The Vegan paradox
Humans are the first animals known to have what we call morals. Ethical living is of concern to us.
Many moral theories have been invented with the aim of understanding and guiding this very human need to be good and shun the bad. Whether this enterprise has borne fruit or created more confusion is a personal matter.
That said the common thread that links all forms of morality is happiness and suffering. The former to be actively sought and encouraged while the latter discouraged and forbidden.
Of the two, happiness and suffering, greater weightage is given to suffering. This is perhaps succinctly expressed as ''if you can't help then at least do no harm''.
It seems to me that the right place to plant the flower of morality is a peaceable lifeform - a deer or a bunny rabbit perhaps.Yet, this is not the case.
Morality has, ironically, evolved in the apex predator on Earth - humans. This presents a rather obvious difficulty. We have a taste for meat and so have to kill but our morals forbid us to harm or kill.
The Vegan paradox.
Many moral theories have been invented with the aim of understanding and guiding this very human need to be good and shun the bad. Whether this enterprise has borne fruit or created more confusion is a personal matter.
That said the common thread that links all forms of morality is happiness and suffering. The former to be actively sought and encouraged while the latter discouraged and forbidden.
Of the two, happiness and suffering, greater weightage is given to suffering. This is perhaps succinctly expressed as ''if you can't help then at least do no harm''.
It seems to me that the right place to plant the flower of morality is a peaceable lifeform - a deer or a bunny rabbit perhaps.Yet, this is not the case.
Morality has, ironically, evolved in the apex predator on Earth - humans. This presents a rather obvious difficulty. We have a taste for meat and so have to kill but our morals forbid us to harm or kill.
The Vegan paradox.
Comments (212)
It's a paradox for omnis who want to maintain that they care about animals, believe less suffering is better than more suffering, and yet willingly contribute to the meat industry.
Vegan's see no Paradox and in their hypocrisy denounce humans being omnivores.
Ya, I think NKBJ has you on this.
The real Vegan paradox is how much suffering and killing is done to maintain their own eating habits...like such massive amounts of non-animal based food do not result in a huge mount of animal death and suffering.
What starts as a noble goal,
'My life should not incur suffering upon other living beings',
in practice results in,
'My life should not incur suffering upon other living beings (unless it means I would have to part with my favorite luxuries).'
People all too often don't realize that their goal isn't the former, but the latter. Would they part with daily hot showers? A pointless waste of water and energy? Of course not. Would they prefer to keep washing their bodies with a wide selection of perfumed shampoos, scrubs and soaps? Would they take the bicycle to work, even when it is raining and the wind is blowing? Do they use central heating, instead of a single heater in the main living area? Do they prefer branded clothing over second hand clothing? Do they use plastic? Do they grow their own vegetables? Etc.
All too often one finds that these people use all the luxuries society has to offer, except for the fact that they don't eat animal products, ignoring the fact that all these other luxuries contribute either directly or indirectly to the suffering of other beings (including other humans). Such a morality is no morality at all. One is either fooling themselves or attempting to fool others.
That's a problem, but clearly not an argument to go ahead and commit mass murder.
It's akin to saying that since driving cars will statistically and accidentally kill so and so many people every year anyway, I should just go out and mow down pedestrians for fun.
You do what you can and the best you can. Most vegans don't wear animal products either.
And even if they didn't, you're basically saying that since we can only eradicate part of the suffering by changing our lifestyle, we shouldn't bother and just go ahead and cause a much larger amount of suffering.
Anyone who claims to hold such ideals should ask themselves those questions, and doubly so if they believe themselves to be morally superior because of it. Ideals are meaningless if they aren't translated into action.
Needless to say, I don't know you or the way you practice your veganism, so don't take this as being directed specifically at you.
Hence - no paradox. Not even a dilemma.
All too often one finds that, does one?
Do you have any evidence to back up that claim?
I doubt it. I am not vegan but most vegans I know are very concerned about the environment and go to great lengths to reduce their carbon footprint and their consumption of unnecessary, resource-wasting manufactured goods.
Clearly, so it is a good thing I didnt make such an argument. What I did was point out a paradox, a contradiction, in using the suffering of animals as a basis for veganism. It cannot be done without also justifying a non-vegan position. (The non-vegan will be able to use the same arguments to justify non-vegan-ism as the vegan will use to justify the death and suffering to animals for the sake of vegamism.)
It's not paradoxical though. Veganism is about the commitment to reducing suffering. They're under no illusions that all suffering will be gone. It's clearly not paradoxical to ascribe to ideals that greatly reduce suffering.
Not sure why you're so concerned about the humility of vegans. This post is about whether veganism itself contains a paradox. Which it doesn't. It's a commitment to reducing suffering by avoiding animal products. It's not about eliminating suffering altogether, since that is likely impossible.
Non-sequitor. Your not addressing what I said was contradictory. I didnt say anything about illusions to eliminate suffering or that it was paradoxal to have ideals that greatly reduce suffering.
You said it was paradoxical to use suffering as a basis. I pointed out why it is not. Sorry you're unable to understand that.
I didnt say it was paradoxical to use suffering as a basis. This is what makes your snideness insufferable, that you actually label your own inability to understand as someone one elses inability to understand.
What I said was, when a vegan argues against a meat eater on the basis of suffering they are being contradictory because the vegan too causes suffering for what they eat.
Either do not respond or respond with some humility because few things on a forum are as obnoxious to me as a fool who condescends above their own capability.
Omg, this is getting too funny.
"I didn't say it was paradoxical to use suffering as a basis for veganism, I just said it was contradictory!"
:rofl:
In any case, I've already explained why it's not contradictory.
And NKBJ explained here why that is not contradictory. You have not responded to that explanation. If you still believe it is contradictory or a paradox (you actually said it was both) you need to explain why that is the case. How can a goal of reducing animal suffering be used to justify eating meat or, more specifically, eating meat produced by Western factory farming methods?
And is it not the case that moral, ethical living is directed toward the manner in which we treat each other? How central to the moral and ethical codes to which we subscribe is "not eating chickens, cows, fish, and pigs"? We have been eating animals for a very long time -- at the same time we developed morals and ethics.
Health is one issue. So, some people maintain that it is healthier to eat only plants; others think it healthier to eat mostly plants, but allow eggs and milk or cheese. Most people think it is healthier to include at least some meat in their diets.
We don't expect moral or ethical consideration from animals such as chickens and we have not considered it appropriate until recently to extend moral and ethical consideration to animals. (I'm not reckoning Buddhist or Hindu religion here.) Animals are outside moral and ethical consideration. (That doesn't mean that we can't be sentimental about animals. I think squirrels are very cute; I wouldn't deliberately run over one of them. Deer are very attractive, warm fuzzy animals, too. Killing a squirrel or a deer deliberately (like, by shooting it) is neither moral nor immoral. It is only legal and illegal, depending on the laws governing hunting season.
For our good, food animals should be raised under "humane" conditions. Factory farming doesn't qualify as humane, as far as I know. But if a chicken is crowded in its cage, that is a health concern, not a moral concern. (We are concerned about a chicken's, pig's, cow's health because it may affect our health.)
You are right, I used the two terms to express the same sentiment. Doesnt really matter. We can stick to contradictory, I think its the more suitable of the two.
The explanation of NKBJ you linked, like your reiteration of it, doesnt address what I am saying. I just repeated what I mean in my last post, easily referenced above.
Ecology is a real moral issue, as is the social, economic and industrial system we have built. No matter what we eat, the goods required to support soon-to-be-8 billion-people has been, is, and will continue to be highly UN-ecological. It isn't just food, vegans of the world: It's oil, coal, steel, glass, plastics, electricity, clothing, housing, transportation, health care, education, and so on -- all of it requiring much more intensive extraction of resources and food production. If one is really worried about the welfare of the animal kingdom (including spiders, grasshoppers, bed bugs, beetles, wasps, wood ticks, mosquitos, et al one should foreswear having children.
I feel there is an oddness if not a clear paradox.
People who are of moral bent are generally docile. They like peace, quiet, harmony, you know, all the ''good'' stuff. They avoid conflict in general - turn the other cheek kind.
I'm just extending the arrow of morality in the direction it points to - docile, peacable creatures. So, morality should've evolved in creatures like deer, sheep and fluffy cute rabbits.
Instead, we see moral beginnings in what is justifiably the apex predator on the planet - humans. It's paradoxical, isn't it, that a predator, who by definition is violent and has to kill to survive, is troubled by its own nature.
It's like the most notorious criminals on the planet philosophizing about ethics. Paradoxical no?
Dolphins and other primates also exercise empathy (what I assume you mean by morals; the general concept that you are not the only one with feelings and yours aren't more important). This is because the live in a similar role to early humans.
Upon inventing tools and cultivation methods we leaped, almost instantly, to the top of the food chain. Now we are left in environments with essentially no life threatening phenomena to exercise our anxious and empathetic minds on.
Medicine, safety regulations, law, veganism are all outlets for outdated evolutionary traits. Never before has there been such an explosive success outbreak from a mutation. Evolution has had no time to dull our mid-food chain instinct and thus we over populate, nurse those who might've been dead and meddle with the nature of predator and prey.
Docile nature to me, springs from mindfulness, the ability to exist in the present (in time and space). Not to worry about what you should be doing for people elsewhere or about what you should've done or what you should do. Something a bunny rabbit or deer has likely mastered. To be completely focused on the grass it wants to eat, and then the moment a predator is present, the deer/bunny takes flight.
Quoting DingoJones
The response to that was that the vegan causes less suffering and the moral principle they are following is to reduce suffering.
Can you explain how you find a contradiction in that response, or how it fails to address your claim that veganism is contradictory?
No they're not. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, William Wilberforce, Emily Pankhurst, Yitzakh Rabin were all revered for their integrity and moral courage. I can't think of anybody that would describe any of them as docile.
The real paradox lies in the fact that one is willing to part with some, but not all, luxuries in order to reduce the suffering one induces on others. Apparently, the consumption of meat is an acceptable sacrifice, but to take the bicycle to work or foregoing hot showers is not. If one's ideal is not to cause suffering to other beings, then how does one account for this?
