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Zeusthecat

Is It Wrong To Eat Meat?

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I see what you're saying, but it also kind of just looks a lot like moving an arbitrary line around to whatever makes someone comfortable. Which is fine. That's how I approach this, I know where my comfort line is in regards to meat eating, and I respect that other people have personal comfort lines they live by. But the way its been presented in this thread is not as being particularly arbitrary, but built on a pretty firm ethical foundation. One that potentially leads to some pretty gnarly quandaries, and possibly human rights issues (in the case of mapping the framework over to abortion).

 

My arbitrary line was baked in at childhood through religion, where it was imparted that the value of human life essentially has no equal. I've lost a lot of that religion, but that part stuck pretty hard. That's part of the reason using -isms in this conversation, under any pretense, is an especially hard non-starter for me.

 

This is not an argument to support any particular position. This is a statement I am making about myself.

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On 1/22/2015 at 6:45 AM, Badfinger said:

My arbitrary line was baked in at childhood through religion, where it was imparted that the value of human life essentially has no equal. I've lost a lot of that religion, but that part stuck pretty hard. That's part of the reason using -isms in this conversation, under any pretense, is an especially hard non-starter for me.

 

This is not an argument to support any particular position. This is a statement I am making about myself.

I guess I'm a little confused what having an arbitrary line baked into oneself at childhood has to do with "isms" being a non-starter. Is the idea that "isms" can't be baked in at childhood, so therefore if you've got something baked in, it can't be an "ism"? Or is the idea that it's impossible to think of something simultaneously as baked in and as an "ism," so given that you must think of something as baked in, it won't work for you to simultaneously think of it as an "ism?"

 

Moreover, it's not clear what exactly it means for "using isms" to be a "hard non-starter." Does it mean that any argument that uses "isms" anywhere in it won't work? Because I could certainly rephrase everything I've said without any words that are "isms." Or does it mean that any argument that avails itself of the ideas behind "isms" won't work? That seems implausible to me - it rules out literally all ethical argumentation, I think, because there's an "ism" for everything. Does it mean that arguments that contain, either overtly or in a rephrased manner, "isms" that were baked into you as a child are arguments that you can't possibly accept, regardless of how good they are? Why would that even be the case?

 

I guess my confusion stems from the fact that everyone has "isms" baked into them as children - that's just what happens when you raise a kid. You impart various beliefs to them. Unless all moral discussion is automatically a non-starter, how can "isms" be an issue?

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Tycho, reading through your posts, I'm not sure that I entirely understand what you personally believe and practice regarding speciesism. A lot of what you are posting is really just a series of questions and statements like "I would feel the same about this as I would feel about that". So, if you don't mind, can you indulge me by answering the following question: Do you personally think all forms of life are equal and deserve the same considerations? For instance, do you think swatting a mosquito is the moral equivalent of killing a person? I am genuinely curious to know if you draw a line somewhere with the speciesism argument and what criteria you would use for life that is worth making the effort to not kill.

 

Personally, I draw the line somewhere between mouse and mosquito but I don't fully understand why I feel that it is perfectly okay to kill mosquitoes while I would feel some level of guilt for killing a mouse.

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Tycho, reading through your posts, I'm not sure that I entirely understand what you personally believe and practice regarding speciesism. A lot of what you are posting is really just a series of questions and statements like "I would feel the same about this as I would feel about that". So, if you don't mind, can you indulge me by answering the following question: Do you personally think all forms of life are equal and deserve the same considerations? For instance, do you think swatting a mosquito is the moral equivalent of killing a person? I am genuinely curious to know if you draw a line somewhere with the speciesism argument and what criteria you would use for life that is worth making the effort to not kill.

 

Personally, I draw the line somewhere between mouse and mosquito but I don't fully understand why I feel that it is perfectly okay to kill mosquitoes while I would feel some level of guilt for killing a mouse.

 

I had been thinking about a similar line of questions today, mulling over the reply to me about abortion. Because speciesism really goes far beyond just the original subject of the morality of eating meat, due to the base assumptions in it (the valuing of all animal life as equally as possible).

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On 1/22/2015 at 0:25 PM, Zeusthecat said:

Tycho, reading through your posts, I'm not sure that I entirely understand what you personally believe and practice regarding speciesism. A lot of what you are posting is really just a series of questions and statements like "I would feel the same about this as I would feel about that".

The reason I'm posting a bunch of questions and statements instead of just bluntly naming a few key points that I think are right, the way other people are, is that, unlike other people in this thread, I'm being very careful to make sure I only say things that are internally consistent and actually defensible. Most people in this thread are just throwing out any old bullshit they believe, and if they actually had to adhere to internal consistency and defensibility they'd probably not be posting what they're posting. Instead they'd rely almost entirely on asking me questions (which, as you'll notice, is also a lot of what is happening - indeed, you're about to do it!). There's nothing wrong with asking lots of questions.

 

I do want to point out that it's not like I've said nothing. I feel like I have been extremely clear and extremely strident about one point, namely, that discriminating on the basis of species membership is no more or less legitimate than discriminating on the basis of race, gender, or sexuality. Even if everything else is up in the air or unclear, this single point answers the thread topic pretty well: it's wrong to eat meat if it's wrong to eat meat from humans raised and killed in the same manner, and I take it everyone thinks it would be wrong to have factory farms full of human beings.

