Like, you sound to me like you’re saying that by eating this hamburger right here, I thereby cause the cow to die that was used to produce that hamburger.
Is that what you’re saying?
It seems like you’re saying that, because I keep mentioning the fact that by eating an animal, I do not thereby cause it to die–which seems very trivially and obviously true to me–and you guys keep immediately uttering denial words which seem to be directed at that very proposition. It’s as though you think we actually cause the animal to die by eating it after it’s dead.
That’s pretty funny, LSLGuy. I remember when I was taking comparative anatomy in college I couldn’t eat a piece of chicken without first finding the origin and insertion of every muscle I was pulling off and stuffing in my mouth.
Yeah, I follow your logic, Frylock. You didn’t cause the death of the cow. In a vaguer sense “the cow had to die so you could have your burger”, but the cause was a decision that somebody made that had nothing to do with you personally.
But by eating the burger, you do keep the hamburger industry going and contribute to other cows dying in the future.
Unless you think that people are cutting a hole in the cow’s hide, opening that up, cutting out a steak, and then patching the cow up, then however much meat you eat is how many animals you killed. If you eat 200 pounds of beef in a year and a cow only supplies 100 pounds, then you’ve killed two cows. It’s as simple as that. It died so that you could eat it.
If you went vegan, there wouldn’t be demand for those two extra cows and they wouldn’t have been bred. Those two were bred for you. They were raised and slaughtered for you. You gave the slaughterer money to go out and do it.
So yes, the OP’s original logic was…questionable to say the least.
I know you guys are joking, but I have met people who argue like this. “Oh, you’re a vegetarian?” (I’m a bit of an on-again, off-again vegetarian.) “Don’t you know that plants are alive? Ha-hah! That’s just as bad as eating hamburgers, then.”
I just want to kick those people. I mean, there are perfectly good reasons to eat meat. I fine with you people doing it. At the end of the day, it’s about personal choice. So why do you have to jump directly to the most pants-on-head moronic arguments?
Do you mean the bolded portion literally, or do you mean I may as well have killed that many animals? I agree with the latter (now, after having gone through the thought process in the OP) but on a literal reading, it’s false. Do you agree that it’s false on a literal reading?
It was questionable, but not in the way you’re questioning it.
Here it is distilled to some basic premises:
By eating this hamburger, I do not thereby kill the cow that died to produce it.
If I do not thereby kill the cow that died to produce it, then I also do not thereby kill any cow.
Conclusion: By eating this hamburger, I do not thereby kill any cow.
The argument is valid–its conclusion follows from its premises.
In the OP I describe how I came to realize that premise 2 is false.
But you and some others are insisting, it would seem (for example, if you think the literal reading of what I bolded from you above really is true), that premise 1 is false!
But premise 1 is very clearly true. If premise one were false, then my doing something now would have to reach back in time and cause something to happen in the past. Almost everyone thinks that is always impossible. And those who think there are exceptions would not say that this cow-burger business is one.
Think of it this way. Had I refrained from eating that burger, would this thereby have allowed the cow to survive? Of course not. But if by eating that burger I killed that cow, it would have to be that by not eating the burger I allow the cow to survive. Since the latter doesn’t hold, logically the former cannot either.
Since “may as well” and “literally did” are the same thing at the ethical level in cases like this, the distinction makes no difference. If I pay my buddy to go kill Fred, ethically, it is the same thing as literally killing Fred.
Except that “eating” has nothing to do with anything. I am not absolved of Fred’s death because I did not eat Fred. Arbitrarily deciding that only cannibalism counts as murder doesn’t create a reasonable framework for well-structured conclusions, regardless of how well the logic works within that framework.
It’s not false. It’s a non sequitor. It has nothing to do with the topic at hand beyond sharing some of the vocabulary.
“Reasonably think?” No. There’s nothing reasonable about it. It was an illogical childish thought. You’ve figured that out. Go with it. Your epiphany is correct.
Cattle are a far cry from their aurochs ancestors. They are domesticated animals, and have minor use without humans (if they can even survive in the wild). Apparently, if dairy cows are not milked, health problems can arise (having trouble finding a non-biased cite, but it appears so). But suffice it to say, if everyone gave up on beef tomorrow, we’d be left with a lot of useless cows. Ranchers aren’t just going to open the gates and wish them luck. Nope, lots of cows have to die. Eating meat prevents the cow genocide! (tongue firmly in cheek).
But I didn’t pay anyone to go kill the cow. I paid for a cow that was already dead. How can I kill something that is already dead?
But if I didn’t eat a cow, how am I not absolved of the death of that cow, even on your account?
What does this remark have to do with anything I’ve said?
You’re saying it’s true but irrelevant. I agree that it’s true and irrelevant. But prior to this, you seemed very clearly to be arguing that it’s false and relevant.
You didn’t say “kill”, you said, “cause the death of.” Yes, your (and my) eating meat causes animal deaths. If none of us ate meat, fewer cows would die. (Fewer would also be born.) To quibble about whether it’s this cow or the next cow is childish rules lawyering.
Sorry, I had started using that language in my conversation with someone else because they seemed to prefer it.
To you I’d ask–you’re saying it’s childish to think I didn’t cause the death of the animal that died to produce the burger I’m eating? Why so? Or is that not what you’re saying is a childish thought?
That might be a response to my question above. But here you’re making a lot of presumptions concerning what conclusions I drew from my belief that I wasn’t killing the animal that died to produce the burger I ate. One conclusion I certainly did not draw from that was anything like “It’s ethical to eat meat.” If you thought I had drawn that conclusion from that observation, you were mistaken. If that is what led you to call it a “childish thought” then you based that judgment of me on a presumption and a mistake.
Domestic animals would not exist outside of the demand for them. Yes, by eating meat you’re causing some animals to be killed (or, if you want to argue causation, it was the anticipation that somebody like you would buy some meat that caused the animal to be killed in order to make that meat available). But the next step in the chain is that by eating meat you’re causing some animals to be born. If people, for example, ate zebras there would be more zebras in the world. And if people stopped eating pigs, the number of pigs in the world would be greatly reduced.
Yes. I think maybe you’re reading a more judgmental tone onto “childish” than I meant, though. I mean “childish” in the sense of having a limited understanding of your impact on the world and the way things work.
If you’re talking in a purely Newtonian physics sense, then of course your eating a hamburger doesn’t kill a cow. It might cause juice to drip down your chin, it might cause you to fill your appetite, it might cause you to have diarrhea if it’s a bad burger. Those are direct physical causes-and-effect causes. Those are the causes and effects a child is likely to notice.
Contributing to the deaths of animals by eating meat isn’t so straightforward or directly observable, but it’s still very real. Because it’s more indirect, maybe even abstract, it requires a more mature worldview and more information about the means of production, supply and demand, etc. and that usually comes with age and experience.
Didn’t even occur to me. I don’t place any value or moral weight on eating meat or not eating meat.