Quiet, Almost too quiet

[Farm Boy]

That there are economic reasons for tracking yields, and there are good ones, does not alter the fact that there are also very good ethical reasons for tracking numerical slaughter, method of slaughter, and effective returns from the act of slaughter as well. Putting one cockerel through a shredder because it's economically efficient to do so may not rise to the level of an ethical imperative to halt the practice of harvesting eggs, but neither is it an null ethical act.

 

[aelf]

It is not, but that problem is usually dealt with by having certain standards and enforcing those standards through inspections and penalties for failure to observe them. It's not dealt with by counting the number of chickens slaughtered, which may be useful info but for other purposes. I am also all for safe abortions, with proper information and advice given and late term ones requiring more oversight - those are the standards for ethical practice.

 

[Farm Boy]

Doesn't change the baseline that even though there may be standards to meet breeding and shredding the cockrel is still an ethical negative. Doing it twice is repeating the negative. Doing it a million times is a systemic negative. Were it feasible, nay, when it's feasible, to breed pullets without hatching cockrels to shred, or even just significantly less cockrels to shred, mere inconvenience isn't going to excuse the abysmal stewardship of not acting on it.

 

[aelf]

I would say that just straight up shredding live chickens doesn't meet the baseline standards that I want. Now what?

 

[Farm Boy]

Make it any hypothetical method of killing the unwanted chicken you want. Stipulate that it's instantaneous and painless and we're still in the ethical territory of it being careless to intentionally breed a life merely to destroy it without, in the situation of the chicken, a good use. If it becomes possible to fertilize chicken eggs such that unwanted cockrels are not produced not only would there be potential for increased economic efficiency there is ground for improvement in the ethics of stewardship as it pertains to the raising of chickens for eggs and meat. If it becomes possible to efficiently identify and destroy fertilized cockrel bearing eggs prior to hatching the same benefits apply though somewhat diminished. No life is of zero worth even if it livestock raised for consumption. Intentionally embarking on a course of any course of action that specifically creates that life increases the obligation due. It is absolutely shameful, for example, how much food is wasted in the US every day, and not only because of the disparity of distribution within global society. Having intentionally created life in order to kill and consume it one of the most callous actions then possible is to waste it.

 

[aelf]

Seems like whatever objection you have raised are examples that might be bad in other ways, not simply because lives are taken away. If you truly believe that taking away lives is inherently bad and should be minimised, then you'd even have a problem with harvesting plants in a way that kills them.

No. The most coherent argument for animal rights is utilitarian in nature and revolves around the idea of unneeded suffering, which is why the same doesn't apply to plants. You could go the whole way and say that raising animals in captivity for consumption causes suffering, but then you'd have to be a vegetarian to maintain a good semblance of integrity.

You are not a vegetarian, are you, Mr. Farm Boy?

 

[Farm Boy]

Wasting plants is a badness too Mr. Aelf. That the plant isn't capable of suffering as the cockrel is capable matters, but if I use 10 tillable acres of this earth and burn both diesel and my labor to make them grow a crop using fertility that needs to be replenished with inputs then neither the plants themselves nor the crops and profit they may produce are of null living ethical value either. We create monocultures and enforce them, or we create more complex living cultures but enforce them too. How we approach stewardship in each situation says something about how we treat the whole. It's quite possible to raise chickens that one then eats while cherishing both the chicken and the sustaining of the system that allows both the chicken and the consumer to be. It's also quite possible to weep sincerely over dogs destroyed by animal control while buying a new pet from the puppy mill down the road.

 

[aelf]

Like I said, "waste" doesn't necessarily have anything to do with taking lives. Those are two quite distinct issues. If you want to come up with an ethical argument about animal rights, you just have to either refer to the idea of unneeded suffering or some variant of "cruelty towards animals is not what good people engage in." Anything else is probably not going to make sense.

At any rate, you still have no case for arguing that all abortion is bad.