 

On 1/22/2015 at 0:25 PM, Zeusthecat said:

So, if you don't mind, can you indulge me by answering the following question: Do you personally think all forms of life are equal and deserve the same considerations? For instance, do you think swatting a mosquito is the moral equivalent of killing a person? I am genuinely curious to know if you draw a line somewhere with the speciesism argument and what criteria you would use for life that is worth making the effort to not kill.

I do not think all forms of life are equal and deserve the same consideration. Trees are alive but don't deserve the same consideration as animals. I do believe basically all animals (certainly any that can feel pain) are equal in terms of basic moral standing and deserve the same basic moral consideration. I do not think swatting a mosquito is the moral equivalent of killing a person any more than I think killing a person is the moral equivalent of killing another person, which is to say, it depends on why you are swatting the mosquito and why you are killing the person. I do think that generally, if you are swatting the mosquito simply because it annoys you or killing the person simply because it annoys you, you've done something morally reprehensible. Whether they are equally morally reprehensible is not something I'm sure about or something that I care about, because once I'm pretty sure I shouldn't swat the mosquito, that solves the question for me.

 

On 1/22/2015 at 0:25 PM, Zeusthecat said:

Personally, I draw the line somewhere between mouse and mosquito but I don't fully understand why I feel that it is perfectly okay to kill mosquitoes while I would feel some level of guilt for killing a mouse.

I can't really help you there apart from pointing out that it's much easier for us to see the pain and suffering of a mouse than that of a mosquito - mice, for all their differences from us, still run around, squeak at each other, cuddle up with friends, bleed when cut, recoil in fright, etc. Mosquitos are very alien. For the same reason that people hundreds of years ago found it very easy to ignore the pain of other races, because they found these other races very alien to their own existence, we today find it very easy to ignore the pain of insects, fish, and other non-mammalian creatures that are, for lack of a better word, "weird."

 

On 1/22/2015 at 0:38 PM, Bjorn said:

I had been thinking about a similar line of questions today, mulling over the reply to me about abortion. Because speciesism really goes far beyond just the original subject of the morality of eating meat, due to the base assumptions in it (the valuing of all animal life as equally as possible).

Yes, speciesism does in one sense "go far beyond" the original question, but I don't know how else you would answer the original question. What if the original question were "is it wrong to enslave and torture black people?" Surely your response to that would advert to the wrongness of racism, would it not?

 

Really, as I've asked two or three times in this thread, I think it would help a lot of you if you would answer the challenge I've posed a few times. Why is it wrong to enslave and torture black people on the basis of their race? Can you explain why racism and the practices it justifies is wrong in a way that won't also allow me to explain why speciesism and the practices it justifies is wrong?

 

And remember one of the most important parts: you have to explain this to a racist person, just like I have to explain my position to a speciesist person. If you can't convince the racist, and I can't convince the speciesist, what might that mean?

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Thank you for clarifying your position a bit.

 

I'll admit, the question you pose is not as easy to answer as I would expect it to be. If I had to take a stab, I would say that there is no established connection between what race a person is and their 'quality' or 'importance' as a life form. So I would say it is wrong to enslave and torture black people on the basis of their race because their is nothing to indicate that their race makes them any lesser of a life form than any other race.

 

As far as animals are concerned, I think one could argue that perhaps it is more 'okay' to enslave and torture them than it is to enslave and torture people based on race because as you go down the chain, your human instincts might scream at you that many of these are clearly lower life forms that don't have a strong enough significance in the grand scheme of things and aren't worth going out of your way to protect. This is a pretty half-baked thought though so it probably needs some work to make more sense. I'll mull it over and try to state it more clearly later.

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Thank you for clarifying your position a bit.

 

I'll admit, the question you pose is not as easy to answer as I would expect it to be. If I had to take a stab, I would say that there is no established connection between what race a person is and their 'quality' or 'importance' as a life form. So I would say it is wrong to enslave and torture black people on the basis of their race because their is nothing to indicate that their race makes them any lesser of a life form than any other race.

 

Race is overwhelmingly a social construct. Gender is overwhelmingly a social construct. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how much of a social construct biological complexity is.

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On 1/22/2015 at 1:33 PM, Zeusthecat said:

I'll admit, the question you pose is not as easy to answer as I would expect it to be. If I had to take a stab, I would say that there is no established connection between what race a person is and their 'quality' or 'importance' as a life form. So I would say it is wrong to enslave and torture black people on the basis of their race because their is nothing to indicate that their race makes them any lesser of a life form than any other race.

 

As far as animals are concerned, I think one could argue that perhaps it is more 'okay' to enslave and torture them than it is to enslave and torture people based on race because as you go down the chain, your human instincts might scream at you that many of these are clearly lower life forms that don't have a strong enough significance in the grand scheme of things and aren't worth going out of your way to protect. This is a pretty half-baked thought though so it probably needs some work to make more sense. I'll mull it over and try to state it more clearly later.

