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From a practical position it is hard to see a difference between eating less meat and being vegan, if the object is to reduce meat demand then it doesn't really matter if you cut out most or even just some of your meat eating rather than all of it, as both would have severe effects on the economic viability of the industry.
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Aug 30, 2022 12:06
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I feel like veganism specifically is odd from an environmental point of view because volume matters a lot more than your personal elimination of every particular product. If everyone cut like, I dunno, a tenth of the meat they eat it would have the same effect as making one in ten people completely vegan. I would interpret it as a very after-the-fact argument. The personal moral one is more consistent.
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Aug 31, 2022 00:14
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What I mean is that I think that radical a dietary change is likely to have a bit of a limit on how widely it's going to be adopted, and I don't think it necessarily gets at the core of the environmental argument either. I also think that a lot of its present growth is down to it being commodified by capitalism itself as way to sell people a sense of moral superiority in the form of marked-up vegetable products, similarly to all other kinds of "more ethical consumption" type stuff, but that this is likely to reach something of a limit if it threatened the viability of the animal product industry, as you would see far more counter-messaging. I suppose I am skeptical of the extent of its effectiveness as something that I think is extremely dependent on that commodification. Frankly I'm not sure if it has much staying power either other than as a food fad, though it is of course possible that food shortages will in time necessitate the transition to a more staples based diet, but that isn't voluntary veganism in the here and now, that's disaster response on an economic planning level in the future, and would happen regardless of veganism as a concept. Recycling is a good comparison in that as far as I'm aware most of the stuff I recycle just goes to landfill anyway via a more roundabout process and probably overseas, so doing it probably isn't actually helping, but I might as well rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic I suppose. It's something to do.
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Aug 31, 2022 00:51
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I feel like that road leads you down "my skin is constantly covered in microorganisms writhing around and they're in my mouth and eyes and body and they're constantly multiplying and living in my secretions" Like yes it's true but it doesn't really matter.
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Sep 1, 2022 18:16
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Out of curiosity, is there a vegan position on "rewilding" ideas involving the reintroduction of animal species to habitats in order to improve their resiliance? Because to me it would seem to be something that they should oppose.
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Sep 5, 2022 18:50
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I would generally take the position that animals behaving naturally is still really poo poo for them, nature is barbaric and I don't think animals in their natural state have what I would call a good quality of life, much in the sense that humans are subject to horrific conditions that it requires constant effort and industry for us to try to minimise. But when the existence of those animals is predicated on human intervention I don't really see how it is different from agricultural use combined with neglect? You're breeding animals for human benefit and not looking after them. Which, I mean, I'm fine with because I don't have an issue with using animals for human ends generally, but it would seem like it would conflict with veganism. But a lot of people seem to think that even if humans have the ability to intervene in "natural" affairs, what happens within our possible control is sort of... not under the scope of moral judgement as long as a human isn't actively the one doing it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Sep 5, 2022 |
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Sep 5, 2022 19:20
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I suppose generally the thing that sticks with me is that it is necessary to at least accept that humans are going to be making all the decisions for animals, basically all the time, because there are very few of them that are not in some way within our reach. Thus I don't really see a great distinction between direct-human-inflicted suffering or human-absence-subsequent suffering. If it is OK to keep animals around to starve and kill each other because it contributes to our own environmental security, or just because we imagine it to be aesthetically pleasing, then I find it difficult to say that we can't keep them around to kill and eat. You could certainly make the argument that we could improve the process by which we do that to reduce some of the suffering involved but I don't think that is quite veganism, which appears to seek to totally divest from animal exploitation, or at least to do so in a more extreme form than simply improving agricultural processes.
