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Apr 18, 2009

OwlFancier posted:

Also by the extreme form of that logic you should not hold your child's hand when crossing the street because if the child wants to get hit by a car that's their choice.

This is the worst comment in the thread, well done

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DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

Harold Fjord posted:

I don't think they need our help. Should we be spaying ferals?

Yes but that is not the point I was making. I was arguing against the idea that breeding them and giving them a good life or letting them roam free are the only two choices.

OwlFancier posted:

I mean if you think cats can be happy as indoor pets it kind of is unless you adopt the position that a happy life is not worth initiating under any circumstances which is even more antinatalist than I am, I certainly have objections to most forms of reproduction at this current time but in the event that we figured out a way to reliably give people lives as happy as cats I think I would reassess that.

If animals have experiences as valuable as humans and we are to take the premise that well lived lives are inherently worth living, and initiating, then I would be hard pressed to come up with a better example than a housecat for something we should desire more of.
I am not anti-natalist but we should not intentionally breed more cats. There are already thousands of cats that are euthanized every year after not finding homes. Giving existing cats a loving home is obviously a good thing.

Harold Fjord posted:

Raising alpacas for wool seems perfectly ethical if you are nice to your alpacas. That's another particular where I would agree with calling veganism absolutist.
I'm not familiar with alpacas but the sheep wool industry is brutal. They have been selectively bred to need our help so if they escape they either die or are found later near death with the wool overgrown. They are neutered without anesthetic, mutilated to avoid having wool grow near their anus, and only sheared when best suited for wool sales and not the sheep's comfort leading to awkward periods of too much wool on them. They also time the breeding to be ideal for farmers meaning later winter and early spring where many young newborns die of exposure. Since they are treated like a wool growing machine and not sentient creatures there is a lot of abuse uncovered when they are sheared.

OwlFancier posted:

I fear that position runs into the danger of solipsism where I identify as vegan despite eating a burger for dinner because I was out and the burger place was there and it was practical for me to get it and I had to eat something because I had work to do.

I would generally hew more to the idea that words have, like, collectively defined meanings, and vegans at least to me appear to be far more absolutist about the concept of avoiding animal products than I think it is necessary to be. They may not achieve it but their concept of practical swings well into my concept of exceptional. If you have a better word to describe the length they go to to avoid animal products I could use that instead though. I suppose I do not strictly mean absolutist in reality, but rather absolutist in ideal.
There needs to be a little wiggle room and possible and practicable can be a little muddy but the level of inconvenience of buying something else at the restaurant or grocery store is trivial. I'm against killing humans and would not say that grandma took too long at the crosswalk and I'm late for work so lets run her over!

What if you were at a roadside diner and you walk in craving a burger and they had a perfectly good vegan burger or other plant based options, but they were out of beef. Would you ask them to cut the throat of the cow you walked past on the way in so you could get what you were craving, or would you be ok with buying one of the other options available? That's more or less the choice you're making every time you're in a grocery store buying the beef instead of beyond burger.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

OwlFancier posted:


I mean yes there are some things I am more absolutist about than others, or rather that I think it is good to take exceptional measures to adhere to, sorry I thought that was implied, I am not taking an issue with all forms of absolutism but I do think that this one is an odd issue to be absolutist about.
Because you disagree on the underlying ethics of killing animals. In their ethical system it's not odd at all.

If you were transported to humanburger world I'm sure the people in line for burgers would tell you your absolutism is odd, but so what, no amount of telling you that or trying to find some other gotcha is going to change your mind unless they manage to convince you to adopt their ethical system in place of your own. If they can't convince you to abandon your murder-is-wrong stance then there's no one weird rhetorical trick they can use to get you to eat a humanburger once in a while.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

DrBox posted:


I am not anti-natalist but we should not intentionally breed more cats. There are already thousands of cats that are euthanized every year after not finding homes. Giving existing cats a loving home is obviously a good thing.

In the world we have now I agree, there's so many animals that need homes that intentionally breeding more doesn't make sense. My dog is from a shelter.

What about in a future where that problem is solved and the shelters are empty but people still want pets, would breeding them to satisfy families who would like a pet be all right then?

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

DrBox posted:

Yes but that is not the point I was making. I was arguing against the idea that breeding them and giving them a good life or letting them roam free are the only two choices.

