Veganism: I honestly don't understand it

[GreNME]

"Afraid? I'm not afraid of Nothin... 'cept a box of matches"

I was simply adjusting the heiress scenario to fit your insertion of "pleasure" in the the argument. Eating meat give pleasure thus killing the cow is OK. By the same token, if the heiress gets pleasure from putting down the dog then doing so must be OK.

You choose to eat meat, and eating that meat requires the death of an animal. All that is being asked is why you feel your choice (that results in death of an animal) is more important or morally superior to any other choice (that results in death of an animal). Its simple reductio ad absurdum.

I'm sorry if this line of reasoning is painful for you, but, as I said very early in this thread, little of what we choose to eat is based on logic and when faced with logic we may choose to ignore it. I know I do (see where I readily admit to hunting/killing/eating deer).

The only problem is that not everyone uses moral arguments from which to base their diets. In fact, outside of the vegan/vegetarian diets, the only other examples that do such a thing are religious in nature (as far as I can tell).

It's not about pleasure, it's about practicality and accepting that death is a part of that cycle. As I mentioned in the other thread I'm not opposed to someone choosing to use their moral arguments to dictate their diet, I'm simply pointing out that not everyone does. All of this trying to moralize something that has thus far been a mostly morally neutral issue for people creates an is-ought problem in the argument-- we can agree on what is when not attributing motives (malicious or otherwise), but the problem comes when voicing what we think ought to be (which is where the attribution of motive comes sneaking in). And to be fair, I think the original post does as much of this as the opposite of the OP's message.

 

[Drudgewire]

"Afraid? I'm not afraid of Nothin... 'cept a box of matches"

"In my bartender's pockets I still carry, out of habit, wooden matches. As long as there are fuses, no walls are safe. As long as every wall is threatened, the world can happen. Outlaws are can openers in the supermarket of life."
-Still Life with Woodpecker

 

[Cain]

The Heiress has no reason AT ALL to have the dogs put down. Why doesn't she just give them away?

I do not have time to reply to other points right now, but I can quickly answer this one. The reason why she cannot openly advertise giving her dog away is because it makes for bad publicity. She cannot be seen replacing an otherwise healthy dog as it would spark moral outrage. For all the public knows, she has kept the same dog, who is himself the subject of profiles in gossip magazines and fan websites. The example is inspired by controversy that Paris Hilton did exactly this at least one time, (there were comparison photos of her carrying the dog at different premieres, alleging it was not one and the same).

 

[Yoink]

"Afraid? I'm not afraid of Nothin... 'cept a box of matches"

I was simply adjusting the heiress scenario to fit your insertion of "pleasure" in the the argument. Eating meat give pleasure thus killing the cow is OK.

Which would be simply fascinating if I had made that claim. I didn't (I'll gladly PayPal you $100 if you can accurately quote me making that assertion). I made no claim whatsoever about whether or not the killing of the cow was justified. I merely pointed out that the hypothetical case of the spoiled heiress IS NOT PARALLEL to the case of the meat-eater. The meat-eater kills the cow in order to get the meat and eat it. If the meat-eater wants to satisfy his/her "whim" for cow-meat, the cow must die.

The story of the spoiled heiress is the story of a person who has a dog they no longer want. The dog's death is quite unnecessary to that end. It is, therefore, not a parallel case.

If you want to adjust the hypothetical model of the spoiled heiress be my guest. But making the story be "a spoiled heiress decided on a whim that she wanted to kill her dog because the dog's death in itself would give her pleasure" then you've still failed to make a case that is parallel to the case of the meat-eater. The meat-eater takes pleasure (and sustenance) from the eating of meat. The death of the animal is a necessary means to that end. (And please, for the very small-brained: no part of the preceding two sentences is a claim that meat-eating is morally justified. It is a value-neutral description of the position of the meat-eater). The meat-eater need take no pleasure at all in the animal's death (in fact, could be honestly saddened by it) in order to enjoy eating the animal's flesh.

So: get those creative juices flowing. Try to come up with a hypothetical scenario about someone killing animals for some reason OTHER than pleasure in death itself and yet which is NECESSARY to the achievement of some goal and which we would all agree was either cruel or wrong. Surely it shouldn't be that hard, should it?

