She’s a she. And I’m a vegetarian who does not feel picked on by her. She and I share similar ideals and the only debate is about methods to realize those ideals. I probably don’t agree much with her argument, but I have no problem with her proposing it to stimulate thinking and discussion.
There are children who never develop language, and who therefore never report what their experiences are. Why are you not okay with maintaining them in a carefree environment and killing them quickly for food?
This is why you should read Tom Regan. The arguments you put forth are ones he examines in detail and thoroughly dissects.
Thanks, I looked up his books on amazon and wil read them if I have a chance.
What does any individual human being’s ability to use language have to do with anything?
Since you clearly do not understand my argument, it’s unlikely that Tom Regan has thoroughly dissected it, but I’ll happily check it out anyway. I am certainly open to hearing any fresh arguments; I’m very familiar with most of the major ones on the subject of animal rights and I find that they suffer from excessive projection on the part of the thinker in question.
And I say this as someone who believes passionately in animal rights. I believe animals have the right not to be tortured for any reason, either physically or emotionally. I think the primary fault line between my view and others’ is that I do not think that being killed is torture, nor do I think that living under the control of human beings is in automatically torture, it depends on the circumstances. Living cooped up in a pen is torture - I don’t believe this because I would find it torture so I project that on to the animal, I believe it because it has been clearly demonstrated to be psychological and emotional torture by the animals who are forced to live that way: they wound each other and themselves, they bite themselves and others, they bite at the bars, they twist and rock and shriek and stop eating…they manage to convey their misery very effectively, they don’t require words to do so.
By the same token, animals who are given plenty of space and allowed to live and behave in a natural way do not exhibit signs of psychological torture at all, they appear perfectly content.
We don’t need to guess at how animals are experiencing things, we don’t need to project our own feelings about their circumstnaces on to them, they communicate their states of being just fine.
You’re the one who said, “We know these things for a fact, because human beings have reported their experiences.” Perhaps you mean that they reported them with telepathy or pictures, but it’s a reasonable assumption that the ability to use language enters into making a report.
And there is a long tradition of philosophers who suggest that it’s precisely this ability to use language that distinguishes animals from humans. Is that not your take? If not, why is it significant that other humans reported their experiences? Surely animals have communicated their unhappiness with being killed just as clearly as humans have communicated their unhappiness with being abused. If it is your take that language distinguishes animals from humans, what do you do with nonverbal humans?
Getting back to language, I don’t have telepathy. I understand your argument only through the words you express it in. If you don’t explain it with clarity, of course I won’t understand it.
As it happens, I justify my meat-eating through some arguments tangentially related to the ideas you’re putting forward. However, I’m not so arraogant as to be bewildered at people who disagree with me, and I’m also well aware that there’s a hefty dose of rationalization that threatens to creep into any argument I make in favor of my current course of action.
Nope. I’m berating you for responding with “Emphasis doesn’t equal anger to me”, when it was obvious it didn’t mean that to you, otherwise you wouldn’t have needed to ask why other people saw anger in your post. You didn’t express any understanding of anyone else’s point of view, you just dismissed other points of view with 6 words. Another point of view, I’ll add, that you specifically asked about and sought clarification for.
Yes, you have. Quite loudly, with all sorts of capital letters and underlining and bolding and italicized type and other emphasis, sometimes even a combination of them.
No, it shouldn’t be clear at all, as I’ve never advocated the notion you describe, nor have I weighed in on the subject of your OP. Or would you care to quote me where I said “everyone’s ideas, thoughts, beliefs, points of view or what have you are all equally deserving of equal degrees of respect and deference”?
All I’ve sought to do is help you understand why people perceive, through your posting, that you are angry. You asked about it, and then seemed to not make an effort to understand, instead slinging things back to how you see them.
Yes, I said that in explaining why I called slavery and sexual abuse of children “inherently inhumane”. Not “inhumane in the individual circumstances of individuals who have individually reported it but possibly humane if it happens to someone who can’t speak”. In other words, we are not guessing at how human beings experience these things, we are not assuming because we figure it’s how we would experience it. We know because others have experienced and reported it and the reports are consistent enough that we can safely say that enslavement and sexual abuse are experienced so negatively that they are inhernetly inhumane, even when they are done “nicely”.
