[QUOTE=genXmalcontent]
Oh really? Have you seen the latest obesity stats? Look, I am not arguing against eating meat. What I am arguing against is the recklessness of the standard American diet. Whatever you choose to eat, monitor it. Just because we can eat most things doesn’t mean we should. I work with natural foods and have seen my share of unhealthy vegans, but I also see unhealthy omnys as well.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, really. You are arguing against a strawman of your own, not my argument. I specifically said that Americans have issues related to diet, but that those issues have more to do with the quantity of (bad) food they eat and their sedentary lifestyles. It has nothing to do with the fact that they eat an omnivorous diet, since there are plenty of non-obese people who eat such a diet.
You don’t need to monitor your diet in the same way with a omnivorous diet as you do if you are a vegan. Why folks keep questioning this with strawmen is a mystery to me. Yeah…if you eat like an idiot on ANY diet and lay about the house being a couch potato, you are going to have health problems, but that has nothing to do the same level of monitoring a vegan has to do to ensure he or she stays in good health.
that’s not even almost what i said. seriously–take a step back from your 101 textbook and think about things with your human-brain.
i said we used animals to advance society. as beasts of burden, modes of transit, to initial agriculture. because we did these things, society advanced.
are you saying you disagree…?
are you as well saying that we would have advanced all the same having never used animals to toil…?
how do you propose this would have happened? how would we, just as a basic example, gotten from Roanoke to san francisco in the same amount of time without horses to draw our wagons?
honestly, you’re contributing nothing to the conversation–you’re distracting from it. you’re muddying it by getting the key points wrong and debating things people didn’t even say.
It has nothing to do with ethics, but then you moved the goal posts concerning the original point being discussed there. You also tossed in a strawman…I never said that there was evidence that someone following a strict vegan diet is harmed, or is any less healthy…hell, I acknowledged that most vegans are ahead of the curve, health wise, and part of that is definitely do to a better diet.
But what does a small subset of the population who are more focused on diet and health than the general population have to do with ethics? See what I did there?
This isn’t supported by any evidence. If it were the case that a vegetarian would suddenly be massively hampered by missing some vital supplement then that would be reflected in lifespan data, which it isn’t. Your position is not disprovable: if they’re healthy, it’s because a vegetarian diet is too hard to sustain for the general population, if they’re unhealthy, it’s because a vegetarian diet is too hard to sustain for the general population.
Sorry, that wasn’t your original argument at all. I’m sorry if I’m only arguing against your position, but your original contention seemed to be that humans needed some amount of meat to survive. Which would be relevant to a discussion of ethics: if humans couldn’t survive on a vegetarian diet or if humans would suffer inordinately by adopting one, I’d considering the ethical concerns of other animals moot.
I believe you mean detracting?
Which I cede, but to say that vegetarianism is untenable because omnivorism was the basis of our society (as much as rape was) is equal parts appeal to tradition and genetic fallacy.
Trust, you need to keep up with your own arguments. You brought up the idea of ownership. Now you want to dodge it, and go back to the idea of suffering. Which you and I have agreed is a bad thing and must stop. So exactly what point do you hope to make by pointing out that there are animal cruelty laws that prevent me from being cruel to my own or any other animal? Does it change the fact that I am the legal owner of my dog? No.
“Believe” has nothing to do with it, ethics exist only in the minds of human beings.
I highlighted the words that create the problems in what you say here. We have been going back and forth about this, and you have been picking and choosing what to respond to in order to avoid things that you evidently cannot answer.
You are operating on your golden rule not THE Golden Rule. You define “others” as any living being that isn’t a plant. That is not the definition for anyone else outside of PETA. So anytime you talk about the Golden rule you’re only talking about your own private beliefs, not the widely shared code of ethics that requires that we treat other human beings the way we ourselves would like to be treated.
Therefore, “We” are not breaking The Golden Rule when WE eat meat.
Why would you assume that when I have been very specific and direct about exactly what I mean? So that you can avoid answering something you have no way to answer? Or some other reason?
I have no clue what you are actually saying in response to my point.
Have at it. I hope you have a high tolerance for disappointment.
What about it? More bobbing and weaving. None of the foods you mention were attempting to replace other foods we like, they were new foods created from old that we ALSO liked and continue to eat. How in the world do you think that supports your contention that fake meat will be so great everyone will abandon real meat? What did we love to eat that we stopped eating after we had beer, bread, yogurt, cheese and wine? Nothing.