The issue that pops out to me is that just as you can go "down the chain" of animals, all the while being screamed at by instincts that say "this animal matters less! This one even less!" you can also go "down the chain" of races, all the while being screamed at by instincts that say "this race matters less! This one even less!" I know you wouldn't do this, but that's the most natural thing in the world to the racist. In fact the metaphor of a "chain" where something (humans, or white people) is at the "top" and everyone else is "below" is already assuming the prejudice in question. If you're allowed to assume that all animals are ranked on a chain with humans at the top, and as you go down the chain, your life matters less, then Racist Tycho is allowed to assume that all races are ranked on a chain with white people at the top, and as you go down the chain, your life matters less.

 

Amusingly (or not so amusingly...) this literally happened. In 1588, José de Acosta ranked all the races of man (Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, etc.) and argued that as you go down from the top (which, surprise, was white people) you were warranted in treating people worse.

 

He wasn't the only one to do this: Alessandro Valignano did the same thing, and I'm sure you could find many more examples.

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Race is overwhelmingly a social construct. Gender is overwhelmingly a social construct. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how much of a social construct biological complexity is.

Would you say that it is thus okay to discriminate on the basis of biological features that are not social constructs? So, for instance, I could discriminate against short people, people with darker skin (but not because of their race, just because of their skin color), people with red hair, people with vaginas, people without a Y chromosome, and so forth? Whether some feature is or is not socially constructed strikes me as literally irrelevant to whether it is okay to discriminate on the basis of it.

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Would you say that it is thus okay to discriminate on the basis of biological features that are not social constructs? So, for instance, I could discriminate against short people, people with darker skin (but not because of their race, just because of their skin color), people with red hair, people with vaginas, people without a Y chromosome, and so forth? Whether some feature is or is not socially constructed strikes me as literally irrelevant to whether it is okay to discriminate on the basis of it.

 

How about discriminating against organisms that cannot feel pain, or at least organisms that do not express it in anthropomorphic ways? Obviously there's a line you're willing to draw and I'd really like to know where it is, especially since you've just said that all biological differences are effectively arbitrary. Why is the ability to feel pain (or, again, to express it in ways that we as humans recognize) such a meaningful distinction if every other ability is not a valid basis for discrimination? Why does pain have a moral dimension that's unable to be generalized to life itself?

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On 1/22/2015 at 1:45 PM, Gormongous said:

How about discriminating against organisms that cannot feel pain, or at least organisms that do not express it in anthropomorphic ways? Obviously there's a line you're willing to draw and I'd really like to know where it is, especially since you've just said that all biological differences are effectively arbitrary. Why is the ability to feel pain (or, again, to express it in ways that we as humans recognize) such a meaningful distinction if every other ability is not a valid basis for discrimination? Why does pain have a moral dimension that's unable to be generalized to life itself?

The reason I think the ability to feel pain is important is because the sorts of things we do to animals are bad because they cause pain. Hitting something with an ax is not inherently wrong. It's wrong because it causes pain. Thus if something can't feel pain, because it is, for instance, a rock or a tree, this suggests there is nothing wrong with "torturing" it, for instance (to the extent that it's even possible to torture it...). If you don't think causing pain is bad, then stab yourself in the thigh with a rusty nail until you get the picture.

 

If you don't think the ability to feel pain matters, then you have two options. You can either say "it's okay to hit anything with an ax," in which case I'm going to stay away from you whenever you have sharp objects within your reach, or you can provide some other criterion according to which we can sort the world into "okay to hit with an ax" and "not okay to hit with an ax." I would be interested in the criterion you choose, given the skepticism you've expressed about mine.

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The issue that pops out to me is that just as you can go "down the chain" of animals, all the while being screamed at by instincts that say "this animal matters less! This one even less!" you can also go "down the chain" of races, all the while being screamed at by instincts that say "this race matters less! This one even less!" I know you wouldn't do this, but that's the most natural thing in the world to the racist. In fact the metaphor of a "chain" where something (humans, or white people) is at the "top" and everyone else is "below" is already assuming the prejudice in question. If you're allowed to assume that all animals are ranked on a chain with humans at the top, and as you go down the chain, your life matters less, then Racist Tycho is allowed to assume that all races are ranked on a chain with white people at the top, and as you go down the chain, your life matters less.

 

Hey now, I did say it was a pretty half-baked opinion! But fair enough, point taken.

 

Using the term 'instinct' was a poor choice in getting my point across. To state the way I feel about it more clearly, I guess I see there being two factors that my brain primarily uses when deciding whether a life form is 'important' or not: size and how similar it is to me. Like you said, even with something as small and foreign as a mouse, I would feel some level of guilt if I ended its life because there are enough things about the dying process that are similar enough to humans. I feel like I can recognize that I am causing it pain, I can see that it avoids things that scare it and gravitates towards things that it likes. So even though it is small, there are enough things about it's behavior and state of being that I can relate to.

 

With a mosquito, I don't feel this way at all. First off, it's fucking tiny. Even if I could recognize it was in pain or scared or whatever, I would need a magnifying glass to do so and it would take some conscious effort. Second, I just can't relate to it at all. It is such a foreign life form to me. I have no way of telling whether it is in pain or not, I can't tell if it experiences fear, and as far as I can tell, it is more similar to a plant than it is to any of the more 'important' animals that I've observed. Because of these differences, I guess I just don't care and don't value its life. But if either of these factors were different, I would feel differently. If it were human sized I would probably feel differently. And if it were the same size but exhibited recognizable behavior that I see in humans, I would also feel differently.

