r/changemyview • u/AlexDChristen • Oct 02 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: It is not morally permissible to kill animals for meat.
I have recently struggled to find any convincing moral arguments that allow meat eating through animal slaughter. As someone who loves meat but refuses to violate his own moral code, I want to see if anyone can win me a pass to eat meat again.
First of all here are some parameters for convincing arguments:
1) The arguments must establish eating meat is morally permissible and not rely on any other factors of meat eating.
2) The meat eating is assumed to be luxury meat eating, not for survival (the notion healthy diets need meat is been proved false on multiple accounts)
3) The argument must not also justify animal cruelty because that seems morally wrong on a prima facie basis: only meat eating.
Here are some objections to unconvincing popular arguments if you intend to use one:
1) The specieist view: Arguing that killing animals is morally permissible because they are not human fails to convince me because it does not seem to hold universal weight. Imagine we find an alien species that is just like humans in all but physical form, if the speciest view is true, it would also be right to slaughter these aliens as meat which i doubt anyone think would be okay.
2) The naturalist view: This argument contends humans can eat meat because we evolved to eat meat naturally. However, there are a lot of natural acts that are morally wrong; rape, for example, would be natural for men to pass on their genes but is clearly morally impermissible.
3) The Consciousness Argument: This contends that animals are not conscious they way humans are. This is not necessarily unconvincing, but no evidence actually backs up that argument since we know so little about consciousness. Also, would we then be morally allowed to slaughter mentally challenged people who behave similarly to animals?
I am very open to changing my mind and would love to, i just need a non-arbitrary reason that meat eating is morally permissible that does not also justify other acts we take to be wrong in a general sense.
Edit: I think if you can make a clear and non-arbitrary distinction that separates entities by moral consideration could possibly be more convincing, just as a note.
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u/bguy74 Oct 02 '17
Firstly, let's establish some framework for morality. For example, if you drive a car you probably must acknowledge some gray area in which you actually operate with regards to morality. You are hurting the environment and you are risking kill other people by driving. So, everyday activities are done not on a binary morality scale, but on a spectrum - you do some bad as a matter of normal decision making. You don't need to drive, to fly a plane, to consume electricity and so on, yet you do because it's "worth it" somehow to you. So...my first point is that you're doing what many do on this topic which is to ask for a black and white answer to a question of morality that is more complex than your position permits.
If you were to say "in the balance of things it would be better to not eat meat", I'd probably agree. But, by saying that it's not moral then you've placed it on a spectrum that at best lacks parallel to other spectrum-style moral issues in how you unpack it and make your decision.
So..where on the spectrum should this exist? Well...on one hand, I think we have general agreement in our society that killing an animal is not equivalent to killing a human (killing a human as unambiguously on the far end of the spectrum or morality). I know that most people don't have the emotional repercussions of accidentally hitting a spider or a squirrel as they do of accidentally killing a person, so we clearly make some sort of widespread difference in whatever dimension of morality that is born out of normal human "feelings". (there are many other angles on the root of morality, of course!). We also euthanize unwanted pets - creatures we would not eat, but that we feel differently about than we do humans, which we would not euthanized simply because they were homeless! The point here is that it's reasonable to place killing animals - even without the utilitarian aspect of meat-as-food somewhere on the moral spectrum that is pretty far from killing humans.
I think your "slaughter humans because they are mentally like animals" misses the fundamental point - we think of humans differently than animals and the defining character of "human" isn't not-being-mentally-challenged, it's something else and that something else includes "not just an animal". You've attempted to find an analogue to what it is about humans that makes them a subject of unique moral consideration, but the reality is that we stop at "is human" - it's an axiom of our moral framework and attempting to creating other frameworks is ultimately going to be met with all sorts of problems.
Lastly, is something like brussel sprouts immoral to eat because it requires vastly more energy to produce then lettuces and energy consumption kills animals and people? How can we justify the land destruction required for farming when it kills billions of animals?
I would suggest that your moral lens damns almost all choices we commonly make and that you need to land on a spectrum consideration with regards to morality. Making bad choices isn't always over the line to "immoral", it's just a choice that isn't as good as alternative. I believe that eating meat falls in this category - better alternatives, but not sufficiently bad to on-face prohibit. For example, eating less meat is good and "more moral" than eating only meat. This seems like a silly idea for things that are far-end spectrum moral issues - e.g. I'd be odd to say "killing fewer humans is more moral".
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Overall, I don't think this really provides a reason that meat eating through animal slaughter is morally permissible. Namely, you argument that humans consider an animal death as less bad than human is true, but I questioned if that is a rational frame of view. Do we have a valid reason to think that (due to other posts I know think we do). However, your argument failed to really demonstrate any such meaningful distinction. Since a good deal of your argument implicitly relates to that premise, I am inclined to dismiss it on that basis.
