Thread 5067858

Why a Simple Declaration That You Don’t Value Animals Does Not Diffuse the Arguments for Veganism

The position that animals don't matter at all is just crazy

Richard Hanania has an [excellent article](https://www.richardhanania.com/p/eating-animals-and-the-virtues-of) about eating meat (made especially great by its favorable citation of me), though unfortunately, he still eats meat, despite agreeing that factory farming is the worst crime in human history. Many people left comments explaining why they’re not vegan—some agreed that eating meat in normal circumstances is severely wrong, others did not. One person called a_perverse_sheaf left a comment that I think demonstrates a common, yet severely wrongheaded, belief about animals:

If someone is a materialist---meaning that they believe mental states, consciousness, etc. are the results of matter interacting with other matter---I don't really see why we can't just arbitrarily say "human suffering bad, other animal suffering meh."

>>5067858 (OP)
Animal torture is just the rearrangement of a much of energy and matter. What's wrong with that if we're okay with letting people abuse their cars to the point there's a check engine light? Surely the check engine light, like pig squealing, is a form of suffering of a less complex system?

What makes human suffering different is that we are human, so we can adopt a very strong anthropic bias in our ethics.

The point about materialism seems broadly irrelevant to the argument—even if you weren’t a materialist, you could still say that you only care about animals ( [and you shouldn’t be a materialist](https://benthams.substack.com/p/against-dogmatic-physicalism) , btw). Suffering may be caused by the rearrangement of matter and energy, but every plausible view will say that suffering exists, even if it is reducible to physical processes.

These odd claims about physicalism are not what this article is about though. The basic idea that lots of people, including a_perverse_sheaf, seem to have is that because our preferences are arbitrary, we can just choose to only include humans in our moral circle and there’s no issue with that. If we choose what to care about, if value is subjective as many people think it is, then we can just choose to exclude animals from our moral circle.

Now, one can, of course, dispute the metaphysics. I’ve argued for [moral realism elsewhere](https://benthams.substack.com/p/moral-realism-is-true) , and if ethics is discovered rather than an arbitrary bundle of preferences, then we can’t just arbitrarily pick which beings to care about. But one doesn’t need to dispute the metaphysics at all—even if you’re a subjectivist, you should still think that animals matter. The view that animals don’t matter doesn’t really reflect the values of almost anyone who says that they don’t care about animals.

>>5067860
There are various simple cases that can illustrate this. For example, suppose that a person tortured ten cats a day. This person had so thoroughly internalized the view according to which animals don’t matter that it didn’t negatively affect their character at all. Most of us would still consider that wrong. Yet if one’s values don’t include animals, that wouldn’t be wrong at all.

People in reply often claim that we shouldn’t harm animals because it makes humans worse, but that they don’t matter in their own right— [Michael Knowles claimed that recently](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl-wGg7Uc0s) . But this doesn’t preserve our commonsense intuitions. Let me list just three.

0. In the earlier case where the person tortures cats but is thoroughly desensitized such that it doesn’t make them worse, it still seems wrong to torture them. If we really imagine a person ripping apart a cat slowly with pliers, that seems obviously wrong. This would be so even if doing so didn’t make the person morally worse.
1. Suppose that we ran detailed tests and concluded that boxing had exactly the same negative impact on character as raping and torturing animals. Suppose one raped and tortured an animal while using very thorough protection, such that there was no risk of disease spreading. That would seem more wrong than boxing, even if they had the same effect on the person, yet this view entails that those would be equally wrong.
2. Suppose a fire burns to death 1,000,000 animals, but these animals are on a faraway planet where there are no humans, such that it doesn’t affect humans at all. That seems bad, but it wouldn’t be bad on this view.

But why does torturing dogs require having a mental disorder?

not gonna read all that gay shit.
kys yourself faggot

>>5067862
If a person “tortured” plants, that would be weird, but it wouldn’t necessitate them having a mental disorder. If someone really enjoyed doing so, we wouldn’t see that as objectionable. So why do we see dog torture as objectionable? The reason is that most of us have the intuition that animal suffering is bad, and we should try to prevent it. This just seems like total cope—people don’t want to have to change their diet, despite the cruelty it causes, so they pretend to think animals don’t matter at all, and then provide obviously ludicrous replies to the arguments for veganism.