I do acknowledge that there is a bit of a 'hipster vegan' thing happening at present, where veganism is seen as a fashion choice rather than a deep conviction and is adopted at the same time as a heavily consumeristic lifestyle. The people you refer to might be like that. But I think that's a passing fad and not representative of traditional and mainstream veganism, which is very closely associated with environmentalism.
Yes, it fails to address my claim because the meat eater can still use the exact same argument to justify his position and because if the vegan goal was to actually reduce suffering they could chose to not eat fruits and vegetables from farms. For the most part they do though, making it hypocritical to then use this argument against a meat eater. Its a contradiction, a double standard.
Ahimsa is non-violence isn't it?
Non-violence is a soft stance as opposed to, say, the on-going malady of terrorism. Isn't it?
I'm currently reading a book on logic and just finished the chapter on credibility. Humans discussing moral theory while, simultaneously, discussing the gustatory delights of meat in another setting does more than convince me that humans are not the right species to be talking on the subject.
Peace, one of the greatest goals of mankind and yet, by their nature, unattainable, is docility isn't it?
I'm afraid I am unable to make any sense of this. Are you denying that, for a typical city dweller that can only obtain food from shops, there is less animal suffering involved in a vegan diet than an omnivorous one? If there is less suffering involved, and it is easy to show that's the case, then the vegan's goal of reducing suffering has been achieved.
Do you have an actual argument against that, other than (apparently) suggesting that vegans are hypocrites for not starving themselves to death?
No. It isn't.
Try marching in a line up to a bunch of policemen that are systematically clubbing those that reach the front of the line on the head with long sticks until they collapse, and then say that that's a soft way to live. Most terrorists are weak, narcissistic softies by comparison.
Docility would involve obeying the police's orders to stop and turn back, not marching on to receive the blows of the lathis.
If the goal is to reduce sentient suffering, then the only way we can be sure that our actions have brought about our desired goal is at the end of all time where we tot up the total suffering caused. Anything short of that is a speculation about what set of behaviours will minimise suffering.
Now we can base that speculation on a number of methods depending on how we prefer to deal with uncertainty. Some will simply take the latest research from the majority of scientists and use that. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it's not automatically right either. Scientific research is flawed, the results definitely follow trends, and biases, as well as poor understanding of statistics, often cloud the results.
Others (myself included), take more of an Hippocratic 'do no harm' approach to uncertainty. Not interfering with our best interpretation of the natural order unless it is overwhelmingly clear that we need to.
The point here is that the solution is confused with the objective. Many non-vegans want to reduce suffering too. I might, for example, wear a woolen coat because I'm concerned about the effects microplastics from artificial fleece may have on the life in our oceans in the long run. I'd do this, not because of the scientific evidence, but because I know the planet is used to substances like wool, whereas substances like polyester represent an uncertainty.
The same can be said for grazing land being converted to mass vegetable farming. The current science might consider it possible, but it is an uncertainty (not having been tried before) and therefore the solution is not the same as the objective.
More to the point of the OP, however... I don't see an issue with an apex predator developing morality until you start extending that morality to our prey. That seems to me to be just a fundamental misunderstanding of what morality is.
But that's not what vegans are advocating with regards to meat eating though is it? Vegans are advocating eliminating meat, not minimising it. The uncontradictory equivalent would be to eliminate hot showers (above what is strictly necessary for health), eliminate transport (apart from that required for survival), basically eliminate the use of any and all substances which harm the environment other than those strictly necessary for survival.
The point is, what happens in reality is that people (those who care) reduce the harm their lives cause to others down to a minimum tolerable level of comfort. For some that might be no meat at all (but a shower every day and a few plane trips to explore the world), for others it might be a much more frugal resource consumption, but a considerable amount of free-range meat remaining in their diet.
It may be reasonable, and quite helpful, to reiterate what experts currently think about the harms various practices cause, what I think is unreasonable is the presumption that there is an action that anyone wishing reduce those harms should do as a result of that data.
The answer seems to be ''yes''.
On the contrary, Peter Singer - probably the world's most influential and well-known vegan - advocates exactly that, ie minimising, or even just reducing. He has written repeatedly that it is not realistic to expect that most people will give up eating meat, but if they can even be persuaded to reduce their consumption somewhat, and pay more attention to the conditions in which their meat was produced, a great deal of suffering can be prevented.
Further, Singer advocates all of those other things you mention - minimise unnecessary travel, resource consumption (including frequent, long, hot showers), greenhouse footprint. Most of the outgoing vegans I know do too.
I don't mean what vegans qua people are advocating (how could any of us possibly know that without exhaustive survey), I mean what vegans as a philosophy are advocating, otherwise 'vegan' becomes meaningless. What's the significance of the difference between someone who eats 1 gram of meat a day (not a vegan) and someone who eats no meat at all (vegan) when compared to someone who takes one flight a year (no ideological name for this) and someone who takes no flights a year?
Veganism is making something significant out of an absolute (no meat) not a variable (amount of meat). All other environmental concerns are only variables, no ideology associated with absolute elimination. That's the point I'm making. Anyone who just happens to have set their meat intake at zero (no different to someone who just happens to have lowered their plane flights to zero) is just an ethical person doing what they can, same as someone who's lowered their meat intake to just above zero and their plane flights to zero.
So why does one have an ideology named after their decision and the other not? Because being a vegan is a statement, not about the direction our meat consumption should go in (less) but the final destination (none). That makes it different to other statements about environmental variables.
Probably, they don't, any more than the average meat eater justifies eating cow but not horse, pig but not dog, sheep but not caterpillar, and so on. My own justification for not in general eating meat is that it is grossly bad manners to eat someone to whom one has not been introduced. Thus I will happily eat my own livestock or my neighbours, but avoid anonymised corpse-parts at the supermarket.
You're touching on really interesting questions that I would love to further discuss. However, they fall beyond the scope of the question of this thread. The question here was whether there is a paradox at the heart of veganism, which there obviously isn't.
Maybe you could start a thread asking which, if any moral consideration can/should be extended towards animals? I'd love to discuss the difference between a moral agent and moral patient.
Oh, I see. You're talking about humans as predators and why would they be moral towards others, especially prey, at all. Interesting question.
For one, because we're social animals. We evolved to have empathy for others. It was meant for our group, but it's a skill that we can use on non-humans as well.
For another, we actually only fairly recently in evolution started being huge predators. Pre-tools, we only occasionally caught small mammals, birds, or fish. We ate lots of vegetable matter, grubs, and termites.
Also, we have a lot of impulses given to us by evolution that seem paradoxical. The human mind is able to entertain conflicting impulses. Like to be selfish or to share. To procreate indifferently or to be monogamous. I don't think it's paradoxical, though it is the root of much good literature and story telling.
Do you ever do charitable work? Or donate to a charitable cause? Or even just help out someone randomly? If yes, then why don't you donate all of your income? Why not become a saint or the next Mother Theresa?
A commitment to doing good, or at least reducing harm in the world does not equal a commitment to sacrificing your whole life. Are there areas all people could improve? Sure.
Again, the fact that we can't be perfect about our commitment to a better world does not mean we toss the baby out with the bathwater and just do whatever the heck we want.
Except a) that chickens and all animals spend a considerable amount of energy avoiding death, so it's safe to say they don't want it. B) you're taking any potential pleasures in life away from them. C) that's not what farms actually do, so it's not really a practical question.
Thanks for pointing out my poor choice of words.
Do you see, then, the irony (paradox?) that the most violent species, humans, are the ones troubled by their own natural bloodlust?
One could say, of course, that mental evolution is out of step with evolution of our body. The latter still needs meat and, so, must resort to violence against other, and sometimes same, species but the former allows us to analyze and, perhaps, rue our inherent violent tendencies.
It could be considered ''good'' though; this odd combination of the predator feeling pain for its prey. Some may think it to be an ''awakening'' and we, as representatives of mother nature herself, have come to realize how cruel life can be.
What should we do now?
Like you said, many other paradoxes can arise out of this disharmony. Tigers don't worry about strangling their prey to death because their brains match their body: they can't think of ethics and their body needs meat.
It's only us, humans, that are in this position. Is it a cruel twist of fate or is it an opportunity to make life for all living things better?
Yes but the term 'charity worker' does not only apply to someone who does the most charity work it is possible to do, the term 'charitable donor' does not only apply to people who give the maximum amount of money it is possible for them to give. The term 'vegan', however, (the subject of this thread) applies only to someone eating the minimum amount of meat it is possible to eat (ie none). So I'm unsure as to how accurate this conflation you're making is.
A vegan may well advocate eating less meat, they may also advocate a particular football team, but neither is what makes them a vegan. What makes them a vegan is eating the least meat it is possible to eat, hence the comparison I think @Tzeentch is making is fair.
Because I do not pretend to hold ideals that I cannot or do not want to live by.
Quoting NKBJ
Then it is not much of a commitment. Would you call me committed if I were to live by my ideals only when it suited me? Ideals that do not lead to action are meaningless, mental vanity.
Quoting NKBJ
An imperfect commitment is not an actual commitment. What one is in fact commitment to is an ideal that sounds a lot less appealing. Something along the lines of "I will live by ideal X as long as it is convenient for me to do so." One shouldn't lie to oneself or others about the nature of their commitment. This is something many do not like to confront themselves with, as it does not fit the image of a morally superior being they have of themselves.
If a person when asked, "Do you eat meat?", would reply, "Yes, but I don't drive a car", would a vegan feel like the person made an equal sacrifice? Most likely not. But the person is showing the exact same selectivity as a vegan.
In short, doing good things is good, whatever one's ideals. However, preaching ideals that one does not follow themselves is not.
No. It doesn't.
Quoting TheMadFool
Depends on what we decide to do. Currently we are destroying the planet and murdering billions of animals for our taste for flesh, so it seems the bad part is winning. It all depends on how many people can ultimately choose to put the needs of others and the planet before a pretty trivial desire. And if they can do so in time.
You're missing the point.
Charity workers and vegans alike are working towards reducing harm. Both are aware of the impossibility of total elimination of suffering. Both still find it to be a worthwhile endeavor to reduce suffering.