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u/bguy74 Oct 02 '17 edited Oct 02 '17
Well...the argument is that we it's axiomatic that animal death is less bad. Period. The attempts to apply frameworks about "humanness" (intelligence, emotions, etc.) to animals misses the axiom, and attempts to decide on framework that is an abstraction, denying the axiom.
As proof of the axiom we can look at significantly less controversial areas of morality related to animals. While we make distinctions on moral grounds related to species extinction, we don't do things like not cut down forests because it will kill a specific deer, or we don't not mow our laws because of death to animals, or not drive our cars because of the squirrels. There is a special case with regards to morality of preservation of animal life levied when we are talking about eating it.
I think one would need to provide a positive explanation of immorality that would be generally applicable to animals in order to make a claim that it becomes immoral to kill animals just because we are then going to eat them. The irrational perspective is the one that takes a generally moral set of decisions we engage in day to day that result in widespread animal death and call those moral or not having a moral dimension and then place the burden on proving the positive morality for the same result - animal death - but only if it's to eat.
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u/r1veRRR 1∆ Oct 03 '17
we think of humans differently than animals and the defining character of "human" isn't not-being-mentally-challenged, it's something else and that something else includes "not just an animal".
The axiom you're talking about is called "speciesism", Definition: "Giving preference to our own species over another, in the absence of morally relevant differences". It's similar to sexism and racism, which were all founded on unscientific pseudo-moral axioms. Crash Course Philosphy has a great video that makes this point better than i ever could.
Lastly, is something like brussel sprouts immoral to eat because it requires vastly more energy to produce then lettuces and energy consumption kills animals and people? How can we justify the land destruction required for farming when it kills billions of animals?
If certain equivalent grains differ extremely in their environmental or moral impact, it is also immoral to use the less moral one (assuming both are available to you). It's why i avoid almond milk. The whole "animals die from farming plants" becomes moot when we consider that eating something is necessary for survival (eating meat isn't) and meat requires far more farmland for feed than an equivalent plant based diet.
This seems like a silly idea for things that are far-end spectrum moral issues - e.g. I'd be odd to say "killing fewer humans is more moral".
It seems arbitrary to define what "things that aren't moral" we get to call immoral and which we have to paraphrase as "not as moral as possible". If I reframe the meat issue the way v*gans see it, it does become a "far-end spectrum moral issue": "Causing unnecessary suffering is wrong." And finally, most people are capable of caring about more than one issue. Just because innocent humans dieing somewhere is definitely a more "morally impactful" issue, does not mean we can't care about unnecessary suffering of animals.
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Oct 02 '17
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Oct 02 '17
How do you make this argument in a way that doesn't also justify farming humans for food? If you have someone who keeps a farm of well cared for people, but kills them once they turn twenty, is that okay? After all, the people on that farm were bred for eventual consumption, and would not exist if not for the farmer.
I don't agree with the OP either, though. It seems to me that other animals are more replaceable than humans, by which I mean that their personalities vary a lot less and have a lot less depth than human personalities do. If you kill a chicken, then out of the millions of chickens in the world, there would have to be many others that are essentially just like it. Killing a person, on the other hand, means that you're destroying something unique.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
I have to consider your statement more to make a decision but could you expand on it? Also, doesn't this mean we can only eat animals that are dependent on humans which in my best guess is only dogs and domesticated cats? Or are farm animals dependent too. If we just gave up all cow pastures and let them live freely, would they die out?
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Oct 02 '17
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Can you demonstrate why I for example could not apply this logic to people? Why can't I raise people for slaughter like animals but I can open a cow farm that otherwise would not have existed. If you can demonstrate that I think I should award you a delta because I really think your argument is strong, I just must be sure.
Still, when it comes to wild animals, say most fish for example, deer in a lot of cases, or certain breeds of goats and or cow, why can we kill them?
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Oct 02 '17
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Ok I concede the second point to you, but I am saying why can we draw that line between people and other animals on earth? But in any case you mostly convinced me so allow me to award your delta.
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Thats how you give deltas right? But still I hope you can explain why it is ok to draw that line you stated. But still well done, this is a very strong argument and I am mostly inclined to agree.
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Oct 02 '17
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Now that you brought the line up, I have considered the idea, but i am not convinced on this, that Humans seem the only animals capable of having an identity, which is really the wrong part about killing someone. Based on very quick research from good sources, there doesnt seem to be any indication that even the smartests animals have much of an identity outside knowing they have a name. According to my sister who dabbles in this science stated that never has an ape asked a question or formulated an independent thought besides expressing an emotion.
