, intolerability, or some kind of ought-not. Subjective states are different from objective states of affairs in this way. They seem to be intrinsically value-laden. It doesn't seem possible to separate the feeling of intense pain from some sense of intolerability or badness. Perhaps pain, in itself, is sort of a real ought-not. When you stab me, the hurt is real. The injury is real. You have added to the intolerability in the world. Maybe, somehow, we can here find the beginnings of a connection between what is and what ought to be.
If the very nature of pain is that it is a sort of ought-not, then if a pain is, an ought-not is.
Isn't pain curious? Notice how when you have a really bad headache, you can't seem to simply observe it as a pure sensation without also suffering from it. It seems that to the extent that it loses its intolerability, it ceases to be a pain or simply ceases altogether, as if it is, in itself, a state of intolerability. Might we say that if pain is real, there is a sense in which intolerability, or badness, is part of reality and is therefore objective?
Some experiential qualities like blueness are real, in that we really do experience them. Blue experiences are part of reality. But they seem not to carry an intrinsic desirability or undesirability the way pain and pleasure seem to.
But then some pleasures seem to us bad or shallow or sacharrine or whatever, and indulgence in pleasure seems problematic in some ways. And some pain seems beneficial. This certainly complicates what I am saying.
I am not quite sure how to think about it properly, but there is a sense in which I think that the suffering of the child really matters, objectively, that somehow the very mattering of it is part of reality. It matters regardless of whether I care or not, whether it matters to me or not. At the very least, it matters to that child. That child's interests are violated or harmed. Are her interests real? Is there really a better and a worse for her, even beyond her own feeling about it? Isn't it truly better for a child to be happy and thriving than to be harmed and incapacitated? My strong intuition says yes. Some conditions in the world really are better than others. But how to justify this rationally? I am not sure. Here, I am rather baffled, quite honestly. But it seems obviously absurd to me when I consider that it might be the case that no particular state of affairs in the world can ever rightly be considered better than any other. For now, I guess, I'll hold to it as an intuition not rationally justified, and risk being in error.
If we deny the reality of subjective experience, of selves, of interests, and all the rest, obviously, all of this sounds like nonsense. But I find it absurd to deny that which I experience so directly in every moment. I take subjectivity seriously. And I suspect that maybe such things as selves and interests belonging to them might have a sort of reality not usually recognized. It might even be that selves have rights. Maybe selves properly belong to themselves.
Getting back to the issue of the ethics of eating animals, I have often had the feeling that it isn't simply a problem of causing them pain, as we could conceivably raise them for food, enslave them, or otherwise take possession of and exploit them while causing them no pain, perhaps even while causing them intense, continuous pleasure with drugs or brain implants. Still, something seems not right about all of this to me. I don't think it would be right for us to do this to a group of humans. Why is it okay with animals?
My feeling is that to the extent that a being is a self and has interests of its own, it simply doesn't belong to me to do with as I please. It has a sort of autonomy that I have no right to violate.
I once saw a pig being pulled by the ears down a ramp, off a truck, toward the spot where it was to have its throat cut, after which it woud be cooked and served as food. When the men were pulling it by its ears, it was squealing loudly and resisting the forward motion with its feet. Its will was clearly being violated. The pig had interests! I found myself thinking that part of what is wrong here is that the people were taking what was not rightly theirs, and were violating the interests, or perhaps even rights, of another sentient being.
Something struck me about the killing. Before the killing, there was a self, a set of interests belonging to that self, goods, bads, fears, perhaps hopes, and so on, and after the killing, there was only tissue. This subjective world had been destroyed and now there was only food, only flesh. Previously, there was an objective and a subjective in that pig. After, there was only the material, just a bunch of physical resources to be incorporated into other bodies.
This, I think, is also reflected in how we talk about meat. We call the living animal a pig. We call what remains after it is killed and cut to pieces pork. Cows become beef. Sheep become mutton. Is this is a way for us to insulate ourselves from the reality of what we are doing when we eat these animals? We don't eat cows. We eat this stuff called beef. But notice that we only seem to do this with higher mammals that we regularly eat. We don't do it with chicken or fish.
I think eating animals is a kind of theft, a kind of dishonorable banditry, worse than parasitism. To overpower another self and to forcibly take for yourself what it has labored to collect and build, and to totally disregard its interests, especially when this isn't necessary for you, especially when it is for the sake of your pleasure, is evil.
Most would consider it evil for a kid to go out on Halloween and knock over another kid and steal all his candy. How is predation any different in principle?
Why do we admire predators and despise parasites? It is because, I think, at some instinctual level, we admire power. Our default, evolved, animal values are as Nietzsche described as the sort of power-based morality that preceded Christianity. The more powerful is the better. This is partly because some of our animal ancestors were polygynous mammals with a certain kind of power hierarchy with an alpha male at the top. And we were arboreal. And to be higher in the trees was better. And those with higher status were literally higher in the trees, eating the choicest fruit, safe from predators. Our whole vertical value dimension seems to stem from this instinctual pattern. Higher is better. Stronger gets you higher. Stronger is better. God is the strongest and also the best. And God is the highest. Heaven is at the very top and Hell is at the very bottom. Good people go up. Bad people go down. The word aristocrat literally derives from "best". The upper class rules over the lower class. Elevated people stand above lowly people. High-brow versus low-brow. Feeling high versus feeling low. Moving on up versus falling to rock bottom. Notice also that at the bottom of a dense forest, it is nearly dark. And there are reptiles and cats and things down there that might eat you. At the very top of the forest is sky and sun and birds. Look familiar? Heaven and Hell. Notice our cities, with the wealthy up in their towers and the untouchables down on the street, exposed to the elements. And they deserve it, right? We tend to see a dimension of virtue associated with vertical position. Contempt is a kind of looking-down.
Humans killing and eating cows or rabbits is just another case of the strong stealing from the weak. We admire a lion in the way it masterfully takes down its weaker prey. What about a mugger robbing an old lady? Why is he not similarly admirable? Who is worse, a parasite or a thief? Predators are thieves. That is their strategy for survival. It is one of a number of successful strategies. One can be a thief and also be a biological success. Many successful businesses are based on predation.
Much warfare is the predation of one superorganism upon another. One nation eats another weaker one and steals its resources. Many early societies saw nothing wrong with this, largely because of the tribal mentality, our people being the only real people, the others being fair game or put there for our use. Our interests first! Isn't that what drives the thief? Me first. My family first. My tribe first. My nation first.
Predation is profiting from the misfortune of another.
But if we want to get at what ought to be the case objectively, we need to look at everyone's interests. We have to evaluate the situation from beyond our own perspective, as if we don't know which of the parties involved we happen to be. What ought to happen in a situation, what is for the best period, is the case regardless of which of the persons involved I happen to be. The difference between my personal preferences and what really ought to be the case beyond appeal to my personal preferences requires this sort of view-from-nowhere appraisal of the situation and of the relative values of different outcomes.
Should I eat the porpoise? I meet my needs and serve my interests, but what about the interests of the porpoise? Or is it the case that no non-humans have any interests? If we have interests and they don't, what makes for this difference? If I were that porpoise, what then? Should the human eat the porpoise? What if I don't know whether I am the human or the porpoise? How would I answer? What if the human could survive just as well by eating beans, assuming bean plants have no consciousness and thus no interests? Then we seem to be weighing the added momentary pleasure for the human of eating porpoise over beans against all the interests of the porpoise and any other sentient being whose interests are tied to the well-being of that porpoise, such as that porpoise's friends and family. The small, momentary, added pleasure for the human seems pretty petty by comparison, doesn't it? That rich, beautiful creature enjoying its life, with its complex inner universe of feeling and its playful life in the sea is something that alive, is of far more value than it is reduced to some rubbery stuff to chew for a human, all its complexity lost, its inner world destroyed, its relationships severed, its friends left bereaved, its future annihilated.
In light of consideration of the porpoise's end of things, or even of the overall value in the world, what do humans who justify eating that porpoise sound like when saying that they will continue to eat porpoise because it tastes good? Totally oblivious to anything but crass, short-term self-interest. In other words, rather unaware and lacking in moral development. Reptiles have a similar level of regard for interests beyond their own.
I have often thought that the very definition of evil is to not merely cause, but to literally enjoy the misfortune of another being, especially to enjoy that misfortune for its own sake. It is the very opposite of love. In the way I see it, justifying your harm to another being by the pleasure you derive from your exploitation of that being or the complete theft of everything belonging to that being, is almost the worst possible justification. What would we say to a pedophile who says that he will continue molesting children because he enjoys it and insists that his enjoyment is enough to justify his behavior?
If you believe that you have no choice but to do something that harms another, but you regret it and it pains you to do it, it is a little more forgivable.
If it is the case that you must eat meat to survive, then we have another matter to explore. For one thing, we have to justify your survival in the first place before we can justify your eating that meat in order to survive. Why is it good that you should continue living? Is the value of your life greater than that of all the beings you destroy in order to live? And is there no way to live without diminishing the harm you do? If your life does have greater value and there is no way to reduce your harm, then perhaps you have justification for continuing.
But of course, as many a vegetarian or vegan has demonstrated, it is possible to survive without eating meat. Can one achieve optimal health on a vegan diet? That is another question. If not, then we have to determine the value of that added health and decide if overall, in the world, it is more important to have a human with ideal health than to have all the animals that he might eat spend their lives unmolested by him.
I think that unconsciously, most people think meat-eating is okay because of a kind of cultural inertia, with underlying beliefs and attitudes that derive from a primitive religious worldview in which God put all of the plants and animals here for our use (usually our local tribe). And why did he give us sharp teeth and an appetite for meat if he didn't approve of us eating it? After all, we sacrificed animals to the gods! God likes meat too! That wonderful aroma of the burnt offering rising to Heaven! We are made in God's image after all! He is like us! He is our Father! As the bumper sticker says, "If God didn't want us to eat animals, why'd he make 'em out of meat?" All the stuff on the earth is what he gave to us, right? And meat wouldn't taste so good if we weren't meant to eat it!
Most of our unexamined ideas of good and bad are probably unconsciously about being a good-boy/girl for Mommy and Daddy, God just being the parent or alpha male pattern projected onto the sky. We grow up as children with "good" and 'bad" being associated with behavior approved of or disapproved of by parents, and punished and rewarded. So at some level, we approach questions of good or bad with all of that unconsciously at work. Will Daddy get mad? If not, it's okay. Should I shoot the squirrels? Daddy says "good shot!" if I do! Or at least, Daddy doesn't get mad. And since good and bad derive from Dad's approval/disapproval, if there is no Dad, then everything must be okay, right? "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." And here we get the thoughtless moral nihilism of the atheist. If there is no big judge in the sky to disapprove of my actions, then I can do no wrong. Is that really so?
And we imagine that God, with all his might, must be right, and so if he made us to eat meat, as our bodies and instincts seem to indicate, how could he justly disapprove? Isn't this what many seem to be thinking at some level, even atheists, perhaps while not being quite conscious of it?
Also, if we are instinctually driven to do something, we are biased to think it good. There is a positive valuation attached to our experience of it. Eating meat feels good. So it can't be all bad, can it? Yum! Yum!
But if we are ready to grow up and assume responsibility for our choices and evaluate the situation according to what is actually for the best, considering the interests of all parties involved and the overall beauty, richness, and goodness in the world, things start to look rather different.
Sure, it is rather arbitrary. But if you yourself are going to appeal to this concept in some way, you need to clarify what you mean by it and be consistent. The people who call others out for committing the error that is the naturalistic fallacy are not the ones guilty of appealing to nature. They are responding to those who wrongly appeal to nature.
If someone attacks homosexuality by saying that it is unnatural and then someone else defends it by trying to show that it is indeed natural, the latter appears to be accepting the former's idea that if something is unnatural, it is bad. If they don't accept this, why this defense? Why not just say "So what if it is?" to the claim that it is unnatural? It isn't clear that its being natural or unnatural has anything at all to do with whether or not it is good!
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That depends on what you consider nature to include. If you consider nature to include everything that is actually real or true, that might include ideal numbers, absolute beauty, subjective states, the intolerability of pain, the pythagorean theorem, and all sorts of things. Objective value could be part of reality. If you consider nature to include only what is physical, objective, third-person verifiable, testable, measurable, concrete, and so on, then there might indeed be something outside of that to appeal to. And if that is all you'll permit as real, you might find it hard to justify anything like value and will likely end up with an Alex Rosenberg style moral nihilism, where you see everything as nothing more than valueless collections of fermions and bosons and ask how it is possible for one arrangement of fermions and bosons to be better than another. Jews being gassed versus Jews thriving unmolested are then just one particular arrangement of fermions and bosons compared to another, no arrangement being any better or worse than another. Either way, it is just particles occupying certain positions in the void!