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Sep 5, 2022 19:50
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DrBox posted:Doing something wrong a little better is still wrong. It would be more morally consistent to stop. Even in idyllic conditions and even if the suffering is removed, breeding and killing animals at a fraction of their lifespan for a sandwich is still harm. As I said, though, I think cruelty is an intrinsic state of existence for animals because they don't have any means to escape it on their own, I would personally suggest they have the potential to be better off as livestock than living in the wild, because I don't think ideas like self determination apply to animals. An animal that is kept in decent conditions and then slaughtered for food I think is better off than one that is left to fend for itself until some other animal kills it or it starves to death. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 11:14
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silence_kit posted:I don't think they would be living in the wild. Likely eventually they would mostly die off, and eventually there would be much less suffering of cows, pigs, chickens, etc. Yes but presumably unless you do plan to pave over the former farmland, other animals would be living in that space instead, wild. While natural ecosystems are obviously necessary for the planet to be livable, I don't really think they are good from an ethical perspective because I think that most naturally occuring life is horrible and predicated on constant suffering, humans could potentially change that, although I am not sure if they ever will. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 11:40 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 11:38
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It would be extremely weird yes. As I said I don't think it would ever happen, I don't even really think humans will figure out how to make human lives not predicated on suffering to be honest. But I think that idea should be taken into account when considering human treatment of animals, there is no real option that does not involve animal suffering. Stopping human exploitation of animals does not mean that animals no longer suffer, it just means that they suffer in different ways. Depending on how you look at it, the entire biosphere suffers for human benefit whether we actively participate in it or not. So you should think about that when considering human use of land and animals, it does not have to be free of suffering, it just has to be compared to a space full of animals doing their normal behaviour, which itself is pretty abhorrent. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 11:54
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Clarste posted:If suffering is the natural state of being mortal, then you might as well go full utilitarian supervillain and advocate wiping out all humanity while you're at it. Surely that would lead to the minimization of suffering? It's not like humans don't suffer or fear death even in the absence of specific dangers. I think you are making an absurd argument. I mean yes if you gave me a button that zapped all life out of existence I would have to have a very big think about not pressing it. The conclusion is abhorrent, of course, but I don't find that a persuasive argument against the process of arriving at it. Clarste posted:In a more general sense though, I don't think there is any empirical or scientific basis to claim that human suffering is more vivid or "real" than animal suffering. In the old days people used to appeal to the immortal soul, and more recently the concept of "sapience," but both are equally unintelligible from a purely empirical perspective. There have been many attempts to define what makes humanity different: self-awareness, tool use, language, but every single one has failed to stand up to even the slightest experimental rigor, or rather as we start observing more and more animals. Why should the next definition be any more meaningful, and not just a way of moving the goalposts because you already know in your gut that humans are special, but can't articulate why? Or, I suppose, you could go the other way and accept dolphins and chimpanzees and magpies and octopuses(?) as sapient, but not cows and chickens? But that feels equally arbitrary to me. If animal suffering is just as real as human suffering then that is an even bigger argument in favour of my position, it is in no way predicated on the idea that animal suffering is somehow less valid than human suffering, merely on the idea that only humans currently have the hypothetical capability to escape the cruelty of the natural world, or to offer the same to animals (though I again point out that we are very good at creating new cruelties to inflict on each other, even if we hypothetically could do otherwise.) I would suggest that in fact the best argument I know of against a universal anti-life position is that it is possible, at some point in the future, that human intelligence (or conceivably some other intelligence) could overcome the natural brutality that we and all other life on earth, arise from. Life perhaps does not have to be cruel, but that does not mean that its current incarnation is not full of cruelty. It is a common belief that "natural" is equatable to "good" but I would generally take the position that good is something we have to construct, above the natural course of things. If animals are just as important as humans then the state of their natural existence is even more horrific. It would be very nice to think that their suffering is not "really real" or somehow less so than human suffering, as there are more of them than us. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 15:40
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Conversely I wholly support the argument of reducing the number of suffering-capable creatures, very good idea 10/10 would recommend, very good vegan argument.
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Sep 8, 2022 16:03
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For avoidance of ambiguity I read the "procreation of non human animals" bit of that article and nodded the entire way through.
