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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44935 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Not sure if this is better for SQS but - What is the steelman argument against vegetarianism/veganism? I am especially interested in claims that aren't health-based, as I know quite a few very intelligent and well-sourced vegans who have thoroughly convinced me that most health based claims are false.

I'm not a vegetarian myself but I'm reasonably convinced that I should be one, it's more of a moral failing on my part that I eat meat, not a logical stance.

What is the steelman argument against vegetarianism/veganism?

I like meat.

Hah, same here. Once we have lab grown meat that's better than real meat we'll both be happy.

More elaborately: there is no moral value in the world outside of human flourishing. Morality is not a characteristic of the universe, a cold hard fact we can measure with a morality device; it is a value we assign through our own personal determinations.

Animals don't have rights. Animals have whatever we give them and nothing else. My cat is valuable because I've got a personal bond with my cat. A cow isn't because I don't and want to eat it. In a different life, maybe I'd have a personal bond with a cow, and not eat it. But that's not because cows have the right to not be eaten, it's because I have a personal, one-on-one connection to that cow specifically.

Why do we eat meat? Because we like meat. That we like it is justification enough, because humanity alone is the arbiter of right and wrong.

Replace human with ingroup and (non-human) animal with outgroup, and you see a patten of thought which has been used to justify all sorts of stuff we today regard as horrible.

More elaborately: there is no moral value in the world outside of human flourishing.

This is not an uncontroversial axiom, it is a proposition that has to be argued for or against.

Assuming this sure, “I like meat” is a good enough argument. But many people over the history of humanity would not agree with this. (Eg all religions are against this strict statement, and Buddhism in particular certainly extends sentienthood to nonhuman animals).

I don't agree it's a controversial axiom. It's controversial when phrased so bluntly, but blunt phrasing is my nature. All moral systems, with only one eccentric exception I can think of, boil down to it.

"I support good things and oppose evil things. Good things are , where X is whatever my personal moral system supports. This might be God, it might be Secular Humanism, it might be Progressivism. These things provide a framework for judging the world, a framework which I embrace because I personally believe it to be conducive to human flourishing. I like this framework because it enables me to impose my personal biases on the people around me while appealing to a seemingly neutral platform."

The exception is sincere anti-humanist sentiment, ala "we should all die and go extinct", but even that ultimately derives from personal misanthropy and an aesthetic preference for nature (or non-existence, in the case of severe nihilistic depression).

But in the end, it's all just people asserting X is good. And that's fine. I assert meat is tasty and that makes it good, and most of humanity agrees with me. Some don't, but I don't worry about them.

I agree with your moral framework as far as I can tell. I suppose I would say I think extending our moral circle to non-human animals would be good for flourishing. The more mercy we show in general, the better I think our society can become. Not just in terms of physical violence, but more importantly mercy in interactions with others. The principle of charity and all that.

Essentially, I think if we choose to be better to animals, we will be better to ourselves.

I get along far better with hunters than members of PETA, so I don't think your notion is very sound. I have much more kinship with people who kill animals and are personally acquainted with their rearing and slaughter than I do the people who breathlessly advocate for them. As far as I can tell, if the world embraced a serious conception of animal rights, I would find that world more toxic, not less.

I have no problem with hunters, several of my family members hunt and I love them dearly. I also have problems with PETA vegans, and in my experience most vegans I know also hate PETA for a variety of reasons.

My problem is with factory farming specifically, and the cold, machine-like processing of billions of beings that are genetically pretty close to us. I care nothing for insects, for example.

Why do we eat meat? Because we like meat. That we like it is justification enough, because humanity alone is the arbiter of right and wrong.

Why use 'we' here? Humanity is divided on this issue or else there would not be a debate. If you want to say 'meat eaters alone are the arbiters of right and wrong' that would be more precise and would sound pretty cool, but I'm not sure it settles anything.

There isn't a real debate and humanity isn't divided on the issue. Vegetarians are a small minority.

While vegetarianism might still be a minority position, I can't help but notice that lots of countries have legislation in place regulating animal welfare. So it seems to me that a non-trivial percentage supports restricting the suffering of animals.

I don't advocate torturing animals, but that's because if you get off on torture there's probably something dangerous in your psyche, not because animals have the right to happiness.

if you get off on torture there's probably something dangerous in your psyche

But why would this be so, if it really is a matter of moral indifference? Why would it suggest anything worse about someone's psyche than, say, playing violent video games, or for that matter something totally neutral and unrelated like doing pushups, singing, etc.?

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I'm not a vegan myself but I don't think citing the hedonistic aspect of a morally questionable act as justification would fly anywhere else, why let it settle the argument here?

I think it's a lot like the question of "Why don't you donate 10% of your income to charity?"

"Oh, because I want to spend the money on other things."

"I don't feel that's a reasonable answer that discharges you of your moral obligations."

"Okay, but I'm still not doing it."

I think in that case it's more a matter of moral motivation than moral clarity. Disputing what is good vs knowing the good but failing to act on it.

Christians don't kid themselves here and readily admit that they are flawed relative to what God demands of them, the rest of us might at least take the lesson that the path to the good life may not ever intersect the path of least resistance.

Human utility is far more important to me and most people than animal utility is. It's also not like all farmed animals have terrible lives. Factory-farmed chickens essentially live in concentration camps and from what I've read pigs are in somewhat rough conditions, but cows seem pretty content. If you're that horrendously worried about the lifestyles of the animals you eat, then you should buy ethically farmed meat which has animals that almost certainly have net-positive utility across their lifetimes. Ethical considerations have never been a good reason to be vegetarian, they're just a reason to farm differently, if you care about the animals that much.

People don't bother to cite the hedonic aspects of the act when talking about nonprocreative sex, but it settles the argument nonetheless.

It flies everywhere else, though. Things are good because a critical mass of people assert they are good.

I don't think it would be an absurdity to assert that the mass of people may be wrong.

Sure, you can insist your personal moral vision is superior to the masses. I do that, too. But once you do that you're just debating personal aesthetics. This is good because I say it's good (or because God says it and I say God is good, etc).

Either way, it all boils down to a critical mass of people asserting it.

I don't think that personal aesthetics become morals just through multiplication. Whether it's one person or many, you need more than a head count to substantiate a moral claim.

The opinions of the majority of people change over time. Would you argue that the truth of what is and isn’t good changes over time too?

For example a majority of people in the Americas would have said slavery is good, or at least morally permissible, a few centuries ago. Does that imply that slavery actually was good at that time?

Certainly not evidenced by slave ownership. Only a minority ever owned slaves.

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