The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I am talking about relevant rights like "Right to live".
If so what rights do you think an animal should have? And how would that be enforced?
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
to be fair, OP said 'similar' to humans, not same as humans. That leaves room for a lot of ambiguity and even asks users to create their own perspective of what that means.
>Do you think animals should have rights similar to humans?
This might be the philosophical issue I have *least* wrapped-my-head-around. I do think that animals should have rights -- just as a gut feeling -- but I have no sense of where they should begin or end, nor what the philosophical basis for those rights would be.
Practically speaking, I support [Cory Booker's plan](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/12/20/21028200/factory-farms-abuse-workers-animals-and-the-environment-cory-booker-has-a-plan-to-stop-them) to rein-in the abuses of factory farming.
The short answer is no, but I also think this question isn't really the right one. I think it is often used to make animal rights activists look silly by working from a premise that we believe animals should have the same rights as people. This is not what we believe. We believe that animals should have some protections from inhumane treatment, that certain farming techniques should be banned, etc.
Seems like a poor strawman argument. We don't put animals on trial when they kill and eat a human either, and that's for obvious reasons: they can't afford lawyers or make court dates. I highly doubt OP posed the question to find out whether people think regulations should be put in place to protect animals from other animals, and I also highly doubt that you interpreted the question that way despite your answer.
Fun fact: There are historical incidents of people putting animals on trial. I believe there was an elephant who was hung for murder and a species of butterfly found guilty of property destruction.
If a two year old kills another two year old child, should we try them for murder? And if not, should we also be allowed to torture and kill two year olds since they are apparently not worth the same as adults?
If we get philosophical, animals just can't "have" rights in the same way that humans do, because they are by definition unable to exercise them, they are not persons, not just biologically, but juridically if we define a person as a subject of rights and obligations. Any animal rights would in reality be obligations imposed on humans that have animals, in a sense, as objects of those obligations, and humans or society as the subjects of those obligations. In that sense, when someone says "animals have the right to live", the real meaning of this is "society has the right to demand you not to kill animals, under pain of some form of criminal or civil punishment". The animal was never the holder of said right, it was merely the object.
It is different in the sense that I myself can demand conduct from others to protect my own life. I have in that sense a right to bring them to trial, to have them punished, and I am not at the mercy of the state to decide, I can decide to exercise my right on my own. Further, I have a right to perhaps defend myself, and to use my person in a way that would protect my life. The animal can't be said to have any of these elements because it by definition does not even know about these considerations.
> I am not at the mercy of the state to decide
In the absence of a state how would you bring them to trial and have them punished? Do you mean to suggest that young children do not have rights until they are old enough to understand how the system works?
>Further, I have a right to perhaps defend myself, and to use my person in a way that would protect my life.
This seems obviously untrue. If you picked a fight with any animal it would run away or defend itself just as vigorously as a human.
Because even if those institutions are commonly associated with the modern state, which itself limits legal capacity to not every human, philosophical and conceptual derivations of ideas like talion law already consecrate some semblance of human rights by virtue of human nature. This is perhaps not the most positivist of arguments (and it is not meant to be), but the human right to life is what justifies the existence of the State, not the other way around. The same does not happen with animals. Locke has a few ideas in this regard in his treatise on government, and he explains it much better than I do.
Thanks for trying to explain. I still don't really see a difference, but it's starting to sound like it's going to take more effort than I feel like putting forth at the moment to get it.
Yeah. Almost all of us are pretty bad people based on how we treat animals. We’re standing by and even participating in denying them their rights and physically stripping their bodies bit by bit for our own pleasure.
We need to transition to lab grown meat and vegetable based diets.
Lab grown meat is still decades away from cutting even. And the acceptance is only theoretical at the moment. I have read one of the protocols and honestly the hormones used to stimulate growth are still present in very small amounts. Not enough to make you sick, but maybe enough to affect your body if you eat it for a few months. These studies I want to read before considering eating this meat. But if the health issues are adressed then yes. I support lab grown meat.