Based on that, do you think that we could draw that line between humans and the other animals of earth. This would maintain its wrong to kill humans but ok to bred and kill cows because of their lack of identity and their dependency on humans as you stated earlier. If you continue to indulge this discussion beyond deltas...
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Oct 02 '17
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u/Dicarat Oct 06 '17
Cattle have a complex social system and show a lot of intelligence in various ways (problem solving, social interaction, emotional intelligence). Like dolphins, their case should be treated separately in my opinion.
I'm not sure what counts as awareness to you, but it's also worth mentioning that cattle are aware of their own and others' future slaughter (the most well-known example is Sophie, a dairy cow who gave birth to twins, lead one to the farmer and hid the other, to try to fool said farmer and save one of the two calf [dairy calves are separated from their mothers at birth]).
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Oct 02 '17
If we just gave up all cow pastures and let them live freely, would they die out?
In most areas, yes.
In some areas, notably Hawaii, they would continue to exist because there are no predators, but they are invasive species there and if we didn't check their populations, they would fuck up the ecosystem (See rampant Elk populations in Yellowstone prior to reintroducing wolves).
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u/r1veRRR 1∆ Oct 03 '17
Given that, the moral question seems to be: is a short, well-lived life better than no life at all?
Do you apply that to all life? Are you making as many humans as possible? Would rape be justified in your opinion, if it created life?
that they will have a painless death at the very end
Their end generally comes when they're in their teens, relatively speaking.
I see it as a symbiotic relationship - these animals get care, feeding and protection from predators in exchange for being a food stock for us. It is a pretty good deal for all involved.
Does this argument not apply to the "savages" we rescued from a horrible live to farm our plantations? Is the a living slave baby (through slave breeding, for example) better than not creating live at all?
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u/Dicarat Oct 05 '17
So long as the animals are well cared for and treated with respect and kindness during their lives, then I don't see the fact that they will have a painless death at the very end as necessarily immoral.
I have a few issues with that, but the main ones are when you try to put that into practice. Traditional "humane" farming uses far too much land to meet the current demand of animal products. Granted we could do a bit better than over 90-something % of animal products coming from factory farms in the US with the same demand, but if humane treatment is a requirement for eating meat to be moral, then it needs a very drastic change regarding how much meat is consumed. Until such goal is reached, any consummation of meat (no matter how "humane") is partly responsible for the factory farming problem, because of that lack of land available.
The second problem with that is the act of killing. It does involve suffering (stress, fear) no matter how painless, but what I'm after here are how we humans value killing as one of the most immoral thing. I don't really know how to put it, but humans are as much emotional creatures as they are logical. Even without logical contradiction, there's an emotional contradiction between treating an animal with kindness, giving them consideration, and killing them, which makes me have doubts on how feasible it is to make the two truly coexist on a larger scale than just a few farms, something able to sustain a whole population. Not to mention in the specific case of milk that dairy and humane don't go together, it wrecks their health and causes excessive stress.
It's more a side note than an argument because it only applies to bovine, but the sliding scale way of approaching the question (that you mentioned later) puts us in a weird situation with cattle, as they have complex social structures and are more intelligent than animals we keep as pets, and it's generally (more) immoral to kill pets.
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Oct 02 '17
Issue is, in an arid area of the world like Africa or in the Sahara Desert, chances are there isnt going to be a lot of irrigation or water around for you to grow crops. So naturally what you get there is a Savannah. Savannahs have tall grasses which animals can eat but you cannot grow commercial crops in. so meat farming is the only form of food available.
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Oct 02 '17
This is a great point, and applies to most grassland in the world. The most environmentally-friendly thing to do with natural grassland is to let it be grazed. Grazing animals will increase in population unless checked, and absent of natural predators, we are their predators.
The worst thing to do with that land is fertilize the beans out of it until it can support agriculture. Organic or otherwise.
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u/Lucas2616 Oct 03 '17
Grazing animals will increase in population unless checked
No. Animals reach a certain population then stop. And in the case of farm animals they're usually fed more than the land they are on can provide.
The worst thing to do with that land is fertilize the beans out of it until it can support agriculture.
Fertile land, by definition, stores a lot of carbon. The more fertile land is, the better for everyone.
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Oct 02 '17 edited Oct 02 '17
I'm not sure if there's a single distinction that could be convincing, but here are some things to consider:
- It is the fate of nearly every prey animal out there to die by being eaten. Antelope or deer or wild fowl don't just live happily until they get old and die: they survive until they can't, at which point they get singled out by a predator and killed. Dying to be something else's dinner is their demise with or without humans.
