Animal Ethics - Is it wrong to eat animals?
I base my moral foundation on something similar to Sam Harris, which is the consideration of the well-being of conscious creatures. This includes humans and animals. But I'd also say it is impossible to accept these 3 moral pillars while simultaneously eating animals. And these 3 pillars are: Empathy, compassion and ethical consistency.
Empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another living being. Compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help. (Can be substituted for Altruism). Ethical Consistency is being logically consistent within a belief. Primarily regarding the consistency of the justification being used.
Does anyone here eat animals, while also adhering to the moral trifecta (Empathy, compassion and ethical consistency)? If so, I'd like to know how?
Scientific Research for plant-based diets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
Empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another living being. Compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help. (Can be substituted for Altruism). Ethical Consistency is being logically consistent within a belief. Primarily regarding the consistency of the justification being used.
Does anyone here eat animals, while also adhering to the moral trifecta (Empathy, compassion and ethical consistency)? If so, I'd like to know how?
Scientific Research for plant-based diets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
Comments (816)
What is it like to be a bat?
A case could be made (and is made) that there's nothing like being a bat (or other animal), or at least that it's not anything that we can understand, and so that empathy for animals is impossible. Claims of empathy for animals is actually mistaken anthropomorphism.
So I can be empathetic towards humans, but not animals, and so can adhere to this "moral trifecta" whilst also eating meat.
We may have empathy, compassion and the desire to be consistent but alas all is not well with our world. Look at our biology - we're designed to be meat-eaters. At least that's what I think. We lack the basic bio-machinery to be completely vegetarian. One evidence for this is our tendency to develop anemia on a vegan diet. Of course this can be compensated for but does nothing to diminsh the truth - we're omnivores (meat+veggies). Put this basic biological fact in the context of our more evolved brain. We think of all sorts of things and this includes empathy, compassion the desire to be consistent and we have the asynchrony that puts us in this mess. Our brains are far too evolved than our guts.
I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
Don't worry. Irrationality and hypocrisy, strangely, are not crimes...yet!
Let's take this vegetarian point of view to its logical conclusion. Plants are living things too. Right?
Of course a vegetarian would respond that plants don't feel pain but isn't that the wrong reason to be a vegetarian in the first place.
I'd like to be a vegetarian because of a positive reason like valuing life and not because of a negative one based on pain. I know these (valuing life-not wanting to cause pain) are two sides of the same coin but that's exactly what I'm getting at. We don't want to kill because we value life and plants are living things too.
Someone who eats meat but adheres to your "moral trifecta" would reject the antecedent. Animals don't feel pain; or at least the kind of pain that they feel is nothing like the kind of pain that we feel, and so we are incapable of empathising with them.
What irrationality and hypocrisy?
Quoting chatterbears
If lions, tigers, and alligators do it, then why would it be wrong? Here we go into another thread asking a subjective question as if it had an objective answer.
And some humans are not conscious to the same degree as other humans - therefore the degree of consciousness should not be a measuring stick for deciding who lives and who dies.
Lions, tigers and alligators cannot moral assess actions and conform to ethical consistency. They don't have the capacity for moral evaluation like we do.
Again, what is it like to be a bat? As Nagel argued, consciousness cannot be reduced to physicalism or behaviourism. A case can be made that brains and biological responses to stimulation are not identical to (and do not entail) qualia, and so it is invalid to infer from the available evidence that animals feel pain (or at least that the pain they feel is like the pain that we feel).
They can be arbitrary, but people can be inconsistent within their own arbitrary ethics. Which is part of the problem.
They may not feel identical pain to the pain we experience, but they still do in fact feel pain. That is just a fact.
I don't. I'm not arguing that animals don't feel pain. I'm arguing that a meat-eater can "accept the 3 moral pillars while simultaneously eating animals" by rejecting the claim that animals feel pain (or at least the claim that animal pain is like human pain).
Yes. I was waiting for that one. But what's your point? We don't factory farm humans. They wouldn't taste as good.
Because they feel pain and suffering. And we should not cause needless pain and suffering to another living being. But to be more clear, why do you eat animals?
If they don't feel pain in the same way that we do then we can't empathise with them. If, when I try to imagine their pain, I'm actually imagining human-pain, then I'm not actually imagining their pain. So it isn't actual empathy; it's false anthropomorphism.
By that logic, you can use the same reasoning between two humans. Each person has a different capacity and tolerance for pain, and therefore does not feel pain in the same way another person does. You could get hit on the hand with a stick and feel pain differently than me, but this doesn't mean I cannot empathize with you just because our pain is not identical.
This is a valid point. I overlooked the important point that animals feel pain and plants don't.
Now that you ask, I don't know why we eat meat. It's probably the taste.
Anyway remember that we were hunter gatherers before we settled down to till the land. Perhaps meat eating is just a remnant behavior of our ancient forefathers.
Hopefully, we'll begin to see sense and give up killing animals for food or fun.
We can't adhere to the ''trifecta'' and continue to eat meat as empathy and compassion are based on not causing pain. Am I right?
If we don't feel pain the same way then we can't empathise with each other. To empathise with someone is to understand and share someone else's feelings.
Quoting TheMadFool
The meat-eater can claim that animals don't feel pain, so their position is consistent (even if factually wrong).
Being factually wrong is a big problem, don't you think?
Also, I am unclear of your position. Are you just defending the position that you do not hold. Are you, yourself, a meat eater? And do you believe we can empathize with animals in the context of feeling ANY pain or suffering.
Do you eat meat?
But my question was about consciousness. You cut that part out of your quote. Do you base your moral foundation on consciousness, like Sam Harris, or not? If you do, then please address this aspect of my question, instead of changing the subject.
Sure. But you only asked how a meat-eater can be consistent in accepting the 3 moral pillars whilst eating meat. And they can be consistent by rejecting the claim that animals feel pain (or that we can empathise with animal pain).
One of their premises might be false, but their position is consistent all the same.
:grin: yes :sad:
Yes I do. That I consider the well-being of sentient (conscious) living beings. What exactly is your question?
If you don't mind me asking. Why do you eat meat?
Oh, I am fully aware a person can be consistent and also eat meat, but that usually leads to absurd positions or factually wrong positions. I guess that was assumed that people would not want to be factual wrong or absurd.
It's on page one.
So, if a species level of consciousness is to a point of being incapable to feel pain or suffering (maybe similar to a plant), then I wouldn't see a problem in killing it. But generally speaking, most animals (humans included) can experience a consciousness level that contains the ability to feel pain and suffering.
They don't want to be factually wrong or absurd. They will argue that it's true (and so not absurd) that animals don't feel pain (or at least that their pain is nothing like human pain). As I mentioned before, if Nagel is right then qualia cannot be reduced to physicalism/behaviourism, and so the evidence you present in favour of animals feeling (human-like) pain isn't evidence of this at all.
I'll argue the point with them when the time comes, but that statement in and of itself leads to an absurd position. But again, you are just playing devil's advocate, I assume. What is your position? Do you eat meat, if so why?
I eat meat because I like it.
But they don't have the same level of consciousness with regards to pain and suffering, so why should one be empathic and compassionate to the same degree, rather than just to a degree appropriate for creatures of that level of consciousness?
Do you think the justification of "i like it" is valid and ethically consistent?
A severely mentally handicapped person, or a brain dead person, does not have the same level of consciousness with regards to pain and suffering than we do. But would that make it OK to kill them?
It's not a justification. It's a motivation. Why would I need to justify eating meat?
Every action you initiate has a justification for why you commit that action. Especially when it comes to ethical/moral choices. Things like preferences (listening to different types of music), doesn't necessarily need a justification. But when it comes to decisions that may or may not cause harm, you'll need a valid justification for why you have initiated that action. Otherwise, your morality is based on nothing but feeling/motivation/desire. Which is scary.
What harm does eating meat cause?
Many different types. 1. Harm to the animals who are being tortured and slaughtered for food. 2. Harm to the environment. One of the leading causes of global warming (climate change) is our factory farms. 3. Harm to your own body. We have healthier alternatives to eating meat, which are plant based. The science is out there, research it for yourself.
But the main harm it does, that we should consider, is harming the animals. We contribute to the slaughter and torture of these animals, every time we eat meat. We pay someone else to kill animals for our consumption. Yet, we have plant-based alternatives that negate the need for meat.
People are inconsistent in many things, including yourself. It is probably the result of how our modular brain evolved.
But we were talking about factory farmed animals, like cows, chickens, and pigs, as you specifically requested. So, why are you changing the subject?
We don't factory farm humans, and I have no desire for cannibalism, so it's not the same.
If I am inconsistent in something that is as easily changeable as a diet, I would change it.
This is why I asked you to clarify your question. You went to consciousness and I responded. Rephrase your question.
Okay, so you were playing devil's advocate?
My point was, on what grounds does one claim that animals do not feel pain? If you are playing devil's advocate then why stop playing when the questions get difficult?
The moral question is whether it's morally acceptable to rear and/or sacrifice animals for food.
It would be nice to think that we could eliminate pain and suffering from the meat supply chain, and that animals destined for consumption could have a 'meaningful' existence whilst alive. However, even if this were possible, it is still moot as to whether the euthanising of animals is morally acceptable.
Personally, I am unconvinced by any of the arguments for the consumption of animals, yet, for the record, I will admit to biting the bullet despite the fact that the green and speciesist arguments are compelling.
The point was there in the post. You just cherry-picked the post in making your reply. I said that the degree of consciousness should not be a measuring stick for determining what lives or dies.
"Tasting good" is subjective. Human meat could be designed to taste like anything.
I am a bit confused on your position. Are you a meat eater?
Because I only wanted to show how the meat-eater can be consistent in his position, given that that's what the OP asked for.
Perhaps that there's a lack of evidence.
Given that I do X when I feel Y, and given that you're sufficiently similar to me, I can be justified in inferring that if you do X then you feel Y.
But I might argue that a cow is insufficiently similar to me and so I am not justified in making the same inference.
Or one can argue that given the different nervous system and brain structure, it's likely that whatever they feel isn't like what I feel, and so empathy is impossible.
Again, you can use this same logic between humans. Each individual human has different brain structure and a different nervous system (not identical). But empathy is NOT the ability to feel what another living being feels to 100% accuracy. It is about the practical and basic human/animal emotion and pain that we all feel. Adhering to this 100% absolute identical feeling of empathy is a red herring and is slightly absurd.
It's okay to turn off the life support of someone in a permanent vegetative state, so long as it's in accordance with the outcome of a decision made by someone in the appropriate professional capacity, and so long as it's done by someone in the appropriate professional capacity, and in accordance with the relevant procedure.
People in permanent vegetative states are not treated as equals with other human beings, and neither are cows, pigs, and chickens, and there's an obvious reason for this, which is that they aren't equal in important respects. It's one thing to seek appropriate treatment, and it's another to seek equal treatment. If it's the latter you seek, then I think that you carry a burden of justification.
A hierarchical view of some form makes more sense to me than equal treatment.
I don't eat much meat, and what I do eat at home is free-range etc., so I suppose I reduce the suffering and damage caused, but I find the philosophical arguments against meat-eating to be compelling.
Both humans and cows/chickens/pigs can experience pain and suffering. Therefore, at the very basic level, not violating the rights of another sentient being (human or non-human) is something we owe them. It's the absolute minimum a person can do to be considered a moral agent. We aren't obligated to befriend them, feed them, domesticate them or save them from predators. But at the most minuscule level of moral agency, we are obligated to NOT violate their rights. Their bodily rights (of consent) and their right to life (not die).
For the record, I eat meat because I like the taste. I see "healthy" people get sick and die every day, while a lifetime smoker lives to 95. It's more than what you put into your body. It's also has to do with genetics. What may be unhealthy for one might not be for another (that is not to say that it would be healthy, just not unhealthy).
I do not believe in the existence of any objective ethical laws, so doing what I like is what is "good" and doing what I don't is "wrong". I'm a libertarian so I believe that we are all free to do as we please as long as we don't interfere with anyone else.
Like you said,
Quoting chatterbears
If this is the case, then they do not understand what is being done to them is "good" or "bad". They don't even associate "bad" with any pain they might feel, or "good" with pleasure. The fact that any organism seeks pleasure over pain isn't good or bad. It's simply the result of how they evolved to survive and are the psychological triggers for certain physical behaviors.
So animals are tortured and slaughtered for food because I eat meat? That doesn't seem to follow.
So factory farms exist and harm the environment because I eat meat? That also doesn't seem to follow.
I'm pretty sure the science is inconclusive. There are studies that show that eating meat provides benefits and there are studies that show that not eating meat provides benefits. It's likely that it's a trade-off between different benefits; eating meat benefits in some ways, not eating meat benefits in other ways.
But are you really going to argue that self-harm is immoral? Smoking, drinking, boxing, etc.? Except perhaps in extreme cases (suicide, mutilation, heavy drugs), I'd argue that there's nothing unethical about it (and even in extreme cases I don't think the issue is ethics).
The majority of humanity eat meat, it's been that way since advent of man. Now you suggest that the normative notions of "Empathy, compassion and ethical consistency" ought to differentiate what's moral or immoral...that by these practices ordinary men are immoral because they fail your "trifecta", I think that is intellectual BS.
Are you suggesting that Holocaust's butchering of Jews and others are on the same moral plane as the butchering of animals to feed the world's population?
This is basic supply and demand. You demand the meat, so the factory farms supply it to you. And how do they supply it? By torturing and slaughtering the animals you demand. Not sure how you didn't get this?
Quoting Michael
Same thing here. Supply and demand. Factory farms wouldn't exist if people stopped eating meat.
Also in reference to your science claim, I can link scientific journals that say otherwise. But again, you can research this for yourself. And I mentioned self-harm because you asked what harm eating meat causes. Self-harm is probably the least important, and I wouldn't call self-harm immoral (unless you are hurting someone else in the process).
I didn't say anything about 100%. I can argue that human brains are sufficiently similar to reasonably infer that our pains are sufficiently similar, whereas human and cow brains are insufficiently similar to reasonably infer that our pains are sufficiently similar. If a cow's pain isn't sufficiently similar to a human's pain then empathy is impossible.
And that's still assuming that there's a connection between brain structure and qualia, but that might not be the case. Perhaps it's impossible to empathise even with other people.
You can say this is BS, but test it out for yourself. Why do you eat meat?
Don't be confused. Many individuals are ethically inconsistent, if they weren't there would be no need for ethics.
Re: my position; no doubt I could do more more moral good by giving up animal flesh altogether, but have I done some moral good by modifying my behaviour in order to reduce suffering and environmental damage? Must we be absolutist about this?
Also, would you eat roadkill?
So you only treat animals with decency if they experience pain and suffering at the same conscious level of a human (which I don't even know how you would gauge or test that)?
For this issue, I'd say yes. Because it causes more pain and suffering than anything else. We kill something like 50+ BILLION animals per year, and I don't even think that includes sea creatures (whales, sharks, fish, etc.)
As far as your roadkill question, I wouldn't eat it for health reasons. But I wouldn't say there is anything ethically wrong with eating it, because no pain and/or suffering can come from eating it, Since it is already dead and can no longer feel pain or suffering.
So if I stop eating meat then the factories will shut down? Of course not.
My individual meat-eating decision will do nothing to increase or decrease the amount of harm done to animals or the environment and as such (if "causing harm" is the only measure) my individual meat-eating decision is not an ethical matter. At best you can argue that the collective meat-eating decisions of the wider society is an ethical matter, but I'm not responsible for that. So if anything there's group blame but not individual blame. You cannot attack a meat-eater personally for eating meat.
But your reasoning suggests that your argument isn't against eating meat but actually against meat production? None of your arguments work if we just consider the case of people eating roadkill.
I eat meat because I like it, and you skirted my question... is there a difference between the butchering of humans and the butchering of animals based on your "trifecta"?
No, that's not what you said to me. That might have been what you meant to suggest, but I wanted to be clear, which is why I asked you what your point was.
The degree of consciousness should be factored into consideration with regard to appropriate treatment, and that is my point.
And I don't really care about whacky hypotheticals. Why should I?
This is the same logic people who were opposed to slavery 200 years ago could have said. They could have stated "So if I stop owning slaves, will everyone else stop owning them? Of course not, so what's the point" - The point is, a slow gradual change. If more and more people stop, the demand for it will become less and less. And the supply will become less and less, until it doesn't exist any longer.
It's not the same, because owning a slave is itself a wrong, whereas eating meat itself isn't a wrong.
I'll answer your question first. I'd say both of the butchering scenarios are wrong, but butchering a human is worse, because I value human life over animal life. But at the basic level of human/animal rights, they are the same. Both (animal and human) deserve a basic right to life. Animals don't deserve rights that are more complex, such as the right to vote, or the right to drive a car. Hence why I think humans have more value, because they have a greater capacity for thought. But as far as butchering one over another, both are wrong, as both are infringing upon the well-being of a conscious creature.
And to discuss your justification of "I like it". Do you think this is a valid and sound justification for eating meat? And if we deployed the justification of "I like it" in another context, do you think it would be just as valid?
No, and that doesn't follow from what I said. Besides, it could be argued that decent treatment can take the form of turning off life support. Your side of the debate doesn't have authority over what does and does not constitute decency. I approve of decent living standards for livestock, which, funnily enough, are different to what's considered to be decent living standards for humans, because, funnily enough, there are important differences between livestock and humans.
Funnily enough, I'm not as empathic or compassionate towards a chicken kept in a small cage as I am towards a human kept in a small cage.
Both scenarios (eating meat and owning slaves) are wrong because of the treatment that follows the action. Eating meat supports torture and slaughter. Being a slave owner, supports discrimination and cruelty. Both are about the treatment, not intrinsic wrong.
I will define decency as the recognition of basic rights. That I have the decency to recognize another living being as having the will to live and can experience pain and suffering. And that I would not violate their right to live a life free from pain and suffering. And if I do that, I am discriminating against them in a way I wouldn't want done to myself.
But despite which one you are more empathetic towards, do you think both do not deserve to be in that cage? And do you think both deserve the right to live a life free from pain and suffering?
I too value human life over animal life, however unlike your position I don't believe animals have rights simpliciter, rather their rights are given to them by us.
The aesthetic pleasure of eating a 2 inch well cooked and spiced steak, goes beyond logic and reason. Human activities of this sort and many other sorts can't be circumscribed by logic and reason.
If I hold a pigs head over a flame, will the pig not squirm and do everything in its power to get away from the flame? Meaning, it has a will to live and will avoid pain if possible. And if I observe the pig's actions, that is me recognizing the pig's will to live. And their will to live is part of universal animal rights. We call it human rights, but I extend it to all animals.
It is part of basic universal rights. The right to live free from pain and suffering. We call this universal human rights, which are granted at birth. The same rights should be granted to animals, and you'd have to present an argument for why that shouldn't be the case. Because anything that can feel pain and suffering and has a will to live, should be granted basic rights. Such as, the right to not be killed.
Quoting Cavacava
To state that your position is free from logic and reason, just puts you at odds with ethical consistency. Jeffrey Dahmer could say, "The pleasure of eating 2 inch well cooked and spiced human flesh, goes beyond logic and reason." - Yet we would push him for ethical consistency in the same way I am pushing you. If you are basing your actions on a justification such as "It tastes good" or "I like it", you can justify almost any action with that criteria. Which makes your moral foundation vastly inferior to many others.
Me, as an individual, owning a slave directly causes harm to that slave. But me, as an individual, eating meat doesn't directly cause an animal or the environment to be harmed. This is why it's a false analogy.
If you want to argue that me eating meat is wrong because it causes harm then you need to show that me eating meat causes harm. And to show that me eating meat causes harm you need to show that some particular harm is avoided if I don't eat meat. This is where your argument fails. No harm is avoided if I stop eating meat.
Whereas harm is avoided if I don't own you as a slave.
It's not just about pain. My moral foundation is specifically in reference to sentient beings. That we care about the well-being of sentient creatures. This is separate from whether or not they can feel pain (on a case by case basis).
Not sure what to tell you, because it is very simple.
You are paying for an animal to be killed. That is directly causing harm to animals. Also, by paying for this animal to be killed, you are supporting the factory farming industry, which causes more harm to the environment. It is the same as driving a car. If you drive a car (that is not electric), you are causing direct harm to the environment. But if you stop driving a car, you avoid causing harm to the environment. If you stop eating meat, you avoid causing harm to an animal, as well as causing harm to the environment. Irrespective of whether you stop driving cars or eating meat, other people will still drive cars and eat meat. But the fact that YOU stopped, means that the overall contribution to the harm has lessened. And the more and more people who do this, the less and less the contribution is. Not sure how to make myself any more clear than this.
Tell them to use that logic on themselves. If a human suddenly loses the capacity for pain, should we be justified in killing them? Same with animals. Cows/chickens/pigs all have the capacity for pain, but if one suddenly loses its capacity for pain, does that make it justified to kill them? No.
Sentience encompasses the capacity for pain, so they go hand in hand.
They both don't deserve to be in that cage, but it's fine to farm chickens, and it's not fine to farm humans. And no to your second question - that's not even possible - but they both deserve the right to be treated appropriately, which will be similar in some respects and different in others. I don't condone senseless violence towards humans or chickens. But farming chickens for slaughter is not anywhere near being on the same level as slaughtering humans.
If you're arguing for principle over preference, you kinda need to establish that eating meat is intrinsically wrong, otherwise you'll get every sort of hedonist screaming, "me like taste *grunt*"
I don't think eating meat is intrinsically wrong though. Just like I don't think eating human flesh is intrinsically wrong. They can go to taste, then I'll just throw a consistency test at them. Which fails at its core.
Why is it OK to farm chickens but not OK to farm humans? Name the trait.
Human's construct rights to enable a workable society, they are not by nature and as such animals don't have rights, except as what might be conferred on them by law, custom or tradition. To pretend that all of human societies are inherently immoral because the eat meat, is wrong and I think it is a form of intellectual elitism.
I didn't say that ethical concerns are free from logic or reason, only that these benchmarks can't describe the fullness of human experience. If you think reason & logic are the sole constituents of moral behavior then I think you have an impoverished view of morality which is evident in the elitist position you are trying to maintain.
No I'm not. I'm paying for an animal that's already been killed.
My contribution doesn't cause more harm. My contribution is negligible. The same amount of harm is done regardless of whether I buy meat or not.
This differs from slavery where the very act of owning a slave is itself an injustice, regardless of whether or not it provides a non-negligible contribution to the slave trade. That's why it's a false analogy.
Driving a car pollutes the environment. Eating meat doesn't harm an animal (assuming I'm not eating it alive). Again, this is a false analogy.
The overall contribution has lessened, but the overall harm hasn't lessened. If the overall harm hasn't lessened then I am not the cause of any harm, and if I am not the cause of any harm then I am not behaving unethically (given that "causing harm" is the only measure you've offered).
I'd have to know the position here. What is the "something other than" that you're referring to?
Because ethics isn't the be-all and end-all.
If anything, your argument isn't against eating meat but buying meat.
It isn't about inherently immoral. It is about ethical consistency. You'd have to explain why an animal is deserving of slaughter and a human is not. And if that trait is present in the human, is it now OK to slaughter the human?
Quoting Cavacava
Reason and logic are a part of it. The rest is empathy and compassion, which I stated in my original post here. You still have not made the case for why "taste" should be a valid justification to slaughter animals? And if a human used the same justification of "taste" to slaughter humans, would you accept that as valid? If not, you're inconsistent in your own subjective ethics.
Not sure how this is relevant? My point was, if you can avoid causing suffering by making a simple change (moving to a plant based diet), why wouldn't you do that? Especially already acknowledging that you have an inconsistent and immoral position.
No, it means no such thing. Reflex does not indicate a will to live or avoid pain. You're reading that into it.
Advanced intellectual capacity.
Off to the pastures you go, then!
I did say that we don't confer such rights to animals, and you have admitted that you value human rights over those of animals, therefore since eating meat does not contravene against any human rights, nor the rights we have allowed to animals, therefore we are acting within our rights, i.e., consistently by eating animals, and not humans.
You asked why I eat meat, and I answered because I like it, and then you asked how my liking it can provide reason or justification, and I replied that not all human actions need to be justified. Now adding that when it comes to questions of taste that have no impact on the rights of other humans there is no possibility of acting inconsistently.
So if a human did not have this capacity, such as in a severely autistic or mentally disable person, would it then be ok to farm them? If not, youre being inconsistent in your ethics.
Frank's reasoning isn't the same as yours. You said that it's wrong because it causes harm. Frank said that it's wrong because it supports an industry that causes harm. That's not the same thing.
It's relevant because it gives a reason for things being other than how you understand them to be. There are other motivations besides morality, and these other motivations sometimes take precedence in determining behaviour. That's just how it is. There's a mismatch between reality and your ideal.
And whether or not such a change would be a "simple" change isn't given, but is relative to various factors, like circumstance, habit, desire, and psychology.
You mean this?
I took that as you saying that paying for the animal to be killed (indirectly) causes more harm to the environment.
Is that not what you were saying?
:grin:
Are you really making an equivalence between the severely autistic or mentally disabled and chickens? Your counter-argument only works if you do. And if not, you're being inconsistent in your ethics.
The justification you used was “advanced intellectual capacity”. If this capacity was not present in a human, would it then be ok to factory farm that human? If not, then you’re being inconsistent, or there is some other trait that matters more than “advanced intellectual capacity”. In which case, if there’s a better trait than that, then use it. But it’s obvious you are unwilling to stay consistent with your first justification, which makes it invalid. So do you have another?
What justifies farming a chicken but not a human? And if that trait is present in the human, would it then be ok to farm the human? (This is basic consistency within ethical frameworks)
That only seems wrong to someone who is so against the value of non-human animals that equating them in any way to humans is to denigrate human status. Whereas I would say equating them is to leave humans in value right where they are while raising the status of animals.
But I wouldn't even equate them in every way. A dog and a pig are simply as capable of pain as any human, and as conscious as three year olds, and in many ways as smart too.
I don't know. I guess it's just a habit from childhood. To tell you frankly I haven't given the whole issue serious thought.
Now that you ask I think it's the fact that I don't do the actual killing that makes me feel less responsible for what is obviously cold murder.
A pig and a dog both lack the advanced intellectual capacities that humans have, and which render the limited ways in which they can relate to pain distinct from those of humans. They lack the same overall level of intelligence that a human has or can develop, so they're not equivalent, just similar in limited ways, which is something I haven't denied. Humans and nonhuman animals should be treated similarly in light of any sufficient similarities, and treated differently otherwise.
What exact mental capacity does a being at minimum need to deserve moral status according to you? Because if you draw the line to exclude all nonhumans including dogs and pigs, you will be excluding some humans. And as someone who has previously worked many years with handicapped persons, I can assure you that some are little different than your average human adult, and others are far less capable, mentally and physically, than a dog or pig.
You have no real basis to claim the pain perception of a pig is wildly different from a human's. Evolutionary theory and what we know about the biology of mammals (their nervous system and brains) leads to the conclusion that they do feel pain in the ways we do. And even if you cannot know it for absolutely certain, since it's way more likely than not, you have to err on the side of caution.
It's not about having or not having moral status. I haven't spoken in those terms. So you're asking me the wrong question. It's about the difference in how we treat humans and other animals in light of the differences between them. If there were no differences, then I would advocate treating them equally. But there are, so I don't. I've already given a couple of examples of this sort of thing, from which it should be clear that I don't view other animals, or some people for that matter, as having no moral status whatsoever or that we'd be justified in doing whatever we like to them. Yet, nor do they have equal moral status.
Quoting NKBJ
If you want to talk past me, then you're going the right way about it. If you carefully compare my wording to yours, you should be able to see that we're talking about two different things. And I'm only really interested in a response which addresses what I was talking about, which wasn't simply about the sensation of pain.
To me that just seems to be a matter of difference in semantics. My same argument applies. If you exclude animals from certain types of treatment, you exclude some humans, and if you include all humans you have to include at least some other animals.
Quoting Sapientia
I don't believe I was talking past you. I said pain perception, which means also how animals relate to pain, and would include their intelligence levels. The latter, as I already said, animals possess to the same degree as many groups of humans whom we protect.
No. There's no human sufficiently like a chicken to justify equal treatment.
Quoting NKBJ
You're either clearly wrong or have yet to reveal your own narrow interpretation of what I'm saying. No chicken, pig, cow, duck or other farmyard animal can relate to pain in the same ways that we do. You think that a chicken or a cow has an opinion on whether life is worth living, given the inevitable pain which we must live through? You think that they're able to contemplate whether that which doesn't kill me makes me stronger? You think they're capable of understanding to the extent that we are what pain is, and what causes it? No, of course not. That would be ludicrous.
If every cow or duck was a Hamlet or a Byron, or even just a regular Joe, then I would probably have a different view. But they're clearly not. Some quacking duck is simply incapable of relating to things like pain and many other things in those complex ways unique to humankind.
Does it follow that the more different an animal is to a human, the worse it can be treated?
Why not, the less human, the better it should be treated?
We seem to be generating an awful lot from the moral gold standard of human to human relationships, but why should evolutionary proximity be proportional to humane treatment once we step out of our species?
Some of the persons I've worked with were much less capable than a chicken, since their disabilities kept them in the mental and physical state of infancy.
Quoting Sapientia
By that logic it would be permissible to cause pain to an infant, because they are not yet able to think abstractly about pain.
Also, accepting that a thing isn’t unethical isn’t the same as resigning oneself to that thing, so your example doesn’t make much sense. Even if it wouldn’t be wrong for an advanced race to eat us we’d still fight back.
Such a threshold being power and intelligence, as far as I can see. What am I missing? If 1 is a rat, and 2 is a human, and 3 is a Martian, then 3>2>1. At present, because Martians don't exist, 2>1, and so Sappy can do what he wants with 1 because of A.) greater power, and B.) more intelligence. If, however, a 3 does exist, then Sappy can't, then, fudge the series and argue 3<2>1.
Seeing different treatment as better or worse is loaded and potentially anthropomorphic. Oh, what a hellish life to be taken around on a lead and to eat food and drink water out of bowls on the floor! Yet, on the other hand, wouldn't it be great not to have to go to work or pay the bills?
I'm advocating appropriate treatment. Nothing more, nothing less.
Quoting jastopher
What is or is not humane treatment in a given scenario may be open to debate. There are some scenarios which might not be as clearcut as others, and people set the bar at different levels. It makes sense to me to consider humaneness in relation to various capacities, including intellectual capacity. Why do you think that turning off life support only becomes a legal option in some cases, but not others? Why do you think that there are different laws and sentencing for crimes relating to humans and crimes relating to the mistreatment of animals? Surely this has something to do with intellectual capacity. It's comparing apples and oranges.
Okay, let's farm them too, then. I'm sure Kentucky Fried Human would be a real hit.
Quoting NKBJ
But that's not my logic. I was only disputing your claimed equivalence in how humans and other animals relate to pain in light of their respective intellectual capacities. If I had meant to single out infants, then I could have easily done so. I suspect that you're intentionally skirting around my meaning to try to score a point.
I would likely act as expected and try to avoid that from happening. It is not a logical consequence of what I've said that I would willingly submit to any of that, so I see no valid point from you there. Just a red herring.
Your position is one that must argue that it is right to eat that which is less powerful and intelligent than you, therefore that which is more powerful and intelligent than you is also right to eat you, so your unwillingness would be wrong.
My position must be what you say it is? No, that's not how it works, pal. I'm priority number one, irrespective of whether there were to arise a more powerful or intelligent species than my own, and I haven't once claimed or implied otherwise, so you've got nothing on me.
No, I took him as saying that once something reaches a certain level of intelligence then it would be unethical to eat that thing. Humans have reached that level and cows haven't. That there may be aliens who are more intelligent than humans doesn't change this.
Yeah, I probably don't have anything on you because you've no coherent position to deal with.
What level of intelligence and by what metrics might one judge x, y, z to not be intelligent enough to have its throat saved from a slashing? Once again, if it is that intelligence is the determinant for moral worth, then yes, Man can eat chickens all day, but as I brought up, this also means that it is morally justifiable on the same premises that one that is more intelligent than us can and ought to eat us as food.
Yes.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
If your first plan of attack fails, call it incoherent and give up trying. I like your style.
I'm waiting for you to tell me to reread and go back and understand the illuminating insights thus blessed upon us which I fail to get, zzzz.
Well, exactly because that is ludicrous we have to do the opposite: eat neither animals nor people.
Quoting Sapientia
It's what your logic leads to, whether you intended it to or not.
And I'm not trying to "score points." I wasn't aware that philosophical discourse was about winning or losing. I'm just trying to get at the truth and what the right thing to do is. Part of that entails explaining the problematic conclusions your argumentation would lead to logically. It's not personal.
No, I'm pretty sure that it's not all or nothing, and that we can and do discriminate.
Quoting NKBJ
It's not where my logic leads, it's where you're leading it. It doesn't follow from the nonequivalence of humans and other animals in terms of intellectual capacity that it's permissible to cause pain to an infant.
Only by being inconsistent.
Quoting Sapientia
And what intellectual capacity does an infant possess that you think a pig doesn't?
What exactly is that level? What capacities do all humans possess that no cow does?
No, there's a difference between discriminating between cases based on the application of different standards and being inconsistent. You haven't shown that it's the latter. There are a number of reasons why we don't slaughter babies or those with severe mental disabilities for food production, but we do slaughter chickens for food production.
Quoting NKBJ
I wasn't singling out infants or specifying any other particular group. I thought that I'd already clarified that for you. I was talking about humans in general. But one difference is that a pig won't develop the intellectual faculties of an adult human within its lifetime.
Yes, because it is clear that some humans have the same capacity for thought as other animals. Is this the bullet I was supposed to bite? Yet, it’s just a fact. Some humans are not capable of a higher intellectual thought, and therefore would be on the same level (intelligence wise) as a chicken/pig/cow.
So again, are you going to bite the bullet on your inconsistent position? Stating that “advanced intelligence capacity” is not present in chickens, therefore we can kill them, should also follow that we can kill someone humans who also don’t have “advanced intelligence capacity “. Otherwise, you’d be contradicting yourself and would have an inconsistent position within your own subjective ethics. And as I said before, consistency matters, otherwise you’d have arbitrary lines drawn that are based on nothing other than what you feel is right or wrong.
Fruit has evolved to be eaten!
It may be intutitive to generate a rule based on proximity to our own species, but I see scant ethical basis for it.
Furthermore, if humans really are at the top of some hierarchy because of their unique qualities, it still doesn't follow that they have dominion over life and death of all below them. And even if it did, why not the same dominion over other humans who sit lower on the scale? Being at the top could just as well imply green custodianship.
No, because if we are sufficiently intelligent then it is wrong to eat us, no matter how much more intelligent some other species is.
Sap wasn't saying that X can eat Y if X is more intelligent than Y. He seemed to be saying that X can eat Y if Y isn't sufficiently intelligent.
A cow isn't sufficiently intelligent, and so we can eat it. We are sufficiently intelligent, and so a much more intelligent species cannot eat us.
How did you derive an "ought" from Sap's reasoning? He was only saying that it isn't wrong to eat animals; not that we ought eat animals.
I don't know. I'm only explaining to the best of my understanding Sapientia's argument.
If so, then this is a distinction without a moral principle at play. An apple is not an orange. Great, but...? Okay, what else? I mean, sure, I'm more intelligent than a pig, but such a fact says nothing of whether I ought or ought not eat said pig.
Quoting Michael
Seems to me that Sappy has defined this into being without providing anything that supports it.
Well, that is the is-ought problem.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
I don't think it's right to say that he's defined it into being. At the very least it describes most people's actual moral decisions. I'm OK with eating pigs but I'm not OK with eating humans. I can't put this down to simple speciesism as I can imagine not being OK with eating some intelligent alien. So how do I explain the difference? The intelligence of the species certainly seems like the most obvious distinction.
And how else are we to judge a moral theory if not by testing it against our moral intuitions?
If you think that claiming something like that to be clear and factual is sufficient, then you're wrong. I acknowledge that there are similarities, but that's as far as I'm willing to go unless shown otherwise or I ascertain knowledge to the contrary some other way.
And in hindsight, perhaps I shouldn't have humoured you when you told me to name the trait, as if there were only a single reason why it's considered acceptable to farm chickens, but not humans. If not intellectual capacity, at least in the case of those humans who it is claimed have an intellectual capacity of an equivalent level to that of a chicken, then it must be some other reason, or some additional reason or reasons.
Yes, at least I'm giving it some thought instead of jumping straight for the conclusion they're pushing me towards, like a lamb to the slaughter.
Meat eaters have a plethora of reasons, but you must take each reason one by one and deploy an ethical consistency push. Because if each reason breaks down and is not consistent or valid, then we can discard it and move on to your next reason.
So it seems you concede the point that using the justification of "intellectual capacity" to farm a living being (human or chicken), is not valid nor consistent. Because again, if there was a human who lacked "intellectual capacity" in the same way the chicken does, is it now OK to farm the human? No. And you haven't actually came out to finally bite the bullet on that point, but instead tip toe around minor details.
So do you have another justification for why we can farm a chicken but not a human?
Yes, but I've been also understanding you to be agreeing with him:
Quoting Michael
So, again, I put to you the question, what marker of intelligence do all humans possess that no cow possesses?
That's not me agreeing with him. That's me explaining what I feel about eating certain animals and which trait I think has the greatest influence over that feeling.
And again, I don't know.
I'm glad you're trying to give this some thought--really I am. But I don't think your snark or portraying our argumentation in such a negative light as the above lends itself to the idea that you are unbiased and encountering our side with an open mind.
So how can you claim that there is a significant difference if you don't know what it is? Or are you admitting to a mostly unexplored and possibly just biased gut feeling about the whole thing?
Ok, now you just went to justification overload. Here are your justifications:
1. Intelligence level.
2. How one 'looks'
3. How one 'acts'
4. Difference in 'flesh'
Again let's take them one by one and deploy a consistency push to them. Intelligence level, we can already throw out, because you don't accept humans (who are of lower intelligence) to be farmed.
#2 - How one looks. Is it OK to farm something just because it "looks" different? I assume your answer is No, so we can discard that.
#3. How one 'acts'. Is it OK to farm something just because it "acts" different? I assume your answer is No, so we can discard that one as well.
#4. Difference in flesh. Is it OK to farm something just because their flesh is different than ours? I assume your answer is No, so we can discard that one too. But just in case your answer is Yes. Would you be OK with an Alien species farming you, just because your flesh is different than theirs? No. So we can discard that reasoning.
You're again, left with 0 valid/consistent justifications to use for why you can farm animals but not humans.
You asked me for a marker of intelligence that all humans possess and that no cow possesses. I don't need to know of a such a thing to know that humans are far more intelligent than cows.
It's certainly not a biased gut feeling. It is an empirical fact that humans are more intelligent than cows.
I have. But you haven't shown that there is a significant difference that would make killing animals acceptable.
Quoting Sapientia
If you're talking about humans in general deserving certain treatment on the grounds of a specific trait, all humans have to have that trait.
So, if I have a handicapped person who is permanently intellectually at the level or below that of a pig or chicken or cow, does that mean I can cause that person pain or kill him/her?
Generally, yes. But not all humans are. Which means, if merely intelligence is your marker, that those humans would be fair game to torture and/or kill.
No, because I'm not saying that it is wrong to torture and/or kill something if and only if it reaches a certain level of intelligence. I'm only saying that I am OK with eating pigs but not humans, and that the difference in intelligence of these species seems to be the trait that best explains why I feel the way I do.
That sounds contradictory to me.
Your first sentence seems to be claiming that intelligence is not the marker that makes killing permissible.
Your second sentence seems to be claiming that intelligence is the best marker you can think of that makes killing permissible.
If not, can you please clarify it for me?
Okay. Does this help? :halo:
Then you need to be willing to bite the bullet on humans who have the same intelligence as a pig. If not, you are being inconsistent in deploying your justification of "intelligence".
Michael is OK eating animals because they have a lower level of intelligence.
Michael is not OK eating mentally handicapped humans because they have a lower level of intelligence.
I think the contradiction is clear. You may want to clarify your position here.
The first sentence argues for moral cognitivism and sets out the necessary and sufficient conditions for the (im)morality of killing.
The second sentence expresses an emotional sentiment and best explains which perception influences that sentiment.
At least you're trying to be consistent, even if I think you might just be biting the bullet here!
However, what if we tweaked the above scenario just one iota and said a human who was in every regard like a chicken except that he/she looked like a human?
(Also, I'm curious, why does it matter to you how others have treated this human?)
So.... basically, you have no idea what the actual markers of difference would need to be between humans and animals?
That's literally what I have said (twice) previously.
I know. I guess what I don't understand then is how you can claim to be okay with doing something you can't really defend. Since, if your gut feeling is wrong, and it seems more likely than not that it is, the consequences are so dire.
Because you can't just throw in a bunch of random reasons together and think you have a coherent or reasonable argument. A bunch of bad reasons, when put together, doesn't suddenly become a collectively good reason. If each of your reasons can be broken down and become problematic, the argument fails. Imagine someone trying to condone slavery.
'Slavery is morally correct if it meets this criteria: The enslaved person needs have green eyes, black hair, somewhat of a lower IQ, has a different skin color than me and acts differently than me.'
All of those reasons for why slavery should be permitted, do not suddenly become reasonable when you put them all together. You'd have to assess each reason and see if it is a valid justification to cause harm to another living being. Having green eyes shouldn't justify causing harm, and neither should the hair or skin color. Now apply the same logic to your justifications for why you can cause harm to animals. Just because you have a plethora of reasons, doesn't mean each reason is valid, and doesn't mean all reasons combined suddenly become one valid argument.
What dire consequences? I certainly don't think "being unethical" is a dire consequence.
How so? Is there some reason to believe that it's wrong to eat animals?
Why do I need to defend it?
Participating in, or at least not even attempting to extricate yourself and your actions from, the active and ongoing suffering of billions of animals.
I'm confused. What's suffering got to do with it? We were talking about intelligence.
Everything. If intelligent beings couldn't suffer, then hurting them wouldn't be a problem.
If someone thinks that it's okay to eat chicken, and not to eat human, but perhaps can't quite put their finger on why exactly that is, then I think that it will be intuitively compelling for such a person to conclude, after giving this thought experiment some consideration, that it's okay to eat humans under the right circumstances, namely that they're practically a chicken in all but name.
This is an option that's on the table. It has been one of the bullets to bite, and it stands in contrast to the alternative of thinking that it's okay to eat chicken, but not human, and the alternative of thinking that it's not okay to eat either chicken or human.
Sure it would. It's wrong to hurt and kill people with CIPA.
If this is coupled with a commitment to raise animals responsibly and humanely (which they are not at present, unfortunately) and to make use of the food and other resources they provide (instead of the currently wasteful practices), then I might not have objections to eating meat even in the developed world. I am vegetarian for not merely ethical reasons but aesthetic ones (I do not generally like the taste and texture of real meat) and ascetic ones (I view it as a form of self-denial and even penance).
If there's no significant difference, then how do you explain why we don't slaughter those humans with severe mental disability? We have gathered that there seems to be more than intellectual capacity involved. So, what else?
If you take a human and lose each human trait one by one and replace them each time with a chicken trait, then eventually there will come a point at which a meat eater will think that it's acceptable to eat the human. So, I conclude that 1) there must be something about chickens and our relationship to them that causes meat eaters to think that it's acceptable to eat them, and that 2) there must be something about humans and our relationship to them that causes us to think that it's not acceptable to eat them, and that 3) there's nothing inherent to being a human that makes it out of the question to be eaten as we would eat a chicken, so long as the human were sufficiently chicken-like.
Quoting NKBJ
Poppycock! No they don't, they just have to generally have that trait. The term "in general" doesn't mean or entail "all". It allows for exceptions. It's unreasonable of you to disregard this and to instead seek out highly specific exceptions to pose as some sort of challenge.
Quoting NKBJ
Yes, provided they're sufficiently pig-like, chicken-like, or cow-like in all relevant respects.
I've decided to bite the bullet, in a sense, and it doesn't taste so bad. Tastes like chicken. A lovely succulent chicken bullet. Mmm...
I'm not sure, to be honest. It's a very weird thing to consider. I would probably feel unconformable about the thought of doing so, at least at first, even if it was irrational to feel that way.
And it matters how others have treated the human because if it's treated like a human rather than a chicken, then that'll probably effect how I think and feel about it.
This is the main problem here. It is like saying, "If someone thinks that it's okay to enslave black people, and not to enslave white people, but perhaps can't quite put their finger on why exactly that is, then I think that it will be intuitively compelling for such a person to conclude, after giving this thought experiment some consideration, that it's okay to enslave white people under the right circumstances, namely that they're practically a black person in all but name."
This is an absurd position to hold. Whether you substitute slavery with eating a living being, is irrelevant. If you cannot put your finger on why you are justifying one action but not another, you're position on ethics is unreasonable, incoherent and borderline sociopathic.
No, I don't think so, because I can point to a distinct set of circumstances, and others can relate to and identify with my position. I can know that there's something wrong about standing by doing nothing whilst a house begins to burn with a baby trapped inside, even if I wasn't able to put my finger on it.
What are the distinct set of circumstances? A slave owner could point to a set of circumstances, as well as have others that can relate and indentify with the slave owner’s position.
Quoting Sapientia
It depends on what your moral foundation is based upon. And if you have no foundation you can point to, then you are basically incapable of discerning right from wrong. Because I base my morality on improving the well-being of sentient beings. If it was possible for me to save a baby from a burning house, without putting myself at great risk, it would be wrong for me to not save the baby, because I would be allowing the baby to have a diminished well-being. If my goal is to improve/consider the well-being of sentient beings, saving the baby would be in my framework.
It all depends on the risk factor. Saving a baby from a burning house is of high risk. And I wouldn’t say it is wrong for someone to not save a baby if their own life was at great risk. But if they were at a low (or nonexistent) risk, then it would be wrong. Similarly, you aren’t at any risk to stop eat animals. All you need to do is switch your diet.
Your logic holds if they are moral absolutes and there are no moral relativities. And yet isn't there the alternative - and ethically consistent - morality which recognises that compassion and empathy are never so universally right that they should always be carried to their logical extremes.
What is your position on laughing at YouTube compilations of skateboarders face-planting? Is this morally defensible given that it compromises the ideals of compassion and empathy? Is it a black and white situation where logic says we must ban people from finding the pain of others funny? Why would we stop at merely not eating meat. Why would we not have to follow through with equal rigour in every aspect of life?
So my counter-argument is that your position depends on black and white extremism. You are pushing an unwarranted idealism that unethically rejects the very possibility of a positive and relativistic balance.
There is of course good reason to debate where we would draw our limits. Compassion and empathy matter - but there is also reason to be found in their "others". But you are illegitimately refusing to consider this larger view.
Now perhaps we ought to stop eating meat as we come to appreciate animals as sentient beings. But the balanced reply demands that we show that compassion and empathy are the exclusive moral rule of sentience in the first place. The evidence of how humans treat each other is that we apply relativities more than absolutes in that sphere. Flexibility rather than rigidity is what is considered morally appropriate or actually functional.
And then much more work would have to be done to show that the sentience of animals is of the same order and so demand the same standard being applied - whatever that may be. It is pretty clear to most folk that animals feel pain, but also that it is not experienced in the same existential way. It is not a dread or an ever-present memory. It happens and it is gone.
So it is lesser in some ethically critical fashion. Is it wrong to raise stock in a paddock - keeping them happy and well-fed, as that is in the farmer's best interest - and then end their lives in unanticipated fashion with a sudden bolt through the head?
Factory farming involves more continuous suffering. But - unless you just don't accept relativity and you insist on absolutism - good ethical thought would be able to make these fine shades of distinction. It would be able to justify both empathy and compassion, but also their converse, when appropriate.
The morality would reflect the full balance of interests that exist, not pretend that only one side knows what is right.
But even without empathy or compassion for other animals, consistency would STILL lead to Veganism. Because you cannot justify your actions in one context, while rejecting them in another. Otherwise you'd be contradicting yourself and hold two opposing views simultaneously. This is why, my ethical standpoint doesn't necessarily even matter at all. I am not arguing for absolutism or anything of the sort.
I never claimed that I hold to the position of moral absolutes, nor do I think this is the case. Because there are cases, such as self-defense, where killing something is justified. Therefore, this is an obvious case where "killing is always wrong" does not apply.
The 'absolute' portion you may be confusing, is the logical consistency portion of each person's justifications. To be a moral agent, you would need to exercise reason and critical thought to come to consistent ethical positions. I've used this formula before, but I'll use it again here:
Subject A believes X based on Y.
Humans (Subject A) believe eating animals is OK (X) based on difference of intelligence level ( Y ).
The 'Difference of intelligence level' is the justification the person would be using to justify their action of eating animals. For that person to be consistent, you would need to change the context, but keep the same justification applied. So it would go like this:
Humans believe eating animals is OK based on difference of intelligence level.
Humans believe eating mentally handicapped humans is OK based on difference of intelligence level.
Aliens believe eating humans is OK based on difference of intelligence level.
All three of these scenarios are using the same justification, which is "difference of intelligence level". To be consistent in your justification, you would need to accept all 3 of these scenarios, otherwise you'd hold a contradictory view. And to clarify again, this is from the person's own subjective ethical beliefs. This is completely separate from the justifications I would use for my actions. I can lead people to Veganism from their OWN subjective personal ethics. Which is why I ask people (and you can answer this for yourself), why do you eat meat? And whatever that reason is, if that trait was present in you, would you still accept it? Most people say no, which creates an inconsistent position.
So they are not necessary. But the only way to "care about them" is to "hold true" in a fashion that is idealistically one note and not pragmatically balanced?
Obvioiusly I can care about them quite consistently as being part of a balance. And indeed, a necessary part for there to be that balance. So already your argument is off track.
Quoting chatterbears
Blinded by your absolutism then. It all boils down to black and white.
Quoting chatterbears
Alternatively, I would recognise ambiguity as a fundamental part of the equation. Ethically, I think that is a good thing. Reality is often just ambiguous. Moral reasoning needs to get that.
Quoting chatterbears
Correct. Well, at least it is arguable and illustrates the general point that moral boundaries always ought to be drawn up as the result of striking a reasonable balance between two relative notions of the good.
So we have ambiguity as a basic possibility anyway. Grey is an actual shade between black and white. But also - as a matter of intelligible principle - we want to draw lines that are as definite as they need to be to guide behaviour. And that is where the ethical debate must discover the opposing principles in play. You can't have a balance of interests unless those competing interests are clearly identified.
That is my complaint about your process of thought. You only identified compassion/empathy. You need to bring to the table the other complementary notion of what would be a good here.
Why would self-defence ever be morally justified? What is the general idea you were after there? How is eating meat not a legitimate form of "self-defence" against the perils of being a starving meat-eater?
Of course, in the modern world we have alternatives. We can culture meat stem cells in the lab now. We probably will as it is going to be far cheaper. No central nervous system need ever be involved in this franken-meat.
But still, my point is that if exceptions are justified, then your argument has already shot itself in the foot. To achieve ethical consistency, the other side of the moral equation has to be presented properly. You can't just "care" about compassion and empathy in such a one sided and idealistic fashion, going to the extreme "logical" conclusion that then results. You must lay out a much fuller argument.
Quoting chatterbears
So you answer the charge that you employ the slippery slope fallacy by replying in terms of a slippery slope fallacy.
That is kinda funny.
Quoting chatterbears
I bet you can. You are trying to use the same "save your soul" cheap logical tricks that cults and religions have employed for practically ever. It's how they sell cars or soap flakes. Buy it, you are worth it. It would be logically inconsistent for you to deny yourself these choices.
Slippery slope thinking is endemic. Have you ever thought how you are just surrounded by germs. Look at what this purple light reveals as we scan your hands and kitchen surfaces. My God, it's amazing you aren't dead already. Here, buy these germicidal wet wipes impregnated with nuke-power antibiotics. Please hurry. Save your soul.
But anyway, I see you are here to practice your sales pitch. You want converts. This isn't about a philosophical discussion.
My position is, the consideration/improvement of the well-being of sentient beings. Clearly if I am being attacked, my well-being is being diminished, and self-defense still aligns with this foundation. Someone else is trying to diminish my well-being, while I try to retain/improve it. Therefore it is morally justified to sustain well-being to the highest degree possible, which follows in self-defense. This is still completely consistent, and does not contradict my justification/reasoning for my moral actions. (Unlike people who based moral actions on 'taste' or 'lower intelligence level'.)
Eating meat BEFORE we did not have alternatives, could be viewed as self-defense. Since not eating would diminish your well-being. Right now, we have access to plant-based foods. Nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, beans, rice, pasta, etc... And changing your diet is not that difficult, as it just takes a small amount of research. And in doing so, you would be avoiding contributing to the pain and suffering caused by animal agriculture.
Also, to clear up your point of "if exceptions are justified, then your argument has already shot itself in the foot." - This is false. Exceptions of the situation are justification, not the justification itself. When deploying a justification to use as a basis for committing a moral action, that justification has no exceptions. These are two different statements:
1. It is wrong to kill
- There can be exceptions to this. As self-defense, as I already explained, is an exception.
