Until you give all animals equal rights to humans,
- Thread starter EmptyForceOfChi
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we're not talking about survival, we're talking about gratuitous consumption of meat in an environment where alternatives are abundant.
morality isn't a barrier if being a good person is important to you. there's no true objective morality (unless ur religious) but subjective morality can still be worthwhile.
i was asking your opinion, because you have claimed morality doesn't exist, and that you don't have a sense of morality. i thought it possible you'd like hitler, he achieved more than most people in a lifetime.
are you suggesting your opinion is worthless?
If you could push a button that would horrifically torture a baby animal such as a lamb, then dispense a five dollar note for you to take, would you do it? you wouldn't have to see the animal suffer, and no one would ever know you did it.
pandaemoni said:
i only expect people to act according to their own subjective morality, and i disagree with the assertions people make in explaining their moral compass. what is your personal justification for eating meat when it is non-essential to your survival? why is it ok to cause pain to another creature? have you no sympathy?
Many Asian cultures eat cats and dogs. In fact if it is edible, there is likely people eating it. We are opprotunist omnivors.
Not being eaten by humans.
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
I eat meat because it tastes good in a way that vegetables do not. I respect my prey, but I do not pretend that they are sentient beings capable of recognizing their position in the world vis a vis humanity, nor do they feel existential angst at their hopelessness of their situations. The truth is that, in India where cows are venerated and not eaten, cows are rail thin and often unhealthy. In America, where we eat them, they tend to be fat and happy. Cows, as a species, and all food animals have benefited greatly from their partnership with humans. The number of cows alive in the world today is vastly inflated over what it would be in the absence of human husbandry, and we provide them with medical care to boot that no non-domesticated animal would ever get.
In terms of their reproductive success and the ease with which a typical cow lives its life, humans growing to have a taste for it is the best thing that ever happened to them. What you want is for humans to anthropomorhize the beasts and then forget that we have evolved to enjoy the taste of their flesh. All aminals live on the flesh of other lifeforms. That is what being an animal is. You seek to deny nature if you deny that fact.
The basic truth is that you are anthropomorphizing the animals. They do not fear the prospect of being eaten in the future the way that you do. They cannot conceive of "the future" in the way that you do. You are imagining what it would be like to be a human trapped in a cow's body knowing that you will eventually be eaten (with no concern for how hard a cow's life would be in the wild relative to their easy existence in human hands). You imagine the angst your human brain might feel if trapped as a cow in such a circumstance, but cows do not feel that angst. There may be some concern in their minds when they are penned in at the very end of their lives (much as there is in a variety of circumstances when they are penned in and not about to die, because they are incredibly stupid animals, and easy panic is a successful strategy in the face of such stupidity).
In short, cows are not the people you imagine they are.
It seems to me that you are arguing that animals have the right to live, and I am arguing that they do not. Personally, I believe that people only have "rights" insofar as other people agree that those rights exist. If everyone on Earth (except me) said that I did not have the right to live, or to speak, or to be free, then I would *not* have those rights. I might wish I did, and I might argue that I should, but in the end the difference between having an unenforceable right and not having a right at all is semantics, in my view.
In that vein, animals have the rights that members of society agree they have. Animals, being dumb and outside of human governance as a result, never have a say in this. Humans, in their judgment, do give some rights to some (usually "cute") animals, like dogs and cats, for purely social reasons that, in the end, are rather arbitrary. The right not to me eaten (and to be "free") is not among the rights we grant. For me, an animal is no different than a fetus. Neither has a voice at the political table and neither strikes me as being particularly worthy of saving in the face of conflicting desires of actual sentient humans who do speak up.
Your argument is that you would prefer we expand their rights, and that is fine, but I have yet to see a basis for your position that at all sways me in the face of how delicious their meat is. You are arguing for a radical shift in human diets worldwide, and have not given a compelling reason other than your own particular (and not widely shared) belief that animals should have the right to life.
If I do not believe on the right to life of human fetuses (which I do not), if I support research on discarded embryonic and fetal tissues (as I do), why should I draw significantly stricter lines for the treatment of non-humans?
