Post by Yahweh on Jun 17, 2009 18:02:47 GMT -5
marc,
People ask that question to me all the time. The short answer is this: sure, it would be beneficial if we could eliminate predation. In the same respect, as a human rights activist as well, I'm totally in favor of the idea of ridding the earth of killer tornadoes and earthquakes -- its just that there is nothing, not even in the wildest fantasy world, I can do.
As often as people say "but Yahweh, what about all the predation in the wild", I've never, not even one time, heard someone come up with an idea for policing the trillions of ecosystems on the planet. Never, not even once. I'll consider your argument when someone comes up with a plan to micromanage the 57 million square miles of land and 328,000,000 cubic miles of ocean.
Until then, we're perfectly capable of policing our own behavior, so we should be doing at least that much.
The comment in my OP is very telling: I generally don't hold that human life has any intrinsic value whatsoever. [...] almost certainly human life has conditional value.
You're right, there's no reason to limit moral protection to human, but you're wrong in thinking that humans are valuable because they are life forms.
The consensus among animal rights philosophers is that animal rights isn't a new or radically different moral philosophy, its not even at odds with humans rights. Animal rights and humans rights are two sides of the same coin. In other words, animal rights is a logical extension of the same principles underlying the ethical treatment of humans.
My moral principles are very strongly connected to utilitarianism, but to avoid a lengthy explanation, I'll just put it this way: a capacity to have desires, interests, preferences, wants, and so on is a prerequisite having a claim to moral consideration.
I can go on at length justifying that principle, but the general idea is that a being with no preferences is indifferent to how its treated, it neither seeks to obtain nor avoid anything, its welfare is not affected in any sort of way by any sort of behavior. Rocks, plants, stereos fall into this category: rocks, in and of themselves, cannot be harmed or helped in any sense. In what way can we infer constraints on how we behave with regard to rocks for the sake of rocks themselves?
Welfare matters here, not life for the sake of life. A capacity to feel and hold preferences is a prerequisite for any sort of welfare at all.
For what its worth, what I've written above counts as an answer to my own OP: humans do not matter because they happen to be members of our species, nor do they matter because they happen to be alive, nor do they matter because they happen to be members of our species and alive. People matter because they are feeling beings with an experiential welfare.
Painless killing is marginally better than tormenting the animal beforehand, but to answer your question: no. If you swapped the animals with a mentally similar human, my answer would not change either.
The idea here is that as soon as we accept that torturing an animal has worse moral consequences that not torturing it, then we implicitly accept that animal welfare is morally relevant and shapes our behavior. Somewhere along the line, you're saying to yourself "we should minimize the harm that we cause to animals, so we ought to do X" -- once you go down that road and take the principle to its logical ends, you end up discovering the same arguments that animal rights activists have been making for year.
Make sure you research your claims before passing judgment. For what its worth, see the American Dietetic Association: "Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence."
To answer your two questions:
1) Planning doesn't hurt when you first start a vegan diet, but I think "planning" is grossly overstated. I've never put more than 2 minutes of forethought into my diet in my life, and I'm doing just fine.
There are lots of food myths which circulate the internet, including the myth that vegan diets lack [insert favorite vitamin here]. I've done the research and have been living a vegan diet since I've been 18, and I'm still alive and kicking. The trick to being healthy is eating a variety of foods, eating three times a day, and avoiding junk food.
2) I've heard of horror stories where, every 4 or 5 years, a kid is hospitalized or dies from a vegan diet -- in 100% of cases, the kid has been starved, they haven't had access to any food, so its not merely "inadequate nutrition". There are no cases in history where a child with access to three meals a day has become ill on a vegan diet. Of course, its important to realize that these stories are desparately removed from the mainstream (that's why their newsworthy in the first place), the millions of other kids raised on a vegan diet every year are thriving. Once again, the trick to healthy kids is eating sensible foods.
Here's my question though: If you say it is wrong to kill animals, then surely you would be for preventing others from killing them. If you saw someone about to kill someone else, and could prevent it, I'm sure you would. Shouldn't this then extend to animals? Especially since they can't make moral decisions?
People ask that question to me all the time. The short answer is this: sure, it would be beneficial if we could eliminate predation. In the same respect, as a human rights activist as well, I'm totally in favor of the idea of ridding the earth of killer tornadoes and earthquakes -- its just that there is nothing, not even in the wildest fantasy world, I can do.
