Offensive PETA ad / Animal ethics?

Let me say that the aquatic relative of the cockaroach was very tasty.

So James, where do you draw the line? And no, I'm not going to read a scribe on your version of morality and cows. Can you supply an answer without resorting to a link?

 

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Pigs are a relative to humans, are they not? Would you consider it acceptable to eat a human because it tasted good?

 

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Pigs are mammals, humans are mammals. Do you equate pigs to humans?

No, but that's a fine reason to eat pigs.

 

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My point was a simple one, but I think you missed it, or perhaps chose to ignore it.

Try this, why do you consider it ok to eat pigs and not humans? Perhaps we could feed humans to pigs and then eat the pigs?

Or consider my earlier question:
"what if an alien race wanted to purchase human infants to raise them for meat. It would no doubt be good for the economy, so how could people possibly object?"

DO you think it is ok to do whatever you want just because you enjoy it?

 

Part 1:

Its the "ick factor". In your examples you could have added oysters. An example of which is "if you walk along the ocean and bend over to pluck an oyster out of the sea, crack it open on a rock and slurp out the living creature inside."

Is that possible? Yes, it is possible and people actually do just that. OTOH, many people do not. Why? The "ick factor". Even in nature, animals dont hunt and eat their counterparts. So eating humans can fall in that category because a brown bear does not eat another brown bear or cougar eat another cougar etc. Plus eating another human causes bongovina disease (sp) so it goes even deeper than "ick factor" there. In some countries people do eat dogs, cats and rats and not out of necessity. People dont eat hamsters either.

I am a vegetarian and have been so for a few years but i can switch back at any time.

As an aside, is it even possible to fees the worlds populations with vegetables alone?

Part 2:

Speaking of which, now we are encroaching on questioning the very fundamentals existing in nature. If i observed a mountain lion chase down a deer and eat the deer (or even hunting and killing a human) can i determine the mountain lion to be morally wrong? otoh, if a human hunts down said mountain lion is the human morally wrong? I do tend to look towards nature for these issues.

Can the mountain lion survive on eating vegetables? I am not sure, but i dont think they can. By the same token, can a herbivore live on a striclty carnivorous diet?

The question then becomes: To where did nature place the human?

A:Herbivore
B

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mnivore
C:Carnivore

Seems to me the answer is B. If the human were to eat striclty vegetarian with no supplements is that sufficient?

Then the question becomes: Well what if the poor person does not have supplements. Is it wrong for him to eat a chicken?

Part 3:

I wonder if the human race would have even made it (survived) were it not for the simple fact that they ate meat.

I honestly think it could have been completely wiped. Question is: how long before they made fire?

Well surely they saw a lightening strike and resulted in a fire. So they came upon some carcasses and figured..."the animals are dead....lets eat them and see what happens...holy shit, this is better than eating them uncooked"

I surmise that prior to this they took the meat and dried it in the sun, which, incidentally, is something like cooking. Is it not?

 

i think the meat-eating issue is a consequence of our human ability to be more aware. this awareness realizes that we are a product of a predatorial universe and we are it's victims as much as we are the predators. it's kind of like being taken for a ride or having been duped but here we are. we are a product(victims as well) of this (in some ways) monstrosity.

we can survey our surroundings and what is going on much better. we are awake and what we notice is that some part of us is a victim or betrayed by this system. that's why we can understand that on principle meat eating is disgusting or is wrong (we don't want to be eaten) but that we've been conditioned that way.

 

:shrug:

 

maybe we can have a new thread for those with nothing to say.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d1fMmFrhAc&feature=related

 

I don't completely agree. I was just establishing some boundary values, I'll get to the heart of the discussion shortly.

~Raithere

 

James:

I'm happy to. I don't see much value in merely throwing around value judgments and ethics is always an interesting topic.

Yes, I intended to get to this eventually because I think it's central to the debate. Until very recent times it has been primarily a question of starvation and pure survival.

I know this is rather obvious, but it bears stating that animals have the ability to convert materials such as grass that humans cannot digest into meat, fat, milk, and eggs which we can subsist on. Animals may also be kept and slaughtered in deep winter when little is available in the way of fruits and vegetables. This allowed us to inhabit areas and climates that would have otherwise been impossible to live in. Even today there are many areas of the world where humanity finds it difficult, if not impossible, to sustain its population without the addition of meat. That human morality evolved with a rather low intrinsic value assigned to animals is not arbitrary, it's based upon survival.

Subsequently, I think it is fair to note that we are talking about changing what has historically been a valid moral point of view. The question becomes, if it can be reasonably supported that a human does not have to eat meat in order to survive is it immoral?

At some point we're going to have to address ethics in general, where values originate and the legitimacy of their arguments (is "natural" behavior ethical, is killing immoral, etc.) but I'm going to skip this more difficult problem for the moment to address a salient point.

