why wouldn’t it be? get out of a truck on an african safari, and some lion decides you’re dinner? Well, you’re dinner.
hell, haven’t their been stories of people dying and their pets (dog/cat) started munching on their corpse?
It would. see, this goes into the thing I said before. Some people decide they don’t want to eat animals, and just presume everyone else should be held to the same standard. “We should because we can.”
Ethics enters into it for each person’s own decisions. You don’t want to eat meat, fine. You don’t want to use anything that came from an animal, fine. You want to judge me and tell me how to live? Fuck off and die.
And I get back to the mentions of factory farming. Is it “ethical” by Trust’s standards if I pick up a bow and take a couple of deer?
Um…well, yeah. I’m not sure if you are using my post as a sounding board to chime in, or you aren’t getting what I was saying there (and earlier in the thread).
[QUOTE=jz78817]
why wouldn’t it be? get out of a truck on an african safari, and some lion decides you’re dinner? Well, you’re dinner.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. And the animal is hardly going to be tortured by ‘ethics’ or ‘morality’ over munching on a balding, plump Hispanic such as myself. They are going to think ‘MMmm, looks tasty…plus, he’s dashingly handsome as well!’ if they think anything at all, before chowing down.
Yup. And a wild pig might not even wait until you are dead before starting to, er, pig out…so to speak.
Exactly. And then they project their worldview and ‘ethics’ onto others who disagree, by attempting to portray this whole silly thing into a ‘Ethical/Unethical’ debate, which is simply a (not so) veiled attempt to justify their own viewpoint and cast the other side into a position of being Unethical…which basically equals ‘you are wrong AND evil for disagreeing with me, you meat eating, raping and pillaging bastards! Plus yo mama smells of sausage!’
Pretty much, except I disagree that ethics enters in at all…or morals. It’s like debating whether drinking $500/bottle pure spring water verse drinking water out of a ditch is a ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ choice. You basically have to drink water or you die…there is no moral choice about it, whether you drink the minimum recommended daily allotment or down Evan by the gallon, filling your Playboy mansion Grotto with the stuff while having playmates frolic about in it while you…well, never mind. The point is that, IMHO, ethics, at least as I see them, doesn’t factor in.
And yeah…judge not lest ye be told to fuck off and die…Yeah, verily, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no hamburger, for I am the baddest muthah fucker in the meat eating valley…phear the fat and hungry omnivore on the prowl for a bucket of fried chicken!
Well, that gets into the whole ‘relationship between one’s self and others that involves both sides equally and in a mutual fashion’ (from the Wiki article on the Golden Rule)…so, do you feel that both sides ARE equal, and able to engage in a give and take relationship of equals treating each other in a mutual fashion? I’m thinking…not. The OP seems to feel s/he IS equal to a deer, pig, cow (no bull!), chicken, etc etc, and that these creatures are able to engage in a reciprocal relationship.
I would have to ask the OP and the others siding with the OP about what I mentioned earlier and erislover said so much better…if we all stop eating food animals who have been bred for hundreds or even thousands of years to BE our food animals, and if this very likely causes those species to go extinct (after all, many of them are completely unadapted to life in the wild, are almost wholly dependent on humans for their continued existence, and aren’t exactly cute and cuddly, thus are unlikely to be adopted into human families as pets, and are equally unlikely to be given aide and succor in continuing their existence if they serve no purpose to humanity), how is this an ‘ethical’ choice? Isn’t some life, no matter how brief, better than extinction? And really, isn’t a life even in captivity where all your dietary needs are met, where disease and predation are less likely, better for the animal species than starving and dying in the wild? Especially since most such food animal species are completely unsuited and unadapted to life in the wild?
I find it interesting that you responded to my post while completely ignoring what it said. Seriously, why bother quoting me if what you say does not respond to it?
Again, the point I made is that preserving the resources of our world for future generations of our species (and, oh yeah, not causing multiple other species to disappear on a massive scale along the way) is an ethical imperative. Raising ruminants for protein is a major contributor to greenhouse gases. (Past thread, which included reference to this scholarly cite.)
I am also not sure why you think that slitting a neck is inhumane. From what I understand a clean quick cut is the most humane way to kill an animal for butchering. In any case the discussion about how important raising animals and killing them in as humane of a way as is pragmatically possible is immaterial to a discussion concerning whether or not doing it at all is ethical.