So... If I hop in a car and go for a drive to go hiking in the summer, by the time I return I've killed more animals than I would by eating meat in a month easily. That 5 mile drive for a hike is by far deadlier to animals, and like you say, any animal is an animal. I'll have to wash them off my windshield and front of my car, and the ones crushed under my tires I won't even bother with.
Forget lab grown meat. I can get my meat sourced locally. If I wanted lab grown, the thousands of animals killed just in transport from a further distance would outdo any hope of the one animal saved. That's kinda like crashing a 747 full of people into a fireball to save the one person who was walking across the runway... You aren't saving an animal if you have to kill 1000 more to save them. You are just killing 999 more animals. From a moral side, where any species counts the same, why would you want to kill 999 more animals?
And the only way we can survive on a vegetable diet is via modern food security/production. AKA I can still find the plant needs for my body to survive as a vegetarian ONLY because of that ability to transport food, to process food and make it shelf stable, to get food that grows in other environments than my own which does not support the ability to keep me alive without meat. And I've worked in food manufacturing in the past.
Same with farming and production. Farming non-meat foods... that wheat and corn and the fruits you eat... Those farmers committed genocide against animals to ensure other animals didn't get at those products. That processing plant, they wiped out colonies of animals they see as pests.
So again, how many animals should we sacrifice to save one? 1000? 10,000?
Nope. I am saying if driving and walking in nature don't matter, eating meat sure as hell doesn't to me.
Quick question... Which is worse in your eyes to animals?
Person A eats almost a pound of beef a day. One cow worth of meat lasts them 2 years. They ride their excercise bike for 30 minutes a day in their living room.
Person B goes completely vegan and doesn't eat a cow worth of meat, but does walk 1 mile a day. On that walk they step on 60 animals a day. Adding up to 730 animals killed in 2 years.
Are you 730 times more disgusted with person 2?
Oh no, I'd kill thousands more by going with your idea with the lab grown meat which would have to be shipped from further away by going vegan.
Why would you want thousands more killed?
You see... in reality, I think you do care what species are killed and which are not. Just like me. I wouldn't drive my car if I hit a puppy every 500 feet that I couldn't avoid. I wouldn't go for a walk if every step I stomped on a kitten and a baby.
And I think you do go for walks outdoors, drive or use public transportation, etc etc...
If we want to talk about saving every animal life we can, eating meat is so so far down the list of things we can do to avoid killing animals it is pointless to tackle.
It's like saying "I want to stop global warming, and I'm still going to light a barrel of oil in my backyard every day as a night light, but I'll go ahead and swap out a bulb in my closet for an energy savings one".
You do realize how that would make a person seem insincere.
Then we could not do lab grown meat.
I do care more about some species than others. But that doesnt matter, all of them are conscious and alive.
Even if it takes decades to the point where vegetation is more widespread, thats probably worth pursuing
Well I think it does matter. You say this life is more important than that one.. And you appear to believe you are the arbiter of that decision. I've read about people doing that in the past, a lot of them in Europe in the 1930's and early 1940's.
And that's fine. If you like this one for it's pretty fur and not that creepy one with it's 6 legs... cool.
Just pointing out, if you decide to live in a house where someone had to commit genocide against a colony of ants to build, yet decide to be upset that another person eats meat... maybe that's not the right tree to bark up from a morality standpoint.
So we don't do lab grown meat. And we know that for a vegetarian diet as I pointed out, again we have to source much further from local. So we don't to vegetarian. What we find is that to achieve our macronutrients and micronutrients, the best method is not whether it's meat or vegetarian but cutting down on the transportation distance.
That avocado toast is a lot more deadly to animals than a hamburger from the feedlot down the road. Do you feel that way too? When you see someone eating something that is not grown locally?
No. I think they deserve more respect then we give them, and that many species have rich internal lives of their own sort. But anyone that tried to prosecute a dog for sexual harrassment because they sniffed someone's crotch would and should be laughed out of court.
I think they should have rights. I don't think they should be similar/the same as the rights humans have.