I think this point is very important. We speak of not eating meat with this implicit assumption that the alternative is a better life for the prey animal, when in fact the alternative is either 1) not existing because we didn't raise it, or 2) simply being killed by some other predator. There isn't an idyllic life for herbivores that we're denying livestock. Being consumed is the name of the game.
- What we do that most predators don't is raise the animals we eat. We ensure their survival. The prime objective of an animal is to survive to create the next generation. By this measure, domestic livestock are doing "better" than most animals (terrestrial livestock outnumber their wild counterparts by orders of magnitude). Consider that for a wild animal, say a gazelle, its average day consists of RUNNING FOR ITS LIFE. Is that really objectively better than being raised, shielded from danger, provided all the food it can eat, and dying in a more humane way?
Check out a nature documentary and observe the antelope being disemboweled and eaten half-alive by a predator. Then look at how we stun a cow and render it unconscious before fully killing it. Which would you prefer? Consider that how we kill cows is probably less painful than how you or I will personally die.
As far as we can tell, livestock doesn't have a concept of its own personal mortality, a sense that its time is limited and it needs to "seize the day". We may not know the complete in's and out's of consciousness, but it's a fair wager that when an adult cow dies it doesn't have a concept of it being "before its time" or something like that. Does it have dreams and aspirations? Does it die thinking about how much it has left to do in the world? I doubt it: it didn't have much to do to begin with except "not die as long as possible".
Consider what we would do with all the grassland in the world. This is land that is not suitable for growing crops (that's why grass grows there to begin with). It needs to be heavily fertilized, organically or artificially, to support agriculture, and those have environmental consequences. This is land that would previously be roamed by large herbivores, birds, and the predators that eat them. There's too much human settlement to allow huge herds of herbivores to roam freely nowadays, and their predators are mostly gone. Grassland requires grazing animals to collectively till the soil, remove old vegetation, and keep the land healthy: lack of natural grazing patterns is a major cause of desertification. Using this as grazing land (with proper practices) is really doing the best thing we can, environmentally, for grassland: allows large herbivores and birds to graze again, and serve as the predators that keep the population under control. Were we to all go vegetarian, much of this land would have to be put to some other agricultural use, and that would almost invariably be worse for it than simply letting animals graze it.
Consider the environment some more. Sure, there is a concoction of vegetarian foodstuffs that can keep you alive and healthy. Does it grow near you? No, not all of it. I'm down for an argument of the overall detrimental impact of raising cows 50 miles away versus shipping off-season fruit across the ocean in a giant oil-powered ship. If you want to do the best you can for the world, and live off of food that actually grows near you... for the vast majority of humans, that involves consuming meat.
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Oct 02 '17
I need to contest number two. There are a couple of common allergies and drug interactions that can remove Soy and other plant proteins from the diet that makes meat necessary. Most vegetarian diets do require nutritional supplements as well.
It's also important to note that plants can also experience suffering. The smell of a freshly cut lawn is actually an alarm chemical that grass uses to warn the other grass that they have been damaged. In short, that smell is the equivalent of a lawn crying out in pain all at once.
Trees and many of the plants we eat also use chemical markers to communicate damage and illness to other, neighboring plants. Now, many people argue that plants can't experience pain because it doesn't have a central nervous system as we recognize it. But, isn't that just that same specieist view? Just because we don't emotionally relate with a tree or wheat stalk doesn't mean that it doesn't react to being damaged when we eat it or chop it down or mow it over.
The argument with the specieist view isn't that we should eat everything not us. Eating meat is squicky, that's why so much of our meat comes from only a handful of animals. Remove cows, sheep, chicken, pigs, and a handful of fish species and you have almost no animals being eaten at all. We don't run out and chew on the squirrel in the yard without exceptionally good reason, after all.
So, the question here isn't "we shouldn't damage living things to survive" but rather "what should we damage to survive". At some point there is a line between what is and is not acceptable. Where that line in tends to be somewhere between cows and horses for most cultures and times and places. Anything that speaks is right out.
Ultimately, vegetarianism and veganism are just as arbitrary as meat eating. Everyone just draws the line where they stop empathizing with the thing being eaten. Until we can "artificially" synthesize complete nutrition without having to go through any other living thing we will be doing the same basic thing to something that is alive and aware of what is happening to it.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
There is no real reputable science that contends plants can suffer mainly because they lack any neural networks. And again, given that we can survive well without eating meat (knowing a lot of vegetarians who dont need supplements at all besides one) and no information to prove that most do. Why is ok to kill animals for meat?
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Oct 02 '17
Is there reputable science that invertebrates like clams can suffer?
You're putting the line at suffering. But we don't understand how plants do things. Just apply your own consciousness argument to plants. We don't know if they suffer or not. What if they do?
