Justify non-veganism

I see you're using utilitarianism, which actually lends itself really well to vegan philosophy. I'll give you my thoughts.

>Them having a good life doesn't ethically justify killing them. If your argument is that them being born is net positive happiness, then the imperative on your part is to give these animals a happy life but then let them die naturally.
>See above
>So being stupid justifies what we do to animals. So by that same justification, can we take someone who is permanently mentally impaired, and has no potential to surpass the intelligence of a German Shepard, and eat them? More to the point, is it only intelligence which you can use to assign value to a life, or would you also use the ability to suffer to assign value? Even if a pig is stupid compared to us, it can feel pain, so does it's stupidity justify killing it?

Side note, pigs are as or more intelligent than dogs, according to current science. Chickens are pretty smart too and can solve fairly complex issues relating to colours and patterns.

>Side note, pigs are as or more intelligent than dogs, according to current science.

That is a valid point. Sheep, cows, and many fowl on the other hand are fucking retarded.

>So by that same justification, can we take someone who is permanently mentally impaired, and has no potential to surpass the intelligence of a German Shepard, and eat them?

Kill them, certainly. A person with dog-level intelligence would be exceptionally retarded. Cannibalism is taboo for (at least partly) an entirely different reason to morality.

wat

You realize that it's not necessarily unethical to eat meat, right? Once we've established that there is in fact an ethical and humane way to raise and butcher an animal (free range, pasture fed, stunned and killed without pain), your position should change from "people shouldn't eat animal products" to "people should support farms that raise their animals in an ethical and sustainable manner."

How much space do you think a cow needs to be happy? Do you not feel that a sense of absolute safety and a constant supply of food would go at least some way to compensating for a lack of infinite space?

As long as we kill each other, we'll kill animals.

These animals are born and raised, much more safely than they would live in the wild, in exchange we eat them. Because of the demand for vegan products the habitat of many animals gets destroyed, to make room for soy fields. Even if you are vegan unless you live a naturalistic lifestyle you contribute to animals being killed. I do not get why milk or honey production is considered evil, unless unnecessary cruel. (which to be fair it often is) By the same logic pets or really any way we interact with animals is wrong. I do not really care about justification, I eat meat because I enjoy it. (hedonism I guess)

So if intelligence and potential intelligence is the marker for worth, there's nothing wrong with a species of aliens unfathomably smarter than human beings performing a perpetual on us, in the name of hotdogs?
And what is an ethical way to kill an animal, when you don't need to? And how do you justify any other associated trauma or pain, from transportation, enslavement, artificial insemination and so on? How do you reconcile that you've commoditized and killed these animals without consent on their part, perhaps even resistance?

I don't ascribe to the same moral and ethical code as you. Using evolutionary theory I can argue that cattle are the exploitative ones

these gotten a species to literally change the face of the planet solely to cater to the needs of cattle and rear them in numbers far exceeding anything they could have had in the wild, there well fed, there kept clear of pests and treat when there ill and most importantly as long as the symbiotic relationship exists there more or less guaranteed survival, cattle from an evolutionary perspective are the ones taking humans for a ride not the other way round.

they will literally go extinct if people went vegan

I am not that user, but he said that eating meat is not inherently evil, which is true. They do not even necessarily need to be killed. Do you think it is immoral to eat a dead animal you found in the wild ?

Appeal to nature fallacy. Agreed though, but we're getting there.
Again, if you're using the utilitarian logic that we should give them happier lives than in the wild, then I would offer the challenge that we should be even more ethical and not eat them, while also domesticating them. Also, saying vegans also cause harm isn't a justification. Milk and honey is unethical because of the associated rape, infanticide, separation of mother from child, and in the bee's case, cutting off the queen bee's wings and leaving her to sit in the hive, perpetuating honey production. Honey is also important for the health of bees and we're taking it from them, giving them sugar water instead.

I'm not asking anyone here to care for the record. I'm just curious to see if anyone can actually justify it. Or what you come up with in attempting to do so.

Treating someone better than they would have been treated initially is fine. But it isn't a justification for doing harm to them.

Right, so I could stop a guy from brutally raping a woman in an alleyway. And then I could also rape her, but use minimal violence and inflict as little harm on her as possible. I've given her a better alternative, but it does not justify me raping her.

Just like you can break up the rape and then choose not to rape the woman, you can give an animal a better life than out in the wild without killing them for food.

