Vegetarian's guide to talking to carnivores

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by James R, Aug 29, 2011.

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  1. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    For a start off, what makes you think that this doesn't happen?
    For example:
    http://www.alpinefurs.com/?gclid=CNDuyNvMkasCFQOBpAodiGeDuA

    http://www.nzgifts-souvenirs.co.nz/possum/

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    Doesn't that just fuck with your whole world view, and make a mockery out of PETA?

    Fur isn't murder, it's doing the environment a favour.

    Addendum:
    There used to be commercial deer hunting in NZ http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/wha...articles-archive/magazine-article-about-birds but as of 2008, the price of Venison had dropped too low to make commercial hunting of wild red deer econimcally viable. Which, I suppose, to some extent is you answer, isn't it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2011
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  3. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Telemachus Rex:

    I'm not sure we could provide all the wild lions with an adequate non-meat based diet, even if we wanted to. But in any case, don't you think it's more important that we address the human problem first? It's a much larger-scale problem. There are many times more human beings on Earth than lions.

    Let's fix our own affairs before interfering in the affairs of others.

    No you wouldn't. And you know it. Which makes this argument both dishonest and worthless.

    I guess you're against all medical interventions, then. If human beings evolved certain susceptibilities to disease or disability, then they should just put up with those. Any system that tries to play with "nature", such as modern medicine, is not a moral system worth considering. Right?

    This, by the way, is another instance of the appeal to nature logical fallacy.

    Textured vegetable proteins already exist that satify your criteria. I can buy them in my local supermarket.

    I also addressed this argument earlier in the thread.

    Got anything else?
     
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  5. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Are you suggesting people should become cannibals?

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  7. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Asguard:

    I notice that the ACCC detected this dishonest practice and imposed sanctions. As it should.

    So, no, not like those, Asguard.

    No. So that there are no battery hens in evil factory farms producing my eggs.

    I'm really glad you have chickens of your own, Asguard. I do not. Most people do not. Most people buy their eggs. If you're going to buy them, then free range is obviously better than battery hen eggs.

    So, I'm not quite sure what your point is.
     
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Anti-Flag:

    What has that got to do with your choice to eat meat?

    Maybe you need to start a new thread if you want to discuss other uses of animal products.

    For the record: I am concerned about the freedom and wellbeing of animals. That freedom includes the freedom not to be arbitrarily killed. I think I have been quite clear on this point.

    And so... what?

    I don't eat ants, Anti-Flag. Do you?

    What am I supposed to prove to you, exactly? That ants are different ... to what? And therefore that it's ok to kill ants and eat them? I've never made any such argument.

    Please clarify your line of reasoning. It looks a lot like you're setting up some kind of straw man here.

    What similarities? That we're both human? That we have two arms? That we drive cars?

    What are you talking about? You're not making much sense here.

    Why does it matter so much to you? Check for yourself if you're interested. The exact figure doesn't actually impact any ethical argument I have made in this thread. So, even if I'm wrong and it's only 10% of the world population, nothing turns on that fact.

    Obviously you have no problem with using meat in any way at all, so why try to cover yourself by talking about mitigating health issues?

    At least be honest about why you have no problem with eating meat.
     
  9. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    adoucette:

    I stand corrected. From your link, reproduced here, the conclusion is:

    As the current poor grow to middle income levels, many more of them will start to eat meat. As the current rich grow richer still, more will become vegetarian. The latter process is much slower, and starts from a lower base. In the medium term, therefore, one should expect a dramatic drop in the number of vegetarians. Methane emissions will continue to rise and forests will be converted to pasture. Only in the longer term, when affluence becomes more widespread, can we expect these trends to level off.​

    Since meat production is bad for the environment, this is not a good outlook in the medium term.

    You're right.

    A good comparison is US law prior to the abolition of slavery. The killing of a slave was not equated with the MURDER of a slave-owner, because "everyone" saw a clear moral distinction between the two.

    Thankfully, your laws on slavery have outgrown old prejudices and moral inconsistency. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about your laws regarding the treatment of non-human animals.

    So, to summarise, it's more your laws that are absurd and irrational than my moral arguments. The laws lack moral consistency, and fail to give equal consideration to equal interests. They are manifestly unjust. You should be campaigning for fairness.
     
