You just posted this yesterday unless I missed it earlier. Nonetheless, if this is how things were done, this would be much better than our current system. However, this is not how things are done. It also does not take into account the amount of food produced as I cited earlier and once that is taken into account, this kills more than three times the number of animals.
It is our job to give animals a single right; the right not to be property. If you adopt a child into your family, they are not your property. They are your family. Likewise, if you adopt an animal into your family, they are not your property. They are your family. It is our duty to try to come up with alternatives that still follow the golden rule but still provide for the animals. This is obviously more difficult since cats and dogs are carnivores and rely on meat. It also is more difficult since ethics do not really apply to animals that do not understand morals. In the grand scheme of things, there will be meat soon that does not require suffering to create. In the mean time, if people want to attempt causing less suffering by using Steven’s argument, by all means. This is a temporary solution, not a permanent one.
I am faily confident that for every one source you pull, I can pull two sources that show that a whole foods plant based diet is healthier. Anyone can search google and discover the health benefits. Likewise, anyone can search google and find out “proof” for anything they want to believe whether for or against something. Though I would never want to be on the side of arguing that eating meat is healthier than a whole foods plant based diet. While the health aspects are certainly a good discussion to have, my argument does not rely on the health argument.
As I said earlier, it is not the fear necessarily, but the realization of suffering. Your argument seems to be that if it is difficult to study others and see what they go through, it is impossible. Your argument does not really make sense to me since I am more worried about how death will come than the fear of actually dying. If were projecting all of my own fears, likes, dislikes, etc. onto others, this would still make no sense.
Eating ethical meat that looks like meat, feels like meat, smells like meat, tastes like meat, and literally is meat is a fantasy? Sorry, but you have not studied this enough to know where we are headed. Meat that keeps the golden rule is already here. The first computer cost millions of dollars, took up a whole floor and required a whole staff to run. Now I have a faster computer in my pocket. We use to kill a rabbit every time we wanted a woman to have a pregnancy test. Now we have pregnancy tests. We use to send pigs through the suffering of going through crash tests in cars. Now we have crash test dummies. In all cases, not only did we replace massive amounts of suffering, but the technology also far surpassed the original intent.
My arguments are based on the golden rule. I would argue that the golden rule is self evident. How can you argue with the statement: “All living beings want to treated how they want to be treated”. You can’t. How can you argue that “We should take all lives into consideration”. You can’t without reationalizing. So all we have had is five pages of rationalizations for why people think it is okay to ignore the interest of others in the first place or why it is okay to exploit others. All the while we have no idea that we are simply relisting the same old reasons why we should continue owning slaves ( http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past/ten-reasons-not-to-abolish-slavery/ )
“But it’s difficult to understand animals”, “But plants feel pain too”, “But you are still causing some harm and unless you stop all harm you should just kill yourself”, “But you have not proved without a doubt that animals feel pain, maybe they are faking it”, But animals are lower than us and don’t deserve anything", “But the animals kill so we should be able to kill too”, “But the golden rule says to treat others according to your own tastes”, “But I have a source claiming you are going to die without animal protein”, “But it’s natural” , “But we have always done it”, “But the animals are nothing without us”, “But the animals will die off in the wild without us”, “But our lives are worse than animals”, “But we can feed seven billion people profitably by raising animals humanely and without much of any suffering”, “But this abolition stuff is a utopian idea and impractical”, But wouldn’t it be better to forget abolition and just give them a good life". At some point I saw through my own rationalizations and had to admit the truth. I was in denial myself for about three months.
Do you think it is possible to understand what others go through? Your argument seems to be trending toward saying no. Not only that, but you tend to be implying that we should ignore the pain of animals. It’s just “reacting to stimuli”. This is the argument Descartes put forward in the 1600’s. He would perform cruel experiments on animals and claimed that it was just a reaction to stimuli. That animals are merely machines reacting to stimuli. Good luck making modern humans believe this today. Most people will call you crazy for being cruel to an animal. Anyone who has spent time with a dog or cat knows that it is self evident that they experience pain, just like you and me. To deny this is simply to deny the evidence.