I don't think anyone ever made such an argument, just provided some comparisons. You can add more

DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

VitalSigns posted:

In the world we have now I agree, there's so many animals that need homes that intentionally breeding more doesn't make sense. My dog is from a shelter.

What about in a future where that problem is solved and the shelters are empty but people still want pets, would breeding them to satisfy families who would like a pet be all right then?

In a world where there were no dogs that need homes I'm torn on whether breeding more for pets is exploitation or a form of mutualism. I lean towards exploitation since we are using them as a means to an end which is the fulfillment of our own desire. I'm not married to that position though.

Harold Fjord posted:

I don't think anyone ever made such an argument, just provided some comparisons. You can add more

This was the general tone of the last two pages. Every time I point out that we could simply not breed more animals, wild animal suffering got dragged back into the conversation and I'd again have to clarify that it's not just a choice between feral cows or domesticated cows with a knife at the end. There's also no cows as an option.

Harold Fjord posted:

Everyone knows what factory farms are and agrees that they are terrible. This is a question of the "morality" of kinder farming practices and whether it's "moral" to do them instead of just letting the animals all brutalize one another.

Only seems like two options here. Farm cows or let animals roam free to brutalize each other.

DrBox fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Sep 9, 2022

XboxPants
Jan 30, 2006

Steven doesn't want me watching him sleep anymore.

Harold Fjord posted:

I don't think anyone ever made such an argument, just provided some comparisons. You can add more

I like the little rubbermaid shelters people make in cities for stray & feral cats.


Offer support, give them the option of whether they wanna use it or not. Take responsibility for displacing animals by offering new homes that work with urban lifestyles. Good fit for my ideology. It's not enough to give them perfect lives but it's the right direction imo.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

DrBox posted:

This was the general tone of the last two pages. Every time I point out that we could simply not breed more animals, wild animal suffering got dragged back into the conversation and I'd again have to clarify that it's not just a choice between feral cows or domesticated cows with a knife at the end. There's also no cows as an option.

I think the hangup here is that I and others are not suggesting specifically cows. But rather that if you removed cows, you would consequently get more animals that are not cows, because they expand to fill the newly available habitat (working on the assumption we would not be filling the cow pasture with something else that prohibits animal habitation)

DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

OwlFancier posted:

I think the hangup here is that I and others are not suggesting specifically cows. But rather that if you removed cows, you would consequently get more animals that are not cows, because they expand to fill the newly available habitat (working on the assumption we would not be filling the cow pasture with something else that prohibits animal habitation)

Yeah and those are two different arguments. I would again use the example of an animal testing lab. Are you saying it's better to keep breeding beagles for cosmetics testing because otherwise wild animals may take over that space if we shut down the lab?

Koos Group
Mar 6, 2013

OwlFancier posted:

I think the hangup here is that I and others are not suggesting specifically cows. But rather that if you removed cows, you would consequently get more animals that are not cows, because they expand to fill the newly available habitat (working on the assumption we would not be filling the cow pasture with something else that prohibits animal habitation)

If I understand the argument correctly, which I may not, they aren't actually saying it's bad for animals to die, even violently. They're saying it's wrong specifically for humans to kill them, because we're moral agents with a choice in the matter, whereas wild animals aren't.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

DrBox posted:

. There's also no cows as an option

So all the cows going extinct is moral in a way that humanely killing one is not?

It seems inconsistent, I'm still teasing out how.

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Sep 9, 2022

Fozzy The Bear
Dec 11, 1999

Nothing much, watching the game, drinking a bud
Serious question: If honey isn't allowed because it exploits bees.

Are you not allowed to eat commercially grown fruit, since most of it is dependent on captured bee hives pollinating the flowers to produce that fruit?

Should you insist on fruit that is pollinated purely from wild bees?


Moral issues aside, I watched "Maximum Nutrition Transitioning Towards a Plant Based Diet" several years ago, and used the advice to try to maximize the amount of vegetables in your meal and minimize or eliminate meat. I generally feel better, even though I haven't been able to lose weight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9nNa81dSoY

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Harold Fjord posted:

So all the cows going extinct is moral in a way that humanely killing one is not?

It seems inconsistent, I'm still teasing out how.

Why not.

I don't think we should breed any more sickly inbred dogs that suffer from genetic problems, so we should probably stop breeding more pugs.

But it doesn't follow from that that it would be cool to kill all the pugs that already exist.