I’m not saying there is an absolute formula - and even if there is - it would apply differently to different people, and would be nearly impossible to quantify. I’m just saying that an animal’s well-being has some value. I’m sure 99% of people can agree to that. How much value it has… varies. My argument isn’t necessarily about quantifying that value, but mere acknowledging it’s existence, and attempted to use that knowledge to make informed decisions about eating meat.
I’m saying that everyone can make their own ethical choices - whether “ethical” is subjective or objective, I do not know, and is outside the scope of this thread (but is also perhaps worth debating), but I’ll assume for the sake of this argument that it’s subjective. I’m not suggesting that I should be able to make ethical choices on your behalf.
But despite it’s potential subjectiveness, there are still two issues that cannot be escaped:
If the well-being of animals, or pain and suffering in general, have any ethical meaning or value, then they should be considered in ethical judgments. How the individual incorporates those values in their own personal judgements is subjective… but what I am suggesting is that it would be unethical to not make those judgements at all.
Almost all people place value on animal welfare - even if they state otherwise - but then people go ahead and ignore it. That, I believe, is the root of the problem. Perhaps I didn’t articulate it well enough when I entered this thread - but perhaps at the time I hadn’t thought it through yet.
I feel that it was ‘self-evident’ to you, because it seems that you projected your pre-conceived views onto me. Not surprisingly, it was *not *self-evident to me, since I don’t hold those views.
My point is, can YOU justify eating 9 steaks a day that come from a farm & slaughterhouse that treat animals poorly and cause them excessive pain and suffering? When people DO attempt to justify such things, they usually show quite a bit of logical inconsistency in their application of ethics. I would say that such inconsistencies are unethical.
I don’t ignore the consequences of my own actions. I take responsibility for my choices, because all choices have consequences for those around you. Considering those choices is the ethically “right” thing to do.
And you seem to be arguing for the viewpoint that: Well SOME harm will ALWAYS occur no matter what you do - so why bother trying. <– That stance is unethical.
Some harm will always occur, no matter what you do. The ethical thing to do, however, is to make a reasonable attempt to minimize that harm.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but when I read the above, this is what I hear:
No matter what I do, even if I eat organically, animals will be harmed no matter what! Even the electricity and computer that I use causes harm! I am, however, too ignorant to make choices that lead to less harm. I could do some research, but I am also too lazy to do so. No matter what I do some harm will occur, so why bother trying to reduce it at all. I am hereby shrugging off all responsibility to make ethical choices because… (fill in the blank).
^^^ To me, it is this thought process that is unethical.
Attempting to minimize your impact = ethical.
Not giving a shit = unethical.
I didn’t originally make the analogy in this thread.
I mentioned it because it illustrated the naturalistic fallacy. I was not directly comparing it to eating meat.
Personal enjoyment is fine. Personally, I think it’s great! But in order to be “ethical”, you need to acknowledge that your personal enjoyment might come at the cost of pain and suffering. Whether your personal enjoyment is “good enough a reason” for that pain and suffering to occur, is not a black and white issue. It is here that there are shades of grey.
Short version:
You should acknowledge that your choices have consequences.
You should make a reasonable effort to understand those consequences.
You should weigh the pros and cons of those consequences in an effort to minimize harm or maximize good.
You should be logically consistent in your decision making.
That’s my (overly) simplified guide to ethical behaviour. The problem I have, is that people who argue vehemently for eating meat, usually fail at one or more of those 4 steps. My argument for ethical behaviour is to follow those 4 steps (in general), and not for any particular kilogram/month meat-protein dietary maximum.
Is there some law that says if you are different, we should not put ourselves in their position? Blacks are different from whites. I am failing to see why that matters in regards to the golden rule? Can you come up with better examples?
The reason I bring it up is because I think the evidence shows it to be true. This is not an argument where I ignore the facts to prove my own case. On the contrary, if I thought animals were the same as humans, there would be logical inconsistencies with my argument.