Please explain how you intend to completely separate the suffering from the killing. This is impossible. You think the meat industry is just not trying hard enough?
Would you agree or disagree with the following statement used to justify slavery:
Forget abolition. A far better plan is to keep the slaves sufficiently well fed, clothed, housed, and occasionally entertained and to take their minds off their exploitation by encouraging them to focus on the better life that awaits them in the hereafter. We cannot expect fairness or justice in this life, but all of us, including the slaves, can aspire to a life of ease and joy in Paradise."
Please provide sources that show that we can feed over seven billion people on this planet who almost all want the taste of meat by raising billions of animals, without any suffering. You show me a world where it is possible to exploit others without any suffering at all, and I will show you a fantasy world. If this were how things were done, I would have (unfortunately) never cared enough to get involved. But this is not true. You cannot separate the suffering. Now that I have seen the truth, I would know that it is wrong as a matter of justice. But this really does not matter because it is impossible to separate exploitation and suffering.
You are harping on a minute detail and acting like this is somehow going to allow you to completely exclude all suffering others go through. How do you know what any other human goes through if you are not that person? Oh thats right, you can’t know. It is impossible to say with certainty that any other human is not some robot or that they are lying to you when they tell you something. If you want to claim that because something is not known for 100% certainty then we will never agree on this.
What you need to do is study them. You observe them. Do they scream out in pain? If they do, what is the intensity of the pain based on physical reactions? What activities do they enjoy doing when they are in good mental health? What activities do they do when they are in bad mental health? Do they have strong bonds between their mothers? Are some animals very social while others prefer to be alone? Can they experience anger? Can they experience happiness? Why are some animals very deeply changed when they lose a loved one? If there are clear emotions that have evolved in us, what is the mechanism for them to come out of thin air when we evolved from our ancestors to our current form? These are all questions we need to answer.
How do I prove a negative in this case? How do I prove that I am being objective? All of the things I have said are fairly self explanatory to anyone who owns a pet. Except for maybe the one part where some people misunderstood and thought I was saying animals fear death as oppose to the act of death.
If animals lived out natural lives and died of natural (non-human) causes, then it would be hard to argue that eating their meat would be unethical. I would not argue it at least.
If animals lived out natural lives but were killed without any pain whatsoever, I would still consider it unethical in the sense that we are taking another life for our own pleasure before they would have naturally died. If this were the case though, I would not have even become aware of the issue in the first place. I would have remained ignorant to the issue of taking their lives.
You quoted me talking about pain. Insects do not feel pain (though I suspect there might be exception insects who do feel some sort of pain), but the golden rule does still apply to insects.
So first off you realize that I draw the line for the golden rule as a whole to those who are aware of the world. Insects are aware of the world so they are included even though they do not feel pain. The golden rule is incredibly simple. This is by design. Let’s take slavery for example. You ask yourself if you would want to be a slave. The obvious answer is “no” to anyone who has seen what it is be like to be a slave. Even for those who are “ethically” treated slaves, they normally still want to be able to express their own free will. Here is normally where the discussion ends for someone following the golden rule. However, two hundred years ago it kept going because we try to rationalize why we are breaking the free will of another. So how do you be sure that owning a slave is wrong? You involve Utilitarianism and take into account all lives. Since we are violating the golden rule, there has to be absolute certainty that we have taken all lives into account and that the greater good is a clear winner. Unfortunately, it is impossible to show that owning a slave provides more of a greater good to the slave owner than the slave. The reason this is obvious to people today is because we take into account the ideas of free will and justice and know that they are being broken. However, people back then tried to rationalize how they could keep doing what they wanted to do and what they should do. When you ignore justice and free will, it makes it a lot easier to claim that you are justified in owning a slave.