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I don't think I took you to be making that claim. I took you to reject the idea of the naturalistic fallacy and I was defending the idea of the naturalistic fallacy by saying some things showing why it is problematic for people to argue that eating meat is good because it is natural or homosexuality is bad because it is unnatural. What I was attacking wasn't in every case what you were saying, but what others often say. I was in part trying to show that you should accept the naturalistic fallacy as being a true fallacy, as representing a kind of faulty thinking. Naturalness shouldn't be used to justify or condemn anything.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes. That's how many seem to understand it. And here we have all that crypto-theological stuff. God made us to do such and such and will get mad at us if we deviate from his intentions.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Is this sound reasoning? What is the connection between something being natural and something being okay?
What does it mean for it to be a necessary part of nature? Suppose it is a necessary part of nature for some eagles to survive by pulling goats off of cliffs. Does that justify you doing the same? Just because you can find examples of animals doing something, that makes it good for you? Why? And if you can't find any examples of animals doing something, does that mean it is wrong for you to do it? Why? I simply don't see the fact of animals doing or not doing something as a relevant consideration for whether or not we ought to do it.
Also, when you do the thing an animal does, you aren't doing the same thing really. And you are probably doing what you do for far different reasons. If you kill a gazelle, that isn't the same thing as a lion killing a gazelle. Lions can't subsist on beans, for one thing, as you can, nor are they even in a position to examine their behavior and evaluate its goodness. Your awareness and rationality, and presumably freedom, shoulders you with moral responsibility that a lion can't be reasonably expected to carry. And with a lion, it is less of a question of ought, as lions don't make such considerations. We do. Lions simply do eat gazelles and will continue to do so as long they can. The question of whether or not lions should be allowed to kill gazelles might be a question for us to ask though! ;)
A human killing a gazelle probably is doing it for sheer sport and trophy anyway. Pretty crass, if you ask me!
What if a human just goes around biting and tearing apart every living thing he comes across? And what if he defends his action by pointing out that sharks behave in this way and that it is therefore natural? Yes, sharks do do that and their doing that is part of nature. Why does that make it okay for you? And does its being natural for shark make it natural for you?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Then why are you looking to nature to justify human activity? And if harmfulness is real and can be predicated of nature, doesn't that open another can of worms? Doesn't that point to a domain of objective value? By what measuring stick are you finding nature to be in some sense bad? What are you appealing to?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Why would we have to alter our bodies or even use supplements? And aren't supplements just food? Is pea protein concentrate any less real or natural than beef jerky? Why? And our diet is flexible. We can be carnivores, herbivores, or omnivores.
And as for reasons, I can think of more than a few for becoming a vegan. For one, not violating the autonomy of or doing harm to other sentient beings. For another, reducing your carbon footprint.
I was a vegan for a number of years and probably will become one again. I never had to become inhuman or unnatural, not that it would obviously be a bad thing to do so. The most difficult part is dealing with a world that relies heavily on animal products. It is hard to eat out with friends for example. And meat-eaters complain about judgmental vegetarians and vegans, but you should try to be a vegan among meat-eaters in rural America. You'll encounter some serious judgment, even hate, even threats of violence. I am sure it is not as bad as the way homosexuals are treated, but it can be trying for sure. You constantly have to justify your food choices. People will attack you for it. They sneer. They call you a freak or a nutjob. Even my own brother speaks of "those vegan nutcases" to me, knowing that I was a vegan for a long time. I've been in sporting goods stores where the walls are full of t-shirts and bumper stickers talking shit about people who care about animal rights. These are the same stores with boar heads on the walls.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It is strange to hear such thoughts coming from a person who was defending the idea that moral claims can be defended by use of appeals to nature, that to say something is natural is therefore good. In rejecting the naturalistic fallacy, you seem to be defending appeals to nature as establishing goodness.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Why? Because people call it unnatural? Because at some level you agree with their feeling that unnatural things must be bad?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes, it is comforting to be normal, to be not unusual, to feel a sense of belonging, to not be seen as a freak. This is typical and it is instinctual. It is understandable. There is the warmth of feeling yourself to have a safe place in the group. Our primitive ancestors might have died if they weren't accepted by the group, so we evolved feelings of discomfort when we perceive signs of the disapproval of the group. But such feelings don't justify rejecting the naturalistic fallacy. They don't justify a claim that all natural things are good things or that all unnatural things are bad things. After all, many deviations from normality come to be seen as positive. Socrates certainly wasn't normal. And I don't think you'll find any examples of animals in nature behaving like him! And his people killed him! Was his behavior then something we ought never to imitate? Was it really bad? If we need to find animals doing something to consider it okay, what about doing mathematics? Any animals doing that? Looking through telescopes? Enjoying a beer over a campfire?
Is your comfort partly derived from the idea that finding it in nature, where there is presumably no choice, shows that it is probably not your choice either, and is the way you were born, and is therefore nature's or even God's responsibility and not yours, thus freeing you of any taint of possible sin and assuaging you of guilt? After all, you grew up in a culture that calls it a sin. You are made to feel that what you do is evil and is frowned upon by God Almighty. Your very parents might have disapproved or regarded it as sinful or aberrant. And sin is seen as depending on free will, there only being moral responsibility where there is choice. Maybe that contributes to the eagerness to show that it is not a choice. Perhaps?
Something's being automatic and not chosen seems to remove it from the realm of should and shouldn't, doesn't it? You can't justly be called a bad boy for being short or having brown eyes, right? It's not my fault!
But suppose it is a choice. Maybe it really isn't, but suppose it is. What then? Does that really open it up to be rightly considered a sin? On what grounds? Its chosenness alone doesn't confer this, as we often consider some chosen things to be laudable. What makes a behavior evil? The disapproval of the herd? An old, superstition-riddled book full of primitive ideas from a pre-rational and pre-scientific era (when people thought thunder was the angry gesture of an annoyed and powerful guy in the sky) saying bad things about it and claiming that a big man in the sky disapproves? These are people who also thought they could cleanse their sins by offering a bloody substitute to the bloodthirsty gods in order to appease those abusive monsters. To this day some people try to pass their guilt into chickens or other animals, which are then sacrificed. This creature will die in my place! What madness! The theology surrounding the death of Jesus and its salvific capacity is another example of this kind of crazy thinking. God was pissed and needed blood! But he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son! (read: sacrificed his only or firstborn son as was the greatest sacrifice sometimes offered to the gods by men) And by feeding the blood of his son to himself, he appeased himself and bought our pardon. Our guilt passed into Jesus. And the Father is consubsantial with the Son, and is in some sense the same being. So basically, he sacrificed himself to himself to buy himself off to not punish us. But he is going to punish most of us anyway for not believing in this in exactly the right way or demonstrating it with the proper rituals and professions of faith.
I hope that the beliefs of the same people who believe this crap don't disturb your sleep. These are people who still believe in the efficacy of blood sacrifices to appease big angry men in the sky who are annoyed by the activities of the noisy humans on the ground. Very primitive people thought this way. Why are things going badly for me? I must have done something to offend the powerful spirits that command the forces affecting me. So I must offer them something and say some soothing, apologetic things. "Ooh you are so big! So absolutely huge! We are all very impressed down here! Please don't put us on the barbecue! Please don't boil us in hot fat! We offer you gifts! We praise you! Glory, glory to thee oh all-powerful one! Please have mercy on us! We submit to thee! We kneel! We show submission! We say uncle! Uncle! Uncle! Please don't hurt us! You are good! You are the greatest! We serve no other! Please stop hurting us! Please stop! We'll pay more! We'll be your slave! We'll do anything!" This is the way you talk to a benevolent entity?
Why is homosexuality bad? Is it that it is non-procreative? So what?!! Many heterosexuals practice non-procreative sex and most don't call it an abomination. Infertile heterosexuals who are Christians are not condemned for having sex, at least inside marriage. And many heterosexuals practice most of the same physical acts, including anal and oral sex, and they don't suffer the same stigma. People are just looney about this stuff and are probably driven by some kind of primitive instinct to attack it. Or maybe much of this attitude comes from the culture. The Greeks didn't find it so bothersome. Much of it seems to be based in religious taboo for whatever reason. And I think we can safely reject the abomination of human thought that is Christian theology! How they can believe their theology and also that their God is just and good at the same time, especially with Hell and eternal torment there for finite sins such as masturbation, I can't begin to imagine. Yes, masturbation has been considered a mortal sin, one warranting your eternal damnation! A world in which their God doesn't exist and death is just the end would be better than one in which most people go to eternal torment in the fires of Hell, especially for such small and innocent things! That being the case, how can their God be good?
Be at ease about their charges of sin. They project their own guilt complexes. They probably masturbate and worry about God disapproving. They protest too much! Their religion is basically all about their guilt. They are some neurotic people! Why the hurricans and the floods? People have displeased God and he is punishing them! What a bunch of nonsense!
The question of whether or not homosexuality is bad or good must be evaluated on grounds other than its naturalness. It must be asked whether or not it causes harm to non-consenting sentient beings. Does it violate anyone's autonomy? Rape certainly does, whether heterosexual or homosexual. But does homosexuality involve any such harms? I don't see that it does. Some sexual acts might involve some such violation, but heterosexual sex is probably more likely to have it with all its male domination of women.
What makes something evil, in my estimation, is that it makes life hell for other sentient beings. What Christians do to homosexuals is evil if anything is. What was done during the Spanish Inquisition was evil beyond all imagination, and it was done in the name of God! They should listen to the golden rule given by their Jesus. I've rarely seen more stones thrown than by the Christians who claim to follow the wise man who told them to throw no stones and to judge not. They are the ones who want to condemn. Hell for those who are not them is their fantasy. Many of them are sick puppies! Don't listen to them! Their Jesus did supposedly have some nice things to say though! If only they would listen to those things! Be nice! Isn't that basically what his message was? If only they would hear it. And I think that applies to our treatment of animals as well.
Be nice! Respect the interests and autonomy of others! Treat any other sentient being not merely as a means, but also as an end. That includes animals.
One reason you can't derive an ought from an is, is because you really never do, even when it looks like you are. You are simply failing to put a tacit assumption into words.
For instance:
P1: Hitting hurts.
C: One ought not hit others.
Really should be formulated as such:
P1: Hitting hurts.
P2: One ought not hurt others.
C: One ought not hit others.
(I realize that there are exceptions about necessity that theoretically need to be included in a full argument for this, but you get the gist.)
In attempting to derive an ought from an is, you are almost always including tacit value judgement and ought-claims. So you really aren't deriving an ought from an is.
Subjective experience is of course real, but that does not make recognizing them as real subjective: You have a headache is an objective statement about something subjectively experienced. Almost all people share the capacities for these subjective experiences, so we can objectively make claims about what states of being are okay to evoke in others.
I agree with much of what you say in your post about meat eating and warfare, but I think you veered away from your initial questioning of the is-ought-gap. Perhaps you could explain to me more clearly why you think it is bridgeable? (Unless of course my above explanation of it's unbridgeability is satisfactory to you :)).
You may find it normalizing, and that's great if it helps you emotionally--but it still doesn't make it right or wrong. Ethically, the "naturalness" of homosexuality (or anything else) simply doesn't matter.
If only evolutionary natural things were good, we'd have to give up on all progress of civilization and live in caves without heating, medicine, the arts, etc, etc.
And again: rape, murder, incest, cannibalism, stealing, and so on all occur in nature. They are not good, and we should not engage in these things.
What does matter morally are arguments like: it doesn't affect anyone but the two consenting adults involved (or shouldn't); and it makes those two people happy.
Where are you getting that from? And what's the relevance to what was said in the quote that you were replying to? The point, as I understood it, was that they'll likely have a better life and a better death this way than they would in nature, and I think that that's a good point which deserves a proper answer. (And there [I]is[/I] such a thing as a better death, and you know it).
That's not arbitrary at all. It's parallel in law would be mitigating factors.
You say that all animals must die anyway, and use that to justify killing them for food/our own pleasure.
a)Don't pretend we're killing the billions of cows, pigs, and chickens we eat every year for their own good.
b) Some deaths may be preferable to others, but living is preferable to either.
c) it is not for us to decide for the animal when it should die. Counter example: someone you know has cancer and will die a painful death. Are you allowed to put him/her out of his/her misery when s/he doesn't wish to die yet?
If something happens in nature I don't see how it can be wrong. This is a problem for morality in general.