One of the main assumptions of what I'll call the vegetarian side of the argument is that between the two only meat eaters are responsible for killing animals for food. But while there is a direct and obvious link between eating animals and killing them there is a less obvious but none the less causal link between vegetarianism and the death of animals. Vast swaths of natural ecosystems have been utterly destroyed in order to provide grains, fruits, and vegetables for humans. Chemical and biological warfare is committed against "pest" species in order to ensure the human food supply. Runoff from horticultural activity as well as things like the depletion of the water table, pollution from machines, and other unintended consequences of growing crops.

All of these things cause, directly or indirectly, the death of animals in the preferential interest of humans. Even a vegetarian living in the wild, eating nuts, roots, and berries is competing with other animals for food. There is really no escaping the fact that at some level, deliberately or not, we will cause the death of other animals.

Often the response to this is, "modern agriculture is also immoral" or "we should reduce the human population". To which my reply is, "okay, but you go first" which usually reveals the hypocrisy of the position of asserting that others should make sacrifices you are not willing to make yourself. It's easy to assert a moral position when you do not have to concern yourself with consequences other people would have to face, but it's no less hypocritical than a meat eater proclaiming they do not kill any animals themselves.

Here we start getting deeper into ethics. I'll try to avoid needless complications and address the questions as directly as I can.

As to why a human is more valuable than a cow, I find there are several arguments. One is that generally speaking, a human has a vastly greater potential to contribute to the overall good of every living thing. A human may fight for the benign treatment of cows, invent an antibiotic, rescue a puppy, or stop a forest fire. No cow has or ever will be able to do such a thing. The most universally beneficent act a cow has ever done on its own is protect another cow from a predator. Of course this is a general evaluation, specific individuals may differ greatly and I'm not opposed to the notion that a specific human life may be less valuable than a cow's depending on the circumstance. But as a principle of general value, I believe it withstands scrutiny.

A second argument I draw from the Social Contract theory of ethics, which I personally give a lot of weight to. From this perspective morality is (in the present reality) almost exclusively a human concern with perhaps some consideration due towards certain companion animals. A cow has no direct placement in such a scenario, it's value cannot be assessed aside from human interests.

As to why it is unacceptable for a human to kill another human for food, the same principles apply. From a general evaluative standpoint they are equal and engaged in a social contract with one another. Part of that contract is that humans are not supposed to kill one another.

More broadly, we have a tendency to provide the same status to every human whether they are specifically able to live up to the all the standards of a social contract. Here is where I find your question of personhood comes into consideration. Since animals are obviously not literally people I find the onus of the argument lies upon you. Towards that end I will state that I find significant differences between various species, but to merit the case in one instance does not provide sufficient argument across the board. In other words, you'll have to show me why I should consider a cow to be a person even though I might be willing to grant that status to a mountain gorilla (I don't eat mountain gorillas). You may also be able to provide reason under the Social Contract theory as to why I shouldn't eat dogs, but that does not apply to fish.

I don't find it merely an issue of personal pleasure, I was just establishing a boundary at that end.

While it is possible to sustain a healthy vegan diet in a modern industrialized country it needs to be rather intensively planned, it is costly, it is dependent upon supplements, and is generally unavailable locally. Along with any current environmental issues due to agricultural development and transport much more farmland would be needed to offset the difference.

In my opinion the impact to human life and the overall environment offsets most of the negative moral implications. Need is still a primary factor. Certainly consumption in some modern countries goes quite beyond mere dietary considerations but in much of the world nutrition is still a very serious problem and removing meat from people's diets would make things even worse.

As to if these issues were resolved and eating meat was only an issue of pleasure, I'm not quite sure. I believe I would still find it acceptable to eat some animals, though I think I would want to reduce my consumption even further than I already have. In this instance, ongoing advances in making vegetable products more satisfying would probably go a long way towards eliminating meat consumption.

I find this problematic too. Everything has some intrinsic value, even if it is outweighed by mere whim. I have not the slightest ripple of moral consideration when removing a smooth pebble from the beach but I am still dumbstruck when I consider how it came to be there. Certainly every life has some measure of value.

~Raithere

 

Rather than trying to reply point by tedious point, I'll simply say that all issues of morality and 'good' are being raised by you, not by me. I don't consider eating meat a moral issue. I don't conflate people and animals. I say I eat pigs because I like the taste and you jump from that to eating people, in an attempt to make a moral point. But again, the moral judgement is subjective. You wish to insist that everyone obey your personal moral precepts. That's zealotry.

Arguing anything with a zealot is a waste of time. You can't change a zealot's mind. And I'll point out that I'm not trying to. What you eat is your own decision. You just want to impose your beliefs on everyone else.

