Morality of Eating Meat

[Dtergent]

But doesn't a creature need self-consciousness in order to realize what pain is? Otherwise you would just have a simple reaction to negative stimuli, no?

Does this negate the negative characteristic of pain to an individual or creature?

If you are to apply this line of thinking to animals, would it then be alright to main retarded persons, on the grounds that we have no clear idea of their self-consciousness?

 

[DJDannyUhOh]

Even in the most severe case of mental retardation, the EEG activity (with the exception of gamma band responses related to sight) and, to a lesser extent neuropathology, of the human brain is still vastly different than that of even a healthy mammalian brain of a non-Homo sapiens. Look at the case of Terri Schiavo, people thought she was an emotionally reacting human being when in fact the autopsy showed she was a vegetable reacting to stimuli.

 

[Judas]

Why must our ethical arguments be universalized?
Shouldn't a robust ethical perspective take into account situational contingencies?

In this case, its more appropriate to have a universalized argument. Clearly, the most important argument against eating meat is that you're taking a life. Now, why should it matter where this life happens to exist? Animals in the US should viewed in the same way as any are in other places. Is an animal's life in the US worth more than that elsewhere? If people elsewhere eat meat, they are also taking life.

Many vegetarians are not this intolerant

I realize this. But there will alway be those few and I just don't understand where they're comming from.

Since we seem to be in the business of applying purpose to animals' lives here (which may be a dubious enterprise anyway), why is survival your sole criterion? Why not the ability to feel pleasure and avoid suffering?

I do believe that animals like cows and pigs feel pleasure and suffering. But its really obvious that what they're able to feel is much more limited than for humans. What pleasures do animals have? There's so few, like being warm, being full, mating - I really cannot think of more. Suffering? Pain and a few other things. When youre talking about taking the life of a mature cow, it being done by other animals(including us) or by nature down the road, its equivalent. Those are not precious years.

Because animals do it, it justifies us doing it?
Monkeys will occasionally throw feces at each other, would it be OK if I hurled feces at you? Afterall, we're animals, so it's OK, right?

This analogy is somewhat inaccurate. One deals with eating, a necessary function of life. Throwing feces (could be a funny joke to play on someone ) is less necessary to life.

appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases

I fully agree with this statement. Vegetarianism can be healthy. But part of their diet would include ways to supplement the protein. "nutritionally adequate" doesn't sound like adequate standard.

you can't make a generalization of different cases
if you want to prove the right of all humans to eat meat, that's exactly what you have to do
you can't just find one population for which it's justified and magically apply it to all others

Again, in this case its more appropriate to make generalizations. Animal life should be equal, regardless of where they exist. If I can find examples where its appropriate for people to eat meat, saying that it doesnt apply elsewhere means animal lives are not equal.

If they do not have the capacity to judge, then couldn't philosophers make the argument that animals might not have the human-like consciousness we project them to have, making it universally moral to eat them?

Good point. Animals do not have human-like consciousness. Animals are not as complex as we humans. We hold them to a different lower standard - we don't expect them know right from wrong morally, we don't expect them to grasp the meanings of a lot of things, etc. We should not hold them to our standard of the preciousness of life. We humans see life as precious, but we see this because our lives are precious.

 

[jonO_O]

when in fact the autopsy showed she was a vegetable

That's brilliant :D

 

[vegan]

But doesn't a creature need self-consciousness in order to realize what pain is? Otherwise you would just have a simple reaction to negative stimuli, no?

they don't have to have the same degree of consciousness as we do to be self-aware
it's obvious to anyone who has seen an animal in pain that it wishes the situation to stop
if it sees that a situation may inflict pain, it will even try to avoid it

don't forget that not so long ago, we were non-human animals ourselves
we didn't start from the beginning as a different, intelligent species
someone posted on BL maybe one year ago an article about a monkey (chimp maybe) who had started to walk on 2 legs only
all animals are still going to evolve. and maybe some of them will start to show human-like intelligent in the long term
when would their capacity to feel pain be finally recognized then?
when the first one says "it hurts"?
obviously no
we were in their situation before
we didn't get self conscious when we started to use tools, but way earlier, even before the stage at which the animals we exploit are