  10. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    And therefore you are absolved of attempting to present any rebuttal to any argument put here.

    Nice dodge.

    Mere assertion that arguments are nonsensical is not a counterargument.

    Then it's a good thing that I've never made that argument. In fact, I have explicitly denied in multiple posts to this thread that a cow or sheep is the moral equal of a human being.

    Well done in knocking down the straw man you erected, though.

    I expect you to practice what you preach and take no further part in this thread. Well, not expect, exactly. I mean, that's what you should do if you're not a hypocrite. Let's see.
     
  11. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    *Chimpy eagerly awaits grilled fetus sammich*

    @ Trippy

    Fur has always bothered me...and not just because I'm desperately allergic to it.
    It seems awful to kill an animal for sheer vanity reasons...
    And why are brushtails overabundant?
    Someone altered their environs or took out a predator species.

    For the same reason-killing an animal to use its' parts as a staus symbol... I dislike trophy hunters.
    If you kill it, use every last bit of it.

    Meat hunters I actually don't have much problem with...again, I'm not James.

    I think there's a very good ecological argument for eating wild meat.

    It personally bothers me, though, to harm animals. It might help to explain that while I call myself pagan, I'm much more a blend of pagan and buddhist.
    So I am not going to run around harming things.
    Ahimsa.
    I joke about it around here, but...it is something that has influence on me.

    (And here I go getting all woo-woo on you...)

    I look in the eyes of animals...and what I sense there is not as complex or shielded as what I sense when I do the same to humans...but I feel presence. That is completely subjective. Make of that what you will. My neighbor's horses, the cats, the dogs, wild animals...even chickens...kind of a dull spark, chickens...guinea fowl seem a bit brighter...Projection? Probably, who knows?
    But I personally don't want to eat something that bore it once. If I don't have to to live. There are a number of distatseful things I'd do to live, provided I flipped into survival mode and didn't just self-destruct in a bad situation.

    This would include killing other people and renting out my body if it came down to it...but I wouldn't do that normally.
     
  12. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    The arguments on this thread range far and wide of the mark, yet that is not unexpected given the provocative title.

    My English ancestors were avid gardeners and raised small livestock and my German ancestors were mixed farmers, or so I gather. I was further raised among a culture that practices sustainable wild harvest and stewardship of the land, with a respect for each animal that offers it's life to sustain ours.

    It matters not whether you eat animal or plant, so long as you recognize that all life comes at the cost of the life of another.

    That we are even having such a conversation is symptomatic of our recognition that we have been treating the planet, and our fellow man, inappropriately if viewed from the perspective of sustainability.

    There is not a one of us that does not, in some manner, partake of the resources of this planet, in support of our own life. Upon our death, our own flesh and blood returns to the soil to nourish the next generation (unless you have your ashes sent into space, wasting an enormous amount of natural resources.

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    Yes. Even when you eat vegetables, you are dining on the remains of your ancestors. Moralizing the issue does not change the facts.

    Come and visit the north. Due to loss of habitat to humans, the bears are hungry.

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    Equal opportunity for vegans, vegetarians and omnivores.
     
  13. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    billvon:

    Google it. You'll find that it's a well-recognised logical fallacy.

    I don't think you've grasped what a false appeal to nature is. It's an attempt to argue that what is natural is morally good because it is natural (rather than for some rational reason).

    Should you eat when you're hungry? Yes, provided there's no compelling moral reason not to do so. In the case of eating meat, there is. And besides, you have an alternative available, which still allows you to satisfy your hunger.

    No. See my previous reply to Bells. You're the second person who has apparently not understood the comparison I am making between racism and speciesism. I am happy to answer questions if you're confused.

    Correct. Both versions are non-arguments, and both are equally invalid.

    This is an argument from personal prejudice, based on the experience of one person, plus a statement of fact that doesn't address the moral question at all.

    Got anything better?
     
  14. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Traditionally, the use of fur was designed to provide protection from the environment. The hollow hairs of the caribou provide an insulating layer of air. Sealskin and otter are very durable and wolverine is the furbearer of choice for parka ruffs because their hair does not frost up in comparison to other species. We lose a lot of moisture through our breath and this can be problematic in extremely cold climates, obscuring vision among other risks.