2. It is wrong to kill based on hair color.
- This is where there are no exceptions, on the basis of hair color. If someone believes it is wrong to kill based on hair color, we can deploy "hair color" in another context, and they should always (consistently) believe it is wrong. Meaning, we could change the scenario to, "It is wrong to slap someone in the face based on hair color". That person would still need to accept that it is wrong, because the same justification is being used. This is the part you seem to be confusing.
There is a moral situation #1 (wrong to kill). And a moral justification #2 (wrong to kill because of hair color). These are two separate things. #1 can have exceptions (depending on your basis for morality). But #2 cannot have exceptions, as we test the consistency of the justification "hair color" as a basis for why it is wrong to do something.
You claim I am using logic tricks, similar to that of cults and religions, yet you aren't pointing to anything tangible. And to prove my point to you, we could start from the beginning.
Why do you eat meat? You may deploy the same justifications as others have used, such as: Comfort, convenience, cost, effort, species difference, intelligence difference, cultural norms, etc.
If you use a reason to justify your action of eating meat, you would need to deploy that same justification in another context for you to be consistent in your ethics. So if your answer was, "I eat meat because animals are less intelligent". You are justifying meat eating with intelligence level. So to be consistent, would you then say it is OK to eat a severely autistic human, because they are less intelligent? If not, then it is clear that using "intelligence level" as a justification is not valid, and you do not even accept it within your own ethics as a justification to use against you.
How can an exception be justified if it has no grounds?
Quoting chatterbears
Sure fine. But your dependence on subjectivity and absolutism leaves you open to the counter-position that veganism is all too much effort for me, I really like the taste of meat. And I only feel my own pain or suffering. I don't actually experience that of any animal involved. So the primary duty of care remains the servicing of my own selfish wishes here.
I'm not saying I would take that unbalanced view personally. I'm saying it is equally valid given your subjectivity and absolutism.
I don't actually feel any of the suffering of the pig in the crate or the chicken pumped up on hormones and antibiotics. If feelings of suffering are what count in absolute fashion, I have an absolute right of self-defence here, following your logic. If empathy and compassion are proving troublesome, the proper ethical course should be to look the other way, think of something else, do whatever it takes to prevent any suffering I may otherwise experience as a sentient being.
My own actual position is founded on a quite different psychological model. I don't believe in this glib thing of a "sentient being" as if consciousness were something so simple. So empathy and selfishness are naturally two sides of a coin - a way that a sense of self is even constructed in us as social creatures.
But that is by the by. I am pointing out how you are relying on simplicities that are then going to have their troublesome mirror image. Your argument is not in fact securely founded. It's negation is also "undeniable".
Quoting chatterbears
Yeah. I am absolutely not following your logic now. :)
If something is accidental, like hair colour, then it is hardly grounds for any kind of necessity, like assault or self-defence. So yes. But so what?
Quoting chatterbears
I think you prove my point quite well just there. Let's go back to the beginning and follow the whole script more carefully this time.
Quoting chatterbears
I eat meat because I don't have a strong enough reason not to. I believe that lot of ethical choices do frankly fall into a gray area where there is nothing terribly significant at stake. I see ethics as a pragmatic work in progress and there are many cultural habits to be working on.
Animal welfare matters, but it would be ethically dubious to pick just that one cause and go to the extreme on it when each of us should contribute to moral progress in a rounded fashion. It is OK for things to evolve at a general cultural level because there is no absolute and objective morality involved. So I can imagine not eating meat as a result of that being a general cultural shift over time. But I'm not sure it is one of the most urgent matters facing humankind.
So I think this is a consistent application of pragmatism, a consistent understanding of the very basis of human moral behaviour. I might or might not change my ways. And I only even need some strong opinion to the degree that something high priority is at stake for the collective human condition which is the evolving system in question.
Quoting chatterbears
If that were customary in my society, then I'm sure I'd be quite use to the practice and wouldn't have a strong objection.
Abortions are normalised for most of us. Cannibalism has had its morally approved place in human history. So I wouldn't start with the unrealistic presumption that there is nothing that couldn't be a moral norm. I would instead start with a focus on the functionality of any such behaviour.
Does eating autistics achieve some reasonable goal? What are the actual pros and cons. Any ideas?
Do you regard the efficient use of environmental resources as an urgent issue? I'm not sure about that myself, but if one were to think so, then there is some research available to show that lactovegetarian diets are more environmentally sustainable than the typical US model of a meat eating diet. Not dug into the statistical details, so the studies may be flawed, but supposing they are true, and supposing one valued frugality in the use of environmental resources, that might provide non-subjective grounds for moving towards (lacto)vegetarianism.
I never said pain was the only source of suffering. Though it is obviously a major source of it for most people capable of it.
Such is life, even for the righteous vegan. He must clear the forest, fence out the rabbits and leave them to starve because he scruples to include them in his ecological exploitation, as I scruple to eat seagulls and slugs, and as most folks scruple to eat human flesh, even of those who have died - as we all do.
One sees from the lofty height of man, created in God's image, a hierarchy of life descending all around one, and measures one's moral obligation according to the level of being. Of gods and superior beings, one is not in a position to judge, but only be judged.
But the horror of myxomatosis was visited on the rabbit on behalf of the crop grower, not the animal husband. And it is a horror only because they are cute and cuddly. The destruction of half the insect population of Europe evokes no sympathy, but only a concern for the pollination of our crops.
The guinea worm is almost extinct, thanks largely to the efforts of one man. And I am celebrating, and not volunteering to host this endangered species. Life is just complicated, and morality has to be too.
There's nothing wrong with eating an animal per se. It's killing or harming an animal that's wrong.
And it's the same reasons I have for not kicking my cat or my dog. It's so obviously true that my dog suffers if I hurt her, and that her suffering is akin to my suffering, that I know hurting her is wrong.
And, to be honest, most meat eaters don't defend the idea of harming or killing animals when it comes to cats, dogs, dolphins, chimpanzees, etc. It's just when the idea is brought up that they personally might have to change what is for most a thrice daily habit, that they suddenly try to find some way to say that animal suffering doesn't matter or doesn't exist...
I mean, sorry Sap, but as much as I have enjoyed our discussion for entertainment purposes, your final statement about basically being okay with eating a mentally disabled human is just a hilarious example of biting the bullet.
I don't recall anyone saying it here, but I am reminded of how ironic it is when people think vegans are crazy or ridiculous, when all we're saying is "don't eat the cows, just eat a veggie burger" and omnis say things like "in order to justify my cow burger, it's okay to eat a human burger."
But I do appreciate the discussion with both of you!
Me eating meat doesn't kill or harm animals. Me buying meat doesn't kill or harm animals, either directly or indirectly (given that my individual contribution isn't sufficient enough to have an affect on the amount of harm done or number of animals killed).
At best you can argue that it's wrong to support the meat industry (in the same way that it might be wrong to sponsor a serial killer who would continue with the same amount of killing even if I were to withdraw my sponsorship), and so that it's wrong to buy meat, but that argument hasn't been made yet (although such a claim has been made by @frank).
Quoting NKBJ
That's just speculation. You have no way of knowing that outward behaviour is indicative of an inner subjective state (or that any inner subjective state is similar enough to your inner subjective state that you are capable of empathy).
This is a non sequitur. Hypocrisy doesn't show that it's wrong to kill cows for food. It could be that it's acceptable to kill cats for food, too. All this shows is that given our particular culture (remember that some cultures eat those animals) we have a stronger emotional attachment to these animals.
We've already established that there's nothing wrong with eating a cow burger. Your issue has been with killing and harming animals. So, presumably, eating a cow that has died naturally is morally acceptable? But then what of eating a human that has died naturally? Many people might say that that would be unacceptable. The above suggests that you agree? If so then there is some other reason – unrelated to the immorality of harming and killing things which can suffer – for eating a human to be unacceptable, and this other thing can explain the difference between a cow and a mentally disabled person, and so we can avoid the reductio ad absurdum against @Sapientia's position regarding intelligence as a measure.
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Sapientia
That is what I said to you. READ.
Quoting SapientiaI think you have a more serious problem of not being able to read and address others' posts appropriately. Nothing I said was hypothetical.
Then I don't understand the point of this thread. Is it "wrong"/"bad" to eat animals?
What does it even mean to say that "humans have a higher capacity for moral value"? Humans have the capacity to put themselves in others' shoes. We think that other people and animals think and want the same things we do. They don't. So all you are doing is applying your own rules to others. As I told you before, morals and ethics are subjective and are not applicable across the board in every situation for every organism.
This is clearly incorrect.I have no idea how much meat you eat, but if over the course of a year you ate the equivalent of 1 steer, 2 pigs, and 20 chickens then you are responsible for the death of those animals. That's just the way it is.
Quoting Michael
Eating an animal that has died of natural causes may even be the morally correct thing to do if otherwise it were to go to waste or putrefy and cause disease etc. However, there are some pretty good reasons no eat animals that have died of natural causes since natural causes include diseases, infections and so on. Eating a healthy animal that has died accidentally is another matter.
The same argument goes for humans; natural causes, probably not a great idea. Accident; why not? Many cultures and individuals have consumed human flesh. The reason we don't eat victims of accidents is convention and learned disgust. Nevertheless, we have have no problem in using their organs, which, although not eating, is a form of consumption that could, at a stretch, be argued to be cannibalism that bypasses the alimentary canal.
A reason I don't consume human flesh from accidents is the same as why I will not eat a boiled egg; it disgusts me. Nevertheless, this does not imply that it is unethical.
Yep. Lab meat should use 10% of the land and water, produce 10% of the emissions. So there are huge environmental and economic arguments in its favour.
An effective general veganism will almost surely happen for ordinary pragmatic reasons.
How so? I didn't kill them. I didn't pay for them to be killed. They were already dead before I bought them.
You would have to show that those animals were killed because I bought their meat. And that, I think, is wrong. My contribution is so negligible as to have no affect on the number of animals killed. My purchases are not responsible for any deaths.
But even then, let's consider this hypothetical situation: I promise to pay you £100 if you kill a cow for me. You kill the cow. I refuse to pay you £100. Who is responsible for the death of the cow? I say you, not me. And the responsibility remains yours even if I were to change my mind and pay you. At most I can be held responsible for the solicitation of a killing, but certainly not for the killing itself.
Although in the real life example of buying meat, I haven't even promised to pay for the killing of a cow. Rather the people who kill the cow do so on the presumption that I will pay them. In such a case, I can't even be held responsible for solicitation, which makes the case that I am responsible for the killing even weaker.
Then that negates @NKBJ's ridicule of @Sapientia's claim that it can be acceptable to eat a human burger.
So either there's nothing wrong with eating a human burger or there is some (currently unspecified) difference between cows and humans such that it is acceptable to eat cow burgers but not burgers made from humans who have the mental capacity of a cow. Either way, the reductio ad absurdum against Sapientia fails.
Yes it does. When you buy a product, you are paying for all of the services that went into making that product the way it is. In the case of a chair, that means craftsmanship, and in the case of meat, it means slaughter.
Perhaps one single person's contribution is but a drop in the bucket, but you can't use that as excuse to take part in something immoral. In part because this system exists due to the sum of single persons contributing to it, and in part because the fact that I can't stop x doesn't mean I should take part in, condone, or in anyway support x.
Unless you are a hunter, eating meat implies buying meat. Unless you only eat dead animals you happen to find, which then, be my guest (I mean, ewww, but be my guest). But that really goes without saying.
Quoting Michael
Actually, I do have ample evidence to suggest it is. Evolutionary theory, ethology, and what we know of animal biology (nervous systems, brain structures, etc) all tell us that this is the case... you on the other hand have no evidence to suggest it is not the same. As such, the only rational thing to do is to assume that it is the case.
Quoting Michael
Like I said, we have evidence to back up the conclusion that animals suffer in a significant way. And it's not a non sequitur, since if I'm right, hypocrisy would point to the wrongness of hurting all animals.
Quoting Michael
Eating a naturally dead cow or human would be gross. And there may be an Aristotelian/Kantian argument to be made you shouldn't even be engaging in behavior like that because it sets a bad precedent. However, since in our current reality eating burgers implies the killing (and overwhelmingly also the lifelong torture) of an animal, cow and human burger eating are both wrong.
I'm not trying to actively ridicule anyone as much as I am pointing out the ridiculous conclusions some people try to defend when it's about animal rights.
Your use of the term "paying for" is misleading. I exchange my money for some meat at a supermarket. That's the extent of my involvement. That the supermarket then uses some of that money to cover their costs of purchasing that meat from farmers who in turn kill animals for that meat is not any of my responsibility.
You're changing your reasoning. You said that me eating meat (or rather buying meat) is responsible for those deaths, and so is wrong. Now you're just saying that it's wrong to support an industry that kills animals. That's a different argument altogether.
How does animal biology and evolutionary theory show that there's something it's like to be an animal (to use Nagel's phrasing)?
Not it doesn't. Hypocrisy just points to people being inconsistent in their opinions on whether or not animals suffer. It doesn't then follow that all animals suffer. It could be that no animals suffer, and we're wrong to think that cats and dogs do. It could be that some animals suffer and some don't, but we're wrong iabout which animals do.
I don't know why you think that hypocritical human behaviour provides us with information about non-human consciousness.
Again, it's not the eating that's wrong. It's the killing that's (supposedly) wrong. The problem is that you haven't shown a sufficient connection between the two to warrant blaming those who eat meat for those killings.
It's not ridiculous if it's true that eating human meat isn't unethical, and you agreed that it isn't.
This is word-play. Remove 'those' and change 'bought' to 'buy', and I'll happily attempt a rebuttal.
'Negligible' and 'no effect' are not the same. The sum of many negligible effects is more than negligible whereas the sum of no effects is no effect. You need to clarify.
Quoting Michael
Why not both of us?
"Negligible" refers to the amount of money I have contributed. "No effect" refers to the number of animals killed. The negligible amount of money I have contributed has no affect on the number of animals killed.
You said that I am responsible for the deaths of the 20 chickens I bought. I'm not. I didn't kill them. I didn't even solicit someone else to kill them. I just purchased already dead chickens from the supermarket.
Because I'm not responsible for your behaviour. I may have solicited your service, but you are a free agent who makes his own decisions. All the responsibility of your actions rests on your shoulders.
I'm repeating myself, but, unless I'm missing something, your participation in a market for dead animal products clearly does have an effect on the number of animals killed.
Or are you claiming that there is fixed amount of meat produced, whether or not there is demand (including yours) for it. If this is the case, then I think the burden of proof falls upon your shoulders since it goes against everything we know about how markets function.
Quoting Michael
I did indeed, but I didn't say that you and only you are responsible. You share the responsibility by exercising your autonomy as a consumer in market that responds to consumer demand. Presumably, you know that your demand for chicken stimulates a response in the supply chain. If you buy a dead chicken then the space on the supermarket shelf will necessitate the killing of another chicken. Your purchase of an already killed chicken directly precipitates the killing of another chicken.
Look, I respect your intellectual agility, but I doubt that even you are convinced by your arguments.
My individual demand has no affect on the supply. The market is too big for a single individual's eating habits to change the scale of production. My decision to stop buying meat wouldn't save any animal's life, and a vegetarian's decision to start buying meat wouldn't cost any animal its life.
Quoting jastopher
There's going to be a space whether I buy it or not, either because somebody else buys it or because it goes to waste, and an individual wasted chicken that would have otherwise been bought by me isn't going to make a difference to the supermarket's next order (or further up the chain, how many chickens the farmer will kill). It's not as if they're going to go for 99 chickens rather than 100.
You can argue that it's wrong to vote for someone who will do terrible things, or that it's wrong to financially support someone who kills animals, but it isn't right to accuse the voter or the customer of being responsible.
You are confusing two points here. You stated that a lion doesn't understand the concept of right and wrong, AKA good or bad. But we, as humans, DO understand that concept. So a lion perceives pain as something it wants to avoid. We label that same perception as BAD/WRONG if we inflict that pain onto another. A lion does not understand that to the same extent we do.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Humans have a higher intelligence level, and therefore can understand morals/ethics on a higher level. And the only thing I have applied to humans and animals that is universal, is that we ALL want to avoid pain and suffering. Every other moral dilemma or quality can be viewed as subjective, but the will to live and the goal to avoid pain, is universal. And we can build a moral system just off that foundation alone. If we all want to avoid pain and suffering, to cause NEEDLESS pain and suffering would be wrong. And by NEEDLESS, I am referring to pain that didn't need to be caused because there is an alternative. For example, we don't need to factory farm animals, because we have an alternative of a plant-based diet. Therefore, since it is not NEEDED in the same way a lion NEEDS to hunt an animal to survive, our actions have become immoral. Especially when you self-reflect on why you want to farm animals, most of it comes down to taste pleasure/convenience/cultural norms/etc... All reasons which are not valid or consistent within your own ethical views.
The grounds of the exception are imposed diminished well-being, which I already explained, but apparently you didn't read.
Quoting apokrisis
In the same way you claim that Veganism is too much effort for you, I could claim that a slave owner could use the same justification. Imagine talking to a slave owner, telling him to stop owning slaves, and his response was "It is too much effort to stop owning slaves. And I really like the pleasure of owning them". This reasoning is flawed and doesn't even work when you use it against yourself.
And the slave owner continues, as you have, and says, "I only feel my own pain or suffering. I don't actually experience that of any slave involved. So the primary duty of care remains the servicing of my own selfish wishes here."
Quoting apokrisis
You keep going back to my subjectivity and absolutism. Where is my subjectivity and absolutism being deployed? As I said before, my views/perception are completely irrelevant here. We can use your beliefs specifically, and it would still lead to Veganism, unless you're willing to bite the bullet on some absurd positions. I'd like you to tell me why you believe that eating animals is justified, without pointing to what you think my view is. Especially when you keep getting my view wrong.
So again, tell me what is YOUR reason for why you are justified in eating meat. Don't refer to anything I believe for a second, as that is irrelevant to why you are justified in doing something.
Quoting apokrisis
You eat meat because you don't have a strong enough reason not to? How about causing needless suffering and pain to animals? Or global warming concerns? Or the fact that plant based foods are actually healthier than animal products? It seems that you just haven't done the research, or are being willfully ignorant on this topic, if you haven't found a good reason to stop eating animals.
Quoting apokrisis
Morality based on social norms is flawed, as we have had terrible norms in the past, such as slavery. So I am not sure of your point here?
Quoting apokrisis
Eating autistics is similar to eating animals. There is no NEED for the consumption of either of these living beings. Plant based foods, which cause no pain or suffering and are better for the environment, are a much better option than animals or autistics. That's the point.
I applaud your dogmatism.
lol. I think you should stop trying with Michael. If he can't understand how supply and demand works, I don't know what to tell you.
Plant-Based Research Google DOC
As a paying consumer, you are participating in the whole process. You cannot simply wipe your hands of responsibility when you know part of the process is immoral.
Otherwise you could justify paying for and consuming all sorts of heinous products including, but not limited to: elephant tusks, child pornography, soap made out of the ashes of dead Jews (like they made during the Holocaust), and so on.
Quoting Michael
It's the exact same argument. Buying meat supports the industry, which means you're co-responsible for the deaths.
Quoting Michael
Since their biology mirrors ours in all capacities that are required to experience pain and suffering. And evolutionary theory states that all capacities humans have must exist in varying degrees (more, equal, or less) in other animals. And again, you don't have any evidence to suggest they are not capable of suffering.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
I'll reiterate once more, eating animals is really only in theory okay, since the morally acceptable practice thereof applies only to such marginal cases that don't pertain to our actual lives. Soooo, any talk about eating animals really implies that they were slaughtered as well.
It's hard to understand how someone can't understand that... but it's a fun exercise to try and find the best way to explain it!
Who said anything about justifying it? I'm only saying that the person paying for it isn't responsible for what's done. If I hire a contract killer that doesn't make me responsible for murder; I'm only responsible for soliciting murder. The killer has all the responsibility for the murder.
So if you want to say that the person who buys meat is guilty of soliciting the killing of animals then your argument has more merit, although you'll then have to argue that it's wrong to solicit the killing of animals.
But to accuse the person buying the meat of being responsible for how farmers go about providing that meat? That's a false accusation. I'm never responsible for what other free agents choose to do.
Right. So you accept that this is a legitimate counter-interest. And now your problem is how to prevent sliding down the same slippery slope you employ to argue your own preferred ethical priority.
Let's be logically consistent here. Either two opposed interests are legitimate and so need to be balanced. Or your argument is that one interest rules in absolute fashion, meaning that you haven't actually accepted that the other interest has any ground to be an exception to the preference you've expressed.
Quoting chatterbears
What exactly is illegitimate about that counter-argument - when your argument relies on the abhorrence of suffering?
In the end - unless you define sentience in a more socially-constructed fashion - the only suffering any sentient being could feel would be their own. So any empathy or compassion becomes a logical puzzle - why would you choose to feel the pain of others if you could as easily avoid it?
That is why my own position is focused on why we actually would - as socially evolved creatures - feel empathy and compassion for good pragmatic reason. It is in fact basic to our nature for self-evident evolutionary advantage.
So there is an evolved basis, a pragmatic basis. But not then some objective transcendent basis. If we are talking about extending our habits of empathy and compassion beyond the bounds of our own species, that is something new that we would have to justify on the same grounds of offering an evolutionary advantage. That is what ethical consistency would look like here.
Quoting chatterbears
But I did and have done so again. However I was focused on addressing your argument and so did try to keep my own views on the back-burner. I'm compassionate and empathetic that way.
It would be nice if you answered specifically on my argument against your argument: how is it that the same slippery slope thinking can't be employed against you? If suffering is what counts in some absolute and subjective fashion, then why wouldn't I cite the absolute right to self-defence to put my own suffering first in any ethical situation?
Quoting chatterbears
Actually I've written plenty on these kinds of issues. And I said I accept that there are pragmatic arguments for why we may collectively head towards veganism of some form for these kinds of reasons.
But pragmatic ethics is about the balancing of opposing interests. And it is about accepting that often the situation is grey as what is at stake doesn't matter enough. Someone's personal choice counts as an accident so far as the general case is concerned.
So the black and white stance you want to take is alien to that considered approach to moral issues. Nothing is "just wrong". If behaviour is to be constrained, it only needs to be limited to some reasonable degree. So compassion and empathy may be great qualities in a creature that depends on social living. But selfishness and hard-heartedness are also qualities that provide a necessary balance. They are part of the mix too.
Quoting chatterbears
Who are you to determine what is terrible? Are slavery and cannibalism bad in some abstract and transcendent way, or just not very functional as a social formula?
My point would be that you start by assuming your conclusion - x is morally unacceptable, therefore...
And that way of moral thinking in fact has a pretty chequered past. As I have mentioned - the counter-argument you have dodged - once folk start arguing like that, then the same slippery slope logic can be applied the other way.
Quoting chatterbears
Pragmatically, we can eat plants. I agree. But where is the need to do that exclusively?
Your argument rested on the pain and suffering experienced by sentient beings. And I'm waiting for you to address the counter-argument.
Given you accepted self-defence as a proper ground to justify harming other sentient beings, what stops that self-defence argument being used to justify a right not to be troubled by feelings of compassion and empathy for other creatures ... when you literally cannot experience their experience anyway.
Again, this is not my own ethical position. I think there are good pragmatic arguments for there being empathy and compassion in our moral conduct. We are primarily social creatures and it goes with the territory.
But your way of arguing is seeking an objective and absolute need. And that is fundamentally unreasonable - as is shown when that same way of arguing is used to justify its complete opposite moral stance.
So again, what is your counter-argument that you want me to address? I am not going to go through every aspect of your response because I want this to be very clear.
Name the exact counter-argument, give an example for it, and I will address it.
Justify means "to show (an act, claim, statement, etc.) to be just or right." Since you are trying argue that buying/eating meat is okay, you are justifying it.
Quoting Michael
You can be. It's called "aiding and abetting." Paying someone for an immoral act falls in that category.
I'm employing the same slippery slope logic that you are employing here. Why can't I believe that eating meat is just part of who I am as a sentient being. So you are threatening my survival in that regard.
You can believe you are a pink unicorn too if you want. Doesn't make it true.
Apo is clearly trolling you. He likes to disguise the vapidity and trollishness of his replies in an endless word-jumble that he'll inevitably say you don't understand anyways.
When the argument requires you to consider the cannibalism of autistic human as a limit-case, then you know you are fighting a battle that can only be won by not participating.
Thanks for agreeing. Chatterbears's position asks us to just accept our subjectively revealed beliefs as if they were objective moral absolutes. So like me, you would prefer our beliefs to be founded on reason and evidence. You take the pragmatist position on these things.
I would.
Quoting apokrisis
I haven't seen that. I've mainly seen him defending beliefs with reason and evidence and therefore arriving at sound moral conclusions.
Why so bitter and trollish today?
Quoting Akanthinos
Are you so easily confused by words that you don't see I asked Chatterbears to address the issue of how limits ought to be imposed on unrestricted moral imperatives?
He suggests a cut-off at the level of animals. So plant life is alright to eat. And he also accepts that the sentience of animals is not exactly at the level of humans. So the issue becomes why should compassion and empathy extend past the species boundary?
Perhaps it should. But his argument has become arbitrary to the degree it rests on treating "sentience" as both something black and white (plants don't have it?) and also admitting that humans and animals are significantly different, if in ways he fails to specify.
So he is conflating an absolutist position with a degree of pragmatism. Maybe that is why you are confused by his posts?
He does throw in the fact we can survive on a vegan diet, the environmental damage of trying to feed 10 billion people on steak, and other quite reasonable points. However I was addressing his initial argument that subjectively we feel compassion and empathy for sentient creatures, so as soon as we recognise sentience in a creature, ethical consistency demands a compassionate and empathetic response.
That is fine as far as it goes. But my reply is that compassion and empathy are pragmatic response that evolved for self-evident reason in us as social creatures. And there is then a balance to be struck, given the fundamentally evolutionary nature of the equation.
If someone looks inside and discovers that besides empathy/compassion they experience desire/self-concern - or indeed just that when faced with a steak - then what becomes the ethically consistent outcome in that light?
I agree we would still want to arrive at a consistent story. Seems reasonable anyway. But Chatterbears's approach doesn't look to be delivering that.
I have never said this. This is the problem you are confusing. Empathy, compassion and consistency are ALL SEPARATE things.
You can have 1 without the other 2. You could lack empathy, but stay consistent. You could lack consistency, but stay empathetic. I specifically stated if you have ALL 3, Veganism follows that. And I even stated, multiple times, that each person's subjective moral view is different.
And for the record, morality is subjective, in the same way health is. We first must agree on a goal, and from there we can make objective assessments. So the goal of health is to improve the body's condition. From there we can make objective assessments, based on this goal, such as "Drinking 20 sodas per day is bad for you." - This same thing applies to morality. If we agree on a goal first, we can make objective assessments. We can say, for the sake of argument, that the goal of morality (being moral) is to improve (not diminish) the well-being of sentient beings. Based on that goal, we can say "Killing someone because of their hair color, is immoral" - Killing someone [based on an unreasonable justification] will diminish the well-being of that living being. That's just a fact, and it coincides with the goal we have set.
But even without me and you agreeing on a goal, I can still lead you [within your own subjective moral perspective] to Veganism. All we would need is ethical/moral consistency. And of course, if you really want to, you could reject 'consistency' all together, in which your views about morality become unworthy of consideration. If you don't care to be consistent in your beliefs, then that is a big problem. If we go back to the health scenario, it would be the same as someone being inconsistent in their health beliefs. Someone could say, "It's bad for my daughter to drink so much soda." - Yet this same person will act inconsistently by drinking just as much soda (if not more) than her daughter. This is called hypocritical / contradictory / inconsistent. I use the word 'inconsistent' because it conveys the idea better.
To remind you...
Quoting chatterbears
...so I have accepted ethical consistency as a constraint and challenged the monotonic absolutism of empathy/compassion as "pillars" - the solitary foundations of any moral position.
My argument has been that - pragmatically - all foundations are dichotomous. Any complex system is founded on a dialectical balance. So you need complementary "pillars" here so that you can build your moral position on an actually balanced ground - the view that takes into account both sides of the coin in explicit fashion.
You claim to have accepted my 3 pillars while somehow still eating animals and holding a reasonable position?
Half the time you were arguing from a position you didn't even say you held. And the other half you were arguing that animals don't feel pain in a way you find reasonable enough to stop contributing to. That is a clear violation of empathy. Unless you are stating you only have empathy for humans? In which I would push your position into a consistency test. The reason you eat animals is probably not a reason you'd accept for yourself to be eaten, which makes your position contradictory/inconsistent/hypocritical. And if you would accept being eaten based on the same justification you have used to eat animals, I would say your position is absurd and/or unreasonable.
I am starting to realize that at this point. He can't even clearly communicate his position without pointing to something I said or something I implied (when I clearly didn't imply it).
How do you come to that conclusion?
I agree consistency is a different kind of thing here. It is a principle of constraint we are applying to the general discussion. But aren't compassion and empathy pretty tightly connected as the "what" and the "how"?
Quoting chatterbears
So empathy is how we can actually imagine ourselves in another's shoes (and it is only imagining, with all that then entails in terms of veracity.)
And compassion is what we would then do as a result of imagining ourselves in those other shoes and viewing the situation in a now self-centred light from that different place.
Quoting chatterbears
Yes. Pragmatism makes for good and balanced ethics. You ought to apply it consistently to the whole of your argument.
Quoting chatterbears
Yes. That is how a pragmatic approach would work. Except that your notion of "we" is again tinged with absoluteness. I would suggest it would have to be balanced by that other natural tendency towards individuality. The collective "we" becomes some effective average. It represents an acceptable diversity of views as well.
So taking this probabilistic story as foundational - which is what pragmatism does - we already accept "exceptions to the rule" to the degree that they are just "accidents", or differences that don't make a difference on the whole.
This underlying anti-absolutism point becomes relevant later in the argument.
Quoting chatterbears
That's a red herring. If you've already permitted killing under some circumstances, you will have to have identified some conflict of interests that do indeed strike a reasonable balance. So it is that part of the argument that remains in play, as I argued. I didn't argue that you could bring in other "reasons" that are patently spurious.
If you want to talk about moral positions based on hair colour, go for it. But that isn't this discussion.
Quoting chatterbears
Here we go.
Quoting chatterbears
How many times do I have to repeat that logical consistency is exactly what I am focused on and what I am discussing about your position.
Where you veer into pragmatism, I can agree. But where you try to start in monotonic foundationalism, I point out the logical flaw.
Seems to be a trend when this topic is brought up.
Long story. :)
Read what I wrote. I accepted ethical consistency and challenged empathy/compassion (as monotonic foundations).
Quoting chatterbears
Well yeah. This is a philosophy site. It is one of the skills of critical thinking to be able to present positions you don't have some passionate belief in. It would be quite hard to set out a reductio ad absurdum otherwise.
Quoting chatterbears
LOL.
Could you not say the same for the prohibition on slavery? That people wanted to take over the world with an absolutist moral prescription on treating human beings equally, in the same way Vegans want animals to be treated equally. And both situations are of the most basic level, to not cause harm. That is all. Apparently not wanting to cause harm to another living being when it is not necessary is an absolutist moral prescription?
I am starting to believe you're a troll at this point. So I may stop responding. You rarely even understand/comprehend my points, let alone respond to them accordingly. I'll give you one last shot.
Explain why you eat meat. And whatever justification you are using, would you also accept that same justification against yourself? Example: "I eat animals because they have less intelligence." - Would you then say it is morally justified for me to eat you if you were less intelligent? (Severely autistic or brain dead)
Either explain your position and apply consistency to your justification or I am done. I'll let someone else respond to your word salad.
Yeah, it is REALLY EXTREME to not want to hurt another living creature needlessly. HOW CRAZY of a position is that, lol? The irony of most meat eaters is, they look at dog or cat abuse as immoral. But when you point out that cows/chickens/pigs should ALSO be included in that same fair treatment as the dog/cat, "WHOA YOU HAVE AN EXTREME POSITION!!"
Yes. To the degree that the argument might have been based on subjective feeling rather than rational debate.
A fanatic argues from the basis of emotions. A cult relies on scripts designed to elicit feelings by limiting the scope for reason and evidence.
Is slavery worse than having to work for a living as some corporation's paid employee? Probably yes on the whole. But it is still relative. There are still pros and cons to balance.
Quoting chatterbears
Hmm. Again it is the "not necessary" bit which is at stake. My argument has been that imperatives come in pairs. Morality exists to resolve these foundational conflicts. That's how it works.
So sure, if there is no other point of view in play, it really doesn't matter. But if there is, it does.
Think about compassion/empathy a little more carefully. As I said, they are about being selfish from another point of view. And that is a good thing right? Being selfish ... but now standing in someone else's shoes.
So really we are talking about the ability to see two conflicting points of view and arrive at some pragmatic balance.
Well I'm talking about the pragmatism there. You are saying that an animal that lacks the sentience to reciprocate the good deed should be treated exactly like a sentient being that could.
So already your position is falling apart there.
Quoting chatterbears
It might be because dogs and cats are fellow meat eaters. The others are just plant eaters and so fair game. :razz:
There's around 4.7 million people in my country, each requiring (say) an average of 2000 calories per day. That's 9.4 billion calories that needs to be produced, packed, transported, and consumed every single day just to keep the country running. You simply can't produce that many calories without relying upon livestock. The idea that it's more moral to personally choose not to ingest animal calories, is just a failure to understand just how dependent you are on your community for your daily survival. Sure, you can personally chose not ingest animal calories, and make up the calorie deficit in your diet with extra grains/fruits/vegetables, but you can't opt out of existing within a community that as a whole is dependent upon livestock for it's survival (people who wander off into the wilderness very quickly die).
Say you're a Maasai tribesman. Your own survival depends upon a existing within a community that would literally starve to death without it's cattle. Is it more moral to choose to just survive on the maize produced by the tribe, rather than also consume the blood/milk/meat of it's cattle? Without the cattle, you too will starve. You can't opt out of depending upon the community that depends upon the cattle (you will die). It's the same principle at play in the western world.
Of course none of this means that we can't/shouldn't have laws and systems in place to treat livestock humanely and with some degree of respect. They shouldn't suffer gratuitously and needlessly.
Understanding morals/ethics on a higher level is understanding that morals and ethics are subjective and vary from culture to culture as well from individual to individual. There is no universal right and wrong, or good and bad. It is based upon one's own individual goals, which can be shared or come into conflict with others' goals.
Speaking up for pragmatic veganism now, it might be worth checking this on the future of animal-less meat and dairy ... https://vimeo.com/229663434
Rapid technological advance is coming that will transform our food production models. Or at least we need it to, otherwise the planet is screwed.
So meat-eating is not a sane general practice for the human race if it wants both a population peaking at 10 billion and to survive that in reasonable shape.
We have the entire universe for our living space. If we would just stop focusing on nationalism dividing humans into different groups based on culture and heritage, then maybe we could focus on expanding out into the universe. We don't want to keep all of our eggs in one basket regardless of what we end up eating. For the human race to survive extinction, we need to move off the planet.
So Huston, we indeed have a moral dilemma. Veganism starts to look like shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic.
Shit and move on, heh? Sounds like a plan. :)
So is your problem in hurting another living creature or killing them? We could kill our food with no pain, if that is your problem. If it is the killing itself, then you vegans have that problem of killing life. Plants are life.
Our animal instinct controls our conscience, it compels us to eat meat. This drive we got to eat meat is so strong, that we unconsciously try to find reasons to be moral while doing something immoral, to blind ourselves to the fact that it is wrong to cause pain and cage another living being, though even a child can recognize this. This is the conlfict between moral awakened conscious and wild neutral instinct.
130 years ago, slavery was legal in my country, Brazil. My great-grandfather was a slave, but I'm white. Today, we all perceive slavery as completely immoral. The instinct to profit on top of another is not as basic and primitive as the instinct of eating meat. I've got faith that eventually, we will stop doing everything that is immoral and we will stop trying to see things that are immoral as moral.
Yes, this is a problem for most living beings in this planet, we can't go on without killing something else. But this relation with fruits at least isn't that bad, the tree is giving the fruit for anyone that wants to eat it, so they defecate their seeds and proliferate their species.
Maybe eventually we will find a way to live without having to kill other living beings, i think we could do it by absorbing the elements we need in it's raw form, the same way plants do it. But right now this is out of our reality, we need to focus on what we can do with what we got.
Just because my community is using something that allows them to survive, doesn't mean they cannot improve it or replace it. And that's the entire point of Veganism. We do not need to factory farm animals any more. It's bad for the environment, worse for our health (than plant foods) and bad for the animals we are torturing and slaughtering. We could replace all factory farms with plant farms. And not to mention, half of the world's crops are being fed to the 50 BILLION animals we slaughter every year. All the land for those crops could be used to feed us, and there would still be a lot left over for people who are starving in poverty right now.
And if you're one of those people who denies the negative environmental factors and health issues, I'll post the google doc I created which cites well established scientific studies in these areas: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
Really? So how about you go into a factory farm, lay on the floor and let one of the workers slit your throat. They can then feed you to a cannibalistic tribe who can benefit from your corpse.
It's extremely ignorant to conflate mental hardship with physical pain. The pain I am referring to is physical pain, which is an evolutionary trait. The fight or flight response. Either way, you want to avoid pain, whether that is by running away, or fighting for your life. The rare case of people who want to end their lives is NOT what I am referring to. I was referring to an overall commonality that all living beings share. Which is to avoid pain and suffering.
I am starting to think you're a troll as well, but I hope not.
I can't take you seriously any more. Vegans care about SENTIENT living beings that can experience pain and suffering. A plant does not have a brain or a nervous system, and therefore cannot experience pain and suffering. You keep conflating things in a ridiculous manner. I cannot tell if you're trolling at this point.
Just to clarify, I hope you weren't agreeing with Harry Hindu's incorrect statement of falsely equating plants to animals. Because it is quite clear that plants cannot feel pain and suffering, while animals (cows/chickens/pigs) can.
We're still researching about everything basically, and even about the things that we think we already discovered 100%, there may be something we don't know yet. We recently discovered that trees got a close community and can communicate with each other, you should research about it. So we should value everything that's alive.
I was assuming silence implied tacit agreement from all posters.:wink:
I'm not arguing that it's OK. I'm arguing that eating meat doesn't make me responsible for the death of the animals. It might still be wrong to financially support an industry that kills animals, but it's not because I somehow become responsible for those deaths.
Quoting NKBJ
Someone who aids and abets the killing of an animal is responsible for aiding and abetting the killing of an animal, not for the killing of an animal.
In our particular case, exchanging money for meat at a supermarket just doesn't make me responsible for the farmer having killed that chicken. The responsibility is entirely the farmer's.
I'm talking about killing a whole plant, like a head of lettuce, or a whole forests of trees that are chopped down for fuel, building materials, etc.
When we exercise, we experience physical pain, but we keep doing it for the health and social benefits. Physical pain teaches you what is dangerous to your body and what isn't. We need pain in order to survive. It evolved for a reason.
It is not a rare case for someone to end their lives. People do it every day.
Avoiding something does not make that thing you are avoiding "bad", or "wrong". Pain isn't "bad" or "wrong". Is everything that you try to avoid in life universally "bad"? When you try to avoid your mother in law does that make her "bad"?
Quoting chatterbears
I can't take you seriously because you don't read posts and instead insist on these replies that do not address what I have said. I already made that same point in my post you are replying to. If it is about pain that you are worried about, then we can kill animals without them feeling any pain. If it is life you are worried about, then you kill life every time you eat a head of lettuce and are being inconsistent yourself. Who are you to determine which organism gets to live simply because of the arbitrary boundary you have chosen of having a nervous system or not.
I cannot tell you are an immature child pitching a fit, or an ignorant adult with a chip on his shoulder and is angry at the world for no reason.
Those I've already given. Those in the thought experiment I referred to, about looking, acting, tasting, etc., just like a chicken. Those circumstances of being sufficiently chicken-like make it okay. That's the answer.
Quoting chatterbears
That would be a really good counterargument if the two sets of circumstances were comparable. But there's no good reason for thinking that they are.
Quoting chatterbears
None of that explanation is necessary. I can intuitively know that there's something wrong about it.
And I eat meat because I enjoy doing so, whether it's right or wrong. I probably won't be switching diet any time soon, even if it was an easy thing to do, which it actually wouldn't be for someone like me. I can live with that.
Who are you to say that physical pain is worse than mental hardship? When a child is molested and carries that mental hardship with them for the rest of their lives, is that worse, or not as worse as you burning your hand while steaming your veggies? Pain is a mental state, not a physical state. Damage to your body is a physical state, which your mental state represents as pain. We can eliminate physical pain with drugs, but not so much with mental anguish.
I agree that it's pretty funny, but there's a serious point underlying it which shouldn't merely be dismissed out of hand. And if you do so, then I will consider that giving up in a sense. It puts the ball in your court and calls into question what exactly it is about humans which causes many of us to unthinkingly assume that they're untouchable, that it would be out of the question under any circumstance. It's intuitively compelling, and, of course, it escapes any charge of inconsistency, which has been the basis of one of your main objections, as well as those of others.
The hypothetical I was referring to is where your point was presumably leading, which was food production whereby humans were turned into food which would have an appealing taste. If it wasn't leading to that, then it was leading nowhere.
If you have something to say worth listening to, then please let me know. Otherwise, kindly do not bother me.
P.S. the fallacy you were thinking of was quoting out of context, not cherry picking. You can have that one on me.
Vegetarians, on the other hand, have to do less work, but they do still have to accept some undesirable consequences such as the moral desirability of eating roadkill. The hardest problem though is how a vegetarian responds to the question, "would you kill an animal in order to save a starving child?"
They can either say no, which results in bullet-biting not dissimilar to eating the mentally disabled, or they say yes and admit to the same speciesism as the carnivore. If there are circumstances in which a vegetarian would eat a non human animal, the argument becomes about what circumstances are morally acceptable rather than whether it is or isn't morally acceptable.
So, vegetarians, would you kill an animal in order to save a starving child? What about killing a severely mentally-disabled person to feed a starving child?
There may be a justification for killing and eating the flesh of other animals, and for not killing and eating that of our own species, but it has not been put forward on this thread. However, so far, there isn't an argument for never killing and eating the flesh of other animals either.
Are you going to continue to point toward pain that is beneficial to human health, rather than pointing to the pain that I am referring to that is dangerous to human health. Put yourself in the position of a factory farmed animal. Is the pain and suffering you go through (along with abrupt death) comparable to someone who exercises? Or put yourself in the shoes of a slave 300 years ago. Is the physical pain of a slave comparable to your pain when you exercise? The more you talk, the more I learn about your lack of empathy and reason.
Quoting Harry Hindu
In the United States, the annual age-adjusted suicide rate is 13.26 per 100,000 individuals. That's 0.0001326 % of the population. I would say that is pretty rare.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It is about BOTH. I care about the "life" that can experience pain and suffering. I don't care about every life equally. And by the logic you're using, you might as well say that sticks, rocks, dirt and sand have life. Lettuce cannot feel pain and suffering, and neither can a rock. So I am not being inconsistent when I say I care about all life that can experience pain and suffering. I do also care about plants, but for a different reason.
Also, there is no arbitrary boundary. It is just a fact that things without a nervous system cannot feel pain. We, as humans, experience pain, as well as other living things. All these living things share the fact that they want to avoid pain and suffering. If plants cannot feel pain, we don't need to be morally responsible for our actions in the same way we would toward a living thing that DOES feel pain.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Would you rather get killed or get molested? Would you rather be enslaved or get molested? Would you rather get tortured and slaughtered, or get molested? Would you rather get attacked by a lion, or get molested? Stop being ignorant.
If a person gets molested, they still have a chance to have a healthy life. They can pursue mental help to assist them in their traumatic experience. Stop committing this false equivalency.
So you claim...
Quoting Sapientia
This is shaky grounds for what you would base moral decisions on. I'd rather use reason and logical consistency instead of "feelings" or "intuition".
Quoting Sapientia
And slave owners enjoyed owning slaves. Your grounds for morality are that of a slave owner who doesn't want to give up a habit that is condoned and enabled by society. Instead of using logic and reason, with a bit of decency, you'd rather commit actions (which you imply may be wrong) than actually make a change for the better. I think that says more about you than you realize.
There is no 'moral' connection between me and roadkill. There is no pain I can cause to the animal, and therefore the only concern (if I were to eat it) would be health concerns. Animals and Humans both die as a result of our current transportation. But it isn't specific to animals, as many people die as well in car accidents.
Quoting jastopher
As I stated in this thread before, moral dilemmas (such as this one you have provided) are completely separate from moral consistency. But I will still answer your question.
I would kill an animal to save a starving child, because I believe the child(human) has more value than an animal. I have never advocated that animals are of equal value to humans. I have advocated that animals deserve the same basic rights as humans (right to freedom, right to live, right to not experience needless pain and suffering).
That at the very basic level, not violating the rights of another sentient being (human or non-human) is something we owe them. It's the absolute minimum a person can do to be considered a moral agent. We aren't obligated to befriend them, feed them, domesticate them or save them from predators. But at the most minuscule level of moral agency, we are obligated to NOT violate their rights. Their bodily rights (of consent) and their right to life (not die). And you may think this contradicts my position on your moral dilemma, but it does not. In the moral dilemma, the starving child has no other means to survive, other than me killing an animal to feed it. In the world we live in right now, we have other means to survive that do not consist of eating meat. Necessary harm (moral dilemma) vs unnecessary harm (factory farming).
Quoting jastopher
Same concept. If the only option was to save one or the other, I would save the starving child who isn't severely mentally-disabled. When there is no other option, I would consistently choose the thing of higher value in that specific situation. And by higher value, I am referring to things like: Higher levels of moral capacity and deep reasoning, higher probability of making a positive change in the world, etc.
But when it comes to factory farms and animal harm, we aren't in a position of having no option. We aren't in a position of having a moral dilemma, similar to that of "Would you kill an animal to save a starving child?" - The harm we cause to animals is completely needless, and is not remotely comparable to the dilemma you have put forward. In the moral dilemma, the person either let's the child die, or tries to save it. In the factory farming situation, we are intentionally killing a life, when it had no threat of being harmed or dying in the first place. That is the key difference here.
So yes, I'll bite the bullet on the rare moral dilemma (that I would probably never be faced with in reality), compared to the meat eaters who have to bite the bullet on their internal inconsistency. Some of which commit in reality as of right now. Many meat eaters in the world own pets. This is a clear example of discrimination and hypocrisy/inconsistency. Why care about one animals life (dog) over another (cow)? And neither the cow nor dog is in any immediate harm, or deserves any imposed harm.
Is justification needed? Shouldn't the burden be on the person who claims that it is wrong to eat the flesh of an animal (whether human or otherwise)? They might say that it is wrong because it causes animals to suffer, and it is wrong to cause suffering, but then how do they justify the claim that it is wrong to cause suffering?
I'm vegetarian. I don't eat meat because I don't need to. Were I stranded someplace and needed to eat meat, I would eat meat. Such would be a necessary evil. If I had to feed my child through immoral means, I would likely do so, though with the reservation that my choices were immoral, but necessary. In my opinion, preexisting moral obligations, including to yourself, carry more value than duties that are newly sprung and arise completely out of your control.
Edit: Necessary evils are almost always tied to instances of desperation, which is why decisions that are immoral but necessary are so tragic. However, and especially in the West, decisions to eat meat rarely arise out of instances of desperation, but rather choices of base preference and frank disregard for moral consideration. Choosing whether to steal food to feed your child is desperately difficult. Choosing whether to buy chicken or pork at the grocery store is easy.
So you admit to speciesism?
Yes, so I claim, and as I think most people would accept. If you would claim otherwise, then I think that the burden would lie more with you than with me, since your claim would be much more controversial.
Quoting chatterbears
It's not either the one or the other. In my view, moral decisions boil down to feelings or intuition. I'm not saying to disregard reason or logic, I'm just saying that one can have an intuitive indication of right or wrong prior to any appeal to a process of reasoning or utilisation of logic.
Quoting chatterbears
And comparing eating meat to owning slaves is just silly.
If you're happy with a war of attrition, you can use the rhetorical strategy of repeatedly demanding that your interlocutor do all the work in the hope that he or she will eventually give up.
If you're genuinely interested in the question, then you may wish to attempt to justify your actions even if it's only to yourself.
It's not about attrition. I'm just asking why I need to justify my actions at all. Why is it that I must show that my actions are ethical, and not that you must show that my actions are unethical?
I'm just eating a hamburger. If you want to accuse me of behaving unethically then surely the burden is on you to support that accusation? I don't see why I should have to play defensive to your unsolicited opinion.
How do you move from this to 'humans shouldn't eat meat because they don't need it?'
Also would you accept that if I could establish a 'need', then it would be acceptable to eat meat?
What kind of need would be sufficient?
In principle, is there anything I could say that would convince you that you were behaving unethically?
That's like saying someone who shoots another person is only responsible for pulling a trigger, and is not responsible for his or her death.
Actions have consequences. Your aiding and abetting leads to the death of animals. You know that your money will be used in this fashion. Therefore, you are co-responsible for it. The fact that there is a step between these two things doesn't remove the causality.
That's the very issue I tried to highlight in my post here (and also in another discussion here).
There doesn't appear to be any measure that can be used to verify or falsify a moral claim. Unlike whether or not it's raining, it doesn't seem to be an empirical matter, and unlike maths or logic, there aren't any formal axioms or rules of inference from which to derive a conclusion.
So how does one actually prove that something is right or wrong? It seems to me that you just either believe it or you don't.
Cult : "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object."
That's not veganism.
You can claim that vegans and animal rights advocates are misguided philosophically in some way. But claiming that those who live according to a moral system they have tried to establish through logic and empathy is cult-like is just fallacious, even if you do think they are wrong.
Not only is it fallacious, it's also just a cheap ploy so as not to have to seriously consider their arguments.
By accepting some of the basic premises.
Because you wouldn't accept another living being causing you to suffer needlessly, would you? No, which makes you hypocritical and causes you to have inconsistent ethics. If you wouldn't accept needless suffering for yourself, why would you impose that onto others? As I said before, all living beings try to avoid pain and suffering, because it diminishes the well-being of that life. And if you wouldn't want to allow a diminishing of well-being for yourself, why would you want to do that to another living being? This is where empathy and compassion come in, which you don't seem to have. But more importantly, you aren't even consistent within your own ethical perspective.
Not in the way you think I am. As me and Buxtebuddha already explained, there's a difference between a necessary evil and an unnecessary evil. Eating meat is not necessary. If you still don't understand the difference, I don't' know what to tell you.
This is not an appeal to authority, but some of the most brilliant minds alive today, have made this very same comparison. Look up the talk with Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins: https://youtu.be/GYYNY2oKVWU?t=1766
Richard states that his position on eating animals is similar to that of the position regarding slavery. Sam Harris and others have also made this same comparison. Stating that, in the future, we will look at Factory Farming as an abomination, similarly to how we look at Slavery right now. And there are many similarities to pinpoint.
- Enslaving other living beings for our benefit
- Causing unnecessary pain and suffering to other living beings
- Viewing other living beings as "lesser than", which justify our cruel actions
- The current societal norm
- Is not illegal at the time of being condoned
I'll take that as a yes.
So we have established that both carnivores and vegetarians are speciesist albeit to differing degrees.
That leaves utilitarian, deontological and virtue ethics.
Utilitarian: something is right/wrong to the extent that it causes pleasure/suffering. Animals can suffer. Eating animals causes animal suffering, which must be offset against the pleasure obtained by consuming meat. Factory farming comes out badly, but free-range etc. could produce more pleasure than suffering, and hence eating meat is not absolutely wrong.
Deontological, do unto others (animals included) as you would have them do unto you. Makes sense, but as Michael might say, 'Why?'. Why not do what I like, and others do what I like too?
Virtue ethics: We harm ourselves by harming others (including animals) in the sense that it is imperative to develop virtue and harming others is inimical to that aim.
I like utilitarianism since it permits me to continue to eat meat, but requires me to exercise my influence as a consumer in order to minimise animal suffering. The fact that free-range tastes better and that I feel less guilt when I eat only increases aggregate pleasure.
Causing death by shooting a gun is a case of homicide, not aiding and abetting.
And the relationship between pulling the trigger of a gun and the death of the target is very different to the relationship between buying meat at the supermarket and the farmer killing a chicken.
Yours is a terrible analogy.
Then what if I don't accept the premise that it is wrong to kill any animal that can feel pain? What if I only accept the premise that it is wrong to kill any member of a species that tends to have human-like or greater intelligence?
My unwillingness to allow another living being to cause me to suffer has nothing to do with ethics. It has to do with my aversion to pain, and other feelings of self-preservation.
If the first thing that comes to mind when someone intends to hurt you is the morality of their behaviour, I would say that there is something very wrong with you.
So, no, there's no inconsistent ethics.