As often as people say "but Yahweh, what about all the predation in the wild", I've never, not even one time, heard someone come up with an idea for policing the trillions of ecosystems on the planet. Never, not even once. I'll consider your argument when someone comes up with a plan to micromanage the 57 million square miles of land and 328,000,000 cubic miles of ocean.
Until then, we're perfectly capable of policing our own behavior, so we should be doing at least that much.
Why stop at animal, then? If I believe that non-human animals should be protected, shouldn't I then argue that all life forms should be protected? There is no objective reason for drawing the line at animals, anymore than there is a just humans. Like I said earlier, human is a starting point.
The comment in my OP is very telling: I generally don't hold that human life has any intrinsic value whatsoever. [...] almost certainly human life has conditional value.
You're right, there's no reason to limit moral protection to human, but you're wrong in thinking that humans are valuable because they are life forms.
The consensus among animal rights philosophers is that animal rights isn't a new or radically different moral philosophy, its not even at odds with humans rights. Animal rights and humans rights are two sides of the same coin. In other words, animal rights is a logical extension of the same principles underlying the ethical treatment of humans.
My moral principles are very strongly connected to utilitarianism, but to avoid a lengthy explanation, I'll just put it this way: a capacity to have desires, interests, preferences, wants, and so on is a prerequisite having a claim to moral consideration.
I can go on at length justifying that principle, but the general idea is that a being with no preferences is indifferent to how its treated, it neither seeks to obtain nor avoid anything, its welfare is not affected in any sort of way by any sort of behavior. Rocks, plants, stereos fall into this category: rocks, in and of themselves, cannot be harmed or helped in any sense. In what way can we infer constraints on how we behave with regard to rocks for the sake of rocks themselves?
Welfare matters here, not life for the sake of life. A capacity to feel and hold preferences is a prerequisite for any sort of welfare at all.
For what its worth, what I've written above counts as an answer to my own OP: humans do not matter because they happen to be members of our species, nor do they matter because they happen to be alive, nor do they matter because they happen to be members of our species and alive. People matter because they are feeling beings with an experiential welfare.
You brought up suffering, not me. So let me give you this scenario: If killing an animal for food could be done in such a way that the animal didn't suffer (say, rendering it unconscious first), would that be acceptable to you?
Painless killing is marginally better than tormenting the animal beforehand, but to answer your question: no. If you swapped the animals with a mentally similar human, my answer would not change either.
The idea here is that as soon as we accept that torturing an animal has worse moral consequences that not torturing it, then we implicitly accept that animal welfare is morally relevant and shapes our behavior. Somewhere along the line, you're saying to yourself "we should minimize the harm that we cause to animals, so we ought to do X" -- once you go down that road and take the principle to its logical ends, you end up discovering the same arguments that animal rights activists have been making for year.
I haven't read too much on vegan diet, so I won't claim to be an authority, and feel free to correct me on whatever mistakes I make:
1) Eating a vegan lifestyle requires a great deal of planning and careful monitoring. Also, it's if not cost-prohibitive, than rather expensive.
2) Children are not able to eat a vegan lifestyle.
I'm not certain if either of those two are true. If they are, they would certainly give me pause for following a vegan lifestyle.
1) Eating a vegan lifestyle requires a great deal of planning and careful monitoring. Also, it's if not cost-prohibitive, than rather expensive.
2) Children are not able to eat a vegan lifestyle.
I'm not certain if either of those two are true. If they are, they would certainly give me pause for following a vegan lifestyle.
Make sure you research your claims before passing judgment. For what its worth, see the American Dietetic Association: "Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence."
To answer your two questions:
1) Planning doesn't hurt when you first start a vegan diet, but I think "planning" is grossly overstated. I've never put more than 2 minutes of forethought into my diet in my life, and I'm doing just fine.
There are lots of food myths which circulate the internet, including the myth that vegan diets lack [insert favorite vitamin here]. I've done the research and have been living a vegan diet since I've been 18, and I'm still alive and kicking. The trick to being healthy is eating a variety of foods, eating three times a day, and avoiding junk food.
2) I've heard of horror stories where, every 4 or 5 years, a kid is hospitalized or dies from a vegan diet -- in 100% of cases, the kid has been starved, they haven't had access to any food, so its not merely "inadequate nutrition". There are no cases in history where a child with access to three meals a day has become ill on a vegan diet. Of course, its important to realize that these stories are desparately removed from the mainstream (that's why their newsworthy in the first place), the millions of other kids raised on a vegan diet every year are thriving. Once again, the trick to healthy kids is eating sensible foods.