Saying that because we cannot prevent *all *suffering, we should not prevent any suffering is inconsistent to me.
Please explain how putting roughly 10 billion land animals (of which 99% according to Farm Forward go) through factory farms in the U.S. alone, plus the fact that we need to create roughly five times the amount of crops to end up with meat, somehow ends up causing less harm to animals? This is a blatant lie. Unless you believe the only animals people eat are grass-fed cows (let alone ignore how the Steven Davis argument does not take into account the amount of food produced).
Above you are saying that by suggesting meat is a luxury, it is silly. Are you suggesting that meat is needed?
Please cite this “untold” amount of suffering from coke. If there is suffering, it would be a good idea to take that into consideration. Does the fact that something else is unethical change whether eating meat is unethical? Not really.
Please point me to a post where you lay out the mechanism for why I am being unrealistic.
I would want to be a bird. It would be cool to fly around. I would have no issue with being a dog or cat who is loved on by their owner. I certainly would not want to be an animal in a factory farm.
Of course not. What does this have to do with the animals that are being exploited in factory farms? I certainly hope your argument is not that because someting could be worse, that anything under that bar is permissible. “You could have lived as a Jew that went through the Holocaust. So as long as you suffer just slightly less, you have no room to talk about suffering”.
Oh. I get it. You are doing them a favor by exploiting them…
This argument would be like saying to a girl you rescued:
“Look… They almost sold you into the sex trade in India. But you were lucky. I saved you. So I am only going to rape you once whereas you would have been forced to have sex countless times had I not saved you. Don’t you see I am doing you a favor!”
Here is a quote from the American Dietetic Association:
[QUOTE=ADA]
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. A vegetarian diet is defined as one that does not include meat (including fowl) or seafood, or products containing those foods. This article reviews the current data related to key nutrients for vegetarians including protein, n-3 fatty acids, iron, zinc, iodine, calcium, and vitamins D and B-12. A vegetarian diet can meet current recommendations for all of these nutrients. In some cases, supplements or fortified foods can provide useful amounts of important nutrients. An evidence-based review showed that vegetarian diets can be nutritionally adequate in pregnancy and result in positive maternal and infant health outcomes. The results of an evidence-based review showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease. Vegetarians also appear to have lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes than nonvegetarians. Furthermore, vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Features of a vegetarian diet that may reduce risk of chronic disease include lower intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol and higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, soy products, fiber, and phytochemicals. The variability of dietary practices among vegetarians makes individual assessment of dietary adequacy essential. In addition to assessing dietary adequacy, food and nutrition professionals can also play key roles in educating vegetarians about sources of specific nutrients, food purchase and preparation, and dietary modifications to meet their needs.
[/QUOTE]
This link does not work for me.
No, I am saying that it is possible to produce meat that is ethical. Cultured meat is the only thing I am aware of that would fit that category. If cultured meat were available, my original post would not apply to it.
I am not. I have plainly acknowledged that “suffering” is a wholly appropriate word for animals’ responses to some stimuli.
I have not requested the perspective of god. I’ve asked fairly simple questions and you are unable to answer them.
I would never claim this. No one claims this.
What if they do? Let’s take the issue. I again ask you for a measure, and again you say “pain.” I ask you if animals are the same value as humans, and you say “no.” Then how am I to compare animal pain to human pain? That’s the question. For instance, if you want to measure something, you need units. Say, length: you need centimeters. Can you measure with perfect exactness some length in centimeters? No. Thankfully, no one ever asks for this. Now someone else says, “No, no. I want to measure in inches.” And I say, “Fine. Can you tell me how inches compare to centimeters?” If they’re you, they fail to do this spectacularly several times even when asked clearly and directly. Otherwise, they give some relation, as specific as the situation warrants. “Oh, an inch is about two and a half centimeters.”
That’s a good question. If that’s your basis, I’m eager to hear your results, or the results of others.
These are all fascinating questions which could help us flesh out the form if you ever could manage to even build a skeleton.