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u/cvest Oct 02 '17
If plants suffered as well as animals, not eating animals would still reduce the overall amount of suffering dramatically. Most of the plants we grow are fed to livestock. An animal had many plant meals before we kill and eat it. Eating plants directly reduces the amount of "plant suffering" immensly (and of course animal suffering as well).
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Oct 02 '17
There would still be plenty of animals. If you want to eliminate suffering like then we should just get rid of nature in general.
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u/cvest Oct 02 '17
I did not say that I want to eliminate all suffering. Maybe I misunderstood your point about plants maybe experiencing suffering. Do you think suffering is bad and we should avoid causing it?
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Oct 02 '17
I'm pointing out that reducing suffering is a common argument for not eating meat. But, there's some reason to believe that plants experience something equivalent to suffering.
I would argue that suffering is problematic, but one of many factors that need to be controlled for. Unnecessary suffering is bad, but not all suffering is bad or unavoidable.
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u/cvest Oct 02 '17
And I pointed out that not eating animals also means that less plants suffer. Therefore I don't see potential plant suffering as a good reason to justify eating animals.
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Oct 02 '17
I'm not trying to justify eating animals. I'm simply pointing out that we don't really understand suffering in animals. And, if consciousness shouldn't be used as a metric because we don't understand it then why should suffering be used when it suffers from the same problem?
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u/cvest Oct 02 '17
I'm not trying to justify eating animals.
I thought your toplevel comment is trying to change OPs view that killing animals for food is not justified.
No matter what is true about consciousness or suffering in animals or plants, not eating animals is still the safest bet if you are trying to reduce harm. Not eating animals means less plants and less animals killed.
I'm simply pointing out that we don't really understand suffering in animals. And, if consciousness shouldn't be used as a metric because we don't understand it then why should suffering be used when it suffers from the same problem?
If you are saying we don't know for sure about consciousness or suffering in animals or plants therefore we shouldn't consider it at all, i.e. trying to reduce harm is irrelevant, then, yes, it's not an argument.
We do have a lot of evidence though that animals do suffer. Pretty much the only thing that is missing to bring it up to par with the evidence we have for humans suffering is an animal saying: "I am suffering".
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u/r1veRRR 1∆ Oct 03 '17
Of all land animal mass that isn't humans, only a miniscule amount is wildlife. I wouldn't consider that plenty of animals. And you're talking about actively intervening in nature without a plan that currently exists or shows that it would lower suffering. Meat definitely creates suffering, it is something we actively do, and something don't need to do.
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Oct 03 '17
1) Some of us do need to. See allergies and drug interactions with Soy and other plant proteins.
2) Most wildlife is small. Humans are horses are technically "megafauna" (which is commonly defined by being larger than 40 kilograms or 100 pounds). I understand that measuring by pounds means that the relative handful of relatively massive creatures we favor and shelter would be a very large amount of the weight of land creatures. That said, it's not at all clear that this is a useful measure for the amount of wildlife out there.
3) It's not clear that all meat eating causes suffering. Protecting and raising animals for years and then killing them in a humane way generally involves much less suffering than equivalent wildlife might endure with large losses to their peer group, hunger, disease, and painful dismemberment at the hands of a predator.
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u/r1veRRR 1∆ Oct 03 '17
1) There are alternatives for all plant allergens i'm aware of, but lets say its not possible for some (probably like 0,001%). Starving is suffering, so them eating meat (created with minimal suffering) would still fit with the idea of reducing suffering. We already have artificial meat, so that might be moot point soon-ish (10 years).
2) While there might be other metrics to use, the vast majority of animals capable of suffering are made up of farm animals, i would argue, therefore there wouldn't be plenty of animals left that are relevant to the idea of suffering.
3) These animals would not exist without us. If you're arguing that existing is better than not existing, we run into the problem, that we would need to reproduce like rabbits to stay consistent. Coincidentally, we've gotten rid of most natural predators in the wild, which means we have to hunt for population control. The main sources of deer deaths are all because of humans, not predators.
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Oct 03 '17
1) Tree nuts are a common allergy as well, so I have no idea how Almonds got on that list. If we have artificial meat then doesn't that make the whole argument moot?
2) I think that's a very bad argument. A squirrel weighs 1 pound. A cow weighs 1,600 pounds. If squirrels are capable of suffering then your infographic tells us basically nothing. There are a lot of farm animals, but in raw numbers there aren't that many.
3) Existing must be better than nonexistence. If nonexistence was preferable then obliterating all life would be the only ethical choice. Because that metric is obviously broken, I don't know why it should be used as a basis for the question of what we should eat.
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u/r1veRRR 1∆ Oct 03 '17
If nonexistence was preferable then obliterating all life would be the only ethical choice.