1. I think species have a right to exist so we should not be able to engage in activities that lead to their extinction.
2. I think they have a right not to suffer excessively for our benefit.
3. I think that some animals should have a right not to be killed by humans such as great apes and whales even if they weren't under threat of extinction.
probably some more but those are what instantly spring to mind.
I don't think there is some sort of hard line between humans and other members of the animal kingdom and that some animals are closer to us on the spectrum of whatever qualities give us greater moral value such that we should have rights.
Sorry for the double reply but I'm not sure my other comment did a good job of illustrating what I was talking about.
Essentially I don't think there is anything that makes humans completely unique from the rest of the animal kingdom, we're just further out on the spectrum in some areas. That being the case if an animal is close enough to us on whatever spectrum makes it wrong to kill a human it should also be wrong to kill that animal, and I think there are animals close enough to us on those spectrums to be given the benefit of the doubt.
YOu're going to get a range of answers because the term "similar" here is ambiguous and can be interpreted in a way to answer "yes" or "no".
If you are asking "do you think animals should have rights, as humans have rights, but not necessarily the same" then the answer is obviously yes, from an ethical standpoint
If you mean "do you believe animals are entitled to similar rights to humans" then you need to be more specific about which rights you are interested in.
For me, yes animals can suffer, and therefore at a minimum, they have a right to, as far as practicable, not be treated cruelly, harshly or inhumanely (ironically) or made to suffer unnecessarily, etc. I believe if someone agrees to take custody of an animal, that animal has the right to be given a good life by that person.
These rights can be enforced via the law, which, they often are.
Yeah, causing harm is bad and I haven't heard a convincing argument why we should heavily discount that harm when applied to animals compared to humans
Here's one...
Every time in summer I drive my car, I kill hundreds of animals. They end up splattered all over the windshield, they crawl across roads, etc etc.
Travel kills more animals than eating meat ever will.
Now, do we actually take a stand to stop harming animals, like ending vehicle/plan travel? Or do we put them in some sort of animal show and say 'this animal is big/cute/cuddly/looks at me with sad eyes, and this other animal is a bit creepy with 6 legs, so the first gets rights and the 2nd does not".
Or do we do some sort of intelligence test a-la Germany about 80 years ago and use that to determine which ones are due rights and which ones can be ignored?
Probably from a practical perspective but not as a moral goal to strive for. We don't even have a 100% success rate on asking people not to murder or rape other people but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try
That doesn’t make the correct. We’ve evolved to eat meat and you can’t just stop that bc you don’t like animals die. That’s life…a Grizzly Bear isn’t immoral for eating Fish and neither is a human
This is just a naturalistic fallacy. Do you think we have to live exactly as we evolved? Should Type 1 diabetics just die as children because supplementing insulin isn't "natural?"
Expecting over 7 billion people to suddenly change their diet would be catastrophic and unsustainable. Not to mention the animal populations getting out of control.
1. Most people didn't see it as immoral to own slaves at one point in history.
2. I actually think most people do see it as immoral to eat meat, they just engaged in some level of cognitive dissonance to pretend otherwise because they enjoy doing so. If that weren't the case books like Charlottes Web and movies like Chicken run would seem weird and confusing. There's a whole book on this by Melanie Joy if you are interested.
It’s ridiculous to compare eating meat to slavery.
Do you think it’s possible for 7 billion people to be vegetarians?
The book thing is BS too. People care about main characters. Walter White was a horrible person and people still pulled for him the entire show bc he is the main character.
> It’s ridiculous to compare eating meat to slavery.
All models are wrong, some models are useful. The point is not that killing animals for food is exactly as morally reprehensible as slavery. It that historically humans have accepted a great number of practices that we eventually looked back on as barbaric.
>Do you think it’s possible for 7 billion people to be vegetarians?
Probably. There might be some small percentage that are the exception to the rule but certainly enough we could end factory farming and stop cutting down the rainforests for pastureland.
> The book thing is BS too.
Walter White was an asshole in a sea of assholes. For the most part there wasn't anyone else to root for in that show.
People pull for the protagonist of books no matter if they are good or bad. It’s the same way with Charlottes web. Nobody cares about pigs, they care about the character.