That's not true. Almost all commitments we make are imperfect. Do you try to be a nice person? Thoughtful? A good partner/spouse? And if you ever find yourself falling short of an ideal you hold, do you seriously just give it all up? Nope. You do what you can. That necessarily, practically involves being selective.
Veganism is one part of a larger approach to reducing harm in the world. It's not the only thing you can do. It's not the magic final solution. In a phrase from logic 101, it's a necessary but insufficient condition.
And "preaching" is a red herring. This thread is about whether veganism in and of itself contains a contradiction. Whether or not certain vegans seem to you preachy is entirely beside the point.
The comment of yours which I took to start this little exchange was;
Quoting NKBJ
So the point very much is why avoiding animal products? If one is not attempting to eliminate suffering altogether, and one admits (as you seem to) that even vegans could do more to reduce suffering overall, then why eliminate animal products entirely? We've just established that "because it is possible to" is not adequate because its possible to do more charity work, or use less resources, but you don't. That's what makes veganism seem ideological, hence the charge of inconsistency
To put it another way, if the maxim of the vegan is "cause as little suffering as possible", then they are inconsistent in carrying out any activity which causes harm that is not strictly necessary.
If, rather the maxim is "cause as little suffering as possible without impacting too heavily on one's comfort" then vegans have nothing to say in campaign, because how would they know the ethical meat-eater was not already doing this?
I what I'm going to comment on here isn't what you're focusing on in this thread, but my moral views are not at all based on suffering, harm or happiness. I think all of those concepts are way too vague to base any moral stances on.
And thus you will find that there aren't many things people are truly committed to. An imperfect commitment is nothing other than the pretension to be perfectly committed, when one is in fact committed to a lesser ideal, as we've discussed. However, as I have pointed out several times before, this does not mean one should give up. One should be more conscious about how they view themselves and others.
Quoting NKBJ
You do what you want.
Quoting NKBJ
Sometimes in a discussion other topics come up.
Lol. Okay, well, duly noted, vegans aren't perfect. We never had that illusion, but if it makes you feel better, here again in all caps: VEGANS AREN'T PERFECT!
Veganism is still not paradoxical.
Vegans have recognized that animal use causes a hugely disproportionate amount of harm in relation to the happiness gained from eating them/using such products. They choose not to participate therein at minimal personal cost. And actually they gain a lot health-wise.
It's just an obvious, easy choice that others are too stubborn to make. Like recycling, but more impactful than that.
Obvious to you, perhaps. Do you think on the whole vegans are better people than non-vegans?
That's a weird question.
I think veganism is better than omnivorism.
Any other personal qualities will vary from person to person.
What are your moral views based on?
If suppose your moral theory was x. Is it possible that x causes harm and unhappiness and would you, then, still maintain that your theory is good?
If yes, I'm interested to know more.
I don't use a principle-oriented approach for ethics. It seems to me that principle-oriented approaches always lead to absurd stances. It's the ethics version of theory worship.
There are definitely things that amount to harm and unhappiness in some opinions that I think are morally right. For example, I'm a free speech absolutist. Some speech is going to offend/upset some people. It's morally wrong to prohibit or to socially pressure speech restrictions in my opinion.
Do you think someone should be allowed to lie and shout fire in a theater when it will cause mass hysteria and people will get hurt in their attempts to escape?
And free speech is important because the harm caused by restricting it is potentially greater than by letting people talk.
Perhaps we are the most dangerous species, rather than the most violent one. After all, there are other species whose entire life is conflict and predation or parasitism.
Perhaps our danger comes from our enormous brains, and the ability to reflect and feel concern for others comes from the same source.
I don't quite see a vegan paradox, but I do see a vegan dilemma; at some point the suffering of animals may only be reduced by increasing the suffering of humans (at which point empathy for animals fails, and sympathy for ourselves takes over).
When, if ever, does our duty to not-exploit animals succumb to our desire to maintain our own well-being?
Giving a specific case would be fairly easy, but what about in general?
I think a god way of describing it is in terms of the foreseeable risks involved:
We may be theoretically capable of living without exploiting animals in any way, but there are significant risks should we attempt to do so. It's certainly true that we can exploit animals less (with no risk at all), and I think we ought to, but once we've trimmed the fat from our animal agriculture any further cuts might court national economic and dietary risks (efficient animal farms being shut down will cost the aseconomy (in addition to the added cost of replacing the nourishment, and finding alternatives for all those useful by-products). Orchestrating a nutritionally adequate national food supply entirely devoid of meat might not be logistically feasible given the variety of seasonal produce that would be required, and the unfathomably large amount of artificial dietary supplements (nutrients like iron and b12) that we would have to produce and distribute.
Once we start cutting in to funding we now use for other things (hospitals, schools, basic infrastructure, etc..) to afford our veganism, how much suffering or even death ought we transfer back onto humans in the name of saving the animals?
I think it makes perfect sense to say something like 'I try to be as vegan as I can', meaning one tries to reduce one's use of animal products as much as one can bear to do.
There are nuances too. Some philosophers argue that it is wrong to use products of animals even if they were not harmed or coerced in the process. Such people will not use honey, because it is using bees. This is reminiscent of Kant's dictum that we should see people as ends not means, but applying it to all animals rather than just our species. I say that goes beyond mainstream veganism, but some might disagree. That's the trouble with labels - they're too short to contain all the essential aspects of an idea.
I've not heard 'vegan' being used in that way (as in more vegan / less vegan) I've only ever heard it used as a term to describe people who do not use animal products. I can understand how there might be a use of a term that I've not come across, but I find it quite hard to believe that the only use of the term I've ever heard has been an 'extreme fringe'. So I maintain that the vast majority of people who claim to be vegan do so on the basis that they do not use animal products, not on the basis that they have simply reduced their meat consumption.
I think it is correct that most vegans aspire to not use any animal products at all. I think that is not completely practical because so many things one uses may indirectly rely on animal products. But I admire those vegans for the sacrifices they make in pursuit of their moral values and, if in striving for complete elimination they achieve ninety per cent elimination, they will have prevented a great deal of suffering.
Yes. People need to learn to not panic, and you don't assume that there is a fire and flip out just because someone yells "Fire"
Really? What if its 10 people? Or 50% of the people in the theatre?
You really are a free speech absolutist.
So there is never any speech of any kind that you would consider restricting?
Surely you're not advocating panic in any situation, no?
Quoting DingoJones
Correct.
Ya, panic is bad of course. You have no other concerns about public mischief though? I would imagine you mean this as it pertains to speech by itself, so excluding something like a con man using speech to steal money or something like that. This would be speech used for crime, rather than free speech by itself?
Im also imagining that its something of a nanny state problem, with the panic I mean. You are saying that in the long run people would learn not to panic if we didnt treat them like children. This would count for many such instances of free speech, your setting the bar higher fir the long term gain. So even in cases of slander or even spreading lies the same argument works, people will learn to not believe everything they hear about a person or instance, to do their own research etc etc. Is that right?
I dont mean to babble, Im just wrapping my head around this...embarrassingly I just sorta accepted the conventional restraints on free speech I guess.
Yeah, you've got all of that basically right. I'd keep contractual fraud illegal, but that's not just a speech issue--it's a contractual issue. And I'd have a category of criminal threatening, but speech wouldn't be sufficient for that, there would need to be some immediate physical threat present--for example, holding someone at gunpoint.
Re slander/libel, part of my goal is to get people to not put so much weight on mere claims, to be more skeptical and require evidence beyond just a claim (or set of claims from multiple parties).
In a similar vein, if I were king it would be impossible to convict anyone of a crime via testimony alone.
Guess it's a good thing you're not king. Under your rule more rapists would get away than already do, and the current number is shocking enough.
Luckily most people realize that you can't just say anything you want. Basically, most of us realize that you should not be allowed to use speech to harm others by inciting force/violence, committing fraud, or defamation. It should be pretty obvious why.
5'4" 100lb woman home alone with her infant child. 6'2" 275lb man comes in and threatens to kill her baby if she doesn't sleep with him/give him all her money/something else horrible. Hmmm, no guns needed to make that woman feel threatened enough to comply. And obvious enough that a serious crime has been committed.
It's outrageous that anyone would ever be convicted of rape merely on testimony.
See my above example.
If you just docilely comply in that situation and you have no other means of providing evidence of force (like cameras in your home, for example) then you wouldn't be able to convict the perp.
So, (a) learn some self defense (size is irrelevant there and can rather be a disadvantage), (b) be careful who you allow into your home, (c) consider setting up recording devices in your home if this is a common occurrence.
Wow.
Way to have a) zero compassion for others.
and b) absolutely no understanding of the human psyche.
I understand. Talk is cheap.
Im not sure id make it impossible, But I take your point.
Basically, you're saying, someone should risk having their child murdered to avoid rape, or let themselves be raped to save their kid and we should all just sit back and say, "hey, that's what you get for being a weakling."
Thinking that we should be able to convict others on testimony alone is what amounts to having no compassion for others.
I have compassion for those testifying to horrific situations that were beyond their control.
Out of 1000 rapes, 994 perps walk free. But you're worried about false testimonies...
Consider the 1.3 million rapes a year... and you're worried about false testimonies....
Why is free speech good in your opinion?
If one believes one shouldn't eat animal products because it causes harm to others, how does one justify driving a car, which pollutes the atmosphere? How does one justify living in a consumption based society which inevitably causes suffering to both animals and humans on a large scale? Why does one believe that not eating animal based products is the chosen method? Practicality?
I think it is very hard to justify unnecessary use of a car, which is why I very rarely drive, and try to get as many passengers as possible when I do. The long-term, committed vegans I know feel and act similarly.
Quoting Tzeentch
One doesn't have to justify something for which there is no reasonable alternative. If one is born into such a society, the best one can do is minimise unnecessary consumption. Again, the vegans I know do that.
This is speculative knowledge. There are some traits of what we called morality in the natural world. What does it matter being first? The question is are we 'only'.
Quoting TheMadFool
Wrong, we evolved into the apex predator long before we understood morals.