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My point was that most of the various philosophical justifications that humans use to explain where rights come from don't apply well to animals.
For example, one explanation for where rights come from is that they are mutually agreed upon for mutual benefit. Under that explanation of rights, we all agree that (for example) people have the right to not be forced to follow a particular religion because none of us want to be forced to follow a particular religion. I refrain from forcing my neighbor to be christian with the understanding that in return he won't try to force me to be hindu, or whatever. Animals would be incapable of engaging in that sort of mutual agreement, so if that's where you think rights come from, then it would be hard to explain why animals should have rights, and there wouldn't be anything hypocritical about saying that humans have rights but animals don't.
Another common explanation for rights that many people ascribe to is that they are granted by god. A person who ascribed to that explanation could easily say "God granted humans rights but didn't grant animals rights," and that's pretty much the end of it. Of course you could disagree and try to claim that perhaps god did indeed grant animals rights, but that doesn't mean the person you're arguing against is being a hypocrite - he just disagrees with you.
What sort of gun did you carry?
Pandaemoni, i agree with you in regards to cows and sheep but it gets more complicated when you concider pigs. Time and again i have herd that pigs recognise the significance of the preperations made before killing them which does suggest patten recognision, cognative ability, thinking about the future
I think cows could smell blood all day long and not realize death is connected.
Pigs kill and eat what they kill. I think they know what the smell of blood means. But I don't think they know it means their own death.
And cows are killed outright while pigs have to be bled out. The other pigs hear their friends death squeals.
The right to bear arms should also include the right to arm bears.
respect them? you (mostly) eat them cos you like how they taste. i wouldn't call that respect. its like saying you respect black people, but they should know their place as slaves.
i don't pretend that either. i'm saying when we kill them it hurts them physically, and i'd rather they not go through that.
you think cows care what their population is?
improving their quality of life doesn't give us the right to hurt them. that'd be like a father saying 'i've been a good father so now i can abuse you'.
other carnivores/omnivores don't have our intelligence, they don't have reasons not to eat meat. they don't have morals.
you presume too much, i take note of the distinction between people and other animals. my issue is physical pain, and the conditions some animals live in, battery hens being a good example. my gf saw a doco showing how when a sow is pregnant she is put in a stall just large enough to contain her, where she remains for the length of the pregnancy. she is released after birth to be inseminated asap, then back into the pen.
i don't think animals in such conditions are happy, and given dogs can wag a tail, be despondent etc. i think animals are capable of mood/emotion. having been in a shit mood and physical pain before, its not something i'd wish to indirectly inflict upon an animal.
again, saying 'as long as their quality of life is better than in the wild, we can do what we want to them' is immoral imo. if i do a friend a favour do am i allowed to then inflict some kind of injury upon them?
so the earth was actually flat until we decided it wasn't? reality by popularity? i judge assertions/opinion by their merits, not the number of people who make/share them.
oh that's right, cos humans are the masters of the universe. we made up the rules on deciding rights, so pointing out animals don't get a say based on the rules is redundant.
my personal motivation is sympathy, i hate physical and perhaps emotional pain (very simplistic emotional pain, as the result of being in physical pain for a prolonged period and developing learned helplessness), i don't want another creature to go through it.
It does come down to personal opinion on what is more important: enjoying delicious meat vs. not hurting another creature.
i'm not talking about the right to life, i'm talking about the right to freedom from deliberately inflicted pain under whimsical circumstances. essentially i agree with your foetus stance, so long as you're not hurting the foetus.
does that mean its ok to kill a person as long as you don't warn them in advance? like so long as they don't have to fear it, its not a big deal?
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
The law treats murder of an individual as a crime against that individual, whether that individual knows he is dying (or is about die), but I believe that has much to do with the Roman and Judeo-Christian roots of our laws, both of which cultures believed in a spirit or soul that could survive death and would be aware if the killing no matter how skillfully executed.
