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Why do I have to defend my choice of want, to eat meat?
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Incredible!
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DNA is not what makes a person. I say if we would call “human DNA” a person for x, y, z reasons, then anything else displaying those reasons should be treated as a person, regardless of their DNA/matter/configuration.
You say it’s not about the eating, it’s about the killing. But the original post is titled with the word eating. You do this very commonly. Okay, twice.
However, my friend shared something relevant… please disregard the whole “it’s not about the don’ts” blah blah misunderstanding: 37K views · 1.5K reactions | I think there are a lot of really powerful words of wisdom in my Dad's book, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn, but this passage will forever be my... | By White Oak Pastures | Facebook
Sure. My claim is that the burden is on anyone claiming that some non-human thing is a moral patient.
I’ll let @Splooop address the title, but surely you read beyond it? The OP says that he’s looking for a counter to “notable books such as Animal Liberation”, which is about animal rights and animal suffering, and argues we shouldn’t eat animals because of the suffering/deprivation of rights involved in raising and killing animals for food.
(I’m not sure what “this” is that I do so commonly, but you commonly insinuate that it’s somehow nefarious or poor-form when I do things like ‘read the OP’ and ‘clarify what we’re talking about’.)
Your claim is indefensible. Anything that displays x, y, z qualities that justify treating them as a moral patient/agent transfers over regardless of their material/configuration. To argue otherwise is no different than to argue that men and women should be treated (or act) differently on topics not related to being male or female. Call it materialism?
Thesis: Materialism (more properly: reductive physicalism) is antipersonal.
You don’t need to defend it. Just eat meat if you want to eat meat. If anyone else has a problem with it, that’s their issue.
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The whole ‘globalisation of the food chain’ thing, isn’t working out well… plant-foods are now modified to have too much sugars, and too much histamines, and too much allergens, for them to now be fully- beneficial sources of food crops.
Low FODMAP/histamine seems to be the only way to go for some, and in those cases, not eating meat is not an option for them.
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It has been said, that the food-chain was just fine how it was, and now it has become/been irreversibly damaged.
Yep. Welcome to what happens when humanity allows billion dollar corporations and governments to take over the processes of food production and distribution. These super large-scale systems are turned into profit vehicles at the expense of nature and human health.
Funny how the libtards who get so upset about people eating meat have no concern for Monsanto and other billion-dollar corporations and governments ruining global food production with GMOs and pesticides and toxins and flavor additives and preservatives and artificial colors and other weird chemicals and shit all in the name of profits. All they know is “muh globalism guud!” and “gubment guud!” and “meat eaters bad!!!”
Imagine being that fucking silly. Maybe try to imagine being a zoomer, I guess that’s about as close as it gets. Sure they have it rough. But that is not an excuse.
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Again, “sure”. You say my claim is indefensible, but this is not at odds with my claim. It can simultaneously be true that
- The burden of proof for treating non-human entities as moral patients is on the person claiming that they are moral patients, i.e. the default position is that they are not moral patients; and
- It is possible to meet that burden.
I also don’t think proponents of animal rights have met that burden, but I’m not saying it’s impossible to do, I’m allocating the burden of proof, and saying that in the absence of some argument that meets that burden, the default position is that non-humans are not moral patients.
This, though, doesn’t follow. If someone makes a plausible argument that eating meat is wrong, you should engage with it sufficiently to understand the mistakes it’s making.
Compare to something like slavery, which is common in human history and visible in non-human species, yet is morally abhorrent and shouldn’t be done. If you said to someone who wants to keep slaves, “You don’t need to defend it. Just [keep slaves] if you want to [keep slaves]. If anyone else has a problem with it, that’s their issue.” Particularly where the people arguing against eating meat are arguing that the animals being eaten have rights that are infringed by your eating them, it isn’t sufficient to let it be “their problem”, it is a conflict of rights.
And again, I think it’s OK to eat meat, but the arguments against it should be taken seriously.
This is not new. Farming has been causing malnutrition since its inception. The global food chain gives us access to the variety of food we need to eat healthily.
This is absolutely bizarre. Are you actually unaware of the decades of attacks on agribusiness, and Monsanto specifically, coming from the left? As an example of early popular criticism of Monsanto, is a 2003 documentary about Monsanto featuring critical interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, and Howard Zinn.
The left wants more government regulation, e.g. environmental regulation that would target companies like Monsanto. They support the kind of strong regulatory state that would be necessary to prevent the use of GMOs, pesticides, toxins, flavor additives, preservatives, artificial colors, and “other weird chemicals and shit” – the kind of “gubment guud [sic]” policies you’re advocating.
Since when? That implies ALL humans are moral agents/patients. There was a time in the scarily recent present (yeah!) when not every person with human DNA was/is even considered a human, not to mention a person (moral agent/patient). Some—but not all (the anosognosic ones)—recognize that failure of recognition to be … a moral failure. An indefensible one.