Veganism is not automatically moral, some very bad people indeed have been vegans or have held some other important moral positions. Wasting any food is more immoral than eating animals, animal products have become so cheap that they are regularly wasted. I think that factory farmed meat / eggs / milk is immoral, eating a little bit of meat and not being vegan isn't immoral and being vegan doesn't make you moral.
b) I am not entirely sure chickens posses the wide range of emotion humans do but I could also be sparing it any unpleasant experience such as being brutally murdered by its' natural predators
c) I didn't ask the question to apply it to real life, I am just trying to understand what you're trying to achieve with your veganism (which from a lot of perspectives I agree with - especially in terms of what we could be feeding the 3rd world but instead we fatten up our livestock).
I'm not sure there's much point replying in this thread as it seems clear now that the paradox the OP was referring to was not the paradox I thought it was, rendering this entire exchange rather off topic. But for the sake of clarity, I will try to explain.
Imagine that there are exactly ten behaviours in everyone's lifestyle which cause suffering to others. Each can be carried out at an intensity on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being the least extent possible (whilst remaining healthy) and 10 being the most harmful extent.
Anyone who cared about reducing suffering would campaign for (and hopefully achieve in their own life) a reduction in the total extent of harm yielded by all these behaviours (0-100). In reality people do not even aspire to reduce all to 0, but rather to reduce them all to a level they feel is 'fair'.
The paradox I thought the OP might have been referring to is that veganism seems to be justified by a concern for reducing suffering, yet it advocates the reduction of one specific form of suffering down to 0 and remains silent on all the others.
What vegans as people may advocate is neither here nor there in respect of this argument. Vegans 'as people' have advocated anything from giving away all our excess wealth to the extermination of the Jewish race so I don't see how their actions are relevant to a discussion on Veganism as a philosophy.
They are not relevant to it because veganism is not a philosophy. It is a practice, and different people adopt the practice for different reasons - concern for animal suffering, concern about killing animals, their own health, environmental concerns, their own digestion, economics (it's cheaper), fashion.
To complain that practising veganism does not logically entail, for instance, living with a tiny carbon footprint (although there is a correlation) is to make a category error.
Even if you restrict the discussion to people that are vegans because of concern for animal suffering, it makes no sense to complain about veganism having no impact on other forms of suffering. Veganism is about action through restricting what one consumes. It is as reasonable to complain that being vegan doesn't stop racehorses from being abused as it is to complain that campaigning against the slave trade does nothing to help stop domestic violence, or to complain that the road traffic laws have nothing to say about flight paths.
People are capable of maintaining more than one ethically-based practice at a time.
Name some.
Again, you're missing the point of my bringing it up with respect to this thread. I'm not just randomly saying that veganism doesn't make sense because they're not also advocating a lower level carbon footprint. I'm saying that veganism in the context of this thread (or rather what I thought it was about) contains an inconsistency because it proposes a target level (rather than a direction) in one aspect of life where none is warranted by the problem it is claiming to address.
The problem "how can we reduce the suffering of sentient beings (without completely ruining our own lives)" is not solved by the solution "reduce one source of harm to zero (and potentially ignore all others)". Veganism is not a solution to the problem it claims, in this particular instance, to be addressing. Its nothing to do with the fact that veganism only addresses one aspect, it's to do with the fact that it proposes zero as the solution when reduction is actually the solution to the problem as posed. This is borne out by the fact that when vegans address these other aspects, reduction is the solution they adopt there. Reduction down to what the individual considers a 'fair' level is the solution to the problem both adopted and advocated in all areas except animal use (where elimination is both adopted and advocated). That is the inconsistency to which I am referring.
I'm sure all these alternatives to consumerism sound horribly inconvenient to you, but they're not unreasonable. You wouldn't be the first one to make such a choice.
Valuing free speech is foundational for me. It doesn't rest on something else.
And we know the stats of rapes that are occurring where perps are walking free via?
In other words, you're somehow establishing that a rape occurred (how?), where in those cases the perps are walking free (because?)
A) I'm not sure what your point even is. Because the chicken cannot recognize the instrument of its death, it deserves to be killed? Or that it therefore doesn't reeeeally want to live? Walk up to a baby with a gun and he'll want to play with it.
B) They do not need to possess the full range of any of our abilities. It suffices that they possess the abilities to suffer and feel pleasure. (I mean, they can do more, but that's all moral consideration requires.) You're not killing them to save them from anybody. You're killing them for the pleasure of eating them. But even if you were trying to protect them, that's not the way to go about it. Again, you can't take a child, say "you're gonna die someday, so I'll just kill you now to spare you the rest."
C) I feel like you're being purposefully obtuse here: vegans don't want to participate in the slaughter and torture of billions of sentient animals.
I get it. You just don't want to believe victims. The entire legal system from police officers to prosecutors to defense lawyers to judges know that the vast majority of perps walk free despite credible testimonies because of people like you who demand the impossible from innocent persons.
This is going nowhere, because you have an ideological position about free speech that you will cling to no matter how many lives suffer because of it.
But I'm not sure why I even continue this conversation after you basically said a victim of a rape is at fault unless she took defense classes, set up a security system, and decided to sacrifice the life of her own baby.... It's obvious you're just biting the bullet or you're just amoral and so it's pointless to discuss this any further.
Are you saying that you're using mere testimony as sufficient evidence that a crime occurred?
The whole point of my comments (in this regard) is that epistemically, testimony isn't sufficient support of empirical claims.
So what if there's two eye witnesses? Or three? Or one hundred?
Yes, there are special circumstances where we must decide on testimony alone, and where that testimony is convincing enough to convict.
But again, I think you're just too stubborn about your absolutist free speech thing to budge.
Testimony isn't sufficient no matter how many people testify. You don't believe every major religion, do you? There's no shortage of people testifying there.
Argumentum ad populums are fallacies.
It is inherently illogical for a deity to exist. Not so with crime.
Then testimony alone isn't sufficient for you.
Testimony needs to be logical, coherent, and believable.
Believability can't be bootstrapped by testimony alone, it requires something additional.
Maybe not for you.
Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
That's because zero is not attainable in those other items. There's no reason why an inability to reach 'perfection' in one dimension should prevent someone from striving for it in a dimension in which it is practically attainable.
Does one feel by these sacrifices one has done enough and is justified in enjoying these comforts?
Quoting andrewk
And never let proverbs stop one from putting one's ideals into practice.
If we were to follow your prescription, we would be stopped from putting our ideals into practice - that's the point of the proverb. By the standard you seem to be promoting, we would never do anything to help anyone unless we could be sure that it was the maximum possible good we could do for everyone. Apparently there's no point giving a starving man a meal unless we immediately sell everything we own and distribute it amongst all the starving people on the Earth.
That way lies Ayn Rand's world.
Answer mine first, which pre-dates yours, and is related to it:
Quoting andrewk
If you weren't saying that then point were you trying to make in this post?
Now about your question - I presume you mean this:
Quoting Tzeentch
In order to get an answer, you'll first need to explain what it means. How does who justify what?
No.
Quoting andrewk
That there are possible alternatives within reason, which is something that was denied by you earlier.
Quoting andrewk
Quoting andrewk
Making use of comforts that cause suffering to others, while one's ideals seem to be to reduce suffering.
I see. How do you justify doing this?
Isn't it? I take zero flights, I use zero conflict minerals, I buy zero goods from companies and countries with poor human rights records, I pay zero amount of money into banks who invest in the arms trade. All of this is quite easy, I could do more if I was willing to sacrifice more comfort. I could take zero car journeys, buy zero disposable plastics, buy zero non-fair-trade goods, keep zero income above that which I strictly need, spend zero time doing anything but campaigning for human rights, spend zero time/money doing anything but campaigning to supply clean drinking water to the thousands still without it.... It's perfectly possible to achieve zero in many other areas of life which might otherwise cause suffering.
The main reason why I find fault with people campaigning for veganism is unrelated and much more complex. Its to do with the value I give to naturalness and how I think it best to deal with uncertainty.
The lesser issue I'm raising here is that I do not find "a desire to reduce suffering" to be a sufficient explanation for veganism in any case. There's no equivalent movement advocating zero extents in those other areas I mentioned (where zero is clearly possible). Any ideologies associated with them (like environmentalism) advocate reduction, not zero. Veganism seems to stand out as an ideology for advocating a zero level (rather than reduction) and advocating it in one very specific area of suffering. To be clear again I'm talking about the ideology, not the people (who may themselves advocate all sorts of things).
I don't understand the reason for the difference between veganism (zero animal products) and just animal rights campaigners (reduction in suffering inflicted on animals). I'm sure most strong animal rights campaigners are themselves vegan, but that's a personal choice. The ideology itself seems to me to be sensibly focussed on a direction, not a target. Climate change campaigners want us to reduce our carbon emissions, green-space campaigners want us to increase urban green-space... All sensible goals. Vegans want us to eliminate animal products. It just seems like a complete waste of energy. Improving animal welfare on farms would realistically do far more to reduce suffering overall than trying to get the world to give up 2 million years of omnivory.
Somehow I don't think you'd find that so fair when the time comes.
And so do you think it's permissible for us to kill and eat severely mentally disabled humans?
Guess you live in a cave without air conditioning, medicine, factory farmed meat, and electronics...oh wait, you're chatting with us here. Hm, how does that figure into "naturalness" and doing things exactly like we always have for millennia?
However, the truth is that farm animals, pet animals and pest animals are all part of the human phenomenon, just like the trillions of unicellular and pluricellular beings living inside and all over our bodies. What makes us human, biologically, spiritually, socially, can not be explained without them.
For that reason, to stop our relationship with them, that is: to let them go extinct, is equivalent to mutilate further the human event. A dog is not a species: a dog is the wolf structure incorporated to the human system. A pig is not a species: a pig is the boar structure that has changed to become part of our digestive system, just like we are part of his extended family and his feeding and reproductive systems.
To call for much better treatment of animals and plants that are part of us is very easy to defend ethically; for their own good and ours. However, veganism is not ethically sound as it implies the destruction of a huge part of the human phenomenon and the human soul, incarnated in these life forms and the ways in which we engage with them culturally and personally. Plus, they also contribute to the wider phenomenon of the biosphere producing organic supplies to countless other species, and also DNA memory.