It is more difficult to understand those who are different from us. That is a given. It is not impossible though. As far as eating your cat goes, it means that you probably made him/her suffer when they were being killed and you took away their life. The example I like to give is that God gives a chicken 10 years to live, we take a chickens life at 2 months. Everyone desires to live a full, natural life and die of natural causes if possible. This is not isolated to humans. I have yet to meet any humans/animals that volunteer to be killed so someone can eat them (well okay, there is the one exception to the rule as posted earlier :p)
You said I was hand picking my examples Kidding of course. I do think this example is a rather far fetched one and does not really take into account an every day example. I think the reason you are having a disconnect is because you are looking at the elementary Utilitarianism. You are not taking into account justice, free will, equality, etc. The more advanced Utilitarianism takes these into account. This is no different than how earlier in the thread, people were having an issue with the golden rule since some people have different tastes than others. It requires using the more advanced golden rule. To be honest, your example is so mind-numbingly complicated that it would take a long time to think it through. My initial thoughts are that it breaks free will so the burden of proof lies on us if we would ever sentence another human being to any suffering they did not ask for.
Note that I do not start with Utilitarianism, I start with the golden rule. Utilitarianism is only needed for those very rare exception cases. From a strictly utilitarianistic perspective you are correct. For anyone who has seen a factory farm and is being unbiased, the amount of pleasure we get from meat is not even close to the amount of pain we cause the animals. Not to mention the devastating effects it is having on our environment, feeding the world, health, etc.
Obviously the reason this is a hot topic is because it is currently difficult to give up meat. We are still clinging to the old world of thinking. The answer to this is to come up with an alternative. Soon there will be an alternative that will help the environment, help our health, help the world, stop the suffering, all the while still giving us our taste for meat.
I appreciate the honesty. I would strongly caution you in your line of thinking though. There was at one point a time where we did not take into consideration the lives of blacks. Today we realize how absurd it is that whites should be free and blacks should be slaves. Tomorrow we will realize how absurd it is that some animals (pets) should be free, yet other animals (farm animals) should be slaves.
Every animal we feed, requires many times more crops worth of food. This ends up meaning we need to clear more land to produce the food that goes to the animals and not humans. The statistic is usually “7 pounds of wheat creates 1 pound of meat” for cows for instance. Here are the four main options we have:
Change nothing. We keep having increased health issues like heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, etc. Since many strains are becoming antibiotic resistant, there is possibly another large outbreak like the Spanish flu. We keep taking all of the worlds resources and give it to animals that are only raised to be killed. We keep causing devastating effects to our environment. This is the default option. If I was okay with this option, I would never have made this thread.
Everyone becomes a vegetarian (or preferably vegan). We prevent all of the devastating effects of our current system.
We develop alternatives. Cultured meat for instance would do more for the environment than if the entire world traded their cars for bicycles. It could prevent rather than cause heart attacks. It could feed a hungry world. In short, it would be the single greatest prevention of suffering the world has ever known. We create baseball gloves that are twice as strong and half the weight for instance http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big-abc-news/looking-beyond-leather-143822188.html We create dairy free options which will also help all those poor lactose intolerant people http://www.cargill.com/news/releases/2009/NA3020258.jsp
Basically we upgrade our horse drawn carriages to cars.
Some unknown option that benefits the greater good.
I appreciate the insight. I know of many farmers who are very compassionate and care about their animals. To be honest, if we had been like the original system before 99% of our meat came from factory farms, I probably would have never even felt the need to research the ethics behind this to realize that taking the life of an animal was unethical. Unfortunately, the conditions were so bad that I was forced to get involved. If only all people were compassionate like those good farmers…
As I said before, ethics does not change depending on what you get in return and animals are not capable of the high level moral values we are. Let’s pretend you know a women who killed someone. Does it make it ethical to rape her? Of course not. It is still unethical regardless. Regardless of their actions, something can still be ethical or not.
I’m not joking when I say this: I can appreciate the honesty.
Let’s start with a similar argument that was used in history:
“It is my choice whether I can own a slave or not. If you don’t want to own a slave, that is your choice. But don’t tell me what to do”.
Likewise the modern argument is:
“It is my choice whether I eat meat or not. If you don’t want to eat meat, that is your choice. But don’t tell me what to do”.
In both cases, the chain of free will was broken long before we ever had a choice.
Please look back at my previous posts. I fully admitted that I am not ethical. I am close, but certainly not there. This has nothing to do with judging others. Please remember that I am the first one being stoned if we live by an eye for an eye.
I hope you are not falling for the idea that you need meat to survive because your example certainly sounds like it.
