Veganism

[brian trageskin]

what if, for whatever reason, i distinguish humans from other animals and based on that, i treat non-humans a different way? what if i'm ok with that? what if i couldn't care less that animals suffer so i can eat them? that would mean your insistence on comparing animals to humans is pointless and quite dumb. oh wait, that's exactly what i think.

[goDel]

If we keep on going deep, I've got one too:

"to truly be insufferable, means to completely deny being insufferable"

It's the insufferability-paradox! Godel's insufferability paradox! ;D

[zlemflolia]

8 hours ago, brian trageskin said:

what if, for whatever reason, i distinguish humans from other animals and based on that, i treat non-humans a different way? what if i'm ok with that? what if i couldn't care less that animals suffer so i can eat them? that would mean your insistence on comparing animals to humans is pointless and quite dumb. oh wait, that's exactly what i think.

On what basis?  You can distinguish whatever you want but what is this one based on?  What are the reasons you think we should not cause human death and slavery and why don't they apply to animals?  "I don't care" isn't really an argument unless you want to claim absolute moral relativism in which case whatever, you aren't allowed to complain if someone rapes, milks, kills, then eats your mother, based on your own reasoning.  And in that case I don't care about you or your existence or any of your posts

[brian trageskin]

milk my mother  good one.

the distinction we make between humans and animals is a state of affairs that concerns them only, not us. that power relationship is amoral and needs no justification. it's our will against theirs. whether that's fair or not is irrelevant.

[dingformung]

Why is it irrelevant?

[YangYing]

@brian trageskin the only way I have seen that distinction being viable is through the social contract argument I layed out last page... but note that if you subscribe to that you're against all animal right laws currently in place for example

[brian trageskin]

1 hour ago, MIXL2 said:

@brian trageskin the only way I have seen that distinction being viable is through the social contract argument I layed out last page... but note that if you subscribe to that you're against all animal right laws currently in place for example

an alternate view is that you don't even need that social contract to partially or totally deny animal rights, if the practice this thread incriminates is arbitrary and largely accepted. you can impose your will on others arbitrarily, it's just a matter of whether people accept it or not. moral concerns are peripheral. 

following that logic, animal suffering is a non-problem because the vast majority of people supports it by buying meat, it only concerns animals and animal rights activists. 

1 hour ago, darreichungsform said:

Why is it irrelevant?

for this very season

[manmower]

On 6/3/2019 at 8:30 AM, MIXL2 said:

most of those concerns are discussed on the vid above and on a shorter vid here but to answer quickly

- we already treat mentally retarded people who can't reciprocate social contracts very differently

- since babies can grow to respect social contracts it would be morally wrong to eat them (same w isolated tribes etc)

- same w people in old age or very advanced stages of dementia so that they  can't reciprocate: we treat them very differently

I didn't respond to this earlier because I felt it boiled down to almost the same argument you posted from Zizek, but here goes.

With regard to the mentally "retarded", dementia etcetera: pretty much nobody's position is that non-human animals should be equivalent to healthy adult humans and have the right to vote or drive cars. We're talking about (not) needlessly breeding, exploiting, killing or otherwise harming them for our pleasure. So your (or their) observations seem to be beside the point.

The potentiality argument is problematic too, e.g., all abortions no matter how early would be morally wrong, to me that one is an obvious dead end. Dude in your first video seems to realize this, because I watched 10 minutes of it and he seemed on board with slashing the fuck out of said tribe, assuming he didn't change his mind later on in the video.

Not that I don't give serious consideration to these arguments. I feel like I already explored all the ones that have come up here before deciding I should go vegan, but I suppose it's only healthy to revisit them every once in a while.

[zlemflolia]

3 hours ago, brian trageskin said:

milk my mother  good one.

the distinction we make between humans and animals is a state of affairs that concerns them only, not us. that power relationship is amoral and needs no justification. it's our will against theirs. whether that's fair or not is irrelevant.