An individual can be a vegan and it might be a good thing, as more vegans means less demand of animal products in our critically overpopulated world; however, society as a whole can not be vegan entirely, if the values of life, identity and compassion are to be preserved.
Why aren´t these things obvious?
The human "soul" (whatever the heck you mean by that) requires us to lock up billions of animals in over-crowded factories, torture them their whole lives, and then slit their throats?
Your position can only arise out of a total denial of the inner life of anyone but a human. Which means you don't have even a basic understanding of Darwin's theories.
In this case, there is nothing in the real comment requiring over-crowded factories, which disgust me, and nothing about slitting throats. I advocate ethical farming and legal procedures to sacrifice animals, that in Europe (except for Muslim slaughterhouses) exclude blades and knifes entirely. The legal procedure is to let animal calm down, then put them to sleep, and electrocution. The animals (except for the Islamic slaughter houses, and illegal slaughtering) in Europe are not supposed to feel pain or hear other animal suffer when they are sacrificed, for ethical reasons and also for purely industrial reasons (the organoleptic properties of the meat are impaired by animal stress; and bloody killing makes higiene standards more expensive to keep).
https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/welfare_en
Ethical farming is not so expensive, if we are prepared to eat less meat and more dairy and pulses, and we find local providers. I´m very lucky to have an ALDI supermarket in my quarter, for they have all kind of organic items and they are very cheap.
No to the cave, yes without air conditioning, haven't taken any modern medicine for at least 30 years, no to factory farmed meat and yes to electricity.
Naturalness and "doing things exactly like we always have for millennia" are not synonymous.
And I said quite clearly that the main reason I disagree with veganism is complex and to do with both naturalness and the way we deal with uncertainty. But since this thread is not about the reasons why I disagree with veganism, and you don't show the slightest humility about any potential alternatives to your own blindly fundamentalist dogma, I don't see the point in discussing the matter here.
Please refrain from assuming you know what is going on in my mind or what my emotional state is. That's not only impolite, it's also poor philosophizing.
You still haven't explained a)what the heck the human "soul" is
and b) why it requires murder to thrive.
I think I'm just as right as you think you are.
But let's dissect your label for a moment:
fundamentalist: adjective, 1. relating to or advocating the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.
Well, there is no "scripture" I'm referring to. No religion I'm following. No god I'm appealing to. So that's just not accurate.
2. relating to or advocating strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline.
Well, I also strictly adhere to the principles of not murdering babies, not raping people, and not beating my spouse...so I guess not all fundamentalist attitudes are so bad.
That being said, I never maintained that there are no circumstances ever in which meat eating might permissible. My stance is that if you can be vegan, due to your circumstances, then you ought to, and that this applies to most people living in industrialized countries.
dogma: noun, a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.
a) I guess science could count as an authority in veganism? But I prefer to see it as a source of information...um, nope: no appeals to authority in veganism. And as stated above, I don't believe veganism to be "incontrovertibly true." There are exceptions. And when lab grown meat is available, that'll be an alternative to veganism. And I'm always open to new evidence or a good argument--just haven't come across any yet.
Quoting Isaac
You're the one who talked both about being natural and insisting on meat-eating cause it's a millennia old practice. But okay.
Your insistence on naturalness still makes no sense. I mean, you can read how the appeal to nature has been debunked in any logic 101 textbook.
Pedant
3.noun - a person who adheres too rigidly to book knowledge or definitions without regard to common sense.
Lol. I'm just going to take that as you conceding the argument.
I tried to guess an emotional activation as the cause of you failing to understand what I wrote after reading it, It was not an insult or anything S.
For example when I write: "To call for much better treatment of animals and plants that are part of us is very easy to defend ethically; for their own good and ours" you somehow understood: "The human "soul" (whatever the heck you mean by that) requires us to lock up billions of animals in over-crowded factories, torture them their whole lives, and then slit their throats?".
You said:
Quoting DiegoT
Either we eat animals and therefore must murder them for our "soul" (your description of which I find troubling), or we refrain from murdering them, and either totally or mostly (if you want to eat animals which have died of natural causes, I guess that's fine too) go veg.
My response re campaigning is that I don't think zero is practical in those other things you mention, so it would not make sense to campaign for zero in those.
Never flying disqualifies one from most interesting jobs, some of which are jobs in which one can do far more to reduce greenhouse pollution than if one didn't do the job and didn't ever fly. Furthermore one can buy carbon offsets for one's flights and, if one does some research, ensure that they are genuine, meaningful reductions in emissions. Minimisation is the only practical possibility here.
Never using anything that may involve conflict materials such as rare earth elements form the Congo makes it almost impossible to use a computer. That again rules out the possibility of doing jobs where one can do far more to reduce suffering than that which is created through the conflict materials necessary to the job. Minimisation is the only practical possibility here.
Not buying things from companies that may not have clean supply chains for human rights is not practical in some cases, since most major retailers sell some products that don't conform to that, and for many goods it is impossible to trace the entire supply chain, including that of all tools, transport arrangements and so on that are used in supporting the supply. Again, minimisation is the only practical possibility if one is to live an engaged life that materially helps others.
Veganism is different in that being a vegan does not prevent one from living an engaged, helpful life. It is not easy (if it were, I would be a vegan rather than a namby-pamby vegetarian that tries to come as close to veganism as he can bear (which is sadly, not terribly close)), but it is achievable for those with strong values and will, without making them ineffective in other aspects of life.
I think veganism is very unusual in this respect, compared to other harm-reduction practices, in that it is possible and practical to get to zero. But from another perspective, it doesn't get to zero and is like other harm-minimisation strategies, because in any food production activity some animals will be harmed, be it only when they are trodden underfoot by people planting grain. Eliminating consumption of animal products doesn't get to zero but eliminates an enormous amount of harm.
Nor is the zero issue an article of faith for vegans. Only the most wild-eyed are so extreme that they would rather starve then eat, or even touch meat, or would refuse to eat tofu in a frying pan that had previously been used for sausages. Peter Singer has said that he will eat small amounts of meat or fish when to do otherwise would cause great upset to those offering it, and the animals involved have already been killed so that his refusal would not reduce any harm.
I think perhaps the zero issue becomes associated with veganism because some of the most vociferous campaigners are zero perfectionists. But I don't think most ethical-vegans are like that.
Gary Francione for one. (It's hard to prove him wrong, though.)
But other than that I think it's just a red herring meat eaters have purposefully created so as not to have to listen to the actual arguments.
Also cannibalism is just a disturbing concept and scenery compared to our natural content with killing prey. I imagine we are, at a genetic level, less inclined to kill other humans regardless of the ethical rationale. Just like many things we do without questioning the logic.
If you feel killing animals is equally disturbing then that is respectable but it is not necessary you putting your instincts aside and rationally objecting to injustice. We can't really justify not sending all our money to the 3rd world or halting society until we all have equal privilege, but we do. Fairness is a fairy tale.
How does that work? I recommend the book "are we smart enough to know how smart animals are" by Frans de Waal. There you'll see that we actually have a lot of proof that animals are way smarter than we've ever given them credit for. Provably smarter than some disabled humans.
Quoting Xav
Oh, well, I guess we should just stop all good acts then. s/
If you don't send your money to Africa, you're not engaging in a good act.
If you avoid animal products, you're avoiding engaging in a bad act.
Those are different things.
I haven't criticised either. In fact I've made it very clear in just about every post that I'm talking about the philosophy 'veganism' (and by default the espousal of it) not he activities as a whole of the people who adhere to it.
Quoting andrewk
Not eating meat disqualifies one from most interesting meals some of which (organic locally reared lamb or wild venison) can do far more to reduce greenhouse pollution than if one ate other choices (industrially farmed palm oil).
Not wearing wool disqualifies one from most comforting outer wear some of which (organic pure wool) can do far more to reduce greenhouse emissions than alternatives (polyester fleece).
Quoting andrewk
I'm using a smartphone right now which contains no conflict minerals and all of my computer parts are second hand. I think it would be reasonable in the long-term to eliminate second hand goods from the metric, but an elimination of conflict minerals is perfectly possible right now.
Quoting andrewk
Firstly, if its impossible to trace the supply chain then how is it any different knowing if animal products were used? This problem seems to apply equally to the aspiring vegan as it does to the social justice campaigner.
Secondly, as with the computer, there's very little nowadays that can't be bought second hand.
You seem to be presenting the argument solely from the point of view of an urban hipster in some jet-setting humanitarian career. What about the beef farmers living in rural Scotland. In what way is it impracticable for him to achieve zero flights? He probably does that already. I suspect his purchase of brand new consumer items is pretty limited too. But altering his entire farming system and trying to grow soya in the Highlands is hardly "achievable for those with strong values and will, without making them ineffective in other aspects of life." and for him. I live on an estate where we shoot the deer to protect regeneration in an ancient woodland. It's pretty easy for me not to fly (never been on a plane in my life), but I'm not sure I see much sense in me not eating venison.
The problem I have with veganism comes down to this. I don't see a way in which the additional reduction in harm from moving from organically farmed, free-range or wild meat, to no meat at all, could possibly be so much greater (and certain to be greater) as to justify re-arranging the entire globes food production system. Are you so certain you've covered all the long-term consequences that you'd be willing to stand by such a massive intervention?
If we all stopped wearing wool and started wearing polyester fleece are you so certain that more sheep would be saved from harm than ocean life would be killed by microplastics?
If we stopped grazing sheep on unproductive highlands are you really that certain that the remaining ecosystems could handle the additional burden of protein production?
If organic dairy farms started to lose their markets to soya are you so certain that the economic consequences on the market value of the soya would have less impact on the ecosystems of soya growing regions than the harm caused to the organic dairy cows?
Veganism is just another hubristic ideology. We live in an extremely complex world. Our planet's vital resources are managed by finely balanced ecosystems whose workings we barely understand, our human economy is understood hardly any better, and veganism is suggesting we attack the problems in these systems not by carefully and respectfully making small changes and observing the results, not by reverting to some previously tried system that seemed to work, but by sweeping away ten thousand years of agricultural land management, several million years of ecosystem management to replace it all with a completely untried system. It's crazy.