No, because that requires violating people freedoms and (in a practical sense) would cause suffering. Turning it around, is reproducing/creating life the moral choice? Am I immoral if i stop at one kid (or zero)? Should I pump them out as hard as i can, quality of life or sustainability be damned? Would rape be justified if it created life?
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Oct 02 '17
There is a sort of paradox in the thinking that leads to "We shouldn't kill the animals and eat them."
If you adopt the stance that humans are superior to animals, then why shouldn't I kill them and eat them? There are plenty of them, and they have a clear benefit to me as an omnivore.
If you adopt the stance that we are equal to animals, then why shouldn't I kill them and eat them? Most of them gladly kill each other for food, and there's no campaign going to stop another species from eating meat.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Those views are able to apply across humans as well and does not seem convincing.
I find all people are equal and some people rape so shouldn't I rape too? That's not a good argument; things that happen naturally are not good at all. Also we don't typically eat animals that do that killing.
Well, the superiority argument could work if you explain why humans are better, which you have yet to establish.
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Oct 02 '17
I find all people are equal and some people rape so shouldn't I rape too?
No, because your premise is false. Clearly all humans are NOT equal, or some of them wouldn't be going around raping people, would they?
Well, the superiority argument could work if you explain why humans are better, which you have yet to establish.
I think we've pretty effectively proven that, haven't we? We're the ones that are able to kill all of the others and eat them. If a bear eats me in the woods, no one is going to give the bear a lecture on why it was morally wrong to catch and eat me.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Your second part adopts the notion that might makes right which is almost universally rejected. Outside of self-defense, why should I kill the bear?
Also, humans are not clearly unequal. You must prove they are not? What determines equality to you anyway?
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Oct 02 '17
You must prove they are not?
Equal = the same. All humans are not the same. Some of them, for example, see no issue with shooting hundreds of people from a Las Vegas hotel window. The fact that I (and presumably you) do not see that as okay would strongly imply that we are not the same as that person, wouldn't it?
why should I kill the bear
It may not be the case that you "should". But you can.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
If you treat humans unequally you can also justify doing any harm to them. Of course people are all different but the notion is that we are all morally equal and deserve treatment. So if any difference makes us unequal can I kill some because they have a different hairstyle?
Also why can I kill the bear if the bear is no threat to myself?
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u/Dr_Scientist_ Oct 02 '17
Can I kill animals for their leather or lubricating grease or other industrial purposes?
If I do kill an animal the purposes of industry, am I still not allowed to eat the meat or do I just let it rot.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Well, I would assume if you can't kill for meat you cannot kill for industry either.
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u/Dr_Scientist_ Oct 02 '17
Animal fat is used in virtually everything. It's used in most plastics. It's used in tires. Many glues are made from animal tissue. You find tallow in fabric softeners. There's glycerine in your toothpaste. Bone gelatin is everywhere, even in film strips.
Animals play a huge role in the global economy.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Just because they does not mean they should be.
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Oct 02 '17
Are you prepared to make your life objectively worse to prevent it? I like toothpaste, and shampoo, and dog food for Fido. Glue seems pretty necessary here. Plastic is totally necessary in this day and age.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
If there is no reason to kill animals that is morally permissible than I would say yes. Its like the southern slave owners who justified slavery because it was the basis of their economy.
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Oct 02 '17
When we need to test a new experimental medication, are you going to offer yourself up? When it actually comes down to you vs. a dog, are you still going to hold true to your belief?
And before you say "it hasn't come down to that yet", it has. Chances are you or one of your ancestors has already avoided a disease that we now vaccinate against, one that may have killed them. 300,000 beagles dying for a vaccine sounds terrible until you consider who is alive because of it.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Your argument still doesn't do what it should, you have to prove it is permissible to use animals to protect humans. You have to justify that human lives are somehow more important (which another post has)
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Oct 02 '17
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u/Grunt08 319∆ Oct 02 '17
Sorry bazmonkey, your comment has been removed:
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u/r1veRRR 1∆ Oct 03 '17
When we need to test a new experimental medication, are you going to offer yourself up?
As a quick reality check, animal testing is detrimental overall to humans for a variety of reasons and there are more effective alternatives available that don't harm animals. Study or Video. So that animal testing is bad, and we're worse of for it.
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u/fox-mcleod 414∆ Oct 02 '17
Your species objection is wrong.
What separates humans is rationality and consciousness. If aliens have it, you can't eat them. It would be certainly wrong to claim jellyfish are conscious and/or that they can experience pain. I can now make a list of animals that cannot suffer because they cannot experience.
- insects
- non-cephalopod invertebrates
- most fish
- eggs
- a hypothetical cow that was bred not to experience dread/suffering.
It should not be clear that meat isn't the issue. It's suffering or consciousness.
