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I would actually like to debate you on vegan/vegetarianism, because I have been unable to rigorously justify the ethics of eating meat to myself. I do it anyways, because I’m not a saint and morals are arbitrary anyways.
I’ll copy paste another comment I made in the thread:
Isn’t animals not having moral equivalence just another axiomatic assumption you can make? How would you prove that someone is in the wrong for assigning moral equivalence to chickens?
And supposing you value humans more due to our intelligence, does that mean it is more ethical to make unintelligent humans suffer than intelligent ones? You can substitute any other attribute other than intelligence here.
If instead you go the route of saying “I am arbitrarily drawing the line at humans because I am speciesist, but all other animals are fair game,” can’t someone else arbitrarily tighten that circle further and say “I am arbitrarily drawing the line at whites because I am racist, but all other humans and animals are fair game”?
Is there an argument that both allows you to ethically kill or factory farm animals for food, without also allowing someone else to ethically kill or factory farm animals for food? (Disregard how inefficient and pointless factory farming humans for meat would be, this is just a question about the ethics of it.)
Gladly.
Your argument is fundamentally utilitarian, and utilitarianism leads to insanity or tyranny.
On the side of the suffering, utilitarianism quickly devolves into making things up. I'm pretty sure animals experience pain, but that's vague. At the decision-making level, you must assign some number of qualia to their pain, if you want to trade it off against a human action. The problem is this number is totally made up. Make up a number in one direction, and it's OK to torture animals for sport (bullfighting), make up a number in another direction, and you're a Jain. Both numbers are of course completely made up with no reference to reality.
The second order effects get stranger. If you're in the business of making up qualia, you could find yourself morally obligated to kill predators, worrying about the suffering of subatomic particles, etc. That way leads insanity and SBF.
On the side of the morally responsible, utilitarianism quickly devolves into tyranny. If you've appointed yourself the arbiter of the moral balance of the universe, you might find yourself starting out by murdering ranchers, and end up with the Repugnant Conclusion, murdering unhappy children, and ending up at Stalin.
Utilitarianism is fundamentally unbounded.
I choose reciprocity. I will act with honor towards those who act with honor towards me. I'm entirely OK with raising those who act without reciprocity towards me in cages. In the case of animals, for meat. In the case of people, those cages are called prison. In the case of people, I'm against killing them (the death penalty), because I believe the system for judging them is fallible, and I want the convicted and accused to have the chance to prove their innocence. Since I am against killing them, I can't kill them for food.
Would I eat a murderer, if it was 100% certainty that he was guilty? That's an interesting question that I hadn't gotten to until now.
For now, I find the arguments for vegetarianism unconvincing, and I'm going to leave the Chesterton's Fence of meat eating up - but I'm not sufficiently convinced to stop thinking about it.
Just to follow up in case you’re still interested: I just concluded a nice discussion with aquota where we both acknowledged it comes down to power and realpolitik rather than any higher ethical cause.
If you’re able to come up with a loftier rationale as to why the moral line should be drawn specifically at the species boundary, I would still love to hear it.
Thanks. I was interested. To me the moral line is drawn at reciprocity, because morality is between actors. I have no moral obligation to a rock or a plant. If an animal or an alien is capable of reasoning from principles to determine reciprocal actions to my actions, then they are moral actors. If they aren't moral actors, then morally they are no different than a rock or a plant.
Ah I see what you mean now. I haven’t encountered this specific line of reasoning before, so thanks for introducing it to me.
I’m curious about a couple of follow-up questions: if animals aren’t moral actors, are animals entitled to any amount of ethical treatment? Or is it moral to torture animals for any or no reason at all?
And are only the humans that are moral actors deserving of moral rights? Would it be fine to kill an orphaned infant before it has developed enough moral understanding to be a moral agent of its own?
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Please correct me if I’ve misunderstood you, but it sounds like you only care about reciprocity if the entity you’re interacting with can and does behave with honor towards you, and you believe animals are incapable of honor.
Doesn’t this just push the delineation down to where you draw the line with “honor”? How do you define honor in such a way as to exclude animals from being capable of it, while including all humans in the mix? Is it fine to kill a human infant (or any human with sufficiently low agency) because they are incapable of honoring you any more than a dog can?
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This post shows a huge potential problem with veganism actually.
Ideological veganism of this type as does apply to Peter Singer's version is anti-human.
By trying not to be speciesist as you say and making animals and humans morally equivalent, you enter into valuing human life less, to make it more equal to animal life.
Hence Singer supporting infantcide, killing comatose.
Humanism, what you call speciesism, forms an ideological barrier that restricts anti human ideas from entering.
Ironically, what is often called anti-racism has some of the same problems. The fear of putting a group, such as whites first can lead to putting them last and is an aspect of our anti-white racist age. Which makes all the whining about white tribalism threat pretty immoral and ironically racist and a case of misaligned priorities. In the current circumstances, and in line of your own prejudices, you should be more afraid of that reality and the possibility of this increasing, rather than the opposite threat. Radicals rather than carefully opposing only what should be reasonably opposed have promoted antiwhite racism, in line with their own prejudices.
Similarly, but worse pro animal prejudice and anti human mistreatment is one of the promises of many advocates of veganism in combo with animal liberation. Less so for those which is more about their own personal preference and ethics and are much more restrained in their political vision.
Another thing to consider is that if animals are morally equivalent to human beings, then under that framing current humanity is engaging in mass murder of gigantic scale and is extremely monstrous. This false perspective could very well lead to supporting mass violence at its expense both to stop it, and to punish those engaging in using animal products (i.e human civilization as a whole). It is a path to self destruction and it isn't surprising that one of the biggest anti-natalist figures David Benatar who thinks humanity should stop giving births also adopts the framing of humanity as an oppressor of animals.
And of course would come along with totalitarianism where non veganism is ruthlessly persecuted both as a practice and as an ideology. Which could also come along with a lot of violence.
In regards to David Benatar:
The ideology of this not canceled academic who thinks humanity better not exist is in my view worse than many of the most advertised as worse ideologies in the world, including ones I directly sharply attacked. There is a connection with the marxist idea of utopia after destroying class enemy and class, or cultural marxism and destroying race and whites/whiteness/oppressive western civilization, and now for humanity as the oppressors to be eliminated by not reproducing. Benatar's is the worse version of this way of thinking. I certainly wouldn't trust people sharing Benatar's ideology with nuclear weapons, or biological research on diseases, or even A.I. research. Any veganism that comes anywhere close to Benatar's ideology should be treated with extreme intolerance.
It would be saner, less dangerous and better for advocacy of animal rights to be done under a perspective that rejects their moral equivalency to humans and is very careful not to be anti-human. Humanism is good actually and the speciesism framing is too absolute to not lead to such destructive paths. Hence, we would be better off if we outright blacklisted pro animal rhetoric that is anti-human and not careful. Especially the type that supports, or provides arguments that help justify harming various categories of human beings because they sympathize more with animals.
I mean, I agree with you on the potential implications of speciesism. But what arguments do you actually have against its validity as a moral concept? What convinces you to draw the line at human vs non-human, versus any other arbitrary boundary?
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