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PETA President's Will

Cleon said:
:confused:

According to the bit you quoted, they say:

we believe that it would have been in the animals' best interests if the institution of "pet keeping"—i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as "pets"—never existed.
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So it seems to me they do object to keeping animals in principle, they've simply acknowledged the reality that pets aren't going anywhere, and that we have a responsibility to treat them well. Which, as PETA goes, is a fairly rational viewpoint IMO.
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No, they don't oppose animal companionship in principle.

Fairly consistently, PETA supports and commends animal companionship, and really really hates the use of the word "pet" (with scare quotes). They state "pet" is a four letter word, that its a derogatory term that undermines consideration for animal interests, that the very concept of "buying" and "owning" animals like property is as offensive, that a "pet" is something that exists for a person's amusement and can be replaced with another "pet" at will.

They prefer the term "animal companion" because it emphasizes that caring for an animal in your home is a two-sided.

Whether you agree with PETA on whether the term "pet" is offensive, PETA does not in any way, shape, or form object you caring for animals in your home.
 
cornsail said:
You're right, pet rabbits would not be likely to survive very long in the wild.

I just adopted these two. :)

[qimg]http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i346/parallelsuns/hazel1.jpg[/qimg]

[qimg]http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i346/parallelsuns/meadow2.jpg[/qimg]
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Bunnehs!
 
sadhatter said:
Personally i am of the opinion that if we can eat meat, we can use animals to further other similarly important goals. While i wouldn't be a fan of kitten skeet shooting, if it took a few kittens to cure aids, have at 'er. Every person has the point at which they will kill an animal, maybe it is when it is going to kill you, maybe it is when you would be starving to death and there is no choice, but strip away all the posturing, there is not a single person who can say they would never kill an animal. Besides someone who is suicidal that is.
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edit: I use "you" a lot - I am not referring to sadhatter, but other humans in general. Sorry for any confusion.


Well, that's the thing. A vegan lifestyle kills tons of animals. Everyone admits that it is impossible to get the exact numbers, but by many calculations vegetarians kill more animals with their diet (lots of bunnys, rats, wild hogs, etc., get killed in the fields) than does a moderate meat eater. That statement, will, of course, bring on people arguing that the numbers are wrong. Sure, why not, let's stipulate the numbers are wrong. The fact remains that plenty of mammals die so that you (vegetarian you) may eat.

That of course ignores all the animals that die due to getting hit by the trucks transporting the veges, the fish that die in the hydroelectric plant generating the electricity that is running your computer so they can post their outrage, the animals killed by drilling for oil, the animals you personally run over on the way to work, etc.

I don't buy that people really equate animals with humans (except, the few, like Buddhists in monasteries that walk the talk and go to every extreme to avoid even stepping on a bug). Because I would never, ever drive my car at 65mph through a children's playground, even if it looked empty, nor would any sane person, yet we do it in the "living rooms" of the animals living around us. I'm left to conclude that anyone that does so, thinking animals are our equals, is either a moral monster, or don't truly believe what they say. I'm open to a third explanation, but I honestly can't see one.

I can't put a number on it, but let's say a conscientious vegetarian has from 10 to 1000 mammal lives on their hands. Why that number? Well, I doubt under 10 is realistic, and after 1000, why does it matter? "It's moral to kill 1000 of my peers to live, but not 2000"? No. By 1000 or so you are a monster. I can't say where I'd draw the line - I go about my life, driving my car, knowing there is a small chance that my actions will result in the death of a few humans. It's terribly easy to say this typing safely from my chair, but I'd hope that by the time I knew my actions were going to kill, say, 100 people, that I'd take drastic measures to change my life.

And, none of that is an argument "therefore, eat meat!". The point is that you could choose a lifestyle to minimize animal deaths ( stating the obvious solution would get me banned, and is one that Ingrid seems to more or less support for herself, as she has said she'd rather she didn't exist because of the toll humans do to the planet), but, you don't. Is my head count, a meat heater, higher than a vegetarian's? Perhaps (depending on how you crunch the numbers). Does that give the vege room for the moral high ground, given how close the numbers really are? Not in my book.
 