Even in the most severe case of mental retardation, the EEG activity (with the exception of gamma band responses related to sight) and, to a lesser extent neuropathology, of the human brain is still vastly different than that of even a healthy mammalian brain of a non-Homo sapiens

no doubt about that, but because another species' brain doesn't function like ours doesn't mean it can't share some identical properties with our

there's no reason there'd be only one unique model of brain allowing self-consciousness
we're not the royal road to evolution
it would be like an english saying that if you don't talk english, you can't communicate, because that's the way his own language evolved

Look at the case of Terri Schiavo, people thought she was an emotionally reacting human being when in fact the autopsy showed she was a vegetable reacting to stimuli.

doesn't this go against what you were trying to say and show that indeed, humans can in certain circumstances be less self-aware than animals; thus giving the right (according to your proposed argument) to hurt them since they'd only be reacting to a negative stimuli?

Now, why should it matter where this life happens to exist?

the generalization i'd agree with is that everywhere, it would be better not to kill animals

but you can't look the same way at an inuit killing the only food he has access to and a westerner choosing meat among hundreds of other aliments
exactly as you can't look the same way at a person who kills someone who was attacking him and a person who kills someone who hadn't done anything to him
in both cases a man is killed. but one case has a justification whereas the other no

This analogy is somewhat inaccurate. One deals with eating, a necessary function of life. Throwing feces (could be a funny joke to play on someone ) is less necessary to life.

praying mantis eat their males
that deals with eating and animals do it so it justifies it for humans?

But part of their diet would include ways to supplement the protein

no, no, no, no and no
the protein myth is utterly ridiculous
an adult male needs around 55g of protein per day
i have on my desk a bottle of soy milk that say 37g/L
so by drinking 1,5L of this a day, without eating anything, i already get enough protein
not to mention that i'm addicted to this and drink more like 3L

there's protein in most vegetables. just in lesser quantities
but as said in the other thread, people eat much more protein than they need
the average american eats 4 times more protein than necessary

(and i hope by "supplements" you didn't mean soy and other protein-rich vegetables as that would be like saying that a meat eater has to eat supplements of meat to get his protein)

Again, in this case its more appropriate to make generalizations. Animal life should be equal, regardless of where they exist. If I can find examples where its appropriate for people to eat meat, saying that it doesnt apply elsewhere means animal lives are not equal.

it's like saying "my friend was sick so he didn't have to go to work. so i shouldn't have to go to work either or that'd mean you're not considering our rights equally"

you can't justify your actions with the excuses of others
if someone is attacked and kills the aggressor in the fight or if an inuit eats fish because there's no vegetation where he lives (which by the way is an example of what i labelled senseless in the other thread) doesn't justify killing people or animals you don't have to

We humans see life as precious, but we see this because our lives are precious.

hit a dog once, and then try to hit it again and kill it and you'll see if its life is not precious to itself

 

[Hypnic_JerK]

Because animals do it, it justifies us doing it?

Monkeys will occasionally throw feces at each other, would it be OK if I hurled feces at you? Afterall, we're animals, so it's OK, right?

Logic Stunnaz

 

[DJDannyUhOh]

doesn't this go against what you were trying to say and show that indeed, humans can in certain circumstances be less self-aware than animals; thus giving the right (according to your proposed argument) to hurt them since they'd only be reacting to a negative stimuli?

No, it just shows an instance of less self-awareness and how we project our own state of self-awareness upon that situation. We are taking about a human losing something that it originally had as opposed to an animal that originally didn't have it.

we didn't get self conscious when we started to use tools, but way earlier, even before the stage at which the animals we exploit are

If we did achieve self-consciousness way earlier, then why didn't we debate the morality of eating animals then? It's impossible to tell when we gained such.

 

[Son of Samurai]

We need meat in our diet to cope with life as we know it. The chemicals and minerals in things like fish oil etc. cannot be found in abundant supply anywhere else. To get the correct nutrients for a fit and healthy survival and dominance we would have to eat 2 times as much vegies and fruits as we do the various meats and then have to take daily dietry suppliments.

Vegetarianism is not good for people who play sport competetively or for long term generational brain and body growth, studies have shown this.

