Animal rights

If you ask me, 'we bred these animals for meat and they're useless for anything else' is more of an argument against meat-eating, not for it. If you breed chickens or cows or sheep to have good meat and reproduce fast, sometimes that has negative effects on their welfare.

If it has a negative effect on their welfare, then it has a negative effect on their welfare. No real effect on me.

@Loni jay: Well the axiom to that statement is that animal's welfare is not important unless it effects man. If you believe that then it goes with out saying. If you don't then you don't

edited 29th Jul '11 11:28:58 PM by joeyjojo

@ Blue Chameleon

I can't quite see the issue with harming animals for sport or efficiency. What exactly is the problem here? How do we value the individual benefits of recreation less than those of scientific research, or the economic benefits of efficiency less than those of scientific research? Cancer research that harms mice may be just as "ultimately fruitless" as keeping horses captive for the sake of racing them because people enjoy watching and betting on horse races, and the benefits of an improved economy can improve quality of life just as much as being less likely to die of cancer can. So what does it come down to? Individual value judgements. And what gives anyone the right to make such value judgements for someone else?

re: Why are other animals suddenly different? Answerable with reference to the later stuff.

Torturing a dog for it's whole life vs. a human being itchy is not the logical conclusion. Can you think of a realistic situation in which that would be the case? It's an illogical extreme. But even then, I would say that we really should, if it was totally unavoidable, deem that situation the best.

There are no objective reasons for value judgements. If there is an objective reason, it's no longer a value judgement. For instance, the laws of physics are pretty objective (although you could make the case that they are human constructs and that we ultimately don't have a perfect understanding of anything to the point that we can claim objectivity). What you explained is my subjective reasoning. Humans should be naturally inclined to subjectively value the interests of other humans, no? The objective part is that they should be naturally inclined to do so, but this doesn't mean that there's any objective reason to value them more. If I wasn't human, that would be a pretty bad reason, actually. Thus, as a human, it's the subjective side that is valid.

I suppose part of it really is humans being sapient, to the extent that a sentient species can't assess it in such terms and is simply naturally driven as such. I guess what we need to use our sapience to consider is why sentient animals aren't killing themselves off. And you answered this: it's unsustainable. So, a tendency towards harming your own "species" is unsustainable and self-destructive. Thus, for the benefit of the species (which is a subjective good), we should be avoiding harming our own species as much as we can. It's a more contrived ethical thing to avoid harming other species when we can sensibly avoid it.

Ultimately it seems that we're arguing different points. I'm not saying that it's wrong for an individual to go out of his way to avoid harming other animals. Just that as far as the rule of law goes, I don't think it has a place in telling them what's right and wrong as long as he's not actively being cruel. And if he is, he has problems that go deeper than with what the law can deal. What I am saying is that, since the law is a purely human institution, it should not be actively impeding human interests on the whole. Indeed, the idea of law in the modern world is to protect human interests from other human interests that would impede them. I suppose another part of it comes down to what I mentioned above - I don't think we can justify making value judgements on behalf of others. And if "the right way to deal with animals, when they come into conflict with humans" has no valid objective basis for decision-making, it requires subjective value judgements, and is therefore not something to be decided for anyone else. In short, and in general: We can't offer objective answers to subjective questions, and it's best not to try.

And yes, it's Dormin.

edited 29th Jul '11 11:29:41 PM by ekuseruekuseru

You cannot logically compare animal pain to human pain.

edited 29th Jul '11 11:32:17 PM by NickTheSwing

Why not? Pain is pain, and most animals respond to it in much the same way.

There are viable alternatives, but not acceptable alternatives. Meat tastes good. That is a generally-accepted fact among most of the populace of Earth. An additional generally-accepted fact is that a vegan diet does not generally suffice in the taste and satisfaction department, and it is more healthy to have an entirely round diet of meat and vegetables, etc. Comparatively, we have synthetic substances that can replace fur, and they are equal or superior in practicality and comfort, and, as such, it does not make sense to keep using fur from animals for that purpose.

A criminal is still a human life worth protecting to me. A murderer or rapist, on the other hand, has fallen into a separate and distinct category, for me. When you take or significantly compromise the life of another, you forfeit the right to your own, in my opinion. However, this is a different discussion.

