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  • The difference is respect.

    I can disagree with you but still respect that your decision is yours to make. In spite of any moral arguments, if it's not illegal I don't have grounds to demand that you do anything differently. I can provide suggestions, guidance and opinions on it, but I can't force you into a decision I agree with.

    But I'm also not a vegan. I see the world as much as I can from a neutral perspective. Things are not good nor bad, in and of themselves. The value statements of "good" and "bad" are a matter of perspective. If I were to win the lottery, that is, for all intents and purposes, a good thing.... For me. For everyone who lost, not so much. My win, in the grand scheme of things, isn't good nor bad, simply something that happened.

    I would agree that from an empathetic viewpoint, many of the practices I've seen publicized about factory farming from pro-vegan groups or persons, hasn't been good. Often it can be cruel or lacking any sympathy to the animals, which isn't great. However, looking at things more broadly as I tend to do, any such report will be cherry picked as the worst of the worst from an unknown sample of the industry. So I take what I see from those groups and persons with a grain of salt.

    Of course the industry, defending itself, will do the opposite and cherry pick examples of their most humane practices and locations. So that isn't the full picture either. Even news media, largely owned by corpo's who are likely invested into the meat industry, will skew their coverage to their own benefit, so even that cannot be fully trusted.

    As always the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and bluntly, I can't be bothered to dig deep enough to figure it out. My thoughts on a solution is to impose policy and procedure via laws and ordinances against factory farms for a minimum standard for their livestock, and government run enforcement that's well funded to ensure those regulations are being followed. IMO, that's what government is there to do. If the majority disagree that needs to be done, then such measures will not pass their respective legislative process to be passed into law. In that case, the focus should be on changing the hearts and minds of those who are opposed to the regulation and trying again when the number of people who supports the idea has increased.

    You make your own choices though. Get mad, yell in the park at strangers about it, do whatever. You're free to make those choices.

    • Most western cultures think that they've experienced moral progress over time. These aren't mere intuitions, however, as these observations often admit of some deep analysis. For example, some argue that our modern liberal intuitions (e.g. everyone is born free, etc.) are grounded in the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was responding to earlier moral philosophy and was responded to himself in turn. Kant distilled these intuitions into a rigorous metaphysics of moral philosophy, which was still used quite actively well into the 70s.

      Now, philosophers don't think that 'views have changed, therefore there is no truth.' Instead, they realize that good analysis of these earlier arguments reveals that they're close to right but skate around some important moral issues that can be unpacked with analysis. There's truth that can be found. It appears to all the relevant experts that moral thought is developing in a way that's strongly analogous to mathematical or natural scientific thought.

      These are some of the reasons that subjectivism and relativism are extremely unpopular among experts.

      Although we can observe and say that although there are people who have different moral systems than us, such as psychopaths and Spartans; we can actually scientifically evaluate the merits of the competing moral systems and their objective performance in the long run and historically. Historically, evolution has shown that altruistic humans are indeed "fitter" and objectively, game theory has shown that cooperative strategies are objectively better than selfish strategies in the long run.

      You don't need examples or have to worry about cherry-picking. They're not ours to use. You can't humanely take a life of something that doesn't want to die.

      Consider that neither the wish to be free from suffering nor the wish to continue existing is unique to our species; these interests are shared by all sentient animals, and indeed can be seen as fundamental biological drives. And if my interest in not being harmed or killed makes it wrong to harm or kill me when harming or killing me can be avoided, then an animal’s interest in not being harmed or killed makes it likewise wrong for us to harm or kill animals when doing so can be avoided.

127 comments