Yep, absolutely! Just like moral arguments against, say, slavery didn't work and instead more practical measures, such as offering to have the US government pay all slaveowners to emancipate all of their slaves in the absence of an American Civil War, would have been needed if one would have wanted to have any chance of avoiding the American Civil War itself.
I'll never get used to the strange psychopathy of it all. nice folks on a waterfront patio chitchatting and laughing, waiting for their dinner to be boiled alive.
In a way, going out for "charcuterie" is pretty much the height of our civilization. Our civilization is founded on a primordial fascism aka the speciesist mode of production.
Yes, I feel the same way. I'm reminded of a quote from the South African writer J. M. Coetzee, writing in his novel, "The Lives of Animals". The narrator is an aging novelist who is becoming increasingly concerned with animal rights:
"It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money.
"It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living-room, and they were to say, 'Yes, it's nice, isn't it? Polish-Jewish skin it's made of, we find that's best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.' And then I go to the bathroom and the soap-wrapper says, "Treblinka – l00% human stearate.' Am I dreaming, I say to myself? What kind of house is this?
"Yet I'm not dreaming. I look into your eyes, into Norma's, into the children's, and I see only kindness, human-kindness. Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can't you? _Why can't you_?"
There is a huge gap between forager ruminants (cows and sheep, that life outdoors a good portion of the year) and CAFO raised animals (chicken and pigs).
Agreed, there are degrees of confinement and control. But think of all the ways the free-ranging ruminants are controlled too. Mass castration of males, separation of the young from mother and others (e.g. slaughter of spring lambs). Then there's the longer-term genetic confinement we've imposed on all these animals, turning recently free creatures into meat, milk, and wool machines. We're remaking them into objects of our own ends, pretty selfish.
castration, lamb slaughter - these aren't direct sufferings? perhaps you mean you don't care about genetic "confinenent", specifically. yet even that entails many direct sufferings. for example, diary cows' easily broken bones from calcium leaching.
Not so many males life for long among cows or sheep. My family were ranchers (in the 1980s Spain, not very industrial). Cows were raised for meat, and nothing in their existence was even close to torture. On the other hand, the pigs were raised in horrible conditions.
I am in contact with small ranchers from my family, and for small European farms, cows and sheep live bad existences (like all animals) but far from torture.
Well, they all life in a Malthusian trap. In their infancy they face massive mortality. Their existence is mostly defined by either predate or being preyed.
Surely morality is set by God ( I am assuming you believe in God based on your conservative Jewish posts)? In which case, if God lets humans eat animals, then surely it is not immoral?
As for the comparison of the puppy dogs, to step on its taie for no reason is immoral. But if there is a reason, why not? Religion dictates that humans are higher than animals, and that the use of the inanimate world, which includes animals, if there to benefit mankind and to aid his growth. God dictated that animals are there to be used by humans (with a caveat - don't cause them unnecessary pain), and therefore the use of animal meat is not immoral; on the contrary, to reject a gift that God has given us can be considered disrespectful to him.
Even if that vindicates normal meat-eating, it certainly doesn't eat typical meat eating in our time where animals are factory farmed. In the time of Genesis and Jesus, that was not anticipated.
I a religious jew, so I can't explain the Christian view on this, but will attempt to lay out the jewish view.
Judaism teaches that the existence of animals is purely there for human convenience (please don't say that this is immoral, as morality is determined by what God allows and doesn't allow, and God allows humankind to benefit from animals in most scenarios), and therefore, all meat consumption, whether out of necessity or whether out of taste preference, is allowed by God (interestingly, the Oral law teaches that in the period of Adam to Noah, the existence of animals was NOT for humanity, and therefore all meat consumption was not allowed by God).
However, God limits what sort of benefit that Humans can get from animals. For example, to step on an animals tail for no tangible benefit is wrong, as God prohibits causing unnecessary pain to animals. The argument can be made as well for Jewish ritual slaughter, as it is currently know as the most painless method of killing cud-chewing animals, and that God prohibits the consumption of animals that were not done this way, due to the pain that other forms of slaughter causes.
At the end of the day, God allowed us (IE it is not immoral) to kill an utilise animal products for many instances, including for taste.
I don't think that is what Judaism teaches. I had a conversation with an Orthodox Jew about this and he mentioned that the Talmud says (this is a slightly hazy memory) that you can't feed yourself before feeding your hungry pet. Proverbs 12:10 says "Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel." Exodus 23:5 says "If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him." Deuteronomy 25:4 says “You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain. Isaiah 66:3 says "“He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, like one who breaks a dog's neck; he who presents a grain offering, like one who offers pig's blood; he who makes a memorial offering of frankincense, like one who blesses an idol. These have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations." Deuteronomy 22:6-7 "“If you come across a bird's nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long."
In contrast, there is not one verse from the Bible sanctioning anything like factory farming. While some allow us to eat animals, eating is not the issue. The issue is the torture they go through their entire lives before we eat them, because of our actions.
I agree the Torah prohibits certain forms of abuse towards animals (I will just add that your Isaiah quote does not mean what you think it does; the context is that an insincere offering to God is worse than killing a man, not that killing animals is like killing man), especially unnecessary abuse. The term for this is צער בעלי חיים.
However, the Torah also allows certain forms of what you would define as abuse to be done to animals in certain scenarios, generally for substantial gain, such as killing animals for food, killing lice, or throwing a goat of a cliff to atone for Israel's sins. This means that substantial gain pushes away the prohibition of needlessly causing pain.
According to this, meat eating is moral in the eyes of God.
Now, for what you would be saying to be correct (namely that mass farming is immoral, or in other words, God abhors mass farming), you would have to show that even though killing, the most abhorrent of abuses, is allowed for the sake of food, mass farming, a lower level of abuse, isn't, and that there is no substantial gain by mass farming. I think that you will find this hard to prove.
