I have so many arguments against this I don’t even know were to start, so I’ll keep it simple: you need to abandon anthropocentrism.
Humans are animals and not particularly special or even intelligent ones. (Intelligence being defined as the ability to solve problems and learn from them) Our “intelligence” is actually just cumulative generationally passed knowledge. It is not clear that humans are indeed more rational than a tiger or that tigers or non human animals in general lack rationality, except only in the way in which a human would define rationality which cannot be a universal claim.
I’m not op and I’m an omnivore and i have to tell you, your reply is … not a good response to what op said. It’s full of strawmen arguments and nonsense. You seem to be arguing that humans can’t choose to be vegetarians? And you veer way off into nowhere arguing about what you think intelligence is? I dunno, for someone who said they have a ton of arguments, you sure picked a bunch of bad ones
Humans can choose to be vegetarians of course, that doesn’t mean that killing animals is immoral or wrong, necessarily. That notion can only exist if you think humans have a superior place in the world to that of animals. Anthropocentrism is central to this idea that humans are the only animals who cannot kill other animals to feed themselves without it being immoral.
Ie a chimp could choose to eat fruits if he wanted but they also often eat monkeys even if fruit is available. How is that different, from a human choosing to eat a cow even if he could eat grain? The difference is only that you think the human “knows better” than the chimp.
Your argument is: If animals do a thing then it can’t be immoral for us to do it. I’m sure at this point in the discussion you realize that that’s not a valid argument
That is not my argument at all. I never made such a universal claim.
My claim is that all animals have a right to feed themselves and as a part of that right there is a right to kill other animals. Therefore it is not more immoral for a human to kill an animal than it is for a tiger. I say that only in this context, because our biology evolved to also use meat. We can survive without it sure, but it is suboptimal. It is also true that we should be eating way less meat than we do. Therefore the immoral thing is not killing or eating animals but rather the industry around it.
Look at human history we ate each other and other human species. We are not special we are not chosen by God. We are just animals that think we are special.
Even being vegan has an effect on the earth destroying habitat ruining bio diversity chemicals getting into the environment.
In relating to other animals, there is no reason our standard should be any different than animals to one another. In relating to other people, it is reasonable to have a different standard.
Would you consider bestiality immoral then? The animal equivalent of bestiality (interspecies sex) occurs regularly between different species after all.
I am not able to provide an objective moral reason if other animals may be treated differently from humans. If consent cannot be taken into account, raping animals is not immoral.
The sole argument could be that bestiality harms or at the very least exposes an animal to a significant risk of harm. But then again, killing an animal certainly harms it much worse but this would be morally acceptable in such a system, so the harm an animal faces isn’t really part of the equation.
Nobody invoked intelligence or rationality. You have misread and now you are just confusing things.
To keep it simple: A tiger’s life depends on killing other animals. A human being can live to a record-setting age and never kill another animal. The tiger has no choice but to be violent to vulnerable individuals, but when a human does it, the lack of necessity makes it cruelty and abuse. When a human does have such a necessity, the math works out differently, but in the context of the comic strip, the subject had no necessity to kill those vulnerable individuals.
All life is supported by displacing or ending others. Even if you don’t view plants as ethically problematic, the agricultural practices to feed civilisation, by definition, must upset the natural ecological balance and harm animals.
The reason a vegan doesn’t feel upset about eating produce is the degree of removal from the animal harm. They don’t see the deforestation or destruction of wetlands or the damage done by pesticides or in fertilizer production. It’s no different than an omnivore not feeling guilt when a butcher kills an animal (even if they wouldn’t do it themselves).
This harm has always happened since we developed coordinated agrarian societies. The most ethical stance is that humans should return to their natural ecological niche, hunter-gatherers with minimal reliance on agriculture.
However, veganism isn’t possible in such a society. The ability to supplement the human diet with plant based alternatives at scale requires disruptive agriculture. Thus strict veganism* in this lens is inherently self defeating.