I'm not asking for a better alternative to what would happen in the wild: I'm asking for logical justification for what we're doing to them now.

Them going extinct isn't a justification either. It's not our imperative to ensure they don't go extinct.

>So if intelligence and potential intelligence is the marker for worth, there's nothing wrong with a species of aliens unfathomably smarter than human beings performing a perpetual on us, in the name of hotdogs?

No, assuming that they do it in a way that doesn't have a notable affect on our enjoyment of life. If the human farms let us enjoy comparable levels of mental stimulation and socialisation, and vastly improve our security and ease of living, then they could be entirely fine, depending on how long they allow our lifespans to be.

Ok, I get your point about honey and milk, but how is eating them even more ethical ? Also should we then domesticate all the animals ? Should not we use the massive resources needed to do that in improving human societies ? Not meant to be an argument, I am genuinely curious

>you can give an animal a better life than out in the wild without killing them for food.

Nobody is willing to adopt tens of thousands of cows to compensate for the meat industry not existing. If nobody eats meat then nobody gives those cows a good life. Your rape analogy doesn't work, because "save the woman and leave" isn't an option. The options are ignore her, or help her and then rape her yourself.

>And what is an ethical way to kill an animal, when you don't need to?
So rather than ensure animals lead happy lives and contribute to happy lives of others, we should ensure that they're never born? I'm not going to say your position here is invalid, but surely you can see that there's another valid way of looking at it.
>And how do you justify any other associated trauma or pain, from transportation, enslavement, artificial insemination and so on?
None of those things are inherent to raising animals. I live near a farm that doesn't even push their cows; they're called to anywhere they need to be.
>How do you reconcile that you've commoditized and killed these animals without consent on their part, perhaps even resistance?
Animals can't give informed consent. They can and do give simple consent by walking in to be butchered under their own power, and by not flipping their shit and smashing the building down during the process.

I'm not asking about the practicality of adopting animals, I'm making the point that it isn't ethically consistent to domesticate animals but then eat them.

My analogy does work because you absolutely have the option to not eat an animal if you have the means to domesticate it. Refuting the analogy because it may not pan out that way practically is besides the point.

Empathy can only be applied to those that can feel it themselves.

Animals aren't people.

Not a justification to cause them harm if you don't need to. Your dog isn't human, can I slit it's throat and eat it with gravy?

what are your thoughts on the abortion of humans?

Genesis 9:3
Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.

It's a wonder you godless people can tie your own shoes.

100% fine with it, I'm sure. Just so long as nobody eats them.

I don't have any real opinions on it, but I'd probably be pro-choice. The whole brain activity thing involves too much science for me to give a shit and research it, but around the time the baby starts feeling substantial pain is when I think you shouldn't kill it. People who think it's unethical to abort a fetus but eat animals are stupid, and taking their logic all the way, it's a bit like saying every time a woman chooses not to get pregnant, or every time I jerk off, I'm killing a potential baby instead of letting it be born.

So yeah, pro-life is pretty stupid even for vegans.

>the imperative on your part is to give these animals a happy life but then let them die naturally
This doesn't make sense, because then what would the human get out of the arrangement? Satisfaction? I remember hearing some quote from a farmer who raised free range pigs, cattle, etc.

"They have one bad day"

Quick air shot to the back of the head, they never see it coming. No fear or pain. And now the farmer can use the livestock to produce food for society, isn't that an 'ethical' thing to do?

No, because it's taboo to eat pet animals. That's the reason why we don't eat horse despite the similarity between horses and cows. Even in cultures where they eat dogs, they have special breeds of eating dogs that are closer to some sort of rat hyena hybrid than house animals.

You don't need to rape to survive. You do need to eat, and animals provide sustenance. It's not a wasted life.

Personal gain isn't really relevant here. Though I take your point that it would make sense for the arrangement to be a positive sum game, the issue is it's not positive sum when the animal dies. Also, it's still immoral to kill them unless you need to.

Now let's say there's no alternative, the farmer needs to kill the animal and eat it? Justified. Or he could eat the food the animal is eating... in which case it's not justified.

Refer back to my analogy about the women being raped in the worst way, or a less worse way. Neither is ethical. The ethical choice is to leave her alone.

You can leave the animal in the wild, give it a good life then kill it, or just give it a good life.

If you try to force all of your actions to conform to logical necessity, you'll end up starving yourself to death like Kurt Godel.

I wasn't implying that killing is natural to humans or that it's inevitable, I'm responding to this point.

