On Apr 15, 2009, at 6:32 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
> At 02:21 PM 4/15/2009, ravi wrote:
>
>> Ignoring the revealing attempts at humour here on the
>> list,
>
> Chris said earlier people make fun out of guilt and now you're
> saying the making fun is "revealing."
>
> I don't think people are making fun out of guilt or some other
> hidden motive. I think it's because of the high-handed high-
> horseness associated with animal rights acitivism.
>
Yes, I mentioned that perception myself earlier in this thread. Irrespective of whether I agree with the validity of such a perception, my use of "revealing" is to point out that at some point you have to start offering arguments (unless you have none -- hence the [potential] "revealing"), rather than jokes (or knee-jerk responses to presentation), at least to your comrades -- heck, even when I argue with right-wingers who similarly ridicule the high-handed high-horseness of leftists, I ask for the same. I am assuming of course that people like me, who are interested in animal welfare, are your comrades. Perhaps that is a wrong assumption!
On Apr 15, 2009, at 5:37 PM, Matt wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 02:06:57PM -0700, Chris Doss wrote:
>
>> Eating meat is not the ethical issue. It is the suffering involved
>> in obtaining the meat. That suffering should be minimized is a
>> near-universally accepted premise.
>
> Wait, I thought "vegetarian" was about not eating the meat. If
> "vegetarian" only means "wishes suffering to be minimized", then I am
> a meat-loving vegetarian.
You are trying to be clever, yes? Most vegetarians are so because they want suffering to be minimised. Though I am sure you will find some vegetarians who are so for aesthetic reasons, or because that's just who they are... I am a good example: I was lucky (lucky from my perspective) enough to be born a vegetarian (i.e., into such a culture) but am one today for ethical reasons.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 12:35:24PM -0400, ravi wrote:
>
> Here's what I don't get: why the obsession about *eating*? I dismiss
> proselytizing vegetarians because eating is only a small part of the
> ways we humans kill other animals. Pretty much everything we do since
> leaving behind hunter/gatherer lifestyle ends up killing some animal -
> e.g. the groundhogs who get killed when we bulldoze to make the
> foundation for the building I am currently sitting in.
>
Well, in many instances these killings are justifiable (except when they are not: like the people in New Jersey who want yet another cookie-cutter mansion "overlooking the woods" but don't want to have to deal with the danger of bears, so there is a bear hunt organised each year). Also the animals tortured and killed for eating is not small. It runs into the billions each year.
> So this movement seems to have pre-sorted animal-killing human
> behaviors into OK (building a hospital) and not OK (eating them). It
> also seems to have made arbitrary decisions about which animals are
> worth saving (chickens and cows) and which are not (mosquitoes).
These are not arbitrary. They are justified at multiple levels: (1) need vs choice: you need to kill a mosquito else it will kill you (unintentionally). We find people (other than little boys) who torture insects, especially without reason (reason = say medical research), problematic. (2) extension of reasoning: awareness and avoidance of suffering, etc. Now, you may disagree with the logic of such justification and we could have a productive debate. Bertrand Russell was once asked if he would die for his beliefs, to which he responded that he certainly would not, since his beliefs could very well be wrong!
IMHO, you should not repeat the silliness about cute and cuddly creatures.
> I would also not lump vegetarianism together with advocacy for animal
> welfare. In fact, doing so distracts from the goal of ensuring
> that animals raised for food are treated as humanely as possible. The
> former is viewed as an extreme movement with the appearance of a
> secular religion, while the latter reduces animal suffering and
> improves the health of the humans who consume them.
Viewed as? This sounds a lot like the way liberals and "progressives" distance themselves from us. Oh no, we are not like the "far left"! Of course the thing boomerangs on them because the O'Reilly define their mostly vapid centrism (e.g: MoveOn) the "far left"!
On Apr 15, 2009, at 7:14 PM, John Thornton wrote:
> ravi wrote:
>>
>> To some extent it is. Very few purely vegetarian communities have
>> existed in human history, AFAIK. However, as you imply, large
>> numbers of human beings live a healthy vegetarian life (I would
>> estimate a 100 million or more, just in India), and the argument
>> that meat is a necessity, generally speaking, does not seem to hold
>> much water.