Yes, I remember that. In reply I pointed out that veganism is a practice, not a philosophy, so trying to critique it as a philosophy is a category error.
Quoting Isaac When more than 50 per cent of the world's population is vegan, we can start worrying about that. I don't think that will happen in the lifetime of anybody currently alive.
Quoting Isaac You mean like the careful, respectful, slow, incremental way that we introduced factory farming and modern industrial agriculture more generally?
Veganism is a philosophy because it makes ethical statements and ethics is part of philosophy. Personally, I don't even agree with veganism's meta-ethical position (that we ought to reduce harm to sentient beings to the maximum extent possible), but taking that as agreed for now, the moral proposition veganism makes is that - a net reduction in harm is had by moving from organically reared hill-farm or wild meat to no meat at all, and that we can be sufficiently certain of this to outweigh the risk of undertaking a completely unprecedented alteration to the global ecosystem and economy.
I just don't buy that claim and I haven't yet heard a convincing defence of it.
Quoting andrewk
But that's crazy, why would you advocate a moral system which relies on a failure in uptake. Couldn't I (or anyone else) just argue that our meat eating represented part of the necessary 50% your system is relying on to continue to eat meat?
Quoting andrewk
No, I mean the exact opposite. I mean that veganism should definitely not make exactly the same mistake that factory farming and industry made, of thinking we can run the global ecosystem based on the tiny understanding we currently have. The predator-prey ecological relationship has been a part of the ecosystem for millions of years, what I'm doing shooting and eating deer has a six thousand year precident in my ecosystem. I think mixed agriculture itself is a bit of a upstart, but we at least have a few thousand years of practice to see what it does. Industrial agriculture has only been around for a few decades and it is already obvious that it is a devastatingly bad idea. A move to organic free-range farming, making use of poor land to produce protein from grass and richer land to produce the bulk of food from vegetables is a system which would massively reduce harm and yet is one which (thanks to thousands of years of practice) we are already aware of the consequences of (both positive and negative) so that we can manage them.
Veganism may well be a very good way to go for urban hipsters and I'm glad that so many are making that change, but it's not a universally applicable moral, it's just one solution among many, suitable in some circumstances. If indeed it were just a practice as you claim, then I would have little issue with it (I still object to the replacement of animal products such as wool with industrial ones like polyester), but its near ubiquitous presence on philosophy forums and public debate belie this claim.
Quoting Isaac
No. Veganism is a diet. Look it up. There are many different reasons why people are vegan, only some of which have anything to do with ethics, and there is more than one ethical angle that leads to a vegan diet. We've been over this already.
Next, since a diet is personal, it doesn't imply anything about what others should do. Evangelical ethics-based vegans may make 'ought' statements about it, but there will be great variety amongst what those people say. Plenty limit their advocacy to urban people whose only access to animal-based products is the factory-farmed stuff in supermarkets. They would have nothing to say about your idyllic, bucolic existence where you have the luxury of eating only free-range, clean-killed deer.
I think you're either only listening to the most extreme vegan evangelists - people like Gary Francione - or just taking it all too personally, and interpreting messages that are meant for the urban majority as being also directed at you in your unusual situation.
I suggest you just relax and be glad that the concerns that bother most ethical vegans, about animals leading miserable lives ending in a terrifying, prolonged and brutal killing process, do not apply to you. Why not just enjoy your privilege?
And thus far, these are the only sorts of vegans I have encountered posting about the subject on philosophy forums (our current medium of discourse). I don't argue this way with everyone I meet who happens to be a vegan. I don't run an anti-vegan campaign. I'm just writing about the philosophical element (ethical statements) on a philosophy forum, in response to people making clear ethical connections (as this thread has). Seems entirely appropriate to me.
Perhaps you're referring to discussions you've had elsewhere, because looking back over your interactions on this thread, your only interaction with a vegan is with NKBJ, and your criticism of them doesn't touch on whom they would like to see adopting veganism, but rather is about the issue of how comparable adopting veganism for ethical reasons is to other ethically-driven harm-reduction activities.
If someone has been arguing in this thread that nobody, anywhere, ever, should eat meat - not even indigenous hunter gatherers - then I've missed it. Perhaps you could point it out.
I'm working on the presumption (perhaps erroneous) that anyone making moral assertions on a public forum (such as here) is some form of ethical realist and as such to whom their assertion is addressed is not relevant. The claim that I paraphrased (which I take to be implicit in the fact that veganism differentiates itself from mere animal welfare), is a moral claim which, under a presumption of ethical realism, is a universal claim.
Quoting andrewk
Quoting TheMadFool
Quoting NKBJ
Quoting NKBJ
Quoting NKBJ
Quoting NKBJ
I don't read anything in those quotes that even hints at the idea that these pronouncements only apply to a particular subsection of society, do you? Maybe 'others' in the third quote refers only to some specific group 'others' that is not specified? Maybe 'omnis' in the fourth quote is a term somehow meant to exclude hunter-gatherers, hill farmers and deer-shooters that I'm unaware of. But even then, the second and fifth quotes seem pretty conclusive to me.
Unless one is perfectly dedicated to the reduction of suffering, it is hopelessly hypocritical to judge the moral fibre of others.
And back to square one. Well, if you can't/won't understand how animal agriculture (obviously) kills more animals, then you're beyond hope.
Any moral claim obviously falls under the tacit restriction: ought implies can.
Yes, that is the sense I get. These arguments always seem to start with something along the lines of "scientists say that reducing meat intake helps with..." and end up with "... how dare you torture and slaughter the innocent little animals, you unfeeling monsters".
Quoting Tzeentch
Agreed. Many people have the reduction of suffering as an important part of their morality. The science is not clear on the long term implication of any particular strategy to achieve this (as it rarely is in complicated situations), most people have other moral objectives to balance and everyone's circumstances differ. All this will lead to quite a wide range of equally reasonable courses of action all resulting from the same moral objective. But the sorts of vegans encountered in these arguments seem to want present their solution as the absolute, not simply an option among many.
I'm not referring only to those situations where it is not possible to be vegan. I'm claiming that it is perfectly reasonable, from the empirical evidence we have, to hold the view that a fully vegan diet would not produce the least suffering of sentient beings in many circumstances.
Maybe in one or two rare exceptional cases. But hypothetical edge-case scenarios exist for all moral positions.
It's really not an argument against veganism.
No I'm talking about masses of people. I think there's a reasonable argument that organic Hill farming secures protein with less harm to animals than the equivalent heavily fertilised leguminous crop. I think that the deer cull (which where I'm from numbers over 30,000) represents a massive source of meat, the supply of which causes less harm than the equivalent vegetable protein. I think that, in terms of actual harm, for ethically reared meat in small quantities on land already only suitable for rough grazing, to move from this to vegetable growing yields such a minor reduction in actual suffering that it is actually full veganism which is the solution only in rare cases. Most of the the time it seems to me far more sensible to campaign for more humane farming methods (in both animal and vegetable husbandry). Something which has relatively well known effects, is at least vaguely achievable, and yields arguably close to the same reduction in suffering.
Actually, no. The math does not check out. The ratio of animals killed to calories gained still weighs more heavily in favor of plant farming than deer hunting.
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.
The deer are killed anyway.
But even if we didn't... What about the animals which suffer because the woodland won't regenerate as a result of browsing pressure, what about the long term environmental changes as a result of changing the habitat from woodland to soy plantation, what about the effect on the water table, the hydrology, how will it impact rural communities, what other species will be harmed by an excessive deer population, what about food vulnerability from relying on fewer crops, where's the fertiliser going to come from, what are the effects on soil organisms of the change in ecology, how will the climate respond to it, what effect on the economy will the changing market value have.
That's just the list I can think of right now.
It's not a simple equation of numbers killed. It's about dealing with uncertainty. Small changes can be more easily monitored, previously existing methods are more well-known. Abandoning thousand year old practices because a few scientists have done some maths is ridiculous.
To all of those, I say: we'll just have to find another way to fix it. It's a problem humans created, after all. We have to do better than perpetually bandaging the problem with murder.
And also, this is such a fringe topic--you can't feed the current human population on wild caught deer. Human animal consumption relies on billions of factory farmed animals.
Quoting Isaac
Oh, you mean like when we ended slavery because it was the right thing to do? Or when we liberated women cause it was the right thing to do?
But if the actual math and facts don't make you even reconsider your position, there's nothing more to talk about here and it's obvious that you're just being stubborn.
I suggest you read them more carefully. Some refer to the meat industry - irrelevant to somebody who only eats what they kill. Another says veganism is an easy choice - clearly that is not aimed at hunter gatherers, for whom it would mean death. One talks about 'our morals' and hence can only be referring to people with the same moral framework as themself. The last one says that being vegan avoids engaging in a bad act. If you interpret that as meaning that not being vegan always means you are engaging in a bad act, you are committing the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.
The 'typical vegan' against whom you are railing is made of straw.
But not irrelevant to hill farmers and dealers in wild game, so that's them eliminated.
Quoting andrewk
But it is aimed at someone like me (who you claim was removed from consideration by the previous quote).
Quoting andrewk
As I said, I don't see any evidence of moral relativism here (otherwise there'd be no argument to be made) so those not holding the same moral framework as 'us' are the target of the pronouncements.
Quoting andrewk
Not at all because affirming the consequent does not apply in binomial mutually exclusive events. One either uses animal products (not a vegan) or one does not (vegan), they are not independent members of a wider set.
With independent classes, if being A avoids a bad act, then something about being a non-A is possibly but not necessarily a bad act, it is avoided by being A, but that is not necessarily the only means of avoiding it. To say otherwise would be affirming the consequent.
But with veganism, there is only one exclusive and exhaustive activity being measured (the use of animal products) and it is being measured binomially (yes/no). So it follows that because being a vegan avoids only one thing (the use of animal products) if it avoids a bad thing that bad thing must be the use of animal products. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that the author of that quote meant by it that veganism avoided some other unrelated bad thing by sheer coincidence.
Here's the point again:
You claim that vegans generally argue that it is always and everywhere wrong to consume animal products. I don't believe your claim.