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Mister Earl said:
PETA. I'm going off the definition of terrorism that I was taught in my time in the military. It was along the lines of, "A terrorist organization is one that uses terror as a mechanism to push political, ideological, or religious goals." Peta qualified as a terrorist organization when it sent out booklets like the infamous "Your Mommy kills animals!" to young children in order to terrorize them to further ideological goals. This is why I consider Peta a terrorist organization.
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I'm sorry, but this attitude is if anything offensive to hardworking terrorists.
 
Mister Earl said:
She's the leader of a terrorist organization? Gonna have to say I don't care what she does with her corpse.
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Lamuella said:
which terrorist organization is she the leader of?
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Mister Earl said:
PETA. I'm going off the definition of terrorism that I was taught in my time in the military. It was along the lines of, "A terrorist organization is one that uses terror as a mechanism to push political, ideological, or religious goals." Peta qualified as a terrorist organization when it sent out booklets like the infamous "Your Mommy kills animals!" to young children in order to terrorize them to further ideological goals. This is why I consider Peta a terrorist organization.
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I'd say calling them a "terrorist organization" might be a stretch, but there's no doubt that they give substantial monetary and ideological support to several known terrorist organizations, including the legal defense funds of convicted terrorists.


Cleon said:
Of course, the real radical animal rights groups - the ones that talk about "animal slavery" and so on - have only a tenuous relationship with PETA. PETA is meant to be official and respectable, with the real radicalism being left to groups like the ALF.
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PETA has a long and well-documented history of involvement and financial support of radical eco-terrorist groups like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC).

(BTW, I find it ironic that an extremist animal rights group would name itself after a fictional TV character whose favorite food is cats.)
 
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From a philosophical point of view, do moral agents have a moral obligation to amoral agents? I'm not sure they do, and how moral agents treat amoral agents is a matter of choice and convention.

I think the reason why we don't experiment on humans with cognitive abilities similar to other animals is because most of us find the idea aversive. One of the reasons I think we find it aversive is because other humans trigger our kin selection bias compared to non-human animals.

I'd rather see you harmed than my nephew, a chimp rather than a human baby, a rabbit rather than a chimp, a frog rather than a rabbit, a fly rather than a frog and bacteria rather than a fly.
 
Dessi said:
See here:
Plants, salmonella, ants, AI opponents in video games and such have no mental life. In what way is something harmed if it has no experiences whatsoever? How do you make an argument that being killed or staying alive is in an organisms best interests if it cannot, even in principle, prefer one outcome or the other? What moral characteristics do they have at all? Name just one which makes them comparable to an organism with experiential welfare.
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Lobsters have pretty simplistic brain functions. I doubt they really have much in the way of "deciding outcome". Same with a lot of lower species.

What about fish? They're pretty simplistic in their thought processes.
 
Lamuella said:
so let me ask this: if there was a human being who had the same level of brain function as a cauliflower, would you consider it acceptable to eat this human being?
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Oh, give it a rest! The man's retired to his ranch. Some of you will just never get over your Bush Derangement Syndrome. ;)


Okay, back on topic. One of the posters on the Ingrid's So Awesome thread pointed out that there are insufficient human brains for study, so they use the brains of animals to teach neurosurgery. Wouldn't Ingrid be doing a far better thing for at least one animal if she left her brain to research science?
 
bookitty said:
Everything that PETA does right is already being addressed by the ASPCA, minus attention whoring, misogyny and misappropriation of donations.
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Not quite. While I like them for their anti-cruelty work, they are the classic "moderates" in that they still support animal eating and other industries at their base. They just want killing animals to be a little less messy. Which position is more intellectually consistent is another debate. If one draws the line at gross cruelty, then of course I think one should go to ASPCA first.
 
sadhatter said:
Do you feel angry with a skunk when it chooses to eat another creatures eggs, or another smaller animal, instead of non living things?

If no, then your analogy fails at the moral level. If your going to say we are equal to animals, then animals are equal to us, and should be just as angry with omnivorous animals as you are folks who are eating meat, or trying to save human lives. After all, in both cases neither skunk nor person trying to cure aids needs to kill an animal, they just choose to, depending on the skunk it may be morally worse, as it could **gasp** just be killing something because of convenience, when non living food is also available.

Animals kill animals, we are animals , deal with that premise.
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Animals don't make moral decisions about their diet. We can. We can also minimize the harm to animals, so we should do exactly that regardless of whatever animals do in the wild.