>if it's because of sentience, the ability to feel and suffer that we ascribe moral value to the life of a human being, and because of this it becomes unethical to harm a human being without proper justification, how then, can you justify harming an animal without proper justification?
We as humans do not yet have the sufficient collective value to human life that prevents from killing each other, so I argue that until we are over conflict within ourselves, then perhaps our violence towards lesser creatures will subside.

>this thread again...
Most of these species would be extinct if they weren't being harvested. They take a lot of land and a lot of resources, and if they didn't offer a significant return, they wouldn't be maintained. If we didn't eat them and use them for materials, the larger ones, certainly, would be extinct within the decade. The handful of wild cows that do exist are the result of abandoned ranches, and they rarely last for long.

Even if not for that simple hard fact, not only are these animals more comfortable for all their lives than they ever would have been in the wild, the deaths they do suffer are relatively quick, whereas a natural death could last from months to years, coupled with mind boggling suffering until then, as most animals in the wild live on the edge of starvation.

Finally, they've been domesticated to such a degree that, even the huge natural habitats required to support them were made available (against all odds, given that natural habitat is vanishing so rapidly), they would be unlikely to survive without human tending.

Not that you couldn't put some effort into making sure that they don't suffer anymore than necessary. You've clearly crossed a line to creating suffering beyond not only what is necessary, but to the point of unprofitability, when they are so miserable that you must constantly pump them full of drugs and antibiotics just to keep them alive, but it seems we've reached the peak of such abuses, and are already slowly favoring allowing them more freedom and comfort, bit by bit.

Also, eventually, we'll have ways to artificially produce everything we get from them in ways cheaper than ranching them allows - at which point, aside perhaps on a handful of ranches for the super rich and some zoos, they will go extinct. So I suppose the vegans will eventually have their wish come true - just in a very monkey paw fashion.

This is incredibly idealistic, is that the intention of your thread? You're arguing for a situation in which the human players get no benefits but the animals get plenty. If you want to make the rape case analogous, it'd be more like having the choice to save the girl, take care of her indefinitely and gently have sex with her.

Why would an individual spend the money and resources to give hundreds of animals a good life if they're not getting anything out of it?

God created certain animals for us to eat and harvest things like milk and fur from, it's part of the natural cycle.

Because food chain

Meant to add that the woman would also need to have the iq of a cow and you'd have to be able to somehow sneak up on her and bang her without her noticing

Because omnivore

it is literally our nature to eat animals
explain canine teeth
Even if you think it is immoral you can argue that most animals aren't self aware so they don't realize what is happening to them
It isn't "nice" but we were never about niceness anyway
You can argue that it isn't ethical but ethics change faster than a teenager in heat when faced with Chad dick.

>Is it possible on an ethical or logical basis to treat an animal this way?
Depends on what ethical or logical basis you're having. If your logical basis is hedonism, which means you should do whatever you want to do that makes you feel good without getting in serious trouble and you like meat, then there is no problem.
If your on the stand-point that humans are a much more evolved animal than other animals, and killing is part of nature (as if a leopard cares about the condition the gazelle was in before he ate her) so why should he not do it?

Because it tastes good, and my pleasure is more important than a chicken's life.

>History & Humanities
Get out

Because steaks and burgers and ribs are fucking tasty.

I dont eat burgers.

Im stronger than animals and i want to eat them.

/thread

>to eat a McDonalds hamburger when you could have a veggie burger instead
to sleep in a bed when you can sleep on the floor instead

Because it pisses off you, my ex-gf, and every other one of you obnoxious crybabies all at once, and it tastes good.

>to eat a McDonalds hamburger when you could have a veggie burger instead.

And you could live of soylent green instead of a wholesome and varied diet too!

Choice in life is fundamental to living well.

Eating meat is natural to human history, culture, and civilization and violates no integrity in human morality.

1. YOU ARE NOT "STRONGER THAN ANIMALS", BUT ONLY STRONGER THAN SOME ANIMALS; MOST ANIMALS ARE STRONGER THAN YOU.

YOUR ADVANTAGE AS HUMAN OVER ANIMALS IS YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS, AND ALL THAT IT ENTAILS.

2. BY THAT STATEMENT YOU ARE NOT JUSTIFYING ANYTHING, YOU ARE MERELY REAFFIRMING YOUR SAVAGE PRACTICES.

NONVEGANISM IS UNJUSTIFIABLE.