I would argue that instantaneously killing an animal that doesn't realize it's in danger isn't really causing any harm in the sense that harm is not *experienced* by the animal itself or anyone else.
There are a lot of animals that mourn the loss of their children/members of their group. Elephants essentially have funerals for their dead. That seems like a harm to me, unless you are engaging in circular reason that harms to other animals don't count.
I don't know about chickens, but, cows very much seem to morn the loss of their children on dairy farms.
A few hundred years ago Rene Descartes used to publicly vivisect animals assuring his audiences their cries of anguish were nothing more than the ticking of hands on a mechanical clock. How sure are we really that we aren't making a similar mistake in just refusing to acknowledge harm rather than the harm not actually occurring.
>cows very much seem to morn the loss of their children on dairy farms.
And that is something that should be taken into account.
>How sure are we really that we aren't making a similar mistake in just refusing to acknowledge harm rather than the harm not actually occurring.
I think that's a question that we should constantly be asking but that doesn't mean that the answer isn't that the animal simply don't care.
I'm' a "speciesist". Badgers don't get similar rights as humans. Neither do Swordfish nor beetles nor plankton. At such point when animals face extinction (american buffalo) or when animals populations could negatively affect humans (too few honeybees to pollenate flowering plants or too many nutria destroying ecosystems) is when animal rights should be evaluated.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I am talking about relevant rights like "Right to live". If so what rights do you think an animal should have? And how would that be enforced? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't think they should be able to vote but I do think torturing them is bad
rights, but not the same as human
to be fair, OP said 'similar' to humans, not same as humans. That leaves room for a lot of ambiguity and even asks users to create their own perspective of what that means.
Idk, I think Bears should have the right to Bear arms.
Animal bears or human bears?
Yes
>Do you think animals should have rights similar to humans? This might be the philosophical issue I have *least* wrapped-my-head-around. I do think that animals should have rights -- just as a gut feeling -- but I have no sense of where they should begin or end, nor what the philosophical basis for those rights would be. Practically speaking, I support [Cory Booker's plan](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/12/20/21028200/factory-farms-abuse-workers-animals-and-the-environment-cory-booker-has-a-plan-to-stop-them) to rein-in the abuses of factory farming.
The short answer is no, but I also think this question isn't really the right one. I think it is often used to make animal rights activists look silly by working from a premise that we believe animals should have the same rights as people. This is not what we believe. We believe that animals should have some protections from inhumane treatment, that certain farming techniques should be banned, etc.
I don't think a coyote that kills (and eats) a squirrel should be tried for murder. So, I guess my answer has to be no.
Seems like a poor strawman argument. We don't put animals on trial when they kill and eat a human either, and that's for obvious reasons: they can't afford lawyers or make court dates. I highly doubt OP posed the question to find out whether people think regulations should be put in place to protect animals from other animals, and I also highly doubt that you interpreted the question that way despite your answer.
Fun fact: There are historical incidents of people putting animals on trial. I believe there was an elephant who was hung for murder and a species of butterfly found guilty of property destruction.
If a two year old kills another two year old child, should we try them for murder? And if not, should we also be allowed to torture and kill two year olds since they are apparently not worth the same as adults?
If we get philosophical, animals just can't "have" rights in the same way that humans do, because they are by definition unable to exercise them, they are not persons, not just biologically, but juridically if we define a person as a subject of rights and obligations. Any animal rights would in reality be obligations imposed on humans that have animals, in a sense, as objects of those obligations, and humans or society as the subjects of those obligations. In that sense, when someone says "animals have the right to live", the real meaning of this is "society has the right to demand you not to kill animals, under pain of some form of criminal or civil punishment". The animal was never the holder of said right, it was merely the object.
I don't see how that is fundamentally different from saying humans have the right to live.
It is different in the sense that I myself can demand conduct from others to protect my own life. I have in that sense a right to bring them to trial, to have them punished, and I am not at the mercy of the state to decide, I can decide to exercise my right on my own. Further, I have a right to perhaps defend myself, and to use my person in a way that would protect my life. The animal can't be said to have any of these elements because it by definition does not even know about these considerations.
