I’ve rehashed this several times, but I’ll repeat it for your benefit: I think it is wrong for many people to eat meat. Some people, through circumstances beyond their control, would find their quality of life unacceptably diminished by a lack of meat consumption. I do not think it is morally wrong for those people to eat meat: their quality of life is more important than the lives of the animals they eat. I, and many other people, can be happy vegetarians. People who can be happy vegetarians (or who won’t be significantly less happy as vegetarians than as omnivores) should be vegetarians. For those people, it is wrong to eat meat because it is unnecessarily destructive of animal lives, which have non-negligible value even if they aren’t more important than human quality of life.
There is an overwhelming amount of gory detail about the suffering undergone by the majority of domesticated meat animals in developed countries. If you are curious about how much suffering your food underwent to arrive at your plate, PETA et. al. will be happy to supply that information and you can find it without my help.
a cow’s non-suffering, short-lived existence is more favorable than not existing at all.
I disagree. I think many animals (and people, for that matter) ought not to have been born.
There is an overwhelming amount of gory detail about the suffering undergone by the majority of domesticated meat animals in developed countries. If you are curious about how much suffering your food underwent to arrive at your plate, PETA et. al. will be happy to supply that information and you can find it without my help.
I’m not particularly curious. I have no doubt that I could find plenty of testimony from partisans. Why should I expect that testimony to present the issue in a fair light? Are there any non-partisans trying to find a middle position and present a balanced view of the issue?
Maybe if it was proven that a lot of animal suffering goes into the meat I eat, I might stop.
If you’re not curious, that’s okay. As for fair presentation, I don’t doubt that PETA and its less insane friends heavily skew every piece of evidence that passes through their hands. However, the amount of skewing I can believe went into a mountain of video documentation is necessarily limited by the fact that I don’t think PETA et. al. are staging elaborate scenes of animal torture for the greater good of our noble friends the chickens. Take from that as much or as little as you will; it’s certainly at least weak evidence that bad things happen to food animals between entering the world and leaving it.
Are there any non-partisans trying to find a middle position and present a balanced view of the issue?
If you find any, let me know. Everybody eats, so everybody has a stake in the issue: there is no way to be sure that an omnivore isn’t being defensive or a vegetarian isn’t being self-righteous if they come up with the conclusions you’d expect. I would be surprised to find an omnivore who concluded that food animal conditions were bad enough to warrant not eating meat; most people aren’t equipped to make that kind of admission. Some vegetarians are, or claim to be, vegetarians for reasons unrelated to animal welfare—but they probably would not be inclined to invest time and care into crafting a nonpartisan analysis of the meat industry.
I would be surprised to find an omnivore who concluded that food animal conditions were bad enough to warrant not eating meat
I’m fairly sure conditions are easily that bad; what I’m undecided on is the moral weight that I place on the suffering of animals.
I also acknowledge that being an omnivore with a high desire for variety in food discourages me from trying too hard to make up my mind, because I estimate a non-trivial chance that my final decision would be to eliminate at minimum most mammal meat.
For what it’s worth, my dietary variety has increased since I became a vegetarian. This could, however, be because the switch coincided with ending my dependence on school cafeteria food and with my literal overnight development of a taste for vegetables. (It was the weirdest thing. I woke up one morning and wanted cauliflower.)
Ok, so there is a cost to eating meat (beyond the price tag) and some people love meat so much, it’s worth the cost. You don’t think there is a chance that the hidden cost is actually much worse than meat eaters think? That, given the true cost, not even the most meat-loving person would eat meat?
I dont’ think the true cost is high enough to warrant all meat-eating bad, but substantially worse than most meat eaters think.
I disagree. I think many animals (and people, for that matter) ought not to have been born.
That’s because you’re adding other details. Assuming a person or animal contributed to society an equal amount to its cost to society, would living a non-suffering, short-lived existence still be worse than no existence at all?
some people love meat so much, it’s worth the cost.
While this may be the case, I think it’s a less ambiguous situation when someone has allergies that interfere with eating a healthy vegetarian diet. I have a former professor who used to be a happy vegetarian and then developed allergies to soy, many kinds of legumes, and eggs, plus lactose intolerance. He cannot be a healthy vegetarian, so he should not be a vegetarian (and in fact no longer is).
You don’t think there is a chance that the hidden cost is actually much worse than meat eaters think? That, given the true cost, not even the most meat-loving person would eat meat? I dont’ think the true cost is high enough to warrant all meat-eating bad, but substantially worse than most meat eaters think.