I am certainly not saying what happens in nature is good. Goodness is a problematic characteristic which seems the most subjective of the values.
I am not sure exactly what was meant by "ought equals can" but it seems to me to say moral obligations cannot be impossible to achieve such as things we can't physically or mentally do. This means that expecting a gay person to change his or her sexuality is problematic if it is fixed by nature. So in this sense nature makes moral condemnations of homosexuality defunct.
However this invokes the naturalistic fallacy because the idea that morality cannot makes us do things that are naturally impossible is setting morality in a purely natural setting.
Deterministic positions suggest that certain things if not everything are either very hard or impossible to control. some natural/genetic traits would be harder to manage and total determinism would deny and self control.
Ii think if it was easy to refrain from eaten meat and if a vegan diet was equally delicious and enticing to a vegan one it would be easy for people to change.
I think you're confusing me with someone else.
Quoting NKBJ
I don't. Don't pretend that it doesn't end up in their best interest, in light of the consequences, in some cases, regardless of the motive.
Quoting NKBJ
Oh good, so presumably you agree with the point that was made about an extended lifespan in captivity versus a shorter lifespan in nature.
Quoting NKBJ
Says you. And it's okay if they die of natural causes, then?
Quoting NKBJ
Not a counterexample. You can't compare some chicken on a farm somewhere with someone I know having cancer. Talk about ridiculous!
I am not talking about things that are good via nature but things that are innate via nature. For example most animals can kill but I don't think most animals have an innate drive to kill unless they are carnivores or in exceptional circumstances.
There are degrees to which a behaviour is innate and because of this it limits the amount of condemnation and morality you can apply to this behaviour.
Just like the legal notion of mitigating circumstances. I am not saying humans cannot manage meat eating but carnivorous and omnivorous behaviour is more innate in nature than some other behaviours.
That is what routinely happens to pets because ill animals cannot talk. Also Doctors often cause the death of a patient by decisions about their medical care in life or death circumstances.
Imagine if we didn't intervene in any human lives most humans would die quickly. If their parents didn't care for them they would die shortly after birth.
Leaving animals to natures mercy is not clearly the most ethical thing. If you wanted to be really ethical you could intervene in natural famines and try and make all animal deaths quick and painless (although that would be improbable) But not interfering with nature is certainly not ensuring an animal will thrive and have maximum well being. (For example where an animal is being eaten alive it seems the persons watching should shoot the animal to give it a quicker death.
Ironically most of these eaten alive videos are filmed in nature reserves/safaris where we are trying to preserve nature.
I am not committed to a a notion of goodness I am just dismissing the naturalistic fallacy and arguing that nature is a guide to some things. Obviously a Doctor ought to learn how the heart works before performing heart surgery because that heart has a function and his job would be rendered futile if it didn't reference a model of how a heart best functions.
I think a notion of goodness such as what causes least harm will have to reference nature because harm is natural/biological. I think if we want to minimise harm we have to do it with reference to what nature/reality/biology provides us. It may be that nature can't give us the kind of goodness we idealise.
Lots of people including my self suffer distress from reality not living up to our expectations and fantasies.
How would you know that the child's suffering mattered if it didn't bother you at all?
Pain is essential for survival. People with congenital pain deficit die younger and cause themselves lots of injury. Pain is often in indication of injury.
Pain is created by nature it is not something humans invented. Pain is another "natural" thing that exists whether we moralise about it or not. As I said earlier rejecting these type of things ends with us rejecting nature.
I am an antinatalist so I will not be causing more pain after I am dead because there is no human life without pain. But it is not a clear moral guide and a lot of it is a result of illness and embodiment.
I'll repeat myself once more: so, since rape, murder, incest, etc. occur in nature, or are "innate" as you claim, are we to excuse those who commit these crimes? The naturalness, innateness, or whichever term you want to call something in an attempt to dodge your moral culpability, of an act or impulse does not change whether it is right or wrong. It has no impact on the rightness or wrongness of the act. Since we CAN overcome our desires for flesh, and we know there are many good reasons to do so, we ought to.
A doctor killing a patient against his or her will is called murder. Exceptions apply when we cannot know the will of the patient (as with long-term comatose persons). Try hurting a pig--they will quickly let you know that they do not wish to be harmed, let alone killed. No animal willingly walks into a knife to sacrifice his or herself for the pleasures of our palate.
It isn't in their best interest. It would be best for them not to be brought into existence. How can a life of agony, which ends prematurely, be good for anyone?
Quoting Sapientia
For one: I do not agree; I personally would rather live free and die young, than live in captivity into old age. For two: I don't know what leads you to believe that animals used for food live much longer than in the wild? They have significantly reduced lifespans: the farmer gains nothing from letting an animal live beyond peak-body mass, and in the case of veal, even younger. (And even if you don't eat veal, the dairy industry supports the veal industry.)
Quoting Sapientia
Again: how does that argument even make sense? Of course it's okay. Just like it's okay for you to let the aging old lady next door live and die a natural death and not intervene than kill her beforehand, because you weirdly decided you'd be doing something "merciful" (and wanted to eat her flesh before too much of it wasted away).
Quoting Andrew4Handel
You've been watching too much Shark Week. Nature has brutal moments, and some animals kill to live, but most of a wild animal's life is not "red in tooth and claw." Perhaps you should spend some time observing animals in their natural day to day? They very much enjoy being free, alive, and unbothered by humans.
I think your mistake might be the assumption that vegans and vegetarians have some sort of coherent moral standpoint. This is not the case.
A couple of things to consider.
First is that there is many local ecosystems that cannot reasonably offer humans survival without the use of meat and other animal products. And that to impose veganism or vegetarianism in such places would be seriously injurious in terms of pollution from the energy to bring food to those places.
Secondly, is the real reasons that people take on these unnatural practices. These fall into two categories, both emotional and not logical or moral, being basic squeamishness about blood and death, and the other being the anthropomorphisation of animals, particularly that concurrent with the rise of vegetarianism in the 20thC which I have called the Disney Effect.
Moral justifications follow these emotional responses they do not preceded them.
1. [B]The animals under consideration already exist[/b]. So your point about not being brought into existence makes no sense in relation to them. [I]And if your point wasn't in relation to them, and only them, then it fails to address the point.[/I]
2. [B]They don't live a life of agony[/b]. [I]And the, "They", in the previous statement refers only to the animals under consideration. If you have not been referring to these animals, and to these animals only, then you have failed to address the point.[/I]
3. "How can a life which ends prematurely be good for anyone?" - That question assumes a false premise, namely that for a life to be good, it must not end prematurely. That it might have otherwise been better is not that it wasn't good. That doesn't follow.
Quoting NKBJ
You said that, although some deaths may be preferable to others, living is preferable to either. You did not qualify that statement in any way. I see only two interpretations:
The first is that you're suggesting that living forever is preferable to death, which would be a stupid thing to argue for, given that living forever is not an option.
The second is that you're suggesting that living until natural death is preferable to premature death. But living in captivity until natural death is an instance of living until natural death, and premature death in the wild is an instance of premature death. So it follows that living in captivity until natural death is preferable to premature death in the wild. So you should agree, or concede. Not agreeing and not conceding means that you're being logically inconsistent.
Quoting NKBJ
That would be fine, if it didn't fly in the face of your previous comment, which might have been said in haste without due consideration of the logical consequences. So, I am giving you the opportunity to concede that your previous comment did not convey your true position, and to retract it in light of this.
Quoting NKBJ
That's a strawman. You need to pay closer attention to what myself and others say. What I said was nowhere near as general as that, nor was the original comment by another participant which you replied to. I took care to qualify that I was talking only about specific cases. The other participant took similar precautions. Surely you don't deny that there are exceptions?
Quoting NKBJ
It wasn't an argument. It was a question about your stance. A simple "yes" would've been sufficient. No need to bring up old ladies.
So you think that all of the animals you will ever eat already exist? Or that the money you put into the meat industry by purchasing animal products does not contribute to the breeding of more animals? Some of the animals to be considered already exist, but billions and billions are going to be brought into existence if we do not change our practices. So, in fact, it is very pertinent to the discussion.
Quoting Sapientia
Clearly you haven't looked at the living conditions on factory farms. The vast majority of animals bred and raised for our consumption come from such farms. Maybe you wouldn't find being mutilated, kept in spaces so small you can hardly move your entire life, force fed, artificially inseminated, having your babies stolen from you and killed, etc, etc. to be agony, but I highly doubt it.
Quoting Sapientia
You claim I'm not paying attention, and then you leave out half of my statement :lol:
How can a life of agony and which (to add insult to injury) ends prematurely, be good? How can it be something we can justifiably inflict on others? Especially when we could do otherwise.
Quoting Sapientia
Again, you're purposefully ignoring my explanation. Talk about a lack of paying attention :rofl: You can go back and read it for yourself--I'm not going to bother anymore reiterating myself when you just insist on trying to take me out of context in order to have your strawperson.
Quoting Sapientia
and:
Quoting Sapientia
:chin: I don't think I read that wrong. It's pretty clear, and you did not add any qualifications there. I can imagine arguments along those lines for sanctuaries or zoos, but we're talking about animals raised for consumption. And as far as that goes, they do NOT have longer lifespans.
Quoting Sapientia
There is very much a need--since it elucidates the hypocrisy of claiming x, y, or z is good for animals, while it would be heinous to seriously consider for humans.
You are only repeating yourself because you are failing to understand my point. Not everything that happens in nature is innate. There are degrees to which behaviour are fundamental for survival or not.
I don't believe in prison or punishment and I think crime is natural and moralising about it is pointless. I would tackle the causes of crime rather than focus on vilifying people.
You are refusing to see any subtlety anywhere if you can't see degrees of import and nuance in behaviour and nature. I have stated apparently not clearly enough that I am a moral nihilist and do not think nature can be "wrong".
What I focused on in the first post is the seeming paradox or absurdity that if we were carnivores veganism would be defunct. That this moral stance is only available of you think human can be herbivores. If rape was the only way to impregnate someone then we would probably find it more acceptable. How could something that is essential be a crime?
I wasn't intending to debate all aspects of veganism here but rather that specific issue of morality versus natural traits.
The ending of the official slave trade is not proof that a moral argument is valid. After slavery we had two world wars, several genocides and the Klu Klux Klan so that is hardly moral progress is it?
I don't think campaigning against slavery requires any knowledge of moral philosophy.
To me moral progress if it exists would be moral refinement. Humans behaving less than terrible is actually quite demoralising. So finally Western woman have equality, some gays have equal rights after thousands of years and much philosophy. But these things should have been the default. We shouldn't be proud of having taken thousands of years to give some of the world equal rights.
What I think the moral literature has failed to do is justify morality. To what degree you think reality has improved is subjective. My life has been sub par most of the time.
I have never heard of Shark week. I have lived in the countryside though. I lived on a small holding that had some sheep. I would say the sheep were expressionless showing no specific joie de vivre. One of them was unfortunately killed by a badger.
Have you seen this quote by Dawkins on nature?
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
You missed the bit where I mentioned that pet owners have there ill pets put to sleep.
I have had long experience now of being with a seriously ill person who has been in intensive care at least thrice and has had many stays in hospital also I have other family members who have worked in hospitals.
It is not a straightforward case of asking a patient whether they want to be kept alive. There is a wide variety of medical procedures and caring strategies that effects someones longevity in hospital. In my experience most hospital death are not the cliched pulling of a plug. Some times death is caused by eating problems and medication side effects and the medical staff have to make decisions about a suitable medicine regime of diet plan....In short I don't know what role consent generally plays in death.
----- Do Not Resuscitate
----- Do not Intubate
----- No heroic measures
----- withhold water
----- withhold food
Under the specified circumstances -- like,
----- probably is already seriously brain damaged
----- will be paralyzed from the neck down
----- will be unable to speak, swallow
----- has little time left before death from organ failure
----- so on and dreary so forth
As far as I know, advanced directives are not binding contracts; if the attending physician thinks I'll pull through just fine, even though it looks pretty bad, he isn't required to forego imtubatimg or resuscitating me. And, if there is no advocate on hand (one is supposed to delegate authority to someone trusted to advocate for pulling the plug under the right circumstances) there is a good chance one's final directive will be ignored.
I'm 71; I'm not figuring on dying in the next few years, but should I get run over by a lightweight vehicle and am not quite dead, or if I should develop a terminal disease which, by definition, isn't curable, then let's get it over with.
This all assumes I'm not awake. If I'm awake and alert, then I'll have to convince the doctor myself to let me out of my misery PDQ.
