Philosophical Vegan Forum

If you eat animals or their bodily secretions, I'd be interested in finding out why? What are your primary reasons for eating meat/dairy/eggs?

Just to make a start:
I'm vegan now. But i pretty much know my arguements.
1. taste - i don't know if it was the casomorphins, the backstory (a nice bread with camenbert at my grandparents) or simply that my tastebuds liked it...
2. convenience/unawareness - never really thought about milk and cheese and it was a very nice meat replacement (for pizza, bread cooking and stuff)
3. tradition/fitting in - everybody did it. i never really had contact to vegans before and i thought if everyone was doing it it can't be that bad... oh the innocenc of a child ^_^

i think those have been my reasons. at least the ones that I'm aware of ^^


Adrian

I would begin by saying that 'reasons' is, in my perception, the wrong word to use. A reason is a convincing idea to change position. A justification is a convincing idea to maintain position, so I would like to present my justification for eating meat, instead. But this is knitpicking.

I would like to posit that the meat industry as it is now, is not intrinsically wrong because of the eating of animals. Rather, it's the way they are treated that is bad. I derive my notions of morality from a personal adaptation of utilitarianism. The adaptation is, in this context, pretty much irrelevant, so for all intents and purposes here, I derive my morality from utilitarianism. This is the idea that an action is moral if it increases total happiness and immoral if it decreases total happiness.
With this definition, eating meat can be perfectly moral, provided that the animals that are eaten, live a life that is happier than it would have been if they had lived in the wild. Now, it is easy to see that a chicken with a square foot of living space does not meet this qualification, but if the chicken has enough space to roam relatively freely (or is given the illusion that it does, though that would probably be difficult to acchieve), then I would suspect that is a happier life than in the wild, which, with all the predators and stress and poo and what not, isn't that much of a paradise either.

So in summary: I think that a animal with enough space and food in captivity is happier than an animal in the wild, and as such the former is the preferable moral position.

If you think I'm wrong, please let me know, so that I might either change my mind or clarify.

Coeus Amphiaraus wrote:I would begin by saying that 'reasons' is, in my perception, the wrong word to use. A reason is a convincing idea to change position. A justification is a convincing idea to maintain position, so I would like to present my justification for eating meat, instead. But this is knitpicking.

I would like to posit that the meat industry as it is now, is not intrinsically wrong because of the eating of animals. Rather, it's the way they are treated that is bad. I derive my notions of morality from a personal adaptation of utilitarianism. The adaptation is, in this context, pretty much irrelevant, so for all intents and purposes here, I derive my morality from utilitarianism. This is the idea that an action is moral if it increases total happiness and immoral if it decreases total happiness.
With this definition, eating meat can be perfectly moral, provided that the animals that are eaten, live a life that is happier than it would have been if they had lived in the wild. Now, it is easy to see that a chicken with a square foot of living space does not meet this qualification, but if the chicken has enough space to roam relatively freely (or is given the illusion that it does, though that would probably be difficult to acchieve), then I would suspect that is a happier life than in the wild, which, with all the predators and stress and poo and what not, isn't that much of a paradise either.

So in summary: I think that a animal with enough space and food in captivity is happier than an animal in the wild, and as such the former is the preferable moral position.

If you think I'm wrong, please let me know, so that I might either change my mind or clarify.

hey.
so i got ulititarism a lot in philosophy class... and there is one thing: you can never see all sides of an action, which makes utilitarism a pretty bad choice of moral standart (in my eyes).
But just to try and show you that you are wrong even in an utilitaristic point of view:

pro: good taste! and maaaybe a few good nutrients (but dont be to happy about it. most meat doesnt have any nutrients and good proteins... its mostly liver and hearth of animals, which are often cut out!)

contra:
animals have to be in captivity (do you think slavery is okay as long as you only hit them 3 times a day than 20 times? or is property of another sentient beeing wrong in all cases?)

to produce 1 kilo of meat you have to use ~5-10 kilo of grain! (we dont feed them stuff that humans would eat! but we could use the space thats used for those grains to produce food for us!)
and this is only for caged animals (who are slaughtered as soon as they have optimum size... pretty much in puberty)
with water its 1kilo - 15.000 litre (while grains and rice are between 3000 and 6000)

so you see its a waste of recources!


not to mention the illness that too much meat causes (150gramm a week is too much... 250 say other sources... still thats about 35gram per day! thats literally nothing!)
just to name a few (not only meat but eggs and milk as well):
overweight
cancers (all sorts of them! skincancer is one of the few that has nothing to do with your foodintake)
diabetes
cloughed arteria (sry dunno how to spell it ) (causes strokes and limbs to go numb)
and many more! just look it up! its estimated that us governtment would save 70% of money spent for healthissues! (sry got no source... i heard it somewhere. but even if its "just" 20-30% its enough!)

and of cause the climate! i think its not really a strong point but 150.000.000.000 (estimated! but ~ 12.000.000.000 in the us alone) land animals do produce a lot of gas and dung and whatsoever. its not a big point but still a reason for some to go vegan!

i hope i could show you why even with an utilitaristic point of view its "wrong" to farm animals for your own satisfaction!