BABIES IN THE WOMB BE LIKE
The advent of morality, I guess? The idea of an expanding moral circle implies a line between inside and outside the circle, so it doesn’t seen controversial that some things are not moral patients. And humans have a special status in the history of morality, because morality exists because it helped us coordinate with other humans. It wouldn’t have been all humans early on, but it would have been only humans.
That doesn’t follow, it’s the formal fallacy of denying the antecedent:
\neg A\implies \neg B (if not human then not moral patient)
doesn’t entail
A \implies B (if human then moral patient)
And even if it did, we’re talking about rebuttable presumptions, i.e. defaults that can be overcome by information and arguments. And it doesn’t seem difficult to overcome such a presumption for certain classes of humans, e.g. humans without brains kept alive by machines.
I feel like this is leading us off track, are we still talking about eating meat?
You said: The default position is non-humans are not moral patients.
I said: (Since a negative says nothing, the positive you’re saying is…) All humans are moral patients.
I then challenged your thought that we’ve always thought that way. You then confirmed that yes… we haven’t:
However, I now take issue with your phrase “advent of morality”. Recognition that every other self is a self like self (and should be treated as such…with fear & trembling) has no advent. If selves weren’t always a thing, they could never involve becoming. Morality doesn’t merely help us coordinate/navigate (that sphere/circle of influence/care). It IS us (rather…it is the interpersonality … ¿or is it intra?… after which we are patterned). On pain of rationality. There would be zero culture, and zero individuals without it — it is our very ability to willfully identify.
As for your logic. I agree that the default, from which you assumed non-human means non-moral, is that humans (or persons with x, y, z qualities) are moral agents/patients (…why would we extend personhood outside our own language-speaking species unless they had those qualities?)—I just don’t think it is the default human position (that’s why I said “Since when?”—as in, consistent, coherent, universal recognition is not universal from the get-go).
We do find the golden rule recorded in various versions in every major culture in history, but even the U.S. Constitution initially did not treat every human as an equal citizen. And the U.S. laws still don’t. On pain of rationality. Divided we fall, man.
But. We are only obligated as far as we are aware. Overlooking the former times of ignorance… let’s scrap it and start over from scratch.
Give an individual the benefit of the doubt if they are displaying x, y, z qualities that qualify any other human to give consent, stand trial, so forth. And if we aren’t sticking to a universal set of qualities, overhaul the laws letting folks give consent or stand trial (etc.) willy nilly.
As far as eating meat… I’m still here:
How is that possible unless they have some level of awareness? If that is the case, why do you think government should be hands off about it?
Again, just as a matter of logic, this does not follow.
Suppose I said, “Anything that isn’t a sound isn’t a song”. That doesn’t imply that all sounds are songs; it’s consistent to say that not all sounds are songs, but all songs are sounds.
Similarly, when I say non-humans are not moral patients, it doesn’t imply that all humans are moral patients.
Being human has long been a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition. As you point out, humans regularly deny that certain other humans are moral patients.
There was a time when there were zero individuals, but this is getting well afield.
Let me catch you up:
x, y, z qualities, man
What nonce.
People have lived in the far north far longer than any sign of agriculture. Not that it really matters.
What matters is that they were 100% carnivore and 80% fof their dietary calories were from FAT. Yet no heart disease - not until they encountered Coca-Cola.
As for the Masai. The fact that most of their meat is from domestic cattle makes precisey ZERO difference , since their cattle subsist on a natural diet and the lipid and protein profile are exaclty the same as wild cattle.
If you want to make a rude objection then please have something relevant to the discussion.
The whole moral arguement is not applicable. Domesticaled animals enjoy a better life than wild ones. They are fed sheltered, vetted when sick, and enjoy a clean painless death.
There can be abuses - but none of them match being suffering with some long drawn out disease, fighting for survival to be eaten alive or torn limb from limb by predation.
Farming practice tends to favour welfare, as it is mostly uneconomic to mistreat animals.
There’s something very funny going on here. You quoted Carleas. he still hasn’t answered me here on this point:
These are not inconsistent claims. Humans have lived in the far north for a long time, and of all the humans who have ever lived relatively few of them have lived in the far north. The typical diet of early humans should be defined by the typical early human, and the typical early human did not live in the far north.
The population of wild cattle was much lower, and hunting them is much more costly than slaughtering domesticated cattle. Without domesticated cattle, they would not be able to eat the amount of meat they do.
I think they do have “some level of awareness”, though that phrase is extremely vague. Does a robot vacuum cleaner have “some level of awareness”? It certainly responds to its environment.
And I never said “government should be hands off about it”. Government regulation of food is good but not the topic of this thread.
Meat tastes good.
And is good for you.
And we are designed to digest it and extract important nutritional value from it.
And the meat we eat doesn’t object or ask us to stop.
And we even have carnivore teeth.
Case closed?
…do you sneak up on it in the store?