The Issue with Gary Francione and Deontological Veganism?

[Volenta]

I will have a take on it.

I view morality in terms what's realistic, and realistically animal exploitation will rarely if ever be humane, so I think the deontological viewpoint is accurate.

You have to distinguish between normative ethics and applied ethics. Normative ethics is concerned with the principles that make actions moral or immoral, while practical ethics looks at the specifics of a scenario.

It's true that it's much easier to do things that are generally good and to not do things that are generally bad, but that doesn't get you to the ethical truth of the specific issues at discussion. You have to come up with a pretty good reason why it would be generalizable to become a moral absolute. I haven't seen any convincing case being made here.

Helping someone to end their life is generally a bad idea, but when this person is endlessly suffering and doesn't want to live anymore it's ethically permissible to do so (of course in the most humane way possible). Is your moral absolute going to be "it's wrong to end someones life", or "it's wrong to end someones life, given that the person has an interest in living". Then what about a suicide bomber ready to blow itself up killing many others? Should we make another absolute: "it's wrong to end someones life, unless a suicide bomber is going to blow itself up killing many others"? If you are ready to accept that, then you end up pushing yourself into consequentialism anyway.

And that's the fatal flaw of deontology: "Let justice be done though the heavens fall".

That is to say, once you permit animal exploitation even a little it will all go to hell from there, despite the best of intentions. And we've seen where that ultimately leads.

We haven't seen where it leads at all: people of the farming industry and it's customers are unlikely to be informed consequentialists that act according to their beliefs.

It would be a slippery slope fallacy to say that if we allowed for specific animal exploitation that actually would lead to better consequences, it would eventually result into a moral disaster.

Oh, and I totally agree with the notion that improving welfare of exploited animals is harmful since its reinforces non vegan, non activist viewpoints and rewards non vegan, non activists for doing absolutely nothing.

It sounds insane to me that you're advocating keeping farming circumstances as bad as they currently are for this trivial reason. All you have to do is point out the problems with the now-improved but still far from perfect situation. Don't be afraid that there is no case to be made any longer, because if you aren't able to do so, it has progressed thus far that it could be ethical to eat meat (apart from the environmental impact at least). This is not the situation we are in by making some welfare reforms, so I'm almost tempted to say: don't worry about that. The main point though is that it's not about your personal conscience or superiority over meat eaters; it's about the suffering that animals have to go through.

(and in fact, for partaking in the abuse of those animals to begin with) In effect it prolongs the exploitation of animals and we all know the improvements made are going to be petty and short lived anyway.

We all know? How is that? I think some great improvements have been made and are continuing to be made (more so in Europe than the USA though). It's not necessarily that they are short lived, but rather that small farms that generally treat animals better are decreasing and intensive farming is growing for economical reasons. I suggest reading Steven Pinker's position on this point, to get a better balance/overview on this issue.

In the end though a deontological vegan is still a vegan. Even if it was irrational I don't see the harm in being a little irrationally moral here and there.

That's of course true, but motives and intentions do matter. Sam Harris has made a big point about this—although he goes beyond what I would call reasonable, it might be interesting to read his position.

I personally think that the most rational point of view is more likely to persuade people. People that are advocating an irrational and dogmatic stance could turn off people from taking veganism seriously at all. This might be a rather optimistic perspective about the rationality of the people new to the ideas of veganism, but it's only reasonable to think it has to true to some extend since there will be rational people presented with the ethical case veganism in the future.

I wonder if all morality can be argued as being dogmatic on dome level. You could define morality as reducing of suffering, but even then its on you to explain why suffering is bad in the first place

I think it's just recognizing the fact that there is a space of sentience that we have to fill up with experiences somewhere on spectrum between suffering and pleasure. By induction (which is why it's a falsifiable ethical position to hold) we have determined that every sentient being prefers pleasure over suffering, and thus it's only reasonable to strive towards that goal.

or why I should even care if it's someone else that is suffering.

I challenge you to come up with a good argument for why your own suffering is more important than someone else's. We live in the reality of having the possibility to impact the lives of other sentient beings in a positive or negative manner. To only care for yourself is just closing yourself up for this reality.

For most people its easy to intuit why something is bad without a technical explanation.

By all means: adjust to your audience, because you will be most effective that way. In a philosophical or otherwise more academic debate, or just a discussion with sophisticated people, it might be worth getting into the ethical details.

And for an informed vegan it's also better to educate yourself about it, so you're able to give sophisticated responses to challenges.