The "animals kill other animals, why shouldn't I" is probably the WORST argument against animal rights there is. Nevermind the thinly veiled naturalistic fallacy, nevermind the fact that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to take moral inspiration from animals that can't even make moral decisions in the first place, there is a pretty good reason why no one accepts that evolution is a normative moral theory: its perfectly consistent with evolution for animals to compete against each other, to kill and exploit members of their own species to proliferate their own genes. Sure, humans are social animals, but if you take the view evolution is prescriptive rather than descriptive, you have absolutely NO argument against any form of human exploitation, not even in principle.

There is no way, as a skeptic and critical thinker, you can possibly accept "animals kill other animals, why shouldn't I?" as a credible argument against animal rights whatsoever.

Every person has the point at which they will kill an animal, maybe it is when it is going to kill you, maybe it is when you would be starving to death and there is no choice, but strip away all the posturing, there is not a single person who can say they would never kill an animal. Besides someone who is suicidal that is.
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Well if you phrase things like that, then I would argue that very many people are willing to kill another person, if they were about to be killed themselves, or maybe if they were starving to death. Nevermind that, besides all the posturing, there are scarily few people who would not kill another person. And by the principles you've already laid out, this implies they should kill each other.
 
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roger said:
edit: I use "you" a lot - I am not referring to sadhatter, but other humans in general. Sorry for any confusion.


Well, that's the thing. A vegan lifestyle kills tons of animals. Everyone admits that it is impossible to get the exact numbers, but by many calculations vegetarians kill more animals with their diet (lots of bunnys, rats, wild hogs, etc., get killed in the fields) than does a moderate meat eater. That statement, will, of course, bring on people arguing that the numbers are wrong. Sure, why not, let's stipulate the numbers are wrong. The fact remains that plenty of mammals die so that you (vegetarian you) may eat.

That of course ignores all the animals that die due to getting hit by the trucks transporting the veges, the fish that die in the hydroelectric plant generating the electricity that is running your computer so they can post their outrage, the animals killed by drilling for oil, the animals you personally run over on the way to work, etc.

I don't buy that people really equate animals with humans (except, the few, like Buddhists in monasteries that walk the talk and go to every extreme to avoid even stepping on a bug). Because I would never, ever drive my car at 65mph through a children's playground, even if it looked empty, nor would any sane person, yet we do it in the "living rooms" of the animals living around us. I'm left to conclude that anyone that does so, thinking animals are our equals, is either a moral monster, or don't truly believe what they say. I'm open to a third explanation, but I honestly can't see one.

I can't put a number on it, but let's say a conscientious vegetarian has from 10 to 1000 mammal lives on their hands. Why that number? Well, I doubt under 10 is realistic, and after 1000, why does it matter? "It's moral to kill 1000 of my peers to live, but not 2000"? No. By 1000 or so you are a monster. I can't say where I'd draw the line - I go about my life, driving my car, knowing there is a small chance that my actions will result in the death of a few humans. It's terribly easy to say this typing safely from my chair, but I'd hope that by the time I knew my actions were going to kill, say, 100 people, that I'd take drastic measures to change my life.

And, none of that is an argument "therefore, eat meat!". The point is that you could choose a lifestyle to minimize animal deaths ( stating the obvious solution would get me banned, and is one that Ingrid seems to more or less support for herself, as she has said she'd rather she didn't exist because of the toll humans do to the planet), but, you don't. Is my head count, a meat heater, higher than a vegetarian's? Perhaps (depending on how you crunch the numbers). Does that give the vege room for the moral high ground, given how close the numbers really are? Not in my book.
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Yes, this is a very healthy discussion to have. The current study-counter-study fight is in the favour of vegans:

One of the starting assumptions in the debate over the ethical status of animals is that someone who is committed to reducing animal suffering should not eat meat. Steven Davis has recently advanced a novel criticism of this view. He argues that individuals who are committed to reducing animal suffering should not adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet, as Tom Regan an other animal rights advocates claim, but one containing free-range beef. To make his case Davis highlights an overlooked form of animal harm, that done to field animals in crop production. Yet while Davis's argument is ingenious and thought-provoking, it is not a successful challenge to vegetarianism and veganism's status as the diets that most advance animal rights. Scientific studies of crop production that Davis draws on document two different forms of harm done to field animals: those that are directly killed by harvesting equipment and those that are killed by other animals. Once this distinction is made explicit, the degree to which such studies pose a problem for animal protection theory considerably weakens. Davis also overlooks philosophically significant forms of harm to human beings that are present in beef production but not crop harvesting. Finally, he bases his argument on the controversial assumption that there is no difference between deliberate and accidental killing - either of animals or people. Although these problems defeat Davis's attempt to offer an immanent critique of Regan's animal rights position, his analysis does have important dietary ramifications that animal advocates should take into account.
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Linky.