It's a glass half full or empty thing isn't it? We can lament at there being still a lot of cruelty and injustice in the world or we can be glad at many forms of widespread cruelty and injustice having been greatly reduced (while still working to reduce what remains).
I appreciate the attempt to clarify the matter for me. But what I am trying to get at is something a little different from I understand you to be addressing. And I am quite unsure about it. If subjective experience is taken seriously as something real, and if, intrinsic to serious pain is an intolerability, a badness, an ought-not-ness, or really, if pain is an ought-not in itself, then there is perhaps a sense in which an ought-not can be said to exist in reality. Reality might well contain objective shoulds and shouldn'ts. Maybe it isn't deriving an ought from an is. Rather, maybe this ought-not is an is! And so then we can derive a further is from that is.
Normally, we tend to think that there is a world of things and then we apply value judgements to them, perhaps somewhat arbitrarily. We feel some way about the things that are. If we feel that some state of affairs is wrong, that is simply our feeling about it. But in this way of looking at the matter, the wrongs are not themselves real objects in the world. We are just basically saying that we don't like X. We can say, and be simply stating a fact, that we would prefer for things to be otherwise than they are. Joe disapproves of X. This is a fact. But to make the claim that things really ought to be other than they are is a different sort of claim.
But the usual way in which we talk about facts sort of assumes that the only place to find facts is in the value-free world of objective states of affairs out there, basically just things and their configurations or states among what is third-person verifiable. But if we take subjective experience seriously and realize that it is just as real as anything, the world gets more complicated. Suddenly, it contains not just particles and energy states and so on, but also other things like interests and perhaps selves and rights and maybe even matterings. Maybe there is a way to look at something like a harm as being a real harm, a wrong that actually exists objectively in the world. Maybe it isn't just that I feel it is wrong. Maybe a wrong actually is.
Consider that a rock and its existence seem to us a value-free state of affairs that just is. We can regard this objective state of affairs in a detached manner or can assign value to it, positive or negative, depending on our preferences. But if you have an extreme headache, the situation is quite different. There is now an all too real headache-experience in the world. And that headache experience is intrinsically intolerable. Intolerability is essential to what it is. You can't have this headache and regard it in a detached manner as just a thing in the world while not suffering it. A headache is a state of suffering. That suffering is real suffering and really exists in the real world. A headache experience, which is a real state of affairs happening in the world, has an intrinsic badness to it. It can't cease to be bad or intolerable without ceasing to be what it is or ceasing to exist altogether. The negative value aspect of it is inseparable from it, is essential to it. So there is maybe a sense in which value is objective.
Maybe we could argue in a manner like the following:
Painfulness is badness
Headaches are painful
Therefore, headaches are bad
Bad things ought not exist
Headaches are bad
Headaches ought not exist
I am not sure if any of this really makes any sense. But I have the suspicion that we are so habituated to only considering as factual the usual objective, third-person verifiable things in the world that we are overlooking some very important things about the subjective side of the world. The world doesn't just contain things like quarks, tables, and cells. It also contains things like awfulnesses and interests. The subjective world is perhaps rightly seen as intrinsically value-laden. Here, there is no gap between the ought and the is. They are one thing. Maybe value is something of the very substance of the subjective world.
Maybe? I don't know. I haven't thought all this through very much.
In the universe I observe, all moral justifications follow emotional responses.
Its mattering and badness don't depend on me knowing or caring. This situation is awful even if nobody else exists to know or not know about it. Even if I know about it and enjoy it, it is still a bad thing in the world. There is still suffering and a loss of all sorts of other value. My knowing about or not knowing or liking or disliking this child's torture all make no difference to the reality of what it is.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Certainly. And interestingly, this pain brings a message of ought-not. It dissuades. When you are learning to get around in the world, you need both the encouragement and dissuasion. When you hurt yourself, you know what not to do in the future.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It seems to me that to say that goodness is what causes least harm is like saying that warmth is what is least cold.
When there are two possibe states of affairs, such as a child being tortured or that same child happily swinging in a park with friends, there is a sense in which one state is better than another. It would be better if one happened rather than the other. But how do we decide the better? To know the answer to that, to understand what it is that makes all better conditions preferable to the worse, is to know what the good is.
And if you condemn life as being bad in some way, or the world overall as being bad, you are evaluating it according to some criteria of goodness. You have to have a sense of what is good in order to find the world falling short.
Also, what do you mean when you say that harm is natural/biological? Do you mean to refer specifically to something like damage to an organism? If so, when we call that a harm, aren't we attaching a value judgment to it? To harm is to in some sense wrong someone, to make their condition worse. That involves valuation. And if there is a worse, there is also a better. The two arise together. If you know what makes things worse, you also know what makes them better. You must know what the good is in order to know when real harm has been done.
You might be surprised if you cared to talk to one. Sure, our position may not be as well justified as the pythagorean theorem, but it is at least as well justified as any objection to murder, slavery, and so on. Maybe you ought to give Peter Singer's book a read. Many vegetarians/vegans have been influenced by it. I personally have not read it.
Quoting charleton
And there may be an argument for the greater good there involving the eating of meat. I think humans should exist at the expense of lower animals when necessary. Humans are more valuable for sure, in my way of looking at all this. But the level of complexity/consciousness of the food sources should be minimized and only the minimum number needed should be taken. The minimum level of sentience might be higher in some situations. I certainly can't justify my own eating of meat in this way, however. There may be circumstances where I could even justify eating human flesh. But I won't eat it when the situation doesn't practically force this.
Quoting charleton
Some vegetarians might well be squeamish about blood and death and that might motivate their dietary choices. That isn't true of most vegans/vegetarians that I've known, though it seems to be partly true of one. It wasn't a big factor for me. My decision to stop eating sentient beings unnecessarily came after a lengthy, rational deliberation on the matter. And it was a difficult change to make for many reasons. And of course, feelings were part of that too, feelings such as empathy, a recognition of another mammal's inner similarity to me, and so on. Feelings are unavoidably a part of it. Feelings motivate most action, even yours. When I see what is done to animals in factory farms, I feel a sense of horror much like what I feel when I see videos showing what the Nazis did, not that I hold these two things on quite the same level. But reason is involved as well in a big way. I would guess that most vegans/vegetarians have rationally examined their dietary practices to a significant degree.
As for anthropomorphisation, it is actually hard to know just what it is like to be an animal, and when we try to understand what they are going through, we do try to occupy their perspective in our imaginations. We place ourselves in their position. Some humanization is inevitable. However, I think it totally reasonable and rational to infer from the behavior of an animal like a dog or pig, with whom we share much, including much similar neurology, that when it squeals and tries to get away from someone cutting into its flesh, its inner state is much like mine would be in a similar circumstance. I've spent enough time with real animals, not Disney cartoons, to have come to have a good sense of just how similar to us they are in many emotional respects. It is harder when it comes to more alien creatures like squid, as their body language is very different. But dogs aren't so far from us. I am confident that I understand them pretty well. And it was partly my experiences with real dogs that led me to realize that I couldn't in good conscience kill and eat my dog, knowing what I knew about her, and a pig is no different.
I assure you that no Disneyesque image of a talking, dancing animal ever came into my mind in the examination that I went throught that led me to stop eating meat.
I think it is probably better to err on the side of thinking an animal more like us than it really is than the opposite. If I don't ascribe any of my inner experiential qualities to an animal, and I assume it is nothing at all like me, lacking even the most basic experientiality, I am likely making a grave mistake and might be systematically causing great suffering without even recognizing it. Descartes made this mistake in a big way when he insisted that animals are automata. If I can decrease the chances that I am causing a lot of undue suffering and harming the interests of other beings while not inconveniencing myself in a big way, I will.
And as it happens, making this change improved my health, my self-discipline, my strength in my ability to live my beliefs regardless of what others around me think or what they say (I am surrounded by people who are quite hostile to this choice as I live in a rural, conservative area), and so on. And it felt great to actually bring my behavior into alignment with my conscience.
If it helps you to feel better to think of vegans/vegetarians in the way you seem to, by all means...
I've lived with them, fucked them, and dined with them. They do not hold up to scrutiny. Don;t be so patronising. I'm way ahead of you.
Pythagoras avoided beans, and his followers were instructed to do likewise. He believed that loss of WIND through farting, was injurious to the fabric of the humours and very dangerous to health.
You are correct that your justification is not as good as his.
Cockeyed.
Domesticated animals exist because of humans. Without meat eaters there would be no animals on the land at all.
Far from living at their expense; we guarantee their survival and they live in far better comfort and security than their natural cousins; they die cleanly, with no pain. And provide good shit for the soil.
You've grown up with these ideas since childhood and have an unnatural view of animals. It's an indelible part of culture.
No, of course not. But that's beside the point, which you've missed or are evading. Why is it that there are so few people here who can keep track of a conversation? That's how it's beginning to seem, and I'm getting sick and tired of it.
You seem to have forgotten the preceding conversation. It began with your reply to this:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
[I]Can, hypothetically, occasionally does...[/I]
And it proceeded as follows:
Quoting Sapientia
Now, since you have not given me the courtesy of sticking to the point, in return, I will not give you the courtesy of even reading the rest of your post, let alone giving it a considered reply.
This is a very simplistic view of pain. My point was that it is not a bad thing in the sense that it aids survival. The idea of no one experiencing pain sounds positive until you hear about people who don't experience pain and suffer severe injuries. So do you want to eradicate pain or preserve pain for its survival value?
As a victim of long term bullying in childhood I doubt your pain provides an ought-not theory. If you are hitting someone and you yourself are not in pain it is not going to deter you from doing that.
So being deterred by your own pain is very different from causing pain in others. Also pain and distress in nature doesn't deter carnivores.
I was only referencing the pain that deters some injury but there is a lot of chronic pain that has long outlived any uselessness. I don't think you can turn all pain into a moral issue but if you do it is likely to lead to antinatalist and extinctionist views.
Since the following objection has a bit of substance, I'll address it.
Quoting charleton
Without meat eaters (human meat eaters or carnivores in general?), there would be no animals on the land at all? What?!!! Surely, you mean that these domesticated animals wouldn't be on the land. I'll assume that's what you meant to say. If that's what you meant, it is likely the case that some of them could not survive without our help if we were to let them all go (potentially ecologically problematic, obviously) and it is very obvious that these animals would never have existed in their current form absent our practices. Do you suppose this is something no animal rights advocate has ever considered?
How does this pose a problem for the position that we ought not enslave or eat animals? And how does this pose a problem for the idea that we live at their expense? I have a hard time seeing the existence of a typical factory farm animal as a desirable one, as something there ought to be more of in the world.
To get X at another's expense doesn't always mean that the other in question ceases to exist or would have existed otherwise. If I get pleasure out of torturing you, my pleasure is at your expense, even if I created you just to torture you.
Let's suppose that there is some society that practices cannibalism and finds Danish people to be tastiest. Suppose these people conquer the Danes, or at least some of them, and enslave them and begin some eugenics program to select for more of whatever quality it is that makes them so tasty and less of any capacity to resist, perhaps reducing their intelligence substantially to the point where they are too dumb to even understand their situation. Suppose the Danes here change form over time and become a sort of human that can't breed or otherwise survive without the help of the people who have made them this way. And suppose their lives are utter misery. They are kept in small cages, deprived of sunlight and fresh air, prodded, branded, harrassed with dogs, and so on and so forth, until the day when they are led to slaughter.
Should this practice continue? Does the fact that the continued existence of this new strain of human being relies on this practice justify it? Does the fact that these people would never have existed at all without this practice justify it? I think not. It is monstrous. If the only way for these people to exist is to exist like this, they shouldn't exist. And yes, regardless of the fact that without the cannibals breeding them, they wouldn't exist, the cannibals still live at their expense.
And it seems to me that regardless of the fact that these people wouldn't exist without their "masters", the masters don't rightly own them. As soon as there is someone with interests of their own, they are not the sort of thing that can rightly be considered property. They aren't rightly considered things at all.
As for the animals, it isn't really their existence or nonexistence that is at issue. And the problem with enslaving and slaughtering them involves much more than just causing these particular slaughtered animals to cease to exist, though once they do exist, it becomes a factor.
I think we ought to concern ourselves here with beings that already exist rather than concern ourselves wih potential beings that might exist if certain practices continue. We have this situation, and there are these real beings with their interests. What should we do with them in particular?
If I created you to torture you and you rely on me to be fed, if I decide what I am doing is wrong, now I am probably rightly held responsible for your well-being. I probably ought to provide for you and go to great lengths to make sure the remainder of your life is as positive and free as possible.