You choose to eat meat, and eating that meat requires the death of an animal. All that is being asked is why you feel your choice (that results in death of an animal) is more important or morally superior to any other choice (that results in death of an animal). Its simple reductio ad absurdum.

No, you were offering one particular hypothetical person's choice to have a series of animals killed and asking "how is that morally different from the actions of the meat-eater." And I pointed out that while the meat-eater has to have the animal killed in order to satisfy his/her desires, the hypothetical person you had described did NOT have to have the animal killed in order to satisfy her desires--and that consequently your example was not helpful as a way of clarifying the ethical problems of meat-eating. If you want to revise the hypothetical I'd be very happy. Perhaps you'll be able to come up with a revised version that actually poses an ethical dilemma to meat-eaters. All I can do is wait and see.

I'm sorry if this line of reasoning is painful for you

The only thing that is painful to me is the absurd torturing of logic that you guys are engaged in.

, but, as I said very early in this thread, little of what we choose to eat is based on logic and when faced with logic we may choose to ignore it. I know I do (see where I readily admit to hunting/killing/eating deer).

 

[volatile]

I'm motivated to write on this thread because of some arguments that don't hold water.

I agree with that post 100% Joe. Being dogmatic about veganism is as bad as being dogmatic about anything else. Your actions seem to mirror mine, almost exactly.

 

[Yoink]

I do not have time to reply to other points right now, but I can quickly answer this one. The reason why she cannot openly advertise giving her dog away is because it makes for bad publicity. She cannot be seen replacing an otherwise healthy dog as it would spark moral outrage. For all the public knows, she has kept the same dog, who is himself the subject of profiles in gossip magazines and fan websites. The example is inspired by controversy that Paris Hilton did exactly this at least one time, (there were comparison photos of her carrying the dog at different premieres, alleging it was not one and the same).

Well, that would be an interesting thing to add into the hypothetical. The only problem with it would be that if she's afraid of being caught out giving her dog away, she should be MUCH more afraid of being caught out having her dog put down for no reason. So, that doesn't actually help.

ETA: oops, I see I misread you a bit: you said that this is why she can't "openly advertise"--which is fair enough. Still, that just returns her to the option of secretly giving the dog away--which is clearly far less risky that secretly having the dog put down from the publicity point of view. So we still don't have a hypothetical situation that is parallel to the meat-eaters.

 

[volatile]

Actually it was a serious question. I do suspect that veganism can't quite be maintained as a self-consistent philosophy, but for my own part the jury is still out.

It is more consistent than the alternatives, as far as I can tell - the alternatives that often simultaneously hold entirely opposite positions.

However, the argument you give strikes me as seriously dangerous to the vegan position. You are not giving an argument here based on animal "rights"--you are giving a strictly utilitarian argument ("cause as little suffering as possible"). You wouldn't accept human deaths as the price to pay for harvesting a field of wheat; therefore you are tacitly accepting that human lives are more important than animal lives. Humans have an absolute "right" not to be sacrificed to my dietary needs, but with animals it's simply a case that I should be as merciful as possible. Well, fine--but that just gets us back to treating animals humanely and killing them without suffering. I suspect that there is far more suffering in the wake of a combine harvester than there is in a well-run slaughterhouse; the combine harvester isn't designed to kill efficiently, after all.

Given that we have to eat something, we should take steps to minimise harm where reasonably possible. If your argument is that meat eating is justifiable because all diets result in some harm (which I do not dispute), then you need to explain why we should not take the reasonable and easy steps to reduce that harm where possible, particularly where to do so would merely be the logically-consistent thing to do in line with our other moral principles.

As I said, I do not hold animal harm as inherently wrong. I would not expect subsistence farmers, for example, to pursue a vegan diet, and no doubt a number of the arguments produced in support of veganism are equally or more valid for certain types of omnivorous diet based on small-holdings or local co-ops. But given that most people buy there food from supermarkets where vegan alternatives are readily available, it seems to me that any strong justifications for meat eating begin to evaporate.

