This particular one? Nah. It’s two hours, I don’t expect it to tell me anything I don’t already know, and video is a uniquely bad medium for efficiently learning facts. (If there are specific, like, five-minute-long sections of the video which you think contain likely-novel information, I’ll watch them upon request. But really, I’ve seen this sort of thing many times before.)
I don’t expect it to tell me anything I don’t already know
I disagree and think you should watch it.
… how would you know?
Alright, how about this: name your choice of: (a) one key fact that the video conveys, which you think I’ll find surprising, or (b) one five-minute section of the video, whose contents you think I’ll find surprising.
Do you think the animals you eat have inner lives and are essentially tortured, or something else?
I don’t think that the animals I eat “have inner lives” in any way resembling what we mean when we say that humans “have inner lives”. It’s not clear what the word “torture” might mean when applied to such animals (that is, the meaning is ambiguous, and could be any of several different things), but certainly none of the things that we (legally) do with animals are bad for any of the important reasons why torture of people is bad.
“but certainly none of the things that we (legally) do with animals are bad for any of the important reasons why torture of people is bad.”
That seems very overconfident to me. What are your reasons for believing this, if I may ask? What quality or qualities do humans have that animals lack that makes you certain of this?
Sorry, could you clarify? What specifically do you think I’m overconfident about? In other words, what part of this are you saying I could be mistaken about, the likelihood of which mistake I’m underestimating?
Are you suggesting that things are done to animals of which I am unaware, which I would judge to be bad (for some or all of the same reasons why torture of people are bad) if I were aware of them?
Or something else?
EDIT: Ah, apologies, I just noticed on a re-read (was this added via edit after initial posting?) that you asked:
What quality or qualities do humans have that animals lack that makes you certain of this?
This clarifies the question.
As for the answer, it’s simple enough: sentience (in the classic sense of the term)—a.k.a. “subjective consciousness”, “self-awareness”, etc. Cows, pigs, chickens, sheep… geese… deer… all the critters we normally eat… they don’t have anything like this, very obviously. (There’s no reason why they would, and they show no sign of it. The evidence here is, on the whole, quite one-sided.)
Since the fact that humans are sentient is most of what makes it bad to torture us—indeed, what makes it possible to “torture” us in the first place—the case of animals is clearly disanalogous. (The other things that make it bad to torture humans—having to do with things like social structures, game-theoretic incentives, etc.—apply to food animals even less.)
I (strongly) disagree that sentience is uniquely human. It seems to me a priori very unlikely that this would be the case, and evidence does exist to the contrary. I do agree sentience is an important factor (though I’m unsure it’s the only one).
I didn’t say that sentience is uniquely human, though.
Now, to be clear: on the “a priori very unlikely” point, I don’t think I agree. I don’t actually think that it’s unlikely at all; but nor do I think that it’s necessarily very likely, either. “Humans are the only species on Earth today that are sentient” seems to me to be something that could easily be true, but could also easily be false. I would not be very surprised either way (with the caveat that “sentience” seems at least partly to admit of degrees—“partly” because I don’t think it’s fully continuous, and past a certain point it seems obvious that the amount of sentience present is “none”, i.e. I am not a panpsychist—so “humans are not uniquely sentient” would almost certainly not be the same thing as “there exist other species with sentience comparable to humans”).
But please note: nothing in the above paragraph is actually relevant to what we’ve been discussing in this thread! I’ve been careful to refer to “animals I eat”, “critters we normally eat”, “food animals”, listing examples like pigs and sheep and chickens, etc. Now, you might press me on some edge cases (what about octopuses, for instance? those are commonly enough found as food items even in the West), but on the whole, the distinction is clear enough.
Dolphins, for example, might be sentient (though I wouldn’t call it a certainty by any means), and if you told me that there’s an industry wherein dolphins are subjected to factory-farming-type conditions, I’d certainly object to such a thing almost as much as I object to, e.g., China’s treatment of Uyghurs (to pick just one salient modern example out of many possible such).
