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I’m also quite baffled at the assumption that the burden of proof is on omnivores to defend their diet.
It’s honestly incredibly arrogant. there’s so much stacked against it I think it takes a very fanatical type of person to have that level of hubris.
I mean, just off the top of my head:
1.) Humans are omnivores. That’s how our bodies and brains evolved, and that’s the type of diet that interfaces most completely with us.
2.) Not everyone is a utilitarian, in fact I’d be amazed if even 10% of the population subscribe to beliefs that can be considered fully utilitarian. Outside of that belief system, suffering is often complicated to define and also is often considered morally neutral without greater context.
3.) Even if you are a utilitarian, the state of Nature most animals, including ancestral humans, existed in is incredibly rough and brutal and full of pain and suffering. It’s not a given that domesticated animals, even ones with very sad & short lives, would be better off without human intervention. Or that ending animal domestication will lower total suffering in the world. It’s not even close to a given. There’s a sanitized “Disney channel” version of animals’ lives that I feel that animal lovers sort of unconsciously project on a low level, but the truth is staggeringly cruel.
I could go on and on for hours about this. This is one of the few subjects I’ll likely never budge an inch on, I fully understand the other side of this issue and particularly the instinct not cause unneeded pain and suffering.
But whenever I hear hardcore vegans, which is to say any vegan at all, talk about this all I can think is “This ain’t it, chief”.
But how is this relevant to the question of whether humans should raise animals in inhumane conditions?
Well, they wouldn't exist if not for human intervention, which is better for the ones with very sad and short lives.
You would have to think that e.g. pigs in CAFOs are not suffering at all to believe this.
How is it reverent? It’s literally the baseline for consideration of wether or not animal welfare is important or not in the first place.
Because the question isn’t “will animals suffer?”, that’s a total given. Animals rip each other to shreds, stalk each other in the middle of night, devour the sick and helpless, gorge on each others entrails while they are still alive, and on and on and on forever and ever.
Inhumane conditions? The whole goddamn universe is an unending inhumane condition for them.
So the question isn’t “how much will animals suffer” it’s “what type of suffering will animals be subjected to” and “to what end?”.
That’s where you all lose the plot. Even if you were totally right on animals being worthy of moral consideration on the level of humans, you would additionally have to prove that domesticated animals would be better off not existing at all, and that by ending animal domestication you have managed to somehow lower the amount of animal suffering occurring in the world, while simultaneously outweighing the positive utility animal consumption has for humanity.
Which is from where I’m sitting is an utterly ludicrous claim.
Wild animal suffering is completely irrelevant to this question.
Imagine there's a planet in the Andromeda galaxy where ten trillion humans are being flayed alive.
Does that affect whether or not you should mug the next person you see? Clearly not - it's wrong to do that even if there's a lot of bad stuff going on elsewhere. You're not responsible for the torture planet. You are responsible for the mugging.
If you insist on taking for granted the claim that animals are worthy of moral consideration on the level of humans (you brought this up, not me), then the rest of the argument is a cakewalk. What kind of monster would breed humans in the conditions of factory farming just to eat their flesh? Even if humans tasted really good?
You yourself said that many domesticated animals lead short and sad lives. Do you really think that existence is a benefit for them?
I mean even if you think that ... wouldn't it be highly relevant to other questions, like environmentalism? If Wild animals in general suffer and their live lives not worth living, then a good utilitarian would want to pave over all of nature, yes?
I'd certainly not feel bad about this planet being blown up by a stray asteroid. Do you feel the same way about life on Earth in general? Is the main problem with the last 4 or 5 mass extinction events that they didn't go far enough?
I guess you'd have to ask a good utilitarian.
Fair enough, I suppose I just usually associate veganism with utilitarianism on some level.
I guess I'll just phrase it as a full argument:
A. Animals suffer greatly in their natural environment. Nature and evolution have optimized for survival, not happiness.
B. Artificial environments can make concessions to animal happiness that Nature cannot make.
C. If you care about animal welfare, artificial environments that make some attempt at keeping animals happy are to be preferred over natural environments.
D. If you think artificial environments are not a net positive for animals, then natural environments are definitely not a net positive.
E. Thus if you think we should get rid of artificial environments for animals in order to alleviate their suffering, then we should also get rid of natural environments for animals to alleviate their suffering.
I believe that is the encapsulated argument that @MaximumCuddles has been getting at. Vegan's don't seem to reach point E in the argument. The logic is sound, so one of the points must not be valid from the perspective of a vegan. The question is: which points do they think aren't valid? That would narrow down a large moral argument to a specific point of contention.
I am not a vegan, but C is where things start to go off the rails. Factory farms are optimized for profit, not happiness - they do not make concessions to reduce animal suffering except where it starts to impact the bottom line. There is no reason to think that factory farms are better than nature in this respect.