:rolleyes: Sounds so simple when you just use words to ask the questions and never actually give the answers.
The fact is that we are omnivores so it can’t be immoral. Almost everyone will agree that making an animal suffer is wrong. Those that I know that put down cows did it with one shot, aim for the X between the ears and eyes and they are gone. Plus, they would have had their brief stay here if they weren’t bred for food to begin with.
[QUOTE=Trust]
Here is one I was looking at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/we...pagewanted=all Just look at how much meat the U.S. consumes compared to its size and you will see this is at least partially true. Although I have no idea where I said luxury meant good or bad.
[/QUOTE]
So what? Last time I checked, the US does not make up a large percentage of the worlds population, so your cite basically shows…nothing under discussion. So, no…I don’t see it as ‘partially true’, even if I accept (which I don’t) the ‘fact’ that consumption of meat as a ‘luxury’ is somehow a bad thing.
You used the ‘luxury’ argument several times, with strongly negative connotations. And you’ve thrown this debate into an ‘Ethical/Unethical’ framework, which pretty much ties into the whole ‘good or bad’ thingy. If you want to back peddle on this as well, that’s fine…but don’t try and look all innocent about your own arguments.
Well, it’s your own inconsistency, unfortunately. Whether animals are killed for food directly or killed in the process of the creation of food is all the same to the animals that die. For you to exist, especially in a high tech society that you obviously are part of, animals are going to suffer and die. They are suffering and dying so you can drink that coke, air condition your house and eat your tofurkey dinner. Most people accept that. You rationalize and attempt to take some sort of moral high ground so you can feel smug about your choices while ignoring the real costs. People. Glass houses. Hypocrisy. Sophistry.
Ah…so, I’m a liar, ehe? Yet you’ve been shown cites earlier in this thread (hell, on this page) that you’ve yet to address with anything but accusations of lying. You’ve also had it explained to you several times already how crops themselves cost lives, and how all the OTHER things you use daily (like that coke…or like that computer you are tying on) cost lives as well.
Would it cost more lives in terms of animals to switch over to a completely meat free existence, attempting to do the vaguely defined ‘least harm’? Absolutely I believe that, despite your attempts to call me a liar. And even leaving aside the larger number of animals that would be killed by the necessity of putting more ground under cultivation in order to make up the difference that is currently filled by meat, you have those ‘10 billion land animals’. See, if we stopped eating meat, then their numbers would drop…possibly to zero in some cases, but even if some how you were able to get funding for your farm animal sanctuaries, it would be to a few hundreds or maybe a few thousands. That ALONE is going to cause large numbers of animals who would have lived to not exist in the future. And, of course, it doesn’t even take into account all the other disruptions that such a move would have, and how that would further impact the animal world. Today, many products come from the fact that when we butcher animals we often use ‘everything but the squeal’. There are a whole host of things that rely on secondary or tertiary animal products that have nothing to do with eating meat that alternatives would have to be found for.
So no…I didn’t lie. And I’ll thank you, in the future, to not call me a liar, especially in this forum. You can call me wrong, or say I’m clueless, but don’t call me a liar.
Of COURSE it’s needed. If you don’t eat meat then you have to supplement your diet to make sure you get all the things that you could more easily get from meat. Large portions of the worlds population rely on the fact that they have meat in their diet because they don’t have the freaking LUXURY (the REAL luxury) of being able to go to Whole Foods and get a full vegan diet, nor the resources to cater to that luxury. Have you noticed that most vegans aren’t exactly the poorest members of the population?? Have you ever considered why that is?
So, you handwave it away. You’ve already been shown that crops cause harm to animals. Did you think coke magically materialized from the ether? No, I’m not going to cite, again, something you’ve already been shown and you’ve completely failed to address in your ridiculous arguments.