In the way I understand it, God allowed humans to kill animals for meat/skin. He did not limit the way they have to do this (except for the mandatory ritual slaughter, which is designed to minimise the pain of death), which makes mass farmed meats permissable, and therefore not immoral. There is also substantial gain by mass farming, such as more meat and money available, which pushes pushes away the prohibition of not causing abuse to animals.
But torturing animals in factory farms for meat is never sanctioned. That's the thing I take issue with--not necessarily eating animals, but the grievous mistreamtent that we oppose on them.
Where do you get the idea from that one can only do things that God has sanctioned? Is it prohibited to jump on a trampoline because God never told us that it is OK to do?
And even if you are to say that God prohibited it because there are limits to what humans can do to animals (such as overloading a donkey), we see that God does allow abusing animals for producing foods (I.E. you are allowed to kill animals) - surely one can interpret this to mean that for the sake of producing food, there is no prohibition of cuasing animals pain?
"As for the comparison of the puppy dogs, to step on its taie for no reason is immoral. But if there is a reason, why not?"
What if someone enjoys stepping on dog tails? That's not a very good reason, but it is a reason! It seems to me you don't think sadistic enjoyment meets the threshold for allowing animal suffering. Okay, then - why does "pigs taste good" meet the threshold for allowing animal suffering? The whole point of BB's post is that there isn't a clear difference between outright sadism and enjoyment of how animals taste
"Surely morality is set by God"
1) If you think a benevolent God is advocating for something obviously awful, then you must be wrong about God's will
2) If God is advocating for something obviously awful, then this refutes the notion that morality is set by God
Imagine that some priest or whatnot says God wants you to eat human babies - I hope you'd say to him what I just said to you now! In other words, for your argument to work, you first need to refute the notion that torturing animals is obviously wrong
Morality is set by God and what God does. The term "God advocating for something absolutely awful" doesn't make sense. If God advocates for it, by definition, it is not awful. Humankind, who has no objective moral law, cannot objectively determine whether something is awful or not.
The only way to refute this argument is to claim that morality is objective and seperate from God, which, to my knowledge, has never been refuted.
Well, that responds to point 2, but not point 1. How do you know you aren't mistaken about God's will? How would you respond to someone who said God's will is to eat human babies? I would hope you'd tell them they're mistaken, even if their theistic argument for baby-eating was somewhat compelling. Why not apply the same mentality to severe animal abuse (which is what factory farming is)?
Furthermore, I still think you're ignoring the whole point of BB's original post. You can bite the bullet if you want! You can say "God says we can do what we want with animals, so we can beat dogs." But you're deliberately refusing to do that. If you truly believe what you're saying, then this should be easy choice - you bite the bullet. The fact that you haven't done that is telling
Firsty, my response addresses both points, that if God was to determine that stepping on a dogs tail is moral, then yes, its moral.
However, I will add one thing that I didnt say before; in Judaism (I can only speak for my religion), there is a concept that causing pain in animals for little to no reason (we can discuss the definition of 'little reason' at a different time) is wrong and immoral. I assume that to stand on a dogs tail for no reason is therefore immoral.
Secondly, I know what God considers moral and immoral because he told us at mount Sinai, and it was passed down in the written law (the Torah) and the oral law. Questioning the authority of the Torah is an argument for another time. I am assuming, based on tradition and the Kuzarian principle, that what the Torah is the true and unadulterated word of God.
Thirdly, in regards to your eating babies point; I would firstly say that the God of Judaism does not allow cannibalism, which makes it immoral in my worldview. However, without objective morality, how would you know it's wrong? Or even better, why should it be wrong? In fact, there are probably instances where one can justify eating human flesh, in a world without objective morality.
Let me give you a scenario; Bob has his three children taken hostage, and the kidnapper promises Bob that he will not kill the children, but he will keep them forever, but he gives Bob a dead human corpse and tells him that if he eats part of it, his children will be released. Do you genuinely think that it is still 100% immoral to eat human meat in this scenario, or is it possible to say that Bob acted morally by eating the human meat?
My point here is to show that without God telling us what is right and what is wrong, humankind can (and will) justify any action as moral if it convenients themselves (a good example of this is the ancient pagans justifying human sacrifice as moral). Without God, one cannot objectively say that cannibalism is bad and immoral.
I would like to also say that I can not comprehend a world where God makes cannibalism moral. It is an OBJECTIVE fact that cannibalism is immoral. To say that cannibalism is moral god's against the definition of objective.
I would take a person who gets pleasure from stepping on puppy dog tails as a person to be watched very closely. I think id want someone else to watch them as just having them around would would bring to mind the image of a puppy made to endure pain. If they purpously stepped on my dog's tail they might be in a world of hurt themselves.
I have asked him he he understands objective morality without God, he hasn't yet responded to my questions. As far as I understand, no one has come up with a logical reasoning that proves morality without God. I would love for him to enumerate this idea properly.
Secondly, he seemed pretty OK with the Kuzarian principle in an article he posted a few weeks ago, which means that he has not discounted Judaism.
He has written on this topic here. Despite being a Christian theist, I actually strongly agree with him and find arguments that morality requires God to be very poor.
And even if it did, it would have no bearing on arguments about veganism other than as a proof that religions who reject moral veganism are false (because they have the wrong morality).
I think there's a definition, just as there is no definition for words like "the," "a," or "an." You don't need one to know what they mean. You're using words you can't define in your sentence yet you know what the they mean.
I don't agree to that. All words that function to define something need a definition. However, the function of the words that you listed are not to define, but rather are there for grammar as referatives or conjuctives.
Interesting article, Matthew. I can't disagree with any of the comparisons you've made in this article, but I'm more curious as to what point you think you're making in favour of veganism.
Your argument basically says these two are the same thing:
1. torturing and killing dogs to get a drug which makes you enjoy chocolate more
2. torturing and killing pigs to let you enjoy your food more
I think it's easy to argue these two things are morally similar, but still dissimilar to a third action:
3. torturing and killing dogs/pigs because you get sadistic pleasure out of doing so
I don't really know how this is meant to be an argument for veganism. Most people are okay with using animals for human benefits in some way i.e. rearing and killing them for food, but not okay with hurting them for sadistic pleasure. That intuition would easily carry over to this scenario.