If we say that it is wrong to kill someone at least partly because we are robbing them of the remainder of their lives and all their future potentials, are we also saying that they ought to exist and that therefore, more like them ought to exist, and therefore, that we ought to breed as many of them as possible? Is failing to breed as many of them as possible then a serious wrong, the same as killing an equal number? No. Talk of beings who don't exist is fraught with problems. We should concern ourselves here with the rights of existing beings who have real interests. And if we brought them into existence, now that they are here, we are obliged to consider their interests.
Do your potential unborn children have a right to exist? Are you wronging them by not bringing them into existence? If so, that would open a huge can of worms! But any children you happen to have already had are a different matter, aren't they? Those you can't rightly kill. Killing a living being and failing to create a potential being are two very, very different things.
Yes, pain often serves a beneficial function. Could it be that while pain is an evil, some pain is justified if it serves a greater good?
Is suffering ever intrinsically good, without appeal to any extrinsic benefit?
I don't think goodness is a property but rather a subjective judgement.
I don't think harm in nature gives us any obligations .We can attempt to minimise harm in nature if that is something we feel like doing but as I have said I think it is an improbable/impractical etc task.
Pain seems to be less of a problem if it is not pointless because we are willing to tolerate some discomfort to achieve goals. But I don't think there is any clear meaning in any of it especially since there is no clear purpose in nature.
How can you convince someone to not eat meat if you are not concerned with presenting them a valid argument?
There may have been very compelling arguments for ending the slave trade and not just appeals to emotion.
I am not sure what grounds you have for trying to change someones behaviour if they are not valid or rational?
Anyone can try and changes anyone's behaviour in any direction as has historically been the case. But successfully getting someone to believe X or act like X is not a mark of goodness or progress.
It seems like it might make sense to avoid unnecessarily causing pain where it doesn't obviously serve a greater good.
Am I being arbitrary if I choose to pet a dog or even just leave it alone instead of kicking it in the face?
Also, let's be clear. For me, the pain issue seems secondary to the idea that other sentient beings belong to themselves and not to me. They simply aren't mine to do with as I please. It would be wrong for me to use them as a means to my ends like that without some serious justification even if I cause them no pain or even if I cause them pleasure.
Imagine that I enslave a population of humans and use them for my purposes while using brain implants to make all of this very pleasurable for them. Is this then a good, since the overall pleasure in the world has been increased? I think not. The simple pleasure=good, pain=evil thing is too crude.
I forgot to address this. Even if all that were true, it wouldn't make it okay. It would be wrong even if we fed them a constant supply of pleasure drugs.
Put humans in their place and see if you think it would be okay. Round up all the homeless struggling for survival and do to them what we do to food animals. Would this be right?
And do they really live in far better comfort? Have you looked into what conditions are like in factory farms, which supply most of the animal products these days? Do you really think that these conditions are better and more comfortable? Secure? Seriously? You sound like you believe all the animals live on Old MacDonald's Farm. Where are you from? The big city? I've lived in rural America most of my life and have spent time around farms and ranches and have seen some things. I even worked as a kid on a sheep ranch. I frequently drive by a dairy on the edge of a nearby town where right by the road, you can see all the veal calves confined in their little hutches. I've seen animals being branded. I've helped put the little rubber bands around the scrotums of young male sheep, as well as clipped notches into their ears with a tool not unlike a leather punch. I've seen the male chicks put through grinders or suffocated en masse in large plastic bags. But I never personally saw a factory farm operation. Everything I've encountered directly is tame in comparison to what I've learned about factory farms.
Sure, I realize that animal rights activists, when they make their shock videos, are concentrating the worst footage they have. They are trying to make things look as grim as possible. But if you just look into how factory farms are designed to operate, if you have the least empathy for living beings, you should be shocked that our society does this systematically. Would people stand for humans or even dogs being treated in this way? (And don't get me started about how dogs are treated elsewhere in the world as food animals) The factory farm is a reality that is largely hidden from public view. And now, with all the ag-gag laws, it is harder than ever to educate the public about it.
If all the cattle were free-range cattle, it wouldn't be quite so bad, but it would still be wrong.
And do they die without pain? Some methods are fairly quick, but there is a lot of fear and often struggle involved.
Suppose they do die without pain and fear. Should we go around painlessly euthanizing homeless people that will otherwise likely die slowly and uncomfortably?
A big part of this is the question of who and what rightly belongs to us. If animals have more painful and frightful lives in nature, does this give me a right to exploit them and use them for my pleasure, so long as their pain and fright level is lower under my subjection of them?
Why?
Quoting petrichor
False analogy.
You are confusing humans with animals.
Please see "anthropomorphisation"
Quoting petrichor
I'm not making an argument for factory farms. I'm supporting the natural right of a human to eat meat.
Quoting petrichor
making your point about factory farms completely irrelevant.
Quoting petrichor
You are ignorant here.
Please compare with natural death by predator or disease.
I consider domesticants animals too. Your problem seems to be that you confuse them with humans.
I read the rest of your tiatribe and you failed to even begin to address a world without meat animals and what would happen putting more land under the plough, and destroy the environment with more domesticated vegetables production. More factories making tasteless tomatoes. and endives.
I'm prefer to eat something with a bit of blood.
Humans are animals. Or do you subscribe to the idea that we have some special magical difference that makes our interests matter and theirs not, or leaves them without interests? Descartes thought we have souls and animals don't. Do you share a similar view?
Quoting charleton
If my enslavement and eating of a group of humans were to make their lives less painful, more secure, and their deaths sudden and painless, would that justify it? Would that make it okay? Why? Is comfort all that matters?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, these other beings simply do not belong to us to do with as we please.
Quoting charleton
Factory farming and humans eating meat these days pretty much go together. It is arguable that at current human population levels, factory farming is the only way to supply enough meat. At the very least, factory farming makes meat far more affordable.
Quoting charleton
There isn't one single issue here. The evils involved are multiple. I said that if all the cattle were free-range, it would be better (less confinement, less pain, less fear, more natural behavior allowed, etc), but would still be wrong (they still don't belong to us and we have no right to take possession of them in any way).
Quoting charleton
In the case of enslaving, abusing, and slaughtering them, I am the one responsible. In the case of natural death, I didn't cause it. But it isn't that it is all about me. Rather, it is about what I should do and what I have a right to do to other beings with interests of their own, and perhaps rights of their own.
Suppose soldiers are being wounded and killed on a battlefield in gruesome ways. If I go out and capture them and put them in pens and fatten them up before painlessly killing them before I eat them, even if their deaths are less painful under my "care", do I have a right to do this to them? Am I their benefactor?
It seems that you think we are eating meat in order to do all the animals a favor! And let's not forget, as you pointed out, these animals arguably wouldn't even exist in the first place if we weren't raising them for food, so we arguably aren't even saving them from some natural death that they'd otherwise have suffered. Perhaps the matter is different for hunters who hit their mark with a clear head shot.
But if you are going to defend eating meat by arguing that they suffer less when we eat them, is it really the case that you care about their suffering? Is this why you eat them? Supposing it were clear that they suffer more when we raise them for food and eat them, would you then think our eating them is still justified?
Where did I suggest that domesticated animals are not animals?
You said that "Without meat eaters there would be no animals on the land at all." I tried to be charitable in assuming you meant by "animals" only animals domesticated for human food, as obviously, without us eating any animals, even if there were no angus cattle for example, there would still be deer and rabbits and bears and so on. Or by "meat eaters", did you mean carnivores in general, including non-humans? Was your claim that without carnivore animals there would be no animals on the land at all? And by "on the land", do you mean to say that there might still be some animals in the ocean? What the heck are you trying to say? Taken on its face, what you said in that sentence is utterly absurd! But I read some implied qualifiers in there: human meat eaters and domesticated animals. And I was asking for clarification to see if that was indeed what you meant.
Quoting charleton
It might be argued that many humans aren't so different from domesticated animals! :wink:
Quoting charleton
Environmental impact is a whole 'nother issue! And if you look into the matter, you'll see that it comes down in the end strongly in favor of plant-based diets. Many advocate plant-based diets not because of animal rights but because animal production is so bad for the environment. Cows produce lots of greenhouse gases and contribute in a big way to global warming. And we raise plants on farms to feed animals in feedlots, remember? Most of what we feed to animals consists of plants edible for humans that are grown on farmland that could be used for a variety of crops. We mostly feed our domesticated animals corn, even some in fish farms, of all things! Sometimes, we even feed the animals candy (derived from farmed plants)! It isn't like the cows are created ex nihilo! And there are inefficiencies in converting food we could otherwise eat into cow flesh. It takes less land to produce the same amount of food for humans if we eat it directly than it takes to first feed it to cows.
The nature of reality for life on earth is not like this. No one is free really because no one asks to be born and we are it seems forced into existence.
The kind of freedom doesn't seem to exist where we can really metaphysically control our destiny. Animals appear to act more on instinct than rational goals or desire. I don't know what purpose there is for animals that we can thwart.
Can you imagine being a cow wandering around eating grass drinking water and not much else? Even the most sophisticated animals has far less options for cognitive pursuits and diverse behaviours than us.
I think the kind of morality your espousing is a for another reality not this one.
The same way most persuasions are done in the real world - by making them feel they do not want to eat meat - by telling a story that changes how they feel about it.
Validity has nothing to do with how nearly all persuasion is done in the real world, Trump/Putin is not the current US/Russian president because his arguments in the campaign were valid. Britain is not leaving the EU because the arguments for doing so were valid.
Quoting Andrew4Handel I see the quest for moral grounds as pointless and ultimately doomed. Our moral decisions are grounded in our values. Our values are personal and cannot be justified by reason. Lack of identified grounds is no reason for lack of action. To not explicitly act is as much a decision as to act, and each is as groundless as the other.
Yes, but you're still confusing them with what they're not, more specifically other animals, like chickens or pigs. I wouldn't treat humans like we do chickens or pigs, and I wouldn't treat chickens or pigs like we do humans, and there's nothing wrong about that.
Given that chickens and pigs are not like humans, it's a different argument. That they're useful to us, and can be farmed, is not to suggest the same of humans.
If you are born against your will, does that negate any interests you might have once alive? Does that make ridiculous any argument that I ought to respect your rights? Does your being born against your will give me a right to exploit you, to steal from you, to cage you, to torture you, to eat you? Don't you in some sense belong to yourself and not to me? Is there nothing wrong with putting you in a cage?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Humans are driven more by instinct than I think most appreciate. And most desire is instinct.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I am not sure about purpose. That's a thorny issue. But consider a porpoise instead. In one case, a porpoise is out engaging in all its natural behaviors unmolested by humans. In another, it is put in a tiny enclosure where it can barely move, separated from its kind. No difference worth caring about? Are we not thwarting this animal's interests by capturing it and putting it in such an enclosure? Would this animal not rather be out swimming in the open ocean with its own kind, doing what it is instinctually driven to do?
Do I have a right to just take any number of porpoises out of the ocean and place them in enclosures and poke and prod them for my amusement? Is there no sense in which they, as sentient beings, have a right to be left alone by people like me?
What if we take a chimpanzee and lock its head in a vise and stick needles in its eyes? Do you think there is nothing here like an interest belonging to the chimp that we are really thwarting? Is it simply okay to do absolutely anything to animals? If yes, why? Because they don't reason at a sophisticated level?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Cows do more than just that. They actually have a richer social life than most realize, for one thing. Regardless, cows are constituted such that they enjoy wandering around freely eating grass and drinking water, just as we enjoy eating and drinking and moving around freely. Don't you think it would be a drag to be a cow confined in a tiny enclosure in which you can barely move, indoors, packed amidst many other such enclosures among a multitude of distressed cows, prodded, branded, and so on?
Is it the case that the fewer the options for cognitive pursuits and diverse behaviors, the more it is okay for us to take possession of and abuse a creature? Do more intelligent and complex humans have more rights than those with serious disabilities and cognitive deficits?
Have you worked on a kill floor before? Because I have, for hogs, and I can tell you that no, not at all, the beasts do not die well or cleanly. Even in a plant where we have a gakload of regulations in place.
I have seen people beat up hogs, I have seen people disrespect the flesh by playing "organ tag" (yes, exactly what it sounds), I have seen people get their hard-on from cutting the heads of the animals.
The industrial meat plant is the modern incarnation of Hell.
[i]X are useful to us
X can readily be made use of
Therefore, it is right for us to use X[/i]
I hope you aren't making that argument.
