Comment on Time to grow up.
abraxas@sh.itjust.works 8 months agoThanks for the apology. Forgiven. Now onto the topic. I understand how emotional vegans can get on these issues.
What is the reasoning that’s superior to vegan reasoning?
Sticking with ethics, a few bullet points.
- “Nulla poena sine lege”… “Everything which is not forbidden is allowed”. A legal (and ethical) maxim. Lacking compelling reason to accept vegan reasoning, it is ethical to eat meat.
- Every ethical system has at least one argument that supports meat-eating. Joined with bullet point 1, there is no foundation worthy of continuing the discussion. A strong argument for veganism alongside a strong argument against veganism boils down to “Everything which is not forbidden is allowed”, so long as one pro-meat argument remains. Pick any ethical system if you want to dig in deeper, but I tend towards Utilitarianism.
- Similar to the above, life is suffering. The animals I eat live better lives than most humans, and would live WORSE lives or NO lives if they were not being eaten. (See Sir Karl Popper below)
There is my ethical reasoning that is superior to vegan reasoning. If you’re interested in someone with better foundations than even me, look up Sir Karl Popper’s position on this matter (the philosopher of the “Paradox of Tolerance” fame). He holds to Negative Utilitarianism, and disagrees with veganism being a utilitarian virtue. It was largely in response to (and/or is used in response to) Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, a Utilitarian argument for veganism I strongly disagree with.
Therefore, “Everything which is not forbidden is allowed”
dx1@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Mmn, so negative utilitarianism, the stance that people should minimize suffering. And for some reason this does not apply to animals?
abraxas@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Check out Karl Popper’s argument.
For my points, it’s simply that through any analysis, farming animals is more net utility than not. I actually hold to it by positive Utilitarianism as well as Negative.
First is the utility of people consuming them (if there wasn’t any, everyone would just drop meat-eating in a heartbeat). There is undeniably utility in consuming meat/dairy.
Second is the utility in domesticated animals. The alternatives are wild animals or anti-natalism. For the former, there is no question that even the worst case “veal cow with botched slaughter” is better than the best case of wild animals (life of constant starvation and fear, ended slowly and incredibly painfully). As for anti-natalism… I hold with Karl Popper. To exist and feel pain is better than not to exist. Farm animls have plenty of positive-utility moments.
Third is the Utility Monster scenario. HUMANS are Utility Monsters, as compared to animals. This is not to be confused with human exceptionalism. Cows are not planning what to name their grandchildren, waiting for Christmas Dinner. They’re not excited for a delicious meal, slow roasted for 12 hours. The truth is, there is more Utility to 1000 families eating a hamburger or a steak filet than a slaughtered cow living 1 more year, even 10 more years.
So to sum it up… There is no disagreement that agriculture creates net positive utility for humans, right? Well, I have shown that agriculture also creates net positive utility to animals. Disagree or not, even if you could somehow poke holes in some of those points, there is an avalanche of Reason to the idea that a non-vegan world is simply better than a vegan world.
federatingIsTooHard@lemmy.world 8 months ago
bravo
abraxas@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Gracias.
The issue with veganism is not that there’s no arguments for it (there are some). It’s that there’s plenty of arguments for meat-eating that are just as good… and that so many vegans aren’t willing to take those arguments seriously.
dx1@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Agriculture in general creates net positive utility for humans but there’s a rough equivalency for that benefit between animal and non-animal ag (actually worse for our health to eat the animal products) while it creates huge negatives for the animals involved. The equation of people consuming animal ag products to proof that it “creates utility” strikes me as the same fallacy as saying smoking cigarettes has “utility” - I’d argue it’s an irrational behavior (in terms of selfish benefit alone) that prioritizes very short-term enjoyment over long-term enjoyment.
I don’t know where you’re getting the idea animals are living “better than humans”, this is divorced from reality. Industrial animal agriculture is just that, an industrial process, animals in miserable conditions for their short lives to promote the bottom line of the company in question. Propagandized takes depict cows roaming around lush green hills and such, but essentially anything appearing in a supermarket had absolutely nothing to do with this.
On top of that there’s the actual reality of the incredible resource (read: water, fossil fuels) usage associated with animal agriculture because it’s inherently wasteful at scale, which is a contributing factor to our destruction of the environment sustaining our existence.
abraxas@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Please note, I made a few last minute edits you may have missed. I don’t think it matters because you do not appear to have addressed (or understood?) my arguments.
Sorry, I’m being strict in my terminology. I am using “Agriculture” to refer to the husbandry and harvesting of animals for human consumption. For the latter, I would use the term “horticulture”.
I have argued the opposite of this fairly comprehensively. It is bad form to open as if the opposite of my argument is axiomatic. If you are going to concede that my point was valid, then you cannot presume its opposite. If not, you are better off addressing my argument.
Cigarettes DO have some utility. They also have tremendous amounts of negative utility because they cause people to suffer horrific, multi-month-long deaths. My angles and my arguments applied to cigarettes would (correctly) conclude that cigarettes are a terrible thing while STILL defending that meat-eating is a good thing.
There is value in both short- and long-term enjoyment. If you think there is no utility in short-term enjoyment at all, please provide the argument… but please open with a reason why that is even relevant to this discussion.
Just look at relative average stress levels of farm animals compared to humans. And how much they suffer throughout their life. And what percent of their days are good. To quote Martin Luther King Jr. “It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.” Their lower consciousness has its advantages as well as disadvantages. But a cow on a farm will not suffer through 3 years of agony and self-awareness of death with metastatic lung cancer because they smoked as a kid.
Also, I’d like to point out that your incredulity is not an effective response.
I agree. Ditto with certain human societies (ever seen homeless tent cities, refugees? Ever heard of a little thing called the Holocaust?). And as with human societies, we should be responsible for improving things. But if THIS is your crux, I would be happy to move forward on the discussion of Industrial Animal Agriculture if you will concede that (for example) free range chicken farming is 100% ethically sound. Otherwise, let’s stick to the topic of agriculture as a whole. If you want to have a chance to argue the ethics of veganism, you need to steelman meat-eating. You’re creating weaknesses in your own arguments by using points that most cattle ranchers already argue.
Of course not. Having cows roam in lush green hills is stupid. They don’t care about the color of the hills. Free range cattle roam around on non-arable land and eat the grasses and weeds that will grow anywhere. I often get to see the cows and pigs I’ll someday eat living pretty damn good lives. I’ve got dairy industry in my family, so I’m not “making shit up”. I’ll re-offer my point above. Agree that some meat eating is ethical and I will happily focus on the topic of industrial farming and where to draw that line. At that point, I’m sure we’ll find some common ground, and some disagreements.
That is its own topic, and short of a magic bullet that doesn’t exist that particular thread can’t put a dent in ethics arguments. I think you either need to decide whether to concede the ethics topic we’ve already started and we’ll pivot to ecology, or stick with the topic at hand.
And this is where you sorta walked into your own magic bullet analysis. Care to provide that magic bullet that dairy and meat will destroy humanity and individuals cutting out dairy/meat will save humanity? The farming industry I consume has the same carbon/methane footprint it had prior to the industrial era. Yet again, let’s stick to the topic shall we?