*The vegan concept of harm reduction isn’t impacted here, there are still lots of reasons to go plant based
I’d like to see a single human alive today who because of their actions has not killed another animal? I guarantee every single human alive today has been responsible for killing an animal. Sure it might not have been for food but your actions have resulted in the death of an animal.
It doesn’t need to be invoked, the higher moral agency placed on humans hinges on the notion of superior human rationality. You could choose to be a vegetarian and choose not to kill animals, but that doesn’t mean that it is a more ethical or moral choice because human biology evolved to require meat other wise it requires planning and supplementation that is not necessarily possible outside of industrial societies. I do agree that choosing not to eat animals due to the industrial nature of meat production is a more ethical choice, but not that killing animals is necessarily wrong.
I may not be explaining it well but basically: the idea that humans killing animals is wrong can only exist if you think humans are superior to animals. I reject that notion and that’s where my argument comes from.
That’s a really bad argument, sorry. Of course we place a higher moral agency on humans than on animals - otherwise you’d have yo argue that other atrocities like rape and murder shouldn’t be morally judged either.
A tiger cannot make moral decisions. You can. So you will be judged if you don’t.
Not to hold yourself to a higher standard morally than a literal predator would be downright psychopathic.
You are placing a higher moral agency on humans because you make some special distinction between humans and other animals.
Humans are just other animals and they have diverse conceptions of morality and ethics. Rape and murder are not equivalent to killing for sustanance.
Comparing our moral behaviour to a ‘literal predator’ is a value judgement where you denigrate animal behaviour and elevate human behaviour as somehow superior.
You are placing a higher moral agency on humans because you make some special distinction between humans and other animals.
Well, obviously. Because I believe I can be held to a higher standard than a tiger. They kill and eat disabled babies. Is that something you would deem acceptable for humans to do?
You are judging a tiger from a human centric perspective and making a claim that we know better than it.
Even that article point out that unlike lions tigers are not a social species. Therefore our sense of morality is not applicable to the tiger. A disabled or strange Tiger cub can’t mature into an adult tiger.
For humans it is different. But there are examples, such as Spartans, killing disabled babies which was not immoral to them.
My point is you can’t make a universal claim to the morality of humans killing other animals to sustain themselves since it is evidently how we evolved and our nature.
We can intellecutalize and make moral and ethical decisions to not eat animals for the many valid reasons in this thread which I also subscribe to but that doesn’t mean the moral claim that killing animals is wrong can be applied to all human animals at all times.
For example to switch to vegan diets relies heavily on industrialized society. Arguably our contemporary society which facilities the adoption of vegan diets is more immoral than the behaviour of previous human civilizations since the latter is limited in scope and in inpact while the former destroys entire ecosystems, biodiversity and causes mass extinction.
You are judging a tiger from a human centric perspective and making a claim that we know better than it.
I know that I know better. Don’t know if you do - but claiming you don’t says something pretty damning about your moral capacity.
My point is you can’t make a universal claim to the morality of humans killing other animals to sustain themselves since it is evidently how we evolved and our nature.
Oh yes I can. What you (and plebcouncilman as well) are doing here is a fallacy that was overcome in the 18th century. Something can very well be morally wrong despite being natural. Examples: Murder. Rape. Eating children. All very natural, horrible things which, fortunately, humanity largely rejects.
but that doesn’t mean the moral claim that killing animals is wrong can be applied to all human animals at all times.
No one is making such an absolutist claim. But generally speaking killing is not a good thing and should be avoided if possible. Unnecessarily killing animals, e.g. if you’re reasonably able to thrive on a vegan diet, can therefore very well be claimed to be unethical. And that has nothing to do with anthropocentrism and everything with our willingness to think about morality at all. What you wrote about industrialized society doesn’t change that, since we currently live in a industrialized society and must therefore judge the morality of our actions based on this given reality. Not to mention that with our current understanding of agriculture and science we could reduce our ecological impact without the need to kill animals at all. But all that misses the point.