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Sep 8, 2022 16:18
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XboxPants posted:We don't have to go diving in the ocean and carefully watch over the life of every little octopus and make sure they're well fed, safe, and happy, but we can refrain from personally causing their deaths and I don't think that's morally inconsistent. I, however, do. Whatever choice we make, animals die. I think that providing them food and shelter and a field to roam around in before killing them quickly for meat, is a better lot than they would be afforded in nature. As well as entirely morally consistent with having say, national parks full of wildlife existing in a cruel state of nature simply because we find the idea romantic, or because we need them to preserve a biosphere for us to live in. I do not think it matters whether you personally cause the harm.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:30
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DrBox posted:You are insisting the choice is in how we harm them. Vegans are arguing you don't have to harm them at all. You don't have to but I would certainly suggest that free range agriculture is better for the animals living in it than letting it go wild. I suppose you could also just devote a lot of land to giant petting zoos instead but I also think that you could feed and clothe people with the land while also doing the animals on it a favour on the whole.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:34
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DrBox posted:Please read this very carefully. The choice is not between letting the cow roam free or breeding and killing the cow. The choice is between breeding and killing cows or NOT breeding and killing any more cows. What would you be doing with the previous pasture land if you aren't putting cows on it? Because I had rather assumed you would be allowing it to be inhabited by wild animals (other than cows) I am assuming that by reducing the amount of agricultural land you would be expanding the amount of wild habitat and thus commensurately the population of wild animals.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:38
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XboxPants posted:Does the octopus have any choice in this matter? I'm genuinely not being sarcastic. Manifestly no, the octopus does not have any choice in the matter, because it's an octopus, and they cannot communicate choices to us even if they are capable of understanding and making them.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:40
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I think paving over gigantic stretches of land to make them uninhabitable to all life would be a bit weird when you could just practice agriculture to half decent standards on it instead.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:49
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Content to Hover posted:Not sure if you understand how factory farming works, but "providing them food and shelter and a field to roam around in" isn't representative of their lived experience. Capitalism isn't overly motivated to change that any time soon. I mean I live not far from a bunch of fields with cows in them. They seem quite content, I walk through it sometimes to go for walks, seems like an agreeable state of affairs tbh. Quite happy to demolish the factory farms and keep the fields.  Not a cow psychologist but they seem alright to me. I don't think my actions really make much difference being vegan or not. As I said I don't think of the realistic options it actually makes much difference at all what I do because even if I somehow contributed to the scaling back of animal agriculture, I don't think it would make much difference to animal welfare, even assuming that my actions would do that which I don't think they would, especially as my job involves trying to maximise human consumption of all things so like, my own personal consumption seems pretty moot honestly. It is like asking me if I feel bad about stepping on a bug. I like bugs, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:54
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Harold Fjord posted:Why is it more okay for animals to suffer and kill one another in that forest than it is for us to have some nice farms for a couple of well treated cows? Yeah this is the thing, I do not think it is a separate issue, because I think humans are perfectly capable of giving animals what I might call a good existence while also using them to produce things. By scaling back wild animal populations and keeping more of them in a managed environment I think that could quite easily be better for the animals on the whole. And if it isn't I don't think that is a problem with the concept of humans exploiting animals but specifically the way in which we do it. Obviously we need some amount of wild habitat to keep everyone alive and I am certainly in favour of changing land use for that reason, but I just do not see a distinction between wild animal existence and animal existence under direct human supervision, both are fundamentally within the domain of human interference and humans are responsible for both.