I wouldn’t put it quite this strongly. I do think a great many people who should not eat meat do it anyway, and that most of them don’t think of it as harshly as they should (failing to think of it at all or casually discounting the cost).
That’s because you’re adding other details. Assuming a person or animal contributed to society an equal amount to its cost to society, would living a non-suffering, short-lived existence still be worse than no existence at all?
I think it’s a less ambiguous situation when someone has allergies that interfere with eating a healthy vegetarian diet. I have a former professor who used to be a happy vegetarian and then developed allergies to soy, many kinds of legumes, and eggs, plus lactose intolerance. He cannot be a healthy vegetarian, so he should not be a vegetarian (and in fact no longer is).
Whoa whoa whoa, call me a cynic, but here’s what I got out of that:
A professor, whom you had to agree with or feign agreement with to get course credit, and still have some contact with, told you, a vocal, happy vegetarian, that he was also a vegetarian, then got over six food allergies after telling you this, and today eats meat. This led you to conclude that
“Wow, this noble gentleman tried to reduce animal suffering by being a vegetarian until—darnedest thing! -- he simultaneously developed over six food allergies, which makes him now a non-bad-guy omnivore.”
Now, I don’t mean to offend, but what made you reject the shorter hypothesis of “He lied to you, then covered it up”?
A professor, whom you had to agree with or feign agreement with to get course credit, and still have some contact with, told you, a vocal, happy vegetarian, that he was also a vegetarian
He was a vegetarian first. I became a vegetarian partly out of respect for his reasoning. I also didn’t mention to him that I had become a vegetarian until I’d been one for, IIRC, almost a year and a half.
“Wow, this noble gentleman tried to reduce animal suffering by being a vegetarian until—darnedest thing! -- he simultaneously developed over six food allergies, which makes him now a non-bad-guy omnivore.”
It wasn’t simultaneous. I think he was lactose intolerant all along, and developed the soy and legume allergies through overusing those foods; I’m not sure when the eggs came in. Eventually a doctor advised him to reintroduce meat to his diet.
Now, I don’t mean to offend, but what made you reject the shorter hypothesis of “He lied to you, then covered it up”?
I’ve been to his house and had a meal there and there was no sign of meat in the house. I’ve been to restaurants with him and he flipped straight to the vegetarian section. I’ve met his wife, who is Indian and (I believe to this day) also a vegetarian. I’ve found him generally trustworthy. He had no reason to falsely claim to be a vegetarian the first time I heard him say it, and made no effort to conceal the fact that he ordered a dish with pork in it when we went to lunch after his return to omnivorism.
I think that any given creature should not have been born when there is something about its circumstances of coming to exist that my ethics find objectionable. For instance, I think this about any offspring of rape; about anyone born into slavery; about any animal the creation of which was engineered by people planning to kill it for food (unnecessarily; not for people who cannot be happy vegetarians); and about many people with genetic diseases.
This has the interesting consequence that, because of the way human history has tended to work, it is probably the case that every living human has at least one ancestor who should not have been born. Note that while this means that no living human would be likely to exist if everyone had always been perfectly moral about bringing children into the world, this is probably the case with all kinds of inconsistently followed moral precepts: I expect we’d have a completely different world population if no one ever stole, too.
Random question: Can simply liking meat a lot disqualify yourself from being a “happy veterinarian”?
I think you mean “vegetarian”. There are probably lots of happy veterinarians who love meat. But anyway, although I never liked meat nearly that much, it doesn’t seem impossible in principle to get so much pleasure out of a bite of steak that removing steak would be an unacceptable infringement on quality of life.
Damn, I should pay more attention to my spell checker.
it doesn’t seem impossible in principle to get so much pleasure out of a bite of steak that removing steak would be an unacceptable infringement on quality of life.
So you accept that there is a certain level of happiness derived from meat-eating that warrants meat-eating itself (given that you can be a happy vegetarian). But where do you draw the line? The line between a sufficient and insufficient level of happiness.
I would expect your line to be drawn at a much higher level than mine. If that’s true, what determines who is right? I would think it’s up to personal preference.
I accept that there may be, in theory, such a level of happiness. I have no way of knowing if anyone actually experiences that much pleasure from the consumption of meat. It probably also depends on the other happiness-inducing factors in the person’s life. If the availability of bacon is the difference between someone being merely okay and being great, then I’ll probably err on the side of letting the person have bacon… if it’s the difference between being great and being ecstatic, I’m less inclined to do so, even if in some mathematical sense the improvement in each case is the same. So, I don’t think that “given that you can be a happy vegetarian” (for conservative definitions of “happy”) merely liking meat a lot will tend to be enough to warrant eating it.