It comes down to necessity. I would, for example, have little problem with poisoning rats that had infested my home, because the benefits far outweigh the defecits. I don't believe the same argument can be made for eating meat, where the benefit is usually just "I like the taste of meat".

Also: human lives are more important than animal lives. My argument does not rely on making this distinction.

And this is interesting ad-hom, but irrelevant to the actual argument.

Sorry I don't see how it's an "ad-hom". After all, you yourself said "Killing a dog for no reason at all seems pointlessly wasteful (after all, the dog might bring pleasure to some other person). Killing a cow for meat clearly brings pleasure (and sustenance) to those who eat that meat."

Pleasure was the distinction you seemed to be making between defining a legitimate reason and no that was "no reason at all". As such, we need to ask why taste, of all pleasures, deserves such important consideration when developing a moral framework.

 

[volatile]

The only problem is that not everyone uses moral arguments from which to base their diets.

No, but they do use moral arguments from which to base almost all their other interactions with animals. So we (on this thread) are just trying to point out the inconsistency there. In other words, as we said in the other thread, why should diet escape justification? I know that many of you feel that, and I quote "eating meat does not need to be justified", but you haven't given sufficient reason (or a justification, ironically) why that might be so.

It's not about pleasure, it's about practicality and accepting that death is a part of that cycle.

How, given that meat is one aisle down from the vegetarian analogues in many, many supermarkets, is meat eating quanifiably more practical? And aren't there a number of other behaviours that would be more practical (such as dropping litter when you finish with its contents) that you shirk because your broader moral stance overrides the small inconvenience you must endure?

 

[Yoink]

As I said, I do not hold animal harm as inherently wrong. I would not expect subsistence farmers, for example, to pursue a vegan diet, and no doubt a number of the arguments produced in support of veganism are equally or more valid for certain types of omnivorous diet based on small-holdings or local co-ops. But given that most people buy there food from supermarkets where vegan alternatives are readily available, it seems to me that any strong justifications for meat eating begin to evaporate.

It comes down to necessity. I would, for example, have little problem with poisoning rats that had infested my home, because the benefits far outweigh the defecits. I don't believe the same argument can be made for eating meat, where the benefit is usually just "I like the taste of meat".

Well, you're clearly not a vegan by anybody's definition, so I'm not sure what you're trying to do in this fight, other than (see below) wildly misrepresent my arguments. You're a utilitarian--so it's kinda funny that you think "pleasure" is an inadequate excuse for eating meat. What do utilitarians have as a basis for judgment other than pleasure and pain? If the cow is killed painlessly and its flesh gives many people pleasure, what's the utilitarian position against that?

Also: human lives are more important than animal lives. My argument does not rely on making this distinction.

Well, I'm glad we agree on something. The vegans who do get under my skin are the "no animal testing" ones.

Sorry I don't see how it's an "ad-hom". After all, you yourself said "Killing a dog for no reason at all seems pointlessly wasteful (after all, the dog might bring pleasure to some other person). Killing a cow for meat clearly brings pleasure (and sustenance) to those who eat that meat."

Pleasure was the distinction you seemed to be making between defining a legitimate reason and no that was "no reason at all". As such, we need to ask why taste, of all pleasures, deserves such important consideration when developing a moral framework.