When we correct these errors, Davis's argument makes a strong case for, rather than against, adopting a vegetarian diet...
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Linky.

In addition, this line of thought only works for utilitarians :p . But I really enjoy this problem.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
From a philosophical point of view, do moral agents have a moral obligation to amoral agents? I'm not sure they do, and how moral agents treat amoral agents is a matter of choice and convention.

I think the reason why we don't experiment on humans with cognitive abilities similar to other animals is because most of us find the idea aversive. One of the reasons I think we find it aversive is because other humans trigger our kin selection bias compared to non-human animals.
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I don't come across many people who argue that non-rational humans can be used for experimentation without moral implication (and I thought I had a minority opinion on this forum ;) ), but regarding the subject it seems there is plenty of moral authority to appeal to who argue that moral agency is not a prerequisite for moral consideration.

I generally fall back on Peter Singer's line of thought: if a being suffers, there's no reason not to take that suffering into consideration. If a person hold that suffering has ethical implications, then, with respect to suffering, a human infant and a fully rational human are moral equals. Differences in mental or physical ability doesn't necessarily imply that suffering is less important, but there are ways rational humans can be harmed which may not preclude harm to non-rational humans, such as a rational human being deprived of a right to vote.

Maybe you could start a thread on why non-rational humans have a claim to moral value.

I'd rather see you harmed than my nephew, a chimp rather than a human baby, a rabbit rather than a chimp, a frog rather than a rabbit, a fly rather than a frog and bacteria rather than a fly.
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I don't think you can justify that view by an appeal to kinship. Your nephew and a mentally similar child in Iraq have the same mental and physical experiences, clearly you object to your nephew undergoing certain experiences involving extreme amounts of pain, and its the nature of those experiences you object to; its not very clear how those experiences differ in any fundamental way from an Iraqi child's, so what's the basis for making a moral distinction between them? In what way does your kinship with your nephew change the nature of those experiences, what relevant difference does it make at all?

It should be extremely obvious that there's no moral distinction between a person being harmed whether you share a relationship with them or not. You can probably infer that this carries across species boundaries, and regardless of whether you empathize a lot or not at all with non-members of your species, there's no moral distinction between profoundly harming your nephew or a mentally similar animal.
 
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If we by into this, when do we start locking up all the cats and other predators as murderers?
 
roger said:
I don't buy that people really equate animals with humans (except, the few, like Buddhists in monasteries that walk the talk and go to every extreme to avoid even stepping on a bug).
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Neither do I. I also don't equate pigs and chickens with ants and flies.

And, none of that is an argument "therefore, eat meat!". The point is that you could choose a lifestyle to minimize animal deaths ( stating the obvious solution would get me banned, and is one that Ingrid seems to more or less support for herself, as she has said she'd rather she didn't exist because of the toll humans do to the planet), but, you don't. Is my head count, a meat heater, higher than a vegetarian's? Perhaps (depending on how you crunch the numbers). Does that give the vege room for the moral high ground, given how close the numbers really are? Not in my book.
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You are framing the debate as a battle of personalizations. "Vegs are more moral than you" vs "No they're not,they've got their flaws too". That won't be a very interesting conversation. I'm as big of a POS as the next guy. The interesting question to me is what is the most morally sound approach to take when it comes to consuming animals.

Regarding the crop thing, there is, IMO, a huge moral difference between accidentally killing a mouse in a field and intentionally breeding an animal that one intentionally subjects to a cruel life and then intentionally kills. The second step is the most disgusting part of that process for me. For others it may be the third.

And I don't know if this has been addressed, but as I understand it less than 1 percent of cows in the US are "grass-fed". A larger number are partially grass-fed. So meat requires the death of far more field animals, since generally it takes way more food (grains) to produce a dead animal than the amount of food (meat) you get from that animal in the end.
 
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