"Third, people suggest that you have no effect on the industry because the market is too big. The problem is that this is demonstrably false. See the article I just linked for a more thorough explanation but in short, the meat industry may not respond to each meat purchase, but it responds to large numbers of meat purchases (say, they respond to increases in consumption of 1,000). But each time you eat meat, you have a chance of bringing it over the threshold, which makes the expected value the same. This has also been confirmed by the most thorough empirical analysis of meat markets."
Would a company really care if it made 999 sales of meat instead of 1,000? Quantitatively, these two figures aren't much different.
Philosopher Keith Burgess-Jackson has a wonderful quote on this topic (note that I disagree with most of his other views, though):
"One view of morality sees it as a mechanism of change, with each person being a lever of the mechanism. The other sees it in terms of what sort of person one is. When you hear that billions of animals are killed every year for food, you might think, 'My becoming a vegetarian won’t make a difference, so I may as well indulge my tastes.' That’s to take the first view. But why not say that what other people do is not up to you? You control your actions. Your actions reflect _your_ moral values and what sort of person _you_ are. Stand up for something. Say 'These things go on, but they do not go on through me!' You’ll feel good about yourself; I guarantee it."
(I don't have an exact reference. He wrote this years ago on his now-defunct blog. I saved the excerpt in my quote file.)
Imagine if the company sold, for example, meat slurry. One dead cow is sold as 100 meat slurries. Each year, the company looks at how many meat slurries it sold at the same time last year, and produces enough cows to meet that demand (maybe +10% or whatever for breakage). Then, if you were the 98th meat slurry purchase, you would not cause a new cow to be killed, but if you were the 101st meat slurry purchaser, you would cause a new cow to be killed. You have no way of knowing if you're 98th or 101st, and both are equally likely, so there's a 1/100 chance that you are the threshold cow-eater. So, eating 1 meat slurry (= 1/100th of a cow) carries a 1% chance of causing one additional cow being killed.
If it's not done on such an exacting basis, the company still will presumably produce more meat if demand is higher, and the result will conform to this sort of distribution.
I agree with your analysis. I think Burgess-Jackson was arguing that even if your actions don't have a concrete effect on the industry, you should still avoid eating animal products.
I remember seeing a poster once that showed a picture of a driving rain. The caption read, "No single raindrop thinks it's responsible for the flood."
None of this is surprising. Consider how badly we treat each other to make all the cheap stuff we consume. Everything must be made as cheaply as possible often at the cost of massive human misery, sometimes only slightly better than farm animals.
Yeah, it's sad. I generally think, however, that people take bad jobs because it's their least bad option, so purchasing from people treated badly isn't morally bad, as failing to do so would simply take away their least bad option.
I think this line of reasoning only makes sense if in the long run people's lives improved, otherwise we are simply justifying abusing (and sometimes killing) people for our convenience. It's not too much different than people murdering animals because it's a convenient source of flavour and protein.
Hey! I think that this post captures the main argument against eating meat pretty clearly. I have always thought the mismatch between the morally powerful argument and people seeming totally unaffected is strange. It seems to me that people are like a large shipping boat in the water, very heavy and inert, and a fast flying projectile will glance off the hull or explode against the side leaving the boat unmoved. The words 'extremely immoral' and 'torture' and 'dining on their carcasses', used somewhat for effect but really to communicate a simple matter-of-fact are just so strong that I feel like they miss people and fly right past them or just explode quickly and don't move the inert ship. If one wanted to move the ship it requires some kind of slower, deeper influence. Maybe the arguments you offer quickly with surprising conclusions are just too shocking. I don't know that this analogy really tracks but it's always how I feel when I reflect on that odd mismatch in the conversation about meat.
I understand that you are presenting a compact version of the most general and impactful argument. Your argument clearly applies to the vast majority of contemporary meat consumption so I think that its pretty forceful. A few obvious questions come to mind!
1. It seems like a lot of this argument turns specifically on the badness of factory farmed meat. What about 'responsibly' handled meat? Animals that are treated very nicely and live happy, open lives then are suddenly killed (as painlessly and possible) for consumption? Perhaps there are very few farms or producers that actually manage this ideal scenario, but hypothetically if these conditions were met, I wonder what the moral implications would be. I guess you aren't torturing the animals per-se but maybe there is something innately wrong about the scheme? Perhaps it is an improvement but still falls short? Still killing a living creature for something that is unnecessary or not important enough justify? I'm curious to know what you think about this.
2. You compare the chickens to young children suggesting that there is some kind of spectrum for consciousness/intelligence that we might imprecisely place certain animals on. Is there something to be said for consuming animals that seem like they may experience a lower state of consciousness? I realize this sounds a little ugly but I do think it's fair to make a rough statement that there is some kind of spectrum of consciousness and intelligence in the animal world. Maybe this is again, just an improvement but still presumptuous and morally wrong?
Taken together, I wonder what you think of someone who eats only a small amount of responsibly caught fish or something like this? Is this merely better relative to someone who incautiously eats factory farmed meat but still remains morally unideal? (I guess the reason they would do this is because they notice that they flourish more when they eat a little meat, but they don't want to cause unnecessary suffering? I guess the fact that it is possible to flourish without meat just makes this a lesser evil for the sake of convenience? Maybe you would have to be absolutely certain that you require a small amount of meat in order to 'flourish'?
These responses may seem like marginal issues but I wonder if you have anything interesting to say about them!
I think that to change the ship's path requires repetition. Keep reminding people how awful factory farming is, support your arguments by linking data, and keep it up. I don't eat much meat but am not a vegan/vegetarian, but he makes a very good argument for the immorality of it. I'd add that there is probably a negative spiritual effect from eating these products, an argument that might affect some.