I would say: read the work of Peter Singer, an utilitarian. I think that if you take utilitarianism as the moral framework, veganism is the exactly where you will end. I myself am pretty influenced by the work of Peter Singer and the utilitarian and consequentialism thinking. It's not hard to see that when you include animals in the moral circle and your intention is to maximize the collective wellbeing, you can't justify using animals for food. The pleasure of eating the meat or milk produced in a lifetime for the taste of it, doesn't outweigh the horrible life and death of an innocent sentient being. Surely not if you know it affects 10s of billions of lives more compared to human lives and that the capacity to feel pain is probably just as intense as ours.

I think measuring the wellbeing of an animal in captivity in comparison to the wellbeing of an animal in the wild is just a distraction. It's not a question which situation maximize the wellbeing of the animal the most, but whether domesticated life—because we are talking about domesticated animals here—is worth living at all and whether you should continue the reproduction of it. Not living at all is of course preferable to living a bad life and then being killed at a young age. TheVeganAtheist compared it before in his video's to the scenario of human slaves that would rather die than be enslaved.

The domestication of the animals for human pleasures made them bad at surviving in the wild and they can't get the same pleasure from it as their ancestors had. That's why it's better to take care of them as best as you can—by not exploiting them at all and certainly not the factory farming practices—rather than put them into the wild. It also counts for dogs for example, which aren't able to survive on their own and are sadly enough fully dependent on humans. Because they can't even shit or eat when they want to and can't do anything without their owner permitting it, I think it's better to stop making new generations of them.

@Viktorius_the_Third
Utilitarianism may be hard to use in practice in some cases (although I don't think it really is in this instance), but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it as moral standard. If it's the right approach, it's better to do the best you can within the framework rather than using a different framework that isn't correct.

Volenta wrote: @Viktorius_the_Third
Utilitarianism may be hard to use in practice in some cases (although I don't think it really is in this instance), but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it as moral standard. If it's the right approach, it's better to do the best you can within the framework rather than using a different framework that isn't correct.

well i got another philosophy! i think with everything you do: do not hurt anyone! if you steal money from a local bank and use it to help 1000s of people in africa than its okay because you dont really hurt the bank or its managers! but if you steal from a normal every day man to help those in africa you activly damage this one man no matter how helpful it is to the starving ones! because utilitarism says no matter how much you hurt someone if you help someone else just a little bit more its moral! and i dont like that idea!
and yes that is utilitarism!

i think trying to do your best WHILE NOT HURTING anyone else is the absolute best way! dont you think?

Viktorius_the_Third wrote:well i got another philosophy! i think with everything you do: do not hurt anyone! if you steal money from a local bank and use it to help 1000s of people in africa than its okay because you dont really hurt the bank or its managers! but if you steal from a normal every day man to help those in africa you activly damage this one man no matter how helpful it is to the starving ones! because utilitarism says no matter how much you hurt someone if you help someone else just a little bit more its moral! and i dont like that idea!
and yes that is utilitarism!

i think trying to do your best WHILE NOT HURTING anyone else is the absolute best way! dont you think?

Do not hurt anyone is more a kind of principle which one could live by and you can argue for it using deontological ethics. Sometimes hurting someone can be justified; it can benefit collective wellbeing. Although it's sometimes hard to do so in practice because your unaware of the consequences on beforehand, there are answers out there that maximize wellbeing. Sam Harris gave the example is his book The Moral Landscape (which I recommend) of the tragedy of the Japanese tsunami where a lot of radioactive material was released. How could that possibly be beneficial? Well, in the long run they could prevent an even bigger disaster from happening by being aware of the current problems of nuclear storage. Also problems like the Trolley problem—where you could save the life of five by sacrifice a fat guy by throwing him before the train to stop it—seem to be very compelling reasons to be opposed to consequentialism, but then you aren't taking in consideration that people would constantly live in terror out of fear of being sacrificed and the psychological damage of the person throwing the fat guy (also consequences).

The example you give about stealing from a man to help those in Africa, might do more good than bad, but it's hard to know because there are also unknown factors. But what's for sure is that it's undesirable in society when their are other ways of increasing wellbeing in Africa when not decreasing the wellbeing of bankers or others in the western world. Peter Singer for example made the case (in his book The Life You Can Save) of giving away part of your salary that you don't really need yourself to those in need.