Well, you would either need to attempt to show why this (not difficult) or any other premise is wrong. If you insist on merely saying that you don't accept it, there's no reason to engage with you philosophically since your position will appear to be based on prejudice rather than reason.
If you want to go to the dictionary definition of 'speciesism', it is "the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals."
I never condone or support the exploitation of animals. Therefore I am not a speciesist. But if you want to redefine the term 'speciesism' to mean that anyone who holds the position that humans are of higher value than animals, this is not the same term. But as I stated before, even though I do think Humans are more valuable, I do not think they should exploit animals and/or cause needless suffering.
Another definition of 'speciesism' is "the assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership". This again, does not apply to me. Because I do not assign higher value to humans solely on the basis of being a different species.
So when I said, "not in the way you think", I was implying that you are equating my position with a term that does not apply.
Quoting jastopher
So 200 years ago, a slave owner could say the same thing too right? "Why not do what I like and own slaves, and other white people in my society can do what I like too?" - Flawed moral argumentation.
Quoting jastopher
Free-range, organic, grass-fed, cage-free, are all irrelevant to the treatment of the animals. This is just a lack of research and willful ignorance to continue in your obvious immoral actions.
You cannot justify eating animals without creating a contradiction within your own personal ethics.
If you're talking about a spontaneous act of violence, of course i would not have time to think about the moral decision making of the person/animal trying to harm me. But if it was a person who lived their life and continuously caused harm, you SHOULD assess the morality of their behavior. If you do not, then you have no grounds to say what is or isn't moral at all.
You are causing environmental damage (to the earth), health damage (to yourself) and physical pain (to the animals), when you decide to eat meat. The science for the health and environmental concerns are clear, so that isn't even debatable. The ethics are just as clear as our perspective nowadays of slavery is, but you use every excuse in the book to continue your taste pleasure, rather than actually care about another living being who you are causing to suffer in pain.
I can empathize with a dog or a cat. But admittedly I do not feel much empathy for cows -- they strike me as stupid stinky brutes who are the way they are because we have domesticated them. I wouldn't contend that they don't feel pain. But I don't feel a deep sense of empathy for them. I feel even less empathy for fish. They aren't even vertabrates. I really don't know what it's like to be a fish.
If compassion is defined in terms of empathy, with the additional feeling of goodwill towards the other beings well being, then i similarly wouldn't feel much compassion for a cow since I don't feel much empathy for a cow.
Ethical consistency seems to apply if I were to believe "Do not needlessly harm" -- but if I didn't even believe that, then ethical consistency wouldn't come into play.
It seems to me that you believe cows feel pain, therefore we should not needlessly harm them (and similar reasoning for other animals). I know what pain feels like. I wouldn't disagree that cows feel pain. But I don't empathize with cows. I do not feel like a cow and I am uncertain when it comes to thinking about their perspective -- what it is like to be a cow. I know I would not want to be treated like a cow. I could go so far as to say that I do find current methods of factory farming to be egregious in that they cause needless pain, even to creatures I do not feel much empathy for.
So I would support legislation that would make such methods illegal. That seems to me to be the right way of things. Much pain is being caused where much pain does not need to be caused. I don't feel their pain or even feel much compassion for the creatures, but I do think that simply causing needless pain is something worth avoiding.
But if cows could be raised humanely and killed without pain? I don't have a problem with that. Though I don't know if I hold to your moral trifecta, either.
You have already said that, in exceptional circumstances, you do "condone or support the exploitation of animals" so you are speciesist. My point was that the speciesist argument is not helpful since it applies to both carnivores and vegetarians alike.
Quoting chatterbears
Does this mean that you assign a higher value to humans partly on the basis of being a different species? Because this is still speciesism. Out of curiosity, what other methods do you employ to assign higher value to humans over other animals?
Quoting chatterbears
Indeed, I don't hold with deontology since I value myself over and above many other individuals.
Quoting chatterbears
If it were possible to eliminate all suffering from the supply chain, would you then condone meat eating?
Where do you stand on laboratory grown meat? What about eating insects?
This was supposed to be an example of the basic premises you mention. Basic premises are presumably ones that aren't supported; just accepted or not. Or did you mean something else?
Except for possible health damage (which is debatable, and even then not an ethical concern), this is wrong. Buying meat from a supermarket doesn't cause environmental damage to the environment, and nor does it cause physical pain to animals. The fact that the money I spend eventually finds its away back to the farmers doesn't pass any responsibility that they have for their actions on to me.
You're playing far too fast and loose with the term "cause" here.
For example, I can accept that animals suffer and that we should attempt to minimise suffering whenever possible without needing to recur to ever more convoluted metaphysics. This is not to say that there is no interesting debate to be had over basic premises and axioms, but that if you want to go forward, then going backwards is perverse.
Cows are just one animal in the factory farming industry. Pigs are much more intelligent, even more so than dogs. The moral trifecta isn't necessary to lead to veganism, although I would hold the view that it is impossible to hold all 3 of those qualities as true, without being a Vegan.
The only thing you need to lead yourself to Veganism is logical consistency. Ask yourself, "If I raised a cow humanely and killed it without pain, would I accept this same treatment for myself?" And whatever trait you use to justify the dismissal of that belief, would you accept the treatment if that trait was present in yourself? I'll give an example of what you might say.
' I am not okay with humans being raised humanely and killed without pain, because humans are smarter than animals ' - The trait you would be using here is "humans are smarter". So to lead to your logically consistent conclusion, would you allow that treatment for a human that is NOT smarter than the average human? Something similar to a severely autistic person, or a mentally handicapped person. Since those two types of people would have similar intelligence levels of a cow, is now okay to raise them humanely and kill them without pain? If you say no, then your position is inconsistent.
Veganism is the logically consistent conclusion you would reach, no matter what your subjective ethics consist of. The only thing that wouldn't lead to Veganism, is someone who lacked empathy for both animals AND humans. But that person should not be viewed as someone we should take advice from on how to build a healthy and thriving society.
This is completely false, because I even stated that I would kill a severely autistic human to save a starving human child. So this is not speciesism, because I am not exploiting based on species. There's two different moral dilemmas.
1. Would you kill a severe mentally handicapped person to save a child?
2. Would you kill an animal to save a child?
Both answers are yes. Therefore I am not engaged into speciesism. But just to point out, both of these scenarios are by FORCE. These are situations that leave you with no choice, unless you allow the child to die. The child is put into a situation where it needs to survive off another living being. But in our situation, on a daily basis, we are not put in a situation where our lives are threatened. We do not need to contribute to factory farms, nor do we need meat for our survival. So the moral dilemma is irrelevant.
Quoting jastopher
No, because an animal would still be getting killed, which doesn't allow the animal to live its natural life. That is the same as me asking you, "If we could raise humans humanely, but kill them without pain when they turn 20 years old, would you then condone that treatment?" - No. If you wouldn't be OK with that treatment for yourself or your own species, why would it be OK for you to treat another species in the same way?
Quoting jastopher If lab meat involves no pain or suffering, I have no issue with it. Eating insects is similar to eating animals. Why do it when it is not needed or necessary? Unless your survival rests on the diet of insects (or meat), there's no reason to do so.
I guess I'll post my google doc again: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
Click on the 'Environment' tab, and see the research for yourself. Factory farms, often confining thousands of animals, are major culprits in climate change. These mega-farms create huge amounts of manure that pollute the soil, water, and air. Animal factories also waste grain, water, fuel, and other resources.
As stated before, something you still haven't grasped, is the idea of supply and demand. These factory farmers SUPPLY you with what you DEMAND from them. If you (and everyone else) STOPS demanding what they are supplying, they will go out of business. And if they go out of business, the harm to animals and to the environment will cease to exist.
No.
Quoting chatterbears
I wouldn't use intelligence as the basis. Intelligence is merely a tool, and to be better with a tool can inspire admiration for craftsmanship, but it is no basis for moral feeling.
I would just say that a cow is not human, and I empathize with humans but not with cows. I empathize with humans and not with pigs. I empathize with humans and not with fish. I don't think there is a single trait that separates us. We are all, after all, animals.
But if empathy is the basis for considering other beings moral agents, and compassion is a subset of empathy, then by your own trifecta, since I do not feel much empathy for these things, I wouldn't be logically inconsistent.
Quoting chatterbears
That is one whopper of a statement. Were I a Cartesian, of the old school variety, then animals would simply be biological machines. They would not have a soul, but would be meat-machines reproducing themselves and would feel nothing at all.
I don't think that, of course. I said I think it's reasonable to think that animals feel pain. But this statement seems to indicate that you haven't explored much of what is possible in terms of subjective ethical commitments.
Are you actually interested in knowing how others think about their ethical lives?
It's not the same because I am an avowed speciesist so I don't have a problem in placing my needs and wants before those of animals.
Quoting chatterbears
In the first case you engaged in ableism and in the second case you are engaged in speciesism.
Quoting chatterbears
I'm not even going to get into to your use of 'natural', but it's conceivable that euthanising with zero suffering an animal is preferable to all sorts of horrific 'natural' ways of dying.
Quoting chatterbears
Yet more speciesism.
Look, I have no arguments against vegetarianism, but I still maintain some meat can be reared and consumed ethically.
But I have even presented reasonable arguments for veganism. So it can’t be that.
A cult is an extremist social script that isolates its members from more general society. And I was talking about the philosophy limiting script that CB was using. To the degree it said focus on a feeling, it was trying to limit rounded debate on the issue. It was simply an attempt to convert.
I’m not against veganism or animal rights. Clearly I keep closely informed on these issues. One reason is that I’m interested in how every generation finds its passionate social causes. Society does keep evolving with a certain pattern.
Veganism is annoying to the older generation. What is the source of that?
A prime principle of earlier generations was not to be fussy at the dinner table. Finish everything on your plate. Don’t be faddy. Eat what everyone else eats.
So there is a context of what was socially functional in an earlier era.
Then came the era of processed junk food, factory farming, instant meals and self indulgent diets as a socialised right. The effects of that have been generally disasterous for both individual health and the environment.
The next turn of the wheel would have to be better adapted to the realities. So veganism might be a large part of that. It might be a practical necessity. Or cloned meat could deliver the same general health and environmental outcomes. That is what would be up for moral debate. And philosophy would aim to be ahead of the curve on that score.
But what I objected to in the OP was the narrow focus on sentience and sufferering. That in itself is a symptom of a social dysfunction. It speaks to an egocentrism that isn’t in fact willing to see the self as a product of society. And this leads to moral arguments that lack that pragmatic balance at their heart.
I think the OP would include sympathy with empathy. Humans cannot empathize fully with pigs, but we can sympathize with them. And it is because we consider every other animal to be just a smelly brute that millions upon millions of animals are slaughtered every year without any regard for their status as living things.
One of the earliest things I struggled with as a kid with regard to animals was when learning about the Holocaust. The talk of the Jews and others being rounded up and sent on "cattle cars" was always distressing - is distressing - but I started to wonder why it was wrong for humans to be crammed in there but right for cattle? Why was it wrong to treat humans like cattle but also wrong to treat cattle like humans? It's surreal, really. Humans are lauded and put on a pedestal of deserving more dignity and respect when they themselves don't seem to deserve much when they kill 70 million of themselves during WW2.
The OP does not say it includes sympathy with empathy. I'll wait to hear from him. And he's defining these terms in very specific ways that seems to me to miss much of how people think about moral problems and reasoning.
The Holocaust is an event full of evil. It's not something that's hard to learn about just as a child, but is something which is still hard to learn about. It is unequivocally evil, from my perspective.
As for why it is wrong or right -- I am just using the OP's moral trifecta at this point. I am telling him, point blank, that these are not feelings I have for cows, pigs, or fish. I do have empathy for some animals. I think it is most likely that these empathic feelings are simply due to being brought up in the society I am living in.
For me I don't feel empathy for cows, but I can understand that they go through pain as we currently do things. I don't know the exact specifications which I would say, "Hey, we're doing good now that cows don't go through pain". I'm willing to hear it out. Maybe carting them around in trains is bad. I know that our current practices cause unnecessary pain. I know that the reason for this is that meat is cheaper, but I'm fine with meat becoming more expensive to halt unnecessary pain in spite of not feeling empathy with the animals that are killed.
When someone is in a "vegetative" state does that mean that vegetarians can eat them?
I have questioned from the outset this controversial notion of farmyard animals deserving a comparable degree of empathy and compassion to that with regard to our fellow humans. It's comparable, for me, in at least a minimal sense, but it's arguable whether that's sufficient to justify some sort of equality in treatment.
Second disclosure: this is the only post I will ever write on this thread, so feel free to dissect and criticize it as you wish. My intent is not to start a new argument, but to offer new ideas for consideration in these pre-existing arguments. Then you can reject or incorporate my ideas into your arguments as you see fit. I will also make some general comments about where I think this debate has landed after multiple rounds of arguments.
I have followed this thread quite closely and I've been impressed with some of the ideas presented, from both sides. I wanted to add my own thoughts on this debate, focusing on an angle that has not received much attention: the wider social, economic, and ecological relations that mediate and influence our food choices. I think it's important to consider this component of the debate because it can substantially alter the answer to the original question.
Is it wrong to eat animals? I would say it depends on a wide array of factors, and I don't think that this position commits me entirely to moral relativism. The reason why is because some of these factors are determined by biophysical and ecological realities, hence they do not depend on social preference. I am fully supportive of the San in the Kalahari hunting gazelles or the Inuit in Canada hunting seals. These are communities that live in very forbidding ecozones, making an exclusively plant-based diet quite difficult to achieve. The San still obtained most of their calories from fruits and vegetables gathered by women, but meat was clearly an indispensable part of their diet as well.
We obviously don't live in those worlds. We live in an integrated system of global capitalism, where goods and commodities are exchanged for financial profit and where a small minority of the human population controls the vast majority of surplus wealth. This is the fundamental economic system that lurks behind, in front, and everywhere around that original question. I will argue that eating animals, in the context of modern capitalism, is an objectively bad idea for a number of related reasons. Our moral considerations cannot be fully divorced from these biophysical and ecological factors, hence any moral judgment on whether we should eat animals needs to somehow account for them. The basis for this claim is that the quest for a moral life represents both a social and a philosophical enterprise. In other words, morality is inextricably bound to social relations, and those social relations are themselves coevolving with economic and ecological conditions. Hence we cannot fully analyze the moral dimension of whether to eat animals apart from these conditions.
For your consideration, I present the following three points:
1) Because farm animals are bred for capitalist profit, they are subject to the same dynamics of waste and overproduction that characterize other parts of the global supply chain. Global capitalism slaughters roughly 60 billion animals a year. One estimate says that 12 billion of those animals end up dying for nothing: their meat simply gets thrown away. Others are simply considered useless and slaughtered with no intent for consumption. Male chicks are usually tossed into the grinders on their very first day of life.
2) Eating meat from the capitalist food industry has a negative impact on health. Numerous studies point to vegans and vegetarians having longer life expectancy than meat-eaters (see this and this for some major ones that came out recently). Other studies show that a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts will yield the best health outcomes over the long run. The World Health organization has classified red meat and processed meat as likely carcinogenic (see here). Being vegan is not just the default choice when you want to avoid eating meat while still surviving. It's a way to thrive and contribute positively to your health.
3) The global agricultural and land use industry is responsible for roughly 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN, a huge fraction of which come from raising livestock. These emissions include the biological products of farm animals as well as emissions from logistics, transportation, and other activities that require a large amount of mechanical work. Changing consumption patterns is an important component of making this industry less energy-intensive, though certainly not the only one. Concerted public pressure and state action would also help, but these will probably take a long time to materialize.
In conclusion, it's not simply eating animals that represents the biggest moral problem today. Rather it's an evil economic system that kills so many animals for pure profit, with no intent to actually feed the poor and the hungry around the world. Participating in this system willingly, when its damaging effects are so clear, is what constitutes an immoral offense. Being vegan can represent a small act of revolt against an otherwise corrupt system that seems to be indifferent to the concerns of living things, including human beings, outside of their relationship to the market and their level of wealth.
In following this thread, it has occurred to me that the arguments of the anti-vegan camp, especially from Michael and jastopher, are reducible to the following position:
I will hold any philosophical belief necessary to justify my current methods of energy consumption, or those methods of consumption widely prevalent in society.
For me, the most revealing comment of the entire debate was the following from jastopher, after considering several of the ethical responses available on this issue:
"I like utilitarianism since it permits me to continue to eat meat...."
And that's fundamentally what this entire debate has come down to. It's no longer an argument about who has the best reasons for the ideal moral stance. Instead it's become an exercise for finding any excuses necessary to justify existing lifestyles, lest we have too much pesky radicalism. Better to invent spurious reasons to justify the current state of the world than contemplate any meaningful change to improve our lives. Casual centrism reigns supreme. All the beautiful normative ideals have devolved into the brutal descriptive reality: humans have power over animals, so we can do with them as we please. Might makes right.
What a glorious philosophy!
There is nothing inherently untouchable about what is "human." But that's the one of the points I've been trying to get across. Belonging to a group means nothing on it's own.
The untouchability of a disabled person shows us that intelligence is not the reason we avoid causing suffering--we avoid causing suffering on the basis of the ability to suffer. Since disabled people can suffer, it is wrong for me to cause it. Since cats can suffer, it is wrong for me to cause it. Causing unnecessary suffering is wrong.
Seems that way to you only because you seem to be resisting understanding the basics of causality.
But let's say you're right about not being directly responsible for the animal's death by buying meat (which I still disagree, with, but I'm willing to hypothesis), then aiding and abetting an immoral act is still immoral. Supporting, helping, promoting, enabling....whatever lingo you want to use, in relation to an immoral act, it is all also immoral.
Those are two different statements. The latter does not follow from the former. Faulty logic (if that were the case here, which it is not) does not equal an attempt to convert, and it even more certainly doesn't equal an attempt to convert someone to a cult.
Quoting apokrisis
The idea of avoiding harm to other animals has been around since at least Pythagoras. India has a long history of vegetarianism since around 600BCE. The modern Western vegetarian movement has been around since the 1800's... it's not a "generational" thing.
Any suffering which might be involved would be necessary for meat production. And different circumstances result in the act being judged to varying degrees of severity. Slaughtering chickens for food production is not generally considered comparable in terms of severity to slaughtering humans for food production, as I think you know. That's just how it is for many people, and that's just how it will continue to be for quite some time yet, I predict. I don't forsee a 'veggie revolution' on the horizon. Your views represent a minority.
It's not just a matter of whether it's right or wrong. It's a matter of, if it's wrong, [I]how[/I] wrong? And why should I care enough to act any differently? You can make your case until the cows come home, but at the end of the day me likes meat. :yum:
A recent uptick in popularity doesn't make it generational... Like I said, history is rife with it.
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Sapientia
None of these are philosophical or logical arguments for your case. Do I really need to point out to you that the number of people committing an immoral act has no impact on the morality thereof? Or that the time we spend doing something wrong doesn't make it less wrong? Or that your personal tastes are not remotely interesting in this discussion?
This is a forum for philosophical discussions. We're discussing the theory of animal rights, not trying to start a movement. And, might I add, you are voluntarily participating. No one forced you to. If you are no longer interested in the argument, or have realized that you are too close-minded about the subject to care any longer about the philosophy behind it, perhaps you ought to leave the discussion.
If you are interested in continuing the discussion thoughtfully, here is my answer to the one claim you made which is actually pertinent to our conversation:
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, but the meat production itself is not necessary.
If it were the case that meat were necessary, would you condone its consumption? If yes, what do you consider to be baseline necessity?
I'm glad you're having fun. But you're still wrong.
A generation liking something that's been around for millennia does not make it generational.
"Ought implies can," so, yes.
Baseline necessity would be something that otherwise would seriously impact your health or life.
Please don't start telling me that abstaining from meat hurts your health, because the science has shown that it doesn't. And anecdotes don't count.
However, if I were on a lifeboat or deserted island with a chicken, I guess I would eventually eat it.
Sounds legit.
[Furious muffled scrapping noises resume down the deep hole.]
I hear millennials by and large wear shoes and brush their teeth... is that also generational then?
My point stands, whether you wish to engage with it or otherwise. That it might be wrong isn't enough. At least not if your interest goes deeper than claiming the higher ground and then buggering off. It might be wrong to steal a sandwich from a supermarket, but do I really care? No, not really. I would probably do so tomorrow if I felt like it and thought that I could get away with it. You'll find that there is a large swath of people who need a greater reason to care, and an even greater reason to change their behaviour accordingly, especially if they're aware that it's going to be no easy task. I am one of those people, in this case. Don't you think that that poses a challenge from your perspective if you have any interest in bringing your ideals down to earth?
Yes, of course meat production isn't necessary in an absolute sense. There isn't much that is. But it's necessary to meet the demand. And there is a demand. We could keep going back and forth like this. The bottom line is that you think that it's wrong, and I view it as acceptable in a sense.
So we should just do away with morality completely because some people are jerks?
OK. So if I could show you that, by your own definition, meat consumption satisfies a baseline necessity then you would adapt your position?
Where did I say that we should do away with morality completely? Rather, like I said earlier, morality isn't the be-all and end-all. If you can't see past morality, then in my opinion you have an impoverished view of the world. It's not all jerks and angels. There's a bigger picture where things like stealing a sandwich from a supermarket or eating a chicken burger lack significance.
Again, it's not recent...
This is a metaethical discussion. You may want to start a new thread.
I doubt you can, but you can try. And. yes, if you could, I would.
This is true, but it may just demonstrate that some individuals always gravitate towards asceticism and find it hard to empathise with those who don't.
Are you claiming that it is all the Baby Boomers who are suddenly turning vegan for moral reasons? The fact that you would deny something so factual is frankly weird.
Maybe. But it relates to this discussion. You seem to just be assuming certain things, like these "animal rights" that you mentioned. These so-called rights aren't natural rights, as there's no such thing, and they aren't recognised in law if they're supposed to rule out the slaughter of livestock. They seem to just be a way of making your opinion sound more authoritative than it actually is.
That's what one does in a discussion about anything not meta. You have to assume certain things.
Quoting Sapientia
All rights theorists are just self-important? Good to know. :rofl:
Even if that were the case, I've been arguing about suffering and the capacity to suffer. And I think that argument applies even if I am not a rights theorist.
Quoting Sapientia
Laws can be immoral or not cover all things they should, obviously
:cheer: :100: :ok:
Normal human beings are gross, disgusting, cruel, stupid, selfish and unethical. Animals are not.
I am a normal human being who eats animals.
Sometimes when I am not being a normal human being, there is a special word that describes my occasional behavior vis : 'kindness'
When people do not eat animals they are clearly being kind to beautiful animals.
But vegetarians can be equally unkind (Hitler was a vegetarian)
Normal human beings can on occasion behave kindly. All action and behavior contains consequence and opportunity for kindness. A vegetarian participates in global warming and species loss every time he or she farts.
Being kind can be easier than farting.
M
And I've been arguing that pointing to suffering and the capacity to suffer, in itself, evidently isn't enough for most people, who make distinctions which you choose to ignore, and is only accepted by the already converted and a small minority.
You've been making excuses to avoid properly addressing this.
You still would. Because you need to explain why you don't feel empathy for a cow, but you do for a human. What is the trait that differentiates the two living beings?
Quoting Moliere
Yes absolutely, but my point still stands. If you believe in universal human rights, that ultimately leads to veganism. The only way to be consistent without being Vegan, is to deny rights to humans. Which, 99% of people would not do, other than psychopaths.
Saying you're a speciesist is the same as saying you're a racist. Discrimination against another species (or race), simply because they are of a different species (or race). And to show you how flawed this position is, would you accept an Alien species farming humans but raising them humanely, and then kill them without pain when they turn 20 years old? Probably not, so your position is inconsistent.
Quoting Txastopher
False, because neither of those two cases have anything to do with species. They have to do with moral capacity and positive impact for the world.
Quoting Txastopher
Again, no. Because I am not saying an action is justified on the sole basis of a difference in species. You may want to look up the term 'speciesist', because you seem to not know how to apply it properly.
Ok let's use your same logic here.
If I hire a hitman to kill someone, am I responsible for the person's death? Or am I only responsible for paying the hitman?
You're buying meat. The slaughter house is your hitman. You pay the hitman to slaughter your meat for you. Are you responsible for the slaughter, or just responsible for paying the slaughter house?
It’s pretty obvious. Cows don’t have the cognitive capacity for empathy and compassion, let alone a desire for consistent ethical practices.
- Both situations (slavery & factory farming) are discrimination against other living beings
- Both situations have condoned it and allowed it be legalized
- Both situations are part of the societal norm
- Both situations cause unnecessary pain and suffering that can be replaced with an easy alternative
- Both situations devalue living beings (black people and animals)
I can probably think of more examples, but those similarities are good enough. And to say they aren't comparable and it would be laughable to claim they are, is just ignorant.
This is completely irrelevant. Owning slaves was 'just how it was for many people, and it was just how it continued to be for quite some time.' - And the activist against slavery would have been a minority. Just because a group or view is not popular, doesn't mean it is incorrect. You seem to be engaged in an appeal to popularity fallacy.
Quoting Sapientia
Same for the slave owner. Here's the slave owner talking: "Why should I care enough to act any differently? The activist against slavery could make their case until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, me likes slaves"
Trying to justify your actions with preference and/or taste pleasure, is a bit absurd. At this point, you seem to hold positions of a person who is morally bankrupt.
So if a human (such as a severely mentally disabled one) didn't have the cognitive capacity for empathy and compassion (to any better degree than a cow), are you now justified in killing them?
[This is where your consistency would need to kick in, otherwise you'd have internally contradictory beliefs]
What are you even saying here? An absolute sense? We have plant-based alternatives, so how is it necessary at all, let alone in an absolute sense.
Also, there have been MANY things that were 'necessary' to meet a demand. Again, back to slavery. People needed more slaves, so people bought and traded them. Just because there is a demand for something, doesn't mean that thing is actually good or necessary.
Why do you eat animals?
You're only responsible for paying the hitman. The hitman is responsible for the person's death.
Quoting chatterbears
I'm not responsible for the slaughter, and nor am I responsible for paying the slaughter house. I'm only responsible for paying the supermarket for the meat on their shelves. The real life example of buying meat isn't even like your fallacious example of the hitman, because there isn't any solicitation between me and the farmer. I'm not offering the farmer money in exchange for him killing an animal. Rather he kills an animal because he knows that the supermarket will buy the meat from him, and the supermarket buys the meat from him because they know that I will buy it from them.
A better analogy would be a thief who steals diamonds and then finds someone willing to buy them. Even if the buyer knows that the diamonds are stolen, the buyer isn't responsible for the theft.
Buying stolen goods might be wrong, but it's not because it makes one responsible for the theft. So buying meat might still be wrong, but it's not because it makes one responsible for the killing of an animal.
To make it more analogous, this thief would need to start a business. And that business would be based on the fact that he steals from others and then supplies it inside of a store. And everyone knows that he is stealing from others to supply diamonds to any random buyer. And the law would also see his stealing as fine and legal, and would not charge him for theft, as the law (and society) would be okay with him stealing.
So if there was a business like this out there, where you KNEW the business was working on the basis of stealing from other people, would you still buy from them? This is the same concept as you buying from a company that works on the basis of torturing and slaughtering other living beings (cows/chickens/pigs).
Does it matter? I'm only arguing that it is a fallacy to claim that in buying meat I'm responsible for the killing of animals, just as it would be a fallacy to claim that in buying stolen diamonds I'm responsible for the theft.
You can make a different case for why it is wrong to buy meat or stolen diamonds if you like.
I never said you are directly responsible for the theft or killing of animals. I have specifically stated, multiple times, that you are CONTRIBUTING to the killing of animals. Just as you would be CONTRIBUTING to the theft, if you continuously bought from that store. This makes you partially responsible in an indirect manner.
But conveniently, you didn't answer the question. I'll give you three scenarios.
A: The law does not see animal slaughter as illegal, and society generally condones it and does not see it as immoral. A business is built upon the foundation of torturing and killing animals, to present you with a product.
B: The law does not see stealing from others to obtain diamonds as illegal, and society generally condones it and does not see it as immoral. A business is built upon the foundation of stealing diamonds from other people, to present you with a product.
C: The law does not see slavery as illegal, and society generally condones it and does not see it as immoral. A business (slave-trade) is built upon the foundation of enslaving humans, to present you with a product.
Would you buy products that directly contribute to any of these businesses? If so, are you not partially responsible for contributing to the demand of what the business is supplying?
Besides, this is about killing for eating. Are we back to eating autistics again here? What is the pragmatic reason for killing mental defectives in your scenario?
Here you said that in deciding to eat meat I cause animals physical pain. That's just wrong. The only person who causes animals physical pain is the one who does the killing. The fact that he does so only because he knows that he will get paid for it by a shopkeeper who does so only because he knows that he will get paid for it by me isn't sufficient to accuse me of being the cause. There are too many steps in between – steps which involve choices made by free agents.
Quoting chatterbears
No it doesn't. The responsibility is entirely the thief's. I may be partially responsible if I actually assist him in the act, such as by distracting the owner, but buying his goods doesn't reach this threshold.
Is indirect, partial responsibility sufficient to be held morally accountable?
Partial responsibility means still responsible, yes.
So all I need is a self-serving reason to justify an immoral act?
So, I guess then I can steal food as long as I'm going to eat it.
Yes, it does. Causing, partially or otherwise, an immoral act entails moral responsibility, partial or otherwise.
I have been. You haven't really presented a good counter argument though besides essentially saying "no it isn't."
It's really nonsensical to say you could knowingly be contributing to something immoral, while having the choice not to, and say that doesn't involve you morally.
It's sensible if you accept that people are free agents and that some other free agent is the direct cause of the immoral act. I'm not morally responsible for what other free agents choose to do, especially when I do not compel or solicit them.
Besides, I can turn your own arguments around. You say that they wouldn't kill animals if I didn't buy their meat. I say that I wouldn't buy their meat if they didn't kill animals. Therefore farmers are indirectly and partially responsible for my eating habits? That's ridiculous. Only I'm responsible for what I eat, and only farmers are responsible for killing their animals.
No, it's not completely irrelevant.
For starters, I didn't say that it's incorrect, let alone for that reason. You're quoting me out of context and reading things into what you've quoted that were neither there nor intended.
What I said related to the following paragraph about a significance beyond right and wrong. Even assuming that the majority is wrong, the minority is burdened with the task of attempting to overcome the status quo. The views of the status quo are obviously of relevance in at least that sense. And one of those views consists of a distinction which you've decided to reject, though ultimately not on any reasonable basis, as far as I can tell, but rather on the basis of your own relative feelings of empathy and compassion: feelings which you use as a means of justifying the prohibition of actions which others find acceptable enough. But your feelings aren't enough, and are no more or less authoritative than the feelings of others. You have given me the impression that you think that there's a right and a wrong here beyond right and wrong in a relative sense, and that, in this sense, you're right and others are wrong. But that's debatable.
And I don't accept your repeated analogy with slavery as a true analogy, despite it being analogous in limited ways. I suspect that it's an attempt to appeal to emotion. I have yet to be convinced that they're of equal severity, and I represent the majority. And no, that doesn't mean that I'm right and you're wrong, but it does mean that you have something in common with Flat Earthers and anti-natalists, whether you like it or not.
Quoting chatterbears
Well, I have been trying to bring to your attention that a difference in circumstance and severity relates to a difference in how we treat situations and how we behave, but you just keep redirecting back to me with your false equivalence with slavery and your assumption that you have the moral high ground.
Ad populum.
Excuses for what? I'm not excusing anything. That would imply I was trying to justify something immoral. At most, if we hypothesized that you were right, my arguments are fallacious somehow. But you haven't been able to prove that's the case.
You're right. Pain is a terrible thing and having the power to inflict it is, in a way, a curse. Let's not get into that but I do agree with you that killing animals is bad.
However, there's a difference between killing and eating. I believe that studies have shown that people tend to avoid being the primary instigator of moral misdeeds but if the evil act is sufficiently distanced from a person the instinct is to feel less responsible. That's why you don't mind picking up a $100 dollar note from the street floor even when you know someone misses it dearly but you would avoid actually putting your hand into someone's bag and stealing.
I think it's the same with nonvegetarians too. They don't actually kill the animal so they feel less or even not responsible for the animal's pain or death.
I think it's wrong because eating meat creates the demand that sustains the slaughter of animals for food. So, the fact is animals wouldn't be killed if you stopped ordering meat-based food.
We're human. We have great aspirations. We're animals. We have our nature.
Free agentry only makes them also responsible. It doesn't absolve you.
You should learn what an appeal to the masses actually is. It's more than merely using the term "small minority" in a discussion.
Quoting NKBJ
I don't know why you're asking me that when I told you already: excuses for avoiding properly addressing what I've raised.
I don't need to absolved for what they do. Why would I? What they do has nothing to do with me.
You haven't explained how I can be morally responsible for another person's behaviour.
Um... That's exactly what it is. You're trying to bolster your argument by repeatedly stating it's a minority position. As if it mattered.
Quoting Sapientia
I have the feeling you would only consider agreeing with you "properly addressing." As such, this is getting tedious.
Ad populum!
I have. Repeatedly. And this is the last time I'm going to bother repeating it: aiding and abetting.
Are you talking about the legal doctrine? If so, which country's law on the matter are you referring to, and what does that have to do with moral responsibility?
I'm not explaining this basic concept to you anymore. At this point, you either get it, or you don't.
I don't get how you can ask how it's necessary at all, yet in the next breath mention the necessity of meeting a demand. It's not a simple necessity, but it's a conditional necessity. So long as there are sought after goals, there will be conditions necessary for achieving those goals.
I'm bored of your slavery analogy. Pointing to some similarities between the two isn't enough to refute the position that slavery is totally unacceptable and eating meat isn't. There's definitely a difference in degree, even if not in kind. And I never made the argument that something being in demand makes it good. Quit jumping the gun.
You've never explained it. You just asserted, once, that buying meat is an example of aiding and abetting, and then asserted, once, that aiding and abetting makes me co-responsible.
I'm not aiding and abetting and am not responsible for the death of any animal, even though those animals are only killed because I'm willing to buy their meat.
There just isn't a sufficient enough connection between me exchanging money for meat at a supermarket and a farmer killing his animals to warrant holding me morally responsible for those deaths.
Although I'll admit that legality and morality are not the same thing. But as you brought up a legal doctrine, I thought it worth mentioning.
I know that this was directed at Micheal, but it has already been answered. What differentiates the one from the other is being sufficiently human-like and being sufficiently cow-like. It's not a single trait, as your loaded question assumes, but rather a set of traits. The difference is noticeable without any need for expressing it. Have you ever in your right mind mistaken the one for the other? Or, at least, without quickly realising your error?
Ha! Not quite.
This argument is just going in circles. We're obviously not going to find a way to agree. Doesn't make sense to continue arguing this particular point anymore.
I understand what you're trying to do here. Whatever trait I select is then applied to certain classes of human beings, and then...
But I said most explicitly that there is no trait difference. We are all animals.
The most likely reason is simply because of the culture I was raised in. How much empathy do you feel for Moray eels? Maybe in some universal sense you might, but most people wouldn't think much of them in terms of empathy. I'd wager that's mostly because of exposure and how similar they might feel they are to them.
If you aren't regularly exposed to a particular beastie then empathy doesn't develop.
So it's not so much that there is some singular trait among humans that makes them superior. It's simply that they are human. End of story.
And you know what a cow isn't?
Quoting chatterbears
Given your commitment to reason I'd be interested in how you came up with that number. Where's the evidence?
Psychopathy isn't in any way related to a belief in universal human rights. If you lack empathy for other people then you might be a psychopath. If you don't believe in universal human rights then you might just not find the current political regime all that convincing, but still have a general sense of care for people and ability to feel where they are coming from.
There's no black and white form of consistency. You're either consistent in your ethics, or you are not. A racist is inconsistent within their ethical framework; this is how it works.
A racist believes that he is justified in discriminating against a person of different skin color. But would he accept a different race discriminating against him because he has a different skin color? Probably not. Therefore he is logically inconsistent within his own ethics. His own beliefs contradict either each. And a simpler way of putting it is; he is being hypocritical.
You're doing the same thing within your own justification for killing animals. You believe you are justified in killing cows because cows don’t have the cognitive capacity for empathy and compassion. But you would accept being killed if you (or any human) didn't have the cognitive capacity for empathy and compassion, to any better degree than a cow? Probably not. Therefore you're being hypocritical. AKA, logically inconsistent.
This is a fairly simple concept, and I think you understand it. Which is why you refuse to answer the question when a consistency test is pushed toward your reasoning.
All you have ever said is, "I don't accept your analogy", or "It is not similar." - You haven't actually provided a counter argument or rebuttal to refute my comparison to slavery. Which, as I have stated many times, has strikingly similar characteristics to factory farming. And I'll write them again.
- Both situations (slavery & factory farming) are discriminating against other living beings
- Both situations have condoned it and allowed it be legalized
- Both situations are part of the societal norm
- Both situations cause unnecessary pain and suffering that can be replaced with an easy alternative
- Both situations devalue living beings (black people and animals)
Except that a moral person would try to find the owner of that $100 is possible. An immoral person wouldn't think twice and just take it for themselves. Although one could make a case that it would be too hard to track down the owner of that $100, and therefore is justified in keeping it for themselves.
But this is not remotely similar to contributing to animal torture and death. We know who is responsible for the animal slaughter and yet we still contribute to it. Both situations display our selfish actions, which are indeed immoral.
I eat animals because meat gives me pleasure and I am a disgusting human being. I also do other gross disgusting thing's. . but I try to make up for them by trying to be otherwise.
And I'm bored of you failing to recognize the similarities, and also never presenting a counter argument. Even if the two situations weren't comparable at all (which it is clear they are), I am using your justification in another context to expose how invalid your justification is.
Saying, " it is necessary for a supply to meet its demand ", is a completely flawed argument. Because a demand of something does not tell you whether that demand is condoning something moral or immoral. Again, just because slave traders demand the supply of more slaves, doesn't' mean that the demand of wanting more slaves is justified or morally permissible.
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Sapientia
You framed this statement in a way that although meat production isn't necessary, there is a demand for it, which makes it necessary. This is contradictory, for one. But for two, you're indirectly saying that "because there is a demand for something, it makes it OK"
This is a failure to actually answer the question. What are traits in being sufficiently human-like? Skin type? Intelligence level? The ability to speak english? Hair color?
So are you appealing to the societal/cultural norm? Which, I don't think I would need to state how flawed that position is. The cultural norm says nothing about what is moral or immoral, but more so what people have generally agreed is permissible. in Saudi Arabia, it is the cultural norm to put homosexuals to death, yet I think we would both agree that their cultural norm is immoral. So you cannot point to 'societal or cultural norms' as a justification for your actions.
Quoting Moliere
It is anecdotal, but nonetheless accurate to a greater degree than you may think. I've watched plenty of debates on this topic, as well as spoken to 100+ people about it. Out of the hundreds of opposing views I have read or watched on this topic, only 1 person has been internally consistent without being vegan. They were holding the view that human rights don't matter, and they also lacked empathy for ANY living being (human and animal included). This is a position, I would argue, almost nobody holds.
And do you think you're immoral for eating meat? And if so, why don't you change it. Changing your diet is much easier than many other things in this selfish world we live in.
That's odd, because I have done both. I have actually been acknowledging similarities since at least page eight, I'll have you know. See for yourself. More recently, and in response to your analogy, I have said that it's analogous in limited ways, but I've also said that the similarities aren't enough. Your little list isn't enough, even if I were to accept each and every item on it. You aren't doing anything remarkable. I could list the similarities between a slingshot and a rocket launcher, yet they're markedly different regardless, and should be treated differently too. It only takes a single distinction of importance to render your analogy as inadequate, and as I've been saying, there's a difference in the degree or severity with which the one and the other are generally judged. I accept that you might judge it differently, but you don't get top trumps.
Quoting chatterbears
You appear to have forgotten the context in which I said that it's necessary, and so are conjuring up your own. I said that it's necessary in contrast to your mention of unnecessary suffering, and I only meant that it's necessary in a conditional sense, as I've since clarified, if it wasn't already clear to you. It wasn't an argument for anything else.
Quoting chatterbears
That's a double whammy! It's clearly not a contradiction, because I was talking about two distinct senses of necessity. And no, I didn't say that because there is demand for something, that makes it okay. That's your straw man.
Quoting chatterbears
This is a failure to address my related point about it not being necessary to express a precise distinction. We can tell the difference, like we can tell the difference between a heap of sand and just a few grains.
What or where is the actual expiration of the immorality of 'my' dollar? When does it's inherent evil or immorality end? How many animals will my vegetarian spent dollar ultimately kill?
To function in the world is immoral, it is only fashion or fad that prefers one morality over another at a given moment in time.
The greatest evil is not the consumption of the hamburger, it is the unlimited evil that evolves out of the transaction.
Economic transactions are evil, not meat eaters.
As the Christians love to say: 'What would Jesus do?'
M
This is evidence that you're not so good at judging internal consistency.
Philosophical discussion is really a waste of time. You already have all the answers you need as a matter of faith.
Anecdotal experience is not evidence.
Quoting chatterbears
I am merely telling you why I feel as I do, from a causal perspective.
What is flawed, I think, is your moral trifecta. If you want to argue for veganism then you need to include more than mere empathy -- because empathy is indeed influenced by cultural norms.
You're comparing two items. I am comparing two situations of similar discrimination which people use multiple reasons to justify condoning it. How many reasons have you used to justify eating animals? Probably 5+, correct?
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, we can tell the difference between a heap of sand and a few grains, just like we can tell the difference between a cow and a human. But what matters is the treatment between the two living beings. Similarly to, we can tell the difference between a black person and a white person, but how do we treat each of them? And if we treat one worse than the other, what trait are we using to justify the discrimination?
You still haven't provided a valid or logical response to this question, probably because you cannot answer it. It is necessary to express a precise distinction, when we are talking about why we would treat one living being differently than other. If you cannot pinpoint that trait difference, you have no grounds for committing that action. But even if you could pinpoint that trait difference, I doubt you could deploy it while being consistent within your own ethics.
So you think every evil is equivalent and we shouldn't waste our time trying to better our society to reduce pain and suffering? Because your stance seems to be, "No matter how good I try to be, I will always be contributing to evil in some way". Which is true, but highly irrelevant to this conversation. Just because we cannot reach perfection, which involves no harm to any living being, doesn't mean we cannot strive to do better. We should change our actions for the better, as much as possible. And for most people, it is possible to change their diet to an all plant-based diet. For most people, it is NOT possible to afford an electric car that doesn't produce CO2. There's a big difference here. What is easily changeable and possible, versus what is not.
I am not asking for perfection. I am asking for better than what we currently have. Similarly to the prohibition on slavery, or right now, the prohibition on factory farms.
Agreed, but it is based on deductive reasoning. In the same way I can state that, it is more probable than not, that over 90% of the human population would rather live than die.
Quoting Moliere
Which is why the most important part of the trifecta is logical consistency. If you are a believer in universal human rights, that ultimately leads to Veganism. Because you cannot justify the discrimination of animals without internally contradicting your own position, as I have pointed out multiple times on this thread.
Person A believes it is okay to kill animals because animals are less intelligent.
Person A believes it is NOT okay to kill humans because humans are less intelligent.
These are two contradictory statements. One justifies killing based on intelligence level, while the other does NOT. Because as I have asked before, for this specific example, if you took a human (severely autistic) who had the intelligence level of being no greater than a cow, would we now be justified in killing them? No. Therefore using the justification of "lesser intelligence" to kill something, is invalid and inconsistent.
But I didn't use intelligence. In fact I said intelligence is not a good basis for moral feeling.
The difference between me and you and a cow is that you and I are human. That's it.
Agreed. It's too simplistic. It doesn't seem to take into account varying degrees of empathy or compassion, or varying levels of appropriateness in behaviour or judgement relating to the aforementioned. Merely sharing something in common with his position, like feelings of empathy or compassion, isn't enough of a basis to conclude that there's an inconsistency. You'd have to adopt his position, warts and all, whilst retaining what conflicts with it. But if you reject his premise as inadequate, then you can quite easily evade his trap.
"So you think every evil is equivalent and we shouldn't waste our time trying to better our society to reduce pain and suffering? "
That is a not a fair reflection of what I have said.
"Because your stance seems to be, "No matter how good I try to be, I will always be contributing to evil in some way". Which is true, but highly irrelevant to this conversation."
The point of your vegetarian stance is to do good... is it not? If buying a bag of carrots does as much harm as eating a snail. Then should we not identify a real behavior that will actually fulfill your stated moral objective: WITHOUT the harm that is contained within the purchase of the carrots?
"Just because we cannot reach perfection, which involves no harm to any living being, doesn't mean we cannot strive to do better. We should change our actions for the better, as much as possible."
Outside of heaven. Harm to living beings is a necessity of existence. However I do agree that we should try to limit the harm that we cause, and this cannot be achieved by vegetarianism, no more than global warming can be addressed through the purchase of electric cars. As Zizek states you are simply including the delusion of 'a little bit of morality' into the new or preferred product.
"And for most people, it is possible to change their diet to an all plant-based diet. For most people, it is NOT possible to afford an electric car that doesn't produce CO2. There's a big difference here. What is easily changeable and possible, versus what is not."
Harm is the consequence of the consumptive act. Consume less= less harm. Consume something different, (electric cars and vegetables) just means that you want everyone to go to a different party where the rules are the same, but we are all eating vegetables and patting each other on the back.
Fundamentally nothing has changed only the menu.
M
I'm comparing two items which are similar in ways, yet markedly different in others, and you're comparing two situations which are similar in ways, yet markedly different in others. There is a distinction in terms of degree or severity. That's all that matters, as it's sufficient grounds for rejecting the analogy that you've been peddling as inadequate, so I don't see why I should humour your attempt to switch focus to other matters. How many times have you been on holiday this year? Once? Twice? Over five times?
Quoting chatterbears
I agree that it's about appropriate treatment. That's what I've been saying more or less from the start. And in judging appropriate treatment, one should factor in any relevant distinctions. Skin colour is not a relevant distinction. Species is, unless we're talking about a species which is sufficiently human-like. But the set of characteristics which make us human are unique enough to set us apart from all other species; and, moreover, there's a hierarchy comprised of various levels of closeness. A chicken is further away than a chimpanzee, and a wasp is further away than a chicken. I'm not equally empathic or compassionate, nor need I be, and if you are, then you're unusual. It also isn't a given that your feelings or moral judgement in relation to this matter are somehow more authoritative than mine or those of anyone else.
Quoting chatterbears
I have provided a valid and logical response to this question. You just haven't acknowledged it as such. Contrary to your assertion, it isn't necessary to express a precise distinction. It's sufficient to make that distinction based on whatever it is about chickens which makes them sufficiently chicken-like and insufficiently human-like. You're committing the continuum fallacy.
That's rich coming from the person driven to split us into two categories: pragmatic (those who agree with you), and not pragmatic (those who don't).
Your entire insistence on calling us black and white thinkers who base arguments on belief is therefore, inherently, a bad case of projection on your part.
It's a shame as there are plenty of sound pragmatic reasons for promoting big changes in the standard western diet.
Balance is one thing. I like balance where it makes sense.
A relativist I am not, nor pretend to be. Relativism is insipid nonsense for the most part.
It also is basically diametrically opposed to pragmatism, by the bye.
I wasn't saying you have used intelligence as a justification. I was stating that other people have (in this thread), and this is how the argument follows.
Quoting Moliere
From what you're saying, this sounds like speciesism, correct?
Do not equate snails to carrots. It is objectively true that less harm would be caused from eating a carrot, than eating meat. That's just a fact. Also, you kept stating my position as a vegetarian, when it is in fact a Vegan. Vegan means the consumption of NO animal products, whatsoever. People who are Vegan, are also aware of other animal harm, such as palm oil, animal testing in cosmetics and leather hand bags. All of which are unnecessary and have better alternatives.
Quoting Marcus de Brun
To correct you again, it is Veganism (not Vegetarianism). But also, you're really going to tell me that a Vegan world would produce the same amount of harm as an omnivorous world? That's just demonstrably false.
Just from the environmental standpoint, emissions from the production of beef and lamb are 250 times higher than those from legumes, per gram of protein, and pork and poultry are 40 times higher than legumes. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that confined farm animals generate more than 450 million tonnes of manure annually, 3 times more raw waste than generated by Americans. When manure is repeatedly over-applied to farm land, it causes dangerous levels of phosphorus and nitrogen in the water supply. In such excessive amounts, nitrogen robs water of oxygen and destroys aquatic life. Also, the contribution of the livestock sector to global greenhouse gas emissions exceeds that of transportation. Do a little research, you can look up this stuff yourself. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Aside from the environment hazards, what about the 50+ billion animals we kill every year? To compare that harm to some harm caused from eating a carrot, is absurd.
Quoting Marcus de Brun
Again, this is just you lacking the awareness and knowledge of how much factory farms negatively contribute to climate change and health risks. Not to mention, again, the animal holocaust we have condoned every year that passes.
Zero. Why is that relevant?
Quoting Sapientia
Both are not a relevant distinction that would condone mistreatment of the living being. Species and skin color, are both a form of discrimination against how one looks.
Quoting Sapientia
My consistency within my own internal ethical model is what is superior to your perspective. You cannot justify an action in one context, but then reject the same justification in another context. That is called inconsistency, or put more simply, hypocrisy.
Quoting Sapientia
So again, what is the distinction? After how many pages of this thread, you still have not answered that question. Why do you get to justify killing a living being, based on superfluous reasoning? Is it that the chicken has feathers? Is it the beak? Is it the chicken's intelligence level? Is it the height of the chicken?
You'll never answer, and until you do, I don't see a point in responding anymore. You cannot even pinpoint your reasoning for why you get to justify killing another living being. That in and of itself, is inferior to my morality.
Sure.
I think there's an easily exploitable flaw in your trifecta, which is that you're relying upon empathy. And many of us don't have the emotional reservoir to be empathic towards every living thing -- not even every living thing that experiences pain.
Empathy and compassion are important, but it just doesn't follow that having empathy and compassion and consistency implies veganism. Because we can have all three, feel nothing for certain animals, and continue on our marry way.
There are more commitments than you're letting on that makes your belief work.
:lol: :rofl:
Now you're just not even trying.
Correct.
People keep misinterpreting what I mean by the moral trifecta. I am not stating that most people adhere to this moral trifecta, because in reality I would say most people do not. You don't need empathy for other animals to lead to Veganism. All you need is empathy for humans, and logically consistency. And I would also argue, you may not even need empathy, but could replace empathy with a foundation for basic universal human rights. So just focus on these two things.
Do you believe in the most basic universal human rights? And I am not even referring to all 30 articles of human rights. For the sake of argument, let's just say these:
- Right to Life, Liberty, Personal Security
- Freedom from Slavery
- Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment
If you believe that every human deserves at least those 3 articles of human rights, that ultimately leads to veganism. You don't even need to bring empathy into the discussion. Because after you acknowledge those 4 articles of human rights, it now comes down to ethical consistency.
Why do you deserve those 3 articles of rights, but an animal does not? Whatever that trait/quality may be, if it were true of a human, would you then be willing to violate the rights of that human? Simple consistency test.
But that is now a far worse argument. All humans may be animals, but not all animals are human. So it would be logically inconsistent to grant human rights to non-human animals.
At least in invoking empathy/compassion, you were providing some kind of affective ground for ignoring the difference.
That is irrelevant. You would still need to explain why you deserve those rights, but an animal does not. Because in many cultures, especially in the west, we grant these 3 rights to dogs. People can actually get locked up for abusing a dog, so people have recognized that dogs deserve these same basic rights. And that anyone who infringes on the dog's rights should be punished.
So why stop at dogs? Why not grant other animals the same rights as well? You'd have to specify the trait in which it is justified for a human to get these basic rights, but not other animals.
But if they are human rights, then they are human rights. Your earlier argument was based on natural justice for sentient beings. Emotionally, that is definitely a more powerful approach. Now you just risk leading people into legalistic confusion.
Quoting chatterbears
So now you are talking about animal rights. Yes, we have created those too. And they are lesser rights that pragmatically recognise the difference in sentience. So that in itself becomes a problem with this legalistic turn in your approach.
Quoting chatterbears
But animal welfare legislation does normally cover other animals. Do you live somewhere where the legislation only applies to dogs?
At one point in time, women and black people did not have the right to vote. Just because a group of beings doesn't have particular rights, or it is not legal as of right now, doesn't mean that is how it should be.
"Human" rights got transferred and applied to dogs, in the US. Currently, 46 of the 50 states have enacted felony penalties for certain forms of animal abuse, while others are charged as a misdemeanor offense. Either way, we recognized that "Human" doesn't necessarily mean it ONLY applies to human. The principle of the rights themselves, should apply to other living beings, such as dogs. Similarly, black people should be allowed to vote, as well as women.
Quoting apokrisis
And these animal rights should still hold true to the same 3 rights I have referenced.