OwlFancier posted:

I think the hangup here is that I and others are not suggesting specifically cows. But rather that if you removed cows, you would consequently get more animals that are not cows, because they expand to fill the newly available habitat (working on the assumption we would not be filling the cow pasture with something else that prohibits animal habitation)
Even assuming for the sake of argument that this would be better, it doesn't follow that we may as well slaughter the cows.

If animal welfare is what you're concerned about when you suggest we...get rid of nature???...or at least keep nature away from the pastures we have now, surely it would be better for the cow's welfare not to kill it and eat it.

DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

Harold Fjord posted:

So all the cows going extinct is moral in a way that humanely killing one is not?

It seems inconsistent, I'm still teasing out how.

Yeah there's nothing exploitative or harmful for the individuals if the species goes extinct. There are dog breeds that have genetic health complications and it would be more ethical to stop breeding them rather than keep the breed going out of some worry about them going extinct. Pugs are not having an existential crisis over the future of the species, they are struggling to breathe.

Edit: VitalSigns beat me to it!

Fozzy The Bear posted:

Serious question: If honey isn't allowed because it exploits bees.

Are you not allowed to eat commercially grown fruit, since most of it is dependent on captured bee hives pollinating the flowers to produce that fruit?

Should you insist on fruit that is pollinated purely from wild bees?

Some Vegans will argue we should avoid crops like avacados or almonds for that reason. I'm not sure where I sit on that. If there is a crop that requires exploitation of an animal in order to cultivate it should probably be avoided. I know the proliferation of the honey bee puts stress on native bee species and is another reason why the bees are in decline.

DrBox fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Sep 9, 2022

XboxPants
Jan 30, 2006

Steven doesn't want me watching him sleep anymore.

Koos Group posted:

If I understand the argument correctly, which I may not, they aren't actually saying it's bad for animals to die, even violently. They're saying it's wrong specifically for humans to kill them, because we're moral agents with a choice in the matter, whereas wild animals aren't.

Some of this I'd agree with, but I think there's another angle as well. The idea that humans are not inherently superior to animals as decreed by God.

There's a very entrenched idea in the western Christian world that humans, as first among God's creations, have the right and obligation to shepherd and care for nature and all animals. Under this frame, humans are responsible for all life on Earth due to inherent superiority and the question isn't if humans should care for animals, but what the best way to do so is.

Under this frame, "animal welfare" means "how to treat animals most kindly".

But if you don't accept that the Bible is the word of God, this argument starts to fall apart. We no longer have a moral responsibility to care for animals in the wild, for instance, after we shut down a cow farm and it gets repopulated by the local deer and wildlife. Those guys are doing their own thing, and good luck to them. If I say that humans aren't decreed as superior by God, then humans have no more of a right to control the lives of deer than deer have the right to control the right of man. It simply isn't our domain to decide what's best for other living beings.

Under this frame, "animal welfare" means "giving animals rights and freedoms similar to our own".

It's almost the exact opposite of the other kind of animal welfare.

Though, I do still have a responsibility to care for, for example, my child, because I made a choice to create that being as a moral actor.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
I guess to me the idea that killing an individual animal is morally harmful to a human naturally suggests that driving non-human species to extinction is similarly harmful to our species at scale.

And these things don't tend to die out naturally so it's either going to be feral cows or human interference which veganism suggests is unjustified.

Really glossed over the answer to that question. How do you begin to justify neutering and spaying feral cats under veganism?

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

DrBox posted:

Yeah and those are two different arguments. I would again use the example of an animal testing lab. Are you saying it's better to keep breeding beagles for cosmetics testing because otherwise wild animals may take over that space if we shut down the lab?

I don't particularly think cosmetics should exist at all so that specific example is not a great comparison as I do not think that is a good use of beagles, and also you can put other things in buildings fairly easily etc, but yes I am generally drawing an equivalence between wild animal suffering and directly human incited animal suffering, and have done so at great length over the past several pages. Specifically in the context of pasture land I think that allowing it to return to nature would simply change the kinds of animals that are suffering on it, not necessarily the quantity of it, and whether it has direct human involvement or not is pretty irrelevant. I have said several times that I reject the idea that causing suffering by inaction is meaningfully different than causing it by direct action.

DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

XboxPants posted:

Some of this I'd agree with, but I think there's another angle as well. The idea that humans are not inherently superior to animals as decreed by God.