You wrote that I’m “placing a higher moral agency on humans because [I] make some special distinction between humans and other animals”. At best that’s a bad argument, at worst it’s intellectually disingenuous, because you either do the same or you’re a child-eating psychopath. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and claim that you simply haven’t really thought about it much.
I think this is fundamentally true (although it has issues when it scales down to insects and below that requires an arbitrary line to be drawn) but I’m not convinced that being absolute about it is useful in harm reduction.
It’s objectively better that someone looks to buy meat from a farm that cares about the welfare of its animals than one that maximizes profit at the cost of the wellbeing and happiness of the animal.
Naturally it’s better still if they reduce or stop their meat consumption, but making it black-and-white can potentially result in a worse outcome by setting the bar higher than the consumer is willing to jump.
The one that has a life out in the field and then just dies one day without any stress. The one that is in a factory farm never sees the light is stressed their whole life. Guess what life is a bitch and unfair everything dies.
I genuinely can’t understand the disconnect you people have between the value of one life lived versus another only to be OK with that life being ended for the indulgence of your average McDonald’s customer.
I genuinely can’t understand the disconnect you people have between a plot of ecologically diverse forest life and a sterile field of corn just for the indulgence of a bag of Doritos.
See, it’s not hard to make disingenuous leaps. If you’re going to tell me about sustainable local farming don’t bother, I’ll dismiss it like local animal farming vs. factory slaughter.
So what is your solution for when a species is getting over populated and destroying an ecosystem? Is it not more ethical to kill some and preserve the ecosystem for the rest of the wildlife in that area?
Could be any number of valid reasons that have nothing to do with eating meat. For example, human safety. Unless you’re arguing for a dismantling of civilization due to its natural encroachment, I don’t know where you’re going with this.
I didn’t ask how these situations could have been prevented. That ship has sailed. I wish we hadn’t caused it to be this way, but here we are. Now the two options are to kill them back down to sustainable numbers, or allow them to destroy the ecosystem thereby condemning themselves and a host of other animals as well.
I’m not a hunter myself, and I personally probably don’t have what it takes to kill an animal even in these circumstances, but I also can’t provide a better solution. So I’m not going to shame people for hunting when it both provides food for them as well as brings balance to an ecosystem.
I will, however, shame them if it is done purely for sport and against non problem animals. I hope those folks that go to Africa and hunt elephants and lions and shit get eaten. Slowly.
That’s great for people that don’t live near these places. Most aren’t going to volunteer to have wolves or cougars or whatever reintroduced into their local forest and risk them to run wild through the neighborhood mauling children and pets.
Bears do this in many parts of North America and in general northern latitudes, and people live in harmony.
You’re appealing to fear, and the slippery slope here is eradication of all apex predators. That has done absolutely nothing for environmental conservation in the cases where it has happened.
Apex predators can be reintroduced to habitats without direct impacts to humans. Of course there are indirect impacts, like livestock culling, but those pale in comparison to the moral ill of endangering entire species. Imagine if humans were hunted by a more sophisticated apex predators. We’d want to keep our place in the ecosystem.
You can’t ethically take a life. A tiger has no choice whereas a human does.
I have so many arguments against this I don’t even know were to start, so I’ll keep it simple: you need to abandon anthropocentrism.
Humans are animals and not particularly special or even intelligent ones. (Intelligence being defined as the ability to solve problems and learn from them) Our “intelligence” is actually just cumulative generationally passed knowledge. It is not clear that humans are indeed more rational than a tiger or that tigers or non human animals in general lack rationality, except only in the way in which a human would define rationality which cannot be a universal claim.