Sometimes utilitarianism might lead you somewhere you find repulsive, but that doesn't mean it's morally not the right thing to do. Our feelings and emotions are formed by evolution, a lot of it (I wouldn't say all of it because I don't know whether that's true) are based on reproductive benefit (which includes surviving). Some of it is right about morality (mostly forthcoming out of innate altruism), but a lot of it is not (xenophobia for example). If your feelings happen to be right on an issue, it's just by luck.

Thank you for your response. In an attempt to streamline my answer, I will try to answer only your precise arguments.

Viktorius_the_Third wrote: contra:
animals have to be in captivity (do you think slavery is okay as long as you only hit them 3 times a day than 20 times? or is property of another sentient beeing [sic] wrong in all cases?)

I think you're making a -probably purposely- false analogy, to exaggerate my position. With torture included, I obviously think the captivity of animals to be wrong. However, if the animal is happier in captivity than in the wild, I do think that means the captivity is the preferable option, so no, I don't think property of another sentient being is wrong in all cases. Now, I know it's very easy and probably tempting for you to make slavery analogies, but keep in mind that their options weren't between a life of being chased by wolves and slavery, but rather between living in a caring society and slavery. Animals in the wild have little such priviledges and there's little doubt in my mind that -provided we treat them well- animals are better off in captivity.

Viktorius_the_Third wrote: to produce 1 kilo of meat you have to use ~5-10 kilo of grain! (we dont feed them stuff that humans would eat! but we could use the space thats used for those grains to produce food for us!)
and this is only for caged animals (who are slaughtered as soon as they have optimum size... pretty much in puberty)
with water its 1kilo - 15.000 litre (while grains and rice are between 3000 and 6000)
[...]
and of cause the climate! i think its not really a strong point but 150.000.000.000 (estimated! but ~ 12.000.000.000 in the us alone) land animals do produce a lot of gas and dung and whatsoever. its not a big point but still a reason for some to go vegan!

There is no doubt that our current way of producing meat is not sustainable. This, however, is not an intrinsic property of producing meat, but rather a result of our stupidity. We simply pick silly things to feed the animals. I would like to refer you to an article written by someone who was a vegan. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... orestation
The article is about a book that adresses this kind of objections. The article doesn't adress any other kind of ethical concerns, though, only resource related objections.

Viktorius_the_Third wrote: not to mention the illness that too much meat causes (150gramm a week is too much... 250 say other sources... still thats about 35gram per day! thats literally nothing!)
just to name a few (not only meat but eggs and milk as well):
overweight
cancers (all sorts of them! skincancer is one of the few that has nothing to do with your foodintake)
diabetes
cloughed arteria (sry dunno how to spell it ) (causes strokes and limbs to go numb)
and many more! just look it up! its estimated that us governtment would save 70% of money spent for healthissues! (sry got no source... i heard it somewhere. but even if its "just" 20-30% its enough!)

You haven't provided any sources for that. But even if it were true, that would be an argument to eat less meat, not to become vegetarian, let alone vegan.

Volenta wrote:The pleasure of eating the meat or milk produced in a lifetime for the taste of it, doesn't outweigh the horrible life and death of an innocent sentient being. Surely not if you know it affects 10s of billions of lives more compared to human lives and that the capacity to feel pain is probably just as intense as ours.
[...]
Not living at all is of course preferable to living a bad life and then being killed at a young age. TheVeganAtheist compared it before in his video's to the scenario of human slaves that would rather die than be enslaved.
[...]
I think it's better to stop making new generations of them.

All of your points depend on your assumption that living in captivity is intrinsically bad, whereas, from a utilitarian point of view, captivity can be perfectly fine, as long as the creature is happy. Could you please demonstrate that captivity is intrinsically bad?

Coeus Amphiaraus wrote:With this definition, eating meat can be perfectly moral, provided that the animals that are eaten, live a life that is happier than it would have been if they had lived in the wild. Now, it is easy to see that a chicken with a square foot of living space does not meet this qualification, but if the chicken has enough space to roam relatively freely (or is given the illusion that it does, though that would probably be difficult to acchieve), then I would suspect that is a happier life than in the wild, which, with all the predators and stress and poo and what not, isn't that much of a paradise either.

So in summary: I think that a animal with enough space and food in captivity is happier than an animal in the wild, and as such the former is the preferable moral position.

If you think I'm wrong, please let me know, so that I might either change my mind or clarify.

I addressed this Hobbesian assumption on my (now idle) blog a while back, and rather than repeat myself, I'll just post a link to it here. http://paleovegan.blogspot.com/2012/03/ ... iving.html

In summary: the Hobbesian view of nature as red in tooth and claw is pseudo-science. Or, at best, a small part of the story. From the POV of individual wild animals, predation is quite rare, and statistically speaking, most wild animals live their entire lives without becoming prey.

The notion that captivity is inherently better for animals than wildness is self-serving and irrational, based on outdated conceptions of nature rooted in religion, not evidence and reason.