If the day comes when we can grow prime rib in a test tube without a cow attached, and do so in sufficient quantity to satisfy demand, yeah, sure, that might work. But what is more fantastical to believe than the science which might achieve that is the economics of doing so: the cost of making that a reality would be ridiculous, and since real prime rib is so easily produced the usual way, there would be no motivation to spend the kind of money it would take to succeed. So, nice dream. I’d also like to fly without a machine of any kind. And take a pill to look like Angelina Jolie. We all have lots of fun fantasies. This is one of yours.
In every single post you’ve made, just about. How do you imagine you have NOT said this when you continue to refer to the golden rule as applying to animals? What do you think the golden rule says?
Bobbing and weaving again. You know for a fact that you and I agree about the capacity of animals to suffer, so every time you basically deny that you are projecting your fear of death on animals by characterizing it as declaring they feel pain, you are dodging.
When you say, as you have many times, that they “do not want to die”, you are projecting your understanding and fearing death on to animals. You recognize later in this post that animals are not self-aware. In order to fear death, one must be aware of oneself as a being that can die. If one is not self-aware, one is not aware of oneself as a being that can die. Therefore one cannot fear death.
What’s the distinction you think you’re making? What do you think “equally considered” should be understood to mean? Your own words lead to the conclusion that you intend for all animal life to be considered equal to human life. If that’s not true, then you need to explain what you mean differently and more clearly.
I don’t SEEM to ADMIT anything. I specifically, directly, clearly, unequivocally state absolutely that animals, mammals and birds most especially, experience pain, fear, stress, grief, loneliness, love, and every other feeling, to varying degrees.
On the other hand, I never in any way suggested or intimated that their interests should not be taken into account, exacty the opposite.
So why are you saying this?
I didn’t say that we should ignore their suffering. I said we should cure it, and that we can do so without having to stop raising and eating them. Just don’t cause suffering. The pigs on the Thompson farm don’t suffer.
So why are you saying this?
I specifically noted that considering the issue of intelligence (and by implicaiton, self-awareness) should be done on a species-wide basis, not an individual being basis, and that is why talking about eating brain damaged human beings is stupid. So is using developing human beings, aka children. As a species, we are X. As a species, cows are Y. Species that are not built to be self-aware cannot have individual members aware of their own death and fear it. Species which are self-aware may have members that for one reason or another are not individually so, but they are automatically considered by the rules of the species of which they are a part, not their deficiiencies as a member of that species.
So can we drop that stupid argument now?
Not nearly so far as we have to go to making prime rib in the lab and then making it available to everyone as cheaply and easily as we can make the real thing.
Slavery is related to the treatment of human beings.
Human beings and food animals are not the same thing.
Generally speaking, humanity as a whole believes in education. Shall we send cows to school?
Trust, GET THIS: Animals and human beings are NOT THE SAME.
Using slavery imposed on human beings as a basis upon which to argue against eating meat IS NOT VALID. It is YOUR PERSONAL BELIEF that human beings and animals can be considered as having exactly the same degree of right to exactly the same degree of freedom. Even the animals themselves don’t feel as you do. So any and every time you throw in the idea that slavery will teach us the way, you are doomed to stand alone in that belief. Or alone with your very small contingent of like-minded folk. But it is such a hopelessly weak argument that it will never succeed in enlarging that contingent in any significant way, so find another argument.
As I’ve said a dozen times: I agree. So you can stop talking about SUFFERING to ME now, since we agree about SUFFERING.
Suffering can be ended without giving up meat. They are not the same thing, so please stop using “suffering” as something which means “eating meat”.
This is the diet debate. I’m not having this one here, except to say the ADA is the last place on earth I look to for good information about how to eat.
I dont’ think it’s a lost cause to look for a solution to animal suffering at all and I stand with you 100% in that cause.
I think it is absolutely a pointless and futile exercise to apply oneself to getting the human race to give up meat-eating. And franky, I think that if you really care about animal suffering, vs. imposing your personal beliefs, you will recognize that, accept it, and do something more genuinely useful towards ending animal suffering than pursue your preferred solution, which is not only doomed to fail but is incredibly ineffective at achieving your stated goal.
Mourn the fact that your preference isn’t going to get the job done and apply your energy to something realistic that will produce tangible results to the problem of animal suffering of all kinds.
It’s certainly possible to distract someone from a conversation. However, that doesn’t fit the syntax (it would be: “distracting us from it”) nor context (implying I’m doing the opposite of contribution: detraction).
If you found my response unsatisfactory, feel free to type why.
[QUOTE=gamerunknown]
This isn’t supported by any evidence. If it were the case that a vegetarian would suddenly be massively hampered by missing some vital supplement then that would be reflected in lifespan data, which it isn’t. Your position is not disprovable: if they’re healthy, it’s because a vegetarian diet is too hard to sustain for the general population, if they’re unhealthy, it’s because a vegetarian diet is too hard to sustain for the general population.