I’m not op and I’m an omnivore and i have to tell you, your reply is … not a good response to what op said. It’s full of strawmen arguments and nonsense. You seem to be arguing that humans can’t choose to be vegetarians? And you veer way off into nowhere arguing about what you think intelligence is? I dunno, for someone who said they have a ton of arguments, you sure picked a bunch of bad ones
I believe they are saying you can’t place a universal standard of behaviour or ethics onto the multitude of human animals that live on the earth
Even if that’s what they’re saying, that isn’t a meaningful argument against what op said.
It is possible for a human to live a long and healthy life without eating meat.
It is not possible for a tiger to live a long and healthy life without eating meat. (without human intervention)
Humans can choose to be vegetarians of course, that doesn’t mean that killing animals is immoral or wrong, necessarily. That notion can only exist if you think humans have a superior place in the world to that of animals. Anthropocentrism is central to this idea that humans are the only animals who cannot kill other animals to feed themselves without it being immoral.
Ie a chimp could choose to eat fruits if he wanted but they also often eat monkeys even if fruit is available. How is that different, from a human choosing to eat a cow even if he could eat grain? The difference is only that you think the human “knows better” than the chimp.
Your argument is: If animals do a thing then it can’t be immoral for us to do it. I’m sure at this point in the discussion you realize that that’s not a valid argument
That is not my argument at all. I never made such a universal claim.
My claim is that all animals have a right to feed themselves and as a part of that right there is a right to kill other animals. Therefore it is not more immoral for a human to kill an animal than it is for a tiger. I say that only in this context, because our biology evolved to also use meat. We can survive without it sure, but it is suboptimal. It is also true that we should be eating way less meat than we do. Therefore the immoral thing is not killing or eating animals but rather the industry around it.
Look at human history we ate each other and other human species. We are not special we are not chosen by God. We are just animals that think we are special. Even being vegan has an effect on the earth destroying habitat ruining bio diversity chemicals getting into the environment.
No one said any of the stuff you seem to be arguing against. This is called a strawman fallacy if you’re unfamiliar with it.
In relating to other animals, there is no reason our standard should be any different than animals to one another. In relating to other people, it is reasonable to have a different standard.
Would you consider bestiality immoral then? The animal equivalent of bestiality (interspecies sex) occurs regularly between different species after all.
I am not able to provide an objective moral reason if other animals may be treated differently from humans. If consent cannot be taken into account, raping animals is not immoral.
The sole argument could be that bestiality harms or at the very least exposes an animal to a significant risk of harm. But then again, killing an animal certainly harms it much worse but this would be morally acceptable in such a system, so the harm an animal faces isn’t really part of the equation.
this doesn’t refute what I said.
What I tried to say is:
If treating other animals like they behave towards other animals is acceptable, the only reason beastiality would be illegal is because of “ew”.
I’d say that’s one reason why our standards should be higher than the standards of animals. Suffering is bad even when non-humans are affected.
Nobody invoked intelligence or rationality. You have misread and now you are just confusing things.
To keep it simple: A tiger’s life depends on killing other animals. A human being can live to a record-setting age and never kill another animal. The tiger has no choice but to be violent to vulnerable individuals, but when a human does it, the lack of necessity makes it cruelty and abuse. When a human does have such a necessity, the math works out differently, but in the context of the comic strip, the subject had no necessity to kill those vulnerable individuals.
All life is supported by displacing or ending others. Even if you don’t view plants as ethically problematic, the agricultural practices to feed civilisation, by definition, must upset the natural ecological balance and harm animals.
The reason a vegan doesn’t feel upset about eating produce is the degree of removal from the animal harm. They don’t see the deforestation or destruction of wetlands or the damage done by pesticides or in fertilizer production. It’s no different than an omnivore not feeling guilt when a butcher kills an animal (even if they wouldn’t do it themselves).
This harm has always happened since we developed coordinated agrarian societies. The most ethical stance is that humans should return to their natural ecological niche, hunter-gatherers with minimal reliance on agriculture.
However, veganism isn’t possible in such a society. The ability to supplement the human diet with plant based alternatives at scale requires disruptive agriculture. Thus strict veganism* in this lens is inherently self defeating.
