So like I get that its a double standard to say its ok to farm animals for food but not humans if your using the net positive life argument (is it better that they were never born then given a chance to live some life even if we kill them for meat?), but I feel like I'm starting to think that this logic works to justify farming both humans and animals for food (as long as they live net positive lives), but I hope I'm not on the right track here so can someone please explain why it would be immoral to farm humans for food if we ensured the humans had net positive lives?
P.S. I swear I don't support breeding others into existence for the purpose of consuming their meat even if they live net positive lives, I'm just curious how I can philosophically justify my moral intuition.
Farming humans for food
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NickNack
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Jebus
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Re: Farming humans for food
How is that even possible? Won't these happy future food beings be in captivity? Won't they know that they will be killed and eaten?
Even if you can figure out a way to farm happy humans and do so without any societal ramifications, you would still eventually have to justify the act of killing them while knowing that you also have the choice of releasing them.
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1.Watch Forks over Knives (Health)
2.Watch Cowspiracy (Environment)
3. Watch Earthlings (Ethics)
Congratulations, unless you are a complete idiot you are now a vegan.
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NickNack
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Re: Farming humans for food
@Jebus
What would you say to someone who just said "but they would have never been born if you didn't farm them for food, so is it better for them to not have been born when they would have lived net positive lives?". But then you could say how could you justify the killing again. And then I would say the same thing as last time. It appears we could keep on saying the same thing to each other and it oddly counters each argument even though they are the same arguments over and over again?
I don't know, maybe I need to think about what the syllogistic argument for this would be, I'm not really sure. I guess my agenda here is to explain to carnist why its not ok to kill animals even if they lived net positive lives but instead of using an analogy to humans, I'm trying to figure out what the reason would be that makes it wrong to farm animals for food, even if the animals were to hypothetically live net positive lives. Because I don't want the future to be one where we actually have happy farms due to increased technology but we still don't give animals a right to life.
I suppose the question would be "should you always give a being the right to life once its born if doing so wont have too many ramifications?". Some would say no, others would say yes. The ones who say no would say this because you have already added more net wellbeing and that's all that matters, you are not required to create even more net wellbeing by letting the beings live if you have already added additional wellbeing into the world. The one who says yes would argue from a kind of deontology and say the act of killing is wrong in this scenario, even if you have added more net wellbeing just from breeding beings into existence. I'm not really sure which one is philosophically right here. Am I missing something? Is my assessment a false dichotomy?
What would you say to someone who just said "but they would have never been born if you didn't farm them for food, so is it better for them to not have been born when they would have lived net positive lives?". But then you could say how could you justify the killing again. And then I would say the same thing as last time. It appears we could keep on saying the same thing to each other and it oddly counters each argument even though they are the same arguments over and over again?
I don't know, maybe I need to think about what the syllogistic argument for this would be, I'm not really sure. I guess my agenda here is to explain to carnist why its not ok to kill animals even if they lived net positive lives but instead of using an analogy to humans, I'm trying to figure out what the reason would be that makes it wrong to farm animals for food, even if the animals were to hypothetically live net positive lives. Because I don't want the future to be one where we actually have happy farms due to increased technology but we still don't give animals a right to life.
I suppose the question would be "should you always give a being the right to life once its born if doing so wont have too many ramifications?". Some would say no, others would say yes. The ones who say no would say this because you have already added more net wellbeing and that's all that matters, you are not required to create even more net wellbeing by letting the beings live if you have already added additional wellbeing into the world. The one who says yes would argue from a kind of deontology and say the act of killing is wrong in this scenario, even if you have added more net wellbeing just from breeding beings into existence. I'm not really sure which one is philosophically right here. Am I missing something? Is my assessment a false dichotomy?