Might makes right I guess according to you.  This justifies murder of humans in general committed by people with weapons vs. without.  You are completely inconsistent, or maybe I'm assuming too much of you to think you are against murder of humans without guns by those with

[brian trageskin]

your view is based on assuming that all living creatures deserve equal treatment. i pointed out earlier that whatever the reason for treating them differently, it's a matter of power and consent. i also said earlier in this thread that humans have double standards when it comes to animals, which is very normal since it's deeply embedded in our cultures.

yet you insist on drawing parallels between human and animals and assuming they're interchangeable, when this argument has zero weight to those who think they're not. you can't reconcile people to your view if they refuse it. it's all about power and consent really.

 

[dingformung]

Is it though?

[brian trageskin]

yes it is 

[YangYing]

4 hours ago, manmower said:

On 6/3/2019 at 8:30 AM, MIXL2 said:

most of those concerns are discussed on the vid above and on a shorter vid here but to answer quickly

- we already treat mentally retarded people who can't reciprocate social contracts very differently

- since babies can grow to respect social contracts it would be morally wrong to eat them (same w isolated tribes etc)

- same w people in old age or very advanced stages of dementia so that they  can't reciprocate: we treat them very differently

I didn't respond to this earlier because I felt it boiled down to almost the same argument you posted from Zizek, but here goes.

With regard to the mentally "retarded", dementia etcetera: pretty much nobody's position is that non-human animals should be equivalent to healthy adult humans and have the right to vote or drive cars. We're talking about (not) needlessly breeding, exploiting, killing or otherwise harming them for our pleasure. So your (or their) observations seem to be beside the point.

The potentiality argument is problematic too, e.g., all abortions no matter how early would be morally wrong, to me that one is an obvious dead end. Dude in your first video seems to realize this, because I watched 10 minutes of it and he seemed on board with slashing the fuck out of said tribe, assuming he didn't change his mind later on in the video.

Not that I don't give serious consideration to these arguments. I feel like I already explored all the ones that have come up here before deciding I should go vegan, but I suppose it's only healthy to revisit them every once in a while.

This is very different to the zizek argument.

On the second vid he concedes that following this moral system abortion becomes a moral wrong, if you're curious he's however pro choice legislatively.

The argument goes that since animals can't reciprocate the social contract doing anything to them becomes morally neutral so needlessly killing bereeding etc for our pleasure becomes also morally neutral.

The tribe example comes up later on the vid again in that he's assuming that this people cannot ever learn to reciprocate, so again doing anything to them becomes morally neutral.

I should reiterate that I'm not particularly pro this viewpoint.. it is however the only consistent meat-eating stance I have been able to find.

[ooqpoo]

I think that animals half expect us to hunt and eat them, food chain and all that. What they don't understand is that we put them through stages of prolonged suffering before killing them. The meat industry is bad like factories and the like are bad, they're greedy money making schemes taken too far. We've definitely gotten into Mother Nature's black book with the way we treat animals and nature in general. I think she liked us much better when we were running around half naked, bewildered and spending half the day hunting an animal that had a fair chance against it's odd, furless predator. 

I eat meat. But always feel kind of guilty doing so, especially at the supermarket seeing the rows of chicken breasts, steaks etc. A little dark cloud always comes over me. Then I think everything else in the supermarket is just the same. All mass produced stuff. It's probably too late to get away from everything being mass produced, but it probably would be better all in all if they started mass producing some kind of ersatz meat instead of causing the suffering of animals. I had an amazing burger from a veggie joint that was indistinguishable from the 'real' thing, all the taste explosions without the bloated feeling afterwards. 

Maybe one day we'll look back on those 'dark days of meat industry' in the same way we look back on witch hunting, slavery and other times in history when evil doings were accepted as the norm. Or maybe it's too embedded in our ways and we'll just continue chomping on obliviously. 