 

So I guess for me, I feel like what is 'right' or 'wrong' is relative to the perspective of the life form. I feel like it is wrong to kill, enslave, or torture things that clearly exhibit recognizable characteristics but I don't think it is as wrong to do that to tiny ass things that are completely un-relatable and foreign. By mosquito morality, killing mosquitoes is clearly bad but single celled organisms can go fuck themselves.

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The reason I think the ability to feel pain is important is because the sorts of things we do to animals are bad because they cause pain. Hitting something with an ax is not inherently wrong. It's wrong because it causes pain. Thus if something can't feel pain, because it is, for instance, a rock or a tree, this suggests there is nothing wrong with "torturing" it, for instance (to the extent that it's even possible to torture it...). If you don't think causing pain is bad, then stab yourself in the thigh with a rusty nail until you get the picture.

If you don't think the ability to feel pain matters, then you have two options. You can either say "it's okay to hit anything with an ax," in which case I'm going to stay away from you whenever you have sharp objects within your reach, or you can provide some other criterion according to which we can sort the world into "okay to hit with an ax" and "not okay to hit with an ax." I would be interested in the criterion you choose, given the skepticism you've expressed about mine.

 

I don't have it considered, but my gut instinct is that biological complexity forms a rubric for the relative morality of causing pain, with it all being bad but some of it being worse than the rest. I'll chew on it some more, but I'm just very skeptical that you have a single standard, based in a biological feature, that is absolute in determining the morality of an action towards another living thing, when you are so incredibly unforgiving towards other people's standards based on other biological features. Quite frankly, I do not see how pain is not just as arbitrary a standard of morality as skin color, gender, or sapience. "It's okay to kill it, it can't feel pain" and "It's okay to kill it, it can't talk" seem effectively like they're the same sentence to me, and your response doesn't really articulate to me why the latter is speciesism and the former is a solid moral position, except that pain "feels bad" to us, which is true enough but hardly the basis of an entire philosophy.

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Zeus, your post sounds like a (probably accurate) description of how you make decisions about killing, torturing, etc. But notice I can also give an accurate description of how Racist Tycho makes these decisions. Racist Tycho feels quite a bit of guilt when he kills or wounds a white person, very little guilt when he kills or wounds a black person, etc. If black people were white-colored he would probably feel differently. If they exhibited the same behaviors as white people, maybe he would also feel differently. But they don't, so this is why Racist Tycho enslaves and kills black people.

 

Let's look at the way you sum up your opinion:

On 1/22/2015 at 2:02 PM, Zeusthecat said:

So I guess for me, I feel like what is 'right' or 'wrong' is relative to the perspective of the life form. I feel like it is wrong to kill, enslave, or torture things that clearly exhibit recognizable characteristics but I don't think it is as wrong to do that to tiny ass things that are completely un-relatable and foreign. By mosquito morality, killing mosquitoes is clearly bad but single celled organisms can go fuck themselves.

We can go through the same exercise for Racist Tycho. In his own words:

 

So I guess for me, I feel like what is 'right' or 'wrong' is relative to the perspective of the race. I feel like it is wrong to kill, enslave, or torture things that clearly exhibit recognizable characteristics [of white people] but I don't think it as wrong to do that to black ass people that are completely un-relatable and foreign. By black people morality, enslaving black people is clearly bad but Native Americans can go fuck themselves.

 

Ugh, that was gross! I feel like I need to take a shower. I'm still not sure, though, what makes Racist Tycho wrong and you right. I wasn't asking for a description of what kinds of decisions you and Racist Tycho make. I already know: you make speciesist decisions and Racist Tycho makes racist decisions. I was asking for reasons to believe that these decisions are the right ones to make. It seems like you haven't given me any of these reasons for your own decisions any more than I've given you reasons for Racist Tycho's decisions. I of course think that neither you nor Racist Tycho have any good reasons to give, but you're welcome to try.

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But racist Tycho should be able to recognize that there is little to no difference between the way a black person exhibits pain and fear and the way a white person exhibits pain and fear. I don't think your analogy holds up when you consider my entire post. A black person is very recognizably human and exhibits all of the recognizable characteristics that any other human does. Practically speaking, even with the most racist person, I doubt they would be completely blind to the pain and fear and other human characteristics that a black person would exhibit.

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On 1/22/2015 at 2:05 PM, Gormongous said:

I don't have it considered, but my gut instinct is that biological complexity forms a rubric for the relative morality of causing pain, with it all being bad but some of it being worse than the rest.

What is biological "complexity?" Are whales and dolphins more or less complex than us? What about coral reefs? Are mice more complex than guinea pigs, or less complex, or equally complex? Are people with Y chromosomes less complex than people without them? Etc. This is not to say you are wrong. This is just to say I do not know what biological complexity means.

On 1/22/2015 at 2:05 PM, Gormongous said:

I'll chew on it some more, but I'm just very skeptical that you have a single standard, based in a biological feature, that is absolute in determining the morality of an action towards another living thing, when you are so incredibly unforgiving towards other people's standards based on other biological features.

I don't have one of those. In the context of this thread I just have one, single thing: a principle that tells us whether species membership matters morally when it comes to how we treat an animal.