Using human volunteers is great, but if you can't find them for a dangerous and necessary experiment, then animals can suffice. Using animals to test, say, hair care products, is ridiculous if it will cause harm to them. At the same time, if all it does is make them clean, and they are treated well and, hopefully, even loved by the testers, well, I would even encourage that.

However, in the case of, say, dangerous brain surgery research (just as an example), I look at it like this: it would be neither advisable nor ethical to use humans for such testing, regardless of whether they are consenting or not. At the same time, such research could result in valuable treatments for some form of ailment or another and possibly save lives. If it saves human lives, or allows them to be lived to their fullest (say, for Alzheimer research), I believe the human concern is paramount. If it is for trivial matters (the aforementioned hair care products, as an example) that would harm the animal, then it is not justified in my opinion.

I believe the point is (or should be) that we've already irreversibly changed the animals to be domesticated. It would be crueler to release them into an environment they are not capable of handling, causing their extinction, than it would be to keep them alive and in domestication, using them humanely. I think it's better for them to live and, by all rights, be appreciated, than for them to be forgotten through extinction. At least that way we know they contributed something to the world, rather than dying pointlessly. I think we should love and respect the animals we use for society, but that doesn't mean we still can't use them, assuming we do so in a kind and thoughtful manner.

That is an incredibly callous attitude, Nick. Animals give their lives so that yours may be comfortable and long. The least you could do is respect that and attempt to ensure their suffering is minimized or, if possible, removed altogether.

That is easy. Because animals are not as important in the long run as people are.

And ultimately, suffering cannot be removed altogether. You can try as hard as you'd like, but you cannot remove pain and death. Its nature, really. While I do say it should be minimalized if possible, if impossible, it should be ignored.

edited 29th Jul '11 11:40:36 PM by NickTheSwing

Certainly, but that doesn't mean we can't at least treat them as best as possible while still using them for the intended and necessary purpose. Life is not something to be wasted arbitrarily, either. Human life is higher in importance than animal life, but that doesn't mean that animal life should be thrown away for something not worth the effort. Animals make great sacrifices for us, and I believe that, although these sacrifices are necessary, we should at least respect that and help them as much as we can while still fulfilling our own goals.

And there is our axiom.

edited 29th Jul '11 11:43:32 PM by joeyjojo

That is correct, a sacrifice has to be a worthy sacrifice.

If its just for petty sadism, then really, what greater gain is that? I will say though that, while it cannot be eliminated entirely, if an animal just has to go, it should be with minimal anguish. Any animal who has lost its life so we can progress, I have realized, does deserve my respect for being a worth while sacrifice.

@USAF Yeah, I'm not advocating that we release all meat animals into the wild. That would be exceedingly cruel. They are certainly better off in the farms.

But I'm not talking about their suitability for living in the wild. I'm talking about their welfare in farms.

For example, broiler chickens never live to adulthood. If they do, sometimes their legs aren't strong enough to support their weight. We've bred these animals to the point where they are physically completely disabled.

And we shouldn't just shrug and go "Oh, then that justifies the fact that we kill and eat them while they're still immature!".

If we're talking "in the long run", than neither are important at all.

According to my logic, if its not useful for anything else besides being my meal, then yes, that does justify eating it. It would be far more cruel, then, to let it live to adulthood and be unable to walk or do anything.

In the long run, it is my belief we can ascend to greater levels of evolution, become greater than just humans and gain importance in the long run.

edited 29th Jul '11 11:55:48 PM by NickTheSwing

I don't understand. What is the alternate here?

Right, ok. Before you were coming across more as "oh, well, animal =/= human, so, have at it and kill as many as you like." Glad we cleared that up.

I guess the alternative to not breed them that way?

Which would need to come from a culture in which meat is seen as something 'special' again, and not something to be mass-produced and mass-consumed.

I'm not really against meat-eating. I just took issue with the argument that since we bred them that way it absolves us of any blame for eating them.

edited 29th Jul '11 11:59:29 PM by LoniJay

It's not really gonna fly, that idea of going back in time to when meat-eating was special. Besides that, the only thing that made meat-eating special was the fact that most people were poor, and I doubt we'd want to go back to that anyhow.

I don't think the fact that we already did it "absolves us" of having done it and continuing to do it, but I think it would be pointless to try and negate it. As for not breeding them that way... well, I'm not a farmer, so, I can't really say what to do there, and why they are bred like that.

edited 30th Jul '11 1:06:41 AM by USAF713

I suppose I didn't mean exactly special, in the sense that people didn't get it much.