In my opinion the crime of murder is not necessarily a wrong against the person killed, if that person died painlessly and oblivious, but rather it is a wrong against those around him or her who mourn the loss. While some animals mourn losses (and I personally would feel bad for an animal that was mourning such a loss), the food animals I am aware of (and I have lived on farms never seemed to). I have seen dogs grieve for missing pack members, as makes more sense for a social species, though I do not think they hold onto that pain as long as humans do.
Still if someone wanted me to eat a dog, I would likely want to know that the dog was not part of a pack, for fear it might be missed.
I respect all the stuff that I eat because some organism gave its life so I could eat. Aside from the excess/gluttony, it's all part of the circle of life. Ground bacteria will eat me when I die and get buried.
Sooooo, when mountain lions, bobcats, bears, lions, tigers and cheetahs take down and kill their prey, it's painless?
I bet you the way a slaughterhouse kills a cow (i.e. bullet between the eyes) is way less painful than if a pack of wolves took it down.
What exactly are we doing to 'hurt' them? Please tell us.
So just because we're intelligent, we shouldn't eat meat? WTF are you talking about?
This I will agree with you on, concerning some of the deplorable conditions some livestock are put in. I even read an article on MSN the other day about an undercover animal control agent that infiltrates facilities like this.
You bet your ass animals are capable of emotion.
But battery hens to me doesn't sound like a quality of life better than the wild.
No, just the masters of this planet. I don't say that in a cocky tone, albeit more a realistic one. Given that we are the most intelligent, we have pretty much done what we've wanted to on this planet; that's not necessarily a good thing.
You should type up a memo and send it to all the predators (lions, tigers, crocs, etc.) out there. I'm sure they'll understand where you're coming from.
If one kills a cow, and uses its meat for food, its skin for leather and it's bones, etc. for other useful stuff, how is that inflicting pain under whimsical circumstances? Cow-tipping would fit your description much more than killing it and eating it.
Let me preface this with: I hate animals and don't care if they suffer. Meat is delicious and I will never stop eating it, because I live in America and America is too sweet to cave to pussy vegans.
Then show the life you're eating some respect, and either collect it yourself or buy from suppliers who aren't industrial scale.
Naturalistic fallacy.
Actually, a slaughterhouse cow is shocked or poked in the brain; in either cases, it is common for the animal to wake up from the stunning to find itself hung upside down with its guts being pulled out.
Pigs are raised in a box their whole life with no room to turn around, wallowing in such filth and in such close proximity to each other, they must be on a constant supply of antibiotics or their pusing wounds will grow too large and the health inspector might declare the meat unfit for human consumption.
We have the ability to
a) recognize that pain hurts
b) that we are causing great pain to these animals
c) for little more than our own pleasure
d) stop eating meat
The only reason you don't find eating meat morally bas is because there's no real social pressure on you to think you should stop eating meat. If you lived 70 years ago, and I told you you should stop raping your wife, I'd get a blank stare and a shrug.
Some? Unless you're paying two or three times as much for your meat, or shooting it yourself, I can guarantee that ALL the livestock you eat has suffered deplorable conditions before making it to your dinner plate.
Again, naturalistic fallacy. You may as well defend pedophilia, rape, incest, and cannibalism.
Because there are ready substitutes for all that, without having to create suffering.
Then show the life you're eating some respect, and either collect it yourself or buy from suppliers who aren't industrial scale.
Naturalistic fallacy.
Actually, a slaughterhouse cow is shocked or poked in the brain; in either cases, it is common for the animal to wake up from the stunning to find itself hung upside down with its guts being pulled out.
Pigs are raised in a box their whole life with no room to turn around, wallowing in such filth and in such close proximity to each other, they must be on a constant supply of antibiotics or their pusing wounds will grow too large and the health inspector might declare the meat unfit for human consumption.
We have the ability to
a) recognize that pain hurts
b) that we are causing great pain to these animals
c) for little more than our own pleasure
d) stop eating meat
The only reason you don't find eating meat morally bas is because there's no real social pressure on you to think you should stop eating meat. If you lived 70 years ago, and I told you you should stop raping your wife, I'd get a blank stare and a shrug.