There's a very entrenched idea in the western Christian world that humans, as first among God's creations, have the right and obligation to shepherd and care for nature and all animals. Under this frame, humans are responsible for all life on Earth due to inherent superiority and the question isn't if humans should care for animals, but what the best way to do so is.

Under this frame, "animal welfare" means "how to treat animals most kindly".

But if you don't accept that the Bible is the word of God, this argument starts to fall apart. We no longer have a moral responsibility to care for animals in the wild, for instance, after we shut down a cow farm and it gets repopulated by the local deer and wildlife. Those guys are doing their own thing, and good luck to them. If I say that humans aren't decreed as superior by God, then humans have no more of a right to control the lives of deer than deer have the right to control the right of man. It simply isn't our domain to decide what's best for other living beings.

Under this frame, "animal welfare" means "giving animals rights and freedoms similar to our own".

It's almost the exact opposite of the other kind of animal welfare.

Though, I do still have a responsibility to care for, for example, my child, because I made a choice to create that being as a moral actor.

The idea of being the arbiter of wild-animal welfare gets strange very quickly too. If there's a drought this year are we morally obliged to go out and kill off half the wild animals so they don't die from starvation or lack of water? Or should be we out hunting predator species to extinction? That's why for me Veganism is concerned with the exploitation of animals by humans and not more generally animal suffering as a whole.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

VitalSigns posted:

If animal welfare is what you're concerned about when you suggest we...get rid of nature???...or at least keep nature away from the pastures we have now, surely it would be better for the cow's welfare not to kill it and eat it.

It would! But this is where my idea that killing animals humanely for human use is not a particularly great wrong comes in. I can think simultaneously that humans should endeavour to increase animal welfare in many areas, and are equipped to do so at some scale far in excess of what nature would provide (pets being the obvious example, but I would extend it to ethical livestock keeping as well) and also that we can increase our own welfare by killing them, and that if it is done so properly and following proper care, that this results in a net overall benefit, as I think the human use of a cow's component parts is of greater utility than the cow simply living a bit longer.

XboxPants posted:

But if you don't accept that the Bible is the word of God, this argument starts to fall apart. We no longer have a moral responsibility to care for animals in the wild, for instance, after we shut down a cow farm and it gets repopulated by the local deer and wildlife. Those guys are doing their own thing, and good luck to them. If I say that humans aren't decreed as superior by God, then humans have no more of a right to control the lives of deer than deer have the right to control the right of man. It simply isn't our domain to decide what's best for other living beings

I would disagree with this, as I am certainly not of the view that humans have some sort of divinely mandated moral right, I instead arrive at it consequentially. Suffering exists, and it is within human power to affect it, therefore it is upon us to do so or not, the question is put to us by the very existence of the possibility. I suppose broadly I reject the idea of having "the right" to make decisions in favour of you are always making decisions, and there is not, to me, a clear answer as to why some decisions you should be morally exempt from other than the practical one of "I would be exhausted and/or horrified if every action or inaction I took were something I had to morally justify" but this is not, to me, an actual argument against the reasoning of the position, it's just a reason to draw an arbitrary line to stop your brain melting. But the important takeaway is that line is arbitrary. There is not a firm domain of moral judgement out of which we should not stray, nor equally are we granted moral obligation over a specific set of actions, there are only actions we choose to apply morals to and those we don't.

I do forego moral judgment on a bunch of stuff but it is literally just because I don't have the energy to do it, not because I think there is a good moral reason to do so. I therefore think equally that you can apply moral judgment to anything and it is just as valid as any other thing, because the idea of us having a "domain of right" or whatever over which we can and can't make judgements is a bit weird to me. The outcomes of decisions we make happen whether we think about them morally or not, the potential for us to make a moral decision is always there. As I said it is put to us by the reality of the world we live in, that our actions have consequences.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Sep 9, 2022

DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

OwlFancier posted:

as I think the human use of a cow's component parts is of greater utility than the cow simply living a bit longer.

This is why I'm not a utilitarian. This thinking leads to some really messed up scenarios and without a good foundation there's no reason it stops at animals.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

I am not aware of any moral system that produces good results even if you do it badly, alas.

