What's your opinion of militant vegans?

[lovett]

Oh, and my morals include an axiom that humans > other animals. But I'll be willing to review that one if one of those other animals ever wants to discuss the subject.

Why? And is this 'greaterness' qualitative or quantitative? Could the lives of no number of animals outweigh the pleasure of a human?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Oh, and my morals include an axiom that humans > other animals.

Yeah, that's pretty common. But is there any other non-arbitrary justification then the right of the stronger? And I don't find that one to be very moral to begin with...

 

[innonimatu]

Why? And is this 'greaterness' qualitative or quantitative? Could the lives of no number of animals outweigh the pleasure of a human?

It's an axiom, you get no justification.

And for the second question: only if those animals are somehow relevant to some humans, and the pleasure of other humans is therefore opposed to the pleasure of your hypothetical human. Which re-frames the issue as one of one human versus another. In fact that is exactly why we protect some animals, while killing others without even thinking about it.

 

[innonimatu]

But is there any other non-arbitrary justification then the right of the stronger? And I don't find that one to be very moral to begin with...

It is arbitrary, and it is not at all about the right of the stronger. For example, implicit in that axiom is that a weaker human is considered more "valuable" than a strong animal.

You have to take an arbitrary position to start with. There are only three possibilities:
1) humans are more important than any other animals
2) humans are as important as some animals
3) humans are just as important as any other animal

Take your pick and explain why the first is less moral. I think you are confusing morals with a (misguided) attempt at coherence ("respect every living creature" hippie stuff). Personally I could make up "moral" arguments against any of those.

But I must point out that the third is also suicidal if one were to interpret it as "we must respect all other animals" as, inevitably, we're going to kill more than a few over the course of out natural lives. And the only other possible interpretation for 3) would be "we should use and kill other humans just as we use and kill animals".

I may as well go into detail and explain (again) why I disapprove of 2). And I have two reasons to disapprove. One is logic: because the choice of those some animals to protect will be made by humans, which will have to assume the role of judges - thus the very act of proclaiming some animals "equal to humans" affirms the superiority of the humans doing it... logical contradiction! And the other is moral: people are bound to disagree on which animals to protect, setting humans against humans allegedly for the sake of protecting animals, in reality for the sake of enforcing some human's preferences over those of others. Hardly a paragon of morality, to oppress fellow humans for the sake of some baby seals on the Arctic or "sea kittens" or whatever.


Really, there is no moral high ground on this, actually, it's a matter of preferences. And that's what irks me the most whenever those animal rights activists try to force laws to impose their worldview, and do it with all smug with presumed moral superiority.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I have no problem with veganism or vegetarianism, but do not like anyone advocating their diet militantly.

2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.

I agree that most westerners consume more meat than is healthy for either them or the environment, but believe that the primary reason for this is government subsidies. Rather than trying to disgust individuals out of eating meat, they should focus on fighting the agricultural lobby to end these foolish subsidies.

 

[luiz]

It is arbitrary, and it is not at all about the right of the stronger. For example, implicit in that axiom is that a weaker human is considered more "valuable" than a strong animal.

You have to take an arbitrary position to start with. There are only three possibilities:
1) humans are more important than any other animals
2) humans are as important as some animals
3) humans are just as important as any other animal

Take your pick and explain why the first is less moral. I think you are confusing morals with a (misguided) attempt at coherence ("respect every living creature" hippie stuff). Personally I could make up "moral" arguments against any of those.

But I must point out that the third is also suicidal if one were to interpret it as "we must respect all other animals" as, inevitably, we're going to kill more than a few over the course of out natural lives. And the only other possible interpretation for 3) would be "we should use and kill other humans just as we use and kill animals".

I may as well go into detail and explain (again) why I disapprove of 2). And I have two reasons to disapprove. One is logic: because the choice of those some animals to will be made by humans, which will have to assume the role of judges - thus the very act of proclaiming some animals "equal to humans" affirms the superiority of the humans doing it... logical contradiction! And the other is moral: people are bound to disagree on which animals to protect, setting humans against humans allegedly for the sake of protecting animals, in reality for the sake of enforcing some human's preferences over those of others. Hardly a paragon of morality, to oppress fellow humans for the sake of some baby seals on the Arctic or "sea kittens" or whatever.