Please, PLEASE try to understand what I wrote. I don't actually think you're deliberately misreading it, but it is really annoying to have a perfectly valid (and pretty plainly expressed) argument simply ignored for something you are simply imagining. The statement that you quote MAKES NO CLAIM AT ALL AS TO WHO IS JUSTIFIED OR UNJUSTIFIED. It is a statement about why the two cases ARE NOT PARALLEL. I'm sorry about the shouting, but man! In the hypothetical case that I was responding to, the heiress derives no benefit whatsoever from the dog's death. The only benefit she is seeking is the absence of the dog (although, actually, that isn't well explained by the example as given. There's no reason for her not to simply add dogs to her collection--it's not as if she can't afford more than one dog--but let's let THAT piece of shoddy hypothesizing slide). I instanced pleasure and sustenance (I notice that you both simply ignored the sustenance part) as two undeniable benefits that accrue to the meat eater from the death of the animal s/he eats. I MADE NO CLAIM as to whether those benefits justified or did not justify the animal's death; I simply pointed out that whereas in the case of the meat eater the cow is killed FOR A REASON (the question of whether or no that reason is SUFFICIENT being as yet undecided), in the hypothetical case of the spoiled Heiress, the dogs are killed FOR NO REASON. ETA: Again, I stress that I was pointing out WHY THIS IS A POORLY CONSTRUCTED HYPOTHETICAL; I wasn't making any claim one way or the other about the ethics of meat-eating. I'm quite prepared to believe that you could come up with a better-constructed hypothetical that would, in fact, be discomforting for meat-eaters, in that it would suggest that they are inconsistent in their attitude to what is and is not a justifiable motive for killing animals. I was merely pointing out that THIS hypothetical case doesn't serve that purpose.

Now do you understand why imputing to me a position that "pleasure trumps ethics" is both offensive and false?

 

[Drudgewire]

It's not ALL about pleasure. I don't see many hundred-year old vegetarians walking around, so it's not a health issue. We have teeth made for tearing meat, so it's not a nature issue. Animals simply don't have the ability to reason or so much as say "stop eating us" (except for those Chik-fil-A cows. LEARN TO SPELL YOU SILLY BOVINES!!) so it's not an ethical issue...

It's only the "so damn tasty" part of it which is about pleasure. If it wasn't, it wouldn't matter which part of the animal we ate or how it was prepared. No problems calling a spade a spade, but it's only a small part of a very big picture.

And don't kid yourselves, it's a two-way street. Veganism is about pleasure too, it's just a pleasure derived from convincing themselves they've achieved a higher plane of consciousness by letting the chickens roam free.

 

[GreNME]

No, but they do use moral arguments from which to base almost all their other interactions with animals. So we (on this thread) are just trying to point out the inconsistency there. In other words, as we said in the other thread, why should diet escape justification? I know that many of you feel that, and I quote "eating meat does not need to be justified", but you haven't given sufficient reason (or a justification, ironically) why that might be so.

Do I need to go back and re-explain how this wording of the faulty "moral schizophrenia" argument fails to recognize a basic understanding of social network associations? You keep harping on this inconsistency, but if you're looking for consistency to be moral then you may as well be arguing that bin Laden, Dick Cheney, Vladimir Putin, and George Bush (among others) are behaving morally as long as they stick consistently to their ideas. I'm sorry you're not satisfied with the multiple attempts made to try to explain this and more to you, but like I said in the other thread you have gotten to the point where you were taking my posts and drawing out precisely what you wanted to get from the explanations instead of taking them as a whole anyway.

How, given that meat is one aisle down from the vegetarian analogues in many, many supermarkets, is meat eating quanifiably more practical? And aren't there a number of other behaviours that would be more practical (such as dropping litter when you finish with its contents) that you shirk because your broader moral stance overrides the small inconvenience you must endure?

And again you start with an argument from reason and then drop quickly to a red herring hype. Given that meat might be one aisle down in a supermarket isn't going to change the fact that if you take one half-pound of meat and one half-pound of any vegetable, you are going to find a higher concentration of necessary nutrients in the half pound of meat. That doesn't mean that people should only eat meat-- there are risks to eating too much and there are things it lacks, among other many good reasons-- but if you're going to play an "all things being equal" argument game with me that's what you get. If you ask me, the person in the supermarket would do best to grab from both aisles if they want to get the most from a dietary standpoint.

Do we really need to go in this circle all over again?

 

[Cain]

ETA: oops, I see I misread you a bit: you said that this is why she can't "openly advertise"--which is fair enough. Still, that just returns her to the option of secretly giving the dog away--which is clearly far less risky that secretly having the dog put down from the publicity point of view. So we still don't have a hypothetical situation that is parallel to the meat-eaters.

Here's that word "clearly" again, which always raises a red flag. No, I'm afraid it's not clearly less risky to secretly give the dog away. You do not think she can discretely hire a vet to put the animal down? Giving the dog away widens the conspiracy; people talk. Her friend's friends will tell people.