Do you think that their usefulness to us and the fact that it is possible to farm them justifies our using and farming them? Consider the possible consequences of such a line of justification. Slaves are useful too. And people can be enslaved. It worked for many centuries. Does that justify anything?
Like us, these animals have the capacity to suffer. And they have interests. They may not the have the potential to become mathematicians, but they are better off not being in such conditions as the following and we have no right to do such things to our fellow sentient beings. The idea that our pleasure justifies all this is monstrous.
I don't think that the default existence for life is pleasure. It certainly is not for me.
If we forget other creatures and just focus on humans there is a lot of problems in the nature of human life.
Humans have suffered from the same fate as animals through their history such as mass starvation, diseases, premature death and natural disasters. From a natural perspective as opposed to any human intervention we have had famines that have killed millions and tsunami's and earth quakes that have probably killed millions through out history. So there is no sentimental default state for being alive.
When it comes to purpose humans have been clever at inventing meanings including religions
....but many people have suffered from a horrible sense of futility and purposelessness including myself which effects every day life. In on one sense other life forms maybe lucky never to be exposed to existential dilemmas or to have the same heightened awareness of their future death.
There is a lack of justice in humans affairs and a persistent irrationality and hypocrisy we are not a good model for a moral exemplar.
Human suffering is very nuanced including the existential stresses I just mentioned. I was forced to go to church up to 5 times a week as a child and found that very stressful and boring. I was bullied in school and by local young people so I have not ended up with a positive perspective on humans.
Reflecting on all my experiences there has been a lot of distress and harm caused by existing and in this social framework. Another anecdote is that my older brother has had progressive M.S. for 20 years and has been paralysed by it, he has had pressure sores, pneumonia at least 6 times and so on.
This is another "gift" or reality of life. Personal moral conduct does not at all ensure positive outcomes. For the phenemonologists here I could give vivid descriptions of the 20 years of my brothers illness and my own problems if you like the tactic of invoking emotions.
However bad we might think life is for humans or animals, that doesn't give us the right to do bad things to other sentient beings. On the contrary, we ought, as much as possible, to bring some kindness into the world. The worse the world is, the more this is needed! Why add bad to bad when it isn't necessary?
I am sorry you've suffered so. And I too have a sibling with progressive MS who is quite disabled. It is a horrible disease for sure. But what does this have to do with vegan ethics? How does any amount of suffering in the world justify adding to it?
No, I'm not. There are hidden premises and I'm not committed to that conclusion. It may well be wrong. I'm just pointing out that they're different, that they're treated differently based on these differences, and that, therefore, the same set of arguments do not apply.
Quoting petrichor
No, it would have to be something more than, or other than, that. It might or might not be justified. My own stance, as I've explained, is that I'm either on the fence - [i]which I think I am to some extent[/I] - or I consider it wrong - [i]which I think I do to some extent[/I] - but I am a meat eater nevertheless. My behaviour doesn't always conform with morality - no ones does. And it doesn't in this case, if you're right about this. There are other important things in my life besides the moral status of eating meat, and they might conflict with a proscribed course of behaviour based on the immortality of eating meat.
Quoting petrichor
Nope, that's not possible, given what I've just argued and made clear.
Quoting petrichor
Yes, they are similar in some respects, and different in others. You seem to want to trivialise or understate the differences.
Quoting petrichor
That's an underhand tactic and is not at all relevant to anything that I have given my support to or accepted. Another member has already objected to this. It just makes you look like a fanatic with a single-minded agenda. This is a philosophy forum, not a protest against keeping animals in those kinds of conditions.
I think that the moderators should consider deleting those pictures - not for graphic content, but because they're unnecessary, irrelevant, and an indication of evangelism.
DUH.
Animals are not humans. Think that through a minute!
Quoting petrichor
Animals are not human.
Quoting petrichor
Yes they do!!
Quoting petrichor
Cows are carbon neutral. This is a false argument and quite a desperate ploy to traduce herbivores in general. The planet is capable of making x amount of biomass. All plant matter eventually rots or passed through an animal, cows, monkeys, or widebeasts; human too, makes no difference. If a cow had not eaten the food the greenhouse gasses would have been farted out by a vegetarian, or eventually rotted away expressing the gas then. A cow is just a part of the carbon cycle.
The only exception to this of any consequence on land is trees. I'm an advocate of growing more tress and humans producing fewer vegetarian babies.
I note you like to look at pictures of animals suffering. I'm not an advocate of battery farming or any kind of intensive farming, certainly not the sort of farming that modern vegetarianism needs in the northern hemisphere, which is destructive of the environment.
I do not advocate these buildings in our countryside.
I prefer to see this.
I've killed several animals that I have reared personally; chickens. geese, ducks, rabbits. I also killed a monsterous goat, as it was born in pain.
Where the law prevented me doing the job myself I took the animals to be killed and observed the process, personally.
Some killing floors are poorly regulated, but best practice in the UK reduces suffering to a minimum.
But even with poor practice the death of an animals in such circumstances would be preferable to ANY natural death.
Define sentient!
I am challenging the view of nature you appear to have.
Humans are not just relaxing in the sun by a pool lazily feasting away on meat. The context of meat eating is brute survival in a far from perfect morally ambiguous world.
I am trying to fix the debate in the context of the real world. My initial point is that meat eating is innate in life not an aberration. And there is no default Utopia for us to return to or achieve.
The question of how we should treat animals is different to whether or not we should eat them and veganism is a diet excluding meat. So I would have no problem with a philosophy of keeping animals in as painless as possible situations.
I don't think life lawfully gives us any obligations and we are just as much a victim of nature as the rest of life.
Maybe you were not doing your job properly?
Maybe the country you live in has poor standards?
Maybe the boss you worked for did not comply with the standards that were his legal responsibilities?
I've seen animals die of natural causes. I know which I would prefer.
You're comparing apples and oranges: A doctor using medications that may have harmful side-effects, uses them because s/he believes the chances are greater that they will help the patient live longer and better than going without the meds. And the doc still has to have your consent to give you the meds unless you are incapacitated in some way. The farmer/butcher kills an animal for the farmer/butcher's good and not that of the animal. The animal benefits in no way from having it's throat slit, nor is it asked for consent.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
And what does an animal have to do in order to show joy in your book? I see animals in my backyard all the time enjoying life: sunning themselves, playing with each other, taking naps, caressing each other, etc, etc. Anyone who's had a dog knows that dogs enjoy life--especially when there is a warm lap, a yummy cookie, and an ear scratch to be had. But then, don't take it from me--take it from any actual ethologist: animals enjoy life.
Furthermore, since homo sapiens enjoy life, evolution dictates that other animals must have this capacity too.
I'm not sure you are quite understanding Dawkins' quote: the universe, being something which cannot think or act, obviously is indifferent (really not even that, since being "indifferent" implies the capacity to care, which the universe cannot). That, however, does not mean that the individuals (human and non-human) within the universe do not, or cannot care. To argue thus would be a fallacy of division.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I'll ignore the contradiction in saying it's pointless to moralize, but we ought to stop crime from happening...
This means that you can identify those things that would count as crimes: which implies you do understand the difference between things one ought to do, and what one ought not to do. But we can use your lingo if you insist (even though it doesn't make a difference really; you're just giving a different name to the concept): the debate then is whether killing animals for food, when we could reasonably do otherwise, is a crime (or should be considered as one)--the answer is still yes. Taking the life of an autonomous, sentient, intelligent being without his/her consent and purely for one's own pleasure is a crime.
Getting so upset about what a stranger says on the internet in a philosophical debate, especially when they did not say anything personal to you, is a sign that you have lost objectivity about the subject (at least for the moment).
Quoting Sapientia
Like we don't all know that actually means "I can't think of a way to counter your arguments, but I don't want to admit it." :cool:
Quoting Sapientia
Why does that change the essence of what I was saying? Even IF you could hypothetically keep a cow for it's natural lifespan (20+ years), it doesn't happen. They are killed before three years of age (dairy cows get to live a whopping 4 years before being killed). And even IF one in a million cows gets treated like a lifelong pet by some farmer who has a soft spot--how does that justify the treatment of the other 999,999? That doesn't even justify it's own killing--because it does not want to be killed.
People post pics and vids on this forum all the time--it's just prop material, get over it.
"Evangelism," "proselytizing," "ideologues" etc, etc are all terms people use against animal rights when they are tired of being proven wrong and just want to cling to their own ideology without having to recognize it as such. You're debating your side, we're doing the same-- if we're evangelists or whatever, so are you. I think neither of us is: we're just debating in a forum created for that very purpose.
:wink:
Yes, but evolution dictates that anything and everything we are innately capable of, other animals can do as well in varying degrees (some better, some worse than us). Such as, but not limited to: suffering when being held captive.
"Able to perceive and feel things"
I was only using the term crime because you brought it up. I have said I am a moral nihilist... so I am only referring to things that have been socially labeled crimes and saying that if they were to be dealt with I would not deal with them in a condemnatory and punitive way. You are trying to commit people to behaving in the same way in a diverse set of circumstances however.
I don't have one default way of categorising and dealing with what may be harm. The "natural" issue was an issue of to what degree our behaviour accords with natural survival, functional behaviour. Eating animals and dead organisms is an essential part of the life cycle so that is a big mitigating circumstance.
........
The issue about pets and humans needing medical treatment is to point out that death is not a consent issue or straightforward. My brother who has been intensive care more than once and had pneumonia several times & nearly was allowed to die by a doctor because they thought that to keep him alive might not be the best option because of his profound disabilities.
So my Dad had to advocate on my brothers behalf and my brother hadn't expressed his wishes. Then the next time he was becoming unconscious through pneumonia I had to make sure I asked my brother did he want to be kept a live at all costs and convey that to the medical staff.
But even after getting a clear advocacy or consent for keeping some one alive the medical procedures are a life or death matter and to which extent you persist in treating someone. So there have been long court cases about whether someone should be kept alive (babies/people in vegetative state etc)
This is in response to you saying "It is not for us to decide for the animal when it should die".
I think life is ambiguous and there is no clear cut moral framework to apply consistently.
You would have to have another premise to get from one to the other. But if you did define harm as bad it would outweigh the good and make a lot of neutral things or natural things immoral..... It seems we are to believe only humans harming animals is a moral evil.
More on moral non-naturalism in this rather wordy article. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/
I've read G.E. Moore: he was not arguing against explaining types of wrong or good, he was arguing against reducing the good or the bad to one type of thing. Along the lines of, you can say an apple is a type of fruit, but you cannot say all fruit are apples--that was Moore's argument for goodness and pleasure.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Um, no? I didn't say that. But humans harming animals is one kind of moral wrong. If you're suggesting it could be immoral for a lion to kill an antelope--lions are not moral agents and so cannot be the perpetrators of moral acts.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Maybe. But you still argued that we ought to stop crimes--which flies in the face of your supposed moral nihilism.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
In some ways, yes I am: I have no qualms about admitting to wanting to commit people to not being murderers or rapists. :snicker:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes, and if you had read my post more carefully, you'd know I said those are exceptions. In cases where a patient cannot make their wishes known, or is not capable of having wishes, others must make choices for them. But a cow is neither a baby nor in a vegetative state. Let a cow choose between pain and no pain, death or life--they can and will choose no pain and living. Duh. No cow voluntarily walks into a knife merely for our pleasure.
Nonsense.
Quoting NKBJ
My way of countering your red herrings is to disregard them.
Quoting NKBJ
It changes it massively. It's the difference between [i]all[/I] and [i]some[/I]. How can that not change the essence of what you're saying? Get it right.
Quoting NKBJ
No one anywhere on the planet, in modern times, has kept a cow for the duration if its natural lifespan? There's not a single exception? Yeah right. That would be extremely unlikely. So, why should I believe that?
Quoting NKBJ
Pointing out what is generally the case doesn't rule out the exceptions that we have been trying to get you to address.
Quoting NKBJ
Did I make that argument? No. So why are you asking me that?
I think vegetarians are all absolute hypocrites because I've never meat a kind vegetarian.
:lol:
Funniest shit I've seen all day.
Pictures of animals in a "vegan ethics" thread is entirely relevant. You're just a snowflake and it's not the moderators' problem that you've a guilty conscience. It'll be okay, Sappy.
Now [I]that's[/I] funny! So I can just waltz into a discussion about, say, the ethics of smoking and pick comments at random to reply to by posting multiple pictures of lung cancer, impotence, bad teeth, and so on - even if it bears no relevance to the specific point that was being made?
On ya bike, Heister! :lol:
I said that "crime" is natural and if we were to intervene in it it should be in a non moralistic way. As I have been saying in the thread "How can actions be right or wrong" I think you can have a best way to achieve an outcome (regardless of how dubious the outcome might be). So there are various methods to interfere with activity deemed criminal.