I think one could make a decent argument for eating naturally farmed or ranched meat, a totally different picture.
I think, however, that's much less obviously bad, and much less bad.
I think that all else equal it's less bad to eat less conscious animals. Unfortunately, they tend to be smaller, even if chickens are generally less smart tahn cows, eating chicken is worse than eating cow because on account of chickens' size, the average person eats thousands of chickens in their lives and just a few cows.
If you really had to eat a bit of meat to flourish, I think it would depend a bit on the details. Probably it would be best to eat the meat and then donate to effective charities to offset. But fortunately this isn't true.
In my view, an animal with twice the brain of other is more than twice more valuable. In fact I dislike the horror we inflict on chicken, but for me it is obvious that pigs are the worst horror.
I don't understand "offsetting" at all. Consequentialism ought to involve recognizing utility tradeoffs that exist causally in the world, not inventing ad hoc "tradeoffs". Otherwise, what's to stop someone who wants to litter every day from deciding he's now a wife-beater, but on every day when he litters, he's going to "offset" by not beating his wife? Clearly, littering plus not beating your wife is much better than not littering plus beating your wife, but *these are not causally connected choices*.
However morally good donating is for the "offsetter", it seems just as morally good for the full vegan. However excusable consumption of a certain animal product is for a certain individual, it seems just as excusable whether or not the (independently good) donation takes place.
Edge case, but I'm curious: If a woman took a drug during pregnancy that ensured that her fetus would never grow a properly functioning brain and thus be born an anencephalic, and then wanted to kill and eat this anencephalic baby, without its brain (due to the risk of the human equivalent of Mad Cow disease), what specifically would be the moral objection with this?
I'm not Matthew, but for whatever it's worth, I think it would be immoral to eat animal products even if the animals were raised humanely and killed painlessly. My go-to philosopher on this subject is Gary Francione, who has essentially made a career in arguing that animals shouldn't be treated as property or as a means to an end. Animals are sentient creatures with an inherent interest in living. If the purpose of ethics is to respect the interests of all sentient beings, then it's unethical to eat animal products no matter how those animals lived their lives.
I see, so the idea is: It is wrong to kill/eat animals and you shouldn’t do it, and factory farming is even worse and you shouldn’t do it.
I guess the emphasis on the cruelty of factory farming makes these responses about marginal reduction of suffering tempting but they still miss the central argument about the basic wrongness in question?
Yes. When I talk to people about veganism, I try to avoid the subject of factory farming because it's easy for people to get the (wrong) idea that it's OK to use animals for our own purposes as long as we treat them nicely. No doubt it's worse to torture an animal before you eat it, but dwelling on the torturing part sends the wrong message, I think, and only serves to confuse people. I consider myself an abolitionist vegan (one who aims to abolish all animal exploitation), as opposed to a welfarist, who thinks we should just treat animals better. Also, in practice, there is not much difference between "happy" farms and factory farms. https://www.humanemyth.org/
I think if you ask people to think about the ethics of eating happy dogs and cats, the ethical issues become more obvious, since people tend to be familiar with the fact that domestic pets are sentient individuals with an interest in their own lives. People have the unfortunate tendency to dismiss the interests of farm animals, so I draw parallels between dogs/cats and farm animals. I also tell the true story about how I became vegan after I got a job working with rescued cows, pigs, chickens, etc. and had a chance to see them up close. Prior to having that job, I was an unabashed omnivore.
Are you (Matthew) familiar with the work of animal rights philosopher/lawyer Gary Francione? He frequently makes the point that there is no morally significant difference between eating meat and eating other animal products. Dairy cows and egg-laying hens are also tortured, and they all end up in the same slaughterhouse as their meat counterparts. Do you agree with this argument? Francione feels that drawing a false distinction between meat and other animal products only serves to confuse and mislead consumers who might then choose ovo-lacto-vegetarianism instead of veganism.
OK, but... why do your blog posts (or some of them, anyway) refer to eating meat when you could have written them to refer to eating animal products in general?
It's a bit more awkward to talk about linguistically, but you're right, I should generally talk about consuming animal products rather than eating meat.
Mi position is the opposite: if you take suffering by euro of expenditure, there is a huge difference between milk (the cow suffering is diluted in an enormous amount of produced milk), ruminants meat (cows and sheep life is better than the average wild herbivore) and the CAFO Hell (pigs and chicken).
This is basically my position as well. The move from beef and dairy to vegan is morally substantial, but the move from chicken to beef and dairy is vastly larger.
This is why I’m so hopeful for lab meat. Bc moral argument alone is clearly not working.
Yep, absolutely! Just like moral arguments against, say, slavery didn't work and instead more practical measures, such as offering to have the US government pay all slaveowners to emancipate all of their slaves in the absence of an American Civil War, would have been needed if one would have wanted to have any chance of avoiding the American Civil War itself.
I'll never get used to the strange psychopathy of it all. nice folks on a waterfront patio chitchatting and laughing, waiting for their dinner to be boiled alive.
The dissonance of fancy people thinking they represent the height of civilization going out for “charcuterie” always struck me.
In a way, going out for "charcuterie" is pretty much the height of our civilization. Our civilization is founded on a primordial fascism aka the speciesist mode of production.
Yeah that’s the other way to look at it. I was using ‘civilized’ more in the refined sensibilities sense.
Yes, I feel the same way. I'm reminded of a quote from the South African writer J. M. Coetzee, writing in his novel, "The Lives of Animals". The narrator is an aging novelist who is becoming increasingly concerned with animal rights:
"It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money.
"It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living-room, and they were to say, 'Yes, it's nice, isn't it? Polish-Jewish skin it's made of, we find that's best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.' And then I go to the bathroom and the soap-wrapper says, "Treblinka – l00% human stearate.' Am I dreaming, I say to myself? What kind of house is this?
"Yet I'm not dreaming. I look into your eyes, into Norma's, into the children's, and I see only kindness, human-kindness. Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can't you? _Why can't you_?"