This is getting pretty close to fetish territory.

well it is my property after all

Veganism != prevention of animal cruelty or exploitation. It's just a way of pretending not to bear any personal responsibility while living in a world where animals are still used as byproducts for other goods.

It tastes good. I'm willing to eat cultured meat if it's already economically feasible and safe though.

Animals have no ethical significance.

NO, THAT IS HYPOCRISY, NOT VEGANISM; YOU DO NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND WHAT VEGANISM IS.

Just because you don't use animal products does not imply that you will never be in contact with them. Abstaining is just waiving your own moral dilemma. Unless you live in a world the does the same.

OP hasn't addressed any of these valid points.

Also:

1: Humans are sentient. This means that they are aware of their existence and act with intent.
2: Animals are not sentient. They are unaware of their existence and react rather than act.
3: Animals do not have feelings, rather, they have pre-incoded reactions to certain triggers such as pain.
4: Some humans derive pleasure from eating meat, since humans have evolved as omnivores.
5: The act of eating meat creates pleasure for humans but does not create displeasure for animals.
6: Eating meat harms no one while providing happiness to humans.
7: Therefore, eating meat is not only ethical, but practical.

Well the heart of the question is this.

>What makes killing something wrong?

Honestly I don't have a good answer, but remember eating plants also requires that you kill them. So the question is why is killing plants ok, but not animals. If you want to go farther why is killing people. You need to define what key trait makes killing wrong before you can judge anyone else for said killing. Otherwise your position holds no more ground than people who say
>I eat animals because they taste good.

>1 and 2
Honestly, to a degree one and two are debatable but more or less correct.
>3
I would argue that is impossible to know with our current tech and it is likely people's feeling are the same way
>4
True
>5 6 7
Haven't done enough to prove this

I love meat but these arguments aren't very good.

5, 6, and 7 literally build off of all the rest. I would've expected someone on Veeky Forums to know how a philosophical argument functions.

Well i was saying that 1, 2, and 3 are weak arguments without the proper basis especially 2 and 3. I find it interesting to that you state animals feelings are any less real than humans even if functionally we can differentiate them clearly. The whole sentience argument is better founded but their is one example of an animal showing possible sentience. However, on a deeper level sentience isn't something that is on and off. We are only sentience of certain parts of experience and it would not be without reason to argue that a large degree of human sentience is illisuionary.

I can never understand this line of reasoning. If it's not ethically sound to eat animals or animal by-products, why is it ok to eat plants or plant by-products?

The whole "they can't feel pain argument" really falls flat when you consider many animals can't fell pain in the same way we do or at all. Not only that, but I highly doubt most vegans or vegetarians would eat an animal that was medically or genetically prevented from feeling pain.

If one makes an argument that it's not pain, but suffering that we should be concerned about, then I can't see how plants are unaffected. They're a living organism with needs. They respond to stimuli and avoid things that would harm their well being. In growing them as crops, we artificially nurture them and then kill them or harvest from them. There is essentially no difference from how cattle are raised.

There's nothing to justify.

Also I sure hope you vegans don't eat soy.

Honestly, this is generally my argument against vegans.

Because meat is tasty and humans also evolved to eat meat. That's all.

So what's the alternative, OP? Eat vegetables? Oops, you just killed hundreds of mice, rats, worms, and other critters.

And at what point is an organism special enough for you to care about, my precocious child? Do you care about the worms? What about the knits in your hair? The bacteria in your shoes? Any one of these limits is as arbitrary as choosing the limit to be human beings.

The rational argument for veganism is efficiency, but don't delude yourself into thinking that because you don't eat meat that animals still aren't killed for the sole purpose of making your meal.

Because it tastes good, that's why

>more comfortable for all their lives than they ever would have been in the wild

This is laughably untrue. The vast majority of animals are born and die in cages, pumped full of growth maximising hormones, developing horrific skin rashes while never touching another animal. Most chickens face one direction their entire lives and never see natural sunlight, their beaks clipped and bones brittle. Most cows are constantly impregnated and ripped from their calves to induce permanent lactation, lame from foot disorders and muscle wastage, living to 3 despite a life expectancy of 21 years.

You're right that meat-eating keeps many animals alive that would otherwise be extinct (or more likely reduced to tens of thousands in zoos and subsistence farms). Why is this a good thing if the majority are locked in constant suffering? Have you ever read I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream? Would you rather you personally were dead, or had to live in a state of constant torture?