Really, there is no moral high ground on this, actually, it's a matter of preferences. And that's what irks me the most whenever those animal rights activists try to force laws to impose their worldview, and do it with all smug with presumed moral superiority.

Good post. You know, despite being a crazy commie, you're one of the best posters here...

 

[MantaRevan]

In my view, Manta Rays and innately superior to all other animals, including us.

Nah, just kidding. A species worth should be determined by their capacity to feel pain/terror. This is why I value an elephant and human equally, however a beluga should be valued higher than a jellyfish.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

@innonimatu
With "right of the stronger" I meant we just exploit and kill animals because we can. Not because we have a sensible moral base from which to derive such a right. And that - because we can and enjoy the pleasures it brings (like eating meat) - we don't care about morality in the first place.
But yes this is an attempt at coherence. But I don't think at all that all living creatures should have any moral rights. Creatures which experience emotions however do, IMO.
This rests on the assumption that all morality in the end rests on emotions. For example it is wrong to kill because people don't want to be killed, which is an emotional desire. And I have to wonder: Why should an animal's natural emotional desire to live be of less worth. Why should its agony due to imprisonment be of less worth? Emotions are emotions. And if we follow this path, I don't see why a moral stance an our relation to animals has to be arbitrary. If I go by my logic I arrive at the second option you proposed: 2) humans are as important as some animals.
But it is not like I propose that we act on that (as said, I like eating meat and hence exploiting animals just as most humans do). I just propose we admit the immorality of it.

One is logic: because the choice of those some animals to protect will be made by humans, which will have to assume the role of judges - thus the very act of proclaiming some animals "equal to humans" affirms the superiority of the humans doing it... logical contradiction!

I am not saying animals are equal to humans. I say in a crucial area they can be - which is having an emotional inner world.

And the other is moral: people are bound to disagree on which animals to protect, setting humans against humans allegedly for the sake of protecting animals, in reality for the sake of enforcing some human's preferences over those of others. Hardly a paragon of morality, to oppress fellow humans for the sake of some baby seals on the Arctic or "sea kittens" or whatever.

What is moral and how moral the actual enforcement of morality is are two separate questions. I am only concerned with the first one for now.

 

[GoodGame]

Why STFU? We fight and die for our civil liberties.

I eat my steak, in moderation, with veggies. If someone wants to tell me meat is murder, let them. I won't believe them of course. If someone want to over-analyze that we are omnivores, let them.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm a Las Vegan. But I'm not really militant. I'm a lover, not a fighter.

 

[plarq]

If someone acts as a Militant Vegetarian (TM), I'll be a Militant Cannibal!

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

What's your opinion of militant vegans?

They'll eat all the plant life on Earth someday...

 

[lovett]

It's an axiom, you get no justification.

I was asking why it was an axiom. You attempt to defend why below:

It is arbitrary, and it is not at all about the right of the stronger. For example, implicit in that axiom is that a weaker human is considered more "valuable" than a strong animal.

You have to take an arbitrary position to start with. There are only three possibilities:
1) humans are more important than any other animals
2) humans are as important as some animals
3) humans are just as important as any other animal

Take your pick and explain why the first is less moral. I think you are confusing morals with a (misguided) attempt at coherence ("respect every living creature" hippie stuff). Personally I could make up "moral" arguments against any of those.

But I must point out that the third is also suicidal if one were to interpret it as "we must respect all other animals" as, inevitably, we're going to kill more than a few over the course of out natural lives. And the only other possible interpretation for 3) would be "we should use and kill other humans just as we use and kill animals".

I may as well go into detail and explain (again) why I disapprove of 2). And I have two reasons to disapprove. One is logic: because the choice of those some animals to protect will be made by humans, which will have to assume the role of judges - thus the very act of proclaiming some animals "equal to humans" affirms the superiority of the humans doing it... logical contradiction! And the other is moral: people are bound to disagree on which animals to protect, setting humans against humans allegedly for the sake of protecting animals, in reality for the sake of enforcing some human's preferences over those of others. Hardly a paragon of morality, to oppress fellow humans for the sake of some baby seals on the Arctic or "sea kittens" or whatever.