*The vegan concept of harm reduction isn’t impacted here, there are still lots of reasons to go plant based
I’d like to see a single human alive today who because of their actions has not killed another animal? I guarantee every single human alive today has been responsible for killing an animal. Sure it might not have been for food but your actions have resulted in the death of an animal.
It doesn’t need to be invoked, the higher moral agency placed on humans hinges on the notion of superior human rationality. You could choose to be a vegetarian and choose not to kill animals, but that doesn’t mean that it is a more ethical or moral choice because human biology evolved to require meat other wise it requires planning and supplementation that is not necessarily possible outside of industrial societies. I do agree that choosing not to eat animals due to the industrial nature of meat production is a more ethical choice, but not that killing animals is necessarily wrong.
I may not be explaining it well but basically: the idea that humans killing animals is wrong can only exist if you think humans are superior to animals. I reject that notion and that’s where my argument comes from.
That’s a really bad argument, sorry. Of course we place a higher moral agency on humans than on animals - otherwise you’d have yo argue that other atrocities like rape and murder shouldn’t be morally judged either.
A tiger cannot make moral decisions. You can. So you will be judged if you don’t.
Not to hold yourself to a higher standard morally than a literal predator would be downright psychopathic.
You are placing a higher moral agency on humans because you make some special distinction between humans and other animals.
Humans are just other animals and they have diverse conceptions of morality and ethics. Rape and murder are not equivalent to killing for sustanance.
Comparing our moral behaviour to a ‘literal predator’ is a value judgement where you denigrate animal behaviour and elevate human behaviour as somehow superior.
Well, obviously. Because I believe I can be held to a higher standard than a tiger. They kill and eat disabled babies. Is that something you would deem acceptable for humans to do?
You are judging a tiger from a human centric perspective and making a claim that we know better than it.
Even that article point out that unlike lions tigers are not a social species. Therefore our sense of morality is not applicable to the tiger. A disabled or strange Tiger cub can’t mature into an adult tiger.
For humans it is different. But there are examples, such as Spartans, killing disabled babies which was not immoral to them.
My point is you can’t make a universal claim to the morality of humans killing other animals to sustain themselves since it is evidently how we evolved and our nature.
We can intellecutalize and make moral and ethical decisions to not eat animals for the many valid reasons in this thread which I also subscribe to but that doesn’t mean the moral claim that killing animals is wrong can be applied to all human animals at all times.
For example to switch to vegan diets relies heavily on industrialized society. Arguably our contemporary society which facilities the adoption of vegan diets is more immoral than the behaviour of previous human civilizations since the latter is limited in scope and in inpact while the former destroys entire ecosystems, biodiversity and causes mass extinction.
I know that I know better. Don’t know if you do - but claiming you don’t says something pretty damning about your moral capacity.
Oh yes I can. What you (and plebcouncilman as well) are doing here is a fallacy that was overcome in the 18th century. Something can very well be morally wrong despite being natural. Examples: Murder. Rape. Eating children. All very natural, horrible things which, fortunately, humanity largely rejects.
No one is making such an absolutist claim. But generally speaking killing is not a good thing and should be avoided if possible. Unnecessarily killing animals, e.g. if you’re reasonably able to thrive on a vegan diet, can therefore very well be claimed to be unethical. And that has nothing to do with anthropocentrism and everything with our willingness to think about morality at all. What you wrote about industrialized society doesn’t change that, since we currently live in a industrialized society and must therefore judge the morality of our actions based on this given reality. Not to mention that with our current understanding of agriculture and science we could reduce our ecological impact without the need to kill animals at all. But all that misses the point.
You wrote that I’m “placing a higher moral agency on humans because [I] make some special distinction between humans and other animals”. At best that’s a bad argument, at worst it’s intellectually disingenuous, because you either do the same or you’re a child-eating psychopath. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and claim that you simply haven’t really thought about it much.