By the time we get to E the argument is fully nonsensical. The claim that we should not actively cause harm that wouldn't exist otherwise should not be construed to mean that we must go and eliminate all harm everywhere, even harm that has nothing to do with us.
A serial killer whose defense is "well in the state of nature these people probably would have been killed anyway" is just as deranged. You remain accountable for your actions regardless of what's going on elsewhere or in other hypothetical situations.
And there are things that impact the bottom line that mean better welfare for the animals. Animals that die in a high stress way do not taste as good. Animals that are starving do not taste good. Animals are not butchered while they are still alive because it can be done better and more efficiently when they are dead. Animals that are sick have lower quality meat. Injured animals can at times be nursed back to health rather than being put down. For larger animals like cows and pigs, safe pregnancies result in lower chances of miscarriage and death at birth. Minor birth defects that might impair movement are not an immediate death sentence. None of these are amenities that Nature provides.
There is a small jump there, but not really when it comes to reality. Think about something like the Amazon rain forest. There are three land uses: farming, ranching, and leaving alone (nature). Many vegans I've spoken with would order their preferences as (nature) > farming > ranching. But my claim is that they should have preferences of farming > ranching > (nature).
Its not that Vegans need to embark on a project to eliminate all nature. Its just that anytime nature is about to be destroyed for some other use, vegans should be happy. None of this is hypothetical, these are the actual land use debates that happen all the time. There have been at least two centuries of these debates in the United States. And some of the earliest recorded conflicts in history have had a similar theme of farmers vs ranchers vs hunter gatherers. Typically most of history is just farmers vs ranchers (China vs Mongolia), but the 20th century saw the first introduction of people that wished to return things to (nature).
I'm very confused why you keep seeing this as a purely hypothetical question. What do you think happens to ranch land if all the farm animals go away? Usually the land used for ranching isn't great for farming in the first place. Its more likely to just go back to a wild state of nature. Or is it that Vegans actually getting their way is completely hypothetical, so we need not consider the actual implications of their policies?
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It’s amazing how similar this is to arguing with an Anarchist. Which to me is also a sort of crypto-religious belief wrapped in a rationalist skin suit.
Wild animal suffering is relevant because when you say animal domestication is morally wrong, the obvious next question is “compared to what?”. Good and bad must be weighed against each other to make some semblance of moral judgement, especially in the realm of the political. And veganism insofar as it is related to animal welfare and liberation is certainly political.
So the obvious comparison is the lives of wild animals, because the end of animal domestication means the subject of moral questioning is overwhelming subjected to that mode of living, which is basically the IRL version of lovecraftian horror.
This also highlights the absurdity of your thought exercise, because we can clearly point to a possible world for humans better than being skinned alive for meat. It’s the one we live in right now. Not only is it possible but it’s currently existent. No such comparisons exist for animals. So the whole moral weight of this line of reasoning collapses.
As for the question as to wether a short and sad life is worth it, that remains an open question.
Certainly Life seems to think so, seeing how abundant those types of lives are in nature, red in tooth and claw.
You are verging on intentionally being obtuse. If I proposed turning loose the 130 million pigs slaughtered every year to fend for themselves, you would have an argument. Instead I am proposing not having those 130 million pigs at all. The comparison is not between factory farming or wild life, it's between factory farming and non-existence. The state of nature is totally irrelevant to the question of factory farming. It's not an option on the table for these animals.
The torture planet doesn't have to exist. It would be better if it did not exist, no matter how people live on Earth. To say otherwise is to engage in utilitarian sophistry that you were condemning a few posts above.
You cannot derive an ought from an is.
I agree, I feel like you are being quite obtuse. But that’s how these conversations generally go.
The problem with your little analogy is that for the animals, the torture planet was already here. It was here before us and it will be here after us. We didn’t build it. It doesn’t need us to exist. We simply carved out a little portion of it for our own purposes. The only proper way to judge that carve out is by comparing it to the rest.
The is/ought thing is telling, humans can talk about is/ought distinctions because they exist for us, we can decide amongst ourselves to live differently than the state of nature, within some limits. We have options.
For animals there is no “ought”, only “is”. That’s why they are animals. There is only the existence they are born into or no existence at all, which is hinted at even by your own admission and desire, The “final solution” for domesticated animals.
I think our little dialogue has demonstrated that Veganism is part of a whole constellation of beliefs that take an aspect of our existence where there is suffering, radically decontextualizes it, and then compares it to itself.
Anarchism, Pacifism, anti-nuclear activism, deep ecology, they all seem to have this in common and they are all, from my perspective, equally tedious to interact with as they have an almost religious-like aversion to dealing with the plain tragic reality of life.
No, just judge it against not breeding billions of animals in pitiable conditions. They don't have to exist. That's the counterfactual here. The counterfactual of doing X is not doing X.
By this argument, if that torture planet in Andromeda exists, you're basically clear to do whatever you want here on earth. After all, it's unlikely to be worse than the torture planet, and almost all humans live on the torture planet!
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