 

[Yoink]

Here's that word "clearly" again, which always raises a red flag. No, I'm afraid it's not clearly less risky to secretly give the dog away. You do not think she can discretely hire a vet to put the animal down? Giving the dog away widens the conspiracy; people talk. Her friend's friends will tell people.

Well, I give you credit for at least trying to construct a scenario in which there is some reason for her to have the dogs killed. Unfortunately this doesn't hold water. Why are we to assume that vets are the souls of discretion (especially vets who will make housecalls in the dead of night to whack celebrities' pets!) and yet it takes some kind of vast conspiracy of the loose-lipped for her to give her dog away? Why doesn't she give the dog to one close non-celebrity friend and ask her to give it away pretending that it is her own dog? That seems easier and cheaper than ringing around for Killer Vets ("Vet Vorks"? "Kervorkian Pets"? "007 PetCare"?).

Look, even getting a friend to take the dog to the pound as a stray would be a better option than simply having the dog put down. Yes there'd be a possibility of the dog getting put down at the pound, too--but there's a pretty good chance of such a well-cared for example of a desirable breed being adopted.

I'm sorry--the hypothetical as drawn just doesn't make the dogs' deaths necessary to her ends in the way that the cow's death is necessary to the beef-eater. Instead of adding rube goldberg extra steps to this turkey, why not try to come up with a hypothetical that ACTUALLY poses the problem you want to pose?

 

[martu]

To be honest if she ate the dog I would have some respect for her.

 

[volatile]

Well, you're clearly not a vegan by anybody's definition, so I'm not sure what you're trying to do in this fight, other than (see below) wildly misrepresent my arguments. You're a utilitarian--so it's kinda funny that you think "pleasure" is an inadequate excuse for eating meat. What do utilitarians have as a basis for judgment other than pleasure and pain? If the cow is killed painlessly and its flesh gives many people pleasure, what's the utilitarian position against that?

Whilst I rather resent you telling me "I'm clearly not a vegan" just because I don't happen to fall into the preconceptions you have (Cain would definitely agree with me on this broad statement, and he's also a vegan), I do agree that largely, yes, my beliefs are utilitarian to a degree.

Nevertheless, the argument is not simply about pleasure vs. pain, but about necessity and consistency, considerations perfectly tenable within a more broadly utilitarian standpoint. I am against dog fighting. I am against animal cruelty. So by what measure can me overcoming these general principles (which, I admit, require a much broader and much more complex argument to support, but which I feel are sufficiently widely held to allow their admittance into this argument as general axioms) be justified simply by my taste buds? If there is quantifiable harm from a diet that includes meat (and I believe there is, on a number of metrics), is desire for a specific set of tastes enough to legitimise that harm.

I don't think so.

Now do you understand why imputing to me a position that "pleasure trumps ethics" is both offensive and false?

Well, on the one hand you've misread the case as presented, as pointed out to you. But that notwithstanding, the point of this thought experiment is simply to illustrate that we, as a society, afford a level of reverence to the pleasure of eating than we would do to other pleasures, as Madurobob has been trying to explain.


But I take your word for it - you do not see pleasure as trumping ethics. Good. On what grounds, then, can meat-eating be justified given the ready availability of plant-based alternatives?

That's the meat of the point, if you'll excuse the turn of phrase. You are, I take it, generally against the unnecessary infliction of harm to animals, including livestock. This is certainly the position of a number of laws in a range of countries. If killing an animal constitutes harming it (which, I note, you agree with), then the criteria we need to examine is is meat eating necessary, or at least sufficiently necessary.

Again, for most people in the industrialised West, I don't think so.

 

[volatile]

Do I need to go back and re-explain how this wording of the faulty "moral schizophrenia" argument fails to recognize a basic understanding of social network associations? You keep harping on this inconsistency, but if you're looking for consistency to be moral then you may as well be arguing that bin Laden, Dick Cheney, Vladimir Putin, and George Bush (among others) are behaving morally as long as they stick consistently to their ideas. I'm sorry you're not satisfied with the multiple attempts made to try to explain this and more to you, but like I said in the other thread you have gotten to the point where you were taking my posts and drawing out precisely what you wanted to get from the explanations instead of taking them as a whole anyway.