I have made it quite clear by now that I am drawing a distinction between things that happen in nature and things that are functional survival traits in the fabric of life.
There are specific contexts for trying to alter peoples behaviour and different motivations. We have personal motives for interfering in behaviour but I don't think we have any obligation. Also I don't think we can moralize about or interfere all harm. It is not inconsistent to chose which harm you feel the need to prevent.
Quoting NKBJ
On what grounds are you calling someone a moral agent?
Are you happy for us to post pictures of animals being eaten alive then? Are you happy for us to post images of mass drowning or starvation in nature etc?
Links would be sufficient.
The fuck are you talking about? Petrichor's been in this thread from the beginning and has stayed on point throughout. You simply don't like the pictures and want them removed because you're too insecure to address them.
Quoting Sapientia
Sure, and I'll leave you crashed in the ditch, laytuh beeitch.
Has a plant ever voluntary walked into your most merely for your pleasure? Nothing has a choice about whether it dies or not because that is inevitable.
We have to exploit nature to survive. As a depressed nihilist I know what it is like to be unhappy with the state of life an nature. It certainly is not Disneyland.
It is unfortunate but dead animals are part of the cycle of life and part of most organism nutrition.
:lol:
Quoting Buxtebuddha
That's a cute theory. Now, explain the relevance to the point that it was replying to.
If a thread is about veganism, the ethics of veganism, animals, the rights and wrongs of using and eating animals, then pictures relating to these topics and many other subtopics are entirely relevant. If a thread is about drowning, starvation, or natural disasters, then pictures relating to those topics are also relevant.
As far as I can tell, his intention was to highlight the ability for animals to suffer. Pictures, in addition to the thousands and thousands of words that he has written in the thread, help to support his post. As I said before, you don't like the pictures, so you started crying about them.
And like I said before, that's a cute theory, but you need to explain the relevance to the point that it was replying to. That his intention was to highlight the ability of animals to suffer does not explain the assumed relevance to the point that it was replying to, and that intention would fit the motive of an evangelical.
(Also "thousands and thousands": :lol: )
^
The above assertion was what he responded to with a post about use and suffering, about which pictures were relevant. You never even made an argument, so whatever "point" you've been whispering to me about still isn't coming through.
Quoting Sapientia
Here, I'll put his shit in a word counter, give me a moment, sweetie.
When are you going to explain the relevance to the point that was being made? How many replies is it going to have to take? That he responded with a post about use and suffering does not adequately explain the relevance. And besides, that can be done without splattering a post with propagandistic imagery in a superficial attempt to appeal to emotion and promote your agenda.
Also, I find it funny that you quote my argument, and then claim that I never even made one.
Quoting Sapientia
One can argue how they like. Petrichor read your post and responded to it accordingly. Whether or not you agree with what he posted is irrelevant to the matter of whether or not he is able to post pictures.
That's impressive. I'll make sure he gets his medal.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
They sound like the words of someone who has begun to realise that they're fighting a losing battle. Yes, one can argue how they like - that's beside the point. Yes, he responded accordingly - in accordance with what one would expect from an evangelist, rather than in accordance with what one would expect from someone whose main concern is to stick to the point - that's the problem. And yes, whether or not I agree with what he posted is irrelevant to the matter of whether or not he is able to post pictures - which in turn is irrelevant to the point that I made.
You're utterly incapable of admitting when you're wrong, aren't you?
Quoting Sapientia
"Evangelists: Those who must convince everyone that their religion, ideology, political persuasion, or philosophical theory is the only one worth having."
That's the relevant site guideline to which you have appealed. Now, since you know Petrichor's words so well, inside and out, please direct me to where he has stated that his opinion "is the only one worth having," and that him posting animal abuse photographs reflects that. Go on, I'll be waiting...but no, hold on...
Quoting Sapientia
There we go, I've saved you the time of getting out your white flag by retrieving it for you myself! I'm the nicest chap, I know. God bless me.
When I'm wrong? Does not compute.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
First of all, he doesn't need to state that, so whether he has or he hasn't stated that - and he probably hasn't - I do not need to waste my time searching through his post history to find out. It doesn't have to be so explicit, and it likely isn't so explicit in most cases.
Secondly, as I think I've already made clear, posting multiple images of the type which are likely to elicit an emotional reaction to the benefit of the agenda that you support, in response to a specific intellectual point, which do not address that specific intellectual point, is something one would expect from an evangelist.
So you've got nothing, okay.
Quoting Sapientia
What does it have to be then? Whatever you suspect with a tin foil hat on?
Quoting Sapientia
Whenever you're in the wrong on this forum your first reaction has always been to say that the other is not properly addressing you, and so in the end the debate ends because you were threatened and chose to divert attention. You seem to be doing the same thing here by assuming the entirety of Petrichor's intentions. This is quite clearly wrong. That the mods have chosen to do nothing appears to validate that in some way.
When the "something" is not required, the "nothing" will suffice.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Indicative of evangelism.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
His intentions are secondary. The primary objection is that it's irrelevant and misleading.
Yeah, because you really follow that lingo, :chin:
Quoting Sapientia
So, lemme try and get this straight, as Petrichor has written 13, 617 words, none of that was "indicative of evangelism," but as soon as he posted a couple of pictures, he ought to be taken out back and shot for evangelism? Please, Sappy, I think it is you who needs to leave along with your hurt butt. Your "point" the last page is pathetic and vacuous, give it a rest.
I will help you get it straight, because I'm generous like that:
The part that was indicative of behaviour associated with evangelism was indicative of behaviour associated with evangelism for the reasons I've made clear, and the rest of the content, including most of those 13,617 words you bring up, are not relevant to this point.
Furthermore, as I've now made explicit, this point in relation to evangelism is secondary. So you're choosing to focus on a secondary point, and, moreover, you're addressing it in your usual manner which utilises ridiculous exaggeration, flippancy, and unnecessary personal commentary.
The first of these images of the pigs in wire cages has been used on the internet in a misleading way. This was a picture from China and the pigs were temporally in those cages awaiting transport to market.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pig-cage-photo/
Personally pictures of animals never move me in they way pictures of humans suffering do. But I think animal welfare can be improved with in the framework of meat eating.
You cannot call my arguments red herrings if you haven't read them--either you lied previously, or you are committing an argumentum abusi fallacia (falsely calling something a fallacy, which would be the case if you just toss the fallacy's name out there without knowing it to be true).
Quoting Sapientia
If you actually let a cow live it's entire natural lifespan, then you can't have killed it. If humans just let cows live and die according to their own biological timeline and then feel the need to pick the flesh of off their rotting corpses, I suppose I see no ethical problem in that (although, at this point in my life, I have serious aesthetic objections).
Even if a cow were to be raised humanely and treated nicely up until a day before it's natural death, it would still be wrong to then kill it. Just like you cannot kill the elderly lady next door a day before her natural demise. To do so is murder. Murder is not defined by how nice you were before death, or how long they could have lived after, or any of that: it's the intentional killing of another sentient and intelligent being who did nothing to deserve death and does not want death.
Quoting Sapientia
Because that's where your entire argument is headed: you're arguing against veganism partially on the basis of some hypothetical scenario that is not only wrong, but also just doesn't happen in the real world. You're gonna have to find other arguments to justify your hamburger.
You're not very good at following what I say. You suggest that I haven't read your argumentative points, or that I've said or implied that I haven't, but that isn't the case. On the contrary, obviously I have read some of them. I just stopped doing so after a certain point because they were not relevant to the points that I was making to you, and because I lost patience with trying to get you to stay on point.
Quoting NKBJ
When you say that it doesn't want death, that's not the same as when you say that a human doesn't want death. There are different implications, or rather, there must be to make sense of what you're saying. What evidence is there that a cow can understand, contemplate or reflect on death? Or are you just speculating that it doesn't want death?
Anyway, regardless of whether or not it's wrong, it's useful and has benefits. Maybe that's more important to some people.
Quoting NKBJ
No, my argument was not attempting to justify the treatment of the other 999,999 - which is, word for word, what you [i]actually[/I] said, rather than what you're [i]now[/I] saying.
My argument just pointed out an exception, which does indeed happen in the real world, given the likelihood of it. I thought that you had conceded that point, as you appeared to accept that the likelihood of it being otherwise would be extremely remote, and you haven't given me any reason to rethink this likelihood.
And I'm not trying to justify my eating of hamburgers. If you listened more, and characterised less, then you might have picked up on that. It is what it is, right or wrong, and I accept that. Either way, my behaviour remains more or less the same.
That's a sweeping statement, don't you think?
Eh, you know what? Since you self-admittedly just ignore the arguments you don't like, and since you're also admitting to not actually being interested in the truth:Quoting Sapientia, I'm quite sure there is no longer a point to our conversation.
It's worse than that, it's counterproductive, because you demonstrate time and again that you either can't accurately follow what I'm saying, or you're purposefully misrepresenting it.
So yes, let's end it.
In relation to what? I was just making a general point in relation to my opening post concerning how close to nature a behaviour is.
In relation to the statement you made.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
And I'm replying that it isn't something which warrants such a generalisation. Nature can be a poor standard on which to judge how we should behave. I can think of some counterexamples.
I said we shouldn't disregard our nature. Disregard means ignore or place little weight on.
Meaning we should take into consideration what we actually are like as biological and psychological creatures. That doesn't mean we should copy the behaviour of nature.
It means we should not give a false picture of ourselves on which to base a morality etc.
Okay, sure. But that's all rather meaningless on its own, without going into specifics about how it should guide our behaviour and why. That we're omnivorous is a poor argument for eating meat. In fact, pointing out that something is natural is generally a poor argument in ethics, cf. the naturalistic fallacy heretofore mentioned by others.
I don't think we need arguments to justify our behaviour. Does any other animal provide arguments to justify their behaviour.
Anyhow I did not specify any behaviour here because I am making a more general point which could be called biological realism if you like.
But I have mentioned homosexuality before. I don't think it is possible to change someones sexuality so I think it is futile and harmful to try.
As I also said before some behaviours or traits are like this were the more ingrained they are the less they make coherent moral objects.
I am a moral nihilist because I don't see any moral rules anywhere and if a moral property is not found in nature where else could it be found?
You can take an ethical or moral stance on anything without it revealing an underlying moral truth.
There is only so much intuition could tell us. I have things I don't like but not strong moral intuitions. Also moral intuitions or feelings lead to quite different conclusions.
I would say I had preferences rather than a moral stance. I don't think moral ideas can be non natural because that stance is meaningless.
I am not sure what moral stance you are attributing to me.
Point taken--that wasn't a very precisely worded example on my part. But I hope you can still get the gist of what I was saying: cows don't want to be hurt, and that includes being killed.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
True enough. But how does that justify killing someone?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I'm not sure that it's true that we have to exploit nature to survive--it's one way to survive temporarily, but clearly that's now backfiring on us. We DO have to live in symbiosis with nature, but I'm not convinced that means living off of the flesh of other sentient and intelligent beings.
If Dante had known about Disneyland, it would have been one of his levels of hell. :joke:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
True enough. But that doesn't justify killing either. The worms can just as well munch away at a carcass after it has lived it's full life.
Isn't a "depressed nihilist" a pessimist? And many of your arguments seem more pessimistic than nihilistic, honestly.
Okay, but that's just semantics, it seems. I can say that I have a furry friend rather than a cat, but we'd still be talking about the same thing.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
What? I'm not sure what you mean by that or its presumed relevance to what we were talking about. My point was that using, "It's natural", as an ethical justification - or, "reason", to use your terminology - is not a good argument. Do you have a reply which directly addresses that? Or, if the above reply is supposed to address that indirectly, can you connect the dots?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
The moral stance that I'm attributing to you is that eating meat is acceptable because of X, Y, and Z, despite the objections, of which you're aware, and which you have considered and rejected.
Even if you think I have strong moral opinions that does not mean I believe they relate to existent moral facts.
Quoting Sapientia
What I have been saying is more like meat eating isn't a moral issue.
I have went into great detail about about why I don't accept the naturalistic fallacy. I am waiting to hear where you can find a morality that doesn't reference nature.
If I was a god and created a world then I imagine it would be odd if I didn't put any moral guidance in nature. And If nature wan't a moral guide there is nowhere else we know of that transcends nature etc.
Why do you why do you say "someone"? Can we not stick to talk about killing animals for food?
There are lots of reason why we a won't kill a fellow human.
Personally I don't see why we have to justify anything. And to whom?