Really, there is no moral high ground on this, actually, it's a matter of preferences. And that's what irks me the most whenever those animal rights activists try to force laws to impose their worldview, and do it with all smug with presumed moral superiority.

And here I think you make a simple mistake. We do not have to conceive of the moral value of animals in one of the three ways you enunciate. Your framework supposes that each species has a certain intrinsic importance that makes members of that species inviolable. Your claim is that only humans have any intrinsic importance, so only humans are inviolable. We can do pretty much whatever we please to animals.

But we do not need to look at the issue in this way at all. We can claim that animals are valuable without claiming that they are inviolable, and without claiming they arem ore valuable than humans. This is, I believe, the claim we would normally make about people. Human life is valuable but it is not inviolable; that is why we are allowed to kill someone in the ticking-bomb scenario.

I do not find this claim implausible nor necessarily arbitrary. If we have a plausible theory of value and animals have value according to that theory we can say animals are valuable. If we have a moral theory linking value to rightness (i.e. a consequentialist moral theory) we can say things about what we ought and ought not do vis a vis animals.

I can see little plausibility in any theory of value that would not give animals some of that value. We generally believe that happiness and pleasure are valuable; the world is in a better state if people are happy or experience pleasure than if they do not. Consequently, because animals can be happy and can experience pleasure their lives are valuable.

Again, that does not mean they are more valuable than humans. I believe that the development of autonomy, the cultivation of appropriate personal relationships and the exercise of our rational capacities are of intrinsic value. Animals cannot, for instance, exercise rational capacity and therefore we need not conclude that each animal life is as valuable as each human life.

What it does mean is that we should take into account the value of animal lives when making decisions. Your claim denies that animal lives have any value and I believe that that is arbitrary; you have not given a theory of value that would substantiate this. If we do assign animal lives value than it is quite plausible that the pleasure you or I get from eating factory-farmed chicken is outweighed by the enormous suffering said animals underwent on their long way to the slaughterhouse. That does not mean we can do nothing with animals; keeping pets (for instance) does not seem to damage animals but is certainly of value to people. Indeed, we might still be able to justify some sort of meat-industry, in which the livestock are treated very well up until and including their being slaughtered.

What it means is that we take into account the interests of animals when we make decisions. We do not treat animals as if they were valueless and as if there suffering meant nothing, which is largely what we do today. We accept that human life is of higher value, but we assert animal life has value nonetheless. We assert this because animals are capable of suffering and happiness, and these things are of disvalue and value respectively.

This conclusion is not touched by your contrary arguments. It is no contradiction* to assume the role of judges in such circumstances. We can judge because of our (valuable) rational capacities. But this does not entail that animal life is valueless simplicter.

Nor is this merely a matter of enforcing preference, any more than the assertion 'torturing people is wrong' is merely a matter of enforcing preference. I believe torturing people is wrong because of the incredible damage it does to people and because of the disvalue of this damage. Similarly, the normative conclusion 'factory farming is wrong' is something one might believe because of the incredible suffering factory farming inflicts and the disvalue of this suffering. If the latter is 'mere preference' than so is the former; that it is a preference is suddenly not a criticism. If my view that 'torturing people is wrong' has normative significance despite it merely being an expression of preferences, so do views on animal rights.

As it happens, I do not believe either to be the expression of preference. I believe them to be assertion of moral fact; it is fact that torturing people is wrong and it is fact that factory farming is likewise. This is the case because some consequentialist theory is true and that theory has an account of value similar to the one I propose. We should not factory farm and we should not needlessly injure animals, even though human life is more valuable than animal life.

Your thinking goes wrong in that it is needlessly polarized. You seem to think we cannot have a sliding scale of value. When assigning value, and moral rights, we must assign it either totally or not at all. We must say either that a species (or animals in general) is absolutely every bit as valuable as humans or that it has absolutely no value whatsoever. But this is false. We can say that animals are less valuable than humans whilst still maintaining they have some value. This is precisely the position I have defended above, and I have elucidated some of the normative implication of this.