Gren - bin Laden and Cheney and Putin are acting morally, at least as far as they are concerned. Now, we can have a discussion about whether we agree with their morality, but that's entirely beside the point.

The point here is that the contention that unnecessary animal harm should be avoided is a moral position most people already hold. These threads were never about whether this contention in its most basic form - unnecessary animal harm is wrong - is a tenable one or not, because it is, as we've pointed out, one that seems to enjoy wide support even amongst meat-eaters including yourself. You and I have no argument on this issue.

A discussion about the prima facie immorality of animal harm would be rather different from this one. We, that is Cain and I and, I see, Juggler and probably even you, can take it as axiomatic on general consensus for the purpose of this, more nuanced discussion.

 

[Yoink]

Well, on the one hand you've misread the case as presented, as pointed out to you.

How? Explain to me how, in the case "as presented" the death of the dogs is necessary to her.

 

[Yoink]

If killing an animal constitutes harming it (which, I note, you agree with), then the criteria we need to examine is is meat eating necessary, or at least sufficiently necessary.

I agree that this is (mutatis mutandis) the essential question. My sole point so far has been that the Paris Hilton hypothesis utterly fails to provide us with any tools with which to examine the point. It is a straw man because it presents us with a case of someone killing animals FOR NO REASON AT ALL when what we are trying to decide is whether the reasons (amongst them pleasure and sustenance) for which meat eaters kill animals ARE SUFFICIENT REASONS.

So, again, if I'm wrong about that, explain to me why, in the example as given, the spoiled Heiress is in a position in which the death of her dogs is necessary.

 

[GreNME]

Gren - bin Laden and Cheney and Putin are acting morally, at least as far as they are concerned. Now, we can have a discussion about whether we agree with their morality, but that's entirely beside the point.

The point here is that the contention that unnecessary animal harm should be avoided is a moral position most people already hold. These threads were never about whether this contention in its most basic form - unnecessary animal harm is wrong - is a tenable one or not, because it is, as we've pointed out, one that seems to enjoy wide support even amongst meat-eaters including yourself. You and I have no argument on this issue.

I think we have an argument of degree. Degree of necessity and degree of harm are two major ones. The thing is, it's no surprise that saying "well, if you define things the way I say then you should agree with me" is the problem with the argument.

A discussion about the prima facie immorality of animal harm would be rather different from this one. We, that is Cain and I and, I see, Juggler and probably even you, can take it as axiomatic on general consensus for the purpose of this, more nuanced discussion.

See above. Are you saying that you agree this is an argument about degree and definition? If so, would you be willing to take the next step and agree that not everyone's definitions (or degrees) aren't going to fall into the same line as your own? This is where that whole relativism things starts coming into play, by the way.

 

[volatile]

I think we have an argument of degree. Degree of necessity and degree of harm are two major ones. The thing is, it's no surprise that saying "well, if you define things the way I say then you should agree with me" is the problem with the argument.

Oh, sure. Of course this is an argument of degrees. It's obvious that we're disagreeing about whether killing an animal is harmful and whether eating it is necessary.

It's soluble, though, if you can make a justifying case for where you draw your lines (and why you see the same act as harmful and unnecessary in nearly all other circumstances other than food). Here's my case: killing is trivially definable as harm. Meat eating is unnecessary because I can achieve the same level of nutrition from plant-based sources.

Now, I know you disagree. But why? In what way is meat eating necessary for those for whom plant based diets are available? And in what sense is killing an animal not harmful, especially given that you would say it was in situations divorced from food production?

It's those two simple points - why you make the designations of degree on these two criteria - that I had been asking you to clarify in the other thread, really.

ETA: On degree, I've been open that my definitions of necessity (though not of harm) vary quite dramatically from some other (often metaphysically-inclined) vegans, particularly on the issue of animal testing and on pest control. But I can justify these within a coherent moral framework. Would that you would do the same.