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Sep 8, 2022 22:03
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XboxPants posted:Do you think this way about other humans? I don't. I think it matters whether I personally cause physical harm and death to other humans, and I try to avoid those actions. I would suggest that the distinction is more a trolley problem kind of thing. If you do one thing to avert one kind of suffering but cause another kind of suffering. Obviously in the absence of any other factors you should choose the path of less suffering. The animal dichotomy to me is basically: 1. Keep animals in controlled (good) habitats in exchange for the extraction of utility for human welfare, i.e what I would call ethical farming practices. Or 2. Leave land to go wild or semi-wild and allow animal populations to reach their own equilibrium where they have to maximally compete with one another and inflict pain and suffering on each other constantly because that is what nature selects for. There are other possible choices for how to use the land but those to me seem like the two most likely ones, as I said I don't think that creating massive omni-death zones or post-scarcity animal utopias are very likely at the moment, and to me the former realistic option seems like the more ethical choice. I don't think the latter becomes somehow outside the scope of moral judgement because humans are not directly getting involved in the animal competition, which is where the direct involvement idea comes from. DrBox posted:Quite happy until they are trucked to the slaughter house as soon as they are big enough. This is also the exception, not the rule in animal agriculture. 99% of meat is factory farmed despite everyone pointing to cows in fields to say everything is fine. Why not stop breeding the cows so we can cut their throats? They are going to die one way or another, I have no objection to killing them humanely in a way that goes on to benefit humans, as human benefit is also good. I am aware that current processes are often not very humane but that to me is an argument for process improvement, rather than against the concept of keeping animals as livestock generally. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 22:10
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XboxPants posted:Funny enough I did once know a very hard-line vegan who made the argument that I should never walk off the paved or beaten path when I can; for instance stepping onto grass or weeds would be bad, because I might kill a bug. I would argue that all beings have the right to exist, at the very least, and things that must come as a consequence of our existence (like maybe killing an underground beetle when stepping on dirt) are acceptable since we do have that right to exist. I do generally try to watch where I walk, but equally I think I have to accept that that's just going to happen, I do wonder sometimes how many things I kill every day just by existing, but part of the way I rationalize it is by thinking that I won't produce another human to have the same problem. The other part being "that seems like an endless line of thinking that is unlikely to produce a result beyond 'kill yourself' so I am not going to pursue it"
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Sep 8, 2022 22:27
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VitalSigns posted:The argument that because animals kill each other then it's okay for us to kill them is a bit odd. Humans kill each other does that make it okay to shoot up a school because those kids might get murdered by someone else someday anyway? Obviously not. I would argue that there is a difference between humans and animals in that I think humans have a sort of inner-world and can communicate that to other people even into advanced age most of the time and thus humans exist in a sort of... shared mental space? Not quite sure how to describe it but a human is usually a member of a community and their presence adds to that community and adds value to the lives of other humans who interact with them. Whereas I am far from sure that animals have either the inner world or the capability to form communities like humans do. I know they have some kind of social organization but I don't think I have good reason to believe the loss of any particular animal is equivalently devastating to their peers than the loss of a particular human may often be. So yes the "soul" argument is certainly a factor for me. But I would also stress that while I don't think animals have "souls" they are obviously capable of feeling pain and stuff, so we should generally try to avoid that. DrBox posted:No they are only going to die because we keep breeding more. You refuse to let go of this idea that it's cows killed by humans or cows running amok. Are you ok with me starting a puppy mill and killing them to make rugs? By your argument they get the benefit of living for a year relatively comfortable and I get some rugs! But the alternative would be just don't breed and kill the dogs at all. I mean if you keep the dogs in good conditions I don't see what the difference between that and any other form of agriculture would be other than I don't think puppy rugs would be very good commodities. Sheep are much better for that.
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Sep 8, 2022 22:32
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I feel like you could vote for better animal welfare but not be vegan and still be pretty consistent?
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Sep 8, 2022 22:37
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VitalSigns posted:Right so that's your actual disagreement with vegans then. I can disagree on both counts, I can find the natural infliction of extraordinary pain on wild animals to be objectionable while also thinking that humans can provide better conditions for them than nature can and that killing them humanely is only a quite minor wrong, which is offset by the use of their bodies for human welfare. I would have equally minimal objection if a wolf were to sneak onto a farm with a pistol and double tap a sheep and then drag it off to eat, but unfortunately wolves cannot do that. But humans can, and so I have no issue with humans killing animals to feed their pets, for example. And I would in fact prefer that to having animals run wild trying to kill each other with tooth and claw. I would argue that it is better for a dog to be fed farmed meat than it is for wolves to hunt deer. The conditions of the dog, the animal the meat came from, and the process of getting it all seem like they could be vastly improved over the natural state of affairs. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 22:42
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DrBox posted:What does vote mean in this context? If I'm paying to go to bullfighting events but make some vague noises about wishing they didn't die so brutally it's not really consistent. As I said I don't really think that that my personal choice to eat or not eat animal products makes a great deal of difference in that regard, and I don't find it necessary to perform specific actions in this instance to attain a personal sense of moral superiority, nor really do I think any such actions are actually available to me, I would not think I was achieving anything if I became vegan, certainly not any more than just, I dunno, eating slightly less meat or whatever. The absolutist position holds no value to me on a personal level because I am fairly aware of all the myriad miseries I am complicit in anyway. It is not able to generate a sense of moral purity. I think my actions are consistent enough for my own satisfaction, they cannot be absolutely consistent nor do I expect them to be.