So rather than really paying attention to what I’m saying, you seem to be trying to shoehorn me into what you think my argument is or what other people’s argument is or what Tom Regan has, in your view, successfully dissected as a poor argument, presumably the argument that language is the great divide:
That you would continue to argue this or ask that question following my last post is especially odd, considering that I explained that animals communicate without language very effectively, especially in terms of communicaating misery. And you completely ignored that. In fact, considering the following, you literally ignored it, as in “did not read it”
You also won’t understand it if you never bother reading it in the first place and instead insert the argument you assume I must be making or the argument you want to refute.
How is it arrogant to be bewildered?
Are you going to support that argument? Do you plan to respond to people who have disagreed?
My understanding is that a bolt stunner doesn’t kill animals, it stuns them so they don’t thrash around when their throats are cut. They’re applied to the front of the head, not the back, and not everyone uses them. The argument that eating meat is inhumane is not based solely on the fact that animals are killed. Generally the argument also includes the fact that the animalsare kept in inhumane conditions (like small enclosures or removing the beaks of chickens), treated poorly (pumped full of hormones, for instance), and then killed. The killing method can be humane if it works, but I don’t think anyone claims it works all the time. And it goes without saying that people created this setup in the first place.
It’s very clear to me that you and I come from radically different mindsets and are destined to do nothing but crash and burn, and since the topic you are on about is actually me personally and not hte substance of the OP, I’m just going to say: OK. Thank you for sharing. Have a great day.
I have. If there is a particular argument you think I missed, please point it out (but you appear to have missed a lot, judging from the following)
First, it is a tad disingenuous to say that stunning is done so they don’t thrash around, as though it doesn’t also render them unconscious and insensate, which it does. They don’t suffer.
Second, Yeah, I KNOW, that’s the argument I’ve made since the OP: money time and energy is better spent improving the lives of actual living animals. Which is what led to the discussion of killing as inhumane, since some people believe that it doesn’t matter how pleasantly an animal lives its life if it is killed for food that qualifies as “suffering” and inhumane treatment. Therefore, people who think that way promoting a plant-based diet as a means of reducing animal suffering. Which it would do (if it could succeed) only quantitatively, by reducing the number of animals born by reducing the demand for animal flesh.
I am much more concerned with eliminating the suffering of the animals that have the actual capacity to suffer and are actively suffering, whether it’s a dozen or a billion, vs. eliminating the potential for suffering by eliminating the existence of the animal in advance.
So (since I appear to be summarizing the thread up to this point) I think convincing hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of people to go plant-based is a weak way to “reduce suffering”. Far better to appeal to the meat eaters to care about the animals and demand humane treatment of their dinner. So that actual, living, suffering animals will each indivdually experience a meaningful reduction of their individual, personal, current, ongoing and terribly real suffering, rather than theoretical or potential suffering.
Actually I don’t think you’ve supported your argument at all: you haven’t explained why one tactic is better than the other. You’ve said that humanity is never going to become totally vegetarian, which I agree with, but that’s about it. And you didn’t respond to what I said yesterday: continuing to work with a business you believe is unethical also has its pitfalls, and it’s not necessarily true that a business is never going to give a shit about what you think ever again the second you stop patronizing it.
Fair enough, I should have included that also. If they are hit with the bolt stunner (which hits from the front, not the back) they would not suffer if it works, which according to reports does not always happen. And not all animals are slaughtered that way. My understanding is that the bolt stunner is not kosher and not halal.
Again, that seems like progress to me.
In both cases, we’re talking about what’s going to happen to animals in the future. If the animal is already alive, it probably doesn’t have long and any changes in business practices aren’t likely to affect it.
I don’t have to stop eating meat altogether in order to stop patroizing unethical meat producers, that is pretty much the whole point.
And if you find preventing life to be a satisfactory solution to animal suffering then you do. As I’ve said, I don’t look at this as a numbers issue, I am concerned with whatever animals ARE born, and since you agree that a mass switch to plant-based eating isn’t going to happen, it seems whatever impact that will have on the numbers is at best still below detection levels.
Frankly, I think a lot of people (NOT ALL, I can’t say this vs. that person) are primarily concerned with soothing their own conscience on this issue, and eating aplantbased diet does that, so they are content to tell themselves that any reduction in the number of animals born into suffering qualifies as genuine reduction of suffering. B ut it’s really just reduction of available victims.