- Right to Life, Liberty, Personal Security
- Freedom from Slavery
- Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment
We already have legal punishment for violating these rights in regards to certain animals (dogs, cats, etc...). But these rights are not also deployed to other animals, such as cows/chickens/pigs.
Chickens do not have the right to life, liberty or personal security. They are not free from slavery and are not free from torture or degrading treatment. These rights are clearly violated by our factory farming industry, yet the same rights are granted to animals like dogs.
But even if NO animals were granted these rights, you (humans) would still need to give a valid justification for why these rights should only be granted to humans and not granted to other animals.
" Do not equate snails to carrots. It is objectively true that less harm would be caused from eating a carrot, than eating meat. That's just a fact."
It is indeed a fact but it is a fact only within an isolated universe where a hungry you is in existence only in the company of a snail and a carrot and you must act or starve like Buridon's ass.
In the reality that we presently occupy you must procure your carrot and in doing so you effect as much harm if not more harm than you would by eating the snail. You maintain that eating the meat contains an ignorance of factory farms. If I am to be conscious of where my meat comes from you must also be conscious of how you have sourced your carrot. You cannot have your carrot-cake and eat it too, if indeed your stated objective is morality as opposed to the gratuitous pleasure one derives from proselyting.
If on the other hand your philosophy insists upon the consumption of moral carrots, from where might one obtain one of these transcendental and magical objects? If you are to arise early in the morning and forage among the weeds for a wild carrot, which you then might bring home and grow to maturity in your garden before you eat it, you might have a claim to a greater morality than the immorality contained in the eating of the snail.
However from whence did you procure your garden and from whence did you procure the free time to forage among the weeds? Someone somewhere will suffer so that you might enjoy these 'luxuries'.
If morality is your stated objective then you must place the consumptive act before your fundamental principle as the true source of the immorality. The horrors you describe factory farms and the abusive of animals are conducted out of a dependence upon or ignorance of the immorality within the consumptive act.
Also, you kept stating my position as a vegetarian, when it is in fact a Vegan. Vegan means the consumption of NO animal products, whatsoever.
All vegans are vegetarian and some are fundamentalist in their thinking. Fundamentalism is the ne plus ultra of philosophical dialogue. This is a philosophy forum and fundamentalism has no interest in dialogue beyond its own prerogative.
There is a major contradiction in your argument which is that you on the one hand claim that there is no significant trait which separates humans from other animals sufficient to justify our variable treatment, but on the other you claim that the lion is not 'wrong' to eat the gazelle because it cannot conceive of 'right' and 'wrong'.
Now, you may argue (indeed you have) that the trait that justifies killing animals cannot be knowledge of right and wrong because it would not be justified to kill a severely mentally disabled person simply because they did not have the capacity to know right from wrong.
So far so good. The problem for your moral consistency comes about when deciding what to do about the severely mentally disabled person and the lion. If we conclude that it's OK for the lion to kill the gazelle because it doesn't know right from wrong, then, in order to be consistent, we must also conclude that it's OK for the mentally disabled person to kill whomever they wish because they don't know right from wrong.
If, alternatively, we intervene to prevent the string of murders which might otherwise be committed by our brain-damaged psychopath, are we not equally obligated to prevent the gazelle's unfair death?
So, to turn the question back to you, what is the trait that makes us morally obligated to prevent the unfair deaths of our psychopath's would be victims, but confers no such obligation to prevent the gazelle's death at the hands (or teeth) of our amoral lion?
The best arguments are often angry noises. The relative quietude that divides the philosopher from the revolutionary might explain the near paralysis of social evolution.
What is being encountered here is fundamentalism. And this is a fantastic opportunity to attempt the impossible act of shifting a fundamental-ism via philosophical dialogue.
Fundamentalism is indeed the antithesis of dialectics. However the relationship between fundamentalism and philosophy lies at the heart of enormous social problems.
It is very helpful and constructive to engage with fundamentalist principles within the context of fundamentalist vegetarianism (veganism), because the debate is unlikely to become racist or lead to violent exchange. If on the other hand we were dealing with another form of the same fundamentalism... if we were speaking of race or religion, this would be a much uglier discussion despite the fact that the real issue at hand is one of fundamentalism.
Fundamentalists are unwilling to proceed to deeper or truths.
Therefore I applaud and am grateful for the anger and the noise when it is confined to the context of carrots and snails.
M
Exactly.
Quoting chatterbears
No, a distinction on the basis of species is a relevant distinction with regard to appropriate treatment, and it's obviously not just a matter of how an animal looks. A chicken which looked exactly like a human would obviously stand out, and it would be extremely odd to treat the chicken as if there were no relevant distinction.
Quoting chatterbears
Nope, your consistency is not superior to mine.
Quoting chatterbears
You have failed to validly demonstrate any inconsistency in my present stance. You've committed the fallacy of composition by misapplying conclusions drawn from parts of my answer taken in isolation to my answer as a whole. You need to address my answer as a whole, which is not about any single trait or characteristic.
Quoting chatterbears
My answer hasn't changed. I know that it's not the answer that you want, but it's the answer that you're going to get. I only have to answer the question in a way which answers the question, which is what I've done. I don't have to answer the question in the way that you're pushing for, which is unnecessary and would play into your hand. Again, you're committing the continuum fallacy. You're erroneously rejecting a vague claim simply because it is not as precise as you would like it to be. Vagueness alone does not necessarily imply invalidity.
Your morality is superior because it involves fallacious reasoning? Yeah, I don't think so.
Your point is in need of an update. Intelligence is one factor out of multiple factors. Who here, if anyone, is of the position that intelligence or any other single trait is the sole basis of distinguishing between humans and other animals in terms of how we judge how they should be treated? Let's not forget that you have played a part in bringing about this problem by asking subtly loaded questions which contain the controversial assumption that the distinction is due to a single trait, rather than a set of traits. And I've noticed that you're still doing this as of only eight hours ago, despite my pointing out to you previously.
Indeed. I've thought that from the start. We've had to try to tease them out. The opening post doesn't say anything about equality, for example, yet some kind of equality seems to be a big part of it, and a part which is much more controversial. Perhaps that's why it was hidden.
And dogs? Surely dogs too.
The 'what we should prefer to eat' remains an entirely selfish and self serving argument, because the meat or animals that he does not wish to eat resemble himself in some manner: vis the capacity to have thought, experience pain, be unhappy and so on. Life is to be more valued as it approximates to the animal that he loves the most.
Yet animal is entirely dependent upon plant life. We are all here on this earth as the guests of green plants. The distinction between that which is animal and that which is plant is not as clear cut as we might imagine. Is an animal a multi-cellular organism capable of communicating? If so there are many plants and many forms of multi cellular life that readily fulfil these critera.
Whilst he can safely and soundly expound the notion that killing other beings unnecessarily is wrong. This is simplistic and again is subject to selfish principles because one must decide upon the form of life that can be eaten and that which should not be eaten, and once again we arrive at rigid fundamental principles.
Strict application of aristotle's golden mean resolves the paradox for both the vegetarian and the meat eater. It is not the what we eat but the when and why that are at issue.
Upon the carrot there live micro organisms that are also imbued with life. The Carrot itself is a valid living entity that is no less alive and no less beautiful than an oak or redwood tree. The value that is assigned to either life is assigned on the basis of what matters to him alone. His private fundamental beliefs that cannot be shaken by logic. He is entitled to such beliefs and they are good and based upon a desire to do good but they are equally self serving and come with the advantage of an apparent (but ridiculous) claim to the high moral ground.
If I have a chainsaw in my hand and I ask chatterbears which is more immoral: to chop down the old redwood or eat the burger? If he says that carrots are less beautiful than redwoods that is simply because there are more carrots than redwoods... again a self serving view of what is beautiful and what is to be cherished. Dont eat the carrot, dont eat the cow and dont chop the redwood unless you have a philosophically validated need to do so.
Buddhism contains the concept that all life is suffering however suffering can be best avoided if we remain true to philosophical principles which in this instance reside in the 'why' the 'how' and the 'when' and not in the what.
M
Yes, and that's just one of many absurd consequences which arise from the endorsement of an equality of kind which neglects a difference in degree. This is the one fault which pervades much of his thinking.
A couple of things:
The lion and the disabled person are both not morally culpable on the basis of lacking the ability to think about morality. But the lion has the added factor of being excused on the grounds of necessity--he or she must eat the gazelle or die. The disabled person is not in the same position.
Saying that someone is not morally culpable for an action is not the same as saying the outcome of that action is desirable or "okay." An infant is not morally responsible for, say, destroying its parent's property (smashing china, or soiling the carpet, for instance), but we still intervene to prevent the undesirable outcome. Similarly we ought to prevent the mentally disabled person from killing others, as that would be an undesirable, and unnecessary outcome.
You might ask whether that would lead to the conclusion that we ought to intervene on the gazelle's behalf. The problem there is that the ecosystem relies on the balance of all of these animals behaving in just the ways they do, and if we intervene, it could lead to widespread disaster. We would be causing more death and suffering than we averted.
This might lead you to ask about the overpopulation of deer and the necessity for humans to hunt. Note that if this were true, we'd still have to get rid of all factory farms, and only a tiny percentage of the population would be able to eat meat on a very rare occasion. But it's also not true, because there are numerous avenues we can explore for population control that have been widely ignored so far.
Are you implying that a woman's ability to vote is that of a dog? Because dogs lack the abilities required to vote. They do not lack the ability to suffer, that's why hurting them is wrong.
But what does it mean to talk of killing other beings unnecessarily? The killing that we're talking about is necessary to meet the demand for meat produce, so it can't be unnecessary in that sense. Does it just mean, "Not necessary for any purpose of which I approve"? If so, then it's really about your personal approval more than it is about necessity, and speaking in terms of the latter masks this. That would mean that what's being said is that to kill other beings for any purpose of which I do not approve is wrong. What makes your approval authoritative?
I don't think @chatterbears is intentionally setting up their argument to be deceptive or anything like that. I think chatterbears is very passionate about animal rights, and sometimes when that's the case it becomes hard to understand why other people don't believe as oneself -- and hard to see that there may be implicit assumptions that make the belief justified to themself.
No.
Quoting NKBJ
Oh really?
Quoting NKBJ
I know your opinion. Restating it doesn't advance the discussion.
OK.
I do not. I think rights are inadequate for addressing the needs of human beings. That doesn't mean I think that they should be violated, mind. It only means that I think the political theory which requires us to frame demands as rights is deficient.
Regardless, though, for the sake of argument I'm fine with just saying I do believe in the 3 articles below.
Because humans are more important to me than other animals. It's not a particular trait of humans that makes me feel that way, or a set of traits. I belong to the group 'humans', and I look out for their self-interest.
These are, after all, human rights. Rights which human beings decided we deserve and in turn built into human institutions to make those rights a reality, to the best of our ability. With Locke the reason humans all had natural rights was due to being created by God and equal in the eyes of God.
I'm going to hazard a guess here, since you're talking about Sam Harris in your OP, that you probably don't share that view.
What, then, could secure rights for human beings? It seems to me what is left are institutions. And since institutions are built for our own self-interest, we aren't being inconsistent in giving rights to ourselves and not to all animals.
No, that's not right. You seem to be erroneously assuming that others must accept this hidden principle of an equality of sorts among species which you seem to presuppose. If I reject this principle, then I'm not being inconsistent if I don't judge or act in accordance with it. I can have empathy for humans and logical consistency, yet reject veganism.
You sidled from moral culpability to practicality. Are you saying that if a practical method arose by which we could prevent the lion from eating the gazelle without harming the ecosystem we would be morally obligated to do so? Ie, is your argument that the impractical or undesirable consequences are the only thing preventing us from having a moral obligation to prevent all predators from killing their prey?
If so, then the issue ceases to be a moral one (presuming you are a consequentialist) and becomes an entirely scientific one. What are the consequences of meat-eating on the ecosystem? Not factory farming, not even farming per se. What's being discussed here is the ethics of eating meat. If you're saying that Ethics should be consequentialist, then you need to provide evidence for the negative consequences of eating meat (regardless of how it is obtained).
You (more @chatterbears) seem to make a rights-based argument when it comes to eating meat, but now you're switching to a consequentialist argument when it comes to our obligation to prevent the murder of the gazelle by the lion. Since the entire debate has centred around consistency as a measure of ethical standards, should we not at least stick to one consistent ethical framework?
Hey, that's actually a pretty decent question! :wink:
I think part of the problem here rests on a bit of an equivocation. There is a difference between causal and moral necessity. Yes, in order for you to eat meat, it is causally necessary to kill animals.
When we talk about moral necessity, though, we have to be comparing two or more moral issues. You eating meat does not inherently entail a moral good. There are situations in which it might: like if your life depended on it, saving your life would be a moral good.
Even if you did argue that the fleeting pleasure of eating flesh was a moral good, it is clearly a very, very minor one and does not even come close to outweighing the bad of the suffering and death of the animal.
Saving the ecosystem is a greater good than saving the gazelle, though both are good. Since I cannot save both at this moment in time, I have to choose the greater good. When it becomes possible to do both, I should do both.
Quoting Pseudonym
I haven't been arguing with the language of rights. And rights-based morality wouldn't be inconsistent with consequentialism anyway, since they both can be argued to contain elements of the other.
My eating the meat of other animals doesn't inherently entail a moral good or a moral bad which is anything other than relatively minor at best, and does not even come close to the level of bad relating to the suffering and death of humans. I'd sacrifice the lives of at least a hundred sheep for every human life saved, and I wouldn't sacrifice the life of a single human to save the lives of all the sheep in the United Kingdom.
This sounds insane to me, so I thought I'd better double check. You're actually saying that you see nothing morally wrong with humans completely altering the ecosystems of the entire planet (should they ever be technologically capable of doing so) in order for us to create an artificial utopia where nothing ever died?
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. It's up to us, and so we should? Or we have the power, whereas they do not, and so we should grant rights to animals? Or they have rights, and don't have the power to secure them, whereas we do, and so we should secure the rights they already have?
We're not talking about your suffering or death. No human is going to die because we decided not to hurt the animals.
The key phrase being "capable of doing so." And by that I mean if we could do it in a way that wouldn't cause the ecosystem to collapse or tragedy to happen, obviously. And I'm not even seriously suggesting it, because we're obviously eons away from being able to do so, if we ever could.
It's just a hypothesis. Just like the p-zombie thread is based on hypothesis. Such scenarios just serve to help us articulate how and why we ought to do certain things.
Morality is dependent on empathy - to be able to feel for other people. Even a schoolboy knows that our empathy is not universal. Rather it decreases with what I describe as ''feeling range'' which is basically the fact that our feelings are strongest for the self, then family, then friends, community, country, humans, animals and then plants.
As you can see animals at the end of our ''feeling range''. That's the reason why you made this post and that is also why you advise us to be vegetarian.
Also, if you notice you'll find people extending their ''feeling range'' just as you have.
So this is the difficulty with your ethical position. You're saying we have a moral obligation to prevent the death of every sentient being with no restriction other than our knowledge of the potential consequenses. Do you realise the risk that obligation entails by referring to nothing more than our current knowledge to judge the infinite future consequences of our actions? Do you really trust our current knowledge that much?
So you don't think that the two situations are analogous? Because earlier on you seemed to be trying to blur the lines, focussing on the similarities between humans and other animals, putting forward arguments such as that if it's okay to cause pain to a chicken, then it must be okay to cause pain to an infant, and so on. At one point, you said that equating them is to leave humans in value right where they are while raising the status of animals.
You seem to have changed your tune. I remember sarcastically telling you that I'm sure a Kentucky Fried Human would be a real hit in response to your bringing up of humans when we were talking about chickens, yet now it seems that you want to leave humans out of it and stick to talk of chickens. Interesting...
We always have to go with our best knowledge and act as morally as we can accordingly. I don't see how we can reasonably act any differently. Yes, that means sometimes bad things will happen anyway, but that most certainly is better than doing wrong things knowingly.
But that also entails knowing when we don't know something. I know I don't know how to save gazelles from lions without causing disaster, therefore I don't try to.
Since our knowledge is not, nor probably could ever be infinite, we needn't try to judge infinite consequences. But any foreseeable consequences should definitely be taken into account.
I know that you could probably figure this out on your own if you actually tried, but okay, I'll explain it slowly:
Just now we were talking about being caught between two acts. I'm pointing out that giving up meat is nothing compared to the suffering of animals. You jumped to talking about sacrificing animals to save humans. I explained that no one is suggesting we sacrifice human lives or even cause them suffering. The great thing is, we can do both: we can let humans live AND let animals live. Woot woot!
That is a wholly different argument than explaining that human and animal suffering are alike in many significant ways that both matter morally.
That's pretty much a definition of consequentialism. So to be consistent you'd have to take a consequntialist approach to the eating of meat too, so where's the argument that the killing of animals for food causes more harm than good for the foseeable future based on current knowledge? Not factory farming, just any killing of animals. More importantly, where's the argument that it does so with such incontrovertible certainty that the moral choice is as unavoidable as it is being painted here?
Wait! You're going too fast.
Quoting NKBJ
I'm not just randomly jumping off to talk about a subject with no relationship to what you're saying. You've just said that you were pointing out that giving up meat is nothing compared to the suffering of animals, and, in response, I'm saying that the suffering of other animals is nothing compared to the suffering of humans. This indicates the scale of significance beyond mere right and wrong that I brought up earlier. For me, humans are at the top, and other animals don't matter as much. So, even if it's wrong, it's not wrong in the same way, which is important. Because if this were about the holocaust, then I would judge it very differently. But it's not.
The great thing is, we can let other animals live decent lives, right up until we kill them for food production. And, since they're not quite like us, it doesn't matter as much as it otherwise would. That way, it's a sort of compromise where we both benefit. They get to live a decent life, and I get to eat meat. Woot woot!
I provided scientific evidence that eating animals cause more objective harm than eating a carrot. Are you going to provide any counter-argument or any type of evidence at all, other than just saying "carrot harm and snail harm are the same"? Also, the comparison of snails to factory farmed animals is absurd.
Quoting Marcus de Brun
Fundamentalist how? Again, saying things without providing an actual argument or evidence for it. You seem to just assert things without any logic to back it up.
The lion requires the consumption of the gazelle to survive. This is a necessary evil for the lion to survive. The mentally disabled person does not require the killing of whomever they wish in order to survive. This is an unnecessary evil for the mentally disabled person to survive.
Hence I go back to the factory farms, which are an unnecessary evil, and is not required for humans to survive.
So to clarify, are you a speciesist? Because since you don't have a specify trait you can point to, in distinguishing why one animal (humans) deserves better treatment than another animal (pigs), this is an easy position to attack.
Sapientia believes it is okay to kill animals for food, based on the difference in species.
Alien believes it is okay to kill humans for food, based on the difference in species.
Do you accept both of these scenarios? If not, you're internally inconsistent.
I ask for a single trait, rather than multiple at a time, so we can tackle each trait one-by-one. I am fully aware that everyone has multiple traits they can point to, but I'd rather dissect each trait to see if it is valid and worthy of justifying the unnecessary killing of animals.
So if you have 5 traits: Weight, species, intelligence, taste, convenience
We would need to go one-by-one and see if each justification is valid and consistent on its own. Is a difference in "weight" a valid justification for killing something? No. Is the pleasure of "taste" a valid justification for killing something? No.
We can go one-by-one, and eliminate each justification by deploying logical consistency to it, in which the person would now be left with ZERO valid justifications for why they feel it is okay to kill animals.
Can dogs understand voting rights? No. Therefore, that right should not be granted to them.
Can dogs understand pain and suffering? Yes, therefore the right to protect them from that should be granted to them.
It's not about the morality of the lion or the psychopath, it's about the morality of the person with the ability to prevent either killing. In order to be consistent you would have to hold the view that, if at any time if became unnecessary for the lion to kill the gazelle we are as morally obliged to prevent it as we are to prevent the deaths caused by the psychopath. So, what do you do about excess killing? Would you be in favour of the destruction of the Wolf pack responsible for the killing of 18 Elk without the need for food in order to prevent them from doing it again?
Completely false, as I stated every animal deserves basic rights. I have no love for porcupines in the same way I love dogs, but both of these species deserve basic rights. And the 'what we should prefer to eat' is the opposite of selfish, because I am willing to give up the pleasure of 'steak, cheese, chicken and ice cream', to cause less suffering to the animals that derive from these foods. Eating plant-based foods objectively causes less suffering to the animals and the environment, compared to eating meat.
Quoting Marcus de Brun
The form of life that can be eaten is the one that causes less harm and suffering. In which, factory farms, objectively cause more harm. You seem to be ignorant of the actual research behind factory farms and the harm they cause to the animals and environment.
Quoting Marcus de Brun
A microscopic organism, such as a bacterium or virus, cannot feel pain, nor do they have a brain to think or communicate back to us in a meaningful way. Brains are made of many neurons that are interconnected to each other. Each neuron is a cell. Bacteria are single-celled organisms - as such, there is no possibility for a single bacterium to develop a brain. Viruses are even smaller than bacteria - they are in fact sub-cellular. It would only make sense to grant rights to a living being that has sentience, as these basic rights directly address possible pain and suffering.
So to equate a carrot to an animal, simply because the carrot may living microscopic organisms living on it or within it, is objectively false.
Quoting Marcus de Brun
My argument has nothing to do with beauty. Where did you even get that from?
My argument has to do with the unnecessary harm caused by humans, when there are better alternatives. Chopping down a redwood may indirectly harm squirrels and insects, which if unnecessary, should be avoided. Killing animals is DIRECT harm to them, which is a key difference here. Indirect harm and direct harm. One (factory farms) can be easily avoided and is unnecessary, while the other (cutting down trees) is harder to avoid any harm, but should still be considered if possible.
-Right to Life, Liberty, Personal Security (Article 3)
-Freedom from Slavery (Article 4)
-Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment (Article 5)
I don't believe all animals deserve every right a human has, such as Article 17, which is the right to own property. But I do believe all animals deserve these basic 3 rights, which have been granted to humans. Animals deserve what they can understand and experience. Owning a car, house or voting cannot be understand by these animals.
Quite simple. Don't kill other sentient beings if you don't need to. There are two options.
A: Eat animals, which results in pain, torture and death.
B: Eat plants, which results in almost no pain, no torture and no death.
A is unnecessary to live and be healthy. B is necessary to live and be healthy. B will still have some indirect pain/death associated with it, such as the field mice that die during the harvesting of our crops. But the pain/death associated with B, is not even remotely similar to the pain/death associated with A.
Again, look up the environmental factors between meat and vegetables. And I will link the research again if you need me to.
Logical consistency implies equality. I wasn't hiding anything, and from the very beginning of this thread, I have stated "Don't justify an action you wouldn't accept if the trait you are discriminating against was active in yourself". Example:
A: I kill animals because they are less intelligent. (chicken)
B: I do not kill humans if they were less intelligent. (mentally disabled person)
Although the position implies equality, as I said from the start, this is about logical consistency. If you're not consistent within your own subjective ethics, you have no grounds for telling me what is moral or immoral. And also, you have contradictory/hypocritical beliefs within your own internal moral framework.
This seems to me you are a speciesist. Is this correct? That because a species is different, we are therefore justified in treating them however we want.
You see this is where you keep changing the terms of your argument. On the one hand you talk about the pain/suffering of creatures who can feel pain (this is how you avoid the reality that vegetable farming kills billions of insects/worms etc). But then when the idea of humane animal farming is raised, such that the farmed animals feel no pain, you go back to the idea that it is simply the killing that's wrong for purely ethical reasons (to avoid having to concede that humane animal farming would solve the problem).
Decide which is the wrong you wish to avoid - pain and suffering, or the taking of innocent life, and then we can continue the debate based on that.
Not necessarily equality, as more so to do with consistency. Also, even if it was about equality specifically, what valid counter-argument have you presented to reject this principle? All you have presented is, "Cows are animals, humans are humans. Therefore I can subject cows to pain and slaughter." - This sounds like a speciesist position, in which can be easily refuted by an Alien hypothetical. So again, you're not logically consistent.
If that's what speciesism is then I don't think I'd qualify as a speciesist.
How different are we from animals, really? Is there a difference that makes a difference?
Not really. We are nothing but animals, ourselves. And we are an animal I happen to prefer over other animals, when it comes to satisfying needs.
That doesn't then imply that I think we can do whatever we want to every other animal. I don't believe in torturing animals. I find some scientific experiments that use animals to be inhumane. I think dog fighting and cock fighting are wrong. I don't think the way we produce meat now is humane.
So I guess I don't qualify, by this particular definition. Still, I think it's fine to eat other animals. We can do so, and other animals do the same as us. I don't think it's necessary, as you note. We could get by on a vegan diet -- the species wouldn't cease to exist were everyone to go vegan.
But so what?
It seems to me that you believe animals have inalienable rights. But why? Why on earth would you believe such a thing? What gives animals rights?
Humans have rights in our current political setup. I don't think they have inalienable rights. Rights are legal entities that gives some political agent a claim to something -- be they positive or negative rights.
Quoting chatterbears
Well, I wasn't telling you what is moral or immoral. :D By all means bless your vegan heart.
Half the world's grain crops are fed to the world's 65 billion farm animals. How many insects/worms do you think are killed in the process of harvesting these crops for the farm animals? How much grain crops does 1 cow eat, compared to 1 person? Think about how many crops we need to grow for farm animals, compared to how many we would need to grow for ourselves.
I already acknowledged harvesting fruits/vegetables/grain has some harm associated with it. But again, the harm associated with fruits/vegetables/grain is demonstrably less than factory farms, by a substantial margin.
Both are important. To lessen the pain and suffering, while also lessening the death count. Veganism accomplishes both of those things. You just need to do a little research.
Again, unless you want to produce an inconsistency within your own ethical framework, you would need to grant the same 3 basic rights to animals.
- Right to Life, Liberty, Personal Security (Article 3)
- Freedom from Slavery (Article 4)
- Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment (Article 5)
Quoting Moliere
Since you claim you are not a speciesist, you seem to be basing your reasoning on preference? Which we can easily refute right now.
Is "preference" a valid justification to use for causing needless harm to another sentient being? It could be the preference of a white man to enslave a black man. It could be my preference to torture a dog and then kill it. It could be your preference to contribute to factory farming. None of these are a "need". So when you say, "when it comes to satisfying needs", eating meat is not a NEED for survival.
Clearly "preference" is not valid, and not consistent.
No, I'm not a speciesist, because I judge situations which are similar in other respects differently in light of relevant differences between species, not soley on the basis of species alone or on the basis of irrelevant differences. I've already said that I'd be fine with eating a human burger under the right circumstances, and I'd also judge and treat chickens on a par with humans under the right circumstances, but presently these circumstances are only hypothetical.
Quoting chatterbears
That's right: I don't distinguish between the one and the other based on a single specific trait. If that makes my position easy to attack, as you say, then I'm curious as to why you seem to have been holding back doing so thus far, choosing instead to repeat the same line of questioning which I've already dealt with.
Quoting chatterbears
That's not an accurate representation of my position, and it doesn't demonstrate any inconsistency in my position.
I find it acceptable enough that other animals are killed to produce food for humans based on what the difference in species entails, and I wouldn't find it acceptable enough otherwise. Meaning that if a species were sufficiently human-like, I would not find it acceptable enough. And funnily enough, humans are sufficiently human-like.
Plants do not have a brain or nervous system to experience pain, therefore they don't' belong in this discussion. As far as basic rights, my "feeling range" is the same for all sentient beings. So I don't know how your point applies to my argument.
So at this point, you're either being intellectually dishonest or are extremely confused. Other way, I think I have tried enough times to get a valid, coherent answer out of you, but you never supply one. I don't care to continue the discussion with you specifically, but others (such as Buxtebuddha or NKBJ) are welcome to try.
Until you supply me (or anyone) with a valid and coherent justification for why you feel it is necessary to kill animals, there's no point in a discussion. All you say is, "There's no single trait that I can point to, and I am not a speciesist." - If you don't even know why you are justified in committing the actions you initiate, it is no surprise that you have a hard time with considering animal well-being.
Your method for assessing the justification for the conditional necessity of killing other animals is flawed, as I've explained, because it is an example of the fallacy of composition. It's a fallacy to infer that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole, or even of every proper part. That a wheel can't fly, and that a wing can't fly, and that an engine can't fly, and so on, and so forth, does not mean that a plane can't fly. Similarly, if weight alone isn't good enough of a reason, and if species alone isn't good enough of a reason, and so on, and so forth, that doesn't mean that the set of circumstances as a whole isn't good enough of a reason.
I don't see how we could reasonable judge whether or not it became unnecessary for a lion to kill a gazelle. How would you even be able to differentiate 'need' and 'needless' in regards to a lion's survival? I don't think you could, but feel free to provide me evidence to suggest otherwise.
Also, this is a secondary issue to factory farming. Even if there are other unnecessary harms performed by other animals, we first need to fix the unnecessary harms we are engaged in. After we fix that, we can then focus on other issues, if that is even necessary.
The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. For example: "This wheel is made of rubber, therefore the vehicle to which it is a part is also made of rubber." This is clearly fallacious, because vehicles are often made with a variety of parts, many of which may not be made of rubber.
How am I doing this by deploying a consistent test toward each justification that people use for killing animals? I am not saying, eliminating one invalid trait (part) means their (whole) position is invalid. I am saying, if we go one-by-one and assess the validity of each trait, and all the traits they point to are invalid, then clearly their entire position is invalid. But I don't start with "their whole argument is invalid because one trait is invalid." - I start with, "Let's go one-by-one and see if each trait is valid and logically consistent. If each treat is not, we can eliminate it and move on to the next trait."
This is nothing remotely similar to the fallacy of composition. Because I am saying, let's asses each PART. And if each and every PART is invalid, then the WHOLE becomes invalid.
I do not believe that humans have inalienable rights. They have legal rights, and that's it. As God does not exist so too with Inalienable rights -- they do not exist. There is no God who we stand in front of as equals.
Quoting chatterbears
My preference was for human needs, not for causing needless harm. It is a moral preference, if you will, and I don't think there is anything more than preference to secure moral feeling. Reasoning only goes so far, and is moored in moral preferences of moral agents. Also note that need, for myself, is not just brute necessity, but is defined by what makes human beings happy rather than what is required to survive.
The beasts aren't even moral agents. They are not culpable for their actions, because they are beasts. We are. But, in being culpable, we are also simply reflections of what we desire in a moral sense. So, for yourself, you desire rights to be universal. This would include beings that can feel pain, and not just morally culpable agents. You believe this in your desire to be consistent. Consistency is the main drive behind all of your replies -- maybe you could give up rights, but whatever you or someone else proposes you believe that they must be consistent in their proposals.
I'd say that this notion of consistency is a bit vague. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think it's just mere logical consistency you're thinking of. I think it only makes sense for your notion of consistency to apply to animals in the light of another commitment -- that those deserving moral consideration are those who can feel pain. I don't think that sentience makes sense, because that's a much harder thing to prove of various animals, and besides it seems that you're mostly concerned with animal suffering anyways. In light of an animals ability to feel pain you believe they should have three rights, because you believe all humans deserve those three rights. In that sense I can see what you mean by consistency -- anything that feels pain is worthy of moral consideration, and animals can feel pain, so you would be inconsistent if you just decided that only humans got these basic rights when the important thing is that all animals feel pain.
That makes perfect sense to me. But I don't believe in rights. Further, I don't think that the ability to feel pain is enough, or even the only thing. What if a human couldn't feel pain, after all? Well, they would still be human, and deserving of the respect afforded them as a moral agent regardless of this trait. I believe in a commitment to other human beings, and maybe more generally to moral agents (so in the case of aliens who are relatively human-like I would say we should treat them like humans, and not like cows).
I think pain is an important thing to consider in how we treat some being. Needless suffering I can understand should be prevented -- I am the sort of moral agent who prefers this kind of world, and think it a good thing to pursue. But I don't think that leads to veganism, simply reform of how we kill animals.
Plants have no nervous system to feel pain. I agree but what is critical in ethics is the ability to feel the pain of others. Yes, a pain sensing ability in others is necessary but what is equally important is the ability of the self to feel pain.
So, yes, plants can't feel pain but you should feel the pain of death and through such knowledge grasp the value of a plant's life.
Morality is empathy-based and empathy relies on the self being able to sense pain of others.
That's arguably a consequence which arises from the endorsement of an equality of kind which neglects a difference in degree. Other animals can't understand or relate to life, liberty, personal security, freedom, slavery, torture, and degrading treatment, to the unique degree that we do, so it wouldn't make sense to treat them as if they did.
There's also an inappropriateness in your suggested application of those concepts with regard to other animals. For example, keeping chickens on a free range farm is not slavery, it's more like serfdom. Slaughter is not torture, it's execution. And what's degrading treatment for humans isn't necessarily so for other animals.
To me those are three parts of the discussion that should be treated seperately. Though of course if ones position is that it is unethical to farm any animal for consuption under any condition, then the two other questions don't arise, but I doubt that is the case with chatterbears, since he doesn't seem to object to the ethics of growing unconcious animals for consumption.
So does a dog deserve to eat meat? Or would you force it to be vegetarian under your bill of universal sentient rights?
No wonder you won’t extend the vote to dogs.
I don't think I'm being a consequentialist, and like I said, consequentialism doesn't work without a certain amount of deontology and vice versa, but okay, we'll entertain your argument for the fun of it:
Unless you are willing to only eat those animals who have died of natural causes, the eating of one implies killing it. Killing is a form of harm. The consequence of getting the flesh you want to eat is therefore harming a sentient being. Harming a sentient being is causing more harm than good.
It's not nothing. And even if that were true, giving up flesh still means NO ONE suffers. Which is a better outcome than some suffering.
The majority of meat currently comes from factory farms, which means the lives of the animals is definitely not "decent" or anything approximating decent. If you agree that they shouldn't be kept in such places and should be given decent lives, then you agree that their suffering matters. Period. No comparison to humans needed. If their suffering matters, and having a decent life matters, then killing them is wrong too.
Recent technology is making meat eating possible without harming animals, though. Clean meat, grown in a lab, is going to be available. I'll personally still find it gross (been vegan too long to go back, and I'm healthier for it anyhow), but you can then indulge without harming animals. Woot woot indeed :yum:
I don't kill other sentient beings. Other people do so for me. And killing them is necessary for there to be meat available for me to eat.
Quoting chatterbears
With the first option, there doesn't need to be torture, and the pain can be minimised to an insignificant level. So the only aspect of the first option which really needs to be taken into consideration is the death aspect, which, by the way, would also apply to your second option, although you mistakenly claim in your second option that there would be no death. Plants are living organisms too, and the food production process causes the premature death of any plants used. Although I accept that there's a big difference.
Quoting chatterbears
Yes, I accept there's a big difference between the death of plants and the death of nonhuman animals, like there's a big difference between the death of nonhuman animals and the death of humans.
Both options are necessary to live the way that I want to live, which involves eating meat and vegetables. So I choose both. I can live with the death of plants and other animals for the sake of my personal gratification, so I must be an evil monster. But it turns out that being an evil monster has it's upshots. I get to enjoy the food I like, and you get to enjoy feeling superior, so it's win-win.
This is just as flawed as appealing to 'preference'. What makes you happy does not say anything about what is right or wrong.
If it make me happy to cheat on my wife, am I then justified in doing so? If it makes me happy to torture animals, am I then justified in doing so? If it makes me happy to exploit animals for my taste pleasure, am I then justified in doing so? No. No. And no.
I don't even understand what this means. I should care to not kill the plant because it has a life, just as I have a life? I specifically stated that we should take more consideration for sentient life, because sentient life can experience pain and suffering, while plants cannot.
This is just completely false. You can't ignore facts about reality to feed your inconsistent position. Animals can experience mental distress, similar to how humans can. You think an animal is in a better mental state confined to a cage, or walking around in an open field?
Quoting Sapientia
Animals on typical organic and “free-range” farms often spend much of their time confined to crowded sheds or mud-filled pens, just as animals on conventional factory farms do. Slaughter is a violation of the 'right to life'.
Correction here. The proper term would be sentient, not conscious. So can you point to a non-sentient animal that we would raise for consumption? But even if you could, I'd say it would only be ethical if it was necessary. Which, raising any animals for food (in this current day) is NOT necessary. We have plenty of plant-based alternatives that can sustain our survival perfectly.
The deserved rights I was referring to were about liberty, pain and freedom. But does a dog "deserve" to eat meat, isn't the proper question. The proper question would be, "Can a dog survive on a vegetarian diet?" - The answer is yes. I feed my dogs v-dog: https://v-dog.com/
I have even consulted with multiple vets, as well as done a lot of research, to ensure my dog would get its proper nutrients from a vegetarian diet. And it can. And if we run into any problems, we can do blood work every year or two, to make sure my dog has the proper levels it should have.
Are you admitting defeat? Appealing to personal gratification is probably the worst justification you have used so far.
No, it's definitely not consistency. It's the hidden presupposition upon which you're judging consistency, which seems to be some kind of equality among species. Without the acceptance of this hidden presupposition, there's no inconsistency, and your argument falls flat on its face. It's as simple as that. Game over. You'll be forced to abandon the inconsistency angle and try a different tactic.
I've given reasons as to why equality among species ought to be rejected. It can be summed up by saying that an equality in kind, or on some level, or in some respects, doesn't necessarily entail equal treatment. And that any relevant differences in circumstance and severity ought to be factored into appropriate treatment. The goal should be to strive for appropriate and proportional treatment, rather than equal treatment.
And your alien hypothetical is a laughable failure which has already been dealt with. It's not a serious challenge.
Quoting Sapientia
I'd like someone else who reads what he wrote to explain how that makes any sense? And how does it answer my question, "What justification/reason do you have that allows you to be okay with unnecessary animal slaughter for food, but not unnecessary human slaughter for food?" - He has still never answered this question, and I am starting to think he is trolling at this point.
"But what does it mean to talk of killing other beings unnecessarily? The killing that we're talking about is necessary to meet the demand for meat produce, so it can't be unnecessary in that sense."
That is entirely the basis of my point. The demand is antecedent to the killing and it is the demand that renders the killing necessary or necessary. The demand is the horizon that both contains and perpetrates the immorality, it is also the domain over which the agent has power and personal responsibility. If he chooses to have a morality that includes the withholding of suffering from animals, this moral luxury, (if it is to be effected in a practical and real manner) must, confine itself to his demand or desire to consume things in general, as all consumption is interconnected via the universality of commerce.
When he buys a carrot the consumptive reality of the world is affected he has released his dollar into the commercial reality that contains and perpetrates the cruelty he seeks to avoid, and therefore he cannot avoid contributing to the suffering of animals directly or indirectly each and every time he engages in the consumptive transaction.
One cannot change aspects of our consumptive reality with the hope of changing that reality in toto. And the reality must be changed in toto, if we are to derive a moral benefit from eating vegetables instead of animals. To do so we must acquire those vegetables outside of a transaction with potentially 'immoral others', and this is impossible. This cannot be aspired to in any real sense by simply modifying the product within the transaction.
The mechanistic reality of the transaction must be altered, (Communism tried and failed) this can only be achieved by withholding ones participation from the transaction. In doing so, one does not behave immorally and one can claim a morality that is substantive and non-fictional.
By not consuming, or by strictly consuming in accordance with a philosophical validation of ones material needs (the demand) morality becomes possible. Electric cars, vegetarianism and recycling etc., these activities do not represent any threat to the consumptive act, they merely transform it into some sort of fluffy self serving delusion wherein only the material nature of the product has changed and the consumptive act remains unchanged, or is even further reinforced by 'new products' such as electric cars or genetically engineered steaks that don't come from cows and are not sentient.
A vegan world that remains confined to the transaction, contains the same potential for suffering that our non-vegan world already enjoys. The vegan remains smugly indifferent to those consequence because they do not yet exist. Within a vegan world if the transaction, (capitalism) is maintained more vegetables will be produced to generate vegetable based profits, all of these come at the expense of the natural environment and global ecology, and hence at the expense of the other animals with whom we share the earth. A vegan world would be just as ugly as a non vegan world.
That's a weak and disappointing reply. You asked me whether I am a speciesist. Since you didn't provide a definition of what it is to be a speciesist, I looked it up myself and gave an honest reply based on a definition I found and its mismatch with my position. I know that you're eager to paint me as a speciesist, which to you is the same as being a racist, but if I ain't one, then I ain't, and that's that.
If I don't need to point to a single trait, as opposed to a set of traits, then why should I do so? Because you'd prefer it that way? Because it suits your strategy? Not good enough. If you can provide a good enough reason for me to answer any differently than I have done so thus far, then I will oblige you. But I'm sorry to say that I've found your responses thus far unconvincing, and you're coming across as increasingly disgruntled because you can't have it your own way. I won't be boxed into a corner, so deal with it. Threatening to end our discussion won't work on me, either. Go ahead and do so if that's what you want.
Because that is how two people discuss and debate a position. One side presents reasons for why they believe something, and the other side can respond. You have presented ZERO reasons for why you believe animal slaughter is justified, other than saying "I cannot pinpoint anything specific."
So in the same way you cannot have a productive conversation with a racist who says, "I cannot pinpoint anything specific that justifies my discrimination of blacks vs whites", I also cannot have a productive conversation with you. If you're unwilling to provide a coherent reason/justification, I cannot have a discussion with you. Simple as that.
I'm guessing that you read the Wikipedia page on the fallacy of composition, since you quoted from it, so I'm also guessing that you read what it says about the fallacy applying even in cases regarding every proper part. If you did, then you should be able to realise that your response above doesn't get you off the hook.
If you examine each and every part of a plane, one-by-one, then each time, you will find that this or that particular part cannot fly. But that doesn't mean that a plane cannot fly.
If you examine each and every person in a crowd, one-by-one, then you will notice that each and every person in the crowd has a face. But that doesn't mean that the crowd has a face.
If you examine each and every atom which makes up a grain of sand, one-by-one, then you will find that each and every atom has a nucleus. But that doesn't mean that a grain of sand has a nucleus.
You're committing a version of the fallacy of composition, and the similarity is clear.
That weight alone isn't enough, and that species alone isn't enough, and so on, and so forth, [i]does not[/I] mean that a collection of qualities together as a whole isn't enough.
Concious or sentient, I came to understood from other posts that it boiled down to wether or not the animal in question has a nervous system so it could feel pain. In wich case I was thinking of sessile and/or single celled animal life as examples of animal life without a nervous system.
I don't really see an ethical difference between killing plants for food and killing animals for food, other than that for some/most animals, humans are able to increase their suffering by doing so.
I don't really see much of an ethical problem as long as the animal isn't suffering any more than it would if it were born, living and dieng in free nature without ever being near a human being.
Hence I consider certain dog breeds more of an ethical problem than growing animals for food while treating them well,
It might be possible that humans could survive perfectly on a plant only diet, but it will be hard to convince me there is any practicality to it, seeing that even the most strict vegans eventually take supplements of animal origin.
Great. You are consistent with your beliefs. And pragmatically, the modern techno-consumer society allows you to achieve that. There are the products out there now.
My argument was against your OP - where you argued that we should be consistent with our feelings. And what is obvious then is that we all could have different kinds of feeling about the issue of killing and eating animals.
So your initial argument could carry no real weight. Unless you could go on to say there is only one "right" way to feel about these things.
If you simply assert this rightness as some kind of objective moral absolute, then fine. But it lacks any actual reason. It is simply an expression of your personal faith.
And you do tend to respond just like that on a whole range of ethical issues, like slavery, discrimination, etc. You know what is right and expect others simply to agree.
I instead have argued for pragmatic morality. I see moral systems as expressing functional social and biological organisation. Morality evolves for actual good reasons. And that should be the starting point for ethical discussions.
This doesn't mean that our biological legacy should dictate outcomes - we evolved as meat eaters, therefore must remain so. But it does still rightfully inform the debate. If social and cultural choices are more under our control, then that is a thing too. But there is a context to which a final position must respond.
That was what I saw as ironic about your attempt to by-pass reason and invoke the "natural emotions" of compassion and empathy. Those are precisely the kind of evolve states of mind that are functional for an intelligent social creature.
And if we look to social science, we can see that the flip side of these feelings is just as functional - as our intelligence is all about weighing a competing balance of interests. We need to be competitive and co-operative, dominant and submissive, understanding and selfish, as best expresses some overall adaptive state.
So if you are going to look to evolved feelings as a basis to moral rightness, you would need to take both sides of the coin into account. Instead you pick out one aspect of what we naturally feel - the empathetic/compassionate - and then turn that into your absolutist rule.
As I say, I don't have a particular beef against vegetarianism. I won't lose sleep if we all generally head that way as food technology deals with the issues of our habitual taste preferences, the economics of lab meat means it wins on price in the supermarket aisle, and - what really counts - environmental footprints leave us with no other practical choice.
But when it comes to pain and suffering, that too is part of the pragmatic circle of life. For humans, it remains a natural part of the deal as well.
It is a different argument, but take away all apparent hardship and people still suffer. With no real sources of suffering and pain, people start to become hurt and anxious over the thousand trivial things they didn't have the time to focus on before.
Life just ain't simple in the way you need it to be simple to fit your one-sided analysis.
So there are good arguments - based on a balance of reasons - for encouraging a social trend towards veganism. Your OP was not an example of a good argument in my view.
I'd say this suffers from a impoverished view of happiness. Happiness is not so singular as this sort of view suggests. There are general enough trends in happiness that it can serve as a guide to a good life. Not as something failsafe, or anything. Just general.
But, regardless, I did note other things in my reply to you. Namely that we are moral agents, and if aliens were sufficiently human-like to be moral agents then they'd be included and not treated like beasts. Beasts are not culpable for their actions, but they do suffer -- so it is reasonable to treat them as beings which suffer, and not with the same respect as I give moral agents. So we can kill them, though to make them suffer is too much.
Quoting chatterbears
I don't believe there are moral foundations at all. We are adrift in a universe devoid of intrinsic meaning or value, and one way that we create a meaningful life in said universe is living an ethical life. But said meaning-seeking activities are a matter of choice more than anything. Rather than having a moral foundation we are beings which believe this or that is right or wrong, and act in accord with this or that to the extent that we are passionate enough about it.
For myself I think living a happy life is good. I also think that living a just life is good. I also have moral intuitions which are similar, but not identical, to Kantian moral philosophy. Those are probably the most foundational values I have, but I'm willing to go against them too depending on the situation. I'm willing to hear out other thoughts, and find a middle road between them when working with others. I have very few hard rules. I think that the world is too complicated to live a life bound by principles -- generally, a good will, a willingness to listen to others, and prioritize the people you love will go far.
But there are no guarantees and there are no answers. There are just choices which prioritize values, and the responsibility that this sort of freedom incurs: the acceptance of the choice and the act.
Plus, I view ethical thought as a constant work in progress. So there aren't any rods to hold to. As the world changes, as I change, so do the morals. It is more appropriate to deliberate the world as it is than it is to fashion whole new commandments from on high that we stand by.
So a collection of bad reasoning, when put together, somehow creates a good whole reasoning? This makes no sense.
An argument can consistent of multiple justifications, but each justification needs to be valid in order to be part of the argument. Otherwise, the argument becomes flawed on some level. For example. I can say, "I believe women shouldn't have the right to vote because of these reasons: They have long hair, they have never been president, they are not physically strong like men." All 3 of these justifications are completely invalid and have very poor reasoning. But according to you, if you put all 3 of these justifications (parts) together, it somehow makes the entire argument as a whole, a valid or correct one? And if someone objects to it, you accuse them of appealing to the fallacy of composition.
Have you done any research on the harm caused from factory farming?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
Click the environmental tab.
Quoting Tomseltje
This is false. There are Vegan supplements, as well as fortified foods. Some of which are GMO.
Which creates an internal contradiction. The point of my OP was to display the consistency of our ethics. The compassion, empathy & consistency standpoint reaches the goal in a similar way as the universal rights perspective. They are just two different arguments, structured very similarly.
So in the same way that everyone has different kinds of feeling toward killing and eating animals, they also have different kinds of feeling toward racism, sexism and other things. The point is not, whether the belief/action is wrong in and of itself. The point is whether or not people have an internally consistent position based on their justification they have used to fuel their beliefs or actions.
So a person can think they are justified in their actions or beliefs, but that's where internal consistency comes in. No racist, sexist, slave owner or meat eater, are internally consistent. All these positions are based on unjust and invalid justifications based on discrimination.
My moral system is based on the consideration of the well-being of sentient beings. Racism, sexism and unnecessary meat eating, all goes against this system. Because if you consider the well-being of sentient beings, you would do your best to maximize their well-being, not diminish it.
Well you didn't clarify. All you said was, "what makes human beings happy rather than what is required to survive." - And what makes human beings happy, doesn't mean those things are moral or immoral. Therefore, the justification "what makes human beings happy" is not valid or consistent to base your actions on.
Quoting Moliere
Some humans aren't moral agents, such as mentally disabled people; so there's your first problem. And if you appeal to species, an Alien species could come down and farm humans for food, and you'd have to be okay with that based on the same justification you use to farm animals.
Quoting Moliere
What I meant by this was, how do you differentiate between right and wrong? What mechanism do you use to morally justify an action as right/correct?
And so in turn, a felt natural contradiction that ethical reasoning ought to aim to balance. no?
Like you agreed about self-defence for example.
Not sure what you mean here. Can you rephrase and clarify?
Quoting apokrisis
Self-defense is justified because that living being's rights have been violated and needs to protect itself out of necessity. Well-being is still at work here, as someone's well-being has been diminished. And again, this is a necessary harm (self-defense) that is taking place for survival. Eating meat is not a necessary harm in order to survive, therefore it is not justified. But even if we don't use necessary vs unnecessary, people cannot even be consistent within their own justifications for why they can eat meat. If you're going to deploy a justification for harm, at least do so consistently.
It's what I already argued. Contradiction is to be what is expected. Cognition thrives on having alternatives to contrast.
So contradiction is not a fatal flaw like you suggest. It represents the fundamentality of choices that can be "equally good" in context. And so the job of ethics is to strike a reasonable balance.
Quoting chatterbears
Well yes. We went over this. Well-being or flourishing is the generic goal. And then the "contradiction" is between personal self-interest and collective self-interest.
Society is founded on competition AND co-operation. It is essential that one does not exclude the other. It is also essential that as local vs global interests, they are fruitfully balanced within an ethical framework.
Quoting chatterbears
But there are degrees of harm. And perhaps good reasons for recognising that.
Your monotonic absolutism makes it impossible for you to properly envisage that - even if in specific instances, as in killing in self defense, you feel forced to yield the issue.
You allow exceptions to the rule when things get so extreme your rule breaks. I prefer a more logically consistent approach that follows from seeking a fruitful balance of contrasting interests. That maps to reality more smoothly. It is how the real world works.
Here goes the second of your two regular vacillations.First you switch between death per se and pain/suffering to suit your argument, then you switch to the environmental impact of factory farming when we talk about the impact of farming vegetables. Please try to stick to one issue at a time so we can determine what your line of argument actually is.
To be clear absolutely no-one here is suggesting that modern factory farming of animals is fine and needs no intervention to make it better, so would you please stick to the argument that's actually being had, not the one you'd like to have. we're all trying to debate the morality of eating meat, the killing and consumption of another species of animal.
I only eat meat that I have either shot myself, someone I know and trust has shot, or has been locally reared on grass or kitchen scraps. So, if you're concerned about total number of deaths, one Red Deer shot in the wild causes one death (that of the deer), absolutely no impact on the ecology whatsoever (in fact it benefits it slightly) and will keep me in protein for months. To grow the equivalent amount of legumes you'd need to clear five acres of otherwise wild ecosystem, destroy all above ground life within that five acres, kill every single insect, mole, rabbit, deer, mouse that threatens that crop. Then you'd have to but it in a series of lorries and ships to transport it half way across the world, pack it, ship it again before it finally yields it's protein. There is no way the killing of one wild deer causes more environmental harm and animal death than the farming of five acres of legumes, so if you're using an environmental harm or total sentient deaths argument, then you should be advocating wild game and grass fed, free-range meat as part of a balanced diet.
Quoting chatterbears
I've already given you the exact circumstances under which we can judge that - surplus killing. It clearly was not necessary for their survival for the wolf pack to kill those 18 Elk, they just left them there. So let's stick to the philosophical issue. Would you incarcerate or kill those wolves (in the same way as we would incarcerate or kill a psychopath) in order to prevent them from killing more elk that were beyond their food requirements?
I'm not going to write it all out again, so please see my comment above. The use of wild or grass fed animals to supply protein kills just one animal, to grow the equivalent quantity of legumes requires the deaths of hundreds, not to mention the destruction of the habitat of thousands more. Farming anything causes more death and destruction than obtaining meat from the wild, or from landscapes which are ecologically grazed by herbivores.
This is incorrect. People can be contradictory within their own personal subjective beliefs. It has nothing to do with the collective. As stated before, a person could justify their action based on REASON A, but then reject an action done to them based on REASON A. This is an internally contradictory position within the person's own ethical framework. You cannot hold simultaneous beliefs that contradict each other.
