Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hey all,

I have been meaning to dive into discussions here for a bit now, and after an uplifting discussion last night with a couple roommates it gave me another boost in energy and will to dive further. My current stances at the time of this writing are atheist (I feel bold enough to boast being well educated in this topic) and meat-eater. Although the latter stance is very, very fragile. I've been on a "tipping point" for almost 6 months now, not because of any sort of emotionally driven animal abuse videos, but because I keep diving further into moral ethics. I used to vehemently state my rights to be a meat-eating citizen, but now I can barely hold an argument for it. I'm sure it may be exciting to see a potential convert.

But my intention here is not to find my edge and step into the slightly more challenging lifestyle (but morally rewarding) of being vegan, but to sharpen where my questions keep ending up that never seem to be answered well enough.

One subject I need to cover is the amazement I've had over the varying answers I've received when many of the vegans I encounter try to explain where the lines are. I have seen lines being drawn from sentience, having a functional brain, ability to receive pain, levels of consciousness, or even just the simple classification system (which seems to roughly end up being whether or not a living being is made of cells that contain cell walls or not). I realize there is a clear difference between a cow and a dandelion, but is it ok to eat an ant? Where are the lines we draw, and why?

Another topic is a subject I had last night with animal ethics that seemed to display a difference in view of values. Is it right to value humans over animals because we are more sentient, or have a higher level of consciousness than all other known animals? I really want to ask a two part question to continue this, one: if you had a gun to your head and were told you have to kill either a dog or a human, which one would you pick and why? Two: If you had a gun to your head and were told you have to kill either Bill Gates or a McDonald's clerk, which one and why? I realize these are forced situations and in the real world we are not always forced to kill animals or separate people on value, but I'm trying to understand if values can be a valid system without getting into utilitarianism (or maybe that's exactly where it is already). I think the discussion wound up into a foolish 'argument by authority' by the end, because names of philosophers came about, and I started to rely on saying most current philosophers seem to agree animal consumption is immoral, which may or may not be true but using authority was just an attempt to trump by saying "smart people said this". If we have the ability to not eat animals, do we truly have a moral obligation to not consume them, even if their lives are lived happily are ended humanely, and why?

- PJ

Welcome PJ,

Tryclyde wrote: One subject I need to cover is the amazement I've had over the varying answers I've received when many of the vegans I encounter try to explain where the lines are. I have seen lines being drawn from sentience, having a functional brain, ability to receive pain, levels of consciousness, or even just the simple classification system (which seems to roughly end up being whether or not a living being is made of cells that contain cell walls or not). I realize there is a clear difference between a cow and a dandelion, but is it ok to eat an ant? Where are the lines we draw, and why?

This is largely a matter of empirical science. The varying answers you receive are predominately caused by varying levels of scientific knowledge, but also due in a small part to a certain level of uncertainty within science itself.

You understand, I presume, how scientific knowledge is provisional, and works within certain bounds of probability and uncertainty, right?
That is, we will usually be 99% sure something has such value, X, but plus or minus 10%.

Because of that uncertainty -- those "error bars" -- things with similar values are not always as clear.

Like you said, there is a clear difference between a cow and a dandelion. There is a less clear difference between a worm and an ant, or between a sponge and a dandelion.

I'll clarify some of those classifications for you:

Sentience: This is the correct means of classifying, because sentience is the root of will; a non-sentient being can not want or have interests, all sentient beings want things and have interests. You can only respect the interests of a being if it has interests to begin with.
A good example is a rock. A rock may fall due to gravity, but that doesn't mean it wants to fall. A plant may grow due to chemistry, but that doesn't mean it wants to grow. Just because something does a thing, inherently, doesn't mean it wants to do that thing.
Sentience means possessing some form of associative learning, which means rudimentary intelligence and a certain innate self awareness. Only animals are known to be sentient, but not all animals are sentient.
It's important to understand that sentience is a gradation. Something can be non-sentient, marginally sentient, all of the way up to highly sentient.
The spectrum runs roughly from some kinds of worms to humans.
Sponges, Oysters, Jellyfish, some other kinds of worms, early term fetuses, and very small arthropods (like mites or microscopic krill and larvae) are all probably not sentient.

Having a functional brain: This is induction. All sentient beings that we know of have functional brains, and there is no known natural means by which an organism could be sentient without a functional brain or some substantial cluster of nerve tissue approximating those functions. Checking to see if the organism has a functional brain seems to be a good approximation of the truth of its sentience.

Ability to receive pain: This is not very useful. Sentience isn't just nerves firing, it is perception and understanding of those impulses by processing them. Sentience also need not necessarily include text-book pain; it only requires unpleasant stimuli or situations of some kind to be able to be perceived. A brain dead human in a vegetative state has nerve endings that fire, sending "pain" signals to the brain, but there's nobody home to understand them or ANY stimulus. A human with CIP but who is otherwise functioning properly is incapable of feeling pain, but very sentient with wants and a will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenita ... ty_to_pain

Levels of consciousness: "consciousness" is ill defined, and the word is more used in pseudoscience. Sentience is what is important.

Simple classification system: That's a worse approximation than looking for a brain. If something is not an animal, there is pretty good reason to assume it is not sentient. And most visible animals are sentient. In a very crude way, it usually works,

Tryclyde wrote: Is it right to value humans over animals because we are more sentient, or have a higher level of consciousness than all other known animals?

Yes as a generalization, but not always. Not every human is sentient, and not every human is more sentient than some non-human animals.

Tryclyde wrote: I realize these are forced situations and in the real world we are not always forced to kill animals or separate people on value, but I'm trying to understand if values can be a valid system without getting into utilitarianism (or maybe that's exactly where it is already).