[EquALLity]

I'm not saying you mustn't steal if it will save a life

But that's what anit-theft deontology claims.

a vegan system of morality has respect for the animal which non vegans do not, so I welcome the viewpoint.

What do you mean by welcoming it?

A system of humane cow milk is very unlikely since cows must be stationary.

That doesn't matter. It's possible, and harmless, yet deontology would call it immoral.

I would consider it only for people with special conditions in which they need the milk to live (assuming such conditions even exist). So in other words for medical purposes only in which there is no alternative.

What? What harm is done just by milking a cow?

If you wanted to kill someone, any action you take toward this goal is wrong, even if it results in accidentally saving his life somehow, since you did not know that would happen.
If you commit a selfish act, any incidental benefit to come out of this action is just an excuse.

I think we're talking about two different things.

I'm saying that the action is moral, assuming it produced more good than harm. I think you're saying that the acting person is immoral for doing so, which is different.

Anima welfare reinforces non vegan viewpoints since it reinforces blind trust in the corporations, that they will take care of them.

What does veganism have to do with blind trust in corporations? And it wouldn't be blind trust, because the law would be enforcing these regulations.

Hey non vegan friend, check out this footage of animals being mistreated.
"That's terrible! Someone should do something!"
Its okay, we made a petition and they promised to start phasing out such cruel methods from now on.
"Oh, everything's hunky dory then!" *continues to slurp on ribs*
"(gee I wonder why he showed me the footage at all then, seeing as it did not matter)"

Maybe some people will react that way, but what about all of the animals treated significantly more ethically?

For the rest of their lives when they hear of animal cruelty they will think it is temporary. It reinforces the idea that the system is designed to stamp out problems like this when in fact it's designed to maximize animal suffering.

How is a system where animals are being treated better as time goes on designed to maximize suffering?

How does them thinking the cruelty is temporary hurt the movement? People who care would stop doing things they find unethical until they no longer find them unethical.

Deontology might be good in one way, if people understand that not every vegan has the exact same moral system, then it is a sign that veganism is much bigger than any one system and also that veganism is not a cult.

But the problem is that it's a flawed moral system. Having the whole movement based on deontology would undermine it completely, because deontology is wrong.

And it reinforces the idea that veganism is a cult by having all vegans adhere to a dogmatic (according to deontology things are inherently immoral) moral system.

Varied moral systems among vegans makes veganism normal and vast, just how non vegans don't all believe the same thing, and only share one thing in common: the fact that they buy animal product.

I agree that it'd be good if we all accepted a rational moral system, but deontology isn't one. And if the entire movement is based on a flawed ideology, it's a flawed movement.

"Crazy vegans" what other vegans think is a flawed reason not to go vegan.

I agree, but people still use it as a reason, so it matters.

[brimstoneSalad]

Deontology, from what I know, is a form of morality in which things are inherently wrong.

Right, the important thing is there are no "degrees" of wrong which can be compared against each other.
E.g. Killing a million people is not more wrong than killing one, in any useful sense.
That is, if you have to choose: Kill a million, or kill one? A deontologist is stuck. It's an easy decision for a consequentialist.

If a deontologist believed it was immoral to steal, it would always be immoral to do this, even if you needed to steal medicine from a billionaire to survive.

Basically right. Although to be more specific, deontology can occasionally include hierarchies. But they are absolute. (I haven't really mentioned it before because it's not very relevant, or a solution to their problem, and just complicates the discussion).

So stealing a square of toilet paper from somebody's house to blow your nose on later (not more immediate use as it is provided), is equally wrong to stealing a billion dollars from a charity which distributes AIDS medications in Africa and causing the death of millions of people.

But categorically, killing might be "more wrong" than stealing. However, it's also important to point out that the organization of those is completely arbitrary. Stealing could be just as easily more wrong than killing, and they have no rational basis for "sorting" these wrongs; it's based on their personal whims or whatever arbitrary authority they appeal to.

Killing a dictator who has a terminal illness and will die tomorrow anyway and who plans to commit genocide tomorrow morning before he dies as part of his bucket list is more wrong than stealing a billion dollars from an AIDS charity and committing a sort of genocide by consequence yourself (because deontologists completely ignore consequence, and look ONLY at the act).
So if you have the choice to do one or the other (a forced choice), you MUST choose to steal the billion dollars thus killing millions and not kill the dictator to save millions of lives.

I view morality in terms what's realistic, and realistically animal exploitation will rarely if ever be humane, so I think the deontological viewpoint is accurate.