And just to clarify, flourishing is a goal, not a justification. The thing that people use for eating meat is a justification. And that justification needs to be consistent, NOT contradictory. Goals can have exceptions, but justifications based on unnecessary harmful acts, cannot.
Quoting apokrisis
There is necessary harm and unnecessary harm. That's the key difference here. Necessary harm can be an exception to the goal of maximizing well-being, such as in self-defense. But again, this is reference to a GOAL, not how people use justifications to commit unnecessary harm.
When you are committing harm, you need to evaluate whether or not it is a necessary harm. After that, are there alternatives to this that cause less harm. Then, how easily is this alternative to achieve. I think most people agree that eating meat is an unnecessary harm, but still use a plethora of justifications to continue doing it. These justifications need to be consistent within their own subjective perspective. If they are not, then they are wrong on two fronts. Wrong for not recognizing it as an unnecessary harm. And wrong for not being internally consistent within their own justification being used to commit this unnecessary harm.
Remember, maximize well-being as much as possible. This isn't absolute in any way, because there can be many gray areas to this goal. Similar to health, the main goal is to maximize the body's condition. But there can be many gray areas to this, such as a person who needs to consume more sugar sometimes due to a low level of blood glucose. Generally, health professionals advise against a large sugar intake, but a person with diabetes may need to sometimes consume a large amount of sugar to raise their blood glucose level. This is a necessary 'harm' the body NEEDS in order to survive. Just as self-defense is a necessary harm the body NEEDS in order to survive.
But again, I am never referring to absolutes in any sense, when regarding the goal. The only absolute, if you even want to call it that, would be have internal consistency within your justifications of moral actions that cause harm. So just like I would accept 'self-defense' as a valid justification for causing harm, I would also accept someone else using the same justification against me if I were to attack them. But this is never the case with meat eaters. As their justifications seem to be completely random and sometimes silly, such as "I eat meat because I like the taste". Ok, would you let someone eat you because they like the taste of human flesh? No. There's your inconsistency. And again, diet is something that is easily changeable. Other things are much harder, such as buying eco friendly transportation or growing crops yourself.
only quoting half my statement on the subject seems disingenious. I don't like being misrepresented. My statement was:
"I don't really see an ethical difference between killing plants for food and killing animals for food, other than that for some/most animals, humans are able to increase their suffering by doing so."
I don't really see why me doing research on the harm caused from factory farming is of any importance for the topic. The question wasn't wether animals are suffering from factory farming, the question was wether it was ethical to grow them for consumption without excluding the possiblity that this can be done without causing any (additional) suffering to the animal.
In my first post I stated:
"Seems to me that the question wether it is ethical to farm animals for consumption gets conflated with the question wich animals are ethical to farm for consumption and the question wether our treatment of the animals we currently farm for consumption is ethical."
Seeing your question about factory farming (adressing the 3th question) as a response to half a statement I made (adressing the 1th question) , I conclude this conflation still applies. Please start treating the different questions seperately.
My objection was to the practicality, I didn't claim there weren't 100% vegan alternatives, I claimed that (for most I've seen) it was inpractical to obtain them. Perhaps they are easier to aquire where you live.
Did you consider people living in countries that banned GMO? Are you aware that some supplements sold as vegan still contain substances of animal origin without this being mentioned on the product?
Pain and death go hand in hand, as they are both causing harm. Environmental impact is also in reference to harm. They are all regarding harm, so I am not sure why you are saying I am not sticking to one issue. The issue I care about is NOT causing more harm than we need to. If you want to put it on a scale, let's just say it this way, for the sake of argument.
Meat farming: Causes a 9 out of 10
Vegetable farming: Causes a 5 out of 10
Even though both cause harm, there is a significant difference between the two. And if possible, we should get rid of the one causing the most harm, and then work on making the second one better. Vegetable farming is a perfect utopia that is free from causing any harm. But it is better than what we are currently doing in factory farms. That's just an objective scientific fact.
Quoting Pseudonym
You may be, but other people haven't stated they care at all to improve factory farming. But again, why improve it when it is not necessary to begin with? It's like saying 200 years ago, "Hey we should improve our slavery techniques and practices. It's a bit cruel, so let's be a bit nicer. We can still own humans and property and sell them like furniture, but let's just improve the business a bit." - How about no? Something that is unnecessary (which causes harm) needs to be removed, not "improved".
Quoting Pseudonym
I agree with you. But to feed 7.6 Billion people, almost a billion of which don't even have the proper food to live a healthy life, we need to create food on a mass scale. This is why we breed and kill 50+ Billion farm animals every year, to feed as many people as we can. If it were possible for all 7.6 Billion of us to kill one deer and live off the protein for months, it would be much better than both vegetable farming and meat farming. But since that is not possible, vegetable farming is the lesser of the two harmful industries. And again, I am not asking for some utopia. I am asking for better than the current. And I am asking for consistency in any justifications that would be used to cause unnecessary harm.
But as a side question, let me ask you this. Would it be possible for you to grow some of your vegetables, grains, nuts, etc...? And whatever you cannot get, buy at a local store?
Quoting Pseudonym
As I have stated before multiple times in this thread, animals cannot analyze moral actions in a complex way like we can. But even so, we do not know the exactly reason for surplus killing. Researchers say that animals surplus kill whenever they can, in order to procure food for offspring and others, to gain valuable killing experience, and to create the opportunity to eat the carcass later when they are hungry again.
As stated before, animals tend to do things based on survival instincts. Yes, sometimes they can commit unnecessary harm, but they do not have the intellectual capacity to deeply analyze their actions on a level that we can. We, as humans, have a higher intellectual capacity. And with that higher capacity comes a higher obligation to living beings around us. Since we can conceptualize the harm and effect that we have on the environment and everything around us, we should be more conscious of our decisions and if they can be improved. So in the same way I wouldn't expect a 3 year old to understand a deep level of right and wrong, I wouldn't expect it from a wolf either.
To answer your question, no I wouldn't incarcerate the wolves because of everything I said in the previous paragraph. We incarcerate humans because they have a higher ability in thought, and can understand a deeper level of right and wrong. We cannot ask the wolves what their reasoning was for killing so many elk. But we can ask a psychopath his reasoning for why he killed so many people. And we would incarcerate that person to prevent him from causing more harm to other people. Wolves, and most animals, based their decisions on survival. Humans do not. And grow adult humans have a higher understanding of morality, and therefore are held to a higher accountability.
And as a last thought, I wouldn't see a problem with protecting your farm animals from the harm of other predators. And by farm animals, I don't mean the ones you would raise just to kill for bacon. I am referring to people who own farm animals and allow them to live without harm or death. These people usually see their animals as part of their family. And if their family is being harmed, it would be a form of self-defense. Similar to a person defending his daughter from being attacked by a wolf. Self defense is different than infringing on two animals in nature. Otherwise you'd have the problem of trying to decipher whether or not wolves are killing for survival, or are committing a surplus killing. Initially, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, until the damage has already been done.
Is it impractical to obtain plant-based products where you live? Because as i have stated before, every single person I have talked to, owns a computer. They also live near a grocery store, which sells fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and grains. It is as simple as going down a different isle, nothing more. And yes, I acknowledge that some places have it harder to achieve a plant-based diet, but everyone I have talked to does not. So to refer to other places is a deflection, as I want to know why YOU have not changed your diet.
The main vitamin that Vegans need to worry about is B12. Which can be found in fortified foods, or supplementation. And yes, I am aware that we cannot know 100% of where our food/vitamins are coming from or how they are being created. But the point is, do the best that you can with as much research as you can, and make an informed decision. If you find out later than the supplement you have been taking for B12 was actually created from substances of animal origin, look for another supplement.
We can't even get past the idea that eating meat is immoral and worse for the environment, let alone which supplements are better than others. And as far as practicality, is the vegetable isle too far from the bacon? Practicality isn't a valid justification for people who live near a grocery store. Which i can reasonably assume, all of us in this thread do live near a grocery store.
Ah now I see where your confusion comes from:
I'm sorry to be the one bringing you the bad news, but even those animals suffer, eventually they all die. Allowing animals to live without harm or death is not within the capabilities of humans. All humans can do is reduce the suffering. They can't prevent all suffering, nor death.
Preventing suffering is one thing. Causing suffering is another. Eating meat CAUSES suffering. Not sure how you don't see the difference here? I am not suggesting we prevent all suffering from every animal in existence. I am suggesting that we prevent any suffering that we are causing them directly, if reasonably possible.
And to say that even the farm animal suffers because they eventually die, is like saying us humans suffer, because we eventually all die. That's not even remotely comparable to what factory farms are doing, which is direct harm, torture and abrupt death caused by humans.
So you are not actually interested in the philosopical ethical discussion as much as you are interested in my personal choises in the matter. Well sorry to dissappoint you, but I'm not gonna let you know. Especially not since you make unwarrented assumptions about me clearly demonstrated by your statement " I want to know why YOU have not changed your diet."
How do you know I didn't change my diet?, and why is it even relevant to the philosophical discussion about the ethics of eating animals?
Wether I choose to do the ethical thing or not is totally irrelevant to the discussion about what is ethical.
I'm here for the discussion about what is ethical, not for polarizing the community in this forum by pointing out the ones behaving according to my (possibly flawed) ethics and the ones who don't.
The discussion wasn't about eating meat, the discussion was about the ethics of growing animals for food. Single celled sessile animals can be eaten, but are not meat, since meat is the muscle part of an animal, not all animals have specialized muscle cells. You only find those in multicelled animals. you keep conflating the three questions. So I will sum them up again and accompany them with my answers to them:
1 Is it ethical to farm animals for consumption?
Obviously yes, since it's possible to do so without causing any additional suffering, especially in the case of farming animals without a nervous system.
2 Wich animals can ethically be farmed for consumption?
All animals as long as it is done without causing additional suffering to the animal.
3 Is the treatment of animals we currently farm for consumption ethical?
Commercially no, we still have much to improve before all commercially farmed animals no longer endure additional suffering that could have been prevented.
Yes in some cases where people have their own farm and treat their animals well as a part of the family untill they start suffering too much from old age.
No, they don't. For many people living in pain is worse than death, a short but happy life may be considered by many to be preferable to a long but miserable one. Pain and death are most certainly not sufficiently similar that an argument about one can be substituted for an argument about the other. It is perfectly legitimate, for example, to argue that the shorter but comfortable life of an humanely farmed cow is preferable to the perhaps longer but less comfortable (diseases, fear of predators, variable food supply) life of that same animal in the wild. I personally would not agree with that argument because I value autonomy and the freedom to express our natures and so I extend that value to sentient animals, but it's certainly not as cut and dried as you're making out. If your argument is to minimise net harm you could easily argue that that could be satisfied by taking an animal from the wild and rearing it for meat, giving it a shorter but much happier life. That is why, philosophically it so important to get at the distinction between death and suffering.
Quoting chatterbears
The Forestry commission in Scotland alone kill 30,000 wild red deer every year and that is still not quite enough to keep their population stable (numbers are still increasing and they're also spreading geographically). One deer produces about 9kg of meat, enough to meet a persons protein requirements (by RDA) for half the year, so Scotland's forestry estate alone could feed 1% of its population. Since the forest Estate occupies less than 1% of Scotland, a move to greater consumption of wild meat would be far from insignificant, yet your advocacy of vegan ism would have us ignore such a valuable contribution.
If you add to this the amount of grass-fed and scrap-fed animals in farming (almost the entire world's lamb production, for example, is grass-fed), you can see why people are accusing you of fundamentalism. You've taken a very sound argument against mass production of corn-fed beef, caged chickens and factory pork, and concluded that it's therefore immoral to eat all meat. The way meat is grown seriously needs reforming. The way vegetables are grown seriously needs reforming (see the impact of pesticides on the world's bee population, for example), and all of this can be affected by our consumer choices, but none of it requires that we give up eating meat.
Of course it would, I'm pretty much self-sufficient in leaf and pod vegetables, but to grow enough legumes to meet my protein requirements would require the clearance of another few hectares of land. Plus all deer, rabbits, pigeons, and squirrels threatening the crop are shot and eaten, moles, mice and voles are controlled by lethal trapping if required (I don't eat them, but perhaps I should?). All this death would have to be expanded to expand my vegetable growing. Any food I buy at the store simply entails someone else doing all that killing for me, except I expect most of their meat just goes to waste.
Nonsense, in case of scavenging I can eat meat without causing any additional suffering, the animal is dead already.
Quoting chatterbears
Then the discussion should focus on what one considers to be reasonable possible instead. Again my position is that as long as humans can do it in a way it causes equal or less amount of suffering to the animal than it would suffer otherwise in nature without being farmed, it's ethical enough.
Quoting chatterbears
Life is suffering, ethics are about what people do in order to increase or decrease suffering. I made it clear already that I consider the abusive treatment disproportionally increasing the amount of suffering to the animals in said factories for monetairy gain to be unethical.
We eat animals because they have a lower ability in thought, and cannot understand a deeper level of right and wrong.
I don't think there is such a thing as a mechanism which justifies action as morally right or wrong. Differentiating between right and wrong takes judgment, choice, and a willingness to look at the effects of your actions. The various calculi proposed can help in thinking through any choice, but they are just tools for reflection.
There is only judgment, action, and living with the choices you make.
Quoting chatterbears
I don't think this is the case at all. If you are human then you are a moral agent, and deserve the respect that this entails. There are circumstances of character or environment which mitigate responsibility, but that does not then mean that the person is not a moral agent.
Consider, for instance, how strange it would be to hold your dog as morally responsible for digging through the trash. That's just silly.
I wanted to make some general comments to chatterbears. As I said before, I'm also a dedicated vegan, so on a practical level we are on the same wavelength. Watching this debate unfold, I've noticed you have provided different kinds of justifications for veganism. You started out with a valiant Kantian attempt, a kind of categorical imperative that should be universally applied. You then shifted to some utilitarian reasons in the later stages of the debate. I think it's this bouncing around between deontological and utilitarian reasoning that has a lot of people confused, and rejecting some of your arguments. For me, it's much easier to defend veganism on utilitarian grounds: it's good for our health, it's good for the ecological basis of civilization, and it simply makes you feel good (whenever I think about meat, I remember how hard I wanted to punch myself 10 minutes after finishing at McDonald's). There are lots of great, positive, and utilitarian arguments in favor of veganism. I explained some of them in my first post in this thread. There may be some kind of categorical imperative for it too, but I think it's going to be extremely difficult to find a consistent moral standard for why you shouldn't eat meat. This thread has already gone down the toilet, so maybe you can consider this advice going forward, when you debate other people on the merits of veganism.
Having said all that, I can empathize with the routine nonsense you have encountered here, because obviously I've encountered it too in my life (Don't vegans need animal supplements? How can you eat plants, which are also living things?). The first time anyone finds out I'm a vegan, that person immediately becomes an expert nutrionist, economist, scientist, philosopher, and every other academic professional you can imagine. In reality, these people are just projecting the fears of the capitalist system, which needs people to eat and consume garbage so the profits can keep flowing to the meat and dairy industry. As I emphasized in my original post, this debate is no longer about normative ideals, but about the hard descriptive reality that people have power over animals and can treat those animals as waste and fodder for profit.
Anyway, I appreciate the valiant effort you have shown here in defending veganism.
In this thread, as well as other people I’ve talked to in person, they have rejected the health evidence. They think it is just as healthy to include meat into your diet. They reject the environmental evidence, and state that farming vegetables causes as much harm as farming animals. They also say the opposite in regards to what feels good. They have actually used it as a justification for continuing to eat meat, which is “eating meat gives me pleasure.”
I switch to different arguments depending on how much science and fact they are willing to reject. As you said, people suddenly turn into health and environmental experts when the topic of Veganism is brought up, while rejecting the actual scientific evidence.
I find it most effective to argue from a consistency standpoint. And this can be done through universal rights or even an empathy/compassion perspective. Or you don’t have to bring any of that up and just simply ask “why are you ok killing one living being but not another?” - From there you push for consistency within their own subjective views. This leaves no room to talk about what science they want to reject for health or environmental factors.
Arguing with meat eaters is like playing whac-a-mole. Once you get rid of one justification, another one pops up.
I've literally just given you the scientific evidence. The UK forestry experts agree that deer need to be culled in order to allow natural regeneration of woodland. Killing a wild deer causes one death, farming the equivalent protein quantity of legumes requires the deaths of tens, if not hundreds of potential pests (deer, moles, voles, rabbits etc). Not to mention the fertilisers, eutrophication, pesticides, herbicides, habitat loss, soil degradation, etc. Wild or grass-reared meat is better for the environment because it's the best way to manage open space, it causes least deaths overall, and it provides healthy meat. So please don't accuse me of ignoring the scientific evidence. I have a degree in ecology and a masters in countryside management I know how ecosystems respond to grazing and I know how they respond to intensive arable treatments.
:D
Vegan apologetics spoken like a true believer. It reminds me of missionary work -- if the person you wish to convert believes this, then respond with that, if something else then this argument works better.
You may have missed the fact that a substantial fraction of all agricultural land globally is devoted for grains to feed and fatten livestock, 60 billion of which are slaughtered every year. Ending factory farming would free up much of that land for human food production. 'Grass-reared' animals is a very funny joke, kind of like 'cage free' chickens. Factory animals are kept in confined spaces and fed whatever is necessary to put meat on those bones. Do you honestly think this capitalist system cares about providing them healthy or nutritious food?
What a terrible waste of pomposity.
There's sooo many fallacies this whole "you're just a missionary" statement could fall under... suffice to say that it would be pure stubbornness on your part to look at this entire discussion and claim that the entire vegan position (even if you don't agree with it) lacks any merit whatsoever and that anyone trying to defend it is just being a missionary.
That goes against a core principle of philosophy--the principle of charity.
I don't believe that's actually true. Let's do the math:
There's about 100lbs of meat on the average deer. And about 715 calories per lb. That's 71,500 calories per deer.
Soy yields on average 6 million calories per acre. There are 2.47 acres to a hectare. That's 14,820,000 calories per hectare.
They estimate that about 15 animals are killed per hectare of crops. 14,820,000 divided by 15 is: 988,000 calories per dead animal. 988,000 divided by 71,500 is 13.8.
Almost 14 times more animals are killed on a calorie for calorie basis when hunting deer than harvesting soy--which is not even one of the most calorie-dense crops.
:cool:
I don't think that the entire vegan position boils down to missionary work. I don't think missionary work is even a bad thing -- especially in light of a good cause. I have soap box issues myself that are near and dear to me.
But discussing what to say to what sounds an awful lot like apologetics to me. I mostly try to avoid my soap box issues here anymore, though I'll mention what I believe, because soapboxing isn't philosophy. If you have that kind of conviction the issue stops looking like something that's really worth debating. You're persuaded. And persuasion seems to be the goal at that point.
Does that count as philosophy, anymore? Maybe so. But it's a philosophy which is concerned with the beliefs of the listener -- a kind of medical philosophy where the practitioner is attempting to move someone from one belief to another for their betterment, be it moral or otherwise.
This is why I cautioned chatterbears about coming up with a universal imperative on why people shouldn't eat meat. All this aside, I think every rational person would agree that we're all better off if people on average ate less meat, even if they don't go fully vegan.
I don't see any difference here than people insisting on being right in other threads here. Unless you'd claim that all threads here eventually devolve into mere persuasion? But then again, the art of rhetoric is the art of persuasion, so perhaps that's a big part of what all discussions are about?
For what it's worth, I have not for a moment thought that anyone would change their minds due to this thread. I've mainly seen it as a useful vehicle for helping me better clarify and articulate my own position.
You're missing the point.
1. The Forestry commission already kill the 30,000 deer for the good of the forest, so my comparison is not with an already established crop, but the cost of destroying the natural landscape currently occupied by large herbivores to make way for lentils, which I can guarantee wiil cause more than your 15/hectare deaths.
2. Much more importantly (for a philosophy forum) we're already trading disputed figures and methods for measuring the net harm. Do you trust the Forestry commission's opinion on whether the deer need to be culled (you've already indicated you don't)? Do I trust your 'they' who've apparently measured all deaths from arable farming and come to a figure of 15/ha? No, not on face value I don't. So far from being this cut and dried ethical issue it has been painted as, it turns out its an extremely complex ecological issue with varied harm calculations depending on which metrics you use and which experts you trust.
This is the point of avoiding making every decision on the basis of strict consequentialist ethics. Our knowledge of the consequences of our actions is always limited and open to alternative views.
I take a default position. Do not interfere unless you have to. Carnivores eating herbivores is a natural process, I'm not about to advise playing God and re-arranging the ecosystems of the world on the reckoning of a few scientists who've done a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the total number of animals killed in either scenario. You don't take a 3.5 billion year old system and suggest we could do better after five minutes of looking at it.
By the way we are already rearranging global ecosystems. That's capitalism for you: consuming natural resources at will for financial profit. The major reason why an extreme position like veganism is called for is precisely because the extremes of global capitalism have brought us here, with human civilization risking collapse in this millennium.
I don't wish to say that everything devolves into persuasion. I don't even wish to say this thread devolved, even. At most I was giving @chatterbears a light ribbing for simultaneously claiming reason and science while obviously being motivated by a deep passion, and being unable to admit to that. It's the sort of thing that you see Sam Harris do too -- thinking that there really could only be one position that anyone could reasonably hold.
It's not just the act of persuasion. I mean, sure, we frame our arguments in that way. But at the point of discussing rhetorical tactics to persuade? That's what really set my mind off with respect to missionary work, because those sorts of apologetics are exactly the kind of thing discussed in groups dedicated to persuading others. The same happens in politics too, for what it's worth. "if they believe X, then respond Y" There's a kind of lack of ability to listen to others that comes with that level of planning out your conversation.
Sure, I feel the same there.
I think veganism can be defended, it's mostly the manner in which chatterbears did it that I was responding to. I wouldn't even mind if vegans won their political goals. There would be some good from it.
This is what I was responding to:
Quoting Pseudonym
I very directly addressed and refuted your point. Sorry, not sorry :kiss:
Quoting Pseudonym
The fields already exist because we use 70% of crops to feed our livestock. No need to make more, and actually we can reforest a huge percentage thereof, since not as many acres are needed to directly feed humans than are needed to feed the animals we then eat.
Quoting Pseudonym
If you wanted a source, you could have just asked nicely: http://www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc/
Quoting Pseudonym
The idea that what humans do is any longer a natural and integral part of the ecosystem is just laughable. That boat sailed when we invented agriculture and it entered a whole new universe when we entered the industrial period.
Okay. I misinterpreted you then :sweat:
Quoting Moliere
:smile:
Yes, and I explained that the point is that far from being a cut and dried ethical issue, it is a complex issue requiring agreement on many technical points;
1. How do we count an animal that was 'killed' because of growing vegetable protein? Just the ones the farmer actually kills? The ones who die of starvation and disease due to direct habitat loss? The ones who die from starvation and disease due to indirect habitat loss (such as eutrophication)? The ones who die as a result of prey species loss from pesticides and pest control? The ones who die as a result of the actual production of the mechanised and chemical means of modern arable farming?
The source you give is clearly a biased, single, source. anyone with even a modicum of understanding about how to assess evidence would know that you do not reach unequivocal conclusions based on a single biased source. The article isn't even a piece of original research, it's a critique of another scientist's original research which he claims (and still claims) proves the exact opposite. As I said in my previous post, the point is not to argue that I'm right (or that Davis is right) it's to point out that it's obviously complicated.
Can you not conceive of the idea that in a few month's time an article might be published showing how Middleton has actually made an error in his calculations and in fact the total number of deaths turns out to be higher in arable afterall? Then another article showing how that critique missed a key point and Middleton was right afterall, and so on ...
Articles are not regularly produced showing how gravity actually doesn't exist afterall, or how electricity is actually magic like we first thought. Some things are so widely agreed upon as to be reasonably taken as absolute fact, other things are contested and we have to accept it is reasonable for rational people to base their ethical behaviour on any of the currently supported conclusions.
Notwithstanding the complications in how to count animal deaths, there are other ethical issues the simple death count does not address ...
2. What value (in terms of harm) do we give to habitat loss compared to actual deaths, are we to ignore completely the loss of biodiversity simply because those animals never lived rather than were actually killed?
3. Are we to give any value at all to the 'naturalness' of a landscape as an intrinsic value of it's own?
4. Are we to give any value at all to the 'naturalness' of human interaction with that landscape - Hunting/gathering vs. mechanised farming?
I'm not arguing against Veganism, I think it's a perfectly reasonable response to the situation we find ourselves in and a perfectly ethical position. What I'm arguing against (and I think I can say this for everyone who's contributed to this thread) is this overly simplistic notion that it is the only ethical position.
Don't we feel for those who are intellectually challenged. We don't go around mistreating people with disabilities do we? We do call severely brain damaged people ''vegetables'', right? Yet we extend our compassion to them. So, how far are ''vegetable'' humans from actual vegetables?
I used Davis' study because it is the one which counts animal deaths the highest and which is most often cited by pro-meat eaters. All other studies I have come across say he highly overestimated the numbers.... So I was actually just being conservative in your favor.
But since you're the one who falsely claimed both that you would need whole hectares of food to equal one deer, and that there are hundreds of deaths per hectare.... Do you have any research to back it up that you can show us here? Or is ot just wishful thinking on your part?
Based on the sum of research, we not only have fewer deaths total with veganism, but those deaths also are unintentional. Both aspects speak in favor of veganism. I should think it goes without saying that it's more wrong to intentionally kill someone.
Re:2-4, as previously stated, veganism requires less land to be used for agriculture; we already have permanently changed the landscape so the best we can do is reforest a few areas; it is not possible to feed the entire human population based on some hunter-gatherer ideal anymore.
Sure. It's possible anything we think we know is false. It's also possible that we will someday find out smoking actually cures cancer. But I'm going to base my actions on our best current knowledge and not what could possibly some day maybe be shown to be the case.
1) Lucas Reijnders and Sam Soret (2003). "Quantification of the environmental impact of different dietary protein choices" in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Note: this paper became one of the classic studies on the subject and has been cited hundreds of times in the literature)
Their major conclusion:
2) Baroni et al. (2006). "Evaluating the environmental impact of various dietary patterns combined with different food production systems" in European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Note: this is also a landmark paper in the literature)
Their major conclusion:
3) Rosi et al. (2017). "Environmental impact of omnivorous, ovo-lacto-vegetarian, and vegan diet" in Nature (Note: I personally think this is the most important study here for the simple reason that it actually uses the individual diets of real people in Italy, instead of fancy mathematical assumptions about what different diets should look like)
Their major conclusion:
4) Robin White and Mary Hall (2017). "Nutritional and greenhouse gas impacts of removing animals from US agriculture" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Note: this paper was one of the more critical ones to look at a mass transition to veganism, but still found reductions in emissions)
Their major conclusion:
Obviously not all ethical and scientific conclusions are perfectly "cut and dried," as Pseudonym puts it. But at this point it's full-on pseudoscience to suggest that veganism is not a better choice for the environment than other diets. It may have some drawbacks in certain contexts, which I have detailed in this thread and which some of the papers above also mention, but on the whole it's the far superior dietary choice, if you care about the long-term viability of global civilization and if you can manage to make the transition (also if you care about improving, you know, this thing called your health).
I do, however, applaud Pseudonym for stating the following:
This is very much a sensible position, hardly much different than the one I hold as a vegan myself.
No, because you are a vegan. The "all other studies" are going to be studies trying to prove veganism, just like Davis's was trying to prove meat eating. Its confirmation bias, we all have it. All we can say without bias is that there are arguments for either case presented by intelligent, well-informed experts. Therefore, no case is unequivocally correct from an ethical pont of view.
Quoting NKBJ
Yes, Davis's study. The mere existence of counter arguments does not render a study no longer evidence. As I've said dozens of times already, it depends how you measure harm and what harms you're prepared to accept as consequenses of a particular land use. If you can find me the article in which Davis and other ecologists making the same argument (like Farleigh), all put their hands up and say "fair cop, we were wrong" then I maintain that there exist a range of arguments in this matter.
Quoting NKBJ
Again, we can't "reforest a few areas" unless we manage deer numbers, and I'm not, nor ever have been, talking about land that could be used for arable. I think the use of good arable land to grow corn to feed cows is both deplorable and stupid. I'm talking about meat from Woodlands (both natural and timber-growing) and uplands (all lamb production in England, for example), animals which undergraze (chickens and cattle in agroforestry systems), and animals which are scrap-fed (our pigs). None of these systems use land which could be used for growing arable crops, so if you don't eat these forms of meat you are directly requiring a greater quantity of land to be taken up with agriculture.
Really? Which one of them compares a chemical assisted vegan diet to a fully organic omnivorous diet which includes only wild, agroforesty, upland, or scrap-fed meat?
The comical nature of this thread never fails to impress.
So none of them then.
Its not "some random standard I decided to come up with" it's how I actually live my life so I get pretty offended if someone starts up a thread telling me it is categorically unethical.
The thread has been a consistent mush of arguing that all meat eating is immoral by comparing the worst form of meat farming to the best form of vegetable growing.
If you're convinced that even the best forms of meat farming as I've outlined still cause more harm than vegetable farming, then make that argument. If all you want to do is shut down the discussion with derisive remarks when it gets difficult for you then you've done a fine job.
When faced with this kind of a scenario, the next best thing we can do is look at the existing scientific literature. And that's what I've done, from the very first post. That scientific literature largely supports the position that a vegan diet is the superior choice if we wish to limit harmful environmental impacts.
Just to be sure, because you don't seem to be getting this, I will always trust that scientific consensus above the opinions of someone on a forum.
Then I suggest you start another thread and stop confusing this one. This thread is entitled "Animal ethics - is it wrong to eat animals?", not "Global environmental concerns - which diet overall produces least environmental impacts for average people?". It's pretty easy to win an argument if the one you're having isn't even the same one your opponent is.
I have never, in any of my posts suggested that veganism is a bad idea (quite literally the opposite in fact), I've specifically stated that growing meat using land that could be used for arable crops is stupid, and eating such meat is unethical on the grounds of the harm it is proven to cause (proven in the sense that no well-informed expert disagrees).
All I have argued is that there is a way to include meat in a diet which cause as little (or less) harm as the equivalent vegetables and therefore eating meat is not 'wrong' as the OP suggests.
And this:
In fact in my very first post I wrote:
Again, another deflection. You pointed to other places in the world that do not have access to a plant-based diet. I then responded and stated 'I want to know why you have not changed your diet', because I can reasonably assume you have a grocery store near you. And whatever your reasoning is, it can lead to a philosophical discussion. Such as, "I think animals have a lower level of consciousness." - We can then get into why that is or isn't a valid justification to kill something for food.
Both actions need to be properly justified. Yes, a world with a perfectly raised animal that experienced no torture and pain, up until a painless (one shot in the head) death, would be better than what we are doing right now. But that 'death' is still being caused by us, and that is the whole point. I want a world where HUMANS can minimize net harm that THEY cause. If animals lived in the wild, diseases and predators are not harm that is caused by us. I am specifically referring to harm that is cause by us, and how we justify it. If you wouldn't justify raising a human needless for food, why would you justify it for an animal? And so far, the only thing I have heard is things like, "Because it tastes good." or "Because it makes me happy." or "Because God allowed us to have dominion over animals." - All these reasons would be rejected in any other context, and therefore are not valid or consistent reasons to use to justify an action.
Nice strawman there. You already know I am not referring to animals that we find dead. I am referring to animals that we kill, such as in factory farms.
Quoting Tomseltje
And for your position to be consistent, would you allow the same to be true for humans? Because a human probably wouldn't last that long by themselves in the Amazon forest or on the plains of Africa. So for you to have a consistent position, swap the cow with a human, and it would be OK to do the same to them?
And to be consistent, should it follow that we can eat humans that contain a lower ability in thought, such as a mentally disabled person?
We extend compassion for them because of the harm it would cause to those who love them. It has nothing to do with causing harm to the brain damaged person himself, but more about causing harm (mental distress) to the people who love that brain damaged person. If a person had no family or ties to anyone, and could not recover from this brain dead (vegetable) state, I don't' see a problem killing him/her. But to compare that to plants, is a bit silly and slightly absurd.
You insisted on the numbers when you assumed they worked in your favor. Now I've shown how they don't and you're calling me biased.... Oh the irony!
Quoting Pseudonym
I didn't argue against Davis' study. I used it to prove you wrong.
And also, you were JUST arguing that you disagree with his study.... Make up your mind.
Quoting Pseudonym
That model is not sustainable for feeding the entire world's population.
But I did look up sheep farming in the UK:
https://www.nationalsheep.org.uk/know-your-sheep/year-on-a-sheep-farm/
And while it does seem much nicer than the usual factory farming, it does still require fields to grow plant food on with which to feed the sheep. The farmers supplement the sheeps diet with hay and pellets. Not sure how much it is, but it doesn't come out to zero acres of farmable land used.
I'll think upon the action at hand. I'll apply this or that moral calculus as an exercise. Then I'll make a decision based upon what seems best, relative to the things that are important to me. I'll reflect upon what I've done in the past, and make adjustments based upon said reflections.
I don't think this is unique to me. But it's a fair description of how I decide things.
For literally the last time I am not claiming any figures work in anyone's favour, I am claiming that there exists a sufficient diversity of figures that the issue is not settled. all that it required for me to make this claim is the existence of a single well-informed intelligent scientist with expertise in the field who has concluded that eating meat (under certain circumstances) causes less harm than the equivalent quantity of vegetables (under certain circumstances). Such a study obviously exists, the "2003 article in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Steven Davis advanced the argument that fewer animals would be harmed if we consumed a diet containing large herbivores (namely cattle) fed on pasture than if we consumed a vegan diet". You may well disagree with his conclusions, other scientists may well disagree with his conclusions, but unless he disagrees with his own conclusions then there remains one intelligent, well-informed expert who has concluded that meat eating (in certain circumstances) does not cause more harm than vegetable eating.
even within our own calculations. I have calculated them to be roughly equivalent (less harmful for wild meat), You calculated it to 15 times more harmful. @Uber, kindly linked to a large number of studies, the first one of which calculates it to be only 1.5-2 times more harmful (for average diets, and agrees that "exceptions may occur"). The matter is very clearly not settled. It is therefore entirely reasonable to take one of the currently held conclusions and use it to support one's ethical choices.
Quoting NKBJ
How exactly? the Davis study concludes -
How does that prove me wrong when all I'm arguing is that there exists a well-informed expert study which concludes that meat eating causes less harm than vegetable protein?
Quoting NKBJ
Who said anything about sustainable for the worlds population. The title of this thread is "Animal Ethics - Is it wrong to eat animals?" The OP asks clearly "Does anyone here eat animals, while also adhering to the moral trifecta (Empathy, compassion and ethical consistency)? If so, I'd like to know how?. No one mentioned anything about the diet that would be best for the average urban dwelling occupant of westernised industrial countries to adopt in order to cause least environmental damage overall. If you want to have that debate then open your own thread on that topic, I will most likely argue entirely in agreement that veganism is a large part of the solution to that problem, but that's not what this thread is about.
Quoting NKBJ
Well you obviously didn't look very hard (confirmation bias, as I mentioned before - we all have it), since on the very second paragraph it states clearly that "Every farm is different, and there are a huge variety of systems and schedules in use across the UK. For this example, we will look at a traditional lowland farm producing lambs to put delicious meat on the table", and later "often feeding more nuts or pellets (a concentrated high-nutrient feed) and less forage (hay and straw)...If there is not enough grass, supplement feeding will be offered to ensure the ewes keep supplying enough milk.... Some farmers also offer extra feed to the lambs so, when they stop feeding on only milk from their mum (at about six weeks of age), they will grow fast on feed and grass."[my highlights]. I'd be hard pushed to find a more classic example of confirmation bias. You've read an article wanting to find that sheep farming using supplemental feeding, so your brain has missed out all the 'if's, 'some's and 'often's and just left you with an unequivocal conclusion that all sheep farming using supplemental feeding. You haven't even felt the need to find out how much before coming back to me no less vitriolic than you were before, nor apparently looked into the fact that the hay meadows which provide the supplementary feed are so valuable to wildlife that they are an internationally protected habitat.
I will summarise my position again so that we can avoid wasting further time.
The OP states that eating animals is unethical because of the unnecessary harm it causes animals. This is incorrect because there exist several scenarios under which eating meat causes less harm than growing the equivalent quantity of vegetables. Those scenarios are not available to some sections of the population, and so for the those people, vegan diets might be the least harmful, for others fully carnivorous diets might be the least harmful. It depends of the ecosystem one is part of.
That's fine, but it's a long way from your original claim which was that no-one could eat meat and remain ethically consistent. Now we're talking just about what you want, your personal entirely subjective desire. That's not what I want. I want a world where creatures are allowed to express their natural desires to the maximum extent. Harm and the causing of harm are only issues for me insofar as the avoidance of such constitutes a natural desire. I have very little interest in who caused the harm. You and I have different ethical frameworks.
Quoting chatterbears
As I've said now dozens of times, I would justify it on the principle of least harm. If that animal were raised on kitchen scraps (as our pigs are), or raised on upland pastures unsuitable for arable (such as the lamb I buy), or raised in woodland already being used to grow local timber (such as the deer I shoot), or are raised within arable crops and are actually causing a reduction in crop density and so forcing farmers to use more land (such as the rabbit I shoot) - then raising and killing that animal for food causes less harm than farming the equivalent quantity of protein in vegetables.
Quoting chatterbears
No, that's the point. You are being inconsistent by saying that you would not incarcerate the wolves for killing unnecessarily, but you would incarcerate a human even though that human might well have the intellectual capacity of a wolf. You claimed that you would have this difference in position because Humans "have a higher ability in thought, and can understand a deeper level of right and wrong." If that difference can be used to justify taking the freedom from an intellectually disabled human, then why can it not be used to justify taking the freedom from an intellectually capable (and therefore equally intelligent) wolf? You are being inconsistent. You have argued that there exists no trait which justifies the different treatment of humans and other animals when it comes to suffering, and yet you are claiming that when it comes to incarceration for the crime of killing without obvious necessity (incarceration being undoubtedly harmful), you would treat the wolf differently to the intellectually disabled human. Why?
You're just floundering. I could counter your whole post point by point (yet again), but I'm sort of tired of doing that.
Suffice to say that everything you say is about as logical as taking my claim that hunting kills 14 times more animals than harvesting plants, and Uber's claim that animal agriculture is 1.5-2 times worse for the environment and somehow deriving from that the conclusion that we don't agree on the severity of harm caused by a meat versus plant-based diets or that our numbers don't match. Absolutely ridiculous. I'll spell it out in case you're still confused: Uber and I were talking about different things, and our numbers were representing different aspects of harm.
Since everything you say is as well-though through as the above, and no matter what I say you're going to apply the same illogic to "counter" my claims, engaging with you any further would just be a waste of my time and energy.
Brilliant, "I could counter all your claims but I'm not going to", we used to argue like that at school.
Show me where I claimed that you and Uber don't agree on the severity of harm. That whole section of my argument is based entirely on the fact that there are different ways of measuring harm. One of those ways works out at hunting being 15 times more harmful than arable, another works it out at only twice as harmful, a third (Davis's) works it out as being less harmful. I strongly suspect a forth (eliminating all factory farming and supplentary feeding) would work out even less harmful, but since no one's done the calculations that will have to remain speculation.
You argument seems unable to move on from "most ways of farming meat come out worse than farming vegetables according to most experts- therefore all ways of farming meat are worse than farming vegetables. I don't know if you have much experience with basic logic but the conclusion does not follow from the premise.
Okay:
Quoting Pseudonym
I mean... Are you TRYING to be a strawperson? :rofl:
That shows that your calculations and one of the many studies Uber quoted do not agree. It says nothing whatsoever about which of the many varied conclusions Uber agreed with (possibly all of them), so no, it's not a claim that you an Uber don't agree, it's a claim of exactly what I said it was - there are many studies which reach a variety of conclusions depending on the method.
You: uber and nkbj disagree.
Me: no, we don't. *shows evidence*
You: I didn't say you disagreed!
Me: yes, you did *shows evidence*
You: uber and nkbj disagree.
Like I said, not worth my time.
The justification as a whole needs to be good enough. You can criticise the justification as a whole. That in itself is not a problem. But taking parts in isolation, which were not intended to be taken in isolation, is where you've gone wrong. If your reasoning for rejecting the justification as a whole is that each part when taken in isolation is insufficient, then your reasoning is erroneous. You should accept that and move on, in my opinion. I didn't want to drag this out, but you've made that hard to avoid.
You've missed the point. What I said might be "completely false" if it contradicted what you say above about the ability of other animals to experience pain in a way which is to some degree similar to that ability of humans, but it [I]does not[/I]. What I said is that other animals can't understand or relate to life, liberty, personal security, freedom, slavery, torture, and degrading treatment, to the unique degree that we do, so it wouldn't make sense to treat them as if they did. The latter is what you should have addressed.
I'm also going to disregard your loaded question which assumes something of my position which isn't implied, and is of no relevance to it.
Quoting chatterbears
Assuming that's correct, we could just talk of nontypical cases instead. The point was that it matters what exactly you're calling slavery. And to keep things relevant, you ought to consider whether anyone here is actually arguing against you in relation to such conditions.
Quoting chatterbears
But the very point that we were debating was about the appropriateness of applying the right to life to other animals, such as chickens. Though at least that's keeping the topic relevant, unlike your mention of torture, which seems like more of an excuse to go off on a tangent.
That reaction is a symptom of viewing what I said through moral blinkers. What I said was that I can live with the death of plants and other animals for the sake of my personal gratification. That's a descriptive statement about what I can live with, irrespective of right and wrong, yet you call it a justification.
No, I'll quote you if I so desire. No one is forcing you to respond. You're free to reply or not reply as you see fit, as am I, and I'm going to exercise that freedom by refraining from dignifying the rest of your comment with a reply.
That's just laughable. You do realise that other people here can see what you're saying, right? No one has been appealing to God throughout the discussion. And my encounter with your second quote stems from a misrepresentation of something I said.
Well it appears to be very much 'worth your time' as you keep responding. It's almost as if this one tiny thread is the only point you feel you can win on. I find it odd that in a debate about the ethics of eating meat, I present an argument that under some circumstances, eating meat might cause less harm than the equivalent vegetables, you say that you could counter my position but that you're to tired, and then proceed to post twice more, not refuting any of the actual points of the argument, but trying to prove a completely unrelated issue about whether I said two people disagree or not.
As far as I'm concerned, I said that two people presented between them a range of evidence which reaches different conclusions based on how harm is measured, but let's end this pointless distraction. Maybe I missed something somewhere and I did indeed say that you and Uber disagreed, Let's say that somewhere buried in my posts is the sentence "NKBJ and Uber vehemently disagree on [whatever it is you're claiming I said]". Fine, I'm happy with that, I think you probably do disagree. So what relevance has that got to the argument I presented?
The studies I'm referring to are Davis's study, and the first study Uber quoted (both of which conclude that there exist some forms of meat-eating which cause less harm than the equivalent vegan diet).
This is a philosophy forum and we are discussing ethics. It is not an ecology forum for discussing agriculture. If you disagree with the two studies which concluded that some low-impact forms of meat eating are less harmful than veganism, that's fine, I'm sure you have very good reasons to disagree, as I've said a dozen times, the matter seems far from settled. But that has absolutely nothing to with the philosophical argument. The philosophical argument does not require a consensus on the amount of harm (that would be a scientific argument). The philosophical argument is about what it is ethical to do in the absence of such consensus.
If you're not actually interested in ethics, but rather concerned only to proselytize about your preferred interpretation of the evidence, then I suggest you stop posting in a philosophy forum, we have a rule here about proselytizing for a reason.
True.
I was just surfing the net and came across an interesting article on synthetic meat - first mentioned in a book ''Two Planets'' 1897.
What do you think?
I'll admit, your posts are like a trainwreck-it's hard to look away. :lol:
This thread has followed the regular pattern of a claim being made, and arguments for and against that claim being proposed, and in turn arguments for and against those arguments proposed. If that is your definition of proselytizing, then the whole forum is guilty of it.
But I think you're just annoyed that YOU can't win the argument, and are therefore accusing us of proselytizing... Again, very ironic.
Yet again, rather than addressing the actual philosophical proposition, you've focused on the one entirely unrelated part of my post you think you can score a point on. So we'll try the same tactic as before. My use of the term 'proselytising' was entirely rhetorical and if you're offended by its literal interpretation then I'm happy to retract it.
So now can you actually address the philosophical proposition, or do you want to pick me up on my grammar this time? Maybe I misused the word 'rhetorical'? Anything to avoid having to respond to the actual issue.
You: You're proselytizing!
Me: No, because x, y, z.
You: Just because I said you were proselytizing doesn't mean I said you were proselytizing.
:rofl:
I really don't know what to say, you seem very passionate about the subject but more interested in finding fault with completely unrelated aspects of my posts than you are in actually discussing the issue. Anytime you'd like to address the proposition I've raised I'd be happy to respond.
There seems to be a distinction to be made between 'more ethical than' and 'the most ethical'.
Vegans seek to achieve the most ethical consumption possible (based on their suppositions).
Others, and I include myself, are happy with consuming in a way that is more ethical than, say, factory-farming. The above example appears to fall into this category.
Both positions have ethical merit.
However, what bothers me about vegan 'superlativism' is its intolerance, as shown on this thread, for anyone who doesn't go to the same extremes. And 'extreme' is the correct term here. Indeed, someone from the vegan camp here made the claim that veganism is the logical terminus of ethical consumption, but it's not; you can always go to ever more extremes. Hence the logical terminus of ethical consumption as constructed by vegans is a reductio ad absurdum in which humans consume nothing for fear of acting unethically. This strongly suggests that whilst vegan practices themselves may not be wrong, the ethical reasoning behind them is massively flawed.
Adherents of the 'comparative' or moderate approach to ethical consumption tolerate veganism in a way not reciprocated by vegans. The moderate approach attacks the philosophical fundamentals of veganism whilst respecting vegans' choice to follow their diet of preference. On the other hand, vegans see their own position as the ne plus ultra on a cline of consumption and rip into everyone else with supercilious moral vigour not based on a firm philosophical footing. I mean, are fruitarians equally scornful of vegans? Are wild fruitarians scornful of fruitarians? Are autochthonous wild fruitarians scornful of wild fruitarians?...
Clearly, there is no cline of ethical consumption outside the vegan mind, and so the moderate approach is not a stop on the way to full-blown veganism as vegans here have claimed. Rather, it is a logical terminus in itself insofar as it is position of moderation that places an appropriate value on individual human interests and desires in addition to the interests of animals and the planet.
Could I do more? Yes, but at what point does it become life-denying self-sacrifice. I don't want to be an ascetic so, for me at least, it's pretty clear when to stop.
Were the people who supported the prohibition on slavery "extreme'? Would you have labeled them as 'intolerant' to anyone who still continued to own people as property?
Kill a dog? = Psychopath
Kill a pig? = Breakfast
Kill neither? = EXTREMIST !
Quoting Txastopher
Sorry that your indulgence gets in the way of being a compassionate human being. Not only is this an ignorant position, because it is clear that there are an endless amount of Vegan foods that you can also indulge in (French fries, pasta, etc). But it also shows your lack of empathy and consistency, that your 'taste pleasure' is more important than the lives you're willing to kill for it.
I don't have a problem with lab created meat. I'd probably even eat it :D
You just proved my point. You're saying that a person should not criticize each individual justification, and instead criticize all justifications as a whole. And explain to me how you would do this in these two scenarios:
"I believe women shouldn't have the right to vote because of these reasons: They aren't sufficiently man like, they have never been president, they are not physically strong like men."
"I believe eating animals is okay because of these reasons: They aren't sufficiently human like, they can't understand morality, they can't experience pain like we can."
I'd like you to criticize those two scenarios as a "whole", like you say you have to, and not criticize each reason itself [which apparently is erroneous].
What you're basically saying is, "Dont isolate parts of my argument, because then my whole argument will crumble" - Sorry. I'll try my best to not attack you with logic and proper reasoning :)
Where did this come from?
Quoting chatterbears
No. Kill neither? = Cool, but, Kill neither because you hold that the philosophical bases of veganism to be true? = logical EXTREMIST!
Out of curiosity, which came first in your case; not consuming animal products or being a vegan?
I literally said I wasn't intetested in discussing the issue with you anymore. But it's due to the fundamental illogic of your argumentation, which is anything but unrelated to the discussion.
This would depend on the strength of the analogy between humans and other animals, which, as has been shown multiple times on this thread, is far from adamantine. Indeed, it's hard enough to make an analogy between two humans.
I'm a hedonist. My life project and that of the animals I eat, or potentially eat me, are in conflict, yes. Also, by having close friendships with a few people, I am denying the boon of my friendship to the world's friendless. In fact, now I come to think of it, almost everything I do has an unfortunate corollary. It's hard to know where to start given that my very existence is essentially a moral aberration.
Now that you've sorted out your relationship with other animals, what are going to put right next?
This coming from the person who suggested we should just ignore theists so as to get rid of them?
I have no problem admitting that I don't think the middle ground is always the way to go.
I don't see a plausible middle ground between slavery and equal rights for humans.
I don't see a plausible middle ground between child abuse and parenting as best you can.
And many other examples...
If you draw a line and say "here, this is ethical enough" you have to be able to justify it with more than just labeling an even more ethical stance "extreme" without any real argument to back you up.
My philosophical basis for Veganism is to be logically consistent within your ethical decisions and the justifications you use for those decisions. We can start here, why do you eat meat, Txastopher?
Quoting Txastopher
This is quite nonsensical. Not consuming animal products is the definition of being Vegan. That's like asking, "Which came first in your case; not having hair or being bald?"
Quoting Txastopher
Any opposition has not stated anything worth of substance. The only thing they have said is, "That comparison is bad and doesn't work." - It's easy to just ignorantly assert something without providing a proper rebuttal or counter-argument to support your assertion.
If you don't think Slavery has many similarities to factory farming, provide some counter-argument other than, "It's different."
Conflating friendship possibility to the possibility of ending harm to the best you can, is absurd.
Can you unpack this a little, please?
I hope not! I'm sure that many people would potentially like to give up animal products, but would hesitate if they thought they might be classed as vegans since the term is synonymous in so many circles with 'self-righteous dick'.
This is false.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
There's my google doc with scientific/peer-reviewed evidence that is cited. There's a health and environmental tab if you need both.
This is similar to people who don't believe in God, but don't want to be classified as an "Atheist", because the term "Atheist" is synonymous in so many circles with 'devil' or 'immoral monster'. Just because people have a warped and/or incorrect view of a 'group label', doesn't mean people shouldn't use that label. If anything, that is a chance for us to educate them on what the 'group label' actually stands for and what it means.
I don't care if people think I am a 'self-righteous dick' for not wanting to cause animals any harm. They can be ignorant in their assumptions, just as the person who holds prejudice against an 'Atheist'.
SherlockH, if you're genuinely interested in the health benefits of animal products in diet, it's probably best to look elsewhere than a cherry-picked selection curated by an avowed vegan.
Again, it's funny to hear the opposition assert things without evidence. How about you provide him with the scientific peer-reviewed evidence (within the past 5 years) supporting your bald faced assertion. Because I provided multiple scientific sources from different countries that all point to the same thing. This is what a scientific consensus is. Sorry if you're new to scientific literature and journals.
Between this comment and the gems we're getting from xastopher, this thread continues on its epic journey of crazy.
I told you, even when supplying them with scientific studies that support a plant-based diet, people like Txastopher will still reject it and say I am cherry-picking evidence, lol. There's no winning with willfully ignorant people like Txastopher, who provide no evidence for their counter-claim, and just assert things.
But what do vegans think of hunters? You could argue that hunting a wild animal quickly and painlessly is ethically preferable to an animal that is very likely to die in a gruesome or painful manner. I don't know how statistically common it is for an animal to die due to their maximum age capacity, but even if that's the case I'd wager that's not a painless death.
If there's an alternative, then I would say it is unnecessary. If it is a case, such as in an indigenous tribe, then hunting becomes more necessary, because they survive off the land.
Quoting NasloxiehRorsxez
Put yourself in the shoes of an animal. Would you rather live a longer life, free from pain and suffering, and die a possibly painful death [such as cancer]? Or would you rather live a shorter life that is full of pain and suffering [horrible living conditions], followed by getting your throat slit?
Also, just because it's brilliant and somewhat relevant.
[hide]
Have you lost the plot? What reason have I to do that? I have a reason to defend my position, not to criticise positions invented by you. I've already demonstrated the error in your form of argument. I refer you back to those previous replies. I can only lead a bear to water.
What you're basically saying is, "I'm going to stick with the erroneous way and try to spin it as a success". That's it, call it "logic and proper reasoning". That'll do the trick. I'm sure nobody will notice if you substitute a label for the real thing.
Have you noticed that it's a pattern? At this stage, I wonder whether anyone here is in any doubt that he'll do anything other than presuppose such things in his "attacks".