Being part of nature means that what we do is not unnatural. We can't do anything other than what nature allows. The notion we are being unreasonable seems to be a subjective value judgement. I think lots of things people do are unreasonable.
The justification for killing an animal is because you eat hungry and want to eat it. What justification due you have for asking people to live like herbivores?
The inevitability of death puts the whole process in perspective. Organisms try and stay alive but are doomed to become fertiliser. I think humans hypothetically have a lot of potential for however long they live and losing a human is a far greater loss than losing a cow. If Einstein and a cow were drowning I know who I would save first.
I never actually said anything about "existent moral facts" or your beliefs about them.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
But it is a moral issue, even if you think that it shouldn't be. It seems to be quite a popular one, and it's raised with some frequency.
And I do still think that you're taking a moral stance as I described.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I don't need to find a morality that doesn't reference nature. I would need to give a better reason in relation to an arguably moral stance which is not, "Because it's natural", and there are plenty of those. For example, my own reason for eating meat has nothing to do with whether or not it's natural. My reason is hedonistic, in that I eat meat because I enjoy doing so. To give another example, other people don't eat meat because they think that it does harm to animals without a good enough reason. Whether right or wrong, they are better reasons than, "Because it's natural" or its contrary for that matter, "Because it's unnatural".
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That the world might not fit how you would have designed it is another weak starting point for an argument. I think that I would have left out things like cancer, yet cancer is part of our reality.
And that, for some people, nature provides some moral guidance, is not enough to refute my argument. I might even be one of those people to at least [i]some[/I] extent. But it can definitely be a bad reason, and it's quite easy to show that. That's why it is, and should remain, a fallacy.
No, we can't, because they just can't help themselves, it seems! They want to appeal to emotion through language, pictures, or changing the topic to something more serious. It's a shame.
I sort of figured we'd have to sort this part out at some point. Kind of explains why we've been talking passed each other this whole time. I'm not sure what you would categorize non-human animals as, but animal rights theorists (including me) see them as persons, hence calling them "someone." They have everything one needs for personhood: intelligence, emotions, desires, fears, personalities, etc.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Agreed.
That doesn't make it right, though, or something we should do. But I don't think you and I are going to agree about that part ever, so why keep bringing it up? I'm simply not going to agree with you about the subjectivity of morality and you're not going to agree with me about the objectivity thereof. Why belabor the point?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Strictly speaking I don't ask others to be herbivores. I'm just trying to explain my view of vegan ethics that have convinced me to be herbivorous. I think it would be better if people did all go vegan, but I know it's futile to ask or tell anyone to who can't see the light.
If I did ask others to go vegan (hypothetically), I would likely justify it by citing the suffering meat eating causes, the poor labor conditions in the meat industry, the contribution to climate change, the fact that meat has to be subsidized substantially by taxes, that it contributes to world hunger, and that it is linked to various diseases including heart problems, cancer, and diabetes....and so on.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Agreed. And I would save a human over a non-human as well.
However, lucky for us, that is not the scenario we have when talking about veganism. It's not about deciding what is best for humans OR other animals; it happens to be better for humans AND other animals. It's a win-win. :)
But [i]we[/I] talk normally, so... :meh:
I thought we agreed you and I had nothing left to say to each other on this subject? I'd prefer sticking to that.
Compare the lifespans, cultural security, and athletic achievements of the ”Masai” and their respective autopsies; to the ”Kenyans” and the ”Tarahumara”.
Compare the 6-16 copies of AMY1A in our genome to the 1-2 genes each for lipase and pepsin. AMY1A is the gene for producing the enzyme ”amylase” which breaks down starch in the human gut, while enzymes lipase and pepsin break down fats and proteins respectively. To me, this directly suggests that we are genetically prep’d for a ”high-starch, low-fat, low-protein diet.”
Looking at the physiology of our digestive system reveals that us humans share a ”sacculated colon” with all herbivores, rather than the smooth short digestive tracts of omnivores such as dogs, bears, etc.
Even looking at the effect of large scale industrialized animal agriculture that first spawned in the 1940’s & 50’s, which proves destructive and hazardous to the wellbeing of our current civilization type; a move torwads veganism would still predicate desire for ”self-preservation” before it would a prideful mechanism to practice ”ethics”. Such large scale industrialized animal agriculture very well might contribute to 50% or more of GHG emissions, and be the #1 consumer of both fresh water, grain, grassland, forest, and topsoil(which is replenished 1 inch per 1 thousand years).
Now I will start on my bibliography for these statements. This is not college, and my primary motive behind this monologue was merely to entertain myself through writing and submitting a self appealing essay to trigger a megear secretion of dopamine.
Archeological, bone, dental, and hair analytics:
(https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tpNZAYBXNEMZDm1i7Er9CPth_nCJNiDHMTNflFHSiV303UHU2YN7Jy3NgTO4dAxiQ0qRDQbsO-oTKSc3)
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4163920/#!po=4.08805)
Anthropology, health and athletic analysis of Masai and Inuit compared to Tarahumara, and Kenyans:
-(https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/95/1/26/167903)
-(https://nutritionstudies.org/masai-and-inuit-high-protein-diets-a-closer-look/)
-(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajhb.22239)
-(https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/food-and-macronutrient-intake-of-male-adolescent-kalenjin-runners-in-kenya/52555A7D4BCBBFEA54F5AED2B37E1D87)
Genome, and DNA analytics:
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377015/)
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5112570/)
(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/star.201000150)
GHG emissions:-(http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf)
Freshwater consumption of modern industrialized animal agriculture: -(http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts.pdf)
-(https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wulv.html)
Grain, famine, deforestation, and overgrazing.
-(http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat)
-(http://ipidumn.pbworks.com/f/DietMatters.pdf)
Digestive tract anotomy and analyses:
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4458075/#!po=0.866337)
(https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Christensen6/publication/260083597_Christensen_J_Motility_of_the_Colon_In_Physiology_of_the_Gastrointestinal_Tract_Johnson_Christensen_Alpers_Jacobsen_and_Walsh_eds_3rd_Ed_Raven_Press_New_York_Chapter_24_pp_991-1024_1994/links/546e49ca0cf29806ec2eb03d/Christensen-J-Motility-of-the-Colon-In-Physiology-of-the-Gastrointestinal-Tract-Johnson-Christensen-Alpers-Jacobsen-and-Walsh-eds-3rd-Ed-Raven-Press-New-York-Chapter-24-pp-991-1024-1994.pdf)
Anyway, no, the scientific consensus is not that we're herbivores, it's that we're omnivores. That tripe can be found on some websites, like PETA, where they obviously have an agenda. It's an informal fallacy known as cherry picking.
There are even vegan and vegetarian websites which discourage this, by saying things like, "As much as I agree with veganism, distorting facts to make a point is not the way to go. In fact, it’s counterproductive".
Biologically, genetically, and physiologically, we appear to be herbivore animals. Furthermore I might be willing to argue that scientific consensus does in fact show that civilizations thrive on starch as opposed to animal foods.
Obviously the true ”scientific consensus” is buried underneath bias from both sides, and even those are buried underneath the public opinion. We can accuse each other of fashioning either of those biases, or the public opinion; as the ”scientific consensus” now can't we?
Maybe we should make a separate thread for that discussion. I don't know if I care enough or not atm to convince you or anyone else that we are herbivores, thrive as such, and cannot sustain our society with the current scale of animal agriculture. Let it be my opinion, let me be gullible, a victim of vegan media bias, if that's how you see me. I'm only here to please myself through discussion, nothing any of us say here is going to change the world.
In the interim of my bibliography, is there anything specific about my passage that you wanted me to substantiate more thoroughly? Or are you just pushing me to do a better job on writing an initial argument?
Archeological, bone, dental, and hair analytics:
(https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tpNZAYBXNEMZDm1i7Er9CPth_nCJNiDHMTNflFHSiV303UHU2YN7Jy3NgTO4dAxiQ0qRDQbsO-oTKSc3)
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4163920/#!po=4.08805)
Anthropology, health and athletic analysis of Masai and Inuit compared to Tarahumara, and Kenyans:
-(https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/95/1/26/167903)
-(https://nutritionstudies.org/masai-and-inuit-high-protein-diets-a-closer-look/)
-(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajhb.22239)
-(https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/food-and-macronutrient-intake-of-male-adolescent-kalenjin-runners-in-kenya/52555A7D4BCBBFEA54F5AED2B37E1D87)
Genome, and DNA analytics:
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377015/)
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5112570/)
(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/star.201000150)
GHG emissions:-(http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf)
Freshwater consumption of modern industrialized animal agriculture: -(http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts.pdf)
-(https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wulv.html)
Grain, famine, deforestation, and overgrazing.
-(http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat)
-(http://ipidumn.pbworks.com/f/DietMatters.pdf)
Digestive tract anotomy and analyses:
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4458075/#!po=0.866337)
(https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Christensen6/publication/260083597_Christensen_J_Motility_of_the_Colon_In_Physiology_of_the_Gastrointestinal_Tract_Johnson_Christensen_Alpers_Jacobsen_and_Walsh_eds_3rd_Ed_Raven_Press_New_York_Chapter_24_pp_991-1024_1994/links/546e49ca0cf29806ec2eb03d/Christensen-J-Motility-of-the-Colon-In-Physiology-of-the-Gastrointestinal-Tract-Johnson-Christensen-Alpers-Jacobsen-and-Walsh-eds-3rd-Ed-Raven-Press-New-York-Chapter-24-pp-991-1024-1994.pdf)
I must say, I’ve always been curious as to how exactly one decides that an article was or was not ”cherry picked”. Does it feel like I probably cherry picked these articles? Was the 1,600hrs of independent nutritional research I did in my time as an access control guard some years ago lead by gullible influences of biased vegan media? These things keep me up at night, they truly do... Forgive the undertones, I’m not trying to be any less sincere then my esteemed critics, and I’m fully prepared to be every bit as sincere as they can prove to be to me... *bows in respect*
Humans are clearly omnivores and you can happily make that claim just based on the evidence of what we are eating now.
There are also a couple of well crafted videos by sv3rige on YouTube with some evidence of chronic malnutrition in vegans. There is also lots of testimony to be found of ex vegans reporting chronic heath problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HwBtRlyxPs
But you are trying to impose a similar status on animals to humans. You do seem to have an inaccurate view of nature because you seem to be implying that it is a default utopia or something we can improve.
As I have pointed out with some evidence, starvation, disease and predation are the natural default and a death in the wild is not better than one elsewhere.
I don't think an animal becomes a person just by referring to it as thus. There is a clear distinction between our different comprehensions and capacities and our ability to be part of the same society.
I don't believe in rights either. I think rights are statements to justify attitudes and behaviour but they are not objectively existent. For example we don't have a right to life. Many children historically died in infancy and if cancer wants to kill you it won't respect you alleged right to life.
There are people who pamper their pets, clothe them and treat them like children. You can carry out a charade like this but then there is a limit to an animals ability and you would not elect them as a politician or want them to fly your plane. So yes, you can act a certain way towards an animal without it having the traits you want to attribute to it.
I think you need to clarify in which direction you're actually arguing. The way I see it, you're making two different, juxtaposed claims:
1. We shouldn't attribute any rights to non-human animals, because all rights only belong to humans.
2. No one, not even humans have, or should be given, any rights.
I think both claims are wrong, but for the sake of the argument it would be good if you could elucidate what you actually mean.
No entity has rights. Rights are fantasies
There are millions of academic studies. You have cited a few dozen.
Providing a bibliography is not helpful at all, I'm afraid. It actually makes me even more sceptical of what you're trying to flog. It's like you're waving a shiny object in front of us, saying, "Look here! Look at all of these links and studies!". It's just spam, really, and ought to be hidden or deleted.
You can forget all of that. You should start by dealing with the foundation behind the consensus that we're omnivores. It's concerning, and telling, that instead of doing that, you seem to be trying to overload us with select information aligned with the conclusion you're seeking to confirm.
I think you [i]really do[/I] have a personal stake in this, and that doesn't provide me with reassurance. You seem like one of those guys who goes on Dragon's Den and says that he has invested a million pounds of his own money and sold his house in order to get his invention of fireproof matches off the ground. Well, "I'm out".
Well, then, by your own premises you are definitely wrong. Biologically we are omnivorous, which should be evident by the fact that we are neither obligatory herbivores or obligatory carnivores. We are definitely not biological herbivores.
More precisely, we are biological omnivore but behaviouraly primarily granivores, because the vast majority of our food are grain based (think all the bread and cereals we eat).