As has been said before, eating meat in itself is not morally wrong, it is the way that the animals have lived before their death and the method of death that has any leg to stand on as far as morals are concerned. Nature is full of predators and prey, it happens everywhere all the time.

 

[Dtergent]

While my “veganism” is not a result of a moral deliberation, I have some contentions about several things brought forth.

I don’t believe that for pain to qualify as important, it has go through the same processes that it does in human beings. Your statement about differing brains between mammalian and humans is, I think, inconclusive. While it is automatically assuming parallelisms, if not a hierarchy, between what we understand about the human vs. other brains, it is also a bit problematic for me, because you vouch for the difference between animals and humans on the basis of consciousness. While present brain structure and function as an indicating difference, consciousness studies have yet to “locate” consciousness at a precise location/brain function. Your example of that lady who was brain damaged showed that she was not feeling any emotions… is this your idea of consciousness? Animals certainly have shown signs of emotion.

Basically, this thread has mostly consisted of: (1)Arguments that the basis of eating/not eating meat should be based on whether or not a creature has human-type consciousness
(2) Arguments that the basis of eating/not eating meat should be based on whether or not the creature exhibits signs of pain

And each faction is bringing in with it the assumption of what is valuable/important to them, based on norms, empathy, your own logic (and make it known if you wish, but I’d be glad to see someone go further back than these two points). Because from these points onwards, there will be no intersecting and directly opposing points between the arguments.

The first argument (1), I believe, is based on many things that are not yet scientifically proven, and assumes that there are “more important” (obviously there are more advanced) levels of consciousness. Given that we are not talking of issues of survival here, let it be made clear that this line of thinking assumes the supremacy of the human form of consciousness. By virtue of what? Being more intelligent, being self-determining as we understand it? Before we draw out a hierarchy of consciousness types, we must be able to fully understand the dynamics of consciousness. We don’t fully understand it in our own species alone, so it’s difficult to draw conclusions, not about the VALUE of our self-consciousness vis a vis the supposed lack of this same type in another, but basically, it would be hard to hold the two up and draw parallelisms, not to mention conclusions on morality on them.

DJDanny, I also do not believe that the “birth” of human consciousness would have automatically facilitated a discussion on the morality of eating animals. Discussions evolve with social context. It took quite awhile for human rights to enter the realm of actual discussion, what more about animals?

 

[DJDannyUhOh]

If we were to go back beyond the two points you mentioned, there would be no need for debate. We would simply be animals eating animals, which we still are today. And consciousness and sentient go hand in hand so you can't really debate this without bringing up the first point you mentioned.

they don't have to have the same degree of consciousness as we do to be self-aware

That's an assumption. Consciousness is absolute, you either have to have it or not. An organism cannot function on partial awareness.

 

[Dtergent]

By beyond I meant how you arrived at this value of yours. For instance, WHY do you think consciousness should be the basis INSTEAD OF only pain? How did you come to place it above all considerations?

Where do you draw the line of sentience?

 

[DJDannyUhOh]

In order to feel pain you need to be conscious of that pain. We only define pain by how we are aware of it, if we weren't, how would we know what it is in the first place? It's Cartesianism. In order to know what we know, we must be aware of it.

 

[Judas]

As I've stated before, organisms need to consume other organisms to live. Cows eat grass, we eat the cows. Clearly, we don't think much of plant life because we're not complaining about the cows.

Value of life is not the same for all organisms. Our lives are the most important, followed by animal life, then plant life. Now, you can draw the line between plant life and animal life easily, using pain as a criteria for the value of a life. Here's a justification, plants do not feel pain, therfore its okay to eat them. But think about it. Do plants desire any less to live and grow, compared to animals? They evolve and adapt to suit/prosper in an environment. They try to get as much sunlight as possible by growing more leaves or stretching out the branch. But we don't care, our lives are much more important than their's.

The same thought process can be applied to animals. We know that they want to live by struggling to survive. Using a different criteria besides pain, we can justify that their lives are less important than ours (Why should pain be so readily accepted as a criteria with plants, but not any other criterias for animals?). This is where meateaters choose to draw the line.

As a side note, fish and other sea creatures are so nutritional and their lives are not so valuable, why not eat them? If I ever decide to really cut down on meat for health reasons, I would definately continue to eat sea food, as theres almost no good reason for eliminating them from my diet.