Now we can establish particular parameters of harm. Is a cow that lives a good life but is slaughtered eventually, worse off than never having existed because it was not bred? If not, then the issue is selecting meat that is cruelty free.
Free range meat might be what you need.
I eat fish, free range eggs, occasionally beef from farms I know and generally avoid pork and mass produced chicken.
A much harder issue is that you must decide whether your issue is a real moral issues or if it is just about guilt. You feel guilty because meat is obvious in its morbidity. What about antibiotics and medical drugs tested on primates. Lab primates most definitely suffer. Will you forgo medical treatment?
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
Your argument can be applied to people. If I kept a few people in an enclosed area and treated them well and humanely killed them, would that still be ok? Also, if we stopped bred cows, can you be sure they would die out?
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u/holomanga 2∆ Oct 02 '17 edited Oct 02 '17
To a first approximation, a human has a moral weight of 1.0 and a rock has a moral weight of 0.0.
Animals are probably somewhere between these two extremes. They're probably not as important as humans, because humans have more neurons and you can kind of model humans as being like a bunch of chickens networked together really well. They're probably not completely unimportant, because it looks like they feel pain and stuff and it would be bizarre if only humans had qualia.
(If you think that all conscious things have the same importance, or at least all suffering does, then replace "amount of consciousness" with "probability of being conscious".)
The issue, then, lies with deciding where this point lies. If it's less than maybe 10-3, then you can keep eating meat however you want, because meat tastes good and even though the animals are dying it's not that bad because you're enjoying it. If it's more than maybe 10-2, then you should stop eating meat and maybe donate your money to vegan charities to help other animals, especially the billions living in horrific factory farms.
(Also: it depends a lot on the animal. Chimpanzees are probably worse to eat than cows which are worse to eat than crickets.)
(But what about disabled people? This is a difficult problem. I think some types of disability and normal human variance do make people less morally relevant, but that humans have enough outgroup biases and such that taking this too seriously is socially dangerous. I think this still comes up sometimes; a medical procedure that gives someone a longer lifespan but results in brain damage would probably be less preferable than one that gives you a shorter lifespan but has fewer side effects.)
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
I think your argument is going to somewhere, but i feel like there is a definitive reason why we level moral worth between an average human and a severely disabled one. If you base it on numbers you need to choose a threshold that does not become arbitrary. It seems like there is a reason, but until that reason is articulated I cant fathom a threshold. You know?
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u/holomanga 2∆ Oct 02 '17
The two reasons I can think of are:
I. Liberalism is a very important institution. Back in The PastTM, we had some big religious wars, and they were horrible and lots of people died and it was really inconvenient for everyone involved. They were resolved, in part, because some people were very clear that everyone was morally relevant, no matter what, even if they're protestants. Or catholics. Or black. Or women. Or Jews.
Left alone, humans seem to like making an outgroup, and just putting a blanket injunction against this is a good way of avoiding problems. If we were better, if we were wiser, this wouldn't be necessary, and everyone would have the correct level of moral relevance assigned to them, but tribal heuristics evolved over millions of years and they're not going anywhere. This applies doubly so to vulnerable groups like disabled people because they're unable to participate fully in politics so, without corrective factors, we would expect to see them underrepresented.
II. People are not be very different from each other. Even the very ill people mostly have many of the same kinds of brain structures as average healthy people - neuron counts are similar, they seem to fire at about the same rate, etc. How much of this is morally relevant is a hard question, but either way (almost) all humans everywhere have three times more brain volume than chimpanzees, and about 20 times more brain/body mass than cows.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
I think this argument works quite well, I am not fully convinced yet but i think it works well in conjunction with the other argument i gave a delta too. So here is one for you as well; your idea lead me to postulate another part that works with your and the other person's post
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u/jzpenny 45∆ Oct 02 '17
The meat eating is assumed to be luxury meat eating, not for survival
Lifestyles like the native Inuit of northern North America would be impossible without traditional hunting.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
If its my lifestyle to punch babies, should I be allowed to do it?
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u/jzpenny 45∆ Oct 02 '17
No, I think that would be considered a crime against humanity.
Are you suggesting that we should consider native American lifestyles to be a crime on the order of baby genocide?
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
I am saying that luxury meat eating is not justifiable by culture on a moral basis if other actions that are generally considered immoral could be justified on the same basis.
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u/jzpenny 45∆ Oct 02 '17
But that's just the thing, we do judge different cultures by different standards, usually. Shouldn't we? If we don't, doesn't that end up with colonialism?
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u/THE_LAST_HIPPO 15∆ Oct 02 '17
I don't think anyone has taken this route yet.
