Ethical Vegetarianism/Veganism

[Mise]

My own view is that I'm quite convinced that, at least, eating meat produced using standard meat-production practices is wrong (assuming, plausibly I think, that those practices cause pain to animals). I do not think eating meat as such is wrong. I still eat meat though... weakness of will.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter. I believe it's wrong to cause harm to animals, and believe that eating meat causes more harm to animals than is justifiable or necessary, but I still eat meat because it doesn't rank very highly on my list of things I care about.

I do try and eat less meat though. I stick to only 1 portion of meat a day, so if I eat meat at lunch, I don't also eat it at dinner. The way I see it, I'm not Mother Theresa, I'm no saint, I do morally wrong things all the time, and a certainly don't do the most moral thing every time. I give some money to charity, but nowhere near as much as I could give without suffering appreciably myself (I could easily double or increase 10-fold my charitable donations without affecting my life at all). I lie to people when it suits me - sometimes little white lies, other times lies to make my life easier, such as "I'm busy at the moment but I'll do it when I can", when I could easily do it straight away and improve someone else's welfare. There are loads of things that I do that are explicitly immoral, let alone things that aren't maximally moral.

But I'm okay with that. I'm okay with being a little bit hypocritical, or a little bit immoral, because it makes my life easier. And it makes me happier. So sod it: I just don't care.

 

[Brighteye]

I do mean death, specifically though I mean the death of a conscious, pain-feeling life-form.

Why choose 'death of a conscious, pain-feeling life-form' as your arbitrary distinction?

Harm: Any sort of damage inflicted upon the animal is harm, even if this damage is instantaneous painless killing. Harm: any pain inflicted upon the animal.

But as Fifty said, this is outside the scope and I was merely pondering what exactly constitutes harm. By now this has dragged on long enough, so I hope you get my drift and the thread can continue.
Wearing leather outfits, building theme parks going on holiday with a plane are all excellent ways to harm animals.

Eating food produced by modern farming practices involves harm to animals, because even arable farmers kill pests to protect their crops.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

eating meat is not wrong, but raising absurd numbers of animals in conditions that make auschwitz seem like a playground IS wrong. consider me a hypocrite on this one as I do eat meat raised in such conditions very often. shame on me.

 

[Fifty]

Fair enough, but that doesnt say anything about the concept of eating meat.

Ok, but nowhere did I say that we needed to focus solely on the concept.

Also, do you eat meat created using standard industrial farming practices? If so, why?

Is it always unethical to damage the environment or is there a treshold?

Well of course there's a threshold, but I don't think its any big indictment against the environment argument to say that the threshold is fuzzy. If you think anything is permissible that admits of shades of grey and fuzziness, then nearly everything is permissible.

Obviously wrong damage to the environment: Turning earth into a nuclear wasteland for the amount of utility you get from eating a chocolate bar.

Obviously justified damage to the environment: Chopping down one tree to save a billion lives.

And in between somewhere is meat-eating's environmental impact. I'm not well-versed in the empirical literature on this, but my vague understanding is that mass meat production (particularly given the types of meat we tend to eat, resource-intensive stuff like corn-fed cows) is one of the most environmentally harmful things we practice. It takes massive amounts of water, land, and energy to produce meat, compared to what it would take to produce equivalent calories of non-meat food. If I'm wrong on this, I'm happy to be enlightened by someone who knows the literature better than me.

Also, define damage to the environment.

I probably can't give necessary and sufficient conditions for what constitutes damage to the environment, but I don't think I need to either. One type of damage would be using much more resources than necessary to achieve a desired end. Another would be , say, poisoning water with farm runoff, though I'm much less convinced by those sorts of considerations (that is, I'm not convinced farm runoff is a super big deal).

If there is a treshold, it would be negotiable where that is, i think this would make it a political issue then, rather than a philosophical one.

It would be a philosophical issue to determine the criteria for putting a threshold somewhere, it would be a political issue to determine implement a policy for the actual practice of meat production.

An accidental outcome that is not intrinsic to vegetarian vs meat-eating debate. In some countries, animals are raised on unwanted land etc and so are good for the environment.

Thus, arguing that animals should or should not be killed because it is good or bad for the environment is an accidental and unconnected argument. It does not follow that it is moral to kill animals if it could be shown to be good for the environment.