And so there’s no misunderstanding: making a personal choice about your diet so you are not personally contributing through your personal choices is a completely valid goal that I respect and support. I just don’t agree that it makes any actual realistic or meaningful difference in terms of the problem as a whole, and that’s also ok, you’re under no obligation. I just dislike seeing such a fundamentally ineffective strategy promoted as a viable means to a laudable end.
Let’s set aside your moronic whiny repeated claims that I don’t understand what you’re saying, okay? Let’s just deal with what people actually say. (If you can’t do that, if your whole argument hangs upon your right to say, “You just don’t understand me!” tell me now, and I’ll call it a day).
The point is that we don’t need reports of suffering in order to recognize suffering: we can reasonably infer suffering from behavior. This matches what you later said, about how we can infer suffering on the part of animals.
This brings us a key animal rights point: unlike many philosophers who believe that a capacity for language is essential for possessing basic sentience, the animal rights position suggests that many aspects of sentience can occur without language. Nonverbal creatures can have a sense of identity, a sense of the past, hopes for the future, beliefs, desires, fears, object permanence, preferences, etc. (The Case for Animal Rights spends nearly 100 pages, IIRC, establishing these points: nearly 60 pages are devoted to establishing Fido’s belief in a meaty bone).
And if we can infer all that, we may reasonably infer another point: critters don’t want to be killed. This should be fairly noncontroversial; indeed, slaughterhouse designers take care to shield animals from the evidence of the deaths of other animals as a way of keeping animals calm on their way to slaughter.
So, yes, we know that animals don’t want to suffer, despite not getting reports of suffering from them (same way we don’t need reports of sufferers of child abuse to infer their suffering from other empirical evidence). We agree up to that point.
Why, then, do you treat animals’ desire not to be killed differently from their desire not to suffer, AND differently from my desire not to be killed?
FWIW, here’s my twofold reason for eating meat:
- The weaker part is that eating meat is more than just a tasty convenience. Our evolution as primates selected pretty strongly for primates who were willing to go way out of their way for meat: it’s a very concentrated form of nutrients, and those ancestors who took great risks to obtain it were rewarded. Our desire for meat is therefore really strong.
- The stronger part is that, while I think that animals would prefer not to be killed, and while I think that there’s very strong empirical evidence of that preference, that preference cannot be considered in a vacuum. The real option is bundled: we’d have to be able to ask animals, “would you rather live a life that ends early in a quick and relatively painless death, or would you rather not live at all?” It’s damn near ontological. And I know of no empirical evidence suggesting that animals would rather not be born at all than be born, live a sheltered life, and die at a young age in a relatively suffering-free manner. If we give up eating meat, we’re choosing the “don’t be born” option for animals; if we eat only humanely-raised meat, we’re choosing the “short happy life” option for them.
Should I assume you would be in favor of a significant reduction in the breeding of animals that produce red meat, since iy has been proven that red meat is a big contributor to much of our society’s unhealthiness?
I thought your point was that getting people to stop eating meat doesn’t reduce animal cruelty:
I agree that you don’t have to give up meat to stop patronizing the worst meat producers, although of course that depends on what you consider unethical and what you don’t.
I think it’s valid to make sure that whatever animals are born and intended for slaughter are treated humanely while they’re alive, but I think the arguments you’ve used against the “numbers issue” are thoroughly silly.
If more people would stop eating meat, there’d be less demand for it, and thus less produced, which would mean an absolute reduction of the suffering of animals. Yes, they wouldn’t exist in the first place, but I don’t want them to exist as creatures with the only purpose of being eaten anyway, notwithstanding the question if they’ve lived a miserable life or not. Do you think that vegetarians who support the thesis you try to disprove in this thread want the amount of livestock that exists today to be maintained at the current level after a possible decline in demand for meat, with a fraction of it living a merry life and finally dying in their sleep?
So, why should it be fruitless to the cause of reducing animal cruelty to let it happen that fewer animals for slaughter exist in the first place?
Okay. Why?
Looking around… check the label… leaving.
That’s your desire. I’m genuinely curious whether (and if so, why) you think that livestock would make that choice for themselves, if there were some way to give them the choice. That is, if you could ask them before their birth whether they’d prefer to exist for a short while and be killed for food, or not exist at all, is there any reason to suspect they’d prefer the latter choice?
Keep in mind also that when you describe their “only purpose of being eaten,” that’s rather anthropocentric. Critters have their own desires completely apart from the desires of us predators, and those desires might reasonably be called purposes.
Post #24.