Ah yes, a memorable passage! I wonder if I subconsciously echoed it, in my comment.
This isn’t an argument against meat eating, it is an argument against factory farming.
This isn't an argument against either of them.
Well, it argues that factory farming is like torturing puppies, which it claims is obviously wrong. That’s an argument.
I don't think this argument establishes that torturing puppies is wrong
There is a huge gap between forager ruminants (cows and sheep, that life outdoors a good portion of the year) and CAFO raised animals (chicken and pigs).
I think cows still live quite shitty lives, though chickens and pigs live worse ones. I'd eat cow or sheep long before chicken https://benthams.substack.com/p/weve-created-hell-its-called-factory
Agreed, there are degrees of confinement and control. But think of all the ways the free-ranging ruminants are controlled too. Mass castration of males, separation of the young from mother and others (e.g. slaughter of spring lambs). Then there's the longer-term genetic confinement we've imposed on all these animals, turning recently free creatures into meat, milk, and wool machines. We're remaking them into objects of our own ends, pretty selfish.
I don’t care. Regarding animals I only care about direct suffering. I am a welfare utilitarian for humans, for animals only a hedonic one.
castration, lamb slaughter - these aren't direct sufferings? perhaps you mean you don't care about genetic "confinenent", specifically. yet even that entails many direct sufferings. for example, diary cows' easily broken bones from calcium leaching.
Not so many males life for long among cows or sheep. My family were ranchers (in the 1980s Spain, not very industrial). Cows were raised for meat, and nothing in their existence was even close to torture. On the other hand, the pigs were raised in horrible conditions.
I am in contact with small ranchers from my family, and for small European farms, cows and sheep live bad existences (like all animals) but far from torture.
I think the idea that animals live bad existences on average is mistaken.
Well, they all life in a Malthusian trap. In their infancy they face massive mortality. Their existence is mostly defined by either predate or being preyed.
How would you respond to someone who said they don't care if animals are tortured?
https://benthams.substack.com/p/why-a-simple-declaration-that-you?utm_source=publication-search
Surely morality is set by God ( I am assuming you believe in God based on your conservative Jewish posts)? In which case, if God lets humans eat animals, then surely it is not immoral?
As for the comparison of the puppy dogs, to step on its taie for no reason is immoral. But if there is a reason, why not? Religion dictates that humans are higher than animals, and that the use of the inanimate world, which includes animals, if there to benefit mankind and to aid his growth. God dictated that animals are there to be used by humans (with a caveat - don't cause them unnecessary pain), and therefore the use of animal meat is not immoral; on the contrary, to reject a gift that God has given us can be considered disrespectful to him.
Even if that vindicates normal meat-eating, it certainly doesn't eat typical meat eating in our time where animals are factory farmed. In the time of Genesis and Jesus, that was not anticipated.
I a religious jew, so I can't explain the Christian view on this, but will attempt to lay out the jewish view.
Judaism teaches that the existence of animals is purely there for human convenience (please don't say that this is immoral, as morality is determined by what God allows and doesn't allow, and God allows humankind to benefit from animals in most scenarios), and therefore, all meat consumption, whether out of necessity or whether out of taste preference, is allowed by God (interestingly, the Oral law teaches that in the period of Adam to Noah, the existence of animals was NOT for humanity, and therefore all meat consumption was not allowed by God).
However, God limits what sort of benefit that Humans can get from animals. For example, to step on an animals tail for no tangible benefit is wrong, as God prohibits causing unnecessary pain to animals. The argument can be made as well for Jewish ritual slaughter, as it is currently know as the most painless method of killing cud-chewing animals, and that God prohibits the consumption of animals that were not done this way, due to the pain that other forms of slaughter causes.
At the end of the day, God allowed us (IE it is not immoral) to kill an utilise animal products for many instances, including for taste.
I don't think that is what Judaism teaches. I had a conversation with an Orthodox Jew about this and he mentioned that the Talmud says (this is a slightly hazy memory) that you can't feed yourself before feeding your hungry pet. Proverbs 12:10 says "Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel." Exodus 23:5 says "If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him." Deuteronomy 25:4 says “You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain. Isaiah 66:3 says "“He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, like one who breaks a dog's neck; he who presents a grain offering, like one who offers pig's blood; he who makes a memorial offering of frankincense, like one who blesses an idol. These have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations." Deuteronomy 22:6-7 "“If you come across a bird's nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long."
In contrast, there is not one verse from the Bible sanctioning anything like factory farming. While some allow us to eat animals, eating is not the issue. The issue is the torture they go through their entire lives before we eat them, because of our actions.
Wow, tha is for responding.
I agree the Torah prohibits certain forms of abuse towards animals (I will just add that your Isaiah quote does not mean what you think it does; the context is that an insincere offering to God is worse than killing a man, not that killing animals is like killing man), especially unnecessary abuse. The term for this is צער בעלי חיים.
However, the Torah also allows certain forms of what you would define as abuse to be done to animals in certain scenarios, generally for substantial gain, such as killing animals for food, killing lice, or throwing a goat of a cliff to atone for Israel's sins. This means that substantial gain pushes away the prohibition of needlessly causing pain.
According to this, meat eating is moral in the eyes of God.
Now, for what you would be saying to be correct (namely that mass farming is immoral, or in other words, God abhors mass farming), you would have to show that even though killing, the most abhorrent of abuses, is allowed for the sake of food, mass farming, a lower level of abuse, isn't, and that there is no substantial gain by mass farming. I think that you will find this hard to prove.
In the way I understand it, God allowed humans to kill animals for meat/skin. He did not limit the way they have to do this (except for the mandatory ritual slaughter, which is designed to minimise the pain of death), which makes mass farmed meats permissable, and therefore not immoral. There is also substantial gain by mass farming, such as more meat and money available, which pushes pushes away the prohibition of not causing abuse to animals.