Well you certainly made a case for your own level of intelligence. At least word salad is vegan.
I have a mostly vegan diet but can’t updoot this enough.
You’re not vegan if you have a mostly vegan diet, sorry
Cool thanks for letting me know
I think this is fundamentally true (although it has issues when it scales down to insects and below that requires an arbitrary line to be drawn) but I’m not convinced that being absolute about it is useful in harm reduction.
It’s objectively better that someone looks to buy meat from a farm that cares about the welfare of its animals than one that maximizes profit at the cost of the wellbeing and happiness of the animal.
Naturally it’s better still if they reduce or stop their meat consumption, but making it black-and-white can potentially result in a worse outcome by setting the bar higher than the consumer is willing to jump.
Which killing of a cow is objectively better?
This is not a good-faith response. I’m not engaging further.
Yeah I’d bow out too if I were wrong.
Quick and fast
So the method is what’s important not the result? Just say you don’t value animal lives.
It’s a lot better than dying painfully and slow
Yes if an animal had to die then the less suffering way is better, but they don’t have to die.
everything dies
Not everything is killed though.
The one that has a life out in the field and then just dies one day without any stress. The one that is in a factory farm never sees the light is stressed their whole life. Guess what life is a bitch and unfair everything dies.
I genuinely can’t understand the disconnect you people have between the value of one life lived versus another only to be OK with that life being ended for the indulgence of your average McDonald’s customer.
Meat is not a dietary requirement. Full stop.
See, it’s not hard to make disingenuous leaps. If you’re going to tell me about sustainable local farming don’t bother, I’ll dismiss it like local animal farming vs. factory slaughter.
So what is your solution for when a species is getting over populated and destroying an ecosystem? Is it not more ethical to kill some and preserve the ecosystem for the rest of the wildlife in that area?
Why’d the overpopulation happen?
Not enough or no natural predators usually.
And why did that happen?
Could be any number of valid reasons that have nothing to do with eating meat. For example, human safety. Unless you’re arguing for a dismantling of civilization due to its natural encroachment, I don’t know where you’re going with this.
I didn’t ask how these situations could have been prevented. That ship has sailed. I wish we hadn’t caused it to be this way, but here we are. Now the two options are to kill them back down to sustainable numbers, or allow them to destroy the ecosystem thereby condemning themselves and a host of other animals as well.
I’m not a hunter myself, and I personally probably don’t have what it takes to kill an animal even in these circumstances, but I also can’t provide a better solution. So I’m not going to shame people for hunting when it both provides food for them as well as brings balance to an ecosystem.
I will, however, shame them if it is done purely for sport and against non problem animals. I hope those folks that go to Africa and hunt elephants and lions and shit get eaten. Slowly.
How about a third option:
Reintroduce predators that were native to that ecosystem.
If the rampant species has flourished for some time without predators, then they might be less agile in avoiding them, leading to better outcomes.
That’s great for people that don’t live near these places. Most aren’t going to volunteer to have wolves or cougars or whatever reintroduced into their local forest and risk them to run wild through the neighborhood mauling children and pets.
Bears do this in many parts of North America and in general northern latitudes, and people live in harmony.
You’re appealing to fear, and the slippery slope here is eradication of all apex predators. That has done absolutely nothing for environmental conservation in the cases where it has happened.
Apex predators can be reintroduced to habitats without direct impacts to humans. Of course there are indirect impacts, like livestock culling, but those pale in comparison to the moral ill of endangering entire species. Imagine if humans were hunted by a more sophisticated apex predators. We’d want to keep our place in the ecosystem.
Typical anthropocentrism at work
You absulotely can, that’s an absurd oversimplification.
But, if the human has the option not to, that option should always be exercised, which is currently not the case.
You can so ethically take a life.
I’ll just take you’re 7 word reply as the gospel then…
What is asserted gratuitously is denied gratuitously