If it makes you feel better the closest I would apply that to humans is being in favour of voluntary euthanasia, mandatory organ donation, and turning people into compost when they die.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Sep 9, 2022

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

DrBox posted:

This is why I'm not a utilitarian. This thinking leads to some really messed up scenarios and without a good foundation there's no reason it stops at animals.

This is very rude, we've already established that we think humans are special.

DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

Harold Fjord posted:

This is very rude, we've already established that we think humans are special.

Oh ok in that case I apologize to the true victims in the conversation on whether we should cut throats for burgers, the humans arguing we should.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

OwlFancier posted:

It would! But this is where my idea that killing animals humanely for human use is not a particularly great wrong comes in. I can think simultaneously that humans should endeavour to increase animal welfare in many areas, and are equipped to do so at some scale far in excess of what nature would provide (pets being the obvious example, but I would extend it to ethical livestock keeping as well) and also that we can increase our own welfare by killing them, and that if it is done so properly and following proper care, that this results in a net overall benefit, as I think the human use of a cow's component parts is of greater utility than the cow simply living a bit longer.

Yeah I get that but vegans disagree because they think killing animals for human benefit is unethical, and you're not going to convince them to be okay with farming animals without resolving their ethical objection, which this reasoning doesn't do (if that's your goal)

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Well yes which is why that was in response to your question and why I have generally gone with the consequentialist suffering-equivalence argument for other people, and also why I didn't bother leading with the "animals are not the same as people" approach despite believing in it.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

OwlFancier posted:

Well yes which is why that was in response to your question and why I have generally gone with the consequentialist suffering-equivalence argument for other people, and also why I didn't bother leading with the "animals are not the same as people" approach despite believing in it.

Yeah but I'm not sure what the argument accomplishes?

If the act killing is wrong, then emphasizing how you could do it without causing the killee any suffering doesn't make it okay. I dunno feels like you're trying to backdoor around the actual conflict.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

VitalSigns posted:

Yeah but I'm not sure what the argument accomplishes?

If the act killing is wrong, then emphasizing how you could do it without causing the killee any suffering doesn't make it okay. I dunno feels like you're trying to backdoor around the actual conflict.

No I'm saying that I don't think divestment from animal exploitation is actually an improvement. I acknowledge that it would still be preferable from a vegan perspective to not kill the animals we keep as livestock but I am positing that keeping animals as livestock rather than having the space be used for wildlife can be a net-improvement for animal welfare, with the maximal animal welfare being achieved by human intervention to minimise animal suffering, basically the pet model. I think divestment from interference with animal behaviour is actually quite low on the range of possible human-animal relationships from a welfare perspective, on the basis that the natural state of life is pretty horrible.

I acknowledge that killing animals is bad for the animal but that is why I emphasise that the decision is not really "no animals die ever" but rather that they (by which I mean animals of some form living on the space we currently use as pasture, not necessarily the specific animals that we raise as livestock) die by various natural causes, most of which are very unpleasant without human intervention, or they die by human hand, which I believe we have the capability to make far better for the animal, and indeed which we routinely do with our pets when they are sick and we either lack the resources to pay for their care or if we judge that they are unlikely to have a quality of life we think desirable.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Sep 9, 2022

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

So would they be slaughtered in their prime for meat in this scenario, or only euthanized for genuine humanitarian reasons when they became too sick to have a decent quality of life.

DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

OwlFancier posted:

No I'm saying that I don't think divestment from animal exploitation is actually an improvement. I acknowledge that it would still be preferable from a vegan perspective to not kill the animals we keep as livestock but I am positing that keeping animals as livestock rather than having the space be used for wildlife can be a net-improvement for animal welfare, with the maximal animal welfare being achieved by human intervention to minimise animal suffering, basically the pet model. I think divestment from interference with animal behaviour is actually quite low on the range of possible human-animal relationships from a welfare perspective, on the basis that the natural state of life is pretty horrible.

I acknowledge that killing animals is bad for the animal but that is why I emphasise that the decision is not really "no animals die ever" but rather that they (by which I mean animals of some form living on the space we currently use as pasture, not necessarily the specific animals that we raise as livestock) die by various natural causes, most of which are very unpleasant without human intervention, or they die by human hand, which I believe we have the capability to make far better for the animal, and indeed which we routinely do with our pets when they are sick and we either lack the resources to pay for their care or if we judge that they are unlikely to have a quality of life we think desirable.