[/QUOTE]
Well, your strawman might be unsupported by evidence, but not my assertion. I asserted that one can, if one is careful about their diet, thrive on a vegan (which isn’t exactly the same as a vegetarian) diet. So, no…there aren’t large numbers of people who are getting sick due to nutritional deficiency from a vegan diet because, for one thing, there aren’t massive numbers of people ON a vegan diet…and two, if you are careful, if you ensure your diet is getting you everything you need, if you supplement, then you will be fine.
A VEGAN diet IS too hard to sustain for the general population, because it takes thought and planning to make it work. You don’t just eat anything, but instead you have to do your homework and ensure you get everything you need. An omnivorous diet, on the other hand, is pretty much thought free…as demonstrated by the fact that most Americans don’t think about their diet, and only really run into issues when they over eat and maintain a sedentary lifestyle devoid of exercise. Even THEN, we have a pretty high life expectancy…and that’s with millions without healthcare and our horrible diet of fast food. I’m unsure why this is so hard for you to grasp…it’s evident that it IS, since you keep bringing up strawmen that don’t have much to do with what I’ve written. I’m equally unsure why it’s important to the discussion.
I’m sorry if you have trouble with reading comprehension…I really, truly am…but you are moving the goal posts and posting things that I said that pertained to other discussions, and then saying that my argument has changed. It hasn’t…I’ve merely replied to DIFFERENT arguments that various people, including yourself, have made.
The link you gave there was in response to the ridiculous assertion about ‘need’, so that’s what I was focusing on there. I’ve repeatedly said (and you’ve ignored) that a human can thrive on a vegan or vegetarian diet. Sadly, you seem unable to read this point. What I’ve maintained is that humans need many of the nutrients in meat, and that it’s easier for us to get them, from a dietary perspective, from meat than from a vegan diet. This is fact. If one eats a steak, then they are done for the nutrients and micro-nutrients needed that comes from meat. If one doesn’t, then there are a bunch of alternatives you need to ensure you eat from a vegan diet…or you will get sick and possibly die. You CAN get them with the vegan diet (again), but you need to ensure you do…which takes some active thought and planning on the part of the vegan in question.
Again, why this is so difficult for you to grasp is beyond me. Why you want to keep shifting the goalposts is beyond me. Why you want to try and muddy the waters with the quoted part and link above is beyond me. Do you think it’s helping your case here?
You seem to be running in semantic circles and attempting to over awe your audience with your first year philosophy course logical fallacy bullshit, possibly because you think that none of us can follow such lofty concepts or big words. IT’S NO WORKING. Your attempts to shift the goalposts are NOT WORKING. Your attempts at distraction ARE NOT WORKING. Give it up, stop the horseshit and just debate the issue. Or don’t.
:rolleyes: Why would I bother classifying it? What does it have to do with THIS discussion. My statement that the OP and those supporting him or her are attempting to gain the moral high ground by throwing this discussion into one about ethics or non-ethics stands on it’s own measures…or it doesn’t. It has nothing to do with what someone else may or may not have said about a different subject in a different thread.
Help me out here…what is the logical fallacy that your attempt here represents? It’s on the tip of my tongue…you just had first year philosophy, what was it again…?
Because you are wrong when you say it didn’t fit the context. dontbesojumpy was specific, stating that you were “debating things people didn’t say” which is most definitely to distract, which is to divert attention from what people did say.
On the other hand, to detract from the conversation, in some way which means something other than distract, making it reasonable for you to have corrected him, would mean you think he was saying that you were reducing the subject to something less important.
In other words, yes, detract can be a synonym for distract, in which case correcting him by saying he meant to say detract instead of distract is meaningless. Correcting him is only meaningful if you think he meant to use detract in a sense other than distract.
Which makes me say again: Dude, you are the last person in this thread to be correcting other people’s choice of vocabulary. Seriously. Very, very seriously.
Slavery has been touched on in this thread, but I’d like to get a clarification on a few things.
If we decide to base our ethics on the concept of reducing pain and suffering - in general - then because animals (specifically complex mammals with brains and nervous systems) also experience pain and suffering in ways that are very similar to the ways humans do, we should be logically obligated to value their pain and suffering as though it were equal to human pain and suffering.
But the argument has been made that since they’re not human, their pain and suffering doesn’t have the same value as our pain and suffering. Since ethics, and the scope of ethics, is subjective and personally defined, some people can say that they only extend their ethics to humans. As such, animals are effectively irrelevant and don’t enter into ethical calculations/analysis when humans are involved. These people don’t necessarily seem to place any ethical weight to pain and suffering in general, but seem to put their focus on humans in particular.
