RE: Animal rights, veganism and PETA
January 8, 2011 at 12:23 pm
(This post was last modified: January 8, 2011 at 12:25 pm by The Omnissiunt One.)
theVOID Wrote:Like I give a shit anyway, but I think I have a pretty good argument for eating meat that trumps all the vegan pussies.
Eating meat is ethical.
1. Excluding battery farming, farmed animals have amongst the highest quality lives of all animals including wild animals.
2. Eating meat increases the demand for farmed animals.
3. A demand for farmed animals increases the supply of animals
4. A higher supply of animals living better lives increases the mean quality of life for animals.
5. An increase in the quality of life for any being(s) is ethical so long as it is not of a greater expense to other beings.
6. Farming animals is ethical, it increases the quality of life for humans and animals.
PETA are unethical.
7. Preventing an ethical action is unethical.
8. PETA prevent ethical actions.
9. PETA are unethical.
*1: Farmed animals die in a painless way after a longer than average life, this is superior to a shorter average life ending through being prey, starvation or disease.
My problems with this are threefold. Firstly, as DvF has pointed out, consciousness is not shared, so the concept of a mean amount of pain is incoherent. Furthermore, it would justify creating a small slave class whose members were hideously tortured, if everyone else were sadistic enough that the mean pleasure of society was increased.
Secondly, most animals in the Western world, certainly to my knowledge, are treated unethically: chickens, even the allegedly free range, are often battery farmed.
Thirdly, this presupposes that there is nothing wrong with even painless killing from a utilitarian point of view. If, however, some animals are capable of planning for the future and fearing their own death (and I'd suggest that some are), is it not wrong to kill them, as their desires are thus thwarted?
Minimalist Wrote:When the "quality of life" of fucking chickens gets into the discussion things have gone too far!
Why? I'm sure some slave-owners would've said that of black people three hundred years ago.
theVOID Wrote:I don't think chickens have any consciousness, at least it's heavily suggested by data.
What data is this? They can certainly feel pain (well, as certainly as we can know that anyone else does).
'We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.' H.L. Mencken
'False religion' is the ultimate tautology.
'It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.' Mark Twain
'I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.' Abraham Lincoln
'False religion' is the ultimate tautology.
'It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.' Mark Twain
'I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.' Abraham Lincoln