*The argument you propose certainly does not identify a logical contradiction, by the way. It would do so only if we conceived of 'equal' as 'equal-in-every-sense'. But we need not (and should not) conceive of equal in this way. In liberal democracies we claim that everyone is equal, but it is patently obvious that we are not equal in every sense. What we mean is morally equal; everyone has the same moral rights. Similarly, the claim that animals are equal to humans (a claim I do not endorse) should be construed as the claim that animals are morally equal to humans. They have the same moral rights.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

@ lovett
Now that's a good post Can't find nothing wrong with it.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Life is valuable. So if I won't die of not killing the fly or putting on fur of wild animal, I won't make those things. Though, the meat diet has became crucial in human evolution so to have a good life by natural given standards I have to eat it. Then again, there are extremely many people on Earth, so I have to think and control my needs deeper to lessen the harm my life cause to life of other beings and the Life on Earth as a whole.

Btw, lawn mowing is bad and evil. The Lord will punish all mower men.

 

[El_Machinae]

The problem is that wise vegetarianism is better for beings other than just the immediate animal on the plate. This is why those who mock the vegetarians are usually wrong.

The libertarian in me is offended by the subsidized nature of the meat industry, and doesn't want a welfare burger for the same reason he's not interested in taking a make-work stimulus job or an EI extension just because he can. Or, I get their importance if they were necessary for me. But they're not necessary for me, I'm doing fine. And I'm also not interested in foisting additional medicare costs on the next generation, who're forced to pay for me when I get sick, just because I ate an unhealthy diet. Oh, I'll take their money when I'm desperate, but I'm not going to consciously and selfishly increase their burden now, on welfare burgers. BBQ my steak, get colon cancer, and take medicare? Sounds wildly hypocritical to me.

The environmentalist in me is also interested in human welfare, and recognises that wise vegetarianism is provable vastly superior to meat consumption when it comes to protecting the environment. Hey, human welfare is important. The healthier nature is (when we get around to utilizing it or consuming it), the better off humans will be. In fact, people who overconsume certain meats are giving much more of a giant finger to future humans, chomping down on their welfare burgers while muffling something about the value of humans between bites. "Acquiphers degradet?" they'll muffle "I care hnot!". "Osheanic deahdzones? Pshaaw!"

Finally, yeah, I value animal suffering (and the avoidance thereof) at less than 'zero' (dividing by zero is undefinable!). I value human life at more than an animal's life. I'll happily trade animals for more human-days! Need to eat a rat to stay alive one more day? Sure! But the moral difference of you needlessly torturing it to death, or cleanly killing it, remains. One is superior morality to the other.

 

[KaiserElectric]

Militant vegetarian sounds like an oxymoron.

Seriously though, I have no problem with vegetarianism. I'm a carnivore, and I have several friends who are vegetarian. We get along fine. More meat for me!

Although I think it's incredibly naive to consider a human life equal to that of an animal life. Show me a cow that's created a great work of art or a giraffe that composed an opera and maybe I'll be inclined to believe you that all species are equally intelligent.

 

[MantaRevan]

Show me one cow or pig that has ruined his planet.

But on another note, I'm glad I became a vegetarian, but vegans still seem a bit radical to me.

I don't see a problem with using animals for things if they don't get hurt by it.

 

[KaiserElectric]

Show me one cow or pig that has ruined his planet.

Just don't start that up. That's a whole other can of worms.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Although I think it's incredibly naive to consider a human life equal to that of an animal life. Show me a cow that's created a great work of art or a giraffe that composed an opera and maybe I'll be inclined to believe you that all species are equally intelligent.

So we should exploit all the forest and cows to create the Art! And destroy everything for the sake of it if needed, because art requires sacrifice!

Seriously, intelligence means also that you can control your destructive, exploitive and aggressive nature and protect the world around when you see its weak spots (such as less intelligent species or less advanced organisms) at least from yourself.

And what is the value of the art if there would be nothing but humans and the human world. That would be disgusting.

What is the value of humanity's morality if the humanity can't extrapolate it to the other species and natural world around and at the same time asks in its fantasies of external superior species to act that way relative to humans?