Does drinking a coke cancel out eating meat on some fantasy ethics scale? Nope. The fact that you wave your finger at one and your hands at the other merely shows you are a hypocrite. You are willing to cause animal suffering for something YOU desire (such as that coke) while attempting to take some fictional high moral ground about ethics concerning someone eating a steak. It’s actually pretty hilarious, to be honest.
What, again? No thanks…I’m pretty tired of your ridiculous antics at this point. I’m fairly certain that anyone following along (which, perhaps you aren’t) can see it clearly.
Uhuh. Sure you would.
Animals lives are short and brutal, especially in the wild. That’s the reality. It’s always been the reality, it will always be the reality.
Ah, the Godwin card. Yeah, that’s a really good analogy to what I was saying.
You were the one who trotted out the idiotic ‘lesser suffering’ horseshit. Merely trying to clue you in that animals suffer. Are we doing them a favor? Well…yeah. That’s why domesticated animals allowed themselves to BE domesticated, originally. It was a better deal for most of them than the short, brutish lives they would face out in the real world.
Did we do it out of the goodness of our hearts? Of course not…we exploit them because it’s in our own best interest, obviously.
Ah, another ridiculous strawman analogy. Do you suppose that by creating these silly things it’s helping to make your case or make you look less ridiculous? It’s not working here…maybe someone else is falling for it though.
According to whom or what? You? If that’s the standard, I can play too:
It’s our job to give animals a single purpose: to be our food.
Wanna try again?
True. I don’t think it’s even possible to adopt a chicken or an ewe, so what are you talking about?
False. I “adopted” my dog. He is my property, by law. And glad I am, because that gives me the right to decide what happens to him and what happens to hims is lots of wonderful things that make him very happy. And I am beyond ok with that, I’m proud of myself because I’m a GREAT dog owner. If my dog had the ability to ponder the fact that he is my slave, that I own him, (and even though he’s frighteningly intelligent, being the part border collie that he is, he lacks that ability) he’d be 100% down with it, because he likes the fact that I’m the boss of him. He’s made to want one, and I’m it.
According to whom? You? Do you really want to keep doing this? Simply saying that things just are a certain way that you want everyone to agree that they are is an incredibly bad debate strategy. Basically worthless.
Nor, dare I say, do you, since you insist on declaring it immoral to eat meat in any circumstance that is not immediate and direct self-preservation. It is nothing of the kind.
I mean, I don’t want to makeyour head explode by taking it this far, but I have news: morality is not something which is really “real”; it arises from purely human consideration of the idea. The natural world is entirely amoral (although not lacking in compassion, many animals are loving and compassionate) in the sense that there is no right or wrong, there is only life and doing what life requires for life to continue, and doing it is morally neutral.
But, specifically as a result of our ginormous and complex brains, we have the power to consider things in a more esoteric manner, to contemplate the notion of morality and ethics. We are prompted to do so because we are social animals with a natural impulse to altruism and compassion. So we label things according to our beliefs and knowledge and experience.
So it would be most excellent if you stopped talking about what is and is not as though moral questions rank alongside chemistry and physics in their binary character. They do not, they are philosophy, about as far from a hard and fast discipline as it is possible to get.
So perhaps you should back up entirely and start there: what is morality? How do we come by our ethics? What makes our moral beliefs and choices what they are in relation to our fellow humans, and THEN you can address if its valid to extend those values without modification to non-human beings, and why.
There is meat now that does not require suffering to create. It does not require suffering to produce meat at all. Please stop saying that as though eating meat and suffering are identical, or even inextricably connected, because it’s a lie.
Numbrs are meaningless if the methods suck. One solidly built controlled study beats the shit out of guesswork and questionnaires every single time.
False. Anyone can search Google and discover the things people assume are health benefits based on hopelessly inexact methods of research.
“Proof” is right. Thence the term “consider the source” - if the sources are good and the methods are good, it counts.
I can see why it makes no sense to you, because your characterization of my argument makes no sense to me either.