But torturing animals in factory farms for meat is never sanctioned. That's the thing I take issue with--not necessarily eating animals, but the grievous mistreamtent that we oppose on them.
Where do you get the idea from that one can only do things that God has sanctioned? Is it prohibited to jump on a trampoline because God never told us that it is OK to do?
And even if you are to say that God prohibited it because there are limits to what humans can do to animals (such as overloading a donkey), we see that God does allow abusing animals for producing foods (I.E. you are allowed to kill animals) - surely one can interpret this to mean that for the sake of producing food, there is no prohibition of cuasing animals pain?
"As for the comparison of the puppy dogs, to step on its taie for no reason is immoral. But if there is a reason, why not?"
What if someone enjoys stepping on dog tails? That's not a very good reason, but it is a reason! It seems to me you don't think sadistic enjoyment meets the threshold for allowing animal suffering. Okay, then - why does "pigs taste good" meet the threshold for allowing animal suffering? The whole point of BB's post is that there isn't a clear difference between outright sadism and enjoyment of how animals taste
"Surely morality is set by God"
1) If you think a benevolent God is advocating for something obviously awful, then you must be wrong about God's will
2) If God is advocating for something obviously awful, then this refutes the notion that morality is set by God
Imagine that some priest or whatnot says God wants you to eat human babies - I hope you'd say to him what I just said to you now! In other words, for your argument to work, you first need to refute the notion that torturing animals is obviously wrong
Morality is set by God and what God does. The term "God advocating for something absolutely awful" doesn't make sense. If God advocates for it, by definition, it is not awful. Humankind, who has no objective moral law, cannot objectively determine whether something is awful or not.
The only way to refute this argument is to claim that morality is objective and seperate from God, which, to my knowledge, has never been refuted.
Well, that responds to point 2, but not point 1. How do you know you aren't mistaken about God's will? How would you respond to someone who said God's will is to eat human babies? I would hope you'd tell them they're mistaken, even if their theistic argument for baby-eating was somewhat compelling. Why not apply the same mentality to severe animal abuse (which is what factory farming is)?
Furthermore, I still think you're ignoring the whole point of BB's original post. You can bite the bullet if you want! You can say "God says we can do what we want with animals, so we can beat dogs." But you're deliberately refusing to do that. If you truly believe what you're saying, then this should be easy choice - you bite the bullet. The fact that you haven't done that is telling
Firsty, my response addresses both points, that if God was to determine that stepping on a dogs tail is moral, then yes, its moral.
However, I will add one thing that I didnt say before; in Judaism (I can only speak for my religion), there is a concept that causing pain in animals for little to no reason (we can discuss the definition of 'little reason' at a different time) is wrong and immoral. I assume that to stand on a dogs tail for no reason is therefore immoral.
Secondly, I know what God considers moral and immoral because he told us at mount Sinai, and it was passed down in the written law (the Torah) and the oral law. Questioning the authority of the Torah is an argument for another time. I am assuming, based on tradition and the Kuzarian principle, that what the Torah is the true and unadulterated word of God.
Thirdly, in regards to your eating babies point; I would firstly say that the God of Judaism does not allow cannibalism, which makes it immoral in my worldview. However, without objective morality, how would you know it's wrong? Or even better, why should it be wrong? In fact, there are probably instances where one can justify eating human flesh, in a world without objective morality.
Let me give you a scenario; Bob has his three children taken hostage, and the kidnapper promises Bob that he will not kill the children, but he will keep them forever, but he gives Bob a dead human corpse and tells him that if he eats part of it, his children will be released. Do you genuinely think that it is still 100% immoral to eat human meat in this scenario, or is it possible to say that Bob acted morally by eating the human meat?
My point here is to show that without God telling us what is right and what is wrong, humankind can (and will) justify any action as moral if it convenients themselves (a good example of this is the ancient pagans justifying human sacrifice as moral). Without God, one cannot objectively say that cannibalism is bad and immoral.
I would like to also say that I can not comprehend a world where God makes cannibalism moral. It is an OBJECTIVE fact that cannibalism is immoral. To say that cannibalism is moral god's against the definition of objective.
I would take a person who gets pleasure from stepping on puppy dog tails as a person to be watched very closely. I think id want someone else to watch them as just having them around would would bring to mind the image of a puppy made to endure pain. If they purpously stepped on my dog's tail they might be in a world of hurt themselves.
Matthew isn't Jewish and doesn't think morality is set by God. He does believe in God but he hasn't been convinced by any religion yet.
I have asked him he he understands objective morality without God, he hasn't yet responded to my questions. As far as I understand, no one has come up with a logical reasoning that proves morality without God. I would love for him to enumerate this idea properly.
Secondly, he seemed pretty OK with the Kuzarian principle in an article he posted a few weeks ago, which means that he has not discounted Judaism.
He has written on this topic here. Despite being a Christian theist, I actually strongly agree with him and find arguments that morality requires God to be very poor.
And even if it did, it would have no bearing on arguments about veganism other than as a proof that religions who reject moral veganism are false (because they have the wrong morality).
https://open.substack.com/pub/benthams/p/why-i-dont-buy-the-moral-argument?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=ouzsx
Do you mind if I ask how you define what good and evil is?
I think there's a definition, just as there is no definition for words like "the," "a," or "an." You don't need one to know what they mean. You're using words you can't define in your sentence yet you know what the they mean.
I don't agree to that. All words that function to define something need a definition. However, the function of the words that you listed are not to define, but rather are there for grammar as referatives or conjuctives.
You say that humans are higher than animals, and I reply that “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
When I was a young Catholic Cartesian I used to think exactly this. Now I am as Cartesian as then, but I am no longer young nor Catholic…
Interesting article, Matthew. I can't disagree with any of the comparisons you've made in this article, but I'm more curious as to what point you think you're making in favour of veganism.