You are correct that it is accidental and unconnected to the intrinsic wrongness of killing and eating animals, but then so is the pain issue.

But it isn't unconnected to the debate in general, obviously, and I see no reason why we ought to restrict ourselves to the intrinsic wrongness. I certainly didn't stipulate as such in the OP.

Ethically, animals have either been created by God to serve as food for us, or we have evolved to use them as prey. Therefore eating meat is part of human nature and in that respect ethical.

Ignoring the irrelevant God option, just because its natural to do something doesn't mean its ethical to do that thing.

 

[Ayn Rand]

Why choose 'death of a conscious, pain-feeling life-form' as your arbitrary distinction?

It is one form of harm, and seems reasonable for the purposes of the discussion - but other forms of harm or distinctions are valid in ethics. My knowledge of ethics is not brilliant so I'd consider another definition.

Do you think this defintion holds up for the purposes of defining meat-eating as harmful?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Alright, here's my rational, ethical justification of me eating meat.

I could go and state we need meat in our diets because of the protein. We are omnivores so our bodies are build to eat meat and vegetables. But, there are other ways of getting proteins.

Now the simple fact of the matter is I eat meat because I like to enjoy what I eat. There are few substitutes which I like to eat, and only eating those substitutes will not make a healthy varied diet. Unless I turn to substitutes I don't like to eat. There is the rationalization. I don't see a problem in including enjoyment and availability in that rationalization.

Now ethics is tricky. Ethics is related to morality, and what morality are we using here. Ayn Rand's, mine or society's? And which society? To be certain I looked up a definition

ethics
ethics, in philosophy, the study and evaluation of human conduct in the light of moral principles. Moral principles may be viewed either as the standard of conduct that individuals have constructed for themselves or as the body of obligations and duties that a particular society requires of its members.

Moral principles as decided by either individuals on themselves or societies. Technically, if I can comply with one of them, I check the ethical box.

Well, the standard of conduct that animals are being kept solely for purposes of consumption within the rules of a society. In our society that would be to treat the animal as humane as possible before it is processed. So, in that light the ethical side of the argument isn't that hard.

The moral principles I place on myself is self evident.

So, the moral principles I probably do not meet are yours Ayn Rand. If you want a ethical, rational explanation based on your moral principles, you're not going to be satisfied with any answer from someone who has different moral principles.

 

[luiz]

Excellent. Can you contribute a logical, rational and ethical proof of that, as outlined in post 2?

No. Eating meat is part of nature, that's good enough for me.

 

[Ayn Rand]

So, the moral principles I probably do not meet are yours Ayn Rand. If you want a ethical, rational explanation based on your moral principles, you're not going to be satisfied with any answer from someone who has different moral principles.

This is like saying that because we don't agree, we aren't going to agree - slightly pointless and a failure to find objective principles. This is relativism and subjectivism - so granted, from such principles, we are not going to agree. However, from such principles we will not agree about anything - it is clear that the concept of agreement, in relativist and subjective terms, is almost impossible.

So I accept your statements, but only to the extent that they are relative and subjective - which you stated as much in your conclusion.

However, to be fair, I was interested in whether an objective defence of the ethics of eating meat is possible. So I accept your relativist defence as relativist, but in objective terms I don't think you presented what I was looking for. It's no big deal, but to be honest I don't think you even tried to make an objective argument and you were aware of that - you all but stated that you were ejecting out of the argument by means of relativism. I don't mean to appear dogmatic, but I do want to see if anyone can make an objective defence of meat eating.

No. Eating meat is part of nature, that's good enough for me.

Good response - I find your honesty/clarity refreshing

 

[azzaman333]

Not eating meat is wrong.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

However, to be fair, I was interested in whether an objective defence of the ethics of eating meat is possible.

Well, I reached the conclusion it isn't. But keep in mind that that conclusion also included that an objective defense of eating meat as being unethical is not possible. Since it hinges on moral principles. Maybe I'm horribly misrepresenting the ethical side since I only have a basic and very amateur understanding of philosophy.

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

I think eating meat is ethically sub-optimal, but my reasoning is more a matter of food production and the human suffering caused by food shortages in many parts of the world. I eat fish.