What I mean is that, these days people don't really have any sense that their meat comes from animals. It's treated exactly like it comes out of a factory, like biscuits and pasta and frozen meals. I know that when I buy a packet of chicken breasts at the supermarket, I don't really think of it as coming from an animal. It might as well have been mixed in a vat and then extruded out of a nozzle.

And people don't worry much about the welfare of the cogs in a factory.

I don't think we can really go back to the days when it wasn't so, unfortunately. There are too many of us. The only thing to do is try and ensure that farm proceedures are as welfar-conscious as possible. Which I think most places here do a pretty good job of.

edited 30th Jul '11 12:26:49 AM by LoniJay

@ ekuseruekuseru: I can't quite see the issue with harming animals for sport or efficiency. What exactly is the problem here? How do we value the individual benefits of recreation less than those of scientific research, or the economic benefits of efficiency less than those of scientific research?

Harming animals for economic efficiency is a frank admission that at least one person cares more about saving money than about the welfare of anything under his care. If animals suffer as a result, it is not moral. I think the double standard is at least partly unjustified. And I'm less easy about sport. We have plenty of alternative sports that don't involve other animals.

Individual value judgements. And what gives anyone the right to make such value judgements for someone else?

The observation that someone else is not about to speak up to express their value judgements. The fact that people sometimes don't even know, or can't enact, their own value judgements? A smoker who finds it hard to give up and hard to admit it among peer pressure could benefit from an outsider peering in and finding out what they want. To put it another way, a patient who insists that they don't need treatment when they clearly do knows less about their own values than the doctor who disagrees with them. People can be astonishingly bad at making judgements, even value judgements, or at least at judging what they value in the long-term. I suspect many people are similarly confused when it comes to other animals.

Torturing a dog for it's whole life vs. a human being itchy is not the logical conclusion. Can you think of a realistic situation in which that would be the case? It's an illogical extreme. But even then, I would say that we really should, if it was totally unavoidable, deem that situation the best.

I cannot take you seriously if you are going to contradict yourself like this. Reread Post 345:

In situations where you must either harm animals or harm humans, regardless of the degree of the harm to either, I find harming animals to be less unconscionable.

My counter wasn't 'illogical'. It was logically consistent with what you said, allowing that an itch counted as harm. If that doesn’t convince you, just look at the arguments for meat-eating that have been posted up on here. They are a frank admission that the stimulation of a few taste buds is considered more important than the series of lives that were sacrificed to make it possible, for no better reason than species membership, which is ludicrous because species membership largely rests on the criteria mentioned by me earlier. You can’t tell me that that’s a valid moral argument as it stands.

Humans should be naturally inclined to subjectively value the interests of other humans, no?

I don't know about should, but when it comes to are, at best, some humans are inclined this way, some humans don't value the interests of anyone who isn't them, some humans value only the welfare of their small circle of close friends and family, and some humans value the interests of other animals too. But such thoughts have real world consequences, which we must pay attention to because we are in the thick of it.

edited 30th Jul '11 3:42:31 AM by BlueChameleon

And another thing:

@ ekuseruekuseru: I guess what we need to use our sapience to consider is why sentient animals aren't killing themselves off.

I was pointing out the problems with your claim that: It's simply that, from a subjective, human point of view, it doesn't, as a general rule, make sense for a human to promote harming humans over harming non-humans. If it weren't humans, but a different species under discussion, this would still stand, but only from the perspective of an individual within that other species.

Species membership does not lead to species loyalty, though it is a factor in the evolution of their behaviour. That's too human a way of thinking about it.

... for the benefit of the species (which is a subjective good), we should be avoiding harming our own species as much as we can.

Please do not say "for the benefit of the species", that is a biologically obsolete concept. Individuals benefit. The reason extinctions are bad is because extinctions are the suffering and death of individuals times a thousand or so. If an individual screwed over members of its own species for its own gain, whether or not that is bad news for the species as a whole, it could still be beneficial for that individual concerned, so it will continue. If, as a result, he has no children, that's hardly his individual concern. And all it takes is a genetic mutation or recombination in the right place to turn a species member to such behaviour.