 

Notice this leaves a vast number of moral questions open and (unless I add more detail) entirely unanswerable. People have pointed out elsewhere in this thread that I'm refusing to answer a lot of questions. That is on purpose. I am not trying to provide, in your words, "a single standard, based in a biological feature, that is absolute in determining the morality of an action towards another living thing," because as you point out, we might be skeptical that such a thing can be provided. (I am extremely skeptical that I could provide it in the length of a few forum posts.)

 

Luckily that is not what I am trying to do or what I have claimed to do. I have only claimed to tell you one thing: if it's not okay to do it to a human, then it's not okay to do it to any other species, if your reason is solely "this is a different species." Similarly, if it's not okay to do it to a white person, then it's not okay to do it to a black person, if your reason is solely "this is a different race."

 

On 1/22/2015 at 2:05 PM, Gormongous said:

Quite frankly, I do not see how pain is not just as arbitrary a standard of morality as skin color, gender, or sapience. "It's okay to kill it, it can't feel pain" and "It's okay to kill it, it can't talk" seem effectively like they're the same sentence to me, and your response doesn't really articulate to me why the latter is speciesism and the former is a solid moral position, except that pain "feels bad" to us, which is true enough but hardly the basis of an entire philosophy.

This is one position you can take. There is, I think, literally nothing we can say to someone who says "I don't know why the fact that pain feels bad gives us a reason not to cause pain." It's true that I have to assume that to get off the ground. Notice that if you reject that assumption, you're fucked six ways to Sunday when it comes to convincing Racist Tycho not to be racist. If you don't believe me, give it a try.

 

So now you are left with three options. Option #1 is to say "well, I guess my account of morality cannot explain why racism is wrong. So racism must not be wrong." I take it this is a bad option. Option #2 is to say "well, I guess my account of morality cannot explain why racism is wrong. But it's wrong anyways, lol. Speciesism, meanwhile, is fine. Not sure why but eh, such is life." I don't see how option #2 is acceptable - surely Racist Tycho can pull the same move and be equally justified in his reasoning. Option #3 is "I guess I need to refine my conception of morality enough to be able to explain why racism is wrong." This is the option I think makes the most sense. I suspect that in doing so, you will also be forced to admit that speciesism is wrong. If you don't believe me, then do your best to convince Racist Tycho without opening yourself up to objections from the anti-speciesist.

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On 1/22/2015 at 2:18 PM, Zeusthecat said:

But racist Tycho should be able to recognize that there is little to no difference between the way a black person exhibits pain and fear and the way a white person exhibits pain and fear.

This is demonstrably false. You barely have to go back a few hundred years to find innumerable accounts of white people explaining, calmly and rationally, why black people feel less pain than white people, and thus it is okay to treat them harshly when they are enslaved. Even today these biases persist. You can put your fingers in your ears and pretend that actually, deep within their heart, racist people actually do care just as much about black people pain as white people pain: when they see a black person, they feel, deep down, as much empathy and can recognize just as much suffering as they feel and recognize when they see a white person in pain.

 

This is, unfortunately, a fantasy. That is not how racism works. Racist Tycho believes, thinks in fact that he has scientific proof, I bet, that black people simply feel less pain. Ditto for fear. It is a fortunate fact of modern Western society that we rarely face bald, virulent racism, and I guess you haven't read enough 18th and 19th century writing to have been exposed to these sorts of racist claims, which were incredibly common throughout much of history, but trust me when I say that Racist Tycho for sure thinks that black people feel less pain just like you for sure think mosquitos feel less pain.

 

On 1/22/2015 at 2:18 PM, Zeusthecat said:

I don't think your analogy holds up when you consider my entire post. A black person is very recognizably human and exhibits all of the recognizable characteristics that any other human does. Practically speaking, even with the most racist person, I doubt they would be completely blind to the pain and fear and other human characteristics that a black person would exhibit.

Again, this just sounds like you've never really looked in to what actual racist people said and did. A black person is not "very recognizably human" to Racist Tycho. Have you ever heard racist people say things like "blacks are sub-human" or "blacks are animals" or anything like this? If you haven't, then trust me: it's an extremely common refrain. You can wish this sort of thing away as much as you want, but it's an unfortunate fact: racist people for hundreds if not thousands of years have been convinced that being of a different race removes someone from humanity. Are they right? Well obviously not, but the speciesist is also wrong when they claim that being of a different species removes someone from moral consideration.

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(Also, the whole "you can just SEE the pain" thing works pretty well for mosquitos but not too well for pigs, chickens, cows, etc. In other words, the sorts of animals we eat. So as I'm sure you're already aware, this still suggests we ought to be vegan, at least until we start eating grasshoppers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, like in Snowpiercer.)

 

One further point: I tried Googling "black people animals" and "black people subhumans" to find historical examples of racists claiming this sort of stuff, but all the results were contemporary people posting that sort of shit to Facebook. Some things never change...

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Okay, so go back to my point about morality being relative to the perspective of the life form and let's consider these racist people a separate life form. By their morality, I guess killing a black person is just as acceptable as killing a mosquito. However, for anyone capable of recognizing the fear and pain and other human characteristics that a black person exhibits, killing a black person would be absolutely wrong while killing a mosquito would be just fine. Yeah, it is kind of an ugly way of looking at it but there has to be some way we can view morality that doesn't put us in the position where we are forced to accept that killing a mosquito is the same as killing a black person.