But the problem gets even worse. If one only cares about humans, as a species, then if we discovered people from Laos were, while physically and cognitively identical to us, not technically human—instead, they were a totally different species, almost identical in capacities—then it would be open season on torturing people from Laos for trivial benefits. This is not consistent with the values of anyone who isn’t an idiot or a psychopath—what makes it wrong to torture people is not their species but various facts about them. The reason the holocaust was wrong—or in the language of the subjectivist, not in accordance with my values, and the values of most subjectivists—had nothing to do with whether the victims of it turned out to be homo sapiens under a DNA test.

Imagine if a person tortured others horribly. However, when they were torturing them, they thought that, though they were fully conscious and intelligent, they were not homo sapiens. We would not think that their mistaken belief was an exoneration, the way we would if a crazy person didn’t realize they were torturing others. The reason for this is simple: The wrongness of torture is not about species membership.

>>5067864
So clearly people don’t only care about humans. Now, in response, one might say that they only care about beings that are smart. Animals, being very mentally enfeebled, don’t merit consideration. But [this doesn’t reflect our values either](https://benthams.substack.com/p/contra-caplan-on-animals) . There are lots of humans who are more enfeebled than the animals we eat. We don’t think it’s okay to torture them. Torture is bad because it feels bad, not because the victim can do calculus and solve sudokus quickly.

In fact, babies are severely cognitively enfeebled too. Animals are much smarter than babies—they’re often as [smart as toddlers](https://www.poultryworld.net/poultry/study-suggests-chickens-are-smarter-than-toddlers/) . But most people are opposed to baby torture. And it’s not just because babies become smart in the future—most people don’t think you should torture terminally ill babies.

>>5067865
So let’s compare the views.

Not caring about animals because they’re not human

—Must say that we could torture smart aliens that were no threat to us for fun just because they’re not human.

—Must say that if we discovered that some group of people wasn’t technically human, we could torture and eat them.

—Must say that if one was very desensitized, it wouldn’t be wrong to torture or rape animals.

—Must say that if torturing and raping animals produced exactly the same negative impacts on one’s character as watching boxing, watching boxing would be just as wrong as torturing and raping animals, assuming they could prevent the spread of disease.

—Must say it isn’t bad when animals burn to death in fires if it doesn’t harm humans.

—Must say that sometimes it’s okay to inflict vast amounts of suffering for the sake of comparatively minor benefits.

Not caring about animals because they’re not smart

—Must say that we can torture and kill mentally disabled people and babies.

—Must say that if one was very desensitized, it wouldn’t be wrong to torture or rape animals.

—Must say that if torturing and raping animals produced exactly the same negative impacts on one’s character as watching boxing, watching boxing would be just as wrong as torturing and raping animals, assuming they could prevent the spread of disease.

—Must say it isn’t bad when animals burn to death in fires if it doesn’t harm humans.

—Must say that sometimes it’s okay to inflict vast amounts of suffering for the sake of comparatively minor benefits.

Caring about animals

—Must say it’s wrong to eat meat.

It’s obvious which option is the most plausible. Virtually no one actually has the psychopathic preferences described by the view according to which animals don’t matter at all.

tl;dr

why don't vegans understand that posting animal gore followed by paragraphs of dick sucking everywhere doesnt make anyone want to be a vegan

>>5067863
You cook yourself any good meat lately?
I had some really good chicken the other night. I made skewers and used a really expensive type of Japanese charcoal to cook them. Delicious.

>>5067870
idk about that guy but lately ive been making really good stews, soups and stir frys. cut up a bunch of chicken with paprika, salt and italiano on them, put together with thinly sliced beef and a bunch of veggies (cabbage, leek, carrot, broccoli, onion, spinach, bok choy). 3 scoops of gochujang with red chili flakes, sugar and onions sauce. shit is delicious. i also like to imitate choy mein by using onions sauce, oyster sauce, and sesame oil instead.

>>5067858 (OP)
I gotta eat.
Simple as.

There is a reason why vegans are violently attacked wherever they appear and that is non-vegans protecting their cognitive dissonance.

>>5067869
this might shock you, but vegans are mentally ill
>>5067870
nah, I don't even like meat but I think I'll pick some up next time I'm at the store just to spite OP. probably something that was cute like lamb or veal.
>>5067876
or maybe people are tired of your repulsive anti human bullshit

>>5067874
Very nice. Love asian style meats. I have a whole pig head in the freezer I want to make into a mexican stew soon. You know pozole? With the hominy. It's getting around that time