On the flipside, valuing another species can be spectacularly more sensible than valuing other members of your own in evolutionary terms. Human tribes do not like other competing human tribes, but if they respect the living creatures that sustain the ecosystem in which they survive, they are more likely to value the animals than the other people. Gall wasps and their host trees are so tightly intertwined in evolutionary terms that a gall wasp is more likely to 'value' the trees themselves than they will 'value' any other gall wasp, who as far as they are concerned are rivals. And notably this hasn’t resulted in their extinction.

Just that as far as the rule of law goes, I don't think it has a place in telling them what's right and wrong as long as he's not actively being cruel.

The problem is that leaves it open for people to be passively cruel. All that stuff about economic efficiency would be one example: if a horse was injured, because of some 'cost-effective' machine it has to work with, or because it has to work from dawn until dusk, if the farmer finds that it is cheaper to get a new horse than to heal the old one, what, on your model, can we expect but that the horse will be left to suffer on its own? If our morality was content to let that be, then so be it. But in that case why do we find people who are nervous about the suffering brought upon animals? Why are there people challenging the claim that it's OK to eat meat or to perform brain surgery on a chimpanzee? I do not always know why some people say these things, but all your talk about objective laws and subjective values and the law keeping people in line strikes me as just a front for inconsiderate self-interest. Having the self-interest doesn't bother me. Being inconsiderate about it does.

Suffice to say that you insist on arguing on individual grounds. With respect to individuals, which individuals' preferences are valued more comes down to a subjective decision. The best subjective decision, if it is to have a bearing on other people who may disagree with the subjective grounds, is one of non-intervention and permittance. You can please one crowd by prohibition, and you can please the other by not prohibiting anything. Either way, you are upsetting one group of people. Better, if you have to upset someone, to do it by doing nothing, rather than doing something. Someone who doesn't know what's best for themself doesn't need to be forced to do what's best for themself. Beyond that, there's nothing but rubbish in the discussion. Certainly, people who do value humans over animals do it for a number of reasons, and I was sharing one possible reason, that you happen to personally disagree with, on entirely subjective grounds. And you're free to do that, and observe it in your personal life, and encourage others to do the same. But why would you make a law forcing people to observe your personal standards? That's immoral.

You can see some nasty stuff done to animals in the name of making money. A friend of mine has a father working in the racing industry; apparently he's seen people literally take a hammer to a horse's legs because it wasn't likely to win the race it was entered in, and that would lose the owner too much money.

@ ekuseruekuseru: Suffice to say that you insist on arguing on individual grounds. With respect to individuals, which individuals' preferences are valued more comes down to a subjective decision.

Of course. I cannot contradict that. I said earlier that, in the case of morals, our interest is in caring about what happens to others. If you don’t care about what happens to others, you are no longer talking about morality, but about self-interest. But so what? With a rough analogy, I could make the same argument about religion: it starts when you care about the divine or about spirituality. If you don’t care about either, you are no longer talking about religion. The same with science: it starts when you care about learning facts about the world. If you don’t care about facts, you are no longer talking about science. But religious people, scientific people, and people concerned with morality are therefore unlikely to take you seriously.

The best subjective decision, if it is to have a bearing on other people who may disagree with the subjective grounds, is one of non-intervention and permittance.

I disagree strongly with that statement. Non-intervention can too easily be one of the worst things a person does. Let me demonstrate to you why with a thought experiment:

Subjective decision of Person A: Do not let humans come to harm. Subjective decision of Person B: Beat up that guy because he humiliated me. Person A sees Person B beat up Person C. Here, Person A has to make a decision that has “a bearing on other people who may disagree with the subjective grounds”. According to your logic, Person A should do absolutely nothing whatsoever. Not even call the police. That would be intervening and not permitting Person B to do what he wants. The logic also falls down because it is so easily contradicted. Person A’s ‘subjective decision’ contradicts Person B’s. In this case, we either admit no preference or consider one to be more important than the other. If you are concerned with morality, the latter decision is the obvious one.

Referring back to the discussion, if some people want animals to be treated better, and others want animals to be considered expendable, non-intervention would favour the latter. But what if they are wrong? What if, all this time, it transpires that harming animals has been far worse than we imagined, or it turns out that reasons for justifying X, Y, and Z on some animals are spectacularly faulty? What if, on reflection, we don’t respect people who say "I eat meat because I like it and there’s nothing you can do about it"?

You can please one crowd by prohibition, and you can please the other by not prohibiting anything. Either way, you are upsetting one group of people. Better, if you have to upset someone, to do it by doing nothing, rather than doing something.