You need to define your terms. What is “the realization of suffering”? Your assertion that Bessie seeing Bluebell die and freaking out because you believe Bessie is having a thoughtful realization that death is coming for her, or even that suffering is coming for her? Well, no, it’s not - Bessie is having a thought-free, inborn fear response to the stimulus of seeing, hearing, and smelling Bluebell die violently, she is not having a conscious consideration of what death or even suffering actually is.
To sell a Bessie who is having “realizations” about things, you have to start by showing me that Bessie is even aware of herself as an individual being at all, much less an individual being with a finite existence. And good luck with that, since it’s a toughie for almost any animals with brains less developed than great apes, cetaceans and I believe elephants have been shown to be self-aware as well. Outside of that… no.
No. Believing that everyone presented with this amazing alternative will find it satisfying and agree to give up the real thing as a result is a fantasy. Unless we reach Star Trekkian levels of ability to reorder molecules, we will not be replicating meat to everyone’s satisfaction any time in the remote future, forget near.
So your argument is basically that genuine animal flesh is the primitive version of a scientifically formulated copy of animal flesh and as soon as we perfect it, we’re golden? That’s kinda like saying that we can buid the perfect dildo that will be as good or better for all women than a real life penis… and that’s never going to happen either. Technology that is better than eariler technology is a given. Technology that is better than natural? Nothing’s coming to mind as evidence of that being a reasonable assertion.
Is that what I’m arguing with? Because it has appeared that I’m arguing with the statement “All living beings want to be treated the way I, Trust believe that they want to be treated, and I believe that they want to be treated pretty much the way I would want to be treated. And I arrive at this belief and statement by ignoring all evidence that disagrees and making no case for the legitimacy of my beliefs about the nature of animal brains and reactions and behavior.”
Your argument is completely circular. You argue thaat the only morally correct way to think is to view all non-plant based life as equivalent to human life and must therefore be treated and considered on the same basis as human life. But since you know for a fact that others do not agree with this starting place, what do you hope to accomplish by continuing to treat it as something which everyone should already be agreed upon coming into this debate?
It’s exactly the same problem as coming into the debate with the view that everyone just “knows” that a plant -based diet is healthier. Bullshit.
You need to back up. Repeating the “golden rule” and referring to all non-human animal life as “others” in the same way all non-me human beings are “others” is hopelessly empty and meaningless out the gate. It’s a false premise that you ahve made no attempt to validate or even made a really good attempt to argue for, you just keep asserting it as a given just as plain as the sunrise.
If you can’t get outside of that, you need to ask to have this puppy moved to IMHO, because that’s all we’re doing.
Completely false. Beyond false.
That is a fact. Not a fact I put forth to suggest that animal pain, suffering, fear and stress are to be ignored (and really, I have to say I resent the hell out of you saying that, because I haven’t come close) because I’m pretty much the last person who would ever believe or feel that way. I was drawing a distinction, a very important distinction, between the fact that they absolutely do experience fear and pain and stress as a result of certain stimuli, and the idea that because they do they must be capable of thinking about what’s happening, understand it, be self-aware to start with, and then make the connection that because it’s happening to another animal it will happen to them. They do not, they cannot. (At least food animals can’t, I wouldn’t swear to the same with a dolphin or a chimp) none of that means their sufering isn’t real and I never suggested otherwise.
And he was an asshole. It has nothing to do with me or my arguments. Please stop trying to find small points of convergence between an argument made here and some other argument somewhere else and declare they are the same argument.
Easy: raise free range, slaughter fast and humanely. I’m really hoping they perfect using oxygen deprivation because that would really rock: send them out totally euphoric!
Suffering gone. Meat remains. Perfect!
If you want to talk about slavery, start another thread. And there I think you will get very little action, because no one wants to participate in or defend slavery of humans.
But ownership of animals, in and of itself, considered apart from the conditions and treatment they may receive, is not a problem for me at all, as I’ve said many times. Treat 'em right and it can even be a better life than any they might otherwise have. My dog is my slave, as I said, and he loves it. He’d be utterly distraught if he was “set free”.