 

I don't think you can impose some sort of global morality that applies universally. Think about it practically, Tycho. You are never going to be able to convince even a small percentage of people to buy the notion that all life forms are equal. Even if the logic is sound, it is a dead end. Whether it is logical or not, most humans do not recognize all life forms as equal and probably never will.

 

That being said, I still do think that it is wrong to kill animals and eat them. But it is not wrong to kill mosquitoes and eat them.

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On 1/22/2015 at 2:40 PM, Zeusthecat said:

Okay, so go back to my point about morality being relative to the perspective of the life form and let's consider these racist people a separate life form. By their morality, I guess killing a black person is just as acceptable as killing a mosquito. However, for anyone capable of recognizing the fear and pain and other human characteristics that a black person exhibits, killing a black person would be absolutely wrong while killing a mosquito would be just fine.

Just like the racist person is a separate life form, I guess we can consider the speciesist person to be a separate life form. However, for anyone capable of recognizing the fear and pain of animals other than humans, killing a non-human animal would be absolutely wrong while killing a tree would be just fine.

 

Notice that this is pretty anodyne. Like, so what? It's not surprising to me that racist people think it's okay to kill black people and speciesist people think it's okay to kill mosquitos and people like me think it's okay to kill trees. You haven't told me anything interesting. You've just re-described the various beliefs that Racist Tycho, you, and actual Tycho hold.

 

On 1/22/2015 at 2:40 PM, Zeusthecat said:

Yeah, it is kind of an ugly way of looking at it but there has to be some way we can view morality that doesn't put us in the position where we are forced to accept that killing a mosquito is the same as killing a black person.

Imagine what Racist Tycho would say about this! He would explain his racist morality, according to which enslaving and killing black people is okay. When you protest, he would say "yeah, it is kind of an ugly way of looking at it but there has to be some way we can view morality that doesn't put is in the position where we are forced to accept that killing a black person is the same as killing a white person."

 

Is there anything you can say to Racist Tycho? Or is he entirely correct? I don't think Racist Tycho is correct. I think that forcing him to accept that killing a black person is just as bad as killing a white person is no more objectionable than forcing him to accept that humans are causing global warming or that vaccines don't cause autism. Racist Tycho is just flat out wrong when he talks about his racist views. Speciesist Zeusthecat, meanwhile, is just flat out wrong when he talks about his speciesist views.

 

On 1/22/2015 at 2:40 PM, Zeusthecat said:

I don't think you can impose some sort of global morality that applies universally. Think about it practically, Tycho. You are never going to be able to convince even a small percentage of people to buy the notion that all life forms are equal. Even if the logic is sound, it is a dead end. Whether it is logical or not, most humans do not recognize all life forms as equal and probably never will.

I'm not talking about "convincing" people. I've previously pointed out in this thread that prejudices are deep enough that it's often impossible to convince people. You just have to wait until they die. Racist Tycho might just be so fucking prejudiced that no matter what you say, he's still going to enslave and kill black people. The best we can hope for is that the rest of society moves on and forces Racist Tycho and his fellow racists to stop enslaving and killing black people.

 

Similarly, maybe the best I can hope for is that the rest of society moves on, and passes laws forcing speciesist people like you to stop torturing and killing animals. Is this likely to happen? You seem to think "no," but I suspect that's partially because you think it's patently ridiculous that anyone would ever give a shit about animals, so of course society is never going to come around to the anti-speciesist position. But Racist Tycho feels the same way, if we go back a few hundred years. Why in the world would we ever make slavery illegal, as long as we're only enslaving black people? What's the big deal with that? Of course I'll be fine, going forward.

 

Luckily Racist Tycho was wrong. Society moved on. We look back a few hundred years in horror at the fact that the majority of people were virulently racist, and that only a very small number of people fought for the rights of black people. In a few hundred years, I'm fairly certain that they are going to look back in horror at the fact that so many of us see nothing wrong with torturing and killing vast numbers of non-human animals, and they're going to find it bizarre and unconscionable that only a small number of people, like me, were even willing to admit that all animals are morally equal.

 

So, imagine that you're in society a few hundred years ago, where the vast majority endorse racism. What kind of person would you have been? Would you have been a racist? If you had been arguing on a message board back then, which side would you have picked? Racism, or anti-racism? Would you have made arguments like "there's no way you'll ever get everybody to agree that black people count as much as white people. Even if the logic is sound, it is a dead end. Whether it is logical or not, most white people do not recognize all races as equal and probably never will." Or would you have said "holy shit guys, stop enslaving black people!"

 

Now fast forward to today. The vast majority endorse speciesism. What kind of person are you going to be? Are you going to be a specieist? You're arguing on a message board right now - which side will you pick? Speciesism, or anti-speciesism? Will you keep making arguments like "You are never going to be able to convince even a small percentage of people to buy the notion that all life forms are equal. Even if the logic is sound, it is a dead end. Whether it is logical or not, most humans do not recognize all life forms as equal and probably never will." Or will you say "holy shit guys, stop killing animals!"