But I don’t eat any factory-farmed dolphins. And the topic here, recall, is my eating habits. Neither do I eat crows, octopuses (precisely for the reason that I am not entirely confident about their lack of sentience!), etc.
Could you elaborate? It seems to me more accurate to say that whether there is, in fact, any “guilt” is dependent on whether there’s sentience. Where is the hypocrisy?
I hope it’s all right to butt in here—I think the animals I eat have inner lives, and the ones I raise for food are less tortured than the ones who live on factory farms, and also less tortured than those who live without any human influence. I think that animals who live wild in nature are also “essentially tortured”—those which don’t freeze or get eaten in infancy die slowly and/or painfully to starvation or predation when their health eventually falters or they get unlucky.
I think the humans who supply the world with processed food have inner lives and are essentially tortured by their circumstances, also. I think the humans who produce the commercial foods I eat, at all stages of the supply chain, are quantifiably and significantly less happy due to participating in that supply chain than they would be if they didn’t feel that they “had to” do that work.
If I was to use “only eat foods which no creature suffered to create” as a heuristic to decide what to eat, I’d probably starve. I wouldn’t even be able to subsist on home-grown foods from my own garden, because there are often days when I don’t particularly want to water or harvest the garden, but I have to force myself to do so anyways if I want it to not die.
I agree with you on the principle that torturing animals less is better than torturing animals more, but I think that the argument of “something with an inner life was tortured to make it” does not sufficiently differentiate between factory meat and non-meat items produced by humans in unacceptable working conditions.
Your points seem valid. However, it does seem to me overwhelmingly likely that there’s more suffering involved in eating factory farmed meat than eating non-meat products supplied from the global supply chain. In one case, there are animals suffering a lot and humans suffering; in the other, there are only humans suffering. I doubt that those humans would suffer less if those jobs disappeared; but that’s not even necessary to make it a clear win for avoiding factory farming for me.
I eat meat and know all of this stuff about factory farming, AMA.
Did you watch the documentary?
This particular one? Nah. It’s two hours, I don’t expect it to tell me anything I don’t already know, and video is a uniquely bad medium for efficiently learning facts. (If there are specific, like, five-minute-long sections of the video which you think contain likely-novel information, I’ll watch them upon request. But really, I’ve seen this sort of thing many times before.)
I disagree and think you should watch it.
Do you think the animals you eat have inner lives and are essentially tortured, or something else?
… how would you know?
Alright, how about this: name your choice of: (a) one key fact that the video conveys, which you think I’ll find surprising, or (b) one five-minute section of the video, whose contents you think I’ll find surprising.
I don’t think that the animals I eat “have inner lives” in any way resembling what we mean when we say that humans “have inner lives”. It’s not clear what the word “torture” might mean when applied to such animals (that is, the meaning is ambiguous, and could be any of several different things), but certainly none of the things that we (legally) do with animals are bad for any of the important reasons why torture of people is bad.
“but certainly none of the things that we (legally) do with animals are bad for any of the important reasons why torture of people is bad.”
That seems very overconfident to me. What are your reasons for believing this, if I may ask? What quality or qualities do humans have that animals lack that makes you certain of this?
Sorry, could you clarify? What specifically do you think I’m overconfident about? In other words, what part of this are you saying I could be mistaken about, the likelihood of which mistake I’m underestimating?
Are you suggesting that things are done to animals of which I am unaware, which I would judge to be bad (for some or all of the same reasons why torture of people are bad) if I were aware of them?
Or something else?
EDIT: Ah, apologies, I just noticed on a re-read (was this added via edit after initial posting?) that you asked:
This clarifies the question.
As for the answer, it’s simple enough: sentience (in the classic sense of the term)—a.k.a. “subjective consciousness”, “self-awareness”, etc. Cows, pigs, chickens, sheep… geese… deer… all the critters we normally eat… they don’t have anything like this, very obviously. (There’s no reason why they would, and they show no sign of it. The evidence here is, on the whole, quite one-sided.)