I would expect your line to be drawn at a much higher level than mine. If that’s true, what determines who is right? I would think it’s up to personal preference.
I don’t think it’s up to personal preference—I’m a moral realist, these are moral questions. However, there is a fair amount of epistemic uncertainty about where the line is located, and so within limits, for practical purposes, I don’t see a better option than allowing it to be guided by individual preferences.
Do you agree that where the line is drawn is determined by a person’s individual utility function? In other words, there exists a unique line for every person, depending on their terminal value for saving animals and what not.
I’m not sure I believe in the existence of coherent utility functions per se. Whatever passes for a utility function affects my ethical system only indirectly, anyway. I don’t think that a given person’s care for animal salvation typically affects whether they can be a happy vegetarian (although it might affect whether they would be independently motivated to become one), so I doubt it need come into play.
I’ve rehashed this several times, but I’ll repeat it for your benefit: I think it is wrong for many people to eat meat. Some people, through circumstances beyond their control, would find their quality of life unacceptably diminished by a lack of meat consumption. I do not think it is morally wrong for those people to eat meat: their quality of life is more important than the lives of the animals they eat. I, and many other people, can be happy vegetarians. People who can be happy vegetarians (or who won’t be significantly less happy as vegetarians than as omnivores) should be vegetarians. For those people, it is wrong to eat meat because it is unnecessarily destructive of animal lives, which have non-negligible value even if they aren’t more important than human quality of life.
There is an overwhelming amount of gory detail about the suffering undergone by the majority of domesticated meat animals in developed countries. If you are curious about how much suffering your food underwent to arrive at your plate, PETA et. al. will be happy to supply that information and you can find it without my help.
I disagree. I think many animals (and people, for that matter) ought not to have been born.
I’m not particularly curious. I have no doubt that I could find plenty of testimony from partisans. Why should I expect that testimony to present the issue in a fair light? Are there any non-partisans trying to find a middle position and present a balanced view of the issue?
That paragraph responded to pwno’s statement:
If you’re not curious, that’s okay. As for fair presentation, I don’t doubt that PETA and its less insane friends heavily skew every piece of evidence that passes through their hands. However, the amount of skewing I can believe went into a mountain of video documentation is necessarily limited by the fact that I don’t think PETA et. al. are staging elaborate scenes of animal torture for the greater good of our noble friends the chickens. Take from that as much or as little as you will; it’s certainly at least weak evidence that bad things happen to food animals between entering the world and leaving it.
If you find any, let me know. Everybody eats, so everybody has a stake in the issue: there is no way to be sure that an omnivore isn’t being defensive or a vegetarian isn’t being self-righteous if they come up with the conclusions you’d expect. I would be surprised to find an omnivore who concluded that food animal conditions were bad enough to warrant not eating meat; most people aren’t equipped to make that kind of admission. Some vegetarians are, or claim to be, vegetarians for reasons unrelated to animal welfare—but they probably would not be inclined to invest time and care into crafting a nonpartisan analysis of the meat industry.
I’m one.
But admitting you knowingly do wrong is creepy. Faux pas. The normal way out is to rationalize, but sometimes I forget...
I’m fairly sure conditions are easily that bad; what I’m undecided on is the moral weight that I place on the suffering of animals.
I also acknowledge that being an omnivore with a high desire for variety in food discourages me from trying too hard to make up my mind, because I estimate a non-trivial chance that my final decision would be to eliminate at minimum most mammal meat.
For what it’s worth, my dietary variety has increased since I became a vegetarian. This could, however, be because the switch coincided with ending my dependence on school cafeteria food and with my literal overnight development of a taste for vegetables. (It was the weirdest thing. I woke up one morning and wanted cauliflower.)
Ok, so there is a cost to eating meat (beyond the price tag) and some people love meat so much, it’s worth the cost. You don’t think there is a chance that the hidden cost is actually much worse than meat eaters think? That, given the true cost, not even the most meat-loving person would eat meat?
I dont’ think the true cost is high enough to warrant all meat-eating bad, but substantially worse than most meat eaters think.
That’s because you’re adding other details. Assuming a person or animal contributed to society an equal amount to its cost to society, would living a non-suffering, short-lived existence still be worse than no existence at all?
While this may be the case, I think it’s a less ambiguous situation when someone has allergies that interfere with eating a healthy vegetarian diet. I have a former professor who used to be a happy vegetarian and then developed allergies to soy, many kinds of legumes, and eggs, plus lactose intolerance. He cannot be a healthy vegetarian, so he should not be a vegetarian (and in fact no longer is).