Do you get upset when a married couple uses birth control under their own free will? Why would you get upset when we prevent the (non-free will) artificial insemination of other animals? What you are failing to see is that these animals would live out natural lives at places like Farm Sanctuary where their lives are respected. They would be respected for the life they are and not what we can get out of the equation.
I was simply pointing out that, from an animal welfare standpoint, eating chicken causes the most suffering of any animal we could eat. I think that relates to what you were saying since we are discussing the ethics. You certainly make a good point about greenhouse gases and that needs to be taken into account as well.
This is somewhat of a loaded question. Many times the throat slit is done improperly. The stunning can also be done improperly. Though killing an animal strictly for our benefit breaks the golden rule regardless of conditions, it is impossible to separate the horrible conditions of the animals in our current mass production system.
This presuposes several points, many of which you haven’t provided any evidence for.
Not all animal raising uses human feed stocks nor do the food stocks they use compete with human food stocks for farmland.
As an example, there are vast areas of Wyoming/Utah/Colorado,Nevada etc… that are completely useless for growing anything but grass.
You have given no evidence that if the general population moved to a vegan lifestyle with no other changes there would be a drop in heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis etc…
What effects do we avoid, and by what mechanism? it is hard to know what they are and if we want to avoid them if they are not defined.
How would cultured meat dramatically change the amount of resources that are required to produce a set number of calories in flesh? What is so different about cultured flesh that it doesn’t cause heart attacks?
I would argue that the developed golden rule is only the base starting point for our ethics. Although I don’t literally believe this, Mother Teresa was on to something when she said, “I believe in person to person. Every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is the one person in the world at that moment”. I have not graduated to this level of thinking yet though. I am still trying to simply imagine myself as everyone else and follow the golden rule. Once I nail down treating all creation how I would want to be treated if I were them, I can finally start raising humans worth to the level of Christ and animals worth to the level of humans. “I tell you the truth, whatever you did to the least among you, you did to me”.
“Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God’s absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.” - Rev. Andrew Linzey
I have no idea what the logic of that statement is supposed to be. Are you suggesting that decreasing cow (and for that matter pig and lamb) production would result in us suddenly “backfilling” to pre-settlement period elk and bison populations? Um … no. Decreased beef, pork, and lamb production would allow more land resources to be used for producing other foods and perhaps even some for biomass for energy or as carbon sinks.
I certainly support humane slaughter, but OTOH the point that has been made previously in this thread still stands: where you draw the line is arbitrary. Do you apply your Golden Rule to bacteria? To worms? To insects? To mollusks? If not why not?
Ethics is rarely absolute; it is more often balancing different but conflicting moral principles. Future of the planet with risk of complete species disappearing, ecosystems rapidly transitioning, climate refugees, and so on, versus the benefits of knowing that cows are more often slaughtered humanely compared to chickens? Balance to good of planet and leaving my grandkids to be as good of a place to call home as we can.
[QUOTE=Trust]
Do you get upset when a married couple uses birth control under their own free will?
[/QUOTE]
Um…no.
Er…I don’t? I have no idea where you are getting this stuff from.
No, what you fail to see is that the concept of farm sanctuaries are a pure fantasy of your own devising. If everyone stopped eating meat then most of the food species would die out. We’d need the room to grow all the non-meat foods that would be needed to feed the earths population. We’d not be likely to spend large resources maintaining animal populations for domesticated animals that no longer have any use. Oh, we might keep a few in zoos and such (though I doubt it…I doubt most people would want to go to a zoo to see a cow, a sheep, a pig or a chicken), but most of them would just die of and not be replaced. Seriously…you can’t REALLY think that humans would spend vast resources to keep these animals at anything like their present population. Do you?
I hope that you realize that you need many of the micro nutrients in meat to live, and if you don’t get them you have to diet VERY carefully to get them in non-meat foods. Because, if you don’t know this you will, sadly, die. And it won’t be a pleasant death.
Now…translate that effort several billion more times, assuming you could ever get everyone in the world to stop eating meat (something just slightly more likely than your farm sanctuaries, on the probability scale).
In order to apply ethics as you are attempting to do it, there has to be some reciprocity.