 

On 1/22/2015 at 2:40 PM, Zeusthecat said:

That being said, I still do think that it is wrong to kill animals and eat them. But it is not wrong to kill mosquitoes and eat them.

Right, we've definitely established this. As far as I can tell, given the way you've described your thoughts, this is for various arbitrary reasons: you can see the pain of other animals more easily, you imagine some kind of chain of being where mosquitoes are low enough that it's okay to kill them, etc. No arguments there. Racist Tycho is the same way, actually. He really hates black people, because they're subhuman savages, but he's actually pretty down with Asians. He thinks you ought to treat Asians basically the way you treat white people, although there are some edge cases where you can treat Asians worse because they're inferior in a few respects (not all of them are Christian, for instance, blah blah blah). (Historically this was a view held by many, many racists, including Acosta, whom I cited above.)

I take it that you think Racist Tycho is still kind of a dick. I mean, it's great that Racist Tycho doesn't also hate Asians anywhere near as much as he hates black people, but uh, the real issue is that Racist Tycho is enslaving and killing black people so maybe he ought to stop, right? I still submit that you can't convince Racist Tycho to stop enslaving and killing black people without opening yourself up to the charge that we ought not to kill and eat mosquitoes. I may be wrong. But from what you have said so far, you haven't managed to establish that.

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I'm going to return to something that was dismissed quite a few pages back, which was Gormongous bringing up plant intelligence and pain.  Tycho, you were incredibly dismissive of this argument, even incredulous at its mention.  Going so far as to make a quite ridiculous claim about how a shoe (a completely dead, inanimate object) is as likely to feel pain or cry out as a living organism.  That comparison has stuck with me.  It's suggesting that plants have more in common with non-living inanimate objects than they do with living animals.  Which is very convenient for the ethical model you have presented, but completely absurd and counter to every thing we know about life.  

I think this piece references virtually all of the major research that I have found mentioned in every other article, so it's as good of a reference as any to everything that follows.  

Since that was brought up, I've been trying to find an article or two a day exploring the subject, and one thing is clear.  People who disagree with ideas of plant pain and intelligence resort to mockery, dismissal and mischaracterization of claims.  Established scientists even going so far as to say that peers at respected universities have come from the "nuthouse" and declare them a "foolish" distraction to the field.  That's the kind of thing that's going to ensure that very, very few scientists want to seriously explore a field.  You're risking your reputation and livelihood to even ask such questions, let along pursue them.  So there is a loud and distinct pressure against scientists pursuing this idea at all. 

And yet what has been learned about plants is fascinating.  They can be anesthetized.  They produce their own anesthetizers in response to what we would typically call "pain".  Why would a living thing that can't feel pain produce a natural pain reliever?  They produce a variety of neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine and glutamate, even though they would apparently not have a traditional use for them as animals do.  They definitely transmit information about a variety of things, including damage, though we don't know what exactly they are transmitting.  Plants can exhibit behaviors such as competition with outsiders, but sharing or caretaking with family members.  The ability of many plants to sense the world around them rivals or exceeds humans.  The chemical distress call that corn and lima beans emit is hardly analogous to the tearing of shoe leather, and much more analogous to the instinctual cries of pain that any child animal might display.  The plant is communicating with another species in a call for help, and that call is answered.  

If you were able to take someone with absolutely no preconceived ideas about plants or animals, and present them simply with the capabilities of both, what kind of ideas would that person come away with?  Would that person find plants far more alike than we typically describe them, or would that person conclude that they are radically different organisms?  I think if presenting to a blank slate, one would have to conclude that plants are far more animal-like than we are ever taught to think, and that there are clear divisions in the behavioral and reaction abilities of plants, similar to the divisions in animals.  They might, with no pre-existing biases, conclude that plants experience the world and pain in similar ways to animals. 

You keep asking people about racism to justify their choices, and yet you were so quick to dismiss, even eager to dismiss, the idea that the  dominant biologically complex life form on this planet by volume (plants) may be far more complex and rich in life than you give them credit.  Even the piece that you linked to in reply to Gormongous doesn't really do a good job of rebutting plant pain, that article actually strikes me as a far more emotional reaction to the idea than any kind of reaction rooted in logic or thought.  It relies on "common sense" facts that everyone should know, that are actually factually wrong.  Since when, in science, does common sense trump observed facts?  And I see an emotional, not logical or scientific, reaction from other scientists when challenged with the idea.  The only real objection seems to be, "But they don't have brains or animal neurobiology".  Which, seems pretty weak as a response.  The scientific response is to ask if all these traits we associate with animals could arise in a structure that didn't have animal neurobiology, not to declare that without neurobiology they can't exist.

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Okay, how about this. I am speciesist. My views towards mosquitoes are morally equal to a racist person's views towards black people. You have convinced me and I am fine with this. I continue to feel, however, that it is wrong to kill and eat the animals that we kill and eat because of the arbitrary criteria I have chosen for life forms that I deem important. And I mean this sincerely.