Since the fact that humans are sentient is most of what makes it bad to torture us—indeed, what makes it possible to “torture” us in the first place—the case of animals is clearly disanalogous. (The other things that make it bad to torture humans—having to do with things like social structures, game-theoretic incentives, etc.—apply to food animals even less.)
(No edit was made to the original question.)
Thanks for your answer!
I (strongly) disagree that sentience is uniquely human. It seems to me a priori very unlikely that this would be the case, and evidence does exist to the contrary. I do agree sentience is an important factor (though I’m unsure it’s the only one).
I didn’t say that sentience is uniquely human, though.
Now, to be clear: on the “a priori very unlikely” point, I don’t think I agree. I don’t actually think that it’s unlikely at all; but nor do I think that it’s necessarily very likely, either. “Humans are the only species on Earth today that are sentient” seems to me to be something that could easily be true, but could also easily be false. I would not be very surprised either way (with the caveat that “sentience” seems at least partly to admit of degrees—“partly” because I don’t think it’s fully continuous, and past a certain point it seems obvious that the amount of sentience present is “none”, i.e. I am not a panpsychist—so “humans are not uniquely sentient” would almost certainly not be the same thing as “there exist other species with sentience comparable to humans”).
But please note: nothing in the above paragraph is actually relevant to what we’ve been discussing in this thread! I’ve been careful to refer to “animals I eat”, “critters we normally eat”, “food animals”, listing examples like pigs and sheep and chickens, etc. Now, you might press me on some edge cases (what about octopuses, for instance? those are commonly enough found as food items even in the West), but on the whole, the distinction is clear enough.
Dolphins, for example, might be sentient (though I wouldn’t call it a certainty by any means), and if you told me that there’s an industry wherein dolphins are subjected to factory-farming-type conditions, I’d certainly object to such a thing almost as much as I object to, e.g., China’s treatment of Uyghurs (to pick just one salient modern example out of many possible such).
But I don’t eat any factory-farmed dolphins. And the topic here, recall, is my eating habits. Neither do I eat crows, octopuses (precisely for the reason that I am not entirely confident about their lack of sentience!), etc.
I apologize, Said; I misinterpreted your (clearly written) comment.
Reading your newest comment, it seems I actually largely agree with you—the disagreement lies in whether farm animals have sentience.
It’s kind of funny and hypocritical that we measure our guilt based on sentience.
Could you elaborate? It seems to me more accurate to say that whether there is, in fact, any “guilt” is dependent on whether there’s sentience. Where is the hypocrisy?
I hope it’s all right to butt in here—I think the animals I eat have inner lives, and the ones I raise for food are less tortured than the ones who live on factory farms, and also less tortured than those who live without any human influence. I think that animals who live wild in nature are also “essentially tortured”—those which don’t freeze or get eaten in infancy die slowly and/or painfully to starvation or predation when their health eventually falters or they get unlucky.
I think the humans who supply the world with processed food have inner lives and are essentially tortured by their circumstances, also. I think the humans who produce the commercial foods I eat, at all stages of the supply chain, are quantifiably and significantly less happy due to participating in that supply chain than they would be if they didn’t feel that they “had to” do that work.
If I was to use “only eat foods which no creature suffered to create” as a heuristic to decide what to eat, I’d probably starve. I wouldn’t even be able to subsist on home-grown foods from my own garden, because there are often days when I don’t particularly want to water or harvest the garden, but I have to force myself to do so anyways if I want it to not die.
I agree with you on the principle that torturing animals less is better than torturing animals more, but I think that the argument of “something with an inner life was tortured to make it” does not sufficiently differentiate between factory meat and non-meat items produced by humans in unacceptable working conditions.
Your points seem valid. However, it does seem to me overwhelmingly likely that there’s more suffering involved in eating factory farmed meat than eating non-meat products supplied from the global supply chain. In one case, there are animals suffering a lot and humans suffering; in the other, there are only humans suffering. I doubt that those humans would suffer less if those jobs disappeared; but that’s not even necessary to make it a clear win for avoiding factory farming for me.