 

[Farm Boy]

Waste very much often has to do with it, especially as it pertains to animals. The intentional cruelty inflicted upon lab rats may indeed wind up classified as "needful" suffering, but breeding many extra rats beyond what is useful for scientific work is still unethical. Even if those rats can be culled painlessly, even if they have decent rat lives prior to the culling, it does not justify breeding something through either intent or avoidable neglect, merely to kill it for no useful purpose. Doing so might be easy, it might be accidental, these realities may be ameliorating of ethical fault, but it does not make it an ethical null.

I don't think I've ever argued that all abortion is bad for whatever that happens to be worth to you. If I have no case for that extremely rigid stance it is by design. It's a stance I would, and have, here, disagreed with.

 

[aelf]

Your ethical argument is incoherent. Merely asserting that things are not "an ethical null" and tacking on statements about wastage aren't meaningful. Yes, wastage is bad, but that is distinct from the issue of taking lives. Is the taking of lives justified in certain instances for certain purposes? That is the ethical question that must be answered. The issue of wastage is merely a tangent; lives taken for no reason could certainly be considered the inflicting of unneeded suffering, simple enough. The more interesting issue is whether a whole category of human activity should be considered unethical to begin with. That's kind of like the debate about abortion, no? If what you're saying is that there's an excess of abortions, such that there's a "waste" of human lives, which is unethical, then I would ask how you're quantifying it.

And if you don't always have an issue with abortion, then why do you want it included under the statistic for fatalities? You know that they are different things and lots of people weigh them differently. Only people who are against abortion would insist they are equivalent.

 

[onejayhawk]

Your ethical argument is incoherent. Merely asserting that things are not "an ethical null" and tacking on statements about wastage aren't meaningful. Yes, wastage is bad, but that is distinct from the issue of taking lives. Is the taking of lives justified in certain instances for certain purposes? That is the ethical question that must be answered. The issue of wastage is merely a tangent; lives taken for no reason could certainly be considered the inflicting of unneeded suffering, simple enough. The more interesting issue is whether a whole category of human activity should be considered unethical to begin with. That's kind of like the debate about abortion, no? If what you're saying is that there's an excess of abortions, such that there's a "waste" of human lives, which is unethical, then I would ask how you're quantifying it.

And if you don't always have an issue with abortion, then why do you want it included under the statistic for fatalities? You know that they are different things and lots of people weigh them differently. Only people who are against abortion would insist they are equivalent.

That's rich.

J

 

[Farm Boy]

Not all taking of life is equivalent. If it was equivalent I'd be shouting ''murderers!' or some such other thing. The fact that I'm not indicates my understanding and agreement with this point. The fact that I value the lives of chickens while also eating them whilst knowing what goes into their production also indicates this. What it does not indicate is that the killing of something, even the ''needful'' killing of something as you put it, or if it's simply justifiable instead, doesn't mean something wasn't killed. Something was. Or many somethings were and will be. That the killing is deemed acceptable by us matters not a whit as far as the life ended is concerned. It was still the infliction of end-game suffering. That's why I'll include abortions in the fatalities, understanding full well people view deaths by mass shootings, traffic accidents, tobacco usage, and abortion(or even eating chickens) all differently from one another. The benefits from tolerating the losses vary, the costs of enforcing reductions vary, the tally and toll society bears by prioritizing convenience, or pleasure, or freedom over different types of life differ.

I think, if I'm reading you right, you're making a much more difficult argument. That one type of ending life isn't a meaningful act of killing or fatality, or at least not meaningful enough that quantifying it matters, to track at all?

We can dispense of the argumentation around sexuality itself being immoral, if that was what you mean by the more interesting part? It's not anymore than driving a car is innately immoral because that activity can result in violent death. However, driving a car without buckling in your toddler is almost certainly immoral if he/she can be buckled in. Driving a car through traffic while wasted is almost certainly immoral. Sexuality is much the same in some ways. A valuable but abusable activity.