 

You're a reptilian, aren't you?:jawdrop:

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It is quite normal, even useful to consider the moral implications of ones actions. You say you like the taste of pig, well that's nice for you but what about the pig? Am I zealot for insisting that the actions of Jeffery Dahmer were morally wrong?

Perhaps you could simply admit your speciesism. It really is that simple, you are happy to persecute animals because they are not human like you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism

 

No, you're a zealot for insisting that the actions of Jeffery Dahmer are morally equivalent to eating bacon.

No, its really that simple, I am happy to eat animals because they are not human like me. That's the way nature does it.

 

Yes, carnivores rarely eat their own kind (for a number of evolutionary reasons) but certainly all other life is fair game.

The thing I don't get about vegetarians is why they think it's okay to eat plants -- even alive sometimes -- but not animals. Both are living things not really that different.

Life feeds on itself.

 

Fuck you, too.

That's what I said, isn't it? Not as honorable as being hunted by one, but still: the food chain is a Good Thing.

Or should this just be another "fuck you, too?"

Fuck you, too.

Why assume? Didn't I just say that explicitly?

Same reason the lion is King of the Jungle - power and will.

Not worth speculating - we haven't even established that they can comprehend the matter to begin with, so communication isn't even worth worrying about.

In a sense, yes. If they had the power of speech, they're presumably be more valuable as something besides food, and not in such a position to begin with.

The fact of being killed for food, sure. In fact, I'd prefer being killed for food by a predator to many of the ways that I'm more likely to die in. As it is, I'll have to content myself with returning to the food chain in form of plant food, in all likelihood.

The cruel practices associated with factory farming, not so much (either now, or in the hypothetical).

No, and I avoid such products where it is practical to do so, and support measures to address it.

Again, your obtuse avoidance of animal welfare - which is a totally mainstream concern amongst omnivotes - in favor of dichotomized animal-rights rhetoric leads you badly astray. You'll have to search pretty damned hard to find someone who isn't bothered by animal cruelty - but why bother, when you can just accuse anyone who eats meat of not caring about animal welfare, and so ignite a flame-war?

Power and self-interest.

Fuck you, too.

Not "mere" property - highly prized property. Although you seem to be avoiding the issue of wild meat throughout. To the question, again: power and self-interest.

I was being charitable - the suggestion that we continue to breed food animals but don't kill them is so laughably inane that I figured it was a safe assumption. In the real world, an end to meat consumption would mean that nobody would breed, house or feed food animals any more, and that would mean that they'd largely cease to exist. Where would they live? What would they eat?

But I'm not seeing any actual disagreement from you, just complaints about ascribing you a position. Do you actually hold a different position, or are you just siezing onto a pretext to avoid addressing the actual issue in favor of haranguing me? Wouldn't exactly be out of character for you.

I have no recollection of discussing the particular subject of what would become of food animals absent meat consumption with you before. And, as noted above, I did not alter your position (you never stated one), but rather impute what is, by deduction, the only reasonable position. You're free to disclaim it - in fact I'd welcome such, and I notice how much effort you go to badger me about it without ever actually stating any contrary position. So, by all means, clarify: what is to become of food animals absent meat production?

I've read through your SciForums Encyclopedia link, and fail to see where the razor that separates plants from animals is anything other than the presence of a nervous system. And, again, I notice that you're going out of your way to insist that I'm totally wrong without any attempt to correct me. So that's a lot of wind spent on bitching, in direct avoidance of substance - if I'm so far off, it should be a simple matter to bat me down on the actual substance of the issue, no? In which case, why spend paragraph after paragraph trying to paint your refusal to do so as some failing of mine? Seems like ignoring me would actually be the best course, if we're to go in for your characterizations.

Fuck you, too.

My position is that your arguments don't actually add up to what you think they add up to. That's not a revision, that's my own critical position. You can argue it or not, but mere insistence that it doesn't represent your views is obtuse. My entire contention is that there's a gap between your position and your rhetoric.

I understand it fine - my contention is that it doesn't relate to all of these other principles and categories in the way that you think it does. If you think I'm wrong, it shouldn't be so difficult to point out where, no? Why not do that, rather than waste page space with so much aloof vacuity?

Fuck you, too.

Fuck you, too.

You've pointedly stopped doing so here (although you barely started), in favor of haranguing me for disagreeing. You're practically a case study in counterproductive approaches to fringe rhetoric. By all means, though, keep making this point for me - it's a reliably strong suit of yours. Indeed, it's starting to look like a necessary element of a psychodrama - why argue effectively when trolling reliably produces enemies for you to savage, thereby demonstrating your superiority and morality (to yourself, of course - it just makes you look like an ass to most everyone else)?

Fuck you, too.