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    You provide an interesting balance to your posts, Chimpkin. I respect that you are a realist at heart, more cognizant than most of the impacts of the choices we all make, and recognizing that each must find their own path in these matters.

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  15. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Trippy:

    The mistake you're making here is to consider the value of a species (or its individual members, more importantly) only in terms of their value to you or to some other human being, as a commodity.

    My argument is that animals have intrinsic value quite apart from what they can do for you or for some other human being. That is, they have interests of their own, and not just interests by proxy (i.e. their interests are only "borrowed" from your interests).

    The majority position of the general public, which rarely considers such matters, is that non-human animals are a kind of useful property at best and a nuisance or value-taker from human beings' interests at worst. As property, they have no rights. Your CD player doesn't have rights, and an animal is not really any different. You can buy and sell CDs or animals. You can break a CD or an animal. It's yours to do with as you wish, provided you bought it and it's your property. In the case of animals, there's a little head-nodding and fiddling around the edges to partly assuage our guilt at treating animals as mere property most of the time, but we're not serious about animal rights. Not at this point in history.

    Most people are so fixed in this status quo attitude and set of assumptions about animals that they don't even hear the argument that I'm putting here. It just goes right in one ear and out the other, never stopping in the brain for long enough to be seriously considered. In fact, there seem to be inbuilt defences to thinking about for a lot of people. They try to divert the issue to tangents, or they simply claim that the argument being made "doesn't make sense" (because it doesn't - to them), or they claim that anybody making it is just mad and so they don't need to give it the time of day, or they go off in a bout of self-justification and self-righteous indignation. We've seen all of that in this thread alone.

    The definition of a "pest animal", I point out, is that it is a pest to human beings. In other words, only the value of the animal in reference to human interests is counted.

    In other words, because certain human beings have decided that these animals are valueless from the start, then eating them won't make any difference.

    I suggest a gradual phase-out of cattle farming. At present you deliberately breed cattle for consumption. All you need to do is to stop and to let the currently-living cattle live out their natural life-spans. Give it 15 years and your problem is solved. No need to release them to the wild to reproduce willy-nilly.

    Well ... no.

    And the above-suggested solution really doesn't take a lot of thought to arrive at. Does it?

    A gradual phase-out would be appropriate, perhaps with some government assistance if necessary.

    Compare addressing global warming. If you want to cut fossil-fuel emissions, then the hydrocarbon produces are going to lose out in the long term, whether you like it or not. So, spare a thought for the poor executives at Exxon. Are you going to support them? Supplement their incomes for them?


    Asguard:

    You're in the wrong thread. There's a separate thread that you started on this issue, remember. Take it there.
     
  16. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    Brushtails are over abundant because they were introduced into New Zealand, from Australia, in the 1850's, for fur, IIRC, and New Zealand has no natural predators that are effective against them, and our bush has abundant food for them.

    Same reason I suggest that Sheep and cows would be become pest species if the farmers took James' implied advice and liberated them into the wild.
     
  17. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    So a brushtail is a little like these we have here:

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    Nutria rats.
    Introduced for fur, they apparently aren't good for swamplands...
    Not generally eaten...well...
    http://www.nutria.com/site14.php
    Apparently the state of Louisiana would like you to eat more nutria.
    They are slightly larger than rabbits.

    The thing is...define "wild." We apes have screwed up the ecosystem, I guess, now we do have to keep it in balance...I would still like to see predation in place.
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2011
  18. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    No, I am making no such mistake, I can assure you.

    I'm aware of that, yes, the point being missed here is my point to you, not vice versa.
    No, it isn't. Possums are a pest animal because they're completely fucking NZ native bush, not because they're a nuisance to people. Given that 1 in 4 new zealanders live in one city, how many of them do you think, precisely, have ever actually seen a possum?

    More conspiracy-esque bullshit, James.

    We don't need Possums, it's not that they have no value, it's that they're invasive, they're fucking our native flora, and fauna, and they're an introduced species. They're not native to New Zealand. You seriously have no clue about the amount of damage they do to our bush.

    Stoats kill Kiwis, Possums eat parrots, and denude the foliage from trees.