How do I quantify abortions to determine what level is meaningful? For the takeaway I'm forwarding here I don't need to quantify it precisely to know that 700,000 to 1,200,000 aborted pregnancies a year in a rich nation of 300 million total and the number of unintended pregnancies a year on top of that which are not aborted signifies, if even absolutely nothing else, a severe lack of education. It very well may also signify a culture of recklessness in addition to that. The number won't hit zero, but being satisfied with the level we have now is just abysmal.

 

[aelf]

That's rich.

That's poor.

Not all taking of life is equivalent. If it was equivalent I'd be shouting ''murderers!' or some such other thing. The fact that I'm not indicates my understanding and agreement with this point. The fact that I value the lives of chickens while also eating them whilst knowing what goes into their production also indicates this. What it does not indicate is that the killing of something, even the ''needful'' killing of something as you put it, or if it's simply justifiable instead, doesn't mean something wasn't killed. Something was. Or many somethings were and will be. That the killing is deemed acceptable by us matters not a whit as far as the life ended is concerned. It was still the infliction of end-game suffering. That's why I'll include abortions in the fatalities, understanding full well people view deaths by mass shootings, traffic accidents, tobacco usage, and abortion(or even eating chickens) all differently from one another. The benefits from tolerating the losses vary, the costs of enforcing reductions vary, the tally and toll society bears by prioritizing convenience, or pleasure, or freedom over different types of life differ.

There's still a categorical difference between fatalities caused by mass shootings, traffic accidents, etc and the number of lives ended by abortions. That's the issue you're tiptoeing around. The former examples involve the lives of persons, which are in a different ethical category (as consistent with almost all modes of living in contemporary society); the latter may not.

 

[Farm Boy]

There are differences, differences I very much am trying to address head on - we'd be in a far different situation if we lost a million people a year to mass shootings - what I'm failing to agree to is the concept that one killing is beneath the importance of tracking as human fatality. I'd need to stipulate two things to make that true: first that null suffering is inflicted on human life by ending it through abortion(even needful and protectable abortion), second, that there is no negative cost or consequence born by those who abort from the decision and action itself. I don't think either is true.

 

[aelf]

I'd need to stipulate two things to make that true: first that null suffering is inflicted on human life by ending it through abortion(even needful and protectable abortion), second, that there is no negative cost or consequence born by those who abort from the decision and action itself. I don't think either is true.

You'd need some kind of evidence that there is suffering even without a capacity to suffer, which I suspect is in short supply. As for negative cost or consequence, in a society where the proper procedures and education are used and available, that is up to the individual and not for you to decide.

 

[Farm Boy]

You'd need some kind of evidence that there is suffering even without a capacity to suffer, which I suspect is in short supply. As for negative cost or consequence, in a society where the proper procedures and education are used and available, that is up to the individual and not for you to decide.

Being killed is suffering. That pain is not possible is ameliorating. That consciousness is developing, not developed, is ameliorating. But without capacity to suffer? Now that is zealous. And a hard argument to make in its intractability. The pullet can suffer. The cockrell bearing egg can suffer. We can suffer societally for treating either callously.

As far as individuals making up their own mind in how they are impacted by their own decisions? Damn straight. I'm not the one reading in a default response for them, I'm just taking people that have made that decision at their word, how they go is in many different ways. Some are not harmed, some are. I think the harm is a problem, at least enough of a problem not to act as if I do not care. Now that would be unacceptably arrogant.

 

[aelf]

Being killed is suffering. That pain is not possible is ameliorating. That consciousness is developing, not developed, is ameliorating. But without capacity to suffer? Now that is zealous. And a hard argument to make in its intractability. The pullet can suffer. The cockrell bearing egg can suffer. We can suffer societally for treating either callously.

So you're saying that an embryo has the capacity to suffer/feel pain? That's like the entire basis for the ethicality of abortions. Successfully argue that and you have the tools to outlaw abortions. I'd like some proof, naturally.