The onus is on you to support your claim. Arguing against random statements by various vegans does nothing to support your claim. If everything that every vegan ever said was always wrong, it would do nothing to support your claim that they make the italicised statement.
No, you're moving the goalposts. This particular sub-debate started when you claimed that veganism was just a diet and any moral dimension was only added by a few fringe evangelists. I responded that these (moral claims) were the only type of claim I had encountered on philosophy threads (including this one). You then shifted my claim from "vegans make moral claims" to vegans claim that nobody anywhere ever should eat meat" note, this is your wording, not mine.
As far as I'm concerned, all I have stated is -
1. That vegans make moral claims (by which I mean they assign moral value to their actions)
2. That making moral claims on a public forum strongly implies ethical realism (otherwise their motive would be unintelligible).
3. Under a presumption of ethical realism, these moral claims apply to all people everywhere.
Only the first of these propositions is empirical and so it is the only one which is amenable to the supply of evidence in support of it. The other two are inductive. I can't supply evidence in support of them because they were never an empirical claim in the first place.
The quotes I've supplied constitute evidence that moral claims are being made and that these claims, taken together, do not exclude the groups of people I have been referring to (wild game hunters and dealers, hill farmers, rural smallholders...). The rest is induction, if you disagree with it, you'll have to provide an argument to that effect.
Are you against human trafficking or human slavery? If so, I'd assume your reasoning would be to allow humans to be treated fairly and live long lives. But by your logic, you would also have to abandon most of your "luxuries" to adhere to this belief.
1.25 million people die in road crashes each year, no driving for you.
Your clothing comes from child slave work in other countries.
Your electronics are made by slave factory workers in china.
Do you watch porn? You contribute to sex trafficking and the degrading of women.
Do you take showers? Many don't have clean water. Offer to give yours up.
Do you drink filtered water? Offer that up as well.
Do you work in a country that promotes capitalism? Quit to support socialism instead.
I could on into the same illogical tirade you have displayed here. Any position you hold could be 'led' to a conclusion in which deems you as hypocritical. So if Vegans are hypocrites, you're worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJoVbNTu6Pc
List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods
Starts around page 7
https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ilab/ListofGoods.pdf
If you have purchased or consumed any of those products, you must be against human rights. Right?
Kind of funny that the first thing they show is how to use a cell phone to access the information, then go on to explain that child and forced labor is part of the process to make cell phones?
Yes, but what I meant to say was that it does happen. So the 'some' you correctly point out should be in there is at "Vegans sometimes make moral claims".
Quoting andrewk
Really? That's a dramatic swipe at the whole of ethical theory. You might need to expand on that.
You might need to substantiate that claim.
Not to mention the brains of the majority of even otherwise reasonable omnis turn to mush when it comes to this issue.
Ethical realism
I agree that its no reason to stop doing anything good, but not actively doing bad being the same as doing good is something I'm unsure on. I would be inclined to disagree.
I don't know what to discuss because I don't understand where your issue is, you're just playing burden-of-proof tennis with me instead of just spelling out what it is about my argument that you don't agree with.
It's blindingly obvious from both the language used ('murder', 'torture', 'bad', 'stubborn omnis'...) and the sustained campaign, that people like NKBJ and Chatterbears think that non-vegans (with the exception of those who have to eat meat for survival) are committing a moral wrong. If you you're going to try and argue against this bit of the statement then I'm just not interested in such obvious sophistry.
Given that they think other people can have committed moral wrongs on the basis of their morality, they must be moral realists, that's just the definition of the term.
Veganism means not using animal products. It doesn't mean reducing animal product use, those arereductarians. It doesn't mean reducing animal suffering, those are animal welfare or animal rights campaigners. It means what it says, the elimination of animal products. One can, of course, try to be as vegan as possible, but the goal is still to eliminate, even if that goal is frustrated by pragmatics.
I've laid out my argument (again). I'm claiming that those vegans who make a moral claim must, by definition, be making a moral claim that it is bad to eat meat or use animal products unless absolutely necessary for immediate survival. If you think there's a reason to think otherwise, perhaps you could actually state it this time rather than just asking me to substantiate it again.
If you have an argument against what those two individuals have said then your argument is with them, and there's no point in taking it up with me. What I do not accept is your blanket statements about vegans.
Quoting IsaacI often find myself in that position. Probably because my most strongly held philosophical position is anti-dogmatism - recognising that it is very difficult to be certain about anything, and that most dogmatic claims are unsupportable. That includes claims that vegans are inconsistent in the rationale underlying their practices (as opposed to the more specific claim that a certain argument made by a particular vegan is inconsistent, or doesn't stand up to scrutiny, which has a better chance of being supportable).
If you make big claims, expect to be asked for big arguments. It seems to me that the most sensible response to that standard is to scale back the scope of one's claims.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, I think otherwise. There are plenty of other moral claims an ethical vegan can make. For instance they might say that it is immoral to eat a product the consumption of which leads to a net increase in animal suffering. That would exclude hunter gatherers and also people who eat cleanly-killed game. It could even exclude meat production in the manner advocated and exemplified by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. The moral claim that is made depends on the vegan.
Again your claims are too broad and too dogmatic.
No, it isn't. A moral relativist is as capable of making a moral claim to another person as a moral absolutist is. If they share the same moral axioms (which seems to be the case here, as most participants in this thread appear to be approaching it from a utilitarian base), then it's a disagreement about what strategy maximises compliance with the axioms - ie an argument over implementation.
Even in the less frequent cases where the values are not shared, there is nothing to stop two moral relativists arguing with one another using rhetoric to try to win over the other to greater sympathy with their base values.
I've not made any blanket statements about vegans (at least not intentionally). I'm making what I think are rational inferences based on the criteria of group membership. If I made the claim "all vegans try to eliminate meat from their diet" you could not reasonably deride that as a disagreeable blanket statement, it just follows from the definition of vegan. I'm saying that if vegans were to make moral claims about their veganism (as some clearly do) I would dispute those moral claims on the grounds I've talked about (primarily uncertainty about net suffering, which I take to be a moral axiom in this context).
What I'm objecting to here is primarily the equivocation around the moral claim that we should live our lives in such a way as to reduce the suffering of sentient creatures without reducing our own quality of life below a fair standard. That claim as stated I can broadly agree with (although I have issues with it). Veganism, however, by definition, is a theoretical means of achieving this objective, not this objective itself.
Quoting andrewk
No, they could not, not as a vegan claim. They might, as people, make such a claim, but that would be unrelated to their veganism, which is the topic of discussion here. As I said, Hitler claimed that the Jews were an inferior race, and he was a vegan. His views on Jews have no place in a discussion about veganism because they are completely unrelated to his being a vegan. Vegans can make all sorts of claims, but the only ones relevant to a discussion about veganism are the ones related to the elimination of animal products.
Quoting andrewk
This is exactly my issue. We need to share the same moral axioms (I agree that, in this case its theoretically possible that a moral relativist might have posted on the off chance of talking to another relativist who happens to share their axioms, but it makes no difference to my issue).
If the shared moral axiom is reduction of suffering to a point where it does not impose an unfair hardship, then veganism has work to do that it has not done to present itself as the only rational solution. Namely, how do we best manage the long-term uncertainty in the degree of harm caused. Which is how this whole bit of the debate got started.
Soooo, you think causing sadness is okay? Causing suffering is okay? I can kick you in the shins now cause I have some esoteric and paternalistic notion that it'll be good for you?
Quoting Xav
I didn't say it's the same as doing something good. You're just doing less bad. Doing less bad is better than doing more bad, but that doesn't make it good.
Like, if these were numbers, negative numbers being bad, and positive numbers being good, we could put omnivorism at a -10. Then veganism would be like a -5 or a 0. And maybe saving hurt and/or homeless animals could be at a +5 or something.
No.
The aim of the suffering-based version of ethical-veganism is to reduce animal suffering. Veganism is simply a practical means to do that. It happens that it is also the only practical means available to most urban dwellers at a reasonable financial cost.
I see no support for your claim that the only moral claims by a vegan that are relevant to a discussion of veganism are those that relate to elimination of animal products. Again your assertion is too strong. If you want to keep it at that level of strength, you need to provide an argument as to why claims by ethical-vegans, that people ought to live in a way that minimises the net increase of animal suffering, are not relevant to a discussion of veganism. Your Godwin-exemplifying diversion above doesn't come close.
This is just getting ridiculous. The aim of ethical-veganism is to is not just to reduce animal suffering and it is to reduce animal suffering through eliminating animal products. Otherwise it wouldn't be veganism, it would just be negative utilitarianism. I don't quite know what else to do short of buying you a dictionary. Vegans try to eliminate their use of animal products, it's the definition of the word.
From the vegan society website.
They're not just people who want to reduce suffering, they're people who want to reduce suffering in a specific way, and therein lies the problem. What if the best way to reduce suffering overall in the long term included using some animal products? That would make it impossible to be vegan and claim to desire the maximum reduction in suffering, hence the contradiction with which I started this whole thing.
You are confusing the end with the means.
Quoting Isaac And here you are confusing the societal with the individual. A vegan could easily recognise that for society in its entirety, an ideal configuration may involve some aggregate consumption of animal products. That doesn't necessarily imply anything about what an individual should eat in this far-from-perfectly-configured society, where the majority of animal products available to urban dwellers are produced in a tremendously cruel way, and it is very hard for an urban dweller to have any confidence in the extent to which the production of a given animal product did not involve unnecessary cruelty.
It's not, though.
Great, perhaps you can tell me this week's lottery numbers too.
No, that's what I'm accusing those vegans who make moral claims of doing. The claim is that veganism is moral, not that reducing suffering is moral (and that veganism may well be a means of achieving it). It comes down to the issue about certainty. There is a different sense of uncertainty about moral goods than there is about means. That's why no one seriously argues whether murder is wrong but plenty of very committed and intelligent people argue about how best to reduce it.
Let's go back to basics:
How does it follow from 1 and 2 that an ethical vegan must believe that anybody who is not either a vegan or needs animal products to survive is acting unethically?
Further, how does it follow from the bulleted points that a claim made by an ethical vegan about the ethics of a certain act of consumption of animal products, or about a type of consumption by a group of people, is irrelevant to their being an ethical vegan unless the claim matches the one underlined above?