    Seriously, take some time to educate yourself before you go making assinine pronouncements such as these.

    http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/threats-and-impacts/animal-pests/need-for-pest-control/

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    Well no, for starters, I'm not the one banging on their door thumping the IPCC AR4 preaching at them - which is, in your analogy roughly what you're doing here.
     
  19. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    quadraphonics:

    I disagree. Your definition of the term "speciesism" is obviously different from how I'm using the term, that's all.

    Racism is a prejudice. Without even considering the matter, the racist assumes, a priori that certain races are "inferior" and certain races are "superior". This is not based on any morally significant characteristics of the races involved, but on mere asthetics (as Tiassa would no doubt put it). The white racist doesn't like the look of those black people, so he concludes that they are inferior to him. This is an unreasoned assertion of superiority.

    Similarly, speciesism is a prejudice. Without even considering the matter, the speciesism assumes a priori that non-human animals are "inferior" to human beings. This is not based on any morally significant characteristics of the species involved, but on mere asthetics, once again. It is also an unreasoned assertion of superiority.

    My starting point is that we ought to treat like as like - to give [enc]equal consideration[/enc] to the same (or similar) interests, whether those interests happen to be held by human beings or by an animal of some other species. If a "heirarchy" of rights and values evolves from this, it is as a result of a reasoned and argued process, rather than an unreasoned (and often unsupported and/or unsupportable) assertion of superiority.

    As a comparison, you might like to compare the rights we give to underage children with the rights we give to adult human beings. Children are not allowed to drink alcohol or hold a car licence or vote, for example. If their different rights in these matters were to be based on a "childrenist" prejudice, then we would argue that a child should not be able to drive merely because he is a child, and that would settle the question for the prejudiced person. It's "just obvious" that children shouldn't be allowed to drive.

    In fact, the differential rights that we give children are not based on "childrenist" prejudices, but on reasonable conclusions drawn from observation of the capacities of children (among other things). But when it comes to killing non-human animals for meat, there is, in general, a dearth of any moral argument on the side of the meat-eaters. It's apparently acceptable to kill and eat animals just "because it's a chicken" (to use an argument that has been put consistently by one poster in this thread). And that is a speciesist argument.

    I agree.

    As I said earlier, we have a difference of opinion on the definition of a racist. I do not agree with you that anybody who rejects the inherent equality of human races is automatically a racist. I also think you're fudging the term "equality" here, which confuses matters somewhere. You can say two humans are "equal" if they have the same physical and mental characteristics (say), or you can say that two human are "equal" in terms of their moral value or their rights under the law.

    When you talk about people demanding that they embrace equality, you're not, of course, saying that people should be forced to be the same in terms of physical characeristics, mental characteristics, or even behaviour. You're talking about rights. You're talking about equal consideration. That is, insofar as two people share common interests or characteristics, they ought to be treated equally under the law, or in terms of moral decisions taken in respect of them.

    Very importantly, where there is doubt as to whether two people are "equal" in characteristics, I would argue that they should be treated as moral equals, at least until better information is available. And the same applies when we weigh up human vs. animals rights, or plant rights for that matter.

    You could have done without this ending to your post. It makes it look more like a petty personal attack.
     
  20. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    @ Trippy, Had to google...possums there are not the same animal...I was wondering why they'd put a new world animal in NZ...

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    Ours look like giant rats because they pretty much scavenge and predate like one...Different diet, ours don't eat foliage.
    They do go nuts for apples though.

    We have the feral hog problem, I mentioned that failure to hunt down said hogs will quickly lead to destruction of grazing land and crops also...and giant vicious feral hogs roaming the landscape

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    The last time I got out to stay overnight in a parkland, when I went out hiking, there were signs of rooting everywhere...lots of torn up soil and not a deer track to be seen. They eliminate forage for all grazing animals by tearing it out.
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2011
  21. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    That is not true. Pest animals are animals that are detrimental to, or a nuisance to, humans or to human concerns.
    What you are talking about are invasive species.
     
  22. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Invasive non-natives.

    I guess a pest would be the norway rat...and even I don't advocate eating rats.
    Not even with lots of ketchup (Gods bless Terry Pratchett!)
     
  23. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Actually, invasive species can become that in their own habitat. Weird as it sounds..
     
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