As far as individuals making up their own mind in how they are impacted by their own decisions? Damn straight. I'm not the one reading in a default response for them, I'm just taking people that have made that decision at their word, how they go is in many different ways. Some are not harmed, some are. I think the harm is a problem, at least enough of a problem not to act as if I do not care. Now that would be unacceptably arrogant.

If the individual chooses to go through with it, I don't see why not? Even if the individual suffers some consequence later on. That's why there needs to be proper education - informed choice; no more, no less. Your position smells a bit like old-style patriarchalism.

 

[Belzhorash]

You need a cerebral cortex to feel pain.
Embryos have no cortex.
Also, there aren't even brain waves in the first 5 months...
Source: I'm a nurse.

(Sorry to bust in, btw.)

Edit, additional Source: http://www.rcog.org.uk/files/rcog-corp/RCOGFetalAwarenessWPR0610.pdf

 

[Farm Boy]

So you're saying that an embryo has the capacity to suffer/feel pain? That's like the entire basis for the ethicality of abortions. Successfully argue that and you have the tools to outlaw abortions. I'd like some proof, naturally.

I'm not sure how many times I have to say it before you'll listen to it, so here it is again. It might just be a distinction you don't make, or possibly a distinction you won't make on this specific issue. I am not saying an embryo can feel pain. I am saying pain is a type of suffering. I am saying being killed causes something to suffer death, which is end-game suffering. Pain may or may not be associated. I am not saying abortion, as a category, should be outlawed. I have before, and likely will again, argue that it should not be. If you want proof that embryos cannot feel pain El Mac has before and likely will be willing to offer it should you find him trustworthy.

If the individual chooses to go through with it, I don't see why not? Even if the individual suffers some consequence later on. That's why there needs to be proper education - informed choice; no more, no less. Your position smells a bit like old-style patriarchalism.

How is any of this Patriarchal? Seriously. I've argued for education. I'll argue for information. I'll argue for support of those in pain, I'll argue in support of those not in pain. None of these arguments are at all inhibited by the fact that we should discourage ignorance of consequences. That we should take care not to be reckless in the outcomes of our actions both on ourselves and on others. That we should make responsible behavior accessible, convenient, and acceptable.

 

[aelf]

You need a cerebral cortex to feel pain.
Embryos have no cortex.
Also, there aren't even brain waves in the first 5 months...
Source: I'm a nurse.

(Sorry to bust in, btw.)

Edit, additional Source: http://www.rcog.org.uk/files/rcog-corp/RCOGFetalAwarenessWPR0610.pdf

Thanks for that.

I'm not sure how many times I have to say it before you'll listen to it, so here it is again. It might just be a distinction you don't make, or possibly a distinction you won't make on this specific issue. I am not saying an embryo can feel pain. I am saying pain is a type of suffering. I am saying being killed causes something to suffer death, which is end-game suffering. Pain may or may not be associated. I am not saying abortion, as a category, should be outlawed. I have before, and likely will again, argue that it should not be. If you want proof that embryos cannot feel pain El Mac has before and likely will be willing to offer it should you find him trustworthy.

So let me see your thesis on why death is an "end-game suffering."

How is any of this Patriarchal? Seriously. I've argued for education. I'll argue for information. I'll argue for support of those in pain, I'll argue in support of those not in pain. None of these arguments are at all inhibited by the fact that we should discourage ignorance of consequences. That we should take care not to be reckless in the outcomes of our actions both on ourselves and on others. That we should make responsible behavior accessible, convenient, and acceptable.

"I'm not really saying this, but..."?

Seems like you either agree with me entirely, if I take what you're saying now literally, and you're not actually adding anything new. Or you're just running circles trying to argue some elusive point that is masking something else, which I've always thought you're wont to do and which is what your belaboured attempts so far seem to indicate.

Please enlighten me on what your contention actually is, without the BS, besides possibly that "Every life is precious."