I hope no one endeavours to humour this false dilemma.
This thread is for people who actually care to discuss and explain their positions, not ignore all opposing positions without proper rebuttal. I'd love to talk to either of you, or both at once, over voice chat. That way, you can't constantly ignore questions and comments without proper responses, followed by ad hominem. And if you're not willing to debate me over voice chat, get off this thread and go spout your nonproductive comments elsewhere.
Right, so where's your rebuttal to the very simple proposition I've stated three times now?
Eating wild, entirely grass-fed, or kitchen-scrap fed meat (which is the only meat I eat), is ethical because there exists intelligent, well-informed studies which conclude that such low impact forms of meat-eating probably cause less harm than farming the equivalent quantity of vegetables for some measures of 'harm'. Therefore a person could entirely reasonably conclude that such forms of meat-eating are ethically sound.
Do you claim that no such intelligent, well-informed studies exist? Because we have direct evidence within this thread that they do, it would be incumbent upon you to show us how their authors are not qualified intelligent people.
Do you perhaps claim that it is not reasonable for a person to derive ethical commitments from intelligent, well-informed studies? In which case it is incumbent upon you to present your alternative ethics and prove that it is 'right'.
Or do you agree that certain specific types of meat-eating cause less harm that the equivalent vegetable farming for some measures of harm? In which case, for the sake of the environment you're clearly so passionate about, I would humbly ask that you direct your energies towards fighting the factory-farming system so clearly at fault here and stop pestering meat-eaters who have already agreed with you on that front.
Link us multiple studies [not just one] that all point to the same conclusion. Scientific consensus doesn't come from one study, but from multiple sources that all agree with each other.
But even if the evidence pointed to what you are saying, there's an even better alternative. I could point to a random person who grows vegetables in their backyard, and say they cause less harm than your killed wild animal. But neither the person who grows vegetables nor the person who kills wild animals, is who this thread is geared toward. The overwhelming majority of meat eaters are the ones contributing to factory farms. They prefer convenience and pleasure over consideration and ethical consistency.
Also, many people on here will make comments, I will then respond, and they won't acknowledge or answer the question/s I have asked in my response. A good example of that is Txastopher, who likes to talk but never listens or responds to counter-arguments or rebuttals. I don't mind considering your evidence, but there are multiple conversations going on at once, and I saw you responding mostly to NKBJ.
As I said initially, post your scientific journals/research and I will take a look. As far as I can tell (unless I missed it somewhere), you haven't linked anything yet. All you have done is quoted some research, correct?
No, that's not how it works. This is a philosophy forum, not an agricultural one. You have yet to establish philosophically that an ethical position must be supported by the current consensus of scientists who happen to have investigated the subject. I can see an argument to say that supporting an ethical position based on empirical facts with whichno one agrees could be arguably irrational, but that's not the same as consensus.
I need only a single report from an expert who I can reasonably trust to be well-informed and no less biased than any other scientist. If such a report exists, then any ethical position which I find appealing for whatever reason may be reasonably supported by it. Your version of empiricism was rejected by the scientific community a long time ago and with very good reason. We no longer put all the evidence in a bucket and follow whatever it shows us. We arrive at falsifiable theories and continue with them until such time as they are falsified. My theory is that farming/hunting meat in the way I've described causes less harm overall, by my measure of harm, than farming the equivalent quantity of vegetables. Many well-informed, intelligent scientists disagree with that conclusion, but at least one agrees with it, so the theory has not been falsified. Consensus doesn't enter into it, we're not trying to establish what the case if probabilistically likely to be, we're supporting a particular ethical position, the two do not necessarily follow the same process.
The studies I'm using to defend this position I've already citied, Reijnders and Soret (2003), Rosi et al. (2017), and Davis (2003), all of which have been linked earlier in this thread, all of which conclude that some meat-eating diets cause less environmental harm than the equivalent vegan diets. But please don't waste your time looking them up to find points within them you could refute. It's irrelevant that you could refute points within those studies. So long as there exist intelligent experts who disagree with each other, there exists the necessity that one of them is wrong, if it is a necessary possibility that an intelligent expert is wrong then you have no way of knowing that it isn't you, no matter how intelligent or expert you think you are. That is the philosophical point that's relevant here.
Quoting chatterbears
Maybe you could. what does that prove? Only that the 'right' ethical choice varies depending on the circumstances and the facilities one has available to them. Very much not the claim you originally made.
Quoting chatterbears
That's simply not true. If that were the case, the post would be entitled "Is it wrong to factory farm animals?" and I think you would have had considerably more agreement. I don't think anyone here has disagreed with your notion that animal farming is significantly in need of improving. If you want to aim the post at a particular type of meat-eater, then I suggest you don't open it with the statement to the effect that all meat eating is unethical.
Not sure what you're talking about. Are you saying, it is okay to eat animals because other animals eat each other? If this is what you're saying, you're appealing to nature. That because it happens in nature, it is morally acceptable. Rape and cannibalism occur in nature, should it therefore be morally acceptable if humans rape and eat other humans?
Post it again so I can read the study. I don't understand why you couldn't just post it again, when I even said "I may have missed it, so can you link it".
Quoting Pseudonym
If people actually thought that factory farming needed improvement, why aren't they doing anything to help improve it? And the only way to improve an animal enslavement and holocaust is by abolishing it. Also, my original post was "Is it wrong to eat animals?" - This is a general statement that would apply in most situations. Similar to "Is it wrong to rape?" - There many situations where it is not wrong to rape, such as a child soldier who is forced to rape his sister, otherwise they will kill her. In that situation, death is worse than rape, so it is not immoral for him to rape his sister because he was forced to; and the alternative would be death. Same thing with eating animals. There may be a situation where you're forced to, where it depends on your survival. But generally speaking, I am not referring to the child soldier situation or the stranded on a deserted island situation. I am referring to the people who contribute to factory farms every day, by buying animal products. An unnecessary harm (lustful rape / bacon) vs. a necessary harm (child soldier rape / killing an animal for survival).
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?url=https://www.lbs.co.il/data/attachment-files/2015/05/23994_thbahvnvt.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm0EnoQUILL85Pf3mP-Wo5mPQ_KHDw&nossl=1&oi=scholarr
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/664S/4690011
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06466-8
As for the rest of your post, it's not 'necessary' for me to kill the deer I hunt. I could buy the equivalent vegetables, or the equivalent in factory chicken. I hunt deer and eat them because it think its less harmful overall for the reasons cited in the studies above (as well as other reasons to do with the value I personally attach to 'naturalness', the meaning of which would take an entire essay to explain). So your acceptance through gritted teeth of those who absolutely have to kill animals for meat is entirely irrelevant. I wish more people hunted their own meat, reared pigs on kitchen scraps, ate the pigeons and rabbits which are killed anyway to grow vegetables. Its not about necessity, its about believing it to be better.
Agreed.
Peter SInger is a utilitarian. I personally think Tom Regan was better at making the case convincing. (Though they both have a lot of value to add to the discussion.)
Carol Adams also does an amazing job explaining why it's so hard for people to accept even the notion of vegan/vegetarianism.
Why assume the short lived wild animal would have suffered anymore than the long lived animal? It could just as likely be both animals live "free from pain and suffering" until the short lived one is quickly killed by a hunter and the other is likely to suffer a gruesome death.
2002 Study [Steven Davis] - Was refuted by Gaverick Matheny
2003 Study [Counter to Steven David] - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1026354906892
Gaverick Matheny states, in response to Steven Davis, "In his article, "Least Harm," Steven Davis argues that the number of animals killed in ruminant-pasture production is less than the number of animals killed in crop production. Davis then concludes the adoption of an omnivorous diet would cause less harm than the adoption of a vegetarian diet. Davis's argument fails on three counts: first, Davis makes a mathematical error in using total rather than per capita estimates of animals killed; second, he focuses on the number of animals killed in production and ignores the welfare of these animals; and third, he does not count the number of animals who may be prevented from existing. When we correct these errors, Davis's argument makes a strong case for, rather than against, adopting a vegetarian diet: vegetarianism kills fewer animals, involves better treatment of animals, and likely allows a greater number of animals with lives worth living to exist."
Read full article here: https://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/matheny.html
Your 2003 Study [Lucas & Sam] - "Although on average vegetarian diets may well have an environmental advantage, exceptions may also occur." - So this is talking about exceptions, not general knowledge that would apply.
Your 2017 Study [Nature] - "Thus, regardless of the environmental benefits of plant-based diets, there is a need for thinking in terms of individual dietary habits." - Again, talking about exceptions, such as individual dietary habits, not necessarily plant-based diets themselves.
Here are some articles I can point you to that are more recent and relevant.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13959 - Clicking the "Figures" tab on the right side, you can see how much higher the CO2 levels of Dairy, Egg, Fish & Livestock are compared to plant-based foods.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data - Global Emissions of Agriculture exceed transportation
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM - the contribution of the livestock sector to global greenhouse gas emissions exceeds that of transportation.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/08/opinions/go-vegan-save-the-planet-wang/index.html - Scientific Sources are cited throughout the article.
There is very interesting recent research regarding plant sensitivity that demonstrates their abilities to learn, communicate and remember.
For non-vegans this doesn't present an ethical problem, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, it doesn't present an ethical problem for vegans either since anything that might undermine their position is hastily dismissed in favour of the far less intellectually demanding task of rampant virtue-signalling.
My english is not that good, could you explain this to me?
If someone's criteria is suffering, I don't see any ethical dilemma as plants don't feel pain.
Though I do have a question. Is a painless animal kill equivalent to a plant kill?
If someones basis is intellectual capacity however, it seems like it becomes much less clear.
I'd love for you to post the research, instead of constantly asserting things without evidence. Plants can remember? Post the scientific journals and I'll be happy to consider them.
In passing and because I was curious:
Article:
https://m.phys.org/news/2016-12-new-study-shows-plants-can.html
"To respond to light, fans and temperature in this way suggests that plants have far more sophisticated abilities than previously thought. The philosophical and ethical implications of this information are confounding.
It provokes further questions about the plant world that we have historically seen as inert and lacking in agency. With no brain, how can plants have cognition? Yet they exhibit functions we typically only associate with a brain."
Paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep38427.epdf?author_access_token=ndXv7HCRrrXgnqZkGRINU9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PFvNbZvaVrCKW4Rb8ZW14eVyb7xNIHahQoZ-WZXB-uth8RSOQA0pfaOyF6to9zHCjhchoo9tGdx9p0lbntPMnN
https://books.google.es/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8HOeCQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=Plant+Sensing+and+Communication&ots=YWjzxLh43_&sig=YkBo-29XrPxhNSsp-4U1c3VZ7IM#v=onepage&q=Plant%20Sensing%20and%20Communication&f=false
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Monica_Gagliano
http://www.plantbehavior.org/plant-plant-interactions-with-ariel-novoplansky/
https://www.npr.org/2017/01/13/509350471/how-do-trees-collaborate
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4497361/
https://www.google.es/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.michaelmarder.org/app/download/6088188961/M.Marder.Place.of.Plants.pdf%3Ft%3D1512782468&ved=2ahUKEwjLldPY2JzbAhXQAewKHdGcBzMQFjAXegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw0O17Z9vJIErORnjMyKwG-V
But again. Link me a scientific journal that states that plants can remember things. You linked me a random profile from researchgate, then an article from NPR that includes a TED Talk. All these 'talks' and 'articles' describe plants that adapt to their surroundings in order to survive. Not one has stated that plants have a brain, or feel pain, or can remember, or have a nervous system.
Your research provides everything I already knew about plants. And my main argument still stands, which is to not cause unnecessary pain and suffering. Plants cannot suffer because they do not feel pain; since they do not have a brain or nervous system.
Look, it would be unethical of me not to remind you that you are suffering from a messianic eating disorder with extreme grandiosity. Seek professional help now.
Be strong! (Obviously, I don't mean physically strong since you're a vegan)
For the sake of argument, let's assume plants have "feelings" and the ability to "suffer" (which, by the way, none of this research shows), veganism still wins out against omnivorism.
In an omnivorous diet MORE plants are used than in a vegan diet, because the animals you eat must in turn eat first... obviously. So, eating fewer animals means causing harm to fewer plants as well. According to the Least Harm Principle, that's a pretty solid reason why veganism is more ethical than omnivorism.
And puh-lease don't start saying that plants and animals are somehow morally equivalent... like anyone could seriously believe that dicing a potato was the moral equivalent to beheading a kitten.
I'm not really taking a side, but this is an obvious strawman. Mosquitoes are animals, grubs are animals, the corals that make up coral reefs are animals. Slicing part of a coral reef off is hardly more immoral than dicing up a potato. In fact, the vast vast majority of animals are insects who probably are no more worthy of our moral attention than potatoes.
Quoting NKBJ
So, generally speaking, they are actually.
Quoting chatterbears
Insects have a central nervous system and are, for example, a popular dish in Northern Thailand and elsewhere. Where exactly do you draw the line on sentience/suffering? (I haven't read all your posts so I don't know if you've done this already).
Although I have no ethical qualms about killing and eating either since I'm an omnivore, all the arguments that can be made for not killing animals can be made for plants also, but with the added complication that key vegan analogies that are stretched to breaking point with animals, collapse completely when talking about plants.
It does not follow from that the fact that it is seemingly impossible to empathise with plant life due to its difference to us that it is therefore acceptable to eat it. This would just be another version of the speciesism argument.
In order to be consistent, vegans should accept their ignorance, err on the side of caution and avoid eating plants altogether.
If it's based on a philosophical view, it's in my view an arrogant holier-than-thou attitude that simply is hypocrisy. Cows as ruminants are biologically vegans, humans are omnivores. A healthy balanced diet is the best option for a human. If it's a religious view, well, then it's part of your religion.
Actually it's predicated on an anthropocentric hierarchy which grades acceptability of consumption according to evolutionary proximity to humans. This is neither philosophical nor scientific. For this reason ethical veganism is more correctly termed moral veganism and as such only has import relative to those who unquestioningly accept its underlying principles.
The fact that moral veganism is based on such flimsy principles is demonstrated by Chatterbears (a level 10 Vegan Mage) in his inability to incorporate research into plant sensitivity into his worldview. He has to reject it or reject his thesis. A philosopher adapts his or her position to accommodate the evidence since those are the rules of reason. Vegans don't do this because they are not philosophers but rather self-loathing fanatics who wish to impose their crazed brand of asceticism on the rest of humanity.
No, I'm sorry, the same arguments do not apply. And it's kind of like you didn't read what I said. Even IF they did, you'd still be wrong to raise and kill animals for food.
But the fact remains that we have no good evidence to suggest that plants have anywhere near the awareness of pain and suffering that animals do. We have evidence to suggest that they can have chemical reactions. But that isn't the same as pain. To feel pain, you need a brain.
That's absurd and you know it. If this discussion weren't about food you'd never suggest that stepping on a halm of grass was the same as kicking a dog-which is the logical conclusion of saying they are equivalent.
You cannot both claim it is a strawperson and that it is true... Either you admit it's ridiculous, or you bite the bullet.
I didn't say they were exactly equivalent, but strictly speaking, it's true—if counter intuitive and maybe somewhat pedantic— that they're generally equivalent because such a tiny percentage of animals (far less than 1% as I said) are of any real interest in terms of suffering.
That's not inconsistent with recognizing that animals like dogs obviously do suffer in a way that insects, plants and so on don't. But the division isn't between animals and plants, it's between what is a tiny proportion of animals (those who are capable of suffering like dogs, pigs, cows etc.) and everything else.
I'll wait for chatterbears's answer about insects before I say more.
I think you know as well as I do that we're not talking about insects in this discussion. Even though the word "animal" technically includes insects, colloquially it's used to refer to fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals.
No, I don't know that, which is why I asked chatterbears the question. He mentioned a central nervous system, which insects have. So, I'd like to know specifically where he'd draw the line. Maybe you can just let him speak for himself.
For example, non-lactating cows eat 25-30lbs of hay a day.
70% of plant agriculture in the US is used to feed the animals we eat.
You can do the research yourself, but Entomologists have stated they aren't convinced that insects feel pain. Having a central nervous system is only one part of it, but being able to perceive what your nervous system is telling you is another part. This is why Entomologists are more convinced that complex insects, such as Bees, are more likely to be of a higher consciousness and can feel pain.
But to answer your question, I also don't see a need to kill insects for food when it is not necessary. So the same argument applies to farm animals, which is, why would we kill them when it is not necessary? We have other plant-based foods that cause much less harm, and are healthier for you and the environment.
If you don't eat meat because you want your ecological footprint to be smaller, you have a good reason in my opinion, much respect !
If you're a vegan and a piece of meat is served to you by accident, and then you don't eat it and rather throw it in the garbage, you're the worst vegan in my opinion. When an animal died and gave his meat to you and you throw it away, sorry, 0 respect, 0 brains, 0 veganism.
If you don't eat meat because you are hurt by animals suffering, then eat biological meat in stead. These animals had a decent life. I also don't like eating meat when I know for sure the animals have suffered.
If you don't eat eggs or drink milk, you're just weird in my opinion. We give the animals food, shelter and safety, they give us eggs and milk, it's just a fair beneficial trade between two species. (keep in mind that this is only fair when the animals are treated with respect -> biological)
My parents only buy biological meat, milk and eggs. They want to be sure that the animals had a decent life before taking anything from them. In my opninion, this is something that deserves respect because they pay twice as much for the same amount of meat while they have a hard time paying their bills.
It has nothing to do with me not giving a shit about plants. It has to do with the current scientific consensus, which is that plants are not sentient. And since they are not sentient, they cannot feel or perceive pain. They just react and adapt to their environment, similar to how bacteria or viruses do. A virus may change/adapt in ways that allow it to survive, but this does not mean it is conscious or capable of feeling pain. That's the entire point, is causing less harm/pain to animals that have the capacity to feel it.
Quoting Regi
I already cleared this up. It isn't about caring less about plants, as if their sentience is equal to plants. I care about causing the least amount of harm/pain to creatures that have the capacity to feel it. Plants cannot feel or experience pain.
Quoting Regi
This is part of the reason I do not eat meat, yes. Because the environmental damage is substantial, and not eating meat would help climate change improve.
Quoting Regi
If it started to become the societal standard, that cooking human body parts was part of the menu, and they accidentally served you a piece of human arm, would you eat it? Because according to you, that human died and gave their meat to you and you threw it away, sorry, 0 respect, 0 brains, 0 anti-cannibalism.
Quoting Regi
What is biological meat? Are you talking about organic meat? Things like 'organic' or 'cage-free' or 'grass-fed' or 'free-range', mean absolutely NOTHING in regards to the living conditions of these animals. All these animals are still kept in horrible living conditions a majority of the time, and are still slaughtered unnecessarily.
Quoting Regi
The dairy industry is probably the worst of the worst. Raping a female cow with bull sperm, stealing her baby on the day it is born to never be seen again, killing the male cows early for veal. And for the chickens, killing all the males shortly after birth, debeaking the females [which causes a lot of pain], shoving them in small areas that provide horrible living conditions.
Also, it's fair? To say you give them shelter and safety, is slightly ridiculous. You give them shelter and safety by torturing and slaughtering them? How would you like to be factory farmed and put in these living conditions, and then slaughtered at a young age so you cannot live out your natural life?
You also point out that you don't want to be a part of harming animals by eating their meat (which I respect). But, what if an animal had a good life on a farm (WHICH IS POSSIBLE), and then they kill it without it causing stress or pain (WHICH IS ALSO POSSIBLE), then there is no harm, right? There is just the natural food chain 2.0, without any suffering.
And about cannibalism, the situation you describe says that cannibalism is socially accepted, that it is normal to eat other humans. Well this is fiction, this goes against the human nature, we are not created to eat each other. We are programmed to hunt other species. You have your point here but I think this cannot be used in animal ethics.
Are you saying you would rather throw your piece of meat away than eating it? You think this is better than eating it? Why?
This is better than regular factory farmed animals, but it still isn't good enough. Although the pain and suffering is important, so is the killing. Why would you feel the need to unnecessarily kill an animal? And by unnecessary, I am referring to plant-based products that we have as alternatives. Animal slaughter is not necessary when we have a better alternative. We are killing an animal against its own will to live. I'd assume you would not like it if someone killed you unnecessarily against your will, would you? Also, many people wouldn't accept the same type of unnecessary killing for their own pets, such as dogs or cats. So why is it okay for a pig to be slaughtered unnecessarily, but not a dog?
Quoting Regi
It doesn't matter if it is fiction, as I was using a hypothetical to expose the flaw in your reasoning. Also, factory farming goes against nature, so you are already going against nature in that sense. There are many things that occur in nature, not just within our species, but within others as well. Things like cannibalism and rape. Humans aren't the only species that are cannibalistic, but to say it isn't natural, would be an incorrect statement.
So again, if cannibalism was the societal norm (which in some parts of the world, it already is), would you be okay with getting accidentally fed human meat instead of meat from a cow? Would you throw it away instead of eating it?
I find it wrong to assume that plants are a better alternative simply because you don't have a scientific explaination that proves plants are not thinking and can't feel pain. What would you do if there is proof?
Would you feel bad every time you eat?
Quoting chatterbears
Chinese people eat dogs, and I don't hate them for this. I wouldn't eat one myself but it is not wrong to eat a dog.
Well, let's say they serve human everywere and you're not going to jail if you are a cannibal, maybe I'll eat it. If I could give your cooked arm to someone else, I would. But throwing it away would make me feel really bad.
People who throw meat away make me feel angry. It's such a high cost which is payed to please your taste, throwing it away is not going to make it moraly better.
Quoting chatterbears
Okay that's a good point.
Quoting chatterbears
First time I heard that. I thought there were only a few tribes who did this.
Well, where I stand is that we have an increasing duty of care with increasing sentience/ability to suffer, but it certainly wouldn't start with insects in which those characteristics are negligible at best. Pigs and cows though are certainly developed enough so that current treatment with regard to living conditions is probably often unethical. I don't believe killing and eating them is though as they are not agents and cannot ever become agents with similar responsibilities to us and so aren't entitled to similar rights to us. We owe them a comfortable life right up to and including the moment of death in my view but nothing more.
Having said that, looking at historical trends, I think it is reasonably likely that we are heading in the direction of veganism, or at least vegetarianism, in the long term, and should it develop into a highly practical alternative in terms of cost, nutrition, and taste, I would welcome that eventuality.
We shouldn't hurt them but we can kill them?
Yes.
That makes no sense. Killing is clearly one of the most obvious kinds of harm you can inflict on someone.
You can kill an animal painlessly and therefore not "hurt" it as in "cause it pain" which is what you asked me.
A painless death would be better than a painful one, sure. But that doesn't mean killing isn't causing harm. Regardless of pain level, it's still obviously one of the most harmful acts you can commit.
Shooting my dog is clearly not better or more acceptable than kicking her.
If you're going to keep confusing "hurt" and "harm" (in the context of what I said) even after I explain the difference, there's no point answering this.
Quoting NKBJ
It is under certain circumstances including if the dog is in chronic pain. Ask yourself this question, why is it OK to put down an animal (execute it) to stop it feeling pain or discomfort and not do that for a human?
The human broke her leg and could never fully recover. She was put down for her own benefit. (Not OK)
That's a poor analogy in a couple of ways.
First of all, a horse's broken leg is the kind of thing that makes a horse's life miserable and often leads to their death anyway, whereas a human can live a happy and fulfilling life with a bum leg fairly easily.
But, more importantly, there's a huge difference in saving a horse from a life of misery for their own sake and killing them purely for the pleasure of eating them, i.e. our own and not in anyway the animal's sake.
OK, but you've seen the logic works differently when you're dealing with an agent. An agent has rights that imply they can't be manipulated for the benefit of another in ways a non-agent can. However any sentient being, agent or non-agent, should not have to suffer unnecessary physical pain considering that's intrinsically an undesirable. The result is a bit counter-intuitive, killing them is OK, hurting them is not, but that's not necessarily morally contradictory. By killing them you deny them further life (and life which you made possible in the circumstances you made it possible through manipulation of generations of their species) but you do not cause them pain, so it's the difference between denying the continuation of a positive (further life) and enforcing a negative (pain). And what I propose is ethical is to give an animal you breed for meat a better life than a similar wild version of the domestic species could expect (all things being equal) in terms of comfort, freedom from disease and parasites, protection from other animal predators, shelter etc. and then end that life without inflicting pain.
Jeff McMahan answers the question of whether giving animals a good life is sufficient to justify their killing.
He basically says that you can't argue that it's better for an animal to be caused to exist, even if that life is good. And also that if you did cause them to exist, you have obligations towards them not to harm them, including not following through with killing them.
https://philosophy.rutgers.edu/joomlatools-files/docman-files/Eating_Animals_the_Nice_Way.pdf
He makes the case more eloquently and thoroughly than I do. It's not a super long article, and it's pretty accessible language. If you read it, I'd be interested in what your thoughts are.
OK, I read a bit and he does present the argument I was supporting accurately. I'll get around to his counter when I get a chance.
Cool. Let me know :smile:
Would you say the same thing applies to a mentally disabled person who cannot ever become an agent, and we could argue has the same mental capacity as a cow?
If you hit a rock with a stick, do you also feel the same guilt? Because this is getting a little bit absurd, when you start comparing non-sentient life with sentient life. If there's proof that plants and/or rocks can feel pain, we will cross that bridge when we get to it. But for now, there's no evidence to suggest that, so it is irrelevant to talk about it. What is relevant, is talking about sentient life [such as farm animals] that CAN feel pain.
Quoting Regi
Yes, there are a few tribes that still practice it today.
It is as wrong as it is to find it acceptable that thousands of children die every day of preventable diseases in Africa, and India, and Central America, not to mention other areas (using cheap/low tech chlorine to sterilize water, cheap nets to protect against mosquitoes, etc).
We evolved as omnivores, requiring meat as well as plant matter to survive, regardless of if t is humane or not. Therefore, "wrong" is a relative thing.
Morals may not have anything to do with it other than that it has been presented here.
Life101
We don't need meat to survive.
The Association of UK Dietitians - "British Dietetic Association confirms well-planned vegan diets can support healthy living in people of all ages"
US National Library of Medicine - "We humans do not need meat. In fact, we are healthier without it, or at least with less of it in our diets. The Adventist Health Studies provide solid evidence that vegan, vegetarian, and low-meat diets are associated with statistically significant increases in quality of life and modest increases in longevity. The world that we inhabit would also be healthier without the commercial meat industry. Factory farms are a waste of resources, environmentally damaging, and ethically indefensible. It is time to accept that a plant-predominant diet is best for us individually, as a race, and as a planet."
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
Posted my google doc link to provide you with scientific journals that display the health and environmental benefits of a plant-based diet.
It is wrong because we are unnecessarily harming another sentient creature. There's necessary harm, such as self-defense, and unnecessary harm, such as slavery or factory farming. The health and environmental factors are well-established science, so that's not even debatable. Which is why I am attacking this issue from a philosophical perspective, not a scientific one.
We evolved to do all sorts of things, but it does not follow from this that we should do them. Indeed, we evolved to be able to consciously evaluate our actions and thus ascribe a moral value to them so it's entirely reasonable to claim that killing animals for food is wrong. However, what makes an action morally 'wrong' or 'right' is the consistency of the arguments put forward for not doing so in accordance with the presuppositions on which these arguments are based. What makes an action ethical is the strength of the arguments and the presuppositions. Vegan arguments proceed logically from their presuppositions, and thus are internally consistent. However, vegan presuppositions are extremely flimsy.
Whilst is certainly true that, with care, a human can survive on an exclusively plant based diet, it does not follow that we should follow a plant based diet. Animal flesh may not be 'necessary' for survival, but since survival is not the sole goal of most humans, vegans must provide other arguments for not killing and eating animals. Indeed, humans can also survive exclusively on animal produce, so we could argue that plant based foods are not 'necessary' either.
So why not animal flesh? Vegans claim that meat eating causes suffering. This is an intuitive claim based on an analogy between humans and animals. Since we generally accept that it is wrong to cause suffering to other humans, it appears to follow, by analogy, that if animals can suffer, it must be wrong to cause suffering to them also. There are all sorts of problems with this; qualitative and quantitative aspects of suffering for example. We know that humans suffer differently between individuals, so how can we even begin to quantify animal suffering? At best, all we can say is that animals experience something analogous to human suffering. We cannot begin to ascribe it quantities and qualities. Nevertheless, let's concede this to the vegans: It is wrong to cause suffering.
However, it is conceivable that suffering could be eliminated from the supply chain. If I were to die instantly in the next few minutes, it's hard to see how I would suffer. Likewise, a quick and painless death for an animal is not in itself 'suffering'. Going even further, a mutation could conceivably result in an animal that 'wants' to be eaten so not only would it not suffer, it would actually benefit from being eaten.
If we can remove suffering from the equation, what other reasons are there to not consume animals? The environmental argument proposes that animal production is inefficient since it involves a seemingly disproportionate ratio of biomass vs nutrition. Whilst this is true, it is only 'wrong' if we accept the unstated premise that 'we should always minimise biomass'. Animals' consumption of plant biomass is an inevitable part of the trophic web. If it we could fine tune it so that it was not environmentally damaging, this objection to meat consumption dissolves. Indeed, meat consumption may even be an environmental boon; take the European peasant's pig which consumed organic waste including human faeces and was then killed for food. Surely, this pig is the opposite of environmentally damaging and should be encouraged? An animal like this could thrive in a vegan household since vegans defecate up to twenty times more than normal people and this huge amount of vegan faeces places a great deal of strain on sewage services and scarce water supplies.
Vegans are also frustratingly inconsistent in their approach to plant suffering. It does not follow that since it is seemingly impossible to empathise with plant life due to its difference to us that it is therefore acceptable to eat it. Humans do not provide the benchmark of suffering by which all other life forms may be measured. It may be that plant suffering is greater than animal suffering precisely because they don't possess animal sensory apparatus; who knows? But in order to be consistent regarding their desire to prevent suffering, vegans should accept their ignorance, err on the side of caution and avoid eating plants altogether. Of course, they do not do this, instead they make hasty presuppositions of convenience that allow them to do continue to do what they want and to retain their purported moral superiority.
My problem with vegans is not what they eat; I don't care, but I don't think they should care what I eat either since they are incapable of convincing anyone but themselves that the underlying assumptions of their morality stand up to ethical scrutiny.
First of all, why does it matter that plants can't suffer? Why does that entail the forfeiture of their existence to us or other organisms? A few out there, mostly those that follow Jainism practice Fruitarianism. That seems to be the most rational form of following through any argument that pushes for avoiding destroying living organisms. Veganism seems to be not specific enough. Oh, meat producing organisms are protected, but not ones that produce plants for us to eat?
Second, if we were able to create an organism that had no nervous system and did not suffer but was made of meat. Would it be okay to eat that meat? Just wanted to see what others thought.
It's pretty telling that you're getting so defensive in a theoretical argument about ethics.
What does this even mean?
Exactly what it says-- you're getting defensive about an online discussion with strangers that is entirely theoretical and only can have an impact on your actual life if you personally choose to let it...AND you willingly, of your own accord decided to participate in this conversation--and yet you choose to go on the attack "vegans this, vegans that, why won't those evil vegans just leave me aloooooone."
Because this is what immoral actions are based upon. Causing unnecessary harm. Causing harm to life implies that the life has the capability to perceive harm. If it cannot perceive harm, such as a plant or a rock, we do not have an obligation to it in the same way we would toward a sentient being that CAN perceive harm.
Quoting yatagarasu
Many fruits still grow on trees, in which you still have the same affect on plants that Vegans would have. But again, you'd have to provide some data that Fruitarians cause less harm than Vegans. But even so, I don't think you can sufficiently benefit from a diet consisting entirely of fruits. You would need to include nuts, seeds and vegetables with every meal because they will provide the fat and protein you need. They will also help slow down any blood sugar spikes that come from eating only fruit.
Quoting yatagarasu
Such as lab meat? Yeah, I don't see a problem with that. Since no pain, suffering or killing was involved, I don't find it wrong.
Quoting chatterbears
Plants are not rocks though. They reproduce. They function in all of the same ways as a meat based organism does, but without the nervous system. And judging by your response to my lab meat question, you think the same? To me avoiding harm is just avoiding the unnecessary end of your existence ( or genealogy). You move away from being butchered because you want to continue on living and reproduce. The plant wants the same as it is a living organism, except it can't moved (in most cases) . It may not scream in pain, but it presumably wants to avoid the same fate. Why do some living organisms get that benefit while others do not? A nervous system seems to be an arbitrary way to measure their right to life.
Quoting chatterbears
Many Fruitatarians only eat fruit that has fallen naturally. From a scientific perspective fruits are allowed because you are benefiting the plant by eating the endosperm and not harming the plant at all. You are promoting their reproduction. Nuts, seeds are actually considered fruits so you would be fine on that end. If you don't consider them fruits then you will have a hard time meeting the nutritional needs otherwise (especially if you are younger). But I wasn't really arguing about the pragmatics of eating only fruits. I was just trying to follow the argument to its conclusion. The fruit is the only part of any organism that we can eat that won't interfere with their reproduction directly. Which I previously established as my basis for being. Since both plants and animals reproduce they are living and therefore should be treated the same, regardless of their nervous systems. : )
Quoting chatterbears
:up:
There are still three ethical claims which remain un-addressed and until they are further discussion is pointless.
1. The claim that we must base our ethical decisions on a consensus or majority scientific position. This is simply asserted without any philosophical argument as to why. There is active debate in the philosophy of science as to methodology and what scientific studies can actually be said to show, and there is 2000 years of unresolved debate in epistemology as to what it is to 'know' anything to be the case. You have both ridden roughshod over all this debate to simply assert that whatever the current scientific consensus is must be used to guide ethical choices.
2. The claim that the life of a thing which can feel pain is worth more than the life of a thing which cannot feel pain. I think everyone is a greed that we should minimise animal suffering, but you maintain that to kill an animal before it's natural death (whatever that is) is worse than killing a plant before it's natural death simply because an animal has a degree of conciousness that plants lack. Again, you have not philosophically supported the argument that conciousness is equal to value, nor that value automatically precludes killing for meat.
3. You have not substantiated your claim that the reason we do not kill and eat other humans (or pets for that matter) is because of the value we assign to their level of conciousness or sentience, you have merely asserted it. It's perfectly reasonable that we do not kill other humans(or pets) in order to minimise the pain caused to their communities (or owners) at their loss. It may simply be a taboo designed to avoid recriminations - we don't kill other humans (or their beloved pets) because they are capable of killing us in turn. We don't farm tigers.
4. Finally, you have not provided any argument to support the claim that these ethical considerations (harm, the intrinsic value of sentience, internal moral consistency) outweigh other ethical values - Naturalness or moderation and tolerance (both of which incidentally are listed as universal human virtues).
I'll remind you again this is a philosophy forum, not a science forum. It is not the place for a discussion of scientific articles. If you can't get your head around the concept that some things which a culture at one time declares "scientifically proven" is at some later date shown to be entirely wrong, then you're on the wrong forum. Try reading Kuhn.
Please provide a philosophical argument to justify the assertions I've listed above, and then we can perhaps continue this debate within the context of this forum.
A plant cannot "want", as it doesn't have a brain to perceive anything. A plant "wants" to survive in the same way bacteria "wants" to survive, yet neither of them have a brain or central nervous system. Neither can feel pain, produce thoughts, have emotions, etc... A nervous system is only one part of the equation, as something also needs a brain to perceive pain or have thoughts and emotions.
If you want to take the general stance of "everything wants to continue living and reproducing", then the fruitarians shouldn't eat fruit either. Because then, mold wouldn't be able to consume it, correct? Doesn't mold want to live just as much as plants or viruses do? This is the problem with your objection to my ethics, as you seem to be stating that all life wants to continue living and we shouldn't stop it from doing so.
You draw a line at "all forms of life want to live, therefore we shouldn't harm it". While I draw a line at "all sentient life wants to live, therefore we shouldn't harm it." - And i wouldn't call my line arbitrary, because I can use reason and evidence to support my ethical position.
Quoting yatagarasu
As I already stated above, you're harming the mold or bacteria that wants to consume it to survive.
Quoting yatagarasu
Bacterium, virus, and fungus are also living. Should we treat bacteria the same as animals too?
And you still haven't address that your linked 2002 Study [by Steven Davis] was refuted by Gaverick Matheny in 2003.
Quoting Pseudonym
A sentient being of higher consciousness can improve the lives of other sentient beings. They also have the capability to improve the lives of members from a different species. Therefore, a sentient being has more value, because it can provide benefits to other species, as well as members within its own species. We see this in nature, where one species will save and protect the babies of a different species from outside predators. Non-sentient life, such as plants, does not have this value of being able to protect other life.
Quoting Pseudonym
You're speaking in the general, by stating "we". Everybody has a different perspective on why they do not kill or eat other humans. Maybe someone doesn't kill other humans because they do not want to go to jail, not necessarily because they care about causing harm to the human. Maybe their entire reason for not killing a human is fear of punishment and incarceration. You'd have to ask them. I've never asserted that other people don't kill humans because they assign value to their sentience. I've actually done the opposite, which is me asking people WHY they would be okay with killing animals, but not okay with killing humans. So far, the only answers I've received are flawed and superfluous.
Quoting Pseudonym
I never claimed that one ethical value outweighs another value. I have simply stated, ethical consistency leads to Veganism. And I still stand by that. The only way to be ethically consistent without being a Vegan, is to treat animals and humans the same, in a negative sense. Meaning, you wouldn't care if you harmed a human, just as you wouldn't care if you harmed an cow. These people tend to be sociopaths.
Also, I created a new Google Doc today that portrays my ethical consistency test a bit better. See below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1157oWUs6KYeRAKATUEKisl6LsGvEATYfc_OQeZN87vE/edit?usp=sharing
For goodness sake this is not a science forum. We are not here to discuss the technicalities of scientific papers. Have a look at the title bar of the page and tell me what it says just before the word 'Forum'.
Quoting chatterbears
So tigers aren't sentient then? Because they seem to do an awful lot of killing other species and not a lot of saving them. This is patent nonsense. Animals kill other animals, they rape other animals, they injure them, ostracise them, terrorise them, and we're no exception. All animals have just as much capacity to cause misery and harm to others as they do to cause pleasure. Also, plants can cause pleasure, simply by their beauty. So are you going to make an argument that they must 'intend' to cause pleasure in order to be of value? I'd like to see you try to support a theory that you have any idea what a cow 'intends' to do, let alone produce a philosophical argument that this has any correlation with value.
Quoting chatterbears
No, you have simply asserted that they are. That's the point. You say that you're not arguing about why humans don't kill other humans, but your entire argument as to why you find their answers flawed rely on your assertions in this regard.
Quoting chatterbears
Yes, you are consistently claiming it. You are, for example, consistently claiming that if the current scientific consensus say something causes more harm, we must all believe it and act on that thing. That is attaching an ethical value to avoiding harm over and above, say instinct (as Sapienta argued), or naturalness or moderation.
Funny that you were okay posting scientific references and articles when it fit your agenda, but then when I refuted it with an article from Gaverick Matheny, you suddenly state that this is not a science forum. The dishonesty is transparent here.
I don't care to discuss things with you any longer. I'll let NKBJ take over.
You seem incapable of following a logical argument,so I will try to make it simple for you.
I argued, from a position of epistemic uncertainty, that if there existed at least one expert who considered my belief to be sound then it is reasonable for me to hold that belief (for whatever reason). In order to prove this I needed to present such an expert, which I did. The fact that other experts disagree with him has no bearing on the argument because its not making the claim that his position goes un-opposed, simply that because it exists, it is reasonable for me to believe it.
Your position is that the current scientific consensus is the veganism, in all forms, does less harm (according to a specific definition of harm) than all forms of meat-eating. In order to support this claim you would be required to do two things.
1. Provide evidence that the scientific consensus is that veganism is less harmful (by their definition of harm) .
And
2. Provide a philosophical argument to support your assertion that whatever the scientific consensus is about what constitutes 'harm' and which diet causes least, is what we should base our ethical choices on, over and above any other considerations.
You have done 1.,but not 2.
Simple.
Utter bollocks.
Same goes for several species of animals.
You haven't adressed this fact, wich is an obvious flaw in your argument. Resulting from conflating three different questions and trying to answer them in one go. I understand it's easier to ignore my remarks and pretend I didn't make them to continue your preaching of veganism, but then I'll point out again, this is a philosophy forum, not a platform to preach your dogma's.
You keep pretending that all animals can feel pain, while plants can not and thus it's unethical to grow and kill animals for food but it's ok to do the same with plants and bacteria without providing any argument for this assumption. The biological evidence is clear and contradicting your assumptions on this, sure keep ignoring facts and pushing your dogmatic virtues, but please go to a preachers platform for that, If you want to make a philosophical argument, you ought to adress the objections I made rather than ignore them.
xD I gave up talking to Pseudonym a while ago--when it became clear that he would happily negate anything and everything he said, go in endless circles of the argument just in order to avoid giving even an inch. Your current conversation is a prime example. This whole thread he kept insisting "but where's the science?!" and now he's all "this is philosophy and science is worthless"....as if it wasn't clear to anyone with a brain that he's just sore that the science doesn't work out in favor of his own argument.
Ah, but we are the cult-like ones unable to conceive of a moral position other than our own...
:rofl:
What exactly does the science show? It shows that plants have chemical reactions, and there is no evidence that they feel pain or can suffer.
If you're stuck on the phrase "all animals feel pain," because grubs are animals too and you're not convinced that they should be given ethical consideration...well, have fun with your grub sandwich. We're obviously talking about cows, pigs, chickens and other animals that are most commonly eaten--animals which have been proven to be highly intelligent and capable of feeling physical and emotional pain.
Besides which, as has been repeatedly explained here (not that it seems you have bothered to read the whole thread), even IF it were true that plants deserve near or equal consideration to animals, veganism would STILL be better, because fewer plants need to be used for a vegan diet than an omnivorous one.
As @Tomseltje, mentioned above, many animals don't "want" either or have the ability to do any of the things you mentioned. I want to know why you put the line at sentient beings rather than further down the line at plants. I assume most don't because 1) they haven't even considered plants and and/or 2) if they have they find it completely impractical and a cognitive dissonance forms in order to feel fine with eating plant life.
I don't put it on bacteria or mold because it is utterly impossible to avoid harming those organisms. Many are microscopic and their destruction cannot be avoided. Not just in eating, but in doing anything we normally do. That is why I don't include them. Many Jains try and include them as well but I find that impractical and very very limiting to human life. I would include them in my philosophy if I could but it is impossible to do so ( as of now ) . We don't base philosophies around completely impractical modes of acting. (or at least we shouldn't, in my opinion)
EDIT: I mainly want to know because I feel like "sentient beings are a no-no line of argument" to be very exclusive and does not respect life as much as it should. We are the arbiters of who lives and who dies. The plant says, "I'm alive too!" and gets shut down because it isn't "sentient" enough. Why does sentience only give you the right to live? Many philosophies saw this as a hypocrisy and choose not to ignore those organisms as well.
Pain, suffering, happiness etc. are all learnt conceptual terms associated with subjective human experience. We make an inference by analogy that since animals are anatomically similar then they are likely to have similarly subjective experiences given similar stimuli. That, my friend, is the sum total of what can be said about animal experience either by science or by philosophy.
Plants have been around a lot longer than animals and have followed a different evolutionary path. Consequently, animals and plants have radically different anatomies. You want to say that this difference results in plants being unable to suffer, but how do you get from being different to not suffering? For all you or anyone else knows, it could be that plants are far more capable of suffering. It simply does not follow that structural differences of living things implies sentient difference, and so it does not follow that sentience diminishes the further we get from human anatomy.
However, vegans make this very unphilosophical assumption that a plant's difference to us must equate to insentience, and then construct a sentience hierarchy based on this in order to justify their worldview. It seems likely that alien life would be very anatomically different also, so in the vegan dietary hierarchy alien life would need make itself understood using human conceptual language very quickly or risk being consumed by rapacious vegans.
The philosophical critique of vegan thinking is that since it's impossible to access another human's subjective experiences, it's also impossible to give an account for animal minds, especially given that we must consider not only animal anatomical similarities, but also the huge differences between humans and other animals. As far as plants are concerned, we lack even the ability to make this inference from analogy. Consequently, it would appear that sentience is not the way to go when deciding what to eat, but then I'm an omnivore and I never thought it was. For vegans, it's far more damaging because shows that the conceptual hierarchy of sentience they use in order to move from a mere dietary fad to a full-blown crusading morality is based on a thoroughly shoddy presupposition.
Quoting NKBJ
As has repeatedly been explained here, this is a problem for vegans, not for me. I don't claim that sentience is the guiding principle of a dietary morality The ongoing plant holocaust lies solely on the conscience of the vegans.
Ummmm, it's like you can't process what I said. It's NOT a problem for vegans, because even IF we cared about plants, a vegan diet would be reducing the number of plant and animal deaths.
Ought implies can. We CAN'T survive without eating anything. But we CAN survive, as well as thrive, while reducing the total amount of harm done.
I never claimed that all animals can feel pain. I stated that all sentient animals can feel pain, which is what the science supports. And the science all supports the idea that a life-form such as a plant or microorganism [such as bacteria], does not have a central-nervous system or a brain to process pain. If you want to state that you don't need a brain or a nervous system to process pain, then you need to provide scientific evidence to support that ridiculous claim.
Quoting yatagarasu
Did you ignore my entire post/response to you?
Quoting chatterbears
Again, as I said to Tomseltje, if you believe that plants can feel pain, please provide the scientific research to support that.
Quoting yatagarasu
So are you saying we should eat nothing and just die? Since plants apparently need the same moral consideration as sentient animals, we shouldn't eat plants either, correct? Therefore, we would be left with eating nothing; in which we would starve, then die.
Quoting Txastopher
You're trying to inject pseudoscience into the discussion by telling us that plants deserve the same moral consideration as sentient creatures. You want to talk about dogmatic assertions, that's ironic.
If you can prove that plants can suffer and can perceive pain without a brain or nervous system, you'd probably win a Nobel prize for discovering something that ground breaking. But before you can prove your non-evidenced based pseudoscience, can you provide ANY scientific peer reviewed journal that is currently out right now, that suggests plants can feel and perceive pain?
But as pointed out, even if we did have evidence that plants can feel pain to the same extent as cows/chickens/pigs/turkeys, Vegans would STILL be causing less harm.
Meat eaters:
1. Eats sentient and non-sentient animals. [Majority of our plants/crops that we grow in the world are fed to factory farmed animals.]
2. Also eats plants.
Vegan:
1. Only eats plants.
So not only are you cause plants a ridiculous amount of more harm than vegans [by also feeding plants to every factory farmed animal], but you are also cause harm to the animals that eat those plants. And on top of that, you are also eating the plants themselves.
Two things you forgot to mention. 1. Veganism also causes less environmental harm. - 2. Veganism also causes less self-harm, as it is more healthy for your body. Both of these facts have scientific consensus supporting them. Where's your scientific consensus for plants being able to feel pain?
[Smh. I don't understand how this thread even got here. Where people are saying that Vegans are dogmatic because they cannot prove plants don't feel pain. Well, you can't prove that a rock doesn't feel pain, so maybe we should be more morally considerate to rocks too, right?]
But you already know the answer.
Again, surely you know the answer. So, is this just rhetoric?
Quoting chatterbears
Yes, it seems it is just rhetoric. You just want to push the alternative that you judge as better.
Quoting chatterbears
Why do you think? It's no coincidence that there's a much bigger market for dogs as pets, and pigs as livestock.
Alternatively, just continue to eat what you feel you should be eating, and let others do the same.
The problem here is not the vegan diet, the problem is vegan self-righteousness. At some point, a vegan on this thread claimed that veganism is the sole logical conclusion of ethical thinking on diet. Well, it's been shown in multiple ways that this is a false claim. This doesn't entail that vegans should start eating meat or starve to death. Vegans can eat whatever they damn well please. The only thing they can't do is make claims regarding the ethical exclusivity of their choice.
I'm going to duck out of this thread now. I don't think I have anything more to say on the subject.
That comment was directly toward Baden, not you. So I am not sure why you're responding to a statement I made toward someone else.
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Sapientia
All my statements were direct to Regi, not you. So again, I am not sure why you're responding to a statement I made toward someone else, as our conversation is not related to things you and I have talked about. If you want to have a discussion with me, respond to statements I have directly made toward you.
Also, to address your last comment. Just because there is a bigger market for something, based on the cultural/societal norm, doesn't mean that the market demand is morally acceptable. There was a bigger market for slave trading 300 years ago, but it would be ignorant to say "It's no coincidence that there's a much bigger market for blacks as slaves, and whites as friendly neighbors."
This is what I last said to you:
Quoting chatterbears
You then reply with:
Quoting Sapientia
As I said to you before, it's pointless to talk to someone like you and Txastopher, because you ignore questions and comments made by the opposition. I asked you multiple times to clarify your position, in which you never did. I asked you to clarify how I was using a fallacy, in which you never did. All you said was something like, "I can only lead a bear to water." - It's not productive to converse with you. So I'd suggest you stop responding to me, unless you're actually willing to answer questions I have asked you over a week ago.
Quoting chatterbears
But that doesn't address my comment. My comment was picking up on your faux questioning which is really just rhetorical. You're asking questions which you already know the answer to, which is superficial. You aren't seeking knowledge, you just don't like the answer.
Other people's actions have an impact on the world around us. You don't live in a vacuum, as your actions and beliefs will also affect the lives of other people. Eating animal products causes more harm to the environment (which also affects other people, not just you), rather than eating a plant-based diet. To suggest "Let others live how they feel they should live", is completely ignorant to the harm that can come from that type of mindset.
Quoting Txastopher
The problem here is the meat eater's blatant disregard for the harm that animal products cause. Not just to the environment or the health of humans, but also the animals themselves. Would you call the activists in favor of the prohibition of slavery 200 years ago, an act of self-righteousness? Vegans are trying to minimize the harm and suffering, just as slavery opposition was trying to do the same. If you want to equate that to self-righteousness, that's your problem.
Quoting Txastopher
It's a false claim that all the scientific peer reviewed journals point to the same data of a plant-based diet is the least harmful to the environment, our health and the animal's welfare? To state it is a false claim, is to state that scientific evidence is not valid, which it's complete nonsense.
But if you're not referring to the scientific portion, and strictly the philosophical part of animal ethics, you can get to Veganism by logical consistency.
Feel free to take this consistency test I made, and tell me your results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1157oWUs6KYeRAKATUEKisl6LsGvEATYfc_OQeZN87vE/edit?usp=sharing
Quoting Txastopher
Not surprised. See ya.
If you want to comment and jump in to ask about comments I made out of context you don't understand, then you're the one who is doing it wrong.
Quoting Sapientia
What exact question [and be specific] is a rhetorical question? And if I already know the answer, is the answer that I know the same answer you know? If not, is the answer that has been presented to me, backed by facts and logic?
That's odd. I could have sworn I said more than that. :chin:
Quoting chatterbears
Been there, done that, and I'll continue to respond to you if I so desire.
I eat animals.
I don't think I could maintain my health if I did not eat meat...
I have a very VERY low level of body-fat, and if I spend any amount of time under-nourished then it could have serious repercussions for my health.
Here's where someone says "But V, you can get all the nourishment you need from beans and vegetables!".
Mmmmmm, I don't know about that. Gaining fat and weight from beans and greens is extraordinarily difficult, especially for me. I have the metabolism of a humming-bird and almost everything I eat is mysteriously burned away.
Many of my ancestors had to figure out how to survive harsh winters. It was impossible to store enough vegetation to survive a northern winter, and so my ancestors had only the choice of putting on fat and storing meat to make it through the winter. My omnivorous evolutionary past may have caused my gastric system to expect animal fat as a staple (eating a surplus of meat is the only way I've ever been able gain weight and even then it seems impossible to maintain)
"So what if you need to eat more apples and oranges! Your health isn't worth the life of another being"
Isn't it?
We got where we are by exploiting animals (cooking and eating animal meat is likely what permitted some of the evolutionarily recent improvements to homo-sapien brains) and globally we're not quite ready to give them up. We're the dominant crab in the bucket, but we're not over the edge yet. We can step off the lesser crabs but we'll remain trapped in the bucket for longer.
Anyone living an aboriginal way of life eats meat out of necessity; plants don't have the energy/protein density of meat and it's hard as fuck to survive as an indigenous vegan (they all died). There is no argument to be made against meat eating in a traditional way of life....
We also have third world countries who have been dispossessed of their natural environments (with expanded populations generally) and now rely on modern forms of agriculture to feed themselves.
If these third world countries did not utilize animal husbandry they would almost certainly be unable to produce a bountiful and diverse enough vegetable diet to keep their already under-nourished populations healthy. There is a good argument to be made against animal cruelty in the third world, but not against the necessity of meat consumption. Suggesting they spend more money or the same amount of money to have the same amount of nutrition or less nutrition means infant mortality rate, among other things, would rise.