It is not enough to show that some ethical vegans have made claims like the underlined one. You need to show that it is a necessary consequence of being an ethical vegan that one believes that claim.
You won't be able to, because I know ethical vegans that do not believe the claim.
Animal agriculture is known to harm animals. Uses more plants. Causes more damage to the environment. Is more harmful to workers. Is more harmful to the health of consumers....
It's not even remotely like the lottery. To assert that is just showing your willful blindness to the facts.
It doesn't follow because (2) is just an assertion. I make the opposite assertion, that an ethical vegan, by virtue of bringing veganism into the realm of ethics, elevates what should be a pragmatic method for achieving a moral good to the status of a moral good itself. Again, since you haven't answered the key question. What would an ethical vegan (someone who thinks it is a moral good to avoid meat) do if it were demonstrated that avoiding meat entirely caused more animals to suffer in the long term. Are you suggesting that ethical goods them selves are subject to scientific investigation. That Science might one day discover that in fact causing unnecessary pain to innocents is actually a moral good?
Quoting andrewk
You're mistaking logically necessary for linguistically necessary. The fact that you know ethical vegans who claim not to believe the claim has no bearing whatsoever on its logical necessity. People do make false claims, people do make incoherent claims.
2 is a definition, not an assertion. If you want to define 'ethical vegan' as somebody that believes it is always immoral not to be a vegan unless one's life depends on consuming animal products, go ahead.
If your complaint is against such people then I have no interest in contesting it as I do not agree with the underlined claim.
I just want to point out that large numbers of people who are vegan for ethical reasons do not fit your definition of 'ethical vegan', and that there is nothing inconsistent or incoherent about being a vegan for ethical reasons and rejecting the underlined claim.
Show me the data proving that over the next millenia the entire global consequences of an elimination of animal agriculture will cause less suffering to all sentient creatures.
I'll need to see all the data on the long-term ecological consequences (including all the possible scenarios they've explored), all the data on the economic consequences (stock prices, market fluctuations, impact on third-world farmers, changes in agricultural land prices), all the data on the pedological impact (fertiliser sources, increased ploughing, soil erosion), all the data on the hydrological impact (increased irrigation needs, changes in the catchment absorbance and consequent flood lag times), all the data on the impact on the grazing ecology (dung beetles, grassland wild flowers, rare fungi like wax caps), all the data on the demographic impact (will the increased productivity per hectare lead to population increase, because of course we could halve the suffering but if it leads to a doubling of the population we'll have achieved nothing).
When you've totted up the total number of animals and measured the pain they're in, compared that to the next millennia under organic animal agriculture as part of a mixed system, then come back to me with the unequivocal figures for both, agreed on by every scientist working in the field. Until then have some bloody humility, accept that the matter is complicated and stop presuming everyone who isn't jumping on the latest bandwagon is just less holy than you.
Then we are in agreement. I'm sure large numbers of ethical vegans conflate the means with the moral good itself. As I said, this is an inconsistent position as most would not hold that Science can determine what is morally good in other areas of life.
The moral good is reducing the suffering of sentient creatures and that it not something which changes as scientists discover new facts.
The best method of achieving this goal is extremely complicated, widely disputed among experts, open to the vagaries of scientific research bias, and will change as new information is discovered.
The two are very different, and conflating them is dangerous dogmatism, in my opinion.
The vegan campaign, both here and in ethical philosophy (the subject matter of this forum) definitely conflates the two at times.
You're being absolutely ridiculous.
Show me all of this data for why I shouldn't just shoot the next baby I see. You can't? Oh well, guess killing anyone I want is a-okay!
The data we have shows that the suffering is greater. Right now and for the foreseeable future. The only non-humble person here is the one who refuses to give up eating carcasses despite all of that evidence.
No it doesn't. That's the point. People dispute the data. Scientists disagree about the long-term implications, the consequences are complex and open to a good deal of uncertainty. And so far as killing babies is concerned things are no different. Where babies are on life support for untreatable conditions and turning the machine off would kill them, this level of complexity is precisely what the doctors have to deal with. In tribes when disabled children are born, this level of complexity is exactly what the parents have to deal with. Ethics is more complicated than bandwagon jumping.
Arguing from extreme cases now to justify killing any baby or anyone?
But you're just shifting the argument. You wanted an impossible amount of proof. And I showed that this demand is clearly ridiculous, because that would justify killing ANYONE.
There's also a few scientists who claim climate change isn't real. We shouldn't listen to the kooks when the consensus is that animal agriculture is destroying the planet. And it's an undisputable fact that animals die in animal agriculture. Also that more plants are used for it.
What are you talking about? It's very simple.
You are not against human rights.
I am not against animal rights.
You don't pretend to be a champion for human rights.
(You're not donating all your time to homeless shelters and helping impoverished people)
I don't pretend to be a champion for animal rights.
(I am not donating all my time to rescuing animals or stopping animal cruelty)
I would argue that you do "harbor the illusion" that you are morally superior to a rapist or child molester. In the same way I "harbor the illusion" that I am morally superior to someone who supports animal cruelty.
You claim I missed the mark, yet your criticism to vegans not only misses the mark, but it is an exact reflection of how you feel about human rights. Vegans extend those rights to non-human animals, while you keep it restricted to humans.
I posted this earlier in this same thread:
Quoting Tzeentch
And I guess you proved my point, except for the 'thin veil' part.
So as I have asked somebody before, if your daughter gets raped, are you going to tell your daughter that she is no better than the person who raped her, since you believe moral decisions don't make you any worse than the next person, correct?
Also. Here are some analogies so you can better understand.
1: My morals are superior to a person who condones rape.
2. My health is superior to a person who smokes, drinks and eats fast food every day.
3. My work ethics are superior to a person who shows up late every day.
Just because I am not perfect in my work ethics, doesn't mean I cannot judge someone who had poor work ethics. Just because I am not perfectly healthy, doesn't mean I cannot judge someone who is unhealthy. And just because I am not perfectly moral, doesn't mean I cannot judge someone who is acting immorally.
For some reason, people are completely content in labeling their actions as better (or superior) when it comes to most subjects, expect for morality. And anybody who does is an apparent hypocrite who should never judge the moral 'fibre' of others.
First of all, there's no reason to tell my daughter that she's morally superior to anyone. And if you believe that to be a proper way to console rape victims, well I don't know what to tell you.
Secondly, one doesn't know whether one is a morally superior person. If one were to be put in the exact same position as that person, perhaps one would be doing the same thing. Perhaps not, but one simply doesn't know.
And any self evaluation on this subject has proven to be generally inaccurate. Ordinary people who participated as prison guards in for example the Stanford Prison experiment must've undoubtedly thought themselves of (at least) average moral fibre, yet were confronted with their own ability to do extremely immoral things and all it took was a scientist to give them a bat and tell them they were a guard. That's why a lot of those people now have PTSD-like trauma; because it completely shattered their illusions of having moral fibre. The Milgram experiment showed much the same thing.
Though, I believe I've made this point to you once before. In your own thread, no less:
Quoting Tzeentch
You never responded to this. Perhaps you care to do so now.
Now, on the judging of others. I believe it is only fair that if one chastises another for showing up late at work, one had best always be on time themselves. Otherwise that would indeed make one a hypocrite and one lose one's credibility. This applies to any situation in which one feels the need to judge others or chastise them for their behavior. Now, if one has never been in a situation as the one they are about to judge, perhaps one had best reserve judgement.
I'm reminded of an instance where a father shot the rapist of his child. The father must have thought himself to be quite morally superior to his child's rapist, and then in anger shot the man dead in court while he was handcuffed. He, in an act of vengeance, killed this man while he was in a vulnerable state, essentially committing a similar crime as the rapist, thereby proving he was in a sense no different.
Though, one must ask, what is even the point of judging others? I'd say it serves no other purpose than masturbation of the ego.
Actually, it was a whole lot more complicated than that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KND_bBDE8RQ
What if you have a college who is late most of the time, and you yourself are only late on rare occasions when you had no other choice or at least a really darn good reason? Then you're not being a hypocrite.
OR to urge others to try and make the world a better place.
If we never judged others or tried to change the status quo, we'd still have slavery, Jim Crow, no female vote, women wouldn't be allowed to own property, gay people would be thrown in jail...etc.
That's what moral discourse is all about - to encourage/influence the behaviour of others (eg peer pressure).Quoting TzeentchI'd say you misunderstand morality and moral discourse.
Indeed. There is an important nuance, though. If one is late on rare occasions for reasons out of their control, it is not hypocritical to chastise others for running late often. But if one is late, even on rare occasions, out of laziness or complacency, then they would be hypocritical.
Quoting NKBJ
Judging people doesn't help them to be better persons, helping them does. Acknowledging someone exhibits behavior that is bad for both themselves and their environment is fundamentally different from judging them. It's perfectly possible to engage in dialogue with people about their behavior without judging them, and the world would in fact be a much better place if people would realize this.
Quoting ChrisH
I'm sure your understanding of morality is vastly superior.
Why would you even bother with plebeians like me, hm?
This is a false dichotomy. I must judge their actions to be wrong before deciding to help them change.
What if I say that I evaluate that veganism is morally superior to omnivorism?
Generally I agree. It's not helpful to tell people "you're horrible, I'm better than you" and hope they'll listen. (Though the church seems to have done fairly well using just that tactic.....)
However, I can't help if someone feels implicitly judged because I'm living my own life according to my own morals.
Or if someone feels judged in the face of a theoretical argument which is seeking to evaluate the right course of action such as this one.
Let me rephrase the statement for NKBJ. Would this be more convincing?
'I evaluate veganism as morally better to omnviorism'
Other examples:
'I evaluate punctuality as better work ethic to showing up late'
or
'I evaluate punctuality as superior work ethic to showing up late'
Both convey the same idea, but you are some how stuck on the word 'superior'. When, in the context we are using it in, just simply means "better".
Better / Improved / Superior.
Pick your choice of word, as they all mean the same thing in this context. Veganism is morally better/improved/superior to omnivorism.
Can we get over the semantics now and actually talk about the real issues with Veganism?