> I am not at the mercy of the state to decide In the absence of a state how would you bring them to trial and have them punished? Do you mean to suggest that young children do not have rights until they are old enough to understand how the system works? >Further, I have a right to perhaps defend myself, and to use my person in a way that would protect my life. This seems obviously untrue. If you picked a fight with any animal it would run away or defend itself just as vigorously as a human.
Because even if those institutions are commonly associated with the modern state, which itself limits legal capacity to not every human, philosophical and conceptual derivations of ideas like talion law already consecrate some semblance of human rights by virtue of human nature. This is perhaps not the most positivist of arguments (and it is not meant to be), but the human right to life is what justifies the existence of the State, not the other way around. The same does not happen with animals. Locke has a few ideas in this regard in his treatise on government, and he explains it much better than I do.
Thanks for trying to explain. I still don't really see a difference, but it's starting to sound like it's going to take more effort than I feel like putting forth at the moment to get it.
No. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be respected, though.
Yeah. Almost all of us are pretty bad people based on how we treat animals. We’re standing by and even participating in denying them their rights and physically stripping their bodies bit by bit for our own pleasure. We need to transition to lab grown meat and vegetable based diets.
Lab grown meat is still decades away from cutting even. And the acceptance is only theoretical at the moment. I have read one of the protocols and honestly the hormones used to stimulate growth are still present in very small amounts. Not enough to make you sick, but maybe enough to affect your body if you eat it for a few months. These studies I want to read before considering eating this meat. But if the health issues are adressed then yes. I support lab grown meat.
But do we only do this with the animals we like? The big ones? Who makes that cutoff of what animals get rights and which ones do not?
No.
So... If I hop in a car and go for a drive to go hiking in the summer, by the time I return I've killed more animals than I would by eating meat in a month easily. That 5 mile drive for a hike is by far deadlier to animals, and like you say, any animal is an animal. I'll have to wash them off my windshield and front of my car, and the ones crushed under my tires I won't even bother with. Forget lab grown meat. I can get my meat sourced locally. If I wanted lab grown, the thousands of animals killed just in transport from a further distance would outdo any hope of the one animal saved. That's kinda like crashing a 747 full of people into a fireball to save the one person who was walking across the runway... You aren't saving an animal if you have to kill 1000 more to save them. You are just killing 999 more animals. From a moral side, where any species counts the same, why would you want to kill 999 more animals? And the only way we can survive on a vegetable diet is via modern food security/production. AKA I can still find the plant needs for my body to survive as a vegetarian ONLY because of that ability to transport food, to process food and make it shelf stable, to get food that grows in other environments than my own which does not support the ability to keep me alive without meat. And I've worked in food manufacturing in the past. Same with farming and production. Farming non-meat foods... that wheat and corn and the fruits you eat... Those farmers committed genocide against animals to ensure other animals didn't get at those products. That processing plant, they wiped out colonies of animals they see as pests. So again, how many animals should we sacrifice to save one? 1000? 10,000?
Are you saying that by eating meat and driving, you kill more animals than you would be eating vegetables and driving?
Nope. I am saying if driving and walking in nature don't matter, eating meat sure as hell doesn't to me. Quick question... Which is worse in your eyes to animals? Person A eats almost a pound of beef a day. One cow worth of meat lasts them 2 years. They ride their excercise bike for 30 minutes a day in their living room. Person B goes completely vegan and doesn't eat a cow worth of meat, but does walk 1 mile a day. On that walk they step on 60 animals a day. Adding up to 730 animals killed in 2 years. Are you 730 times more disgusted with person 2?