"V, nobody is talking about starving Africans, you know damn well that you can get an adequate vegan diet in Canada". Maybe I could, but it would be at great expense to me and if I'm honest I worry such a radical change to my diet could lead to a radical change in my health.
I didn't actually choose to be a meat eater, I was born with canines, and asking me to change smacks of sacrifice. Unnecessary cruelty to animals is definitely something we need to mitigate in the first world but we just don't know enough about diet and nutrition to eliminate meat from all of our diets. Vegans are guinea pigs.
Furthermore, abstaining from hunting and consuming animals, or raising them, either leads to animal suffering anyway, or animal genocide. Human hunting is a natural part of a balanced ecosystem, and while over-hunting is bad, under-hunting can be just as bad or worse in destroying bio-diversity. Without farms that pay for themselves we must euthanize all those species (cows, pigs, chickens) which can no longer take care of themselves in a natural environment.
All life is locked in competition for energy, and on earth it's a zero sum game. Plants crowd out and kill one-another by seeking the light more greedily (although if they manage to starve everything else, the overall ecosystem becomes less diverse and less robust, cue: the predator), just like animals compete with one another over the consumption of plants, and likewise animals higher up the food chain over the consumption of those lower down.
Without this hierarchy that aggregates solar energy into the consumable meat packages that animals are, humans would not exist. Someone will always be left with or on the short end of the thermodynamic plate. The presence of the deer might mean the vegetation cannot mature, which might bereave other animals of their home (i.e, a rabbit or field mouse). No wabbits means no fox, no coyote, no Tasmanian devil. Killing the deer saves the mouse and gives purpose to the wolf.
But we're not exactly the shepherds of all nature are we? We should try to keep things balanced for our own sake, if anything, but it is not yet our normative duty to ensure the survival of all other forms of life for their own sake (because we're not fit to lead in that respect). Just as the deer competes to the best of their ability, so to should we. It's what keep us healthy and what keeps us thriving. One day if we become masters of biology and technology and can grow hamburgers in a petri dish we can stop eating animals. And then if we ever master the understanding of complex ecosystems and biodiversity, we might gain some normative obligation to make decisions on behalf of all other life on earth about what gets to survive.
TL;DR: nutrition and expense deficits caused by the switch to veganism make it presently too risky. Humans aren't yet obligated to abstain from killing animals, but maybe one day we will be when we can actually pull it off. We would be foolish to think that we have effective decision making power when it comes to what's best for nature; nature destroys and remakes herself constantly, and if we want to continue existing, and to continue thriving, it needs to make room for us. We should leave room for it, but it's not an off-limits resource, it's our hard won inheritance. Also, unnecessary cruelty to living creatures is bad and we should minimize it...
When the existence of two beings are at odds with one another (such as in the case of predator and prey), there can be no moral agreement between them due to circumstance alone. Thus what I like to call "a breakdown of morality" occurs, and competition ensues.
Until predator and prey have the means to escape the circumstances that define them as such, their moral justification is basic health and survival.
Quoting Sapientia
This is the same problem I've had with you and Txastopher. You never answer questions. I ask you to clarify something, and you just repeat yourself. I asked to clarify what exact question that you are referring to that you claim is rhetorical, and you don't answer. Are you actually incapable of answering other people's questions?
Based on what standard. Have you done the necessary research? Have you talked to a dietician? Have you asked for help from Vegans who have lived healthy for years?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
We can live healthier [for ourselves and the environment] if we adopt a plant-based diet. Whether or not the world is willing to give up a tradition or societal norm, is irrelevant to the facts.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yet you are not in the position of an indigenous tribesman, so there's no need to compare yourself to them. Some Indigenous groups may have to eat meat because it is necessary for survival, but they also lack the education/awareness of animal replacements. You are not in that position, this is an irrelevant point.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Are you in a third world country? Probably not. But even so, most places "meat" is considered a luxury. Corn, rice, soy, grains, fruits, vegetables are much more accessible than animal products.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Again, as I intially stated. Have you consulted with a professional? Talked to other Vegans who have been healthy for years? Talked to Vegans who have a similar condition as you do in regards to metabolism? Talked to a dietician?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
This is a complete dismissal of the current scientific consensus. We know as much about plant-based diets than we do about evolution by natural selection, or whether or not the earth is flat. I'll post some scientific journals for you in my Google Doc, since you seem to be unaware of the scientific research.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Here: https://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/matheny.html
Look up Gaverick Matheny's reponse to Steven Davis in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. This idea was refuted back in 2003.
Also. We would stop breeding animals into existence, while selling the majority [that are left over] for food, and keeping the rest in an animal sanctuary.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Killing deer in the wild is not comparable to breeding animals into existence, torturing them and then slaughtering them. Such as how they do it in factory farms.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
But apparently we aren't foolish when we make the effective decision to use our power to breed animals into existence and torture them and kill them by the billions? Not to mention all the harm we do to sea life as well.
Do you have some kind of disability that makes it unusually difficult to answer a simple question I have asked you? I respond to a vast number of questions and comments constantly, in which I also ask a vast number of questions and make statements in response to other people. I asked you to clarify what question I asked that you deemed as "rhetorical". Answer the question, or go away.
This is also why I told you to debate me over voice chat, because you are continuing to do what I said you do. Which is, ignore questions and clarification statements. I wouldn't let you dodge so easily over voice, which is why you wouldn't dare to debate me outside of text.
I've done research, I've tried various diets, and I've known plenty of successful and failed vegans. If you're going to just refer me to a dietician I'm not sure we can have a discussion.
Quoting chatterbears
I know vegans who are less healthy than they were on an omnivorous diet. Are they just doing it wrong?
We may consume too much meat, but converting all that pastureland into farmland (and then somehow fertilizing it without cow-shit) is actually likely more expensive than the vegan dieticians let on.
We could shop around for articles about nutrition and the economics of agriculture I suppose. I'm game for this but are you sure the scientific community has concluded in in these matters?
Quoting chatterbears
My secondary point in bringing up indigenous tribesman is to point out that from an evolutionary perspective, eating meat is a part of who I am. I'm a part of the food chain; it's why I have incisors. Changing my diet radically is a risk you might not be able to convince me to take and is one evolution has perhaps scarcely prepared me for.
Quoting chatterbears
So, because vegetables are more ubiquitous in third world countries, they should not eat any meat? If I was under-nourished, meat would indeed be a luxury, one that would improve my health.
Quoting chatterbears
Yes I have, but are you a dietician? Otherwise citing sources is your best bet
I've done research and the claims I make paraphrase the main points which I've seen the evidence for.
I would be happy to offer sources if you expect them.
Quoting chatterbears
No. We know the earth is an oblate spheroid with mammoth certainty. We also that natural selection is a feature of nature with mammoth certainty, but we don't know all the details of our evolutionary past. We know with mammoth certainty that diet affects health, but we don't know all the details about which diet is best and for whom (hence the last 50 years of gimmick diets, FDA 180's on nutrition, disparity in international standards, and continuous scientific investigation). What's good for you might not be good for me.
And it stands to reason that if my ancestors spent the last 2000 years eating meat on a regular basis, my individual biology is more adapted to a diet that includes some meat.
The staples of most early humans included beans wheat and starchy tubers, some kind of plant, but they didn't dis-include fish and mammals, especially where seasonal periods of reduced vegetation made that impossible. Plant-based diets can yield long-term health benefits but only when they're very well planned, and there isn't enough kale for all of us (the economics of which is a major barrier toward societal/global veganism). Furthermore, being a naturally thin person (maybe that comes with my unique genetic territory), not eating meat could put me at risk of protein/fat deficiency, and gorging myself on beans and peanuts to keep weight might have health detriments of its own.
Quoting chatterbears
This does not address the point I made. A pity-sanctuary to keep a few specimens on hand isn't a refutation of the fact that the animals we breed and raise on farms otherwise would not exist. My point about suffering is that in the wild animals suffer too. Is natural suffering fine because it's natural? A cow raised on a farm can lead a much happier life with much better odds than just about anything that can be found in the wild. How we treat them is a matter of concern to me, but I would wager that it would be better to be born, live, and suffer, than to have never been born at all. The position you've taken borders on anti-natialism which could be applied to humans as well. Is that a position you wield?
Quoting chatterbears
Torture is wrong, and it tends to spoil the meat anyway. The indoor KFC stacked farming model is bad in every way, and not many people would disagree.
Breeding something into existence that would otherwise never exist seems like a positive to me. That we can only afford to do so if it eventually feeds us is unfortunate.
Quoting chatterbears
Life has suffering in it, but there need not be torture. All humans will eventually be killed by something, and we have the exquisite torture of knowing, so should we stop breeding?
Also, polluting the oceans is a bad thing. Fish DO have feelings.
You may have done research, but did you do the proper research that would allow you to get the adequate vitamins and levels you need to be healthy? Have you tried to become Vegan for a month or two and then initiated a blood test to check your levels to see if you have any deficiencies? Have you then corrected those deficiencies by eating more of what you need to correct them? Or possibly tried taking supplements?
Also, saying you've known plenty of unsuccessful Vegans is a non sequitur. There more unsuccessful meat eaters than there are unsuccessful Vegans. You act as if people who eat meat are generally healthier and are more successful at planning their diet. That's absurd, and the data shows the opposite. That even the best well-planned diet that includes meat is less healthy than a well-planned diet that only includes plant-based products. But that is also the entire point, the idea of well-planning. You can be entirely unhealthy and unsuccessful as a Vegan if you do not plan correctly and eat the proper foods. French fries and Oreos are Vegan, yet I wouldn't suggest including those into your daily consumption routine.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yes. This is the equivalent of saying, "I've known non-smokers who were less healthy than they were when they were smoking. Are they just doing it wrong?" - It is a known fact that eating a plant-based diet is more healthy than an omnivorous diet. Here are a few points of reference:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5638464/ - We humans do not need meat. In fact, we are healthier without it, or at least with less of it in our diets. The Adventist Health Studies provide solid evidence that vegan, vegetarian, and low-meat diets are associated with statistically significant increases in quality of life and modest increases in longevity.
https://www.bda.uk.com/news/view?id=179 - British Dietetic Association confirms well-planned vegan diets can support healthy living in people of all ages
http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/planning-meals/meal-planning-for-vegetarians/ - People with diabetes can choose to follow this type of vegetarian diet (VEGAN)
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/100/suppl_1/496S/4576707 - The former prejudices that vegetarianism leads to malnutrition were replaced by scientific evidence showing that vegetarian nutrition reduces the risk of most contemporary diseases.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food. To produce a day’s food for one meat-eater takes over 4,000 gallons; for a lacto-ovo vegetarian, only 1200 gallons; for a vegan, only 300 gallons.
And regarding crops, using land to grow crops for animals is vastly inefficient. It takes almost 20 times less land to feed someone on a plant-based (vegan) diet than it does to feed a meat-eater since the crops are consumed directly instead of being used to feed animals. According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, it takes up to 10 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat, and in the United States alone, 56 million acres of land are used to grow feed for animals, while only 4 million acres are producing plants for humans to eat.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Most of the research is in my Google Doc, which I already linked you in my past response. Feel free to do your own research, because it is out there, just as the evidence for evolution is out there.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
The Hippo and Gorilla have incisors/fangs. Does this make them meat eaters? No, because they are Herbivores.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Meat isn't some magical pill that fixes people who are malnourished. Again, look up the studies yourself, or you can refer to the ones I have posted for you.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yes please.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
As I said before, all diets (including omnivorous ones) need to be well-planned. And saying there isn't enough kale for all of us, is completely irrelevant and inaccurate.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
It's not "fine", but it is better. Would you rather suffer from a disease (that is possibly curable), or have someone factory farm you, torture you, and then slit your throat?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
So you're telling me that it is better to be born into torture and slaughter, than to not be born at all? That's just ridiculous, and you fundamentally know it. If you were given the choice to live again after this life, and the choice was to live as a factory farmed animal or not live at all, to say you would choose the factory farmed animal life is dishonest and absurd.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
This is irrelevant. I am referring to causing unnecessary pain. We are all going to die some day by something, but in the meantime, it would be best to avoid causing each other (and other animals) unnecessary harm. Such as, going around and raping people. By your logic, we are all going to die any way, so should we all be okay with rape?
Seriously?
I just want you guys to be clear about wich exact group of animals you are talking about. Just referring to them as 'animals' while you seem to mean only mammals seems quite disingenious. It's still not even clear if you just mean vertebrates, or just vertebrates humans sympathize with, or just cows, pigs, chickens and two specific other animals. Please clearly define the group you are discussing so we all know what you are talking about.
You clearly demonstrated to have understood my critisism correctly. Where exaclty do we draw the line between 'sentient' and 'not sentient' when considering animals? clearly somewhere between single celled sessille animals without a nervous system and mammals, but where exactly? As long as that is not clearly defined it's impossible to have a sensible discussion about it. Since it's impossible to have a sensible discussion about anything as long it's not clear what exactly is discussed.
Nonsense, in your first post you stated 'animals' not 'sentient animals'. Secondly it's still unclear where you draw the line. Are animals that have a central nervous system but no brain sentient?
Suggesting that I want to state that 'you don't need a brain or nervous system to process pain' is a disingenious strawman at best. I am pointing out you are making generalizations where you clearly intended to be more specific. And instead of becoming more specific by clearly stating where you draw the line between sentient and non sentient animals, you attempt to strawman my position by suggesting things I 'want' to say without me having said anything that could possibly validate that conclusion.
Quoting chatterbears
And this is the strawman. I never even suggested that, I stated that several animals don't differ from your description on plants, so if you claim for that reason plants can be eaten without moral objections, why can't those animals without nervous systems be eaten without moral objections? You may be able to see the direction the needle on the compas is pointing, but you confuse north with south.
You cannot prove that the plant "wants" either in the same way you can't prove that the animal "wants". You are adding on to it your human feelings to justify why animals deserve to live and plants do not. I said nothing about their pain. I don't care about that. What I care about is why you put their right to live at their sentience. I read your paragraph about why, but it stops in the same place. Why does sentience give you the right to live and not just the fact that you are living?
Rocks do not reproduce. Plants, fungi, bacteria, animals all do. They are different. Plant and animal destruction for our livelihood can be avoided. Fungi and bacteria are nearly impossible to avoid. I consider all of those organisms to be worthy of life. By their existence they affirm their wanting of life. That is how I judge their right to live. Not by their sentience. Not by the possible pain they exhibit. But by the fact that they are living beings. If we could avoid killing all of them that would be nice. But fungi and Bacteria are practically impossible to avoid in order to live, so their consideration is impossible to accommodate. Animals and plants are not. That was my point. It is not pseudoscience. It is philosophy. I based it on philosophy, not on their ability to feel pain relative to each other (science). Or their sentience, relative to one another ( again a scientific claim).
And contrary to what I'm typing I am not a fruitarian. I am, hypocritically enough, an omnivore who eats meat rarely, that argues for fruitarianism because it seems to be the proper conclusion to any argument about living beings having the right to live. Not the Vegan: All living things should be respected, EXCEPT plants. Or Pescetarian diets that also modify their definitions to their liking. The extreme of that is not eating anything, not doing anything. Obviously that isn't possible and no one can live that way. The next best is fruitarianism. Where all living organisms are respected as much as humanely possible while still allowing for a normal life. (sorry to the Fungi and Bacteria : /)
I said nothing about the positive ends of veganism because I thought they were self evident. I agree that people should practice it as I see it as part of the path towards a fruit based life style. I just don't see why plants get left out.
Plant- Living (can avoid)
Animal- Living (can avoid)
Fungi- Living (can't avoid killing if I want to live a normal life)
Bacteria- Living (can't avoid killing if I want to live a normal life)
Rock- Not living=irrelevant
If it lives, it's wrong to kill it. That's it. I don't care if it is sentient or feels pain.
Not really, there are many single celled plants and animals that are undetectable with the naked human eye. Perhaps you meant to restrict it to plants and animals with a body mass over 100 gram orso. Otherwise how are you going to prevent a bug from flying in your mouth when you yawn while riding your bike?
Quoting Tomseltje
Well first of all, it would have to be intentional. So that example wouldn't be. XD But, yeah. I meant it in a general sense. You can avoid eating plants or animals but still survive if you wanted to. : )
Edit: Mmmmmmmm, bugs in my mouth. :razz:
So, I've read through the "evidence" you keep quoting. I can't find a single source which supports any of the claims you're trying to make. Perhaps you could guide me to the one in particular you think best supports your claim that eating meat from hunting wild animals, scrap-fed and year-round open pasture fed animals is more harmful to ourselves and the environment.
Ive found an awful lot of papers which support the claim that vegan diet "can" be more healthy than "some" or "most" omnivorous diets. I've found a lot of support for the idea that farming vegetables "can" cause less environmental damage than "some" or "most" forms of animal rearing.
What I have not found is where you are getting your claim that all forms of meat-eating are more harmful than vegan diets.
I'm also getting very confused about your claim, reading your response to @VagabondSpectre. You seem to be making two claims at different times.
1. That all unnecessary harm is unethical, meat-eating causes unnecessary harm (to the animal, ourselves, or the environment) and is therefore unethical.
2. That all unnecessary killing of sentient creatures (or those with the potential for sentience) is unethical, meat-eating requires the killing of an animal and is therefore unethical.
The problem I'm having understanding this is that 1) is clearly a subset of 2). I don't understand why you're spending so much time defending 1) if you actually think 2) is defensible. Conversely, I don't understand why you would keep referring to 2) if you do not think it is defensible.
To put it another way, if you think it is logically inevitable from any consistent ethics that killing a sentient creature is morally wrong, then why are you even arguing about the harm issue? Just lay out your inviolable argument that killing another sentient creature is unethical and that should be an end to it.
If, however, that argument at 2) is not inviolable, then your argument at 1) only applies in so far as harm can be demonstrated and agreed. A wild animal suffers no harm (in this second, weaker sense) from being hunted, there's clearly no impact on the environment (all authors agree that management of grazing is essential to a healthy ecosystem), and you've provided no evidence that lean, wild meat is a harmful addition to the diet.
If you think you can argue 2), then argue 2), 1) is entirely superfluous if 2) can be demonstrated to be the case. If 2) cannot be demonstrated to be the case, then how does your argument at 1) alone cover hunting wild animals?
I've tried eating little to no meat, and I lost weight. I tried eating a variety of nuts and beans, as I indicated, but it wasn't enough. I'm not presently willing to experiment further. As I have indicated, I'm skinny enough and losing weight is a health concern of mine.
I am not in a position to hire a team of doctors and dieticians.
Quoting chatterbears
Those 56 million acres aren't suitable for growing vegetables, you're aware of that right?
Livestock turn un-farmable pastureland and low quality fields into nutrient dense meat and milk. This is how farms tend to work where I live: we feed our cows hay in the winter and graze them in the summer.
They're not actually taking food out of our mouths, they're putting food into them.
So, the efficiency with which we can capitalize on low quality land by either by cheaply growing feed on it (which can grow where things like corn and tomatoes cannot) or grazing animals on it actually nets us more food in the long run. The fertilizer and other animal by-products we get from them are additional economic boons.
Granted, America consumes too much beef, I'm not denying that. The fact that they have to mass farm cattle feed to sustain their ultra-massive cattle farms is a waste of water at the extreme end. But it would be a waste of water not to graze animals on pastureland. The delusion that this 56 million acres suddenly start producing veg is silly to anyone who understands how farms work.
Here's an article that touches on some of the facts: http://www.cast-science.org/download.cfm?PublicationID=278268&File=1e30d1bf7a7156ce24b3154cc313b587d97bTR
a few quotes from the abstract:
There's a reason animal husbandry is a part of our agricultural traditions, and it's not just because we like the taste of meat. Free range chickens lead happy lives eating insects and such; they give us eggs, meat, and nitrogen rich fertilizer ingredient. Free range cows lead happy lives chewing grass, and they give us quite a bit of milk and meat along with more fertilizer ingredient. Pigs basically turn waste into meat, and while I personally would not farm pigs to eat them, on certain kinds of farms they can be useful (Permaculture).
Having too many animals just for extra meat is inefficient. Having no animals is also quite inefficient though, and I don't think we can afford it.
Quoting chatterbears
Of the articles which address the issue in question, they all seem to openly state that eliminating animal products altogether carries the risk of certain nutritional deficiencies.
Quoting Winston J Craig
I've been very open with you from the get go about my own health concerns. "Thinner" for me would mean "unhealthier". I would consider for moral reasons not eating any meat if it didn't seem so risky, and the societal/global economics of not eating meat altogether is another story (a very complicated one).
There are clearly benefits to our society increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables it consumes, but eliminating animal products entirely is seldom the object of dietary study (they tend to look at the benefits of increasing plant consumption or reducing meat consumption, not eliminating animal products entirely).
Thank you for leading by example though, and for doing this experimentation on yourself. I say un-facetiously that it's akin to the poison squad. When the results are in and I can be reliably told what will work for me, I may become a vegan.
Quoting chatterbears
Hippos occasionally nibble on dead flesh, but they have elongated canines for show. While it's true almost all mammals have canines, (and eating meat at some point during our evolutionary past does not make us omnivores today automatically), humans have functional canines which aren't for show. They're sharp and great for tearing meat. Every other primate has longer incisors than humans, which makes me speculate that having them such as they are in humans is somehow useful (speaking and chewing).
Quoting chatterbears
I'm talking about starvation. A pound of meat is far more fat, protein, and energy rich than any vegetable. My point here applies to the third world and many developing countries with hungry children.
Quoting chatterbears
Before we do get into the article scavenger hunt, we should come to specific agreement about what it is we're disagreeing about.
a) I'm contending that going completely animal free will be expensive, which will either translate into less nourishment for children or less investment elsewhere (even in the first world).
My second point of contention, which applies to me and people like me, is that for whatever reason b) my biology is ill-suited to going completely meat free. I do know that different people can do better or worse on different kinds of diets. It may very well be the case that the presence or absence of digestive/metabolizing enzymes or other bacteria in my gut are in fact oriented toward omnivorous diets (or something equally obscure and unknown to me). I don't know why I do so poorly without meat, but until something changes in me or our knowledge of individual nutritional needs, I won't risk it.
You're free to name me ignorant and refer me to an army of dieticians who will happily prescribe and proscribe according to their understanding, I just happen to already know the success rate isn't where they want it to be.
Quoting chatterbears
It makes me wonder if studies contrasting vegetarians and omnivores can properly control for the fact that vegetarians are generally concerned with having well-planned diets in the first place. It may be that whatever nutritional benefits animal products can provide do not outweigh the health implications of well rounded plant consumption, and so if omnivores started eating better varieties of vegetables they would see these same health benefits. Perhaps a well planned diet that does include some animal products with good nutrients (fats, calcium, b12) and an adequate variety of vegetables is actually superior?
Quoting chatterbears
Quoting chatterbears
Quoting chatterbears
This is really something. I've already made it clear that factory farming is wrong, torture is wrong, and causing unnecessary harm to animals is wrong.
Somehow you've managed to draw moral equivalence between raising a free-range chicken and rape.
If my life as a farmed animal contained some moments of joy and contentment in addition to the torture (so, pleasure in addition to pain) then yes I would choose to be born as a farm animal over non-existence.
Let me ask you in return, would you rather exist as a free-range pig or goat or cow or cease to exist?
The ending of a farm animal's life, if done humanely, is itself the only "unnecessary" suffering that a healthy and ethically raised farm animal endures. And for us to afford to bring these animals into existence in the first place, we must inevitably take this action. The animal gets to live a life and our life gets to continue. Win win in my opinion.
I'm not saying just because we are all going to die: anything goes. This is a ramification of the way you equate the life and existence of an ethically raised farm animal to being endlessly tortured and raped. It's not endless torture and rape. Ever see a happy cow? Here's a small group of cows returning to the field after a winter of being pent up in a barn (gif).
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I'm pretty sure these cows might be on the "grass is half green side of the fence" about life. (Famous cow expressions).
If merely dying one day (at the hands of someone or something else) makes life not worth living for an ethically raised farm animal, then what makes life worth living for humans?
I'll say it again, it's better to exist and have suffered than to never have existed at all.
It is nonsensical to compare qualitatively non existence to existence. There is no individual for whom it is better or worse that he or she does not exist, because there exist no non existent individuals.
Nonsensical is a bit strong don't you think?
Is life worth living? Might be a better way to put it.
So, if i accidently run over a deer with my car and then eat it, and since the killing wasn't intentional it's ok?
I doubt humans can survive on eating funghi and bacteria solely as you seem to be claiming, while not accidently eating plants and/or animals.
"Nonsensical" is the only way to describe something that makes no sense. Talking about what is better or worse for non-existing entities makes no sense.
And whether life is worth living is not really the question--the question is whether we have the right to cause suffering and to end that living. Your statements imply that you agree that animals like cows, pigs, and chickens have lives which have worth to them. In order to justify taking these from them, we would have to have something more important to gain. But if you look at what we gain, it is merely a momentary sensory pleasure which is easily both nutritionally and aesthetically (taste being an aesthetic value) replicated by plant-based foods.
You claim to have some sort of medical issue that makes meat-eating a necessity--I am sympathetic to the fact that you may even actually believe this. However, there are no documented cases of medical conditions that I am aware of that absolutely necessitate the consumption of meat for optimal health. Until there is science to show that what you are claiming is true, I'm afraid for the purposes of this discussion, it can only be seen as anecdotal, which just doesn't count for much.
Ah I see. But the question still stands as to whether a painless animal kill is equivalent to a plant or insect kill. Which removes the variable of an animal's capacity to feel pain. Do we now determine what to consume based on intellectual capacity?
Quoting Tomseltje
No, because eating the deer is intentional making it wrong. The killing was accidental, just like the insect flying in your mouth was.
I never claimed that. I said humans can survive on fruit.
While I can relate to your pedantic attitude, calling the straw-man version of my question nonsense and dodging the actual question by saying "that's not really the question" is quite unsatisfying. In any case, the question was meant for the OP who basically declared that the life of a farm animal is not worth living.
As I have previously indicated, thermodynamically speaking, we need to justify expending the resources to breed and raise farm animals.
The resources we dispense in the raising of the animals must be recuperated, else we cannot affords to raise the animals. You've already tacitly agreed that farm animal lives are worth living even if at some point they must be consumed, so we could either not breed farm animals whose lives are worth living in order to avoid having to kill them, or we could continue breeding them and ethically raise and slaughter them.
If I've decided killing animals to eat their meat is wrong, what must I do with my hypothetical chickens?
I might not be able to afford to keep them, so should I turn them loose (so the cats and coyotes can devour them like so many tendies) or do I euthanize them?
What's the difference between euthanasia + cremation and euthanasia + consumption?
Quoting NKBJ
Well I AM the anecdote, so it's not quite fallacious. If I was trying to establish that we all needed meat for optimal health you would have a point, but what I've reported is that if I do not eat meat, I lose weight. I can honestly and reliably report that I've tried to put on weight since adolescence and it really doesn't come easy for me. I don't know why...
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Well, if you look at human and ask that question it should be clear what the difference is.
For the other parts of your comment I would suggest we just not raise animals then? I think that would be the proper thing if we really didn't want them to be killed by our hands. You can just let them go. : )
Quoting yatagarasu
If you eat fruit you eat plant. You may not be killing the plant for it (though you are 'killing' the plants offspring in the fruit). Even if it were possible for humans to survive on eating fruit alone.
Quoting yatagarasu
Why is eating the deer wrong if it doesn't cause any additional suffering for the deer? I should let the flies eat it instead because that's the moral thing to do? why is letting the flies eat it more moral than eating it myself?
If i eat fruit the eating of it is intentional as well, following that logic, eating fruit is just as immoral.
Quoting Tomseltje
Not if you plant the seeds. It is possible to survive on fruit alone, it is just more difficult ( and not advisable for young people ).
Quoting Tomseltje
Huh. Thought about this for a while. Consulted vegan friends and they, including myself, couldn't find anything wrong with eating an animal that died of natural causes or was killed unintentionally. I guess it's okay, you would just be hard pressed to find a lot of meat this way, not to mention that eating animals at old age is pretty unappetizing (from what I've heard).
If a person kills another human after administering a drug to make it painless, does that mean it is less wrong? Humans and other animals like cows, chickens, and pigs all value their lives. In part, yes, being capable of valuing life is an intellectual capacity--we can obviously see that pigs sunning themselves oinking for joy, or cows nuzzling each other, and dogs playing fetch are happy. To deny this is just stubbornness. I've said it before: it's just plain ridiculous to compare the value of an animal's life to that of a plant. It's obvious that beheading even an unconscious kitten is not the same as dicing a potato.
Do you call everything you simply can't counter a strawperson? Because I very directly was addressing your argument that it is better to live and suffer than never to have lived. Which is nonsense.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Satisfying or not, it's true. If you're so concerned about animals having a life to live, go ahead and open an animal sanctuary--just don't kill them for food.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
You let them live the rest of their natural lives in peace--is being kind really so unfathomable to you?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Easy solution: don't cause them to exist. Non-existent entities also do not care about existing--you can't harm anyone by choosing not to cause their existence. That would be nonsensical (as explained previously).
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yes, it still is fallacious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
Sorry, but just as it wouldn't matter in a philosophical argument about gods or ghosts or unicorns that you personally testified to seeing any of these things with your own eyes, it doesn't matter here that you claim to suffer when abstaining from meat. Even if I believe that you did everything nutritionally correct, the placebo effect is real as well as strong, not to mention coincidental other factors of illnesses or stressors or hormonal fluctuations could all account for your experience. Without controlled experiments or strong statistical evidence, all your personal experience tells me is that it is possible that we might want to do some studies in the case that perhaps there are a couple of exceptions to the general rule.
Are farm animal lives worth living? This is the question; it's not nonsense. You have no excuse to keep saying this is nonsense.
Quoting NKBJ
So release my chickens into the wild where they will be swiftly set upon by starvation and predation? Nonsense.
They will live shorter lives of greater suffering if released; farm animals cannot fend for themselves.
It seems like releasing them is immoral compared to euthanasia.
Quoting NKBJ
Things that do not exist likewise do not get to enjoy life. It may not be morally reproachable to not cause something to exist but it's not morally praiseworthy to not cause something to exist either.
So we're back to the question of whether or not the lives of farm animals are worth living.
I think in many cases they are. The pleasures and joy of life can outweigh the pain.
Do you disagree?
I didn't say that question was nonsense. I said comparing existence to non-existence is nonsense. I said the question of whether life is worth living is besides the point, because you're trying to find a way to justify harming and killing them.
For an already existing being, yes, life is worth living and thus you have the obligation to let them live and thus you ought not to kill them.
For a non-existent being, life is neither worth living nor not worth living, because non-existent beings don't value anything.
For a creature who is living in pure agony because we have fattened her up so much her legs break beneath her, and she never sees sunlight, and she can hardly breathe because there are so many of her kind stuffed in a barn, and she will never get the chance to raise her babies, or enjoy a fresh breeze.... that's not a life you should condemn any creature to, but it is what we do to billions of farm animals every year.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I didn't say that. I said let them live--I mentioned animal sanctuaries-- if you want to put them in this world, you have the obligation to make sure they are safe, and healthy, and as happy as possibly until the end of their natural lifespan.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I didn't say it's morally praiseworthy. Abstaining from meat eating is not about doing a positive thing as much as it is about avoiding doing or participating in a negative one. Similarly, I do not join or support the KKK--that doesn't mean I'm doing anything praiseworthy, it just means I avoid doing something condemnable.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Just like you do not get to go up to someone, stab them to death, steal their wallet, and tell them "you've lived a good enough life to outweigh this little thing", so too you ought not kill animals for your own gain no matter how well you've treated them.
Anecdotal evidence can be fallacious for a number of reasons (subjective testimony, irreproducibility, etc...), but my testimony about myself would not be considered anecdotal when it comes to establishing the truth about me, because my own experiences are by definition representative of me (whereas normally anecdotes can amount to hasty generalizations, reporting observed facts about myself is specific, does not generalize about anyone else, and is therefore not fallacious).
Claiming to have seen a unicorn is not a form of argument at all, it's a claim. Using it as a premise for the existence of unicorns would not be anecdotal either because actually observing a unicorn would be sufficient proof for its existence. Anecdotes prove anecdotes
An example of a fallacious argument using anecdotal evidence would be "I've seen someone incorrectly attempt a vegan diet and fail before, and you've failed at a vegan diet therefore you must have attempted it incorrectly.".
It's true that I've attempted plant-based diets, it's true that I lost weight while attempting them, it's true that losing weight is a health concern for me, therefore it's true that attempting plant-based diets in the future comes with some degree of risk.
Well I've explained why their death at our hands is made necessary by thermodynamics alone, else they cannot exist, and you don't seem to be offering rebuke to that, so the question I'm asking is from the perspective of the extant farm animal: is life worth living even though I'm destined for death? (we should note that this question, as it is phrased, applies equally to humans and is indeed worthy of inquiry)
If as you say asking this question prior to their existence is nonsensical (though it isn't, we have a very good idea of what kind of creature farm animals will be, and how content they are likely to be with their arrangements), then you will have no objection to me ethically breeding farm animals because they don't exist yet and therefore have no preference (animals can breed on their own; all you gotta do is feed them).
Once they're alive, as you say, the dilemma then begins.
So, I could euthanize Bovina and Child on the spot because I cannot afford to keep them alive, and starvation is torture, OR, we could strike some sort of deal.
I agree to feed and care for the them, and to euthanize them much later in life, if they agree to let me consume their flesh once I have euthanized them. They get relatively long and happy lives out of the deal and I get a thermodynamic return on my investment. This euthanasia is necessary for domesticated farm animals to begin with, so all I'm really doing is extending their lives, which are quite possibly worth living.
Quoting NKBJ
Moral obligation can be evaporated by circumstance. Delivering adequate nutrition to humans across the planet is one such fiery circumstance.
What magnitude of delay to human progress should we accept by suddenly and simultaneously ceasing the consumption and harvesting of animals? I don't think you're aware of the initial and long term costs of turning every grocery isle into an organic produce section. To do so, I reckon we would need to give up certain activities altogether to afford it without impacting medicine education and security (which seems impossible). Hard to say what we would be giving up though (a little bit of everything probably), let's just guess and say sports and space travel...
Maybe if we gave up space travel as a species and divested all its energy into going organic we could do the goats a solid and stop consuming them. But maybe by sacrificing space-faring sciences we will miss opportunities which could have changed our thermodynamic landscape entirely (i.e, growing burgers and tomatoes fueled by carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen harvested in space) and will thereby prolong the suffering of animals at the hands of humans still living within nature (tribesman, third world), etc...). I'm no fan of sports and honestly wouldn't miss it, but a lot of people would. Perhaps living agrarian lives of gardening and goat-sanctuary building would fulfill our many sports-fans, or perhaps they would funnel that competitive spirit into patriotism for their nation or in-group, and as plants would more or less become a massive part of the new economy, competition over access to the best farmland could become existentially grave.
A slippery slope to be sure (yes it's a fallacy, no it's not my argument; it's a hypothetical depicting possible costs). I cannot say what the true costs will be, but it should be very clear that such radical change does come with cost. To be honest I'm hopeful that science will offer us a solution soon. If we can get abundant energy and can afford to start farming sans animals or even synthesizing nutriments directly then the western world could go plant-based in short order.
We're not there yet though...
If farm animals are to continue existing, individually and generationally, then we're thermodynamically obligated to kill and consume them.
Quoting NKBJ
Do all farm animals live this way?
Let's euthanize them all then shall we?
Quoting NKBJ
They have evolved to be taken care of on a farm. Farms are their natural environment.
We cannot afford to give every chicken a helmet and body-armor or jump through whatever hoops are required to release them into the wild. And if we DO manage to create a large enough habitat which they can survive in, then they'll just start breeding, and we will have to manage the habitat indefinitely (and probably start culling them or else indefinitely expand the habitat).
And if we sterilize everything and establish animal Ritz across the country to wait for them to die of natural causes, the expense would create financial deficit and possibly global food shortages in the 5-10 year term. Obviously this is unfeasible, hence, like PETA we're reduced to euthanasia.
Quoting NKBJ
Yes, but by advocating for the genocide of all farmed animals in the name of moral progress, you're advocating for something similar to what Hitler advocated for. I don't know if that's relevant or means anything or constitutes an argument, but I felt that I should just point it out.
Causing something to exist and providing it with a worthwhile existence at the expense of one day consuming it is the moral trade in question. If I'm arguing for the enslavement of animals, then you're calling for their extermination, but these facetious kind of lines wont advance our discussion.
Strangely, you keep referring to eating meat directly (and the intention to do so) as the immoral behavior instead of the suffering that eating meat possibly causes (which is a strange point of focus). Obviously if you focused mainly on the suffering, then happy farm animals who are slaughtered humanely avoid your condemnation. You've thrown up resistance to the fact that immediate euthanasia would be the only choice if we aren't allowed to eat the meat but I hope you can realize the logistics of animal sanctuaries are beyond our means.
If we must focus on eating meat, then let it be known that eating meat can also contribute to the existence and happiness of farm animals. Does that count for nothing? Not all farms are inhumane...
Quoting NKBJ
If I treated animals like I treated humans then your point would stand, but I cannot yet afford to. Humanity at large cannot yet afford to. We've been expanding our spheres of moral consideration to more people and more animals for quite some time, and we still have a ways to go. Forcing immediate and maximal moral consideration of animals would mean reducing moral consideration toward other humans by means of cost alone. when every child is vaccinated and has a well planned, supplement included plant-based diet, then we can afford to let our farm animals die of natural causes out of charity, and perhaps even establish sanctuaries to keep their species around.
There are yet hard thermodynamic requirements for the earth's 7.6 billion humans, and it's not our fault that we have not yet freed ourselves from the food-chains of evolution. Animal husbandry is still too significant a part of even first world agricultural food production to do away with it over-night.
Why? You then rattle on about the general requirements needed by others (not yourself). Why can you not yet afford to?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Do you not realize that almost every child AND adult do NOT have a well-planned diet that includes meat and dairy? If most people had a well-planned diet, then your point would stand, but every type of diet needs to be well-planned. And we currently don't have that right now, even with diets including meat. And most deficiencies found in humans are NOT because of a plant-based diet. They are actually found in meat eaters.
Also, do we let our current pets, such as dogs & cats die of natural causes out of charity? To say you will let something live naturally out of charity, is slightly psychopathic.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
If it is not our fault, who's fault is it? It doesn't matter if something is a significant part of a society. If it is more detrimental than beneficial, we should change it. We can't even get people to acknowledge that it is detrimental, let alone even glance at the idea that we should change it.
My main point is you still eat (part of) the plant, so it's not possible to survive without eating plants as you previously stated. It may be possible to live on fruit alone for a while, but not for a full human life. especially not if living in colder climates or doing hard labor requiring over 5000 kcal a day.
Besides, when is the last time you picked off all seeds of a strawberry and planted them? It may be possible, but even for most vegans too unpractical to be practicing all the time.
Quoting yatagarasu
Glad we can at least agree on that part. So it's not wether the act of eating meat that is immoral but it's about wether the act of killing an animal in order to eat it is immoral. Seeing you are sensible about this one, perhaps you can come up with an answer on where to draw the line between wich animals are okay kill for food and wich aren't. Assuming you have no problem with killing single celled sessile animals that is. They don't provide meat, but they can still be quite nutricious, and will be killed in the process of digesting. (if you do have a problem with digesting single celled animals, I wonder how you prevent yourself from doing so, since they can't be seen without using a microscope)
You're just all sorts of confused. I have not advocated for killing animals--you have. I'm advocating for not putting them in this world if all we're gonna do is cause them suffering and murder them anyway. And I'm advocating for letting the existing animals live in peace.
Adopting a global vegan diet would require fewer resources than the meat-intensive ones that are currently wide-spread.
Argue for your anecdote all you want--as you point out, all it can do is have any meaning to you--but it has no meaning to me or anyone with whom you are trying to engage in a philosophical conversation. You simply don't have any solid evidence to back you up, thus I have no reason to believe you.
And how does it make any sense to argue that the value of life outweighs the tragedy of death, therefore murder is acceptable? Again, you can't go up to someone on the street and kill them with that logic...that would just be insane.
Humanity at large doesn't have to treat animals like humans. But they can treat them with the basic decency of not murdering them in order to harvest their flesh.
Because I'm too thin, have difficulty gaining weight, and I cannot afford professional assessments or expensive foods. It's a combination of risk and expense.
Quoting chatterbears
If we consumed our pets as standard practice then letting them die of natural causes would be charity because we slaughter our living chattel before it becomes unhealthy. It's not psychotic to realize that chickens and sheep and cows cannot survive indefinitely in the wild. Chickens will die off rather quickly, the sheep might not last a season un-sheared, and the cows will eventually be taken by coyotes, wolves, disease, and the elements.
It's psychotic to think that turning farm animals loose is somehow doing them a favor and not condemning most of them to imminent death and the rest to prolonged hardship in nature.
Quoting chatterbears
Actually animal rights groups have been fomenting for quite some time. If you ask around most of us who are aware of factory farming and it's effects are against it. More and more people are realizing that over-consuming meat has no health benefits and that diet in general has a lot to do with health (something we've somewhat neglected in the 20th century).
I'm not saying we should not change, I'm saying that this change is expensive and can only occur at a certain rate. Our understanding of dietary health still does need improving, as does our technological and economic capacity for improved plant-based agriculture.
Letting existing farm animals live in peace would mean letting them die horribly (the farmer kind of has to tend to them, shelter them, winter them, feed them, protect them from predators and their own stupidity (i.e: a ravine) etc...). We cannot afford that many animal sanctuaries, so euthanize them we must.
Furthermore, you continuously presume without justification that the lives of all farm animals contain nothing but suffering and death. It is easy to demonstrate that farm conditions are not all equal, and in some examples farm animals might actually enjoy their existence. Would you disagree?
Quoting NKBJ
Reducing the rate of meat consumption and therefore meat-agriculture in some western countries would save us money, but going full vegan would cost us too much money. As I've pointed out earlier, the pastureland and farmland used for cattle feed isn't exactly fit for growing squash and eggplant. Having a herd of cattle that can extract energy from un-farmed fields is a great economic bonus, the manure means fertilizer (making plant farms cheaper), and many other by-products are put to use.
Over eating meat and over farming animals is unhealthy and inefficient, but I have not seen a study that demonstrates the health benefits of eating no meat as opposed to reasonable amounts of it as a part of a well-planned diet, or which identifies possible economic gains from eliminating animal husbandry from human agriculture completely.
Quoting NKBJ
I'm satisfied to have raised the possibility that going vegan entails health risks for me, which is a part of the moral justification I give for why I eat meat. Calling me anecdotal and demanding scientific evidence of my personal dietary observations is a bit much don't you think?
Quoting NKBJ
The logic of slaughtering an animal we've raised is that it's an established means of acquiring nourishment and sustenance and is thermodynamically necessary for the collectives of farm animals to exist in the first place. We cannot slaughter other humans because A) humans can fight back, B) we don't want to live in a world where we're under threat of slaughter, and C) we empathize with other humans very strongly.
If you wish to consider a fair parallel with humans, consider the following dilemma: your wife (or you?) is/are 7 months pregnant, and genetic testing reveals that your unborn child has a genetic disease which will manifest symptoms around 7-8 years of age and is universally terminal before 10 years of age. You also know that the genetic disease will cause great and prolonged suffering after it manifests such that a medically induced coma and eventual euthanasia are the most humane medical responses.
Would you be morally justified in going through with the pregnancy knowing beforehand what the outcome must be?
Yes we can afford it. And if the whole world miraculously turned vegan overnight, obviously we would care enough to find a way to fund these. But of course this is a far-fetched hypothetical scenario that we don't really need to discuss, because it's not going to happen that way. As people's awareness grows, the whole factory farm system will simply be phased out.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Two things:1) factory farms raise 99.9 percent of chickens for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle currently sold in the United States. So the conditions of factory farming are of utmost importance to this discussion. 2) A cow who enjoys her life still would like not to be murdered--you consistently seem to think that a good life, or an adequate one somehow means it's okay to harm someone. It does not.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Sigh.
The costs of producing meat versus plants have been thoroughly discussed in this thread numerous times. For the details, please go back, read, and inform yourself. Long story short: a vegan diet requires much much much fewer resources than an omnivorous one.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Nope. Without evidence, I have no reason to be convinced. And you're the one trying to convince me of your experience...
Quoting VagabondSpectre
No.
But it's not a perfect analogy either--we're not talking about 7 month old fetuses when we talk about ending meat-eating--we're talking about creatures who don't exist yet at all, not even as fetuses, zygotes, or embryos...
Quoting Tomseltje
It is not considered part of the plant. That is why it is called a fruit, as it does no harm to the plant if picked properly. It is not advisable for teenagers and younger children to have strictly adhere to a fruit diet, but it is definitely doable and sustainable for everyone else. Fruits contain enough sugar and fats to survive. Why would I need to plant all of them? All I need to do is ensure the survival of some of the seeds and the plants lineage is unharmed. Not all plants are guaranteed reproduction now and every seed doesn't need to germinate. Just as not every human gamete is protected or guaranteed reproductive success.
Quoting Tomseltje
None of them are okay to kill for food. They have a right to live. Accidents are accidents. (see deer example), that is not intentional killing, which is the moral dilemma here. By sessile I assume you mean like sponges and coral? If that is the case then I would say they fit into the same category as other animals. If it lives, you shouldn't kill it to eat it, unless it is unavoidable (see bacterium/fungi).
Nobody said anything about surviving indefinitely. Let me give you two scenarios.
1. Live in a confined area 99% of your life. That area is where you urinate, defecate and also eat from. You're handled aggressively from birth, with constant pain and discomfort. You're also tortured from time to time, and then abruptly hauled off to get your throat slit or put into a gas chamber.
2. Live out in the wild with a right to life and liberty. You're free from oppressive restrictions imposed by an external authority. You still must live with the dangers of predators and/or disease, but you may do so freely.
To say you'd rather live "safe", free from predators, in which the 1st situation would be more appealing, is absurdly dishonest. If anybody had a choice between those two scenarios, they would only pick #1 if they were masochistic and did not desire a life of liberty. The 2nd scenario has a probability of death from predators and/or disease, but it is not 100% guaranteed. And while you live out that probability, you are not completely oppressed without the ability to exercise your free-will.
What we do to animals is absolutely disgusting and ridiculous, just to get taste pleasure from a hamburger. Animals constantly get eaten by other predators all the time out in the wild, but I can guarantee they [and you] would prefer a life in the wild, than life as a factory farmed animal.
I'd actually say yes, but that doesn't necessarily justify the action simply because it's less wrong than something else.
Anyways, on topic. It's not the same because the kitten is still alive and the potato is already dead.
I've also skimmed some research on plant consciousness. It's clear plant's are complex organisms, but don't necessarily feel, think like animals do. Many however, have defense mechanism's to ensure their survival. Ultimately, neither plant or animal "wants" to die. Though they may process differently. So why should animals be prioritized simply due to their sentience? So I ask the same question as I did before, is there any circumstance in which a painless animal kill would be equivalent to a plant kill? A few factors to take into account I presume would be how the animal's death would affect others, perhaps the animals intellectual and emotional capacity as well.
It's also interesting, because apparently some philosophers that advocate veganism draw the line with different animals. For Singer, I think it's oysters. I presume the line is drawn for valid reason. So at what point do vegans demarcate? Is there a certain level of sentience or lack of? Or just none at all?
Raw potatoes are dormant, not dead.
Animals who can feel pain and value life shouldn't be harmed or killed based on those qualities. Same thing applies to humans. Basic. Why don"t you kick Bobby in the shins? Because it hurts, and hurting others is wrong.
Singer draws the line at oysters because they do not seem to possess a nervous system capable of pain and suffering. He says they are in those ways closer to plants than animals.
Sooo, on what basis do YOU think it is wrong to kick an innocent person in the shins?
The global impacts of food production
Joseph Poore, professor at Oxford and the leader on the study, told the Guardian unequivocally:
A pretty rousing endorsement from an Englishman!
Not if the population keeps growing and we don't come up with a new way to meet our food and nutrition requirements.
Quoting NKBJ
You were making the argument that breeding farm animals is necessarily immoral because of their inevitable death at our hands, but I'm sugesting that these can be lives worth living, death included, which cannot otherwise be had. If you want your argument to apply to all farm animals, you need to account for ethically raised and humanely slaughtered farm animals too. Given my position on over-consuming meat, the immorality of factory farming, and the inefficiency of over-farming animals I would expect you to be primarily addressing the position I actually hold.
Quoting NKBJ
A diet with less meat would be cheaper, but a societal diet with no meat or animal husbandry would not save us resources if we aimed for our current levels of nutrition. The extra variety and volume of plants that we would need to grow to ensure rounded nutrition for everyone would be immense. Losing the fertilizer system we typically use would strain our existing crops as it is. Oil based fertilizer is getting more expensive and those 56 million acres of sub-par farm-land are going to require fertilization if we plan to grow nutrient rich vegetables on them.
I'm not crazy, I'm not just ignorant of the science either. Animals who recycle waste and harvest grass/hay fields which otherwise we could not monetize are an economic gain for us. They produce densely packed nutrients of fat and protein, fertilizer which cheapens the rest of our crops, and a slew of by-products. Losing these things will inevitably cost us money or nutrition.
If you look at the issue comprehensively you will find that there is quite a lot to consider for our society to go full vegan. Land used for high quality feed could be converted to human-edible alternatives, and we would get the calories we need, but overall we would be at a nutritional deficit. It's possible to have a very well crafted plants only diet and not need constant supplements, but the variety just wouldn't be there for all of us to do so at once.
None of the discussions or studies linked in this thread address the net economic and nutritional costs of western societies such as America removing animals from agriculture overall. Studies which do examine comprehensively the ramifications of eliminating animals from agriculture find that there would not be sufficient availability of variety to provide adequate nutrition for the entire population. As I've alluded to before, there wouldn't be enough well-planned diets on the shelves; not enough kale.
Here's a study that examines the ramifications of removing animals from agriculture entirely with interest in greenhouse gas emissions and the nutritional requirements and impacts of and on populations
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/48/E10301
It considers what sorts of foods can be grown on the land currently used for animals and projects what our basic diets would look like in a plants only system compared to one which includes animals. It concludes that a plants-only agricultural system would increase deficiencies in certain nutriments while over-providing in calories and bio-mass.Nobody has presented me with any kind of economic or nutritional feasibility study such as this yet. You do claim to need scientific evidence for belief right?
Quoting chatterbears
This is such a silly false dichotomy, or else extraordinarily ill-passioned...
Would you rather
1. Live a longer life in a protected habitat free from predators, which is large enough to live in comfortably, has food provided, where you are handled by compassionate keepers, live happily, but must one day be humanely slaughtered.
Or
2. Life a shorter life out in the wild with only the pains of cold, hunger, and the fear of constant danger keeping you alive for the moment, until statistically you fall prey to the elements or a predator, and will endure suffering of the most unimaginable cruelty (slow starvation or slow disembowelment via predation or slow death by parasite or disease).
A sane person could only ever choose option 1, to disagree would be psychotic.
Can you be more inaccurate? The percentage of factory farms that hold to these standards, are probably less than 1%. You know very well I was referring to the overwhelming majority of 99%, in which factory farms operate. Until factory farms operate in this so-called utopia of living comfortably and being handled by compassionate keepers, buying meat is contributing to the torture of these animals. So you want to talk about false dichotomies, you're portrayal of the current reality is way far off compared to mine.
I've stated that factory farming standards are immoral in one my earliest posts in this thread...
But just to clarify, if I ethically raise chickens and goats in my animal utopia where they are handled with compassion, would you object to me consuming them? Unless I consume or sell these animals (which have not been tortured at all or suffered unnecessarily) the whole operation will have to cease. Do you argue that I would be morally obligated to do so?
http://www.gfi.org/images/uploads/2018/03/EmoryAlmyPNASFullReply.pdf
Point by point rebuttal of your article.
Do you still eat meat? If so, then saying something is immoral is irrelevant if you are going to continue contributing to the industry that you claim is immoral. Talk is cheap.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Your animal utopia scenario would be vastly better by an inconceivable margin. But the treatment of these animals is only one piece of the puzzle. They would still lose the right to life. It's the concept of being killed for exploitation, which is immoral. I'd assume if you had the choice to live in an animal utopia, where you're guaranteed to die at the hand of another, depending on when your owner feels hungry and ready to kill you, or the choice to live how you do now, which would you choose? In your current life, you can make decisions that will allow you to live longer, or maybe live shorter. In the animal utopia farm, there's no decision any animal could make that would allow them to live longer. They would all die whenever they become useless to the person exploiting them for food. Such as, a hen that can not longer lay eggs. That hen becomes useless, so off she goes to get her throat slit.