Sez you.
But then you seem to think that suffering can be eliminated at all, which I do not believe. It can be lessened, but ask the Dalai Lama: to be alive is to suffer. I embrace
Number 5 means to me that pursuit of the impossible is an ego-driven and empty way to focus my attention and effort, and attempting to eliminate suffering at all is a rejection of the inescapable truth of 1-4. So what actions make the ground on which I stand? To act within truth and not seek to soothe my own sensibilities, but to accept responsibility for what I do and try to do better and work towards others doing better. Eating animals is not wrong, it is normal and natural and healthy and good. Torturing them in life is none of those things and it is not necessary and it must be changed.
As for the question of feeding the seven million… well, it’s a bigger question than a mere little debate about the ethics of meat eating. We’re all headed off a cliff in a number of ways, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing in the end…
Just to emphasize something in Stoid’s excellent post:
[QUOTE=Stoid]
False. I “adopted” my dog. He is my property, by law. And glad I am, because that gives me the right to decide what happens to him and what happens to hims is lots of wonderful things that make him very happy. And I am beyond ok with that, I’m proud of myself because I’m a GREAT dog owner. If my dog had the ability to ponder the fact that he is my slave, that I own him, (and even though he’s frighteningly intelligent, being the part border collie that he is, he lacks that ability) he’d be 100% down with it, because he likes the fact that I’m the boss of him. He’s made to want one, and I’m it.
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And the fact that he IS your property allows you to better protect him in ways that he simply can’t, because in the end, he’s a dog. He’s not a human with free will and sentience, he’s a creature that we, as humans, have essentially molded into the species that they are. Our companions. You are exactly right…he was made to be a member of OUR pack, and for you, the human to be the alpha male of that pack. That’s what he and his kind have been crafted to be and to do for 10’s of thousands of years.
I wish more people would take that responsibility as serious as you obviously do, because while we have a lot of perks in being the dominant, sentient species on this planet, it also comes with a lot of responsibilities that we accept as part and parcel. That IS an ‘ethical’ duty that we should take on.
Except that I’m the alpha female who is the boss of Mr. Preston Digitation, my Handsome Black Boyfriend, and yes, that’s exactly as it should be.
(A friend came over to repair my gate the other day and took both sides off their hinges and laid them down in the driveway to work. When I came out an hour later he told me he’d been afraid that Preston would bolt or maybe just wander off. Au contraire, not one pad crossed the No Dogs (Unless You’re On a Leash and Invited) line. I am SO the boss. But he’s pretty awesome anyway.)
Trust, to answer your question about the charity analogy, in my point of view, switching from a responsible omnivorous diet to a vegetarian/vegan diet is like the difference between donating $1500 per year to charity, and $1600 per year to charity. Or something like that. Both groups of people are working to limit the suffering of animals, just like a person who donates 1500 bucks is contributing to charity in the same way someone who donates 1600 bucks. The problem and dispicable behavior would be if the guy who donated 1600 bucks was saying how much better he was for what he did and how everyone else who donated less was responsible for all this terrible, evil stuff.
if someone rounded up and set all the dogs and cats of the world on fire, it would, in a way, limit the suffering of many OTHER animals (who would be raised for meat for said pets). a single dog needs far more than a single cow/pig/chicken to die to feed it over its lifespan. i’m not sure what the ratio of cow deaths to dog’s life of meals is, but i know it’s not 1:1.
so technically, talking of the sheer numbers, someone killing all the dogs and cats in the world would limit the suffering of a greater amount of food animals.
can anyone advocate this? is this how ethics should be applied??
because you also miss the quality of life these creatures bring to their human companions as well as their own existence. studies show humans live better/longer lives when they have pets.
so how do you weight the suffering of an domesticated food animal who was bred and exists only as food and for no other reason against the health and well-being a dog would bring a human and the better life for BOTH…?