But if ethics is subjectively defined by each individual, then I suppose someone can say that they only extend their ethics to white people, and not to blacks or asians, for example. A person can subjectively choose to only place ethical value on the pain and suffering of white people.
So it would appear that some people draw their arbitrary ethical cutoff line at:
Pain and suffering, in general
Human beings
White people
Aren’t all 3 of these ethical “cutoffs” equally valid, since they seem equally subjective and dependent on the individual?
[ul][li]Person A can say “Don’t tell me to eat meat or not - let me make the choice. And I’ve chosen to value humans over animals.” [/li]
[li]And then Person B can say “Don’t tell me to treat whites, blacks, and asians equally - let me make the choice. And I’ve chosen to value whites over blacks and asians.”[/ul][/li]
From a logical point of view, these 2 statements seem equally valid. At one time, there was an ethical dividing line between whites and blacks and asians. While that no longer exists, there is still currently a dividing line between humans and animals. I’m well aware of the reasoning behind this shift in lines… but from a big-picture perspective, they both seem equally arbitrary in a sense, and they both seem personally defined. Some people draw their lines based on pain and suffering, some people draw their lines based on whether something is human, and some people draw their lines based on skin colour (or if you want to add more complexity to the example, then we can replace “skin colour” with “culture/ethnicity”).
Are these 2 statements above effectively the same, or is there a difference that I’m not seeing? If you are okay with drawing the line between humans and animals, you should be okay with someone else drawing their line between whites and blacks and asians, right?
Just FTR it’s actually the same subject in a different thread. Trust framed this thread as “Is it ethical to eat meat?” then specifically cited concerns about animal suffering as the issue he was concerned about in considering the ethics of meat eating (vs. resource management, environmental concerns, etc.).
My thread just took direct aim at promoting veganism as the best cure for eliminating animal cruelty.
So if Trust had been a little less beat-around-the-bush about it, he could have titled this thread: “Veganism is the best way to stop animal suffering.”
Now, as to what gamerunknown’s point was in directing your attention to my post in my thread? Ya got me, I haven’t a clue.
I should probably clarify my above post to make my point a little clearer.
The majority of humans place “ethical value” mainly/exclusively onto human beings. Some people extend ethical value to both humans and animals. Those in the first camp claim that defining “ethical value” is a personal choice, and how one does so shouldn’t be forced onto anyone else. No one should be forced to value animals at an equal level to humans.
My question is whether or not it is logically & rationally coherent to allow a 3rd group to choose to place their ethical value on white people alone? Or does this 3rd example fail on some logical & rational level that I do not understand or see?
I disagree that your logical conclusion is the only logical conclusion.
The conclusion I find logical is to value the pain and suffering of animals as worthy of consideration and concern, as not to be disregarded. That doesn’t mean the same thing as valuing and considering the pain and suffering of animals ***as equal ***(in importance, in consideration) to human pain and suffering. So your first conclusion fails.
I haven’t read every post by everyone in this thread, but what I have read tells me that there aren’t a lot of people taking the position that animal suffering is meaningless and beneath consideration. The general view is that human suffering is the most important, yes, but that animal suffering matters and should be addressed. The degree of importance varies, but it is not a binary question for most people.
Hey, some people draw the line at self/everyone else. We call them sociopaths. So?
And these people would be a particular flavor of sociopath. So?
No. Because sociopathic racists are basing their cutoff on a superficial and meaningless difference in human appearance. People who draw the line between humans and animals are basing their cutoff on species-level differences, favoring their own species over others.
Some people think that this is wrong, but they are unusual in this belief, even among other species, who, as a rule, favor and care for their own species over others; review the behavior of all social species: lions, baboons, chimps, gorillas, dolphins, ants, meerkats, elephants, cattle, many fish, etc. - they take care of each other, but everyone else can fuck off. So it’s not like we’re special in this regard.
But actually we ARE special in that, unlike the other social species on the planet, we DO have regard for the pain and suffering of other species. So we’re already ahead in terms of our ethical standards, now we just need to improve.
And (assuming that “treat” is confined to just being a racist asshole, vs. harming non-whites or violating their civil rights) they can do that. And be judged by their fellow beings as racist assholes. If they start killing and eating blacks, well, then we put their murdering racist asshole asses in jail. Because that’s just how we roll. As a species.