I wouldn’t put it quite this strongly. I do think a great many people who should not eat meat do it anyway, and that most of them don’t think of it as harshly as they should (failing to think of it at all or casually discounting the cost).
I don’t understand the question.
Whoa whoa whoa, call me a cynic, but here’s what I got out of that:
A professor, whom you had to agree with or feign agreement with to get course credit, and still have some contact with, told you, a vocal, happy vegetarian, that he was also a vegetarian, then got over six food allergies after telling you this, and today eats meat. This led you to conclude that
“Wow, this noble gentleman tried to reduce animal suffering by being a vegetarian until—darnedest thing! -- he simultaneously developed over six food allergies, which makes him now a non-bad-guy omnivore.”
Now, I don’t mean to offend, but what made you reject the shorter hypothesis of “He lied to you, then covered it up”?
He was a vegetarian first. I became a vegetarian partly out of respect for his reasoning. I also didn’t mention to him that I had become a vegetarian until I’d been one for, IIRC, almost a year and a half.
It wasn’t simultaneous. I think he was lactose intolerant all along, and developed the soy and legume allergies through overusing those foods; I’m not sure when the eggs came in. Eventually a doctor advised him to reintroduce meat to his diet.
I’ve been to his house and had a meal there and there was no sign of meat in the house. I’ve been to restaurants with him and he flipped straight to the vegetarian section. I’ve met his wife, who is Indian and (I believe to this day) also a vegetarian. I’ve found him generally trustworthy. He had no reason to falsely claim to be a vegetarian the first time I heard him say it, and made no effort to conceal the fact that he ordered a dish with pork in it when we went to lunch after his return to omnivorism.
Oh, okay. That’s enough evidence!
Sorry for doubting you, but it sounded fishy.
I made that question based on an assumption I thought you made.
So instead, how about you tell me why you think: “many animals (and people, for that matter) ought not to have been born.”
I think that any given creature should not have been born when there is something about its circumstances of coming to exist that my ethics find objectionable. For instance, I think this about any offspring of rape; about anyone born into slavery; about any animal the creation of which was engineered by people planning to kill it for food (unnecessarily; not for people who cannot be happy vegetarians); and about many people with genetic diseases.
This has the interesting consequence that, because of the way human history has tended to work, it is probably the case that every living human has at least one ancestor who should not have been born. Note that while this means that no living human would be likely to exist if everyone had always been perfectly moral about bringing children into the world, this is probably the case with all kinds of inconsistently followed moral precepts: I expect we’d have a completely different world population if no one ever stole, too.
Random question: Can simply liking meat a lot disqualify yourself from being a “happy vegetarian”?
I think you mean “vegetarian”. There are probably lots of happy veterinarians who love meat. But anyway, although I never liked meat nearly that much, it doesn’t seem impossible in principle to get so much pleasure out of a bite of steak that removing steak would be an unacceptable infringement on quality of life.
Damn, I should pay more attention to my spell checker.
So you accept that there is a certain level of happiness derived from meat-eating that warrants meat-eating itself (given that you can be a happy vegetarian). But where do you draw the line? The line between a sufficient and insufficient level of happiness.
I would expect your line to be drawn at a much higher level than mine. If that’s true, what determines who is right? I would think it’s up to personal preference.
I accept that there may be, in theory, such a level of happiness. I have no way of knowing if anyone actually experiences that much pleasure from the consumption of meat. It probably also depends on the other happiness-inducing factors in the person’s life. If the availability of bacon is the difference between someone being merely okay and being great, then I’ll probably err on the side of letting the person have bacon… if it’s the difference between being great and being ecstatic, I’m less inclined to do so, even if in some mathematical sense the improvement in each case is the same. So, I don’t think that “given that you can be a happy vegetarian” (for conservative definitions of “happy”) merely liking meat a lot will tend to be enough to warrant eating it.
I don’t think it’s up to personal preference—I’m a moral realist, these are moral questions. However, there is a fair amount of epistemic uncertainty about where the line is located, and so within limits, for practical purposes, I don’t see a better option than allowing it to be guided by individual preferences.
Do you agree that where the line is drawn is determined by a person’s individual utility function? In other words, there exists a unique line for every person, depending on their terminal value for saving animals and what not.
I’m not sure I believe in the existence of coherent utility functions per se. Whatever passes for a utility function affects my ethical system only indirectly, anyway. I don’t think that a given person’s care for animal salvation typically affects whether they can be a happy vegetarian (although it might affect whether they would be independently motivated to become one), so I doubt it need come into play.