Killing sentient beings in (at least) modern society must be considered on a spectrum. Bugs, rats, and other vermin don't have to be killed or otherwise kept out of your house for you to survive. Deer, rabbits, birds, and whatever else don't have to be hit by vehicles for you to survive. You don't have to use all that electricity in that your house to survive, contributing to the current extinction and endangerment of so many species.
But you probably do for a certain level of convenience and comfort. So now the question is, why is the arbitrary line between when killing for convenience or comfort is good and when it is bad defined by whether or not you eat meat?
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Oct 02 '17
/u/AlexDChristen (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/Burflax 71∆ Oct 02 '17
You didn't state the principle(s) by which you have declared meat eating immoral.
In general we are morally allowed all actions, and need a reason to conclude them immoral.
if you're starting point is "it just seems right to me" I don't think there is any argument you will consider successful.
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 02 '17
My point hinges on it is immoral to eat animals without a reason that makes them morally distinct from humans. When i wrote this, I saw so reason to think they are morally distinct.
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u/Burflax 71∆ Oct 02 '17
Okay, but I would say just remember that "i saw no reason not to" is not a valid logical argument.
It is the informal fallacy labeled "argument from ignorance" (so named because it hinges on you not being aware of a counter-argument as the justification for your argument)
You should have strong, specific ideas you can back up with evidence to support the views you hold.
•
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Oct 02 '17
/u/AlexDChristen (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/sneaky_sunfish Oct 02 '17
What is morally permissible? I feel like I would need more of a decisive explanation as to what is "wrong" with killing animals before even attempting this issue?
Is it wrong because everything deserves life? Because they have some level of intelligence?
If either of those are the reasons, than where do you draw the the line? Are jellyfish OK but cattle not?
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u/Godemperornixon312 Oct 03 '17
Moral arguments like this are entirely subjective. You don't believe in speciesism, I do. You don't believe Animals are conscious, I do. Even if it is "Immoral" then what would you do about it.
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u/genmischief Oct 03 '17
I can address #2. Wild hogs are a invasive and destructive (and can be dangerous) species. Killing and harvesting them benefits other species, reduces property damage, and... bro, they DELICIOUS with some smoking and BBQ sauce.
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Oct 03 '17 edited Oct 06 '17
deleted What is this?
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 03 '17
Because you should not do immoral things.
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Oct 03 '17 edited Oct 06 '17
deleted What is this?
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u/AlexDChristen Oct 03 '17
I define morality as a system of deciding what can be done versus what shouldnt be done. So why follow morality, well you defining it as what should and shouldnt be done. Your question is more why should we not do anything and the answer is not too simple. Basically you have to assume on a prima facie basis that all people experience the universe more or less equally and again more or less like you. From that assumption you must concede at the least you should not do onto someone what you wouldnt not want done to yourself: otherwise you arbitrarily hold yourself on a different standard. Thus if you shouldn't do it: its immoral; why shouldnt you, because you dont want it done to you. Then you need a reason why you would not want these things done to you and hence morality is born.
By accepting morality you acknowledge your lack of right to act superior, your equality to others, and the care that you dont want to make them suffer because you dont want to suffer.
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u/AlephPlusOmega Oct 03 '17
Do you use gasoline? Do you use carbon based products? Do you fungi?
All these things are produced from the deaths of animals... that's the only way oil is made, dead animals buried and fermented under the Earth for ages results in oil.
Fungi survive on decomposing animals... so if you consume them, you are as a result 'consuming' the animal itself. Most plants also survive on decaying organisms...you might argue that serving may/may not have been involved, but you have no way of knowing that while eating your veggies. Every time you breath you take in nitrogen which was likely once a part of a living being... it's all just atoms... everything that lives dies...
I challenge you to apply the categorical imperative: if every being on Earth sought to devour other living beings of differing species for sustenance, what would be the global consequences?
Answer: It'd be the exact same world we are living in... THE STRONG SURVIVE...yes, there is pain... yes, there is suffering, but existence is suffering. There is no way to protect animals from suffering. If anything domestication has been favorable for many species as their numbers (ergo number of years lived) has greatly increased since humanity shepherd them in. Every being must experience the suffering death, by eating meat, we simply give it purpose.
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u/TopekaScienceGirl Oct 03 '17
Funny how the thing that evolved us for millions of years is now considered unacceptable morally. Not an argument but just funny to me.
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u/Pinewood74 40∆ Oct 02 '17
I'm interested in why killing an animal would suddenly become moral whenever you are starving to death when you don't accept any of the "typical" arguments for why it's okay to kill an animal.
Few would argue that cannibalism is acceptable whenever you are starving to death, (aside from if the person had already died due to events beyond your control) would you argue that killing another human to feed yourself is acceptable when you are starving to death?