I would need to know more about those situations. Consequentialism is correct, but Utilitarianism is not the only form of consequentialism.

If forced into a choice, I would kill the worse person, who does more harm to the world and is unlikely to change, rather than the better person who does more good and is unlikely to change from this.

Tryclyde wrote: If we have the ability to not eat animals, do we truly have a moral obligation to not consume them, even if their lives are lived happily are ended humanely, and why?

It depends on the animal, and what you mean.
We do have a moral obligation not to purchase or indirectly support (like somebody buying it for you) the predominant meat produced by the current system; their lives are not happy and are not ended humanely.
So, these questions of hypothetical "happy" or "humane" methods are more academic, and don't really apply to the issue of meat as it currently is (they are good conversations to have, but we should all go vegan or at least freegan for the time being).

-Causing animal suffering
-Destroying the environment
-Harming human health

There's nothing good about modern mainstream animal agriculture, and every reason to stop it. It's a lose-lose situation, bad for humans and the animals; no rational person would support it.

Something like rope grown oysters are a different matter.

-Probably not sentient
-No significant bycatch, helps clean the water
-Probably not very healthy, but not as bad as tetrapod meat.

It's hard to generalize to all animals and all production methods. Some are more grey areas. But cows, chickens, and pigs are usually more black and white (at least in first world countries).

Extremely informative. I appreciate you taking the time out to respond such depth.

Is it too ignorant for me to continue to prod the moral philosophy and not the current situations around the meat market? I'm interested in exactly how you can make the justification that it is never acceptable to kill and consume a cow (or if not never, when is it ok?). I think the argument I received was more of "it's ok because they don't contribute anything, we use them, and they don't usually have the amount of sentience we would normally have". I more or less say that animal has a will to live and interests, but it may circle back to "but not like humans do". How do you feel about that response? I feel unable to make a call on this.

I don't have anything to contribute, but this is a really informative post!

Tryclyde wrote: Is it too ignorant for me to continue to prod the moral philosophy and not the current situations around the meat market?

No. But in terms of whether we should be vegan today, and not what we should eat in some hypothetical future where there may be different sources of meat, the current status is the only important point.

It may be that there could be ethical sources of meat. But the current sources people eat are not such.

I would say, once somebody agrees that we should all be vegan today, at least until such a time as proven ethical sources are created (bioreacted or 'lab grown' meats are one of the possibilities for the future), then it's certainly worth discussing future possibilities.
But if somebody can't even recognize that environmental destruction and animal suffering, only to gratify gluttony and at the expense of human health, is unethical, there's not much hope that any other hypothetical discussions will sway such a hardened view.

Tryclyde wrote:I'm interested in exactly how you can make the justification that it is never acceptable to kill and consume a cow (or if not never, when is it ok?).

This is not the rational vegan argument. Only deontologists believe that.

I suggest you read this thread: https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... ?f=7&t=785

Consequentialists are concerned with the consequences of actions. Weighing the good against the bad, and comparing to alternatives.

I would not even say it's never acceptable to kill and consume a human. There are extreme situations of starvation. There are cases where the killing is merciful (terminal diseases). There are even cases where people want to be killed and eaten for some fetish. There are many things to consider.

Tryclyde wrote:I think the argument I received was more of "it's ok because they don't contribute anything, we use them

There are plenty of humans who don't contribute anything.

But the issue isn't just use, it's one of abuse, and also the fact that the entire system is wasteful and irrational.
Feed food to cows, wasting 90% of the food energy, and then only being able to feed 10% of the humans from that meat than you might have with the grains and beans directly.
Convert grains and beans, which are healthy, into unhealthy products with increase the incidence of disease. And why?

Tryclyde wrote:and they don't usually have the amount of sentience we would normally have".

Humans have varying levels of sentience. Young children, the mentally retarded, and (in general) less intelligent people. Is it OK for smart people to eat dumb people?

Tryclyde wrote:I more or less say that animal has a will to live and interests, but it may circle back to "but not like humans do".

Again, all humans don't have a will to live and interests like every other human does. Each person is different.

As a broad example, Christians don't even properly understand the concept of death. They think they're immortal souls, and they they'll go to paradise. So, shouldn't it be OK for atheists to kill Christians, since the Christians don't understand the concept of death anyway?

You can make up all sorts of stupid and irrelevant excuses to discriminate against any group that's different from you.

Tryclyde wrote:How do you feel about that response? I feel unable to make a call on this.

Work on creating analogies, and challenge them with their own broken reasoning.

Welcome Tryclyde! You seem to have an inquisitive mind and I am confident your interest in moral ethics will eventually lead you on to the path of veganism.

Tryclyde wrote:if you had a gun to your head and were told you have to kill either a dog or a human, which one would you pick and why? Two: If you had a gun to your head and were told you have to kill either Bill Gates or a McDonald's clerk, which one and why?

Assuming you wanted to frame these questions into a situation with no legal ramifications, here are my answers:

1. I would rather kill the human (unless s/he were a vegan), as the average non vegan human causes a lot more damage and suffering to the world than the average dog. One could argue that the average dead human will have many more mourners, but that does not even come close when measuring up against the future damage and suffering that human would inflict if his/her life were to continue.

2. No doubt I would kill the McDonalds clerk, even under the unlikely event that s/he were vegan. There are very few people in the world I would choose to kill over Bill Gates. Even though he is not vegan, he is both able and motivated to reduce much suffering in the world.

Hi Tryclyde, great to have you on the forum. Happy to see some great responses to your questions. Hope you find here in the forum what you are looking for.