>>
> Very few? What were they?
> Is none "very few"?
>
I say "very few" rather than "no" because it is possible that the long tradition of vegetarianism in certain communities in India might qualify them as such a historical group.
> I don't recall the argument that meat was a necessity being put
> forth. When did I miss that?
It has been in the general argument against the vegetarian position. That's what I was talking about, if you recall my earlier post.
> I have the same need to reduce human suffering yet not buying Nike's
> won't bring that about so why should not eating meat be any different?
Perhaps its not different, but the inference need not follow. For instance, Glover and Scott-Taggart argue so in a paper titled "It makes no difference whether or not I do it". There are two arguments I would tentatively offer, as starting points: (a) a small number of individuals choosing to avoid meat would lessen the suffering of one or more animals that would otherwise have been tortured, so the few can make a difference. (b) if everyone perceives the need to the extent you do, perhaps the Nike based human suffering will indeed end. The crux then is the power of the argument offered and how often and broadly it is made available.
> The differences between humans and other animals are ones of degrees.
> Animals eating each other is part of a completely natural cycle.
> Some anti-vegetarians like to claim that humans alone suffer or have
> consciousness but vegetarians put forth a similar claim when they
> say humans alone should remove themselves from the hunting/eating
> life-cycle. It's wrong for a human to kill a gazelle and eat it but
> it's alright for a lion for what reason exactly? That humans alone
> can suffer and/or have consciousness?
> How can the same argument, that humans alone have special cognitive
> abilities that are different in kind rather than degree from other
> animals, be used simultaneously to support conflicting arguments?
The appeal to humans is that they can act as moral creatures, as well as the availability of choices to humans -- the lion does not have a choice but to eat the gazelle -- plus in these discussions on LBO, perhaps because it aids the heaping of ridicule, vegetarians are lumped into one strict ideology, but that's not very accurate. For instance, if you are a nomad wandering the Serengeti and you are hungry (or will be soon) and come upon a gazelle, I don't see a problem with your killing it and eating it. These arguments are not absolutist in that sense. Also there is the bit about two wrongs don't make a right.
This proposition: we "are" omnivores -> we eat meat, I find too reductionist for my taste. It seems similar to: we "are" sexually reproducing creatures -> we fuck the opposite gender. etc. Chris pointed to the naturalistic fallacy (the ought does not [have to] follow the is), which you may or may not agree is a fallacy, but nonetheless I hope we can argue without this level of radical reduction.
On Apr 15, 2009, at 4:34 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Apr 15, 2009, at 4:26 PM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
>> Hell, you don't even know that other adult human beings suffer. You
>> could be the only one, a special mutant.
>
> Adults can tell me, and that gives humans a special place in my
> heart, even if they're too young to speak.
I find this argument weak, unless you follow through that it is fine to eat humans who cannot express their suffering in ways dissimilar from other animals.
On Apr 15, 2009, at 3:49 PM, Jordan Hayes wrote:
> Ravi writes:
>
>> In the practice of industrial animal farming we in fact hold
>> microbial life in higher esteem over bovine.
>
> So I suppose that vegetarians would be okay with meat that's
> produced using non-industrial methods? I mentioned this before, but
> Niman Ranch is just one of a group of folks who know that tasty meat
> doesn't come from factories.
Which vegetarians? I don't think we need to define (exclusively) vegetarianism on the basis of prescriptions. Personally, I would be greatly happy if we (humans) shifted to non-industrial produced meat consumption -- free range animals (Bill B might disagree with that, and I have no contest here -- I am glad to let some informed and disinterested panel define what constitutes a fair environment) which are permitted to live a significant part of their life, that are killed quickly and mercifully and only for essential food consumption (as opposed to mindless wastage that is part of current production and distribution systems) or testing for life-threatening and justifiable medical research.
--ravi
-- Support something better than yourself ;-) PeTA => http://peta.org/ Greenpeace => http://greenpeace.org/ If you have nothing better to read: http://platosbeard.org/