You can't just accept a flawed moral system completely, because in practice, in this situation, it usually ends up happening to lead to something ethical. What about all the situations where deontology would lead to something unethical? Also, it's flawed.

Consequentialism would say that animal exploitation will rarely if ever be humane. That's accurate.
The Deontological vegan view is that it is NEVER, and can NEVER be humane. That's inaccurate.

EquALLity: Why is a flawed argument bad, beyond the small inaccuracy? I think that's the most important point, and you got to it here:

They're believing in a bad system that can easily be used to justify harm, and are possibly spreading it. The system might even put people off from going vegan.

"Crazy vegans! They think it's inherently wrong to milk a cow! They're so extreme."

I think it definitely puts people off, particularly atheists and skeptics, because it comes off as dogmatic (which deontology is, so they're not wrong).

It's also the same reason we advance atheism, skepticism, and critical thinking. It's not because theists are always bad people, but it's about that kind of mindset of irrationality that is inherently prone to lead to irreconcilable conflict and bad decisions.

Of course, Matt Dillahunty showed us recently that atheists can be irrational too, but his behavior is in violation of the rational principles of skepticism and critical thinking, not a result of them.

You could define morality as reducing of suffering, but even then its on you to explain why suffering is bad in the first place or why I should even care if it's someone else that is suffering.

I struggle with this.

That's why this is so incredibly important: https://www.theveganatheist.com/forum/v ... f=15&t=671

You can't just define words in any arbitrary way you want.
Words have meanings, and although there is some leeway in their definitions, it is NOT equally true to say "morality is not looking at hedgehogs by moonlight".
It's also not just based on popularity as ardent descriptivists would say (although popular usage IS very important).

Even if you called it something else, morality is a distinct concept, which has certain qualities by necessity of logical consistency, and those implications.
Look into ontology.

So, what morality is, is not arbitrary.
That said, "Why should I care about Morality?"

Well, you don't have to. But if you don't, it means you're not a good person. Do you want to be a good person or don't you?
If you don't, there's not necessarily anything I can say to change your mind. Psychopaths and sadists will do as they do. Haters gonna hate, and all that.

[zeello]

I fathom a guess that I personally agree with both normative ethics and applied ethics.
The reason normative ethics makes sense to me is because animal mistreatment is the logical conclusion of the opposite. While I do think animal use can be justified but the problem is that it results in a slippery slope and it may be naive to think otherwise. Animal exploitation probably started for good reasons, such as survival.

I am not advocating keeping farming as bad as it currently is. However, when farming is improved it feels like a frivolous victory. Its like if slave owners came out and promised to treat their human slaves better.

Here's one way of putting it. Everyone has different moral perspectives, but nobody owns human slaves. How can everyone be different, some religious while others atheist, but all manage to get behind abolitionism? Because abolitionism is right and makes sense. That is what we believe about veganism. It's not a narrow specific doctrine. Yes, someone out may be introduced to veganism through a vegan rationale that they don't agree with, but the same could be true for atheism or religion, and in fact we even have here a case of Francine atheism versus "new atheism" as an example of this. If someone rejects an entire viewpoint or an entire moral stance entirely all because of a bad first impression, that's their problem.

Humane cow milk is immoral according to deontology, but so long as cow milk is unnecessary to our diet then it certainly is immoral since it is a serious threat to the cow's rights.

Animals being treated better over time is not part of the system. Its a direct contradiction of the system. Trying to improve animal welfare in a capitalist system is like trying to plug up multiple leaks in a dam. Sure its better than doing nothing, but for every leak you patch another leak will have sprung, or the patch will eventually break, and you will probably be doing it forever.

"People who care would stop doing things they find unethical until they longer find them unethical." <-- I was not aware of any temporary vegans and I don't believe there are any. Not counting former vegans, since initially it was intended to be permanent. And not counting people who go vegan for a week/month just to try it out. I mean specifically vegans who are holding their breath until the say meat becomes humane and they can start eating it again.

"Reinforces the idea that veganism is a cult by having all vegans adhere to a dogmatic moral system". <-- but I'm not saying all vegans must adhere to the same moral system. Rather, you are. I'm saying that as long as they are vegan then they are on the same side as us regardless, so why not let people find veganism using whatever moral code that brought them to that conclusion.

"If the entire movement is based on a flawed ideology". I could argue that a movement based on any one ideology is not as strong as a movement that encompasses multiple ideologies. We are trying to normalize veganism and make it seem inclusive. We don't argue with other people whether slavery could be justified in certain instances and we don't reject them if they don't answer as we do.