Huh? Talk about your apples to unicorns comparison. It’s unethical to rape a human female, regardless of whether I know her or don’t know her because she is HUMAN…of the same species I am. There is reciprocity there, since she at least has the potential to grasp the basic concepts in play here. A non-human animal does NOT have the ability to grasp even the basic concepts about ethics. Hell, they don’t even have a basic moral compass for something like ‘rape’, let alone something as silly as ‘should I be eating other creatures?’.
rat avatar, previous thread about artificial meat. Look there for details that answer your question. IF feasible, it would result in much more protein with less inputs and less harmful outputs and good be designed to have whatever fat profile (including both percent and sort, such as more omega 3s) taste and health considerations were desired by the market.
Not “all” meat production competes with other purposes for land use that have other beneficial outcomes, be it human food production, biomass for energy, or carbon sink … but most does. The wide expanses of Australia that produce a bit of beef and are otherwise not doing much are, along with some parts of the American West, a non sequitor.
No the majority of cattle in this country are raised on pasture land, the fact that they are grain finished is immaterial and could change quickly base on consumer demand.
The fact that it does not fit in with your argument does not make it a non-sequitor.
Your linked thread also assumes that there will be no backfill of ruminants. which I documented above gives about a 30% decrease in greenhouse emissions.
The golden rule is applied from humans to humans. This is its normal application. You wish to extend it to animals, I think that requires some serious justification.
I am not asking you to deny facts to establish your position, or demonstrating that your position is wrong because of facts. I am wondering why it matters that animals and humans are different for your argument that eating meat is unethical because the fact that humans and animals are different is usually the start of the analysis that it is not unethical to eat meat. Maybe meat eaters are wrong and draw the wrong conclusions from this difference. I leave it to you.
Everyone? We have organized human society around this notion (and other notions). We have not historically granted this notion to animals, except insofar as their full lives are the very aim of our pleasure (such as pets). Again you make this leap into the animal kingdom and suppose that it is because I am incapable of anthropomorphizing animal behavior. The problem is the leap, not the conclusion. (I do disagree with the conclusion. But that’s ok, reasonable people can disagree.)
Of course people don’t volunteer to be killed. Neither do animals. But animals don’t really volunteer to do anything, given the normal use of the word “volunteer.”
Because those are human concepts applied to humans.
That is why I don’t think utilitarianism is a sound ethical system. Not because it creates complications, but that its complications are not answerable by utilitarianism in the first place. With an abstract “everything counts and everything counts equally” rule in place, we don’t call it utilitarianism we call it cost-benefit analysis. In cost-benefit analysis, a criminal’s lack of freedom counts exactly as much as an innocent victim’s lack of freedom. A drug user’s desires are as socially important as a nun’s desires. But even here, we exclude animals, except inasmuch as humans want thing from animals (including their non-farming). But the origin of the measure is humans by humans. There’s no gap to bridge.
Unbiased? I wish for your unbiased measure, because I think farm animals aren’t engaged in non-stop suffering and that a single animal’s death can satisfy multiple people. If we then agree that humans are more valuable than animals [to humans] then one can see that there’s a possibility for the calculation to go either way—animal farming is/is not a net happiness benefit. I do not dispute that if we count animal suffering in the same way as human suffering, and that animals broadly suffer in the same way people suffer, that animal farming would be a horrible injustice. But you agree humans don’t count the same way as animals. So now we need some other way to establish your position.
These are indeed important costs to consider that often don’t get included in this debate.
Maybe we will, but I doubt it. Because there was a time we disregarded the needs of insects and we still disregard the needs of insects, even though insect life is unquestionably valuable to all other life. I think the slavery analogy is very apt and there is no denying that similar arguments have been made in support of both practices and this is a real concern. But we now have the tools to dispute the practice of slavery: they are humans, we have the DNA evidence, we have other evidence that shows that they aren’t lesser beings. And I am asking you, specifically, to bridge this gap for cows. You are obsessed with me disputing your conclusions; I would accept your conclusions, if I felt satisfied that you’ve established them.
Kidding of course. I do think this example is a rather far fetched one and does not really take into account an every day example. I think the reason you are having a disconnect is because you are looking at the elementary Utilitarianism. You are not taking into account justice, free will, equality, etc. The more advanced Utilitarianism takes these into account. This is no different than how earlier in the thread, people were having an issue with the golden rule since some people have different tastes than others. It requires using the more advanced golden rule. To be honest, your example is so mind-numbingly complicated that it would take a long time to think it through. My initial thoughts are that it breaks free will so the burden of proof lies on us if we would ever sentence another human being to any suffering they did not ask for.