[manmower]

3 hours ago, MIXL2 said:

he concedes that following this moral system abortion becomes a moral wrong, if you're curious he's however pro choice legislatively

[...]

it is however the only consistent meat-eating stance I have been able to find.

lol

So let me get this straight, he's decided he wants to be so consistent that he'd be okay with genocide or say, playing footbag with organs he's freshly ripped out of a patient in a permanent vegetative state, as long as this stance allows him to have his steak. But somehow he can't follow through on the anti-abortion side?

[YangYing]

3 minutes ago, manmower said:

lol

So let me get this straight, he's decided he wants to be so consistent that he'd be okay with genocide or say, playing footbag with organs he's freshly ripped out of a patient in a permanent vegetative state, as long as this stance allows him to have his steak. But somehow he can't follow through on the anti-abortion side?

he's pro choice because best way to prevent more abortions is to promote contraception and to make it legal since people will have them anyway wether is legal or not so is a bit more nuanced than that.

ok with genocide in what way? also an easier way to understand this whole thing is that if you take this stance you'd see animals as property so torturing and killing an animal would be as wrong as wrecking a car (so not morally wrong but p stupid.. unless the car tastes good)

[manmower]

2 minutes ago, MIXL2 said:

he's pro choice because best way to prevent more abortions is to promote contraception and to make it legal since people will have them anyway wether is legal or not so is a bit more nuanced than that.

ok with genocide in what way? also an easier way to understand this whole thing is that if you take this stance you'd see animals as property so torturing and killing an animal would be as wrong as wrecking a car (so not morally wrong but p stupid.. unless the car tastes good)

He is free to create an ad hoc mess of an ethical system and call that "nuanced" but I disagree that he's being consistent. I tried watching some more of his stuff and he is all about adding exceptions and amendments to everything he says.

Genocide in the sense of wiping out an entire tribe of course, I thought that one was the more obvious example? For the other one I have no idea what he'd say, that was just me taking his position to its logical conclusion.

And yeah I got the last part, and that he is trying to act as if he has no qualms about consistently applying that to anyone who can't reciprocate. But what do you think, is that legit how his ideal world would work, or is he clutching at straws?

[brian trageskin]

just had 2 beef burgers that i made, goat cheese, onion confit and tomato. i can feel the guilt eating me up.

[YangYing]

11 minutes ago, manmower said:

He is free to create an ad hoc mess of an ethical system and call that "nuanced" but I disagree that he's being consistent. I tried watching some more of his stuff and he is all about adding exceptions and amendments to everything he says.

Genocide in the sense of wiping out an entire tribe of course, I thought that one was the more obvious example? For the other one I have no idea what he'd say, that was just me taking his position to its logical conclusion.

And yeah I got the last part, and that he is trying to act as if he has no qualms about consistently applying that to anyone who can't reciprocate. But what do you think, is that legit how his ideal world would work, or is he clutching at straws?

na I have watched quite a bit of him and he seems to be consistent.. if you introspect for a bit you realize that we really do treat people very differently if they cant reciprocate (say psycopaths, murderers etc).. we barely treat them as humans, especially in a self-defense scenarios. also.. you do understand that a tribe being unable to ever reciprocate is a incredibly fantastical scenario right? you're assuming that even the children in the tribe could not ever be taught to reciprocate which is quite absurd

[manmower]

29 minutes ago, MIXL2 said:

if you introspect for a bit you realize that we really do treat people very differently if they cant reciprocate (say psycopaths, murderers etc).. we barely treat them as humans, especially in a self-defense scenarios. also.. you do understand that a tribe being unable to ever reciprocate is a incredibly fantastical scenario right? you're assuming that even the children in the tribe could not ever be taught to reciprocate which is quite absurd

The differences in the treatment of certain humans are obvious, I acknowledged them in my very first post here today. Can you finish that thought though, i.e., what's the relevance when even for convicted murderers we don't come close to doing whatever we want to them?

And why would he compare, say, chickens, pigs or cows to murderous psychopaths anyway? That alone is deceitful. I'm not exactly keen on lions running around eating every animal in sight either, but I already posted on the separate topic of predation earlier.