Is the optimal path in your view to cut down all forests, drain all wetlands and fill it with livestock so that no animal has to suffer in the wild? This is either a bizarre rationale or a huge distraction to justify killing animals for a sandwich.

Why don't we just leave nature alone where we can, intervene where it makes sense, and stop exploiting animals for food?

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Because nature isn't a separate thing from us and what we do. I think using "Exploit" is pretty loaded and it sounds a lot less bad if you use the dictionary definition, which is "benefit from"

No moral reason we can't benefit from animals while being kind. The animal benefits too

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

VitalSigns posted:

So would they be slaughtered in their prime for meat in this scenario, or only euthanized for genuine humanitarian reasons when they became too sick to have a decent quality of life.

I think that the existence of humans making that decision for animals under our care means that it is eminently possible under what I think is a fairly common ethical framework for us to decide to kill animals for other reasons too.

Would it be wrong to eat livestock if they were allowed to live until old age? If not, would it be permissible to kill them earlier? How much utility does each year of their life have compared to the utility of their body parts? What about animals where you don't have to kill them to get products from them? All of those are situational value judgements I think, rather than clear absolute lines. And all of them seem a pretty significant departure from the idea that we just cannot keep livestock at all.

DrBox posted:

Is the optimal path in your view to cut down all forests, drain all wetlands and fill it with livestock so that no animal has to suffer in the wild? This is either a bizarre rationale or a huge distraction to justify killing animals for a sandwich.

Why don't we just leave nature alone where we can, intervene where it makes sense, and stop exploiting animals for food?

Because "leave it alone" is simply abdicating responsibility for something it is within our power to correct. You can certainly argue for practical reasons to not interfere in ecosystems because they are difficult to fully understand and it is hard to predict what effects our intervention may have, and I would generally make that argument on the basis that it generally benefits humans to have ecological stability and I do not think we, in practice, have the ability to make those sorts of changes in a way that produces reliably desirable results. But that is why specifically I am arguing about places we have already replaced the natural ecosystem with livestock.

The decision in that instance is whether we want to reintroduce wildlife or continue managing the land and life upon it directly. Or I suppose pave it and turn it into some other industry but that seems like it would also have environmental issues so I have basically ruled that out as viable for all such land.

My optimal view would be that humans should endeavour to preserve ecosystems because we should try to understand them, on the basis that there is likely useful information to be found by doing so. And we are certainly dependent on many elements of the biosphere so it is important to keep them functioning, but that this does not necessitate a categorical rejection of animal exploitation and it also does not really have much to do with animal welfare, I think it is primarily something we would be doing for human welfare.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Sep 9, 2022

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

OwlFancier posted:

I think that the existence of humans making that decision for animals under our care means that it is eminently possible under what I think is a fairly common ethical framework for us to decide to kill animals for other reasons too.

Would it be wrong to eat livestock if they were allowed to live until old age? If not, would it be permissible to kill them earlier? How much utility does each year of their life have compared to the utility of their body parts? All of those are situational value judgements I think, rather than clear absolute lines.

This is why it feels like you're trying to backdoor around the ethical conflict, because the answers to these questions are pretty straightforward if killing animals is wrong.

No it wouldn't be wrong to eat something that died of old age. No it would not be permissible to kill them earlier in order to eat them when they are tastier. No it wouldn't be positive utility to kill them for their parts because their life is precious to them, under the same reasoning that it wouldn't be positive utility to drug a homeless man and kill him for his organs to save 5 other people.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Right but "you can keep animals as livestock and eat them as long as you don't kill them" is not, as far as I know, a vegan position. That's probably not even vegetarianism.

Look I'll knock it on the head cos I'm just saying the same thing over and over now and I don't think I can put it much clearer.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Sep 9, 2022

DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

Harold Fjord posted:

Because nature isn't a separate thing from us and what we do. I think using "Exploit" is pretty loaded and it sounds a lot less bad if you use the dictionary definition, which is "benefit from"

No moral reason we can't benefit from animals while being kind. The animal benefits too

I said leave nature alone where we can. This is in contrast to the idea that we have to go into the furthest reaches of the wilderness and wipe out all wildlife to prevent suffering. I feel like I'm arguing with a comic book villain.