Following this logic it would also be ok to eat eggs, especially when unfertillized. Most fruits hardly contain any fat or protein apart from the seeds. And we should just let young childred die or what are they supposed to eat? Any idea how much fruit one has to eat in order to get to those 5000 kcal a day? 1 kg of apples has about 540 kcal. So one needs to eat almost 5 kg of apples a day to just get the calories needed. However 1kg of apples only has 4 gram protein, so even when eat 5 kg, you only consumed 20 gram protein, where you need at least 50 gram a day in a 1500 kcal diet.
Humans need about 2,2 gram protein per kg fatfree bodymass a day. So a 110 kg guy with 10% fat tissue needs about 220 gram protein a day. If only eat apples he needs to consume about 50 kg apples a day. but then one would have 10 times the calory intake needed. So what fruit diet are you suggesting?
Quoting yatagarasu
Sponges and coral are sessile, however they still are multicelled organisms. I was talking about single celled sessile animals like the Vorticellidae.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorticella),
Gametes are living too, they just happen to be the haploid lifephase of a haplo/diplont organism. The 'if it lives, you shouldn't kill it to eat it" applies to eating fruit as well if you don't take out all the seeds and plant them. One can only prevent killing for food when scavenging, wich just means you let someone/something else do the killing for you, quite likely more brutal to the killed individue than had you killed it yourself.
Nonsense, in the animal utopia farm I could also choose to wait with killing and eating the animal till it reaches old age, and it starts suffering from worn out joints. By killing the animal then I prevent it suffering alot of pain from walking about with worn out joints. You are conflating current practices you've witnessed with the suggested idea.
This is an excellent study and shows exactly how far animal husbandry has to go if it is to have any sustainable future.
That animal husbandry has long way to go to become sustainable, however, is not the argument in the OP. That argument in the OP is that absolutely any killing of animals for meat is morally wrong on the basis of either;
1. Killing an sentient thing is morally wrong because we're sentient and we wouldn't like to be killed.
or
2. Using meat to make up your protein, B-vitamin and other trace nutrients is always more harmful (by some as yet unspecified definition of harm, but something vaguely environmental) than farming the equivalent vegetables.
Obviously, the report has no bearing on 1) and it remains unresolved how this is proven, so I'm presuming the report is being advanced in favour of 2). To that effect, in the interests of balance, I'd like to point out a few flaws in the report that my statistical colleagues have mentioned. These are all from the published data, not the original source so are tentative warnings, not absolute critique.
1. The graphs and conclusions are drawn from the mid-percentile range. The lowest 10th centile to the highest 90th centile. This is quite normal practice as it remove aberrations. To give a general picture (as I said it gives a pretty damning general picture). What it does not do, however, is support the claim that even the very best of animal husbandry is less sustainable than the worst of arable farming. It is entirely silent on the comparison having missed off the data for the very best of animal farming (the top 10%). This conclusion comes from their chart, the key to which shows a bar appearing to go from 10th percentile to 90th percentile.
2.The measurements of CO2 emmissions, acidification, eutrophication and land use have been 'standardised' across the 570 studies included in the meta-study. This introduces a serious element of noise, not so much with acidification and eutrophication which are relatively easily measured, but with CO2 emissions (the total carbon footprint of the entire operation and all of it's consequences and requirements) and land use (likewise the total use), it will heavily depend on the measurement methods used by the various studies involved. Again, this is irrelevant for the conclusion that animal husbandry in general is way more harmful than arable as this noise is far less than the size of the sample. But that's not the claim that's being made here on this thread. This thread is trying to make the claim that there is no form of animal husbandry that's less harmful than the equivalent vegetable farming, and that is something this report cannot (and does not) claim.
3. The measure 'land use' does not appear to be stratified and yet is highly significant in some sectors. It is simply wildly wrong to presume that the land use figures for soy (for example) would be equivalent if soy was grown on the land currently growing lamb. Soy is currently grown on the most fertile soils (additionally fertilized with animal waste taken off the land used to graze animals). If you take fertility from one land type and put it on another, which was already more fertile in the first place, then you are going to get a much higher return from the fertilized land per hectare than you are from the land from which you have removed the fertility. To imply that soy-farming is better to the extent that it makes more efficient use of land, is simply false. It has a higher return because it is on more fertile ground. We do not know what the land use comparison would be if the land were properly stratified by fertility.
4. All ruminant animals produce methane, all animals are net greenhouse gas producers, all plants are net greenhouse gas reducers (presuming soil and vegetative waste are handled efficiently). Ignoring this, the report takes the total greenhouse gas contribution of animal husbandry and compares it to vegetable farming. But a wild landscape in the grazed pasture-land would also be a net producer of greenhouse gas emissions. So again, the report is not comparing like with like. If the cattle and sheep were taken off land suitable for arable, there would be a massive net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions - definitely a good idea then. But if cattle and sheep were taken off natural grassland and it was returned to wild grazing, there would not necessarily be a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. So to imply that a change in diet away from fully grass-fed animals on less fertile areas would help reduce greenhouse gas emission is unsupported by this research.
It's customary to make some attempt to cite or paraphrase, otherwise we're just hurling links at one another.
Its main criticism is based on the fact that the study I cited presumed that land used for producing animal feed would be used for legume and grain counterparts of similar nutritional makeup (i.e: human-edible corn). But this main criticism seems to be in part misinterpretation of the original study's assumptions (they even say that the study suggests humans would actually be eating animal feed, which was not a conclusion or assumption it actually made and was not relevant to its total nutritional estimates). It does not cite any evidence showing that a variety of more nutritional foods can in fact be grown on the lower quality land currently used for animal feed production, and it does not address the reasons the original study cites for making the specific assumption under criticism. Very high quality land is generally already being used for fruit and vegetable production which require it; the human-edible foodstuffs we could grow on land currently used for animal feed would likely be of similar nutritional yield for these reasons.
To assume that an equivalent amount of nutriment could be passed directly to humans as is currently passed to to animals from livestock feed is indeed an assumption that merits further testing and modeling, but it might turn out that most of the pasture/forage and animal feed farmland is simply not suitable for nutritional plant-based production.
The Good Food Institute is a non-profit lobby group, and while it's amply clear their hearts are in the noblest of places, they outright accuse the authors of showing bias towards animal agriculture and fail to substantiate their reasons. Very clearly the Good Food Institute is biased to begin with. If I've misread or misrepresented either the study I referenced or the document you linked, please point out how.
Quoting chatterbears
Whether or not I eat meat is irrelevant to the argument at hand, in point of fact
Quoting chatterbears
Farm animals living as I do now is not an option for them. Left un-cared for ("freedom") they would die in agony, and without the return we get from harvesting animals, we cannot afford to have them exist at all. So once again, the dilemma is not between torture and freedom, as it stands the dilemma is between non-existence/painful death and a life worth living that will one day end at the hands of a human, as humanely as possible.
The burden of proof rests on you--there is nothing to suggest that the arable land used for animal feed is not equally usable for human food.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Their whole paper explains how the other authors are wrong, by the way, works for --which substantiates their claim of bias. You, however, merely claim they are biased on the basis of being a non-profit lobbying group....the operative word being "non-profit." To claim they are biased on that basis alone is like accusing MADD of being biased against drunk driving. Having a preference for or against something is not the same as a bias.
By the bye, the authors of the article you posted work for the VT Department of Animal and Poultry Science and the US Dairy Forage Research Center respectively--which on the basis of your definition of bias would make them biased as well. But I will settle for the fact that their paper is just wrong and poorly researched/written.
I get that this doesn't address the ethical argument, and I have little interest in debating that here. Just wanted to drop the Science article because it was new and so ambitious.
Trying to grow crops which require warmer weather or more water or better quality soil runs the risk of crop failure, which is why farmers are very careful about what they choose to plant; they're already somewhat limited. The study did in-fact account for tillable land which could be used for vegetables but it turns out pastureland is obviously unsuitable for growing crops (this should be obvious, and I've previously cited an article explaining this). The rebuttal essay you linked does not acknowledge this whatsoever, it merely assumes that market forces alone would force farmers to come up with adequate variety of plants without stopping to wonder how feasible it might be for them to do so. Furthermore, growing vegetables is more expensive than growing wheat or field corn for flour or animal feed/processing into syrup. If you don't believe me, just go to the grocery store and compare the price of processed foods to whole foods. Healthy diets are more expensive because healthy foods tend to be harder to grow in the same volume and for the same cost. If we even could get our farms to produce the right variety of nutrition at the required societal yield with zero animal husbandry, it would certainly be more expensive than if we continued to grow field corn for syrup and graze animals on otherwise un-farmable pastureland.
Quoting NKBJ
No, the operative word being lobby group. The sole purpose for their existence is to argue against the consumption of meat.
The paper you linked and have failed to cite or paraphrase properly makes unfounded accusations and counter-assumptions of its own which are baseless.
The opening line of its conclusion states "By keeping crop production static, they neglect market pressures that would transform farmland in the US in the absence of animals", which is very clearly a misrepresentation given that their models did not "keep crop production static". In their models the non-animals agricultural system increased its production of many plants markedly, and examining what might increase, by how much, and why, was in part the object of the study itself. to quote them"The total domestic nutrient supply changes substantially when animal-derived foods are removed from the system; human-edible feeds that were previously used by livestock (25) are routed for human consumption, and tillable land is converted to producing food for people" White & Hall assumed that human-edible plants currently used to feed animals would be routed for human consumption, they didn't say Americans are going to begin consuming feed corn directly and leave everything else static.
Quoting NKBJ
A government institute mandated to conduct scientific research isn't the same as a run of the mill lobby group. You will note that in the article I cited, they actually carefully amassed and treated data, constructed models and tested conditions to try and learn about outcomes. The paper you linked comes from a group of people who didn't like their conclusions, and therefore wrote what they could to discredit it.
Ok, sure. But until you have created that animal utopia, you would be immoral for eating meat as of right now. Because, by eating meat, you are contributing to the current conditions of how factory farms actually operate today. And this is a complete 180 from your utopia farm.
So. Do you eat meat?
How convenient of an answer for you. Claim that factory farming is immoral, but refuse to answer whether or not you are continually contributing to it. I think you see your own hypocrisy here.
Quoting Tomseltje
You can eat the egg white, which is equivalent to the endosperm in seeds, but not the egg yolk. Not to mention we can synthesis to supplement those proteins/lipids at this point in history. Plus there are several fruits that have fats/proteins in them (avacado, coconut, dates et cetera). 5000 kcal? Really? Last I checked the average human needed about 2000-3000 kcal. Anyone else can supplement the calories by other means or eat more. Plenty of those fruits have enough of those nutrients and most people don't hit those recommended numbers anyways and are fine.
Quoting Tomseltje
I see. Well, if their destruction is avoidable we should try to avoid them, but if not they fall under the same category as fungi and bacteria. Yes, gametes are living. So you just avoid eating them. That does not mean you have to plant every one. Just some. Gametes do not have the right to always be planted and some will die of old age anyways. They are in a suspended state, not living as the plant, animal was that produced them, so their rights are different in this case.
hows that different from killing for food
we are the most powerful species on the planet and in order to survive we need to eat or kill other creatures
This is not exactly relevant to the discussion we're having, is it? Appealing to presumed hypocrisy in my actions doesn't establish your argument about ethics, nor does it address my own ethical justifications for eating meat which I've volunteered and detailed at length.
I avoid factory farmed meat, though if someone else has bought or prepared it for me I think turning it down is a waste. I eat some meat, chicken and a very occasional steak mostly. In-province farmed eggs too. Here's why I'm not a hypocrite:
If it made sense from a health perspective, I would be a vegan, but the dietary volume and expense that is required to satisfy my personal nutritional needs is beyond my ability to manage. By not over-consuming meat and by avoiding factory farmed animal products, I am not contributing to unnecessary animal suffering.
And if we all had the where-with-all to plan vegan diets and the time and money to pursue them, we would still have to face the increased cost as a society, which would be a detriment to the poorest classes and nations.
Why can't I eat the yolk? if the egg is unfertillized there is no embryo, but there is still yolk. Perhaps study egg anatomy abit more if you assumed that the yolk was the embryo.
Quoting yatagarasu
Sure, however, humans need to consume about 20 different amino acids their bodies can't make, it's very hard to consume the right quantities of these by merely eating plants. Though technically not entirely impossible. However it would include eating seeds wich means eating plant embryos.
Quoting yatagarasu
Na, you are off, its about 1500 kcal for women and 2000 kcal for men a day, however that is on average where most people don't live in extreme cold climates nor do intense physical labor. However, those guys at oil platforms easily burn about 8000 kcal a day some even up to 10000 kcal a day, a man living in the arctic with outdoor activities burns 5000 kcal a day with a body mass of 100 kg.
However, if you are going to set ethical goals for all humans, you should include them.
Besides, not many edible plants grow in the arctic, and its quite expensive to import them. So how are those people going to survive if they start following your ethics?
Quoting yatagarasu
No destruction is avoidable, every living organism dies eventually. You could argue one shouldn't be killing them prematurely, but thats an entirely different discussion.
Quoting yatagarasu
In many cases it's unavoidable, Pollen are the gametes of plants, you are saying we can't eat them either? Going down that line means we can't eat honey either. Many gametes will die soon anyhow if they don't succeed finding the complementary gamete in time, so why can't we eat them? If a fish jumps on dry ground, with no possibility to get into the water again on its own, it sounds alot like you are arguing it's more moral to let it suffocate rather than killing it and eating it. Contrary to a morality derrived from the idea of minimizing suffering.
Quoting yatagarasu
You don't plant gametes, you plant seeds. plant gametes are the male pollen and the female ova (eggcell). once a male gamete fertillized egg cell, a seed will develop.
Quoting yatagarasu
What do you mean suspended state? they may not be living as the plant only having half the genotype, but why assume their lives are inferior to their diploid counterparts? In some species the haploid part is the dominant mode of being.
Nonsense, you are assuming about things you can't know. You don't know wether I eat meat, nor where I would get it from if I did.
Quoting chatterbears
Fishing for an oppertunity to claim the moral highground again? A very see through and disingenious tactic mr chatterbears. You obviously have great troubles separating a philosophical discussion from a personal attack. Asking irrelevant personal questions while refusing to answer general questions that are directly related to the topic.
You still haven't given an answer on what you mean when you say 'animals', so I'm still not sure what the topic is about, other than a shallow rant against the horrors in todays bioindustries. Now if that's all you wanted, you had better formulated the starting question as "is it wrong to commercially breed animals for consumption the way it is done now?" rather than "Is it wrong to eat animals?"
So much wrong in so few sentences. Where to begin?
For one, wheat, corn, meat, and milk products are subsidized by the government and that is why those products are cheap. Most people could not afford meat, and definitely not much of it, if that weren't the case. I thought everyone knew that by now.
And not only can you grow all sorts of foods on the exact same land used for animal feed, you need a lot less land to do so. It's pretty obvious to anyone who's grown even a single tomato plant before.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
That sounds more like you, actually. They used science to counter science. You're claiming, without any proof whatsoever, that they are biased. Just because YOU don't like THEIR conclusions.
Quoting Tomseltje
You are going to tell me to study egg anatomy more even though you don't know why yolk is off limits? It is a gamete that is why. The white is not.
Quoting Tomseltje
Supplemental/synthesized proteins would solve this. So you mean there is a chance? XD How do you think Jains survive? Many of them are fruitarians and even try and avoid harming bacteria/fungi if they can.
Quoting Tomseltje
It was a rough estimate going off the daily value recommended. For those people they can follow the high calorie diets or if they can't then we can make an exception for cases like that. They don't constitute a massive part of the population anyways. Moral systems should be flexible but adherable. No system is perfect or should be dogmatic in it's ways. We minimize suffering, not completely eliminate it. But for the average person it should be attainable. : )
Quoting Tomseltje
I like the thoughts you put here. They are interesting questions but I don't really want to define my moral system as absolute or anything like that. Like I said in my last few sentences. The fish would be the same as the deer (or put it back in the ocean if you're close to it at that time). As long as you're not intentionally pulling fish you can eat it. XD Why can't we kill the gamete in that situation? Do we kill fish or anything knowing it will die eventually too? lol These interesting but narrow scenarios do not disprove or change anything about the core of my argument. In much the same way the "trolley problem" thought experiment doesn't invalidate other ethical codes. Extremely specific scenarios warrant extremely specific retorts. The overall ethic is still there. If it lives, do not kill it.
Quoting Tomseltje
It was a figure of speech. I meant that gametes do not all have the right to be "planted". In plants, animals, or anything that reproduced. Not specifically in the ground. Planted like "right to become living diploid organisms". Sorry about that.
Quoting Tomseltje
I assumed it because it makes my argument easier. LOL XD I'm not particularly sure where I would stand on this. They are technically as living as their other forms but giving them the same status makes things a bit more complicated in certain situations. I mainly wanted to get across the point that seeds don't deserve the right to always become their diploid form. So when you cut out the seeds of an apple you aren't expected to plant them all, only some. Thanks for your thoughts on this stuff by the way! : )
Vegetable produce is inherently more expensive than grains and legumes. We rely on grains so heavily because they are easy to grow, are light weight, high in protein and calories, can be stored at room temperature, and can be dried/processed into long lasting foodstuffs. Vegetables require more care to harvest, yield less per acre, need refrigerated transportation, have shorter shelf lives, and are less easily preserved/processed into long lasting foodstuffs. The US agricultural strategy as a nation is or was geared toward ensuring national food security and affordable food prices, and this is why their subsidies lean towards grains and legumes.
The agricultural system is massively complex and interconnected in so many ways that making simplistic assessments about why things are the way they are such as "bread is cheap and tomatoes expensive because of subsidies" just doesn't persuasively cut the cake. Nobody knew agriculture could be so complicated...
Read this article if you have time.
Quoting NKBJ
I think you must be confused. Different soil and climate profiles benefit and hinder different sorts of plants (which is why we see the bulk of the field corn in the US being grown in a coherent cluster). To be profitable, farmers choose crops by weighing out the costs/market value of the crops they plant along with the risk of crop failure. Furthermore we get more servings AND calories from an acre of grains than we do tomatoes or any other vegetable.
Quoting NKBJ
Well I quoted both articles directly to show and explain why their main criticism is inaccurate. I've been making specific points that require address. Until you actually step up and do so you won't be able to defend your argument or a rebuke to mine. "They used science to counter science" is not an argument and doesn't address the topic.
P.S:I only bothered to call them biased (a secondary point) because they had the nerve to do so themselves in their own paper with reference to the authors of the article I cited (which shows their hand completely; such an attack has no place in the peer review process).
And you assume vegans eat only vegetables? Huh? And I'm not sure I follow your reasoning...meat may be the least efficient thing to produce of all the foods, but grains are more efficient than veggies...therefore eat meat? Makes no sense.
You're failing to examine what an actual plant-based diet would look like.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Again...vegans eat grains.
Just a lot fewer than are needed to make the same amount of calories and nutrition from animal-based products. I shouldn't have to explain that: your own article explains that:
" Specific to animal agriculture is the inherently energetically inefficient conversion of feed to usable products. Because animals (and humans) obey the laws of thermodynamics, energy that is converted to heat through metabolic processes is lost and not retained in tissues "
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yeah, and if the market went vegan, they would plant vegan foods. D'oh.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
The article states: " Their use of irrelevant economic information in the abstract,1 unrelated to the design of their study or any of their findings, shows evidence of bias in favor of the livestock industry."
They didn't accuse the others of bias outright. They merely suggested that the way the first article is written has some evidence pointing to bias.
Sorry, just saw your question. No, I only have the pdf link.
Nonsense, seeds are diploid already, they are the result of the haploid gametes joining. You are basicly arguing that in case of plants its ok to abort their embryos and eat the placenta. While at the same time arguing its wrong to eat a gamete. Not that there is a contradiction, just summarizing how I understood your position.
Quoting yatagarasu
So you are arguing that in those exceptions it's not immoral to eat animals? I'm glad we can agree on this but then we are discussing another topic, not 'is it wrong to eat animals?' but 'under what circumstances is it wrong to eat animals?'. I would estimate that such a topic would provide a more fruitfull discussion.
Quoting yatagarasu
So when eating a strawberry you expect someone to pick of the about 100 seeds on it before putting it into his/her mouth?
Quoting yatagarasu
Some jainists even go as far as to sweep the ground in front of them whereever they walk to prevent them accidently stepping on an ant or some other tiny insect. Is this how you move about as well?
Quoting yatagarasu
I'm not fond of food created in laboratories, I prefer natural sources. Besides the availability of those seems rather restricted to dense populated area's.
Sorry for messing up the chronology, I appreciate your responses, you adequately answer my questions so far, and it seems our opinions don't differ that much when it comes down to the important parts, since you do seem to recognize the importance of the difference in circumstances when attempting to answer questions about ethics. Wich mainly was my point when objecting to the suggestion that it's immoral to eat animals under any circumstance.
I don't believe that, as meat isn't some magical pill you can just take and fix everything with.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Quoting Tomseltje
Why is why I asked...
Quoting Tomseltje
The deflection is real. Philosophical discussions can lead to questions about person's subjective actions. You think it is a personal attack, when I am using logic to display the hypocrisy in your argument. Point me to a general question I have refused to answer, and you better be specific. And ironically, you can't answer whether or not you eat meat because you know it will display your inconsistency.
Quoting Tomseltje
Are you trolling, at this point? I have cleared up this idea multiple times throughout this thread. SENTIENT BEINGS, is what I am referring to. This includes humans and non-human animals. Also, both questions apply. Is it wrong to eat sentient beings? Yes. Is it wrong to factory farm them? Yes. Are people immoral for contributing to the industry of factory farming? Yes. This is a fairly simple conversation, that apparently confuses you to the point of not understanding what a sentient being is.
And just to continue pointing out the inconsistency. Almost everyone on this thread has stated that factory farming is wrong and immoral, yet almost everyone on this thread still eats meat. Cognitive dissonance anyone?
Nonsense, wether or not my ideas on morality are coherent with my actions is not what is discussed. The discussion merely is about the ideas on morality. Now even if you were to point out that my actions were inconsistent with my ideas about morality, is by no means evidence that my ideas about morality are incorrect. It's a common logical fallacy, known as a red herring, and more precisely the red herring called 'poisoning the well'. The fact that you choose to ask for my personal actions, while not being able so far to even give a single reply that demonstrates you understood my position correctly, just strengthens my suspicion you are attempting to make such fallacy. You even admitted to that by this reply "you can't answer whether or not you eat meat because you know it will display your inconsistency."
It definately does not, you don't know what my vieuw on it is even, so you are incapable of determining wether my actions are inconsistent with my vieuw on morality, wether or not I eat meat. Hence the answer to the question wether or not I eat meat is totally irrelevant. The fact that you keep pushing for the answer clearly demonstrates your attempt at making an argument that is obviously fallacious.
Quoting chatterbears
I asked you several times for your definition on the word 'animals' as used in your opening statement.
Quoting chatterbears
Nonsense, you gave a very vague definition. It's by no means clear that when I encounter a random animal, in the biological sense of the word, this animal qualifies as sentient or not. Sure, you mentioned humans, pigs, cows and chickens as being sentient, so in those cases it's clear, but what about the other millions species of animals? How do I determine wether they are sentient, and thus according to your morality I'm allowed to eat them.
Quoting chatterbears
Even if it were relevant to the discussion, you don't know wether or not I eat meat. And even if I did, you don't know where I would get it from. You are just being presumptuous, only increasing my suspicions that you are not actually interested in the philosophy of the claimed topic, but instead abuse this forum as an oppertunity to unwarrentedly claim the moral highground and spread your dogmatic beliefs on veganism.
I know that a well planned plant-based diet does not include too much grain, which is what we would have on our hands given the aforementioned difficulties in vegetable and fruit produce agriculture and distribution.
One thing I would like you to realize is that different forms and scales of agriculture can have different levels of efficiency. A super cattle farm that relies on a constant supply of grain and water is not efficient compared to a traditional farm which grazes its cattle and bales its own hay. The fact that we can afford to raise so much grain fed livestock reflects the point I'm making: grains are cheap to begin with. In the world where we stop using animals completely, we're left with too much potential for grain and not enough potential for vegetables.
One benefit of eating some meat is that you get very compact calories and protein, allowing you to supplement your diet with other things for adequate nutrition. If you need to consume twice the amount of corn as meat to replace the calories and protein, then you have less dietary room to round out your nutrition with other things.
Quoting NKBJ
I'm aware of thermodynamics, but we don't have the 4 stomachs that each cow does to refine the calories and protein of the feed corn we produce for them. Unfortunately we already consume quite enough grain, and we cannot replace all the field corn with fruit and vegetable crops, and if we did their harvest would be seasonal (wreaking havoc on national nutritional planning). There are many factors which can cause the efficiency of animal husbandry to vary. As the article goes on to say following your excerpt:
Quoting NKBJ
They already do plant vegan foods, and vegan foods are already more expensive. Is it just big agro keeping the kale man down? Are vegan foods so expensive because we don't plant enough of them? Or is the production cost proportional to the market value?
The complexity and economics of agriculture is perhaps beyond even the all-distilling powers of a Simpsons episode...
Quoting NKBJ
The supposedly irrelevant piece of information was "The US livestock industry employs 1.6 × 10^6
people and accounts for $31.8 billion in exports.". They didn't bother explain how it was irrelevant (it seems relevant to exploring the creation of agricultural production models), they just went ahead and declared it evidence of bias.
The original authors did publish their own rebuttal to your rebuttal if you're interested. It wasn;t easy to find but here's the link.
They basically summarize all of the criticisms and explanations I have already levied and more. It's a very quick read, I do recommend it.
But this is what you seem to think plants are: a silver-bullet to solve problems while creating none.
Alas, a lack... The world isn's so easily managed or surmised...
I guess that explains your inability to thrive on a plant-based diet. A well-balanced any kind of diet has about the same composition: 45-65% of calories from grains, 5 servings veggies or fruit, some source of protein, some healthy fats. Vegans simply choose plant-based proteins and choose veggies high in calcium and iron (like kale or spinach or collards).
All your article really says is that if all people ate the amount of veggies and fruits that they ought to, it would have an impact on agriculture. Which we should look into, and perhaps it means we need to change food production methods here and there, but that does not equal telling people to give up healthful foods. Aside from that, the cost of protein production is simply much lower with legumes and other plant-basef alternatives.
Your second article also talks about B12 and the cost of making it and the unavailability in plants alone... Conveniently neglecting to mention that 90% of b12 supplements in the US are given to farm animals so that either way your daily b12 comes from a supplement, directly or indirectly.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
It's called supply and demand. It's a simple concept really, but also the authors of your article don't seem to get it. Vegan foods are currently more expensive due to low supply due to relatively low demand. They have been becoming more affordable due to higher demand creating greater supply. But even when avoiding fancy tofus or vegan cheese, anyone can afford a bag of beans. Like any diet, being vegan can be as expensive, cheap, healthy, unhealthy, bad or good for the environment as you want to make it. But on average, it wins against an omnivorous one.
That is why all this talk about agriculture and the environment is just so much icing on top of the real issue: do we have a right to harm sentient, intelligent, emotional beings like farm animals? And if the answer is no (which I obviously think it is) then everything else is secondary. Even if it were more costly to do the right thing (thankfully it's not, but if it were) you still should do the right thing: don't hurt others.
The article is not telling people to give up healthy foods. It takes a look at the feasibility of America switching to a national vegan through the nutritional/GHG ramifications of doing so.
I do understand that this article seems as a pessimistic delay to your vegan goals, but you must acknowledge the real world hurtles we must clear before we can reach them. Our current agricultural systems aren't so easily modified, or so presently stupid as to be missing out on more nutritional crops that would also be more profitable.
Remember when Trump said "who knew health care could be so complicated?"?
Quoting NKBJ
I wish you vegans could actually put forward a tangible action plan or feasibility assessment. It would be great if we could improve our health and save money, truly it would.
So why does the U.S import more than twice the fruit and veg that it exports? If growing it domestically could be cheaper, and there's a demand, why don't they take the risk by planting fruits and vegetables on land better suited to grains? Because grains are easier to grow on soil where vegetables might not thrive, they are easier to harvest, store, and transport; a less risky crop. Suggesting that demand alone determines what farmers can and choose to plant is a vastly narrow view of the complexity involved in large scale agriculture and the many layers of decision making that are involved.
Furthermore, if indeed farmers simply operated on market value, we would have to endure regular ups and downs in pursuit of nutritional stability where one year certain nutriments are at a deficit, and thus more expensive, and then next others are at a surplus, leading to possibly just as much waste as exists presently. We would need massive central planning to tell farmers what to plant, where, and how much, otherwise the total nutritional value of the food we produce will continue to reflect more factors than nutritional demands by proxy of market demands (we're going to continue getting excesses of the cheap reliable stuff: corn and corn syrup)
Where it does make economic sense for farms to move into vegetable and fruit produce and away from field grains, they're already tending to do so. Specific farms may benefit from such a switch but other farms might not. It can depend on region, market availability, market fluctuations, infrastructure, climate, crop risk, soil quality, and more. As people realize that eating too much meat is needlessly expensive and unhealthy, where possible farms will diversify, but your baseless assertion that their ability to arbitrarily alter crop production has no limits invokes the same unrealistic view of economics and agriculture that rendered Emery et al. unable to grasp the assumptions and objectives of the study they criticized.
Quoting NKBJ
I believe it is more important to exist at all than to not be hurt. I don't wish suffering on animals, but I also do not wish non-existence on them as you are inexorably doing. I maintain that there is room on this earth for ethical farms which enable our extended phenotype farm animals to continue existing happily, with lives worth living, which are also thermodynamically and economically efficient on our end compared to a plant-based alternative.
Unless a farm harvests the animals it rears, it cannot continue supporting itself. If and when we can afford the aforementioned animal sanctuaries and actually tackle present infeasibility of nationally going vegan (economically, thermodynamically, nutritionally), then we will share the same views for the same reasons. Until then, I maintain you're wrong that we can so radically alter our current agricultural strategies without great risk, cost, and societal detriment. We need fish, we need ruminants (we may even need their feces). We need poultry for sure... Without these things we're on the train down to too much grain town, where some will afford adequate variety and some will not.
If tis better to have lived happily and been harvested than to have never lived at all, and or if fellow humans are worthy of more moral consideration than non-human animals, then eating meat can be ethical/not immoral.
Again, all of this is based on some totally weird idea about what a plant-based diet even looks like. It's like you have a block and can't process this simple fact: vegans eat grains. Half of the vegan diet consists of grains. And attacking a vegan diet on the basis of how many veg/fruit are in it, is just attacking a well-balanced diet period. It would amount to about the same with a well-balanced omnivorous diet.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
It can't be immoral not to bring people or animals into the world or else you'd have to argue that birth control is immoral. Or immoral for women not to try to be perpetually pregnant throughout their fertile years. Or that even child molesters/beaters/traffickers should procreate and raise children, because living in hell is better than not living... absurd.
A human life is worth more than a non-human animal life sure, but that does not mean every single, however trivial human interest is worth more than an animal life.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
The Twitter in Chief can go jump in a lake as far as I'm concerned. I have no reason to give any credence to anything that ever comes out of his mouth.
I'm well aware that Vegans eat grains, and you're well aware that eating too many grains and not enough variety of other plants will result in nutritional deficits. The conclusion of the study I cited found that the non-animals plant based agricultural system would over-produce grains which give rise to calorie surpluses, higher volume diets, and certain nutritional deficiencies.
There's a reason vegan diets are hard to plan; you can't just eat grains and call it a nutritional day: there's a such thing as too much grain.
Quoting NKBJ
Your constant misinterpretation and hyperbolization of everything I say is genuinely absurd :)
I never said it was immoral to not bring animals or people into the world, I said it was NOT immoral to BRING animals or people into the world despite knowing it will necessarily contain some suffering for them.
Negative moral obligations are much easier to justify than positive ones; identifying things we should abstain from as immoral is much easier than identifying things we must carry out as morally obligatory. I'm not saying we're morally obligated to reproduce or continue breed farm animals, I'm saying it's not immoral to continue to do so.
Quoting NKBJ
Adequate nutrition for children is a non-trivial consideration we must make in undertaking a national vegan diet. If I recall correctly, something like 10-15% of households in the U.S experience food insecurity as it is with varying levels of severity. If we do something that increases the end consumer cost of adequate nutrition in anyway whatsoever, then we exacerbate the harm.
Quoting NKBJ
Generally the things he says are foolish beyond measure. He campaigned in part on repealing Obamacare,one piece of a massively complex industry - medicine and medical insurance - but it turned out that the complexities of the task were well beyond his ability to fathom. Agriculture and societal nutrition are one such field of human activity with hard to fathom complexities.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
You need to decide whether you're arguing for a well-balanced diet or not. A well-balanced omnivorous or vegan diet will both require more fruits and vegs than are currently consumed by the average American. The meat-heavy diet as is followed by most people today is dangerous to the health of children and adults alike. Heart disease is, after all, the leading cause of death in the US. An unbalanced vegan or omnivorous diet is going to be grain heavy. In either case, the omnivorous diet uses animal products which are less efficient than plant proteins.
Just like the study you mentioned compared a standard American diet (which is meat and grain heavy) to a vegetable heavy vegan one, which doesn't really make sense. You can't then counter a grain heavy vegan diet by claiming it's unhealthy but advocate for the grain heavy omnivorous one which is even less healthy.
Children thrive on well-balanced vegan diets. Children who are in food deserts and suffer from food insecurity do not thrive on meat-based diets. All your argument means is that we should make food sources more available to underprivileged people and that government assistance does not reach enough people. But a bag of beans is simply not expensive. Nor are peas. Nor is oatmeal. Nor are plenty of good, wholesome plant-based foods.
But there are people in this world who can't afford to be picky about their food--like people in Somalia. And for them I would argue that ought implies can. Since they can't be picky, they are not obligated in the same way people in the US or Europe or richer Asian countries are.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I'm glad you think the conclusion is undesirable. But it is the logical conclusion of saying we have some sort of obligation to bring anyone into the world.
But let's assume you said that it's not immoral to cause existence even if it entails suffering. Okay, sure. But that does not give us the right to cause said suffering. Go ahead, raise pigs for all I care. You just shouldn't hurt them, and that includes murdering them.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I don't wish to get off track here, so I'll try to be brief: Healthcare is in fact super simple--allow all people to choose a government-run health plan regardless of income level. It's amazingly easy. Other countries do it; I've lived it. It's a great thing.
But even if it were complicated, it's the right thing to do, because letting people die for the want of funds to pay a bill is just barbaric.
The study found that a non-animals agriculture would increase the amount of grain available in our societal food stores, resulting in a more grain heavy diet for those who cannot afford well planned variety. The finding was that certain nutritional deficits are increased under completely non-animals agriculture.
I'm not advocating for a grain heavy omnivorous diet, we should all have well-planned diets. It's just that the actual cost of producing enough volume and variety for everyone is less when we continue using traditional farming styles, such as raising cattle on pastureland. I'm not advocating for over-consuming grains, or for factory farming, or for over-consuming meat.
You vegans say eating no animal products whatsoever is the best bet, some people argue for more subsidies for factory farms. My position is that the current regime of over-producing meat is unhealthy and inefficient, while eliminating all animal husbandry is also unhealthy and inefficient: both are unfeasible, the optimal solution is somewhere in the complex middle.
Quoting NKBJ
Why would we need to assume what Ive argued when my arguments are there for all to read?
Unless I murder the farm animals at some point I could never have afforded them to begin with, that's the dilemma. When you give me the go ahead to raise pigs, you're implicitly giving me the go ahead to harvest them. Would you like to recant?
Quoting NKBJ
I see that I was not wrong to characterize your position as Trump-esque naivete. Healthcare insurance and healthcare infrastructure in America is anything but "super-simple", and likewise societal agriculture is deceivingly complex.
Since we're just repeating our contrary positions at this point, I'm pretty sure it's time to move on from that part of the issue.
I do recognize and appreciate, however, your position that we should lower our meat consumption on the basis of it's adverse environmental and economic effects.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
It's not a dilemma. If you can't afford them without harming them, don't create them. Just like you shouldn't have a kid you can't afford. Don't adopt puppies you can't afford.
The argument that you should raise the pig even if you can't afford it and have to harm it sounds a lot like what I refuted earlier, which you yourself admitted is absurd.
But if by "harvest" you mean "let it live its complete natural lifespan without causing it harm and then eating it once it's died of old age or other natural causes", okay, I guess if that makes you happy. Ew, gross. But at that point, it's just aesthetics and not ethics.
Oh boy! I guess somebody better call Switzerland, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Japan, Luxembourg, etc, etc and let them all know their superior, more cost efficient, public health care which directly results in people who live longer and more healthily is naive. *sarcasm alert*
But I can afford the pig if I harvest it at some point, and I'm confident that the pig would rather have lived and been harvested than to have never lived at all, so actually what I'm doing might be considered morally praiseworthy, although not morally obligatory.
We're back to non-existence Vs life + suffering.
Quoting NKBJ
You're again forgetting the difference between not immoral (fair game) and morally obligatory courses of action. I've never said we're obligated to raise farm animals or even to procreate. It is not necessarily immoral to do so just because life will contain some suffering and eventual death for our farm animals and our children.
This is why the economic, nutritional, and other logistic realities of societal agriculture are relevant to my position. There is yet no possible utopia where we can all live completely harm free; to radically and rapidly alter existing agricultural systems would create short term nutritional deficits or create great expense elsewhere, which is the ethical basis for my reticence to immediately do so as a society. We can definitely make improvements though, and a reduction of meat consumption looks to be beneficial in many ways while eliminating it entirely does not. Regarding my personal consumption of meat: I do mainly consume what I believe to be somewhat humanely produced animal products, and when I am in in a state of health where eating no meat does not pose a health risk to me, I will do so.
Quoting NKBJ
By harvest I mean humanely slaughter for sale and consumption at a point when it is financially beneficial to do so. This does mean slaughtering the animal before it dies of old age or disease, but it doesn't necessitate ruthless pursuit of profit either (which leads to factory farming). I think the way veal is produced is immoral (it's a specialty meat that we don't need to consume, and which involves inflicting suffering which is unnecessary AFAIK), but I don't think the way we produce free-range beef and poultry is immoral, nor do I think hunting is immoral. Yes harm is a bad thing, but some harm can be justified, namely when human survival and well-being are on the table.
We're still a part of nature, and unless we continue to play its game we won't ever have the means to ever escape it.
Quoting NKBJ
Believe it or not, but public health involves more factors than the existence or absence of public health care (food and exercise culture is a big one). America spends more than any other nation on its healthcare system and on average it is not the best. Yes, a single payer system would be more efficient for America. BUT, and this is the crucial bit, America's health-care needs and existing physical and financial health-care infrastructure are somewhat unique (massive) when compared with other nations; we cannot just copy-paste their systems. Changing it's healthcare institutions into a universally state operated system would be a logistic and political nightmare. I'm not a free market absolutist, but it is important to understand that market forces in a system as large as American healthcare can be hard to replace with top-down management.
To be clear, yes America should move into a single payer health-care system, but the difficulty of pulling it off given the complexity of American healthcare and all its interconnected systems/institutions, is extreme, and not to be understated or underestimated. It would require nothing short of creating new governmental departments to investigate and plan transition requirements along with a hefty loan or tax hike to pay for it all. And if we screw anything up during the process, then people might die.
Agriculture is similar in the sense that we need to have uninterrupted success within the industry as a whole for our security, and there are many autonomous and complex interconnected components in agricultural networks where impacting one sector can have ramifications across all agricultural sectors. Comprehensive modeling of these systems is barely achievable by teams of experts, if at all, which makes specific predictions somewhat unreliable.
Medicine nor Agriculture are simple human endeavors, and while state funded single payer health-care systems are something we know is achievable, a national and nutritionally adequate vegan agricultural system has no precedent that could be applicable to America. Someday soon we may have the dietary and technological science required to achieve this, and when that day arrives we should do so. Until then, some animals and some animal products are too financially, nutritionally, and thermodynamically useful.
Nope.
A) A non-existent entity has no interest in being born. Therefore there are no non-existent pigs who wish for you to create them. Your hypothetical pig would not be unhappy about not being born, because not being born prohibits anyone from having interests positive or negative.
B) You cannot justify causing harm that way. Try: "I can afford to have children only if I sell them to traffickers/cannibals/pornographers once they are a certain age".... should those children be happy their lives were afforded by your pemeditating to harm them? I think not.
Life has suffering is a quality that none of us can (100%) control. Actively causing suffering is not justified on that basis.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
No duh. But you'd still be wrong to beat and eat your kids.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I thought we had moved on from talking about you? You can't think clearly about something that you so intensely personalize. You'll notice I also do not expound upon my personal experience, because it's simply too subjective and I realize it's too prone to the regular trappings of psychology.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Can one humanely slaughter unwilling humans? If not, I find the term silly.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Farms, refrigerators, heating, medications, clothes, etc are all not things which are "part of nature." We can clearly deviate from nature when we choose to.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Some interesting points, most of which I don't agree with, but really, if you want to talk about this completely separate issue, you should make a new thread. But of course I also understand if you're kinda sick of talking to me by now :joke:
A) Once a creature is born it can begin exhibiting preferences and interests. Therefore, once a pig is born it can be indirectly pleased that you created it. Your argument here is that the whole concept of a life worth living cannot be considered or applied with respect to as yet non existent creatures, but given the similarity between past and future members of given species, it's more than reasonable to assume that once born, animals who are treated well would prefer life over non-existence, despite the nature of its end.
B) Your comparison is blown far out of proportion. Ethically slaughtered animals are not sentenced to a life of such abuses. If a pig's existence necessarily entails its slaughter, and I was that pig, I might be upset at the brevity of my existence but I would still be thankful for the life I do have.
Quoting NKBJ
Beating farm animals isn't good practice...
Quoting NKBJ
When discussing my individual justification for eating meat, I have to bring up myself. Yes this is anecdotal, but such is the nature of personal circumstances. I don't know why you're concerned about psychology and subjective experience though, you could just address the things I've said directly.
Quoting NKBJ
Well, lethal injection protocols were developed precisely to achieve this. Hanging seems painful, and while the guillotine is fast and probably more ethical it's also an instrument of terror.
I won't say there's a perfectly humane way to slaughter unwilling humans, but there are more and less humane ways, just as there are more and less humane ways to raise and slaughter farm animals. Relatively speaking, yes, animals and humans can be humanely slaughtered.
Quoting NKBJ
We don't deviate from nature really, it's our nature to deviate. Refrigeration is a wonderful product of the wondrous natural adaptive capabilities of the human brain, and it allows us to transport and store quantities of vegetables which would otherwise rot, but we're still beholden to material, energy, and thermodynamic limitations which prevent us from just doing whatever we want to do. We cannot refrigerate everything because it's too expensive.
Quoting NKBJ
I'm not interested in making a companion thread for this other subject. I was more so trying to broaden your perspective of the interconnected and complex nature of societal agricultural systems. Contrary to popular belief farmers aren't stupid, especially when it comes to farming. If eliminating animal husbandry entirely was more nutritious, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly in every way, they would already be doing so en-masse. Many farms are indeed switching towards more human edible plant-based crops, but the feasibility of such a switch is farm dependent and is not suitable for traditional pastureland in the least.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
The key being once it is born. Arguing that we ought to bring people into life, because they will then enjoy it is just an argument against birth control.
And even a well-treated pig doesn't want you to hurt it or kill it. You're pretending like this is a bargain that the pigs made with you: "some time living for my right to eat you." Well, you never asked the pig permission, it hasn't agreed to those terms.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Baloney. If you knew what was coming, you'd try everything in your power to get the heck out of there. You wouldn't just happily say "oh, gee thanks for letting me live at all. I guess it's okay for you to kill me now for the sake of eating my flesh." You would obviously try to escape and you wouldn't be all that grateful. Just like I don't think African American slaves were so grateful to be alive that they thought their situation was just a-okay.
And the comparison to child traffickers is spot on. But we can change it to "black-market organ sellers" or "cannibals" or "snuff film makers" if you want to err on the side of the animal/child simply dying. Cattle are killed at 22 months of age on average, but they have a natural lifespan of 20 years. So killing them at that age is like killing a human whose only 10 years old.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Ummm, but you keep on inserting your personal stories like they matter.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
The death penalty is for people who have murdered others (and I still think it's wrong). It's not right to compare the killing of a criminal human to that of an innocent animal. But even if some ways are less awful than others, that doesn't make any of them "good" or "humane". Compassionate murder of someone who wants to live is just contradictory in terms. Like I said, you wouldn't be so convinced of your aggressors compassion if it was your neck on the line.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
And yet all the medical evidence points to the fact that meat is something we can actually live very well without. Better yet, it points to the fact that meat consumption is linked to various diseases and shorter lifespans.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
How sweetly condescending. I don't buy it though. You've obviously just bought into American corporate propaganda.
I know plenty of farmers-some just vegetable farmers, some raise cattle. They don't dispute that raising cattle is a lot more work, money, and resource intensive than beans and kale.
You know very well that I'm not arguing that we ought to reproduce or raise farm animals for their own sake. I've explained this multiple times, you keep repeating the same misinterpretation. I'm arguing that it's not immoral to breed farm animals, just as its not immoral to produce children. The reason you keep making this mistake can only be because you hold the position that reproducing or breeding animals is immoral, and you're confusing the negation of this with inversion into moral obligation. You're clearly an anti-natalist.
Quoting NKBJ
If pigs could make such bargains then they probably would. If their life is a net positive, worth living, then they would probably rather have the lives they have than never have lived at all.
You never asked your child's permission to thrust them into the world, and it will inevitably involve suffering and death for them. this is exactly what anti-natalists say to argue that reproduction is immoral.
Quoting NKBJ
Wanting to escape the farm before my execution (even though it's certain death) isn't the same as not wanting to have ever lived at all.
Quoting NKBJ
You're very good at not addressing the meat of the argument. How would you like it if I used the Christian potential life argument and endlessly compared your moral beliefs to that of Hitler, Stalin and Mao? You would probably want me to address the actual subject matter at hand and get tired of the emotion laden false equivocations and irrelevant appeals.
Let's see if we can actually agree on a comparison: Your hypothetical wife is pregnant and prenatal genetic testing reveals a congenital terminal disease which will definitely cause the death of the child around age 10. If your hypothetical pregnant wife chooses to have the baby knowing it must die young but will otherwise live happily until then, has she done something immoral?
Your intuition will rightly tell you that it is not immoral, and you will assume that it's not a fair comparison because the killing of the farm animal is optional, and this is where you're wrong.
Just like your hypothetical pregnant wife, the farmer must make a decision prior to the birth of their animals which functions in the exact same manner as the decision she faces: if the animal is to be afforded life, it must include an early demise. One is a genetic cause, the other is a thermodynamic/economic one. Even if you hold to the idea that we can afford animals without harvesting, we cannot afford all of them without harvesting some.
Quoting NKBJ
If I'm making a point about my own circumstances, then I needs must reference myself. This is very straightforward and easy to understand. Obfuscatory hand-waving is bad rhetoric.
Quoting NKBJ
Medical evidence pointsd toward consuming less meat as a healthier alternative, not consuming no meat. And unfortunately there are yet extant economic and logistic hurtles toward a nutritionally adequate national diet.
Quoting NKBJ
Or you've obviously bought into vegan propaganda? You don't buy that either agriculture or health-care are complex systems which are difficult to model, predict, control, and plan?
Of course you don't...
But why?
Quoting NKBJ
And depending on the resources available to the farm, cattle might be more profitable than vegetable.
Why are you inserting your personal stories like they matter? :D
This is clearly a case of projection on your part: you tell me I'm insisting on a misinterpretation and then you call me an anti-natalist without any suggestion of that on my part.
I have repeatedly said that putting animals on this planet is not immoral. Therefore putting humans on it is neither. The problem arises when you seek to cause them harm, and death counts as harm.
Your analogy with the pregnant wife is flawed in part because there is (obviously) a huge difference between someone's natural death that you can't stop, or causing someone's death. To equate the two just means you think that since all children we have will eventually die of natural causes, it's just as okay to kill them when we please.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
But it shows that you don't want to die, and neither does the pig, and that you would see something wrong in being killed...that's because it is wrong to kill someone for your own profit.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Your own circumstances matter not in the least here. Whine to your doctor about it. Until you show me some scientific evidence about how this happens to people and not just you your personal "experience" cannot be used in this discussion. Not sure why that's so hard to wrap your head around? If I told you that being vegan cured my cancer, I should hope you wouldn't just take my word for it either. It's just hearsay.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Medical evidence shows that eating less meat or no meat is great for your health.
And I've already explained that being vegan does not have to cost more than being omnivorous... the price of either diet depends on your abilities to shop and cook and perhaps your location.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Of course I know they are complex, but I know for a fact that in comparison to what we currently have, both plant-based agriculture and universal health care would be much much simpler, affordable, better for humans, animals, and the planet.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
So you admit then that meat is more expensive since it is more profitable?
Just, FYI, citing relevant sources or experts does not count as personal anecdote. At most you could argue that I should be providing some way to verify these sources, but I guess that you really have a hard time telling what is and what isn't anecdotal.
In any case, no new arguments are being made here. We've clearly reached an impasse, so unless you have something new to add, I will consider this conversation over now.
1. Eating anything, plant, animal, for example means that they have to be killed first, or destroyed. For those who believe in God's creation, this means destroying God's creation, in part at least. The scriptures which talk about the Lion laying down with the Lamb envision a peaceful Kingdom where there is no death or killing.
2. You can still eat animals without killing them: wait for them to die. Call these "Carrion Farms" where animals that die of natural causes can be safely processed and consumed.
Actually I pointed out your well repeated misinterpretation, and then explained why your continued misinterpretation suggests you're an anti-natalist.
More than once you presented my position as stating that we're morally obligated to breed farm animals and to reproduce, even going so far as to say I've argued against abortion, which is not a reasonable interpretation of anything I've said. I'm now characterizing your position as anti-natalist because as I've explained, unless many farm animals are harvested at some point we could never afford them to begin with, so to not harvest farm animals is to not breed them.
The thermodynamic necessity of harvesting our farm animals is why we're justified to eventually do so. Just because we need to harvest some or many of them doesn't make their lives not worth living.
And when you compare farmers to child-traffickers/rapists, you're pretty much confirming your anti-natalist position towards farm animals in strong emotional terms.
Quoting NKBJ
We seek to continue life, not to cause harm. If we invest our energy to produce nourishment with plants only, then we cannot waste any on breeding animals.
Quoting NKBJ
I see neither right nor wrong in the situation. The farmer does what nature permits them, and so does the pig. It's an evolutionary contrived exchange made necessary by thermodynamic limitations; prey and predator, just with much more sophisticated predators. The pig wants to live and the farmer wants to continue being a farmer and get a return on their investment (less they risk bankruptcy), so the pig tries to escape and the farmer tries to harvest the pig. If the pig can clear obstacles before it, then it can possibly live free (unlikely unless it is a robust enough breed) and maybe even find intergenerational purchase and become the grandparent of a new invasive species of boar, if the farmer clears their own hurtles, then they play a part in the continuation of human civilization, which inexorably demands suffering as payment.
Quoting NKBJ
Your compatriot Chatter-bears kept asking if I ate meat myself, which is why I brought it up originally, but it has relevance to my central argument:
Planning and purchasing a nutritionally adequate vegan diet might be possible for me to do, but it is presently too difficult. Different people do have different nutritional requirements (do you want scientific evidence for that?). different people also have different means and access with which to purchase nutritionally adequate vegan diets (do you want scientific evidence for that?). As a society, at present, we are not yet able to pull off the logistical miracle of delivering a nutritionally adequate plant-based diet to everyone for the host of reasons I've previously went in to and more.
Quoting NKBJ
Medical evidence shows Americans in particular eat too much meat, and medical evidence shows that well planned diets result in improved health.
Show me the study that demonstrates consuming zero meat or animal products is nutritionally superior to eating some meat...
Quoting NKBJ
How are you going to fertilize all the existing and extra crops without manure and as the price of oil based synthetic fertilizer goes up? How will you manage the logistics of ensuring nationally adequate planting per total nutritional requirements? alter our harvesting and processing infrastructure? ensure proper refrigerated distribution? manage year round nutritional consistency against possible bottlenecks of certain nutrients? Re-educate everyone to understand how to plan and prepare adequate vegan diets? Develop and redevelop the extra land required to grow varieties suitable for replacing animal products in our diet?
Where will all this money come from?
If it was simpler and more affordable we would already be doing it.
Quoting NKBJ
This doesn't make sense at all.
Quoting NKBJ
"This one farmer told me one time that I'm right"...
Honestly, you've got to be joking. You squeal when I suggest that I'm not equipped to undertake a plant-based diet, demanding scientific evidence and screaming anecdote, but when you unambiguously put forward anecdotal evidence of your own you put on blinders
This one farmer you met one time isn't "citing" nor "expert, it's an unambiguous and stereotypical fallacious use of anecdote, and you say I'm the one who has a hard time telling what is and is not anecdotal?
Quoting NKBJ
Why would I need to make new arguments when you haven't yet rebuked them or put forward a substantial argument of your own?