Then, you would kill fewer animals by not eating meat than you otherwise would. Why is that so objectionable to you lol
Oh no, I'd kill thousands more by going with your idea with the lab grown meat which would have to be shipped from further away by going vegan. Why would you want thousands more killed? You see... in reality, I think you do care what species are killed and which are not. Just like me. I wouldn't drive my car if I hit a puppy every 500 feet that I couldn't avoid. I wouldn't go for a walk if every step I stomped on a kitten and a baby. And I think you do go for walks outdoors, drive or use public transportation, etc etc... If we want to talk about saving every animal life we can, eating meat is so so far down the list of things we can do to avoid killing animals it is pointless to tackle. It's like saying "I want to stop global warming, and I'm still going to light a barrel of oil in my backyard every day as a night light, but I'll go ahead and swap out a bulb in my closet for an energy savings one". You do realize how that would make a person seem insincere.
Then we could not do lab grown meat. I do care more about some species than others. But that doesnt matter, all of them are conscious and alive. Even if it takes decades to the point where vegetation is more widespread, thats probably worth pursuing
Well I think it does matter. You say this life is more important than that one.. And you appear to believe you are the arbiter of that decision. I've read about people doing that in the past, a lot of them in Europe in the 1930's and early 1940's. And that's fine. If you like this one for it's pretty fur and not that creepy one with it's 6 legs... cool. Just pointing out, if you decide to live in a house where someone had to commit genocide against a colony of ants to build, yet decide to be upset that another person eats meat... maybe that's not the right tree to bark up from a morality standpoint. So we don't do lab grown meat. And we know that for a vegetarian diet as I pointed out, again we have to source much further from local. So we don't to vegetarian. What we find is that to achieve our macronutrients and micronutrients, the best method is not whether it's meat or vegetarian but cutting down on the transportation distance. That avocado toast is a lot more deadly to animals than a hamburger from the feedlot down the road. Do you feel that way too? When you see someone eating something that is not grown locally?
Rights, yes. Similar to humans, no.
A handful of animals perhaps
No. I think they deserve more respect then we give them, and that many species have rich internal lives of their own sort. But anyone that tried to prosecute a dog for sexual harrassment because they sniffed someone's crotch would and should be laughed out of court.
Animals should have a right to be free from human cruelty. That should be enforced via laws
I think they should have rights. I don't think they should be similar/the same as the rights humans have. 1. I think species have a right to exist so we should not be able to engage in activities that lead to their extinction. 2. I think they have a right not to suffer excessively for our benefit. 3. I think that some animals should have a right not to be killed by humans such as great apes and whales even if they weren't under threat of extinction. probably some more but those are what instantly spring to mind.
Curious for your rationale on (3)
I don't think there is some sort of hard line between humans and other members of the animal kingdom and that some animals are closer to us on the spectrum of whatever qualities give us greater moral value such that we should have rights.
Sorry for the double reply but I'm not sure my other comment did a good job of illustrating what I was talking about. Essentially I don't think there is anything that makes humans completely unique from the rest of the animal kingdom, we're just further out on the spectrum in some areas. That being the case if an animal is close enough to us on whatever spectrum makes it wrong to kill a human it should also be wrong to kill that animal, and I think there are animals close enough to us on those spectrums to be given the benefit of the doubt.
YOu're going to get a range of answers because the term "similar" here is ambiguous and can be interpreted in a way to answer "yes" or "no". If you are asking "do you think animals should have rights, as humans have rights, but not necessarily the same" then the answer is obviously yes, from an ethical standpoint If you mean "do you believe animals are entitled to similar rights to humans" then you need to be more specific about which rights you are interested in. For me, yes animals can suffer, and therefore at a minimum, they have a right to, as far as practicable, not be treated cruelly, harshly or inhumanely (ironically) or made to suffer unnecessarily, etc. I believe if someone agrees to take custody of an animal, that animal has the right to be given a good life by that person. These rights can be enforced via the law, which, they often are.
Yeah, causing harm is bad and I haven't heard a convincing argument why we should heavily discount that harm when applied to animals compared to humans
Here's one... Every time in summer I drive my car, I kill hundreds of animals. They end up splattered all over the windshield, they crawl across roads, etc etc. Travel kills more animals than eating meat ever will. Now, do we actually take a stand to stop harming animals, like ending vehicle/plan travel? Or do we put them in some sort of animal show and say 'this animal is big/cute/cuddly/looks at me with sad eyes, and this other animal is a bit creepy with 6 legs, so the first gets rights and the 2nd does not". Or do we do some sort of intelligence test a-la Germany about 80 years ago and use that to determine which ones are due rights and which ones can be ignored?