Your argument basically says these two are the same thing:
1. torturing and killing dogs to get a drug which makes you enjoy chocolate more
2. torturing and killing pigs to let you enjoy your food more
I think it's easy to argue these two things are morally similar, but still dissimilar to a third action:
3. torturing and killing dogs/pigs because you get sadistic pleasure out of doing so
I don't really know how this is meant to be an argument for veganism. Most people are okay with using animals for human benefits in some way i.e. rearing and killing them for food, but not okay with hurting them for sadistic pleasure. That intuition would easily carry over to this scenario.
Yes. An interesting wrinkle of applying this (correct imo) moral calculus is in how we treat species, not just individual animals. I wrote about this here. https://open.substack.com/pub/liamcs/p/vegans-against-the-endangered-species?r=ckv8e&utm_medium=ios
"Third, people suggest that you have no effect on the industry because the market is too big. The problem is that this is demonstrably false. See the article I just linked for a more thorough explanation but in short, the meat industry may not respond to each meat purchase, but it responds to large numbers of meat purchases (say, they respond to increases in consumption of 1,000). But each time you eat meat, you have a chance of bringing it over the threshold, which makes the expected value the same. This has also been confirmed by the most thorough empirical analysis of meat markets."
Would a company really care if it made 999 sales of meat instead of 1,000? Quantitatively, these two figures aren't much different.
Philosopher Keith Burgess-Jackson has a wonderful quote on this topic (note that I disagree with most of his other views, though):
"One view of morality sees it as a mechanism of change, with each person being a lever of the mechanism. The other sees it in terms of what sort of person one is. When you hear that billions of animals are killed every year for food, you might think, 'My becoming a vegetarian won’t make a difference, so I may as well indulge my tastes.' That’s to take the first view. But why not say that what other people do is not up to you? You control your actions. Your actions reflect _your_ moral values and what sort of person _you_ are. Stand up for something. Say 'These things go on, but they do not go on through me!' You’ll feel good about yourself; I guarantee it."
(I don't have an exact reference. He wrote this years ago on his now-defunct blog. I saved the excerpt in my quote file.)
Imagine if the company sold, for example, meat slurry. One dead cow is sold as 100 meat slurries. Each year, the company looks at how many meat slurries it sold at the same time last year, and produces enough cows to meet that demand (maybe +10% or whatever for breakage). Then, if you were the 98th meat slurry purchase, you would not cause a new cow to be killed, but if you were the 101st meat slurry purchaser, you would cause a new cow to be killed. You have no way of knowing if you're 98th or 101st, and both are equally likely, so there's a 1/100 chance that you are the threshold cow-eater. So, eating 1 meat slurry (= 1/100th of a cow) carries a 1% chance of causing one additional cow being killed.
If it's not done on such an exacting basis, the company still will presumably produce more meat if demand is higher, and the result will conform to this sort of distribution.
I agree with your analysis. I think Burgess-Jackson was arguing that even if your actions don't have a concrete effect on the industry, you should still avoid eating animal products.
I remember seeing a poster once that showed a picture of a driving rain. The caption read, "No single raindrop thinks it's responsible for the flood."
None of this is surprising. Consider how badly we treat each other to make all the cheap stuff we consume. Everything must be made as cheaply as possible often at the cost of massive human misery, sometimes only slightly better than farm animals.
Yeah, it's sad. I generally think, however, that people take bad jobs because it's their least bad option, so purchasing from people treated badly isn't morally bad, as failing to do so would simply take away their least bad option.
I think this line of reasoning only makes sense if in the long run people's lives improved, otherwise we are simply justifying abusing (and sometimes killing) people for our convenience. It's not too much different than people murdering animals because it's a convenient source of flavour and protein.
You should probably read about the theory of underdevelopment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underdevelopment
Hey! I think that this post captures the main argument against eating meat pretty clearly. I have always thought the mismatch between the morally powerful argument and people seeming totally unaffected is strange. It seems to me that people are like a large shipping boat in the water, very heavy and inert, and a fast flying projectile will glance off the hull or explode against the side leaving the boat unmoved. The words 'extremely immoral' and 'torture' and 'dining on their carcasses', used somewhat for effect but really to communicate a simple matter-of-fact are just so strong that I feel like they miss people and fly right past them or just explode quickly and don't move the inert ship. If one wanted to move the ship it requires some kind of slower, deeper influence. Maybe the arguments you offer quickly with surprising conclusions are just too shocking. I don't know that this analogy really tracks but it's always how I feel when I reflect on that odd mismatch in the conversation about meat.
I understand that you are presenting a compact version of the most general and impactful argument. Your argument clearly applies to the vast majority of contemporary meat consumption so I think that its pretty forceful. A few obvious questions come to mind!
1. It seems like a lot of this argument turns specifically on the badness of factory farmed meat. What about 'responsibly' handled meat? Animals that are treated very nicely and live happy, open lives then are suddenly killed (as painlessly and possible) for consumption? Perhaps there are very few farms or producers that actually manage this ideal scenario, but hypothetically if these conditions were met, I wonder what the moral implications would be. I guess you aren't torturing the animals per-se but maybe there is something innately wrong about the scheme? Perhaps it is an improvement but still falls short? Still killing a living creature for something that is unnecessary or not important enough justify? I'm curious to know what you think about this.
2. You compare the chickens to young children suggesting that there is some kind of spectrum for consciousness/intelligence that we might imprecisely place certain animals on. Is there something to be said for consuming animals that seem like they may experience a lower state of consciousness? I realize this sounds a little ugly but I do think it's fair to make a rough statement that there is some kind of spectrum of consciousness and intelligence in the animal world. Maybe this is again, just an improvement but still presumptuous and morally wrong?
Taken together, I wonder what you think of someone who eats only a small amount of responsibly caught fish or something like this? Is this merely better relative to someone who incautiously eats factory farmed meat but still remains morally unideal? (I guess the reason they would do this is because they notice that they flourish more when they eat a little meat, but they don't want to cause unnecessary suffering? I guess the fact that it is possible to flourish without meat just makes this a lesser evil for the sake of convenience? Maybe you would have to be absolutely certain that you require a small amount of meat in order to 'flourish'?