See example above.

Someone who doesn't know what's best for themself doesn't need to be forced to do what's best for themself.

I value consent, but it must be at least reasonably-informed consent. Who can honestly take seriously, say, the claim of a teenager who has just been dumped that he wants to kill himself because he is so miserable? It may well be that directly confronting him about it is a bad tactic because it only makes him defiant, but in that case the issue is one of How To Do X rather than Should We Do X? We should do X. If we persuade the teenager that he still has many things to live for, he can grow up and have a healthy life. If we, as you suggest, refuse to intervene, we’ve got a senseless and premature death.

Certainly, people who do value humans over animals do it for a number of reasons, and I was sharing one possible reason, that you happen to personally disagree with, on entirely subjective grounds. And you're free to do that, and observe it in your personal life, and encourage others to do the same. But why would you make a law forcing people to observe your personal standards? That's immoral.

I don’t want to make a law forcing people to observe it. I’m fully aware of the problems of authoritarianism. I’d much rather it was done democratically. But democracy requires that the people involved are informed about the issues, and for that we need open discussion. Like this thread, for example.

edited 30th Jul '11 4:52:58 AM by BlueChameleon

@ USAF 713: There are viable alternatives, but not acceptable alternatives. Meat tastes good. That is a generally-accepted fact among most of the populace of Earth. An additional generally-accepted fact is that a vegan diet does not generally suffice in the taste and satisfaction department

Oh, well, if by acceptable, you mean this:

Appeal to Popularity.

Don’t expect me to take that seriously. Besides, it is astonishingly wrong. Meat is not the only delicious food out there, so it’s hardly a crisis of pleasure if you drop it from your diet.

Using human volunteers is great, but if you can't find them for a dangerous and necessary experiment, then animals can suffice.

My point was that the volunteering was a crucial factor in considering such practices ethical, and one of the reasons I feel nervous about the concept of animal testing is that there is no way an animal volunteered for it. In the case of chimpanzees, it strikes me as exploitation of an animal which, if it had been human in all departments except its nervous system, would have been called mentally-impaired and spared such trials. I don't believe that such Double Standards are morally consistent.

However, in the case of, say, dangerous brain surgery research (just as an example), I look at it like this: it would be neither advisable nor ethical to use humans for such testing, regardless of whether they are consenting or not.

Why not? The whole point of the volunteering criteria was that the subjects were not being exploited against their will and were fully aware of the risks. That exploitation is precisely what will happen if a chimpanzee is used. And if efficiency is the key, in the case of brain surgery a human is your best model. In case you haven’t forgotten, the majority of human brains are dramatically different from chimpanzee brains.

I believe the point is (or should be) that we've already irreversibly changed the animals to be domesticated. It would be crueler to release them into an environment they are not capable of handling, causing their extinction, than it would be to keep them alive and in domestication, using them humanely.

But those are not the only options. No one’s expecting the meat industry to be felled in one, and I can’t see why that would be good given its economic impact. Some animals will probably still be kept for food, like ducks and chickens for eggs and cows and goats for milk, but all the rest could still be kept in captivity – say, in zoos or petting zoos or equivalent, something like that. You wouldn’t even have to cull them – if you really wanted to make their populations drop, just prevent most of them from breeding. You get the same result for less suffering, and you’re still being morally consistent. In the meantime, though, you can diminish demand for meat products.

Animals make great sacrifices for us,

Correction: Humans have used animals and sacrificed them for human use, never mind what the animals would have done. Don’t make it look as if pigs volunteer altruistically to become pork scratching.

@ Nick The Swing: In the long run, it is my belief we can ascend to greater levels of evolution, become greater than just humans and gain importance in the long run.

First, a correction: We don’t ‘ascend’ to greater ‘levels’ of evolution. Our brains may get bigger, our muscles stronger, our blood vessels tougher, our skeletons thicker, and our lungs capable of extracting more oxygen out of the air, but evolution doesn’t have ‘levels’ and besides, these kinds of changes don’t come from nothing. They have costs.

Secondly, I agree that human beings are far more capable of altruism and goodness than animals are, but let it not be forgotten that humans are also far more capable of committing senseless atrocities. We should celebrate an individual's virtues, but we shouldn’t glorify our species. Let's not get carried away here.

edited 30th Jul '11 5:12:30 AM by BlueChameleon