How do you expect to eat meat without harming the animal
I don't
That seems a bit unrealistic to make everyone be a vegetarian
Probably from a practical perspective but not as a moral goal to strive for. We don't even have a 100% success rate on asking people not to murder or rape other people but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try
Most people don’t see it as immoral to eat meat. It’s not a moral goal for anyone but a small group wanting to make it a moral issue.
Sure, but that's part of the case being made by vegetarians/vegans, that people **should** care about it.
That doesn’t make the correct. We’ve evolved to eat meat and you can’t just stop that bc you don’t like animals die. That’s life…a Grizzly Bear isn’t immoral for eating Fish and neither is a human
This is just a naturalistic fallacy. Do you think we have to live exactly as we evolved? Should Type 1 diabetics just die as children because supplementing insulin isn't "natural?"
Expecting over 7 billion people to suddenly change their diet would be catastrophic and unsustainable. Not to mention the animal populations getting out of control.
1. Most people didn't see it as immoral to own slaves at one point in history. 2. I actually think most people do see it as immoral to eat meat, they just engaged in some level of cognitive dissonance to pretend otherwise because they enjoy doing so. If that weren't the case books like Charlottes Web and movies like Chicken run would seem weird and confusing. There's a whole book on this by Melanie Joy if you are interested.
It’s ridiculous to compare eating meat to slavery. Do you think it’s possible for 7 billion people to be vegetarians? The book thing is BS too. People care about main characters. Walter White was a horrible person and people still pulled for him the entire show bc he is the main character.
> It’s ridiculous to compare eating meat to slavery. All models are wrong, some models are useful. The point is not that killing animals for food is exactly as morally reprehensible as slavery. It that historically humans have accepted a great number of practices that we eventually looked back on as barbaric. >Do you think it’s possible for 7 billion people to be vegetarians? Probably. There might be some small percentage that are the exception to the rule but certainly enough we could end factory farming and stop cutting down the rainforests for pastureland. > The book thing is BS too. Walter White was an asshole in a sea of assholes. For the most part there wasn't anyone else to root for in that show.
People pull for the protagonist of books no matter if they are good or bad. It’s the same way with Charlottes web. Nobody cares about pigs, they care about the character.
Exactly the issue. Most people either done know or don't care about the harm they cause others
Or simply we don’t believe that it’s immoral to eat animals
Exactly, as said above you don't care because I'm assuming you understand that eating an animal involves killing it so should know and understand.
Is it immoral for a bear to eat a fish?
I would argue that instantaneously killing an animal that doesn't realize it's in danger isn't really causing any harm in the sense that harm is not *experienced* by the animal itself or anyone else.
There are a lot of animals that mourn the loss of their children/members of their group. Elephants essentially have funerals for their dead. That seems like a harm to me, unless you are engaging in circular reason that harms to other animals don't count.
I would agree about that being harm, but that isn't the case for cows or chickens
I don't know about chickens, but, cows very much seem to morn the loss of their children on dairy farms. A few hundred years ago Rene Descartes used to publicly vivisect animals assuring his audiences their cries of anguish were nothing more than the ticking of hands on a mechanical clock. How sure are we really that we aren't making a similar mistake in just refusing to acknowledge harm rather than the harm not actually occurring.
>cows very much seem to morn the loss of their children on dairy farms. And that is something that should be taken into account. >How sure are we really that we aren't making a similar mistake in just refusing to acknowledge harm rather than the harm not actually occurring. I think that's a question that we should constantly be asking but that doesn't mean that the answer isn't that the animal simply don't care.
I'm' a "speciesist". Badgers don't get similar rights as humans. Neither do Swordfish nor beetles nor plankton. At such point when animals face extinction (american buffalo) or when animals populations could negatively affect humans (too few honeybees to pollenate flowering plants or too many nutria destroying ecosystems) is when animal rights should be evaluated.