 

So what now? Where has this gotten us? It was a fun thought experiment and I thank you for challenging me to really examine why I see things the way I do but I don't think we really accomplished anything and this exercise has resulted in a dead end. You may not see it as such but by belligerently trying to hammer your point home and taking it to the extreme, you have effectively alienated just about everyone else in here. I am honestly pretty irritated with your method of arguing and even though I don't think you intended it, you have come off as condescending and disrespectful to everyone here who has tried to argue with you. Sorry man, no hard feelings but you are really getting under my skin. This is one of those cases where I think this particular conversation is not very well suited to this format.

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I had a fairly long post written out in reply to you, Bjorn, but I hit the back button on accident and it disappeared, so here is the short version.

 

Let us grant for the sake of the argument that plants feel pain. Here are our options:

 

Option #1: We're fucked. We have to live off of fungi, plants and animals that die of natural causes, and maybe a few other food sources I haven't thought of. Life is pretty grim.

 

Option #2: Tycho is still basically right: eat as many plants as you want, but don't kill and eat any animals. This sounds fairly implausible, given that plants feel pain, but whatever.

 

Option #3: Somehow it must be okay to kill and eat things that feel pain: plants, at the very least, and probably animals too, because the only argument Tycho has against killing animals is that they feel pain, and that's out the door because it would keep us from eating basically anything. So the right account of the morality of food must be something different.

 

I don't think option #1 is patently ridiculous, but let's just assume it's wrong. Now it's down to option #2 vs. option #3. I don't know what option #3 would look like. I have never thought about it and don't know how to go about thinking about it. So, now it's on you. Tell me what you think is the right answer to "what can we kill and eat (assuming plants feel pain)?"

 

Once you give your answer, we'll compare yours, whatever it is, to mine ("eat as many plants as you want, but no animals"). There's clearly one sense in which your answer is going to be way better than mine. Mine implausibly says "kill as many plants as you want," and that's probably a horrendous answer, since plants feel pain. I think there's one sense in which I'm not too badly off, though: any animals we eat must have fed themselves either on plants, or on other animals that ate plants, etc. So it's hard for me to imagine how killing and an animal could ever be better than killing and eating a plant: either way something has to die, and it's going to kill more plants if we eat animals than if we go vegan.

 

However, like I said, I don't know who would win that fight. It's a fight I'm happy to have (although I think it rests on the patently ridiculous assumption that plants feel pain). So, have at it!

 

On 1/22/2015 at 3:09 PM, Bjorn said:

If you were able to take someone with absolutely no preconceived ideas about plants or animals, and present them simply with the capabilities of both, what kind of ideas would that person come away with?  Would that person find plants far more alike than we typically describe them, or would that person conclude that they are radically different organisms?  I think if presenting to a blank slate, one would have to conclude that plants are far more animal-like than we are ever taught to think, and that there are clear divisions in the behavioral and reaction abilities of plants, similar to the divisions in animals.  They might, with no pre-existing biases, conclude that plants experience the world and pain in similar ways to animals. 

You keep asking people about racism to justify their choices, and yet you were so quick to dismiss, even eager to dismiss, the idea that the  dominant biologically complex life form on this planet by volume (plants) may be far more complex and rich in life than you give them credit.  Even the piece that you linked to in reply to Gormongous doesn't really do a good job of rebutting plant pain, that article actually strikes me as a far more emotional reaction to the idea than any kind of reaction rooted in logic or thought.  It relies on "common sense" facts that everyone should know, that are actually factually wrong.  Since when, in science, does common sense trump observed facts?  And I see an emotional, not logical or scientific, reaction from other scientists when challenged with the idea.  The only real objection seems to be, "But they don't have brains or animal neurobiology".  Which, seems pretty weak as a response.  The scientific response is to ask if all these traits we associate with animals could arise in a structure that didn't have animal neurobiology, not to declare that without neurobiology they can't exist.

I agree 100% with all of this. I and others are in a very precarious position when we claim that plants do not feel pain. You don't have to go back very far to find not just normal people but scientists telling us that animals feel no pain, or even that some human beings feel less pain than others because of their race! So surely we ought to be skeptical of scientific claims about plant pain, especially given the circumstances you point out about how people are ridiculed for saying that plants might feel pain, and so on and so forth.

 

Unfortunately, the response to this isn't an ethical argument or even a simple scientific argument. The idea that plants don't feel pain can only be established by a lot of complicated science and philosophy. I don't think it's the sort of thing people can reasonably disagree about once they've seen the evidence, but you maybe think otherwise. That's fine, and there's nothing I can say here, in this space, that can decide the question one way or another. Like I said, it's a horrendously complicated answer. All I can do is give you an "IOU," effectively, which reads something like "I promise that plants don't feel pain. Love, Tycho." I'm sure that's unsatisfying for you. "Why," you might ask, "can't Racist Tycho give me an IOU that says 'I promise that black people don't feel pain. Love, Racist Tycho.' or something like that?"

 

The answer (unfortunately) is basically just "science." Like, Racist Tycho is factually wrong about whether black people feel pain, but actual Tycho is (I claim) factually right when he claims that plants don't feel pain. Could actual Tycho be wrong? Could Racist Tycho be right? You have to ask the scientists (and, actually, the philosophers - this issue turns out not to be as simple as "do some science").

 

I know this is is deeply unsatisfying and suspicious sounding. Luckily, you can reject it all and go with the stuff I said above: elaborate option #3 and we'll see how it does vs. option #2. That's a fine project that I am happy to embark upon.

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