Some? Unless you're paying two or three times as much for your meat, or shooting it yourself, I can guarantee that ALL the livestock you eat has suffered deplorable conditions before making it to your dinner plate.
Again, naturalistic fallacy. You may as well defend pedophilia, rape, incest, and cannibalism.
Because there are ready substitutes for all that, without having to create suffering.
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
Wrong. My respect for them is not respect for their taste and respect alone is not enough to warrant not eating them. I respect their strength, speed agility, etc., depending on the animal in question.
For the most part, the deaths of animals are quick. It is not the case imo that so long as there is one scintilla of pain that we should ignore how good the animal tastes. Both the benefits of my consuming the animal and the detriments caused by killing it must be weighed together and balances against one another. Obviously no one wants to cause unnecessary pain to an animal, but the more I get from its consumption the more worth it it is to kill that animal.
I never said they did. I have extensive experience with cows, and I could not tell you that they "care" about much of anything save their young. What I was saying is that, viewed against the state of nature and using natural criteria, cows are a remarkably successful species. That success is a direct result of man's intervention in their lives.
No, that is a false analogy. You are begging the question by equating eating the animal with "abuse." (I know *you* think it's abuse, but you do not get to assume that as part of your argument if the point is to demonstrate that it is abusive.)
The proper analogy is "I have done you this great boon, and now I require you do something for me."
And if they do not have morals, why then do we have to treat them as our equals? You have just admitted that they are not. Why should I be considered "bad" for eating shark meat, but the shark gets a pass if it eats me?
You still deny basic biology and draw arbitrary distinctions. There is not reason to believe that 100 years from now we will not have 100% artificial food. At that time people like you will be wailing and gnashing their teeth regarding the vegetable holocaust that occurs because people eat living plants and fungi. They will claim that plant eaters are immoral and make the same arguments as you do, save that they will also be judging you as bad.
There is no objective reason to believe that plants are "lesser" life forms as compared to animals. The reason you do not give them the same regard is only that they are less like you. The anti-meat crusade is overly narcissistic.
I tend to be against forced confinement for animals myself, but that is me, and I don't foist that value onto others. Others do feel that the meat of confined animals, like veal, is more tender and has other attractive qualities such as higher rates of reproduction).
Again, I think you anthropomorphize...animals do not live their lives as happiness-seeking utility maximizers. Humans are utility maximizers and what it had led to in us is low birth rates and, in many places, negative population grown. The rules of natural selection do not obviously favor utility maximization because personal happiness is not obviously a superior reproductive strategy as compared to a life where one sacrifices personal happiness in favor of an increased birth rate.
To measure the value of a cows' existence in terms of happiness or sadness is natural for a human, because we conceptualize the world in human terms, but utility maximization is a very human strategy for living one's life.
See above. The proper comparison is "If I do my friend a favor is it immoral to require that he pay me back?" The answer is: No, it is not immoral to demand that someone for whom you have done a service repay you in some way. It might be generous of you to forego such a repayment, but the failure to display a virtue is not by itself immoral. Your argument above assumes that the repayment I require is "abuse." You are free to believe that it is, but you can't expect to win my heart and mind with that unproven assumption.
I am afraid this is also a bad argument. I say that rights arise by collective consent. That is the very definition of "rights" as I conceive them. The definition of" Earth" is in no way affected by popular consensus. Suppose, by way of analogy, that everyone on Earth (save me) agreed that the word "respicient" meant "having an unusual clarity of thought or wisdom." Suppose I thought the word "respicient" meant "a nonsensical story or poem." Should I assert that I don't care how the "rest of the world" defines words, and that my definitions are right even if I am the only one who agrees with them? Obviously, language does not work that way. People, taken collectively, define the meaning of words and although there is variation in meaning anyone who adopts a meaning that is clearly outside the normal degrees of such variation will have no luck using those words to communicate.
In the same way, if I say that I am the all-being, king of everyone in the world, that does not make it true *unless* everyone in the world agrees with me. Then, in that case, I am king of everyone in the world, by virtue of their own consent.