These responses may seem like marginal issues but I wonder if you have anything interesting to say about them!
Thanks for your post!
I think that to change the ship's path requires repetition. Keep reminding people how awful factory farming is, support your arguments by linking data, and keep it up. I don't eat much meat but am not a vegan/vegetarian, but he makes a very good argument for the immorality of it. I'd add that there is probably a negative spiritual effect from eating these products, an argument that might affect some.
I think one could make a decent argument for eating naturally farmed or ranched meat, a totally different picture.
Hi Grant. I focus mostly on eating factory farmed meat because that's most of what people eat and it's the clearest. Generally, you should discuss the clearest and most common practices before weird edge cases https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-discussion-of-meat-should-be?utm_source=publication-search
I still think generally you shouldn't eat happy animals, for reasons I lay out here https://benthams.substack.com/p/against-eating-happy-animals?utm_source=publication-search
I think, however, that's much less obviously bad, and much less bad.
I think that all else equal it's less bad to eat less conscious animals. Unfortunately, they tend to be smaller, even if chickens are generally less smart tahn cows, eating chicken is worse than eating cow because on account of chickens' size, the average person eats thousands of chickens in their lives and just a few cows.
If you really had to eat a bit of meat to flourish, I think it would depend a bit on the details. Probably it would be best to eat the meat and then donate to effective charities to offset. But fortunately this isn't true.
I disagree with this argument, for this reason:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FjiND3qJCvC6CtmxG/super-additivity-of-consciousness
In my view, an animal with twice the brain of other is more than twice more valuable. In fact I dislike the horror we inflict on chicken, but for me it is obvious that pigs are the worst horror.
I don't understand "offsetting" at all. Consequentialism ought to involve recognizing utility tradeoffs that exist causally in the world, not inventing ad hoc "tradeoffs". Otherwise, what's to stop someone who wants to litter every day from deciding he's now a wife-beater, but on every day when he litters, he's going to "offset" by not beating his wife? Clearly, littering plus not beating your wife is much better than not littering plus beating your wife, but *these are not causally connected choices*.
However morally good donating is for the "offsetter", it seems just as morally good for the full vegan. However excusable consumption of a certain animal product is for a certain individual, it seems just as excusable whether or not the (independently good) donation takes place.
Edge case, but I'm curious: If a woman took a drug during pregnancy that ensured that her fetus would never grow a properly functioning brain and thus be born an anencephalic, and then wanted to kill and eat this anencephalic baby, without its brain (due to the risk of the human equivalent of Mad Cow disease), what specifically would be the moral objection with this?
I'm not Matthew, but for whatever it's worth, I think it would be immoral to eat animal products even if the animals were raised humanely and killed painlessly. My go-to philosopher on this subject is Gary Francione, who has essentially made a career in arguing that animals shouldn't be treated as property or as a means to an end. Animals are sentient creatures with an inherent interest in living. If the purpose of ethics is to respect the interests of all sentient beings, then it's unethical to eat animal products no matter how those animals lived their lives.
I see, so the idea is: It is wrong to kill/eat animals and you shouldn’t do it, and factory farming is even worse and you shouldn’t do it.
I guess the emphasis on the cruelty of factory farming makes these responses about marginal reduction of suffering tempting but they still miss the central argument about the basic wrongness in question?
Yes. When I talk to people about veganism, I try to avoid the subject of factory farming because it's easy for people to get the (wrong) idea that it's OK to use animals for our own purposes as long as we treat them nicely. No doubt it's worse to torture an animal before you eat it, but dwelling on the torturing part sends the wrong message, I think, and only serves to confuse people. I consider myself an abolitionist vegan (one who aims to abolish all animal exploitation), as opposed to a welfarist, who thinks we should just treat animals better. Also, in practice, there is not much difference between "happy" farms and factory farms. https://www.humanemyth.org/
I think whether it’s okay to eat happy animals is not obvious but it’s absurdly obvious we shouldn’t torture them and then eat them
I think if you ask people to think about the ethics of eating happy dogs and cats, the ethical issues become more obvious, since people tend to be familiar with the fact that domestic pets are sentient individuals with an interest in their own lives. People have the unfortunate tendency to dismiss the interests of farm animals, so I draw parallels between dogs/cats and farm animals. I also tell the true story about how I became vegan after I got a job working with rescued cows, pigs, chickens, etc. and had a chance to see them up close. Prior to having that job, I was an unabashed omnivore.
What do you think about fish Alex C.?
Are you (Matthew) familiar with the work of animal rights philosopher/lawyer Gary Francione? He frequently makes the point that there is no morally significant difference between eating meat and eating other animal products. Dairy cows and egg-laying hens are also tortured, and they all end up in the same slaughterhouse as their meat counterparts. Do you agree with this argument? Francione feels that drawing a false distinction between meat and other animal products only serves to confuse and mislead consumers who might then choose ovo-lacto-vegetarianism instead of veganism.
Yep! I agree!
OK, but... why do your blog posts (or some of them, anyway) refer to eating meat when you could have written them to refer to eating animal products in general?
It's a bit more awkward to talk about linguistically, but you're right, I should generally talk about consuming animal products rather than eating meat.
That would be great if you could. I get tired of (gently) arguing with ovo-lacto-vegetarians who think they're done because they gave up eating flesh.
Mi position is the opposite: if you take suffering by euro of expenditure, there is a huge difference between milk (the cow suffering is diluted in an enormous amount of produced milk), ruminants meat (cows and sheep life is better than the average wild herbivore) and the CAFO Hell (pigs and chicken).
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/txQJcvTGdsWyXuZLr/effective-altruism-and-the-trust-business
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/L6wdRBCh3izCD244t/farmers-in-the-animalist-coalition
This is basically my position as well. The move from beef and dairy to vegan is morally substantial, but the move from chicken to beef and dairy is vastly larger.
Eggs are very bad though