Another thing I've said in here before is that I have zero problems with people killing and/or eating non-human animals in true life or death scenarios. Killing a human in self defense, fine. Even resorting to cannibalism can be justified in certain situations.

Him and me are two people living in parts of the world where it is extremely easy to be, or at least eat, vegan though. He just happens to love consuming animal products so much that he is willing to ignore suffering per se, raise the bar for ethical consideration to the ability to reciprocate, and just follow that wherever it takes him, including to places like mass breeding non-reciprocating humans to use as goods, for instance... which I don't think is really that "incredibly fantastical".

[YangYing]

7 hours ago, manmower said:

The differences in the treatment of certain humans are obvious, I acknowledged them in my very first post here today. Can you finish that thought though, i.e., what's the relevance when even for convicted murderers we don't come close to doing whatever we want to them?

And why would he compare, say, chickens, pigs or cows to murderous psychopaths anyway? That alone is deceitful. I'm not exactly keen on lions running around eating every animal in sight either, but I already posted on the separate topic of predation earlier.

Another thing I've said in here before is that I have zero problems with people killing and/or eating non-human animals in true life or death scenarios. Killing a human in self defense, fine. Even resorting to cannibalism can be justified in certain situations.

Him and me are two people living in parts of the world where it is extremely easy to be, or at least eat, vegan though. He just happens to love consuming animal products so much that he is willing to ignore suffering per se, raise the bar for ethical consideration to the ability to reciprocate, and just follow that wherever it takes him, including to places like mass breeding non-reciprocating humans to use as goods, for instance... which I don't think is really that "incredibly fantastical".

the psycopath/murderer example is useful to explain the idea of the social contract.. maybe less loaded is looking at animals like we look at trees for example.. nobody is advocating to go torture every tree you see but there is no moral wrong in destroying trees , breeding then and getting wood/other goods from them (some might disagree tho!).

also, if it's suffering itself you value you also come to weird places with the dilemma of naturally predatory animals for example as you mentioned earlier and a couple of other places..

seems like we're going in circles, I don't feel particularly strongly about this issue tbh just find the ideas interesting.

edit: honestly I think it even is a good way to make more people go vegan, you'd argue if you're ok with eating meat then you should be perfectly fine with seeing all of the torture that goes on to make that meat and you shouldn't feel that suffering by virtue of itself should be reduced.. most people would probably disagree w the second premise I.e. most people should probs be vegan

[brian trageskin]

2 hours ago, MIXL2 said:

edit: honestly I think it even is a good way to make more people go vegan, you'd argue if you're ok with eating meat then you should be perfectly fine with seeing all of the torture that goes on to make that meat and you shouldn't feel that suffering by virtue of itself should be reduced.. most people would probably disagree w the second premise I.e. most people should probs be vegan

nobody's happy to know that animals suffer because of us, psychopaths aside. conscious hypocrisy and denial resolve the moral dilemma. 

[YangYing]

1 minute ago, brian trageskin said:

1 hour ago, MIXL2 said:

edit: honestly I think it even is a good way to make more people go vegan, you'd argue if you're ok with eating meat then you should be perfectly fine with seeing all of the torture that goes on to make that meat and you shouldn't feel that suffering by virtue of itself should be reduced.. most people would probably disagree w the second premise I.e. most people should probs be vegan

nobody's happy to know that animals suffer because of us, psychopaths aside. conscious hypocrisy resolves the moral dilemma. 

not happy, but you can be not bothered by it at all. otherwise is not a v soild stance.. if you feel that animals should suffer less and still eat meat you're just being inconsistent or "consciously hypocritical" which is p bad (you could justify having slaves because you're consciously hypocritical for example)

[brian trageskin]

1 minute ago, MIXL2 said:

not happy, but you can be not bothered by it at all. otherwise is not a v soild stance.. if you feel that animals should suffer less and still eat meat you're just being inconsistent or "consciously hypocritical" which is p bad (you could justify having slaves because you're consciously hypocritical for example)

iit's called moral ambivalence and it's omnipresent in our lives. 

[YangYing]

that doesn't make it any less shitty