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Sep 8, 2022 22:59
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I don't think that me eating, say, honey, makes a difference to the world one way or another, no. I do not think there is a signficiant moral dimension to that decision, and the only reason I can think is if you believe you can go for like, any% no animal consumption speedrun of life and that you get points for achieving that specifically. I do specifically have trouble understanding the absolutism, which is why I bring up the wild animal welfare argument. The inherently absolutist nature of veganism to me invites that sort of thinking. The idea that you not consuming any animal products ever is improving the world in a signficiant way over and above eating less meat sometimes, just... doesn't make much sense to me? Unless it is specifically for that very personal sense of accomplishment which as I say, I simply do not experience. If you do then that's great but at that point, to me it feels more like you are asking me to adopt your ethics flavoured hobby rather than actually make an ethical decision.
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Sep 8, 2022 23:11
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XboxPants posted:I do wonder about this, personally. Does the cat who lives with me want to spend its entire life living in a small apartment with no plants, no other animals, no natural environment of the type she would enjoy? She sure seems curious about the outside world. I'd bet she'd like to go check it out. But, then, I picked her up off the street as a stray kitten during winter. She probably would have died, otherwise. If you let your cat outside it will kill birds and mice for no good reason. So I would suggest that this is a quite good example of humans doing better than nature. It would certainly be nice if your cat could have an endless world to explore in safety, but that is not how the world is, and I think it is quite clearly better for it to be inside. Content to Hover posted:Entirely out of curiosity, do you eat much meat? You've raised that reduction is nearly as good multiple times. I like to include some in most meals, and I would struggle to remove things like butter and animal fat because that forms an important component in a lot of things I like to eat. Also eggs and dairy generally. Have tried subbing with vegetable oils but they just don't work as well, and food is one of the few things I really enjoy so it is important to me that I get to eat things I like. I do like vegetables too but I think if I cooked removing all animal products it would be extremely unpleasant for me. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 23:18
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DrBox posted:Which is not an argument for breeding more cats. 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. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 23:23
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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.
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Sep 8, 2022 23:37
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Eating beans instead of beef most of the time I might agree, but never eating beef ever seems somewhat exceptional to me, and certainly some of the other exclusions seem moreso.
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Sep 8, 2022 23:41
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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. We routinely accept that some beings are less capable of maintaining their own welfare than we are, and we routinely restrict their freedom out of the very reasonable observation that if we do not, they end up hurt or dead. In some cases this is because we have built environments that depend upon their inhabitants being able to undertake average human level assessments of the world, understand average human communication methods, and make average human level decisions based on that as well as often having prior experience in navigating those environments. And in those environments you either have to keep animals contained, or keep them out, and both are limiting their freedom. You can also adapt the environment to make it less inhospitible to animals, hedgehog tunnels under roads, making sure animals can climb out of pits or pools etc, but I don't know that it is practical at the moment to completely adapt human environments to be universally safe for all animals. VitalSigns posted:Really? You don't see why people might be absolutist about an ethical principle? 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. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 23:50
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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)
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Sep 9, 2022 00:48
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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.
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Sep 9, 2022 01:22
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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 |
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Sep 9, 2022 01:27
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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 |
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Sep 9, 2022 01:40
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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.
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Sep 9, 2022 02:28
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VitalSigns posted:Yeah but I'm not sure what the argument accomplishes? 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 |
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Sep 9, 2022 03:28
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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. 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 |
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Sep 9, 2022 04:07
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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 |
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Sep 9, 2022 04:20
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