As for "benefiting from animals while being kind" you are still talking about breeding, confining and ultimately killing animals for food we do not need. You are advocating we Impregnate a cow, steal away her calf, milk her until she is no longer productive then kill her.....kindly so that you can have milk in your coffee.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011


OwlFancier posted:

Right but "you can keep animals as livestock and eat them as long as you don't kill them" is not, as far as I know, a vegan position. That's probably not even vegetarianism.

Well yeah, vegans don't think you should keep livestock. You're making an argument that they should change their minds about that in order to reduce animal suffering. Okay fine. This doesn't conflict with their belief that killing animals for human use is wrong.

But you are also arguing that it's okay to go ahead and kill those livestock too with a roundabout argument that tries to avoid their ethical belief against it. This is impossible to do, for the same reasons that someone trying to make equivalent roundabout arguments to get to killing human beings would (I assume) fail to win you over.

Like, sure it's better to build orphanages to put orphans in rather than leave them to suffer and possibly die before their time on the street. It's morally good to do this even it's not your fault they're on the street in the first place. But it doesn't follow that because your orphanage reduced suffering that you may as well euthanize a few orphans and make lampshades out of them. Someone might even argue that they suffer less by getting to be warm and safe for a few years before getting painlessly dispatched to the lampshade factory than they would suffering and dying from exposure outside, and that would even be true. Somehow I doubt that would win you over to the cause of orphan-lamps though since you believe human consciousness is special and killing them for such reasons is wrong.

I'm not telling you not to argue for the superiority of petting zoos over untamed nature. Go ahead. I'm just saying trying to find a way to get to killing animals without touching vegan ethical beliefs isn't going to work.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

DrBox posted:

You are advocating we Impregnate a cow, steal away her calf, milk her until she is no longer productive then kill her.....kindly so that you can have milk in your coffee.

Quote me advocating this

Making up positions no one took is bad form and you just can't help yourself

You arent an absolutist but if we disagree with you we support experimentation on puppies

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Sep 9, 2022

DrBox
Jul 3, 2004

Sombody call the doctor?

Harold Fjord posted:

Quote me advocating this

Making up positions no one took is bad form and you just can't help yourself

You arent an absolutist but if we disagree with you we support experimentation on puppies

So what exactly are you advocating for in clear terms? And do you think anything you're advocating for is likely to happen as long as animals are still seen as commodities or resources to exploit?

Content to Hover
Sep 11, 2009
The original post made an argument and by proxy raised a question to be debated with the thread title. Why You Should Go Vegan. Very few points have been made to refute the OP. Instead the focus seems to have abandoned reality.

I don't understand why the defence being made for the current system seems to depend so heavily on a system of ethical farming that we can show to be a statistical minority.

Do people have any issues with factory farming, not necessarily ethical, they could be anything mass deforestation to environmental runoff or even antibiotic use? Because that is where the majority of your meat comes from.

Focusing on what we should do with bespoke farms when the vegans use their superpowers to overthrow capitalism is a weak gotcha that only works if you insist on ignoring the reality we actually live in.

Cows are not facing extinction due to you as an individual becoming vegan, personal lack of impact has even been repeatedly cited as a motivation not to become one. While I disagree with the conclusion that comes with the argument, could you at least use it consistently.

Segue
May 23, 2007

I think one aspect that the "nature is equally violent" argument lacks is the sheer number of animals that are specifically bred each year to be killed. The WEF says 50 billion chickens (excluding half the male chicks being killed automatically) and they're usually killed before they're two months old.

I mean yes in an ideal world they'd live a short happy life before being killed humanely, but the sheer scale of us creating that level of violence by specifically breeding all those lives makes me very uncomfortable.

I remember reading J A Baker's The Peregrine which goes into just how many small animals a bird of prey kills each day, which is a lot, but the very short lifespans of food animals is absolutely a thing even in an ideal world.

And yes a weird sci fi world where humans manage nature so that they live in Edenic harmony is I guess a goal but we are specifically creating animals that would not exist to kill them very shortly.

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Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Oh look, a vegan is asking is to address factory farming. Again

DrBox posted:

So what exactly are you advocating for in clear terms? And do you think anything you're advocating for is likely to happen as long as animals are still seen as commodities or resources to exploit?

I've been quite clear on what I advocate, and that I think it's more likely to get everyone supporting kind practices than Veganism, though both are relatively close to nil.


Veganism seems to be about claiming an easy moral high ground by washing your hands of a sticky issue entirely, rather than actually doing good by animals.

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Sep 9, 2022

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