 

[Ayn Rand]

Well, I reached the conclusion it isn't. But keep in mind that that conclusion also included that an objective defense of eating meat as being unethical is not possible. Since it hinges on moral principles. Maybe I'm horribly misrepresenting the ethical side since I only have a basic and very amateur understanding of philosophy.

I agree with this statement, it's the same for me of course. Hence my interest in scouting out the objective high-ground, so to speak.

And if I am not mistaken, we have both agreed on the principle under discussion [as you noted].

I think eating meat is ethically sub-optimal, but my reasoning is more a matter of food production and the human suffering caused by food shortages in many parts of the world. I eat fish.

I know a couple of people who say they are vegetarians but eat fish. How does that work? Do you think of yourself as vegetarian?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

We sure did

 

[Brighteye]

It is one form of harm, and seems reasonable for the purposes of the discussion - but other forms of harm or distinctions are valid in ethics. My knowledge of ethics is not brilliant so I'd consider another definition.

Do you think this defintion holds up for the purposes of defining meat-eating as harmful?

I don't mean to appear dogmatic, but I do want to see if anyone can make an objective defence of meat eating.

My quibble is with the link between harm and morality. I see no reason to base morality on causing harm. I chose to lead into this by pointing out that you have already qualified 'harm' as 'harm to pain-feeling, conscious animals'. The more qualifications one introduces, the closer one might come to your opinions, but these qualifications really need some sort of justification. Since the whole argument rests on this proposition, I think that discussing it further is worthwhile.

I think that the further qualifications come not through any set of fundamental principles that lead to them, but in an attempt to rationalise moral beliefs that are already held. This sort of 'post hoc justification' is common (as far as I know) in philosophy and science, but is really not good enough.

I suggest that we start with looking at why we do not cause harm to others and defining very clearly a moral principle there before we start trying to apply it to practical cases.
If we always think of the practical cases as we're devising a principle we might bias our ideas of what is logical by trying to make the principle's conclusions fit our preconceived notions rather than finding a sound principle and applying it in order to decide what our notions should be.

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

I know a couple of people who say they are vegetarians but eat fish. How does that work? Do you think of yourself as vegetarian?

I think of myself as me. I'm not buying into any identity. I just made a compromise based on principle and preference moderated by practicality.

 

[Spidernova]

I eat fish, more for reasons of food production efficiency. I see nothing wrong with eating meat itself, only with the practices used in modern meat production

 

[Defiant47]

The meat is already in the grocery store. The animal is already dead. Choosing not to purchase that meat will not magically make the animal who it came from come back to life.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

So this is an offshoot of the cats thread. I am making it so that one doesn't get threadjacked.

How do people feel about ethical vegetarianism? Poll is forthcoming.

My own view is that I'm quite convinced that, at least, eating meat produced using standard meat-production practices is wrong (assuming, plausibly I think, that those practices cause pain to animals). I do not think eating meat as such is wrong. I still eat meat though... weakness of will.

Some stuff: Just consider vegetarianism and veganism combined... I don't think anything important turns on the distinction between the two.

If you voted that you think eating meat is wrong (in some or all circumstances) but are not a vegetarian, why not?

I suppose an argument for ethical vegitarianism could also be produced by referencing the incredible amounts of potential human food that is wasted by feeding cattle and livestock. I don't remember exact numbers, but it was somewhere along the lines that it takes 50 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, with various but similar amounts for other kinds. The point being that, if we stopped eating meat, then we would have food abound (even more so than now); not only would we have all the land used to grow cattle feed at our disposal, but also all the land we ranch those cattle on (not that all ranching-quality land is useful for cultivation, but some is). The United States alone could feed the world at present, supposedly, in such a scenario.

 

[azzaman333]

I suppose an argument for ethical vegitarianism could also be produced by referencing the incredible amounts of potential human food that is wasted by feeding cattle and livestock. I don't remember exact numbers, but it was somewhere along the lines that it takes 50 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, with various but similar amounts for other kinds. The point being that, if we stopped eating meat, then we would have food abound (even more so than now); not only would we have all the land used to grow cattle feed at our disposal, but also all the land we ranch those cattle on (not that all ranching-quality land is useful for cultivation, but some is). The United States alone could feed the world at present, supposedly, in such a scenario.

Except I like steak and I'm not willing to give it up.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Except I like steak and I'm not willing to give it up.

Fortunately the choice need not be made now.