You wouldn't understand any verbal complaints from a young infant or somebody speaking a language you don't upon deciding to eat them

this entirely a 1st world problem
you consume and focused on MUH profit that industrializing food production is essential

these animals were raised up to be eaten, that means you have to kill them

you aware replacing meat in your diet means on the bigger scale, we need more land to grow crops? this means less living space for wild animals

Vegans will have no argument when lab grown meat becomes economically viable.

>tfw you know they'll still find a reason to be against it

This is the stupidest post I've seen a while. Or are you baiting?

2 and 3 supposes we care only about the suffering of oddly-defined sentients. Magpies and elephants recognise themselves in a mirror - to what extent is this self awareness? Many low-IQ people are fundamentally unreflective and possess internal narrative - would you kills and eat a p-zombie? I'm not sure why sentience is the best basis anyway.

I think the more sensible intuition is to care about suffering, divided into physical and psychological pain. More cognitively complex animals have more psychological pain, so we care about them more, but we care about every animal to some extent, and don't harm them when there are clear alternatives.

Plants do not have a central nervous system or any significant sensory input. The function of physical pain is to help an organism avoid stimuli that may cause them bodily harm. Organisms that are sessile, or unable to move, cannot escape pain and thus there really isn’t any adaptive reason for them to feel pain. So, we don't care about plants.

Animals appear to have a very similar CNS to us though - why do you believe otherwise?

Many cultured meat startups like new harvest are run and staffed by vegans you dolts.

It's not too much "science", retard. It takes 2 minutes of your life to read the pro-life arguments that even a child can understand

>if it can't feel pain you can kill it!
>meat eaters who are okay with murdering a human fetus are stupid
>it's not really a human because it's inside the belly! Its basically sperm!

Dude at least think about this a little bit

If everyone became vegan domesticated animals for the most part would die out.

>slaves were better during slavery
>without slavery they wouldn't have enjoyed the positive aspects of their life as there would have been no life

I haven't read the thread but I'm a vegetarian and I really don't see anything wrong with, for example, eating eggs from chickens you know have been kept in humane conditions (e.g. if you owned ones yourself).

Animals have brains and central nervous systems, and are clearly capable of reason and emotion in a way that plants are not. If you genuinely can't see the difference in kinds between a potato and a cow then you must severely lack empathy.

>If there were an industry dedicated to breeding human beings for mass consumption in poor conditions that would be fine, otherwise they'd have no life at all!

well if what you care about is the environment then veganism is demonstrably not the best choice of diet
qz.com/749443/being-vegan-isnt-as-environmentally-friendly-as-you-think/?utm_source=fb_qz_p_749443_1

All that study said was that total, 100% veganism worldwide probably isn't the most efficient minmaxing combination. It still concedes that veganism would be dramatically better for the environment than present diets, and that it is only in rare cases where the land is suitable for pasture but too difficult for crop raising that eating meat has the advantage.

Also they rely on the assumption that grazing land cannot be used to raise crops full stop, which is untrue. In the long run, figuring out a way to make current grazing land suitable for crops would certainly be more efficient than using it for meat in perpetuity.

you are correct, but given teh premise for teh thread being justifying non-veganism, this study essentially gives people who are concerned primarily with sustainability a reason to choose any of the diets more sustainable than veganism over veganism.

it is a rather pedantic argument but the logic is sound.

Because I think pain and suffering is the problem, not killing per se, which is why I am for abortion, and euthanasia.

As long as the animals don't suffer before they are slaughtered(which they do in many cases and I am opposed to it), I don't have a problem with meat-eating.

>Can you justify harming, killing or otherwise exploiting an animal in a scenario where it is not necessary?

It is still necessary for humanity to exploit animals.
Try again in 150 years. We are almost there.

Yeah fair enough.

Would you be ok with humans being raised for consumption, provided it were possible to alter their brains to not feel pain or distress?

>lets giantly modify large swathes of the earths surface and probably destroy numerous species habitats in order to make eating meat into a less environmentally sustainable practice

>let's ludicrously strawman our opponents without using grammar

>Would you be ok with humans being raised for consumption, provided it were possible to alter their brains to not feel pain or distress?

No because eating humans can cause serious neuro-degenerative diseases; I also think most people have a natural revulsion to eating humans which doesn't apply to other animals for a reason.

its also not our imperative to ensure the animals have a healthy life in the wild as well.

>let's just shout the word strawman and then criticize a posts grammar rather than actually pointing out how the portrayl of teh argument is incorrect