Naturalistic fallacy. Ignores mastitis and mens rea.
Ending suffering is based on the least harm/highest pleasure principle of Utilitarianism. Such a principle does not underly consumption of meat.
Contributing to an industry complicit in the suffering of animals will not reduce suffering, especially if one does not make any other effort to reduce the suffering of animals. Again, appeals to pasture-fed, comfortable instantly executed animals are appealing, but have little external validity.
I don’t believe in proof. I believe in the capacity to disprove (Popper’s falsifiability).
You’re correct: interfering in an animal’s life may end the suffering of an animal, but omnivorism implies interference in an animal’s life that has historically increased the suffering of animals and does not imply reducing its suffering. Likewise, in a highly developed society, cannibalism may be practised after euthanising an individual, but those are marginal cases.
More anthropomorphic value judgements. As for the slave homology: merely illustrating mens rea. The exact same arguments were offered in both situations though (Robert FitzRoy’s comments on slavery are interesting, for example).
I was addressing the notion that it was immoral to subject the poor to suffering by mandating a vegetarian diet.
I think it’s fairly clear that arguments made in the thread are based on reducing suffering and increasing pleasure for as many entities capable of experiencing either as possible. Humans feature primarily but not exclusively in that discussion.
In response to several other posters claiming that a vegetarian diet would be inimical to the poor.
Tu quoque.
A dog can love being a slave, but a Bessie cannot be aware of death?
Appeal to authority?
Naturalistic fallacy.
Omnivorism qua omnivorism is not, by definition, limiting suffering of animals.
No, because the principle is to not commit acts which increase suffering in order to prevent future suffering without consent, the social contract mandating it and sufficient evidence.
Like I said: you need to stop using terms you do not grasp especially if you’re going to do so without any attempt to actually support your use of those terms.
It’s an appeal to first year philosophy class (the one that non-philosophy majors have to take as a requirement to be ‘well rounded’)…and, obviously it’s the ‘got a D-’ corollary.
I have to admit, this is sort of entertaining, in a head shaking kind of way.
Let me see if I grasp the thrusts of Trust’s positions:
Any entity that has awareness is entitled to application of what Trust believes to be “the advanced golden rule.”
That “advanced golden rule” directs us to put ourselves in the other entity’s place and imagine what it would want and only do things to the entity that it would want. Trust believes in studying the entities to determine what it would want but nevertheless, bottom line, imagines what (s)he would want. Humane slaughter is immaterial because Trust imagines that if (s)he was a cow (or another entity) (s)he would not want to have been conceived and reared and put to death before old age took him or her to provide food for another creature. Therefore a cow must not want that, therefore bringing them into the world and killing them before old age takes them is “unethical.”
Trust believes that “awareness”, however such a term is defined, to begin with insects. Multiple requests by several posters to accept and define gradations of “awareness”, variations of degrees of his/her “advanced golden rule”'s applicability, have been ignored, allowing only for the conclusion that the applicability is all or nothing. If by Trust’s assessment an entity possesses “awareness” then the “advanced golden rule” applies. Period.
Trust would allow for humane killing of an entity with such awareness in order to save a human life. (A creature that truly is an obligate carnivore can ethically eat meat.) Sort of violating the standard set, as I wouldn’t want to be killed to save a stranger’s life, let alone many of my kin in order to do so, but okay.
Following Trust’s logic killing a mosquito whose bite would not kill you, but which was known to carry a Plasmodium sporozoite that causes malaria would not be ethical so long under a condition in which the malaria could be diagnosed and treated before death ensued. (Of course if I was a mosquito I would want to be free to feed on that which I am obligated to feed on and to reproduce so therefore preventing a mosquito from doing so, let alone killing it, is unethical by application of “the advanced golden rule.”) Killing millions of them and depriving many more of adequate environments in which to reproduce would of course be even worse. It is not the mosquito’s fault they are infected with a Plasmodium species; we should find a way to treat them instead!