My statement was that if a person placed ethical value on pain and suffering specifically, and chose not to define ethical value based on the characteristics and traits of the being that is experiencing the pain and suffering, then they would value all pain and suffering equally, regardless of who is experiencing it. If a chimpanzee’s or dog’s pain and suffering is like those of a human’s, then logically is should have the same ethical value.
I fail to see a problem with this conclusion.
It would seem that you’re just projecting your own personal “ethical values” into the argument here. Who is to say that skin colour is any more or less superficial and meaningless than species-level differences? That’s a personal choice each individual makes when deciding what holds ethical value to them.
But those animals aren’t really capable of making complex ethical and moral judgements, so I’m not sure how this is relevant.
This is an important point that I think many humans realize. This is the reason some people choose to place ethical value onto pain and suffering in general, and not onto pain and suffering in humans in particular.
Yes. Through our societies, governments, and democracies, we’ve effectively had the majority decide where that ethical dividing line should be placed. We have the choice to make the “circle of inclusion” bigger, but not smaller - otherwise we’d be labelled as sociopaths/psychopaths.
I accept that your response to his question of “good reason?” was not based on health. You wrote:
Which is an ontological argument/appeal to tradition. However, you apparently responded to the segment about necessity for survival with:
Now, I admit that you didn’t explicitly posit that one can achieve equal health outcomes with less thought on an omnivorous diet, but that’s a reasonable extrapolation from that post. However, this is only indirectly addressing his claim. You’re essentially saying that it is easier to eat an omnivorous diet than a vegetarian one, whereas he’s saying that meat consumption isn’t necessary for survival.
I responded with:
Oops, necessity to*. I should have expanded on that thought: it is a necessity to monitor one’s diet in order to have average health, which would be evidenced by an average lifespan. If I had clarified that, perhaps you wouldn’t have responded with;
Saying people need to monitor their diet with no qualifiers is patently false. Plenty of people consume things which kill them, disproving that sentiment. Which is why I should have asked for a criterion for disproof. What level of monitoring and extraneous health variables should we expect equal outcomes at? What effects are we liable to see on the health of a vegan that doesn’t monitor their diet compared to an omnivore that doesn’t monitor their diet?
This contention isn’t necessary. The cohort in the study I linked involved comparing over 27000 people.
This is true for omnivores too. Well, more in regards to
How would you operationalise “work”? If the general population voluntarily a vegan diet, would we expect a reduction in lifespan?
As am I. Arnold Winkelried asked whether anyone thought eating meat was necessary and you responded with “ having animal protean in your diet makes things easier”. Which I think was a non sequitur and it remains unsupported by evidence.
It’s difficult to track down the origin of this red herring. Here you argued that it is necessary to eat meat (bar the minor exception of being able to supplement one’s meal).
As I said earlier, eating meat to avoid starvation is acceptable, but an unrealistic scenario that isn’t applicable in the industrial world (nor historically in Western countries, nor in recent history in the USSR). Currently crops which could be used for human consumption are used to feed animals through the trophic levels.
Saying that it is easier to get the nutrients present meat from meat than from other sources is very different argument from the concept that a vegan diet is a luxury (if the implication is that it would be unsustainable for the majority). It would appear that there’s special pleading: in order to demonstrate the viability of a vegan diet, one has to show that vegans exceed an omnivore’s health. However, one is allowed to posit that an unexamined vegan diet is far more deleterious to the health of a vegan than an unexamined omnivorous diet is to an omnivore with no supporting evidence.
You wrote that:
However, this doesn’t provide a mechanism for disproof (stating: “Americans have a life expectancy above vegetarians”, on the other hand, would) and the scenarios aren’t analogous for comparison unless we have examples of unmonitored vegan diets for comparison (unless one considers that vegan diets are monitored by default, in which case saying “vegan diets require more monitoring” is a tautology and still doesn’t demonstrate that vegan diets require more monitoring in order to achieve equal health outcomes).
Let’s address context again:
If I’m contributing nothing to the conversation, I wouldn’t be muddying it. If I were contributing less than nothing to the conversation by adding mud, I’d be detracting from the conversation. The statement parses better with “detract” than “distract”.
Appeal to popularity.
In which way do the conclusions not follow from the premises?
Who in this thread has denied that we are causing suffering?
It is, and until you address why you say it isn’t, your arguments mean exactly nothing. You have to say specifically and exactlyhow the Thompson hog farm, which is exploiting hogs by raising them for bacon, but doing so in a humane manner that makes them the first 5+ on the scale you said you would accept, is creating suffering for those hogs.
If you can’t, then you must concede that in fact it is possible to separate exploitation and suffering, and therefore back off your position that the exclusive solution to ending suffering is to go vegan.