I agree that this is technically a sound philosophy; the is-ought problem makes it impossible to say as a factual matter that any set of values is wrong. That said, I think you should ask yourself why you oppose the mistreatment of pets and not other animals. If you truly do not care about animal suffering, shouldn’t the mistreatment of a pet be morally equivalent to someone damaging their own furniture? It may not have been a conscious decision on your part, but I expect that your oddly specific value system is at least partially downstream of the fact that you grew up eating meat and enjoy it.
I got the strong impression that you were presenting your values regarding animals as right, calling meat-eating an “obvious rationality failure”. Now you switch to the relativism that you explicitly rejected previously?
Regarding pets, people cultivate close emotional relationships with their pets. That is what pets are for. For someone to cultivate an abusive relationship with a pet strikes me as symptomatic of a sickness in their soul. That is the wrongness of it. (BTW, some vegans reject the use of animals for any purpose, hence oppose the keeping of pets.)
I don’t see anything “oddly specific” about my values around animals. They seem to me boringly unremarkable. And of course my values are downstream of my upbringing, as yours are of yours.
Why is it a sickness of soul to abuse an animal that’s been legally defined as a “pet”, but not to define an identical animal that has not been given this arbitrary label?
I don’t know what’s with this “legally defined” and “arbitrary label”. If someone adopts a stray cat as a companion, legal definitions are not involved. The law is not involved. “Pet” is not an arbitrary label, it is a word with an ordinary meaning that everyone knows. You may disagree with my acceptance of livestock and rejection of maltreating pets, but your faux-naïf framing is not an argument.
You use the word “torture” a lot, but torture has a specific meaning: suffering deliberately inflicted in order to coerce or punish someone, or as an end in itself. (“The purpose of torture is torture.” — O’Brien, in “1984”.) This is not the reason for the suffering of livestock, which is a side-effect of the intention of making food. No farmer, on discovering that the conditions of his animals are more humane than he thought they were, will deliberately go out with a cattle prod to make up the loss of the suffering he thought he was inflicting. If market conditions change to make crops a more profitable use of his land, he will switch without a thought of all the animal suffering he is missing out on.
I agree that this is technically a sound philosophy; the is-ought problem makes it impossible to say as a factual matter that any set of values is wrong. That said, I think you should ask yourself why you oppose the mistreatment of pets and not other animals. If you truly do not care about animal suffering, shouldn’t the mistreatment of a pet be morally equivalent to someone damaging their own furniture? It may not have been a conscious decision on your part, but I expect that your oddly specific value system is at least partially downstream of the fact that you grew up eating meat and enjoy it.
I got the strong impression that you were presenting your values regarding animals as right, calling meat-eating an “obvious rationality failure”. Now you switch to the relativism that you explicitly rejected previously?
Regarding pets, people cultivate close emotional relationships with their pets. That is what pets are for. For someone to cultivate an abusive relationship with a pet strikes me as symptomatic of a sickness in their soul. That is the wrongness of it. (BTW, some vegans reject the use of animals for any purpose, hence oppose the keeping of pets.)
I don’t see anything “oddly specific” about my values around animals. They seem to me boringly unremarkable. And of course my values are downstream of my upbringing, as yours are of yours.
Why is it a sickness of soul to abuse an animal that’s been legally defined as a “pet”, but not to define an identical animal that has not been given this arbitrary label?
Intent.
I don’t know what’s with this “legally defined” and “arbitrary label”. If someone adopts a stray cat as a companion, legal definitions are not involved. The law is not involved. “Pet” is not an arbitrary label, it is a word with an ordinary meaning that everyone knows. You may disagree with my acceptance of livestock and rejection of maltreating pets, but your faux-naïf framing is not an argument.
You use the word “torture” a lot, but torture has a specific meaning: suffering deliberately inflicted in order to coerce or punish someone, or as an end in itself. (“The purpose of torture is torture.” — O’Brien, in “1984”.) This is not the reason for the suffering of livestock, which is a side-effect of the intention of making food. No farmer, on discovering that the conditions of his animals are more humane than he thought they were, will deliberately go out with a cattle prod to make up the loss of the suffering he thought he was inflicting. If market conditions change to make crops a more profitable use of his land, he will switch without a thought of all the animal suffering he is missing out on.