 

[Mehm]

I was vegan for a year and a half but recently started to eat some free range organic animal products. Overall, I feel much healthier. Also, as i learn more about permaculture and sustainable living, I see that animals fit very nicely into the whole system. I can't wait to get some ducks this spring.

 

[Dtergent]

In order to feel pain you need to be conscious of that pain. We only define pain by how we are aware of it, if we weren't, how would we know what it is in the first place? It's Cartesianism. In order to know what we know, we must be aware of it.

So you mean pain is only significant when an organism possesses the kind of "awareness feedback loop" that humans possess? Please help me understand what you are trying to say.

Just because we have no firsthand experience of pain as an animal experiences it, it doesn't mean that it does not exist. Moreso when physical observations make it clear that there is a reaction, a pained one, and an aversion to pain.

If you are reducing animals to machinistic behavior, I don't see why human beings can't be as well. Following this line of thinking, only experiential bias will tell us otherwise.

 

[Dtergent]

Value of life is not the same for all organisms. Our lives are the most important, followed by animal life, then plant life. Now, you can draw the line between plant life and animal life easily, using pain as a criteria for the value of a life. Here's a justification, plants do not feel pain, therfore its okay to eat them. But think about it. Do plants desire any less to live and grow, compared to animals? They evolve and adapt to suit/prosper in an environment. They try to get as much sunlight as possible by growing more leaves or stretching out the branch. But we don't care, our lives are much more important than their's.

The same thought process can be applied to animals. We know that they want to live by struggling to survive. Using a different criteria besides pain, we can justify that their lives are less important than ours (Why should pain be so readily accepted as a criteria with plants, but not any other criterias for animals?). This is where meateaters choose to draw the line.

I knew this stuff about plants was going to come up eventually I thought a lot about this when I was younger. And I do admit it really all comes down to personal values when it comes to this stuff-- that is why I get into a stitch when people try to rationalize either side, it USUALLY just doesn't make sense to me. It all comes down to your level of empathy towards something, and this usually can't be logically explained or "justified" unless you delve into theories of nonlocality.

But here's a thought-- values change over cultures and time. Plants also have "pain" reactions that are quanitified by increase in tannin levels, etc. However, like the earlier examples on Indians, it is a matter of survival for me. If we discover some kind of water that is able to sustain healthy human life, then I will perhaps shift to that, because I have a personal predisposition to consuming "lighter" things, it is something my body naturally enjoys.

Mehm, my brother and I are both vegan, as are many from my relatives, but my dad eats meat. Soon I'm getting chickens and fish for him and will have people tend and range them at our house, mainly because of the deplorable conditions of how they are raised elsewhere. As my dad is firm in his stand of eating meat (he was vegetarian for a few months but gave up), I might as well ensure that he is as healthy as a meat eater gets. Furthermore, I want him to be "fully responsible" in a sense... I know he will develop some kind of attachment to the animals. If he chooses to continue to eat meat, at least he should be fully aware about what they go through, for his choice and convictions to be truly meaningful to himself.

 

[DJDannyUhOh]

If you are reducing animals to machinistic behavior, I don't see why human beings can't be as well. Following this line of thinking, only experiential bias will tell us otherwise.

It has already been pointed out that humans have the ability to judge and reason. Animals don't. That's where automata and higher consciousness divide. You can't reduce humans to automata because of our ability to reason. People use this as an ethical factor when choosing to eat meat and until definitively proven on either side, the meat debate will continue.

 

[huntmich]

I put plants on the same level as animals, and me for that reason. So in my eyes, its no less cruel to be a vegitarian than it is to be a carnivore.

 

[ebola?]

>>That's where automata and higher consciousness divide.>>

I disagree.

ebola

 

[DJDannyUhOh]

>>That's where automata and higher consciousness divide.>>

I disagree.

ebola

Of course. There are infinite points of consciousness at which we can assume self-awareness comes into play. However, I'm a firm believer that it's an "all or none" response as some or partial consciousness is an impossible state to function in. If one believes that partial consciousness does exist, how far along the line do we stop and what objective characteristics can we base that on?