My point is the opposite case, if I say I have the "right" to be king of everyone in the world (or the "right" to free speech, for that matter) and the people around me actively seek to subvert my attempt to assert that right, then I do not really have that right. I do not believe that rights are objective, as if there is some big book in the sky written by God that defines them all. I believe humanity defines them. Even if they are externally derived (and therefore objective), however, people do not agree on the content of these supposed "objective" rights, and hence they do not universally allow them to be enforced. So even if they are "objective" it is only in an abstract sense, since for practical purposes they can and will be denied to me so long as the consensus of the people around me wills them to be so denied.
An appeal to popularity is not a logical fallacy when the populace defines the thing in question.
Practically speaking, definitely. In all practical terms, animals will never have their rights respected unless humans agree to respect them. Worse, species will never respect the rights of other species and even individual non-human animals do not respect the rights of other individuals (as you note), so we are the only shot they have.
There is no objective "right" and "wrong" in the world, so I think the question needs to be asked why we have ethics and morals at all. I think the answer is that ethics are an evolutionary outgrowth of our nature as social animals. We developed an ethical sense because it helped our ancestors survive in social groups by giving those social groups a semblance of order in a world without law. The actual content of those ethical and moral rules can vary from group to group, all that matters if that such a set of rules be conducive to the stability of the group applying them.
Since meat-eating societies are stable and have been over the long term, there clearly are valid sets of ethics that allow for it to occur. I am sure a vegisociety would also be stable, so you could have ethical rules that forced people not to eat meat under an equally valid code of ethics. That said, your preference for the latter over the former is not just that, subjective preference. You might as well take a position over whether Big-Endians are "right" as compared to the Little-Endians, rather than argue that your preference is "right" over mine.
And you are welcome to that position, but it is another matter entirely to believe that others who do not share your squeamishness are "wrong" to feel differently. In my view, you take into account the pain inflicted in an understandable way, but place insufficient weight on the benefits others derive from eating meat. A less arguable position based on your personal view, I would think, would be to assert that animals should always be slaughtered in the least painful and quickest means possible. Even there you have to make allowances for cost and any diminution in the benefits received from alternative means (as in the case of pen raised veal).
I do not view the desire to eat meat as "whimsical". If it is, it is a "whimsy" that nature has had for about 700 million years. And in that 700 million years only one meat-eating species is burdened with the ethical obstacle you raise. If ethics were objective, then you'd think Nature would have made more allowance for them.
As for hurting the fetus, of course abortions cause pain to the fetus. Their nervous systems develop early and there is no physiological reason to believe that they experience their deaths pain-free (it's not like they are separately sedated). Why can a fetus's life be sacrificed so a woman can not have to worry about raising a family? Again I think of it as a cost-benefit analysis of what the fetus endures against what the mother gains.
In the end I am not sure that you'd agree that giving an animal a swift and painless death entitles you to consume it.
You got that right! :thumbsup:
I have no problem with vegans. They can eat what they want. I will have no problem with them until they condescend me with their 'holier than thou' attitude. They can be herbivores if they want. I'll remain an omnivore.
Yeah and you can hire me and give me a pay raise to where I can afford (both time-wise and financial-wise) to go out and hunt, or go to the higher end grocery or health stores that sell them that way.
So you're saying that when a lion or <insert predator here> takes down a wildebeast, gazelle, impala, etc. that the animal feels no pain whatsoever?
PFFT.
No, not all slaughter houses do that. The ones who do need to change their methods. While I don't like that method (because the animal is not required to be dead), they are required to render the animal insensitive to pain.
Quite a few slaughter houses use a metal spike between the eyes. It's fast enough to where it's just like a bullet. Instant death.
And besides, how is that different than a wildebeast being held down by the throat by a lion while his buddies gut him?
I'm glad to know you've been on enough farms to know this. My uncle has over 300 acres of beef cattle farmland. His cows spend most of their time outside grazing...deplorable conditions I tell you.
My stance on that hasn't changed. But I'm puzzled at why you lack the mental capacity to see the correlation of pain between how they are killed at the slaughter house and if a predator or predators took them down.
There is no acceptable substitute for leather
There is no acceptable substitute for beef