[brimstoneSalad]

You have to distinguish between normative ethics and applied ethics.

It might be more useful (and easier for others to understand) to talk about "rules of thumb".

"Let justice be done though the heavens fall".
Great quote.

I often ponder if a visualization or analogy to "alignment" might be useful.

E.g. Chaotic evil, Lawful evil, Lawful good, and Chaotic good.
It might help people understand.

It sounds insane to me that you're advocating keeping farming circumstances as bad as they currently are for this trivial reason. All you have to do is point out the problems with the now-improved but still far from perfect situation. Don't be afraid that there is no case to be made any longer, because if you aren't able to do so, it has progressed thus far that it could be ethical to eat meat (apart from the environmental impact at least).

Absolutely, and more importantly, it sounds insane to people who might be considering veganism too. This kind of thinking is harmful for the movement not just because it is irrational (sometimes something can be quietly irrational without people realizing it), but because it's so intuitively wrong that people see right through it for the dogma it is.

As to environmental impact: That could be solved by cap&trade like systems, capped at zero, thus creating an industry around carbon capture and environmental cleanup to sell those credits on the open market.
It would make meat very, very expensive, but so would treating animals decently.

A system of humane cow milk is very unlikely since cows must be stationary.

That doesn't matter. It's possible, and harmless, yet deontology would call it immoral.

Right, which makes veganism seem irrational.
It probably will never happen, or will happen on such a small scale as to be irrelevant, because it would be so expensive to treat animals well and alleviate the environmental concerns.

It there were something like a hundred cows on Earth being milked, pampered in every way, and the milk sold to some weird millionaires for some immense price like $10,000 a gallon, it wouldn't be a problem.

For the rest of their lives when they hear of animal cruelty they will think it is temporary. It reinforces the idea that the system is designed to stamp out problems like this when in fact it's designed to maximize animal suffering.

How is a system where animals are being treated better as time goes on designed to maximize suffering?

It's designed to maximize profit, and that's all. There is no maliciousness in it. Keep in mind, these people (the industry people) are so delusional they don't usually even believe these animals are sentient or worthy or moral consideration. They think they're doing something good and providing people healthy food, or if they even believe any non-human animals are sentient, they think the animals are happy.
This is where you would quote his earlier statement.
If zeello believes that it is the intent which makes something moral or immoral, and these factory farms don't intend to hurt animals but just make a profit, then either intending to make money is (arbitrarily) immoral, or factory farming is morally acceptable.

Deontology might be good in one way, if people understand that not every vegan has the exact same moral system, then it is a sign that veganism is much bigger than any one system and also that veganism is not a cult.

But the problem is that it's a flawed moral system. Having the whole movement based on deontology would undermine it completely, because deontology is wrong.

I think you misread him. He's saying he thinks diversity itself is good. Not that every vegan should be deontological, but that some should be Consequentialists, and others should be Deontologists.

It may be fine for Christian vegans to be deontologists and appeal to the authority of god, because nobody will confuse this argument with the secular one. In that sense, it's good to have a theist voice that will appeal to a theist audience.
But it's not OK for secular arguments to be made from a deontological standpoint, because this will only serve to confuse people and make all of the arguments worse.

The problem with Francione is that he confuses people. He's a woo, and he appeals to supernatural authority, but he presents his arguments as rational and secular.

It's like the difference between an honest young earth creationist who says he or she doesn't care what science says and just believes the bible no matter what, and one who advocates "intelligent design" as a scientific alternative using scientific sounding words and claiming that evolution isn't science.

[zeello]

Right, which makes veganism seem irrational.
It probably will never happen, or will happen on such a small scale as to be irrelevant, because it would be so expensive to treat animals well and alleviate the environmental concerns.

Correct, and that is what I am saying. In my opinion, this is the rational outlook.
People are trying to isolate using animals from abusing animals, but this is very theoretical and not reflected in reality.

It there were something like a hundred cows on Earth being milked, pampered in every way, and the milk sold to some weird millionaires for some immense price like $10,000 a gallon, it wouldn't be a problem.

But, as per free market capitalism, another company might start their own operation, at half the cost and sell the milk at 50%, the cows are still treated pretty well and they would take over the market instantly. (considering how much the mega wealthy love to save every dollar)
Then the first company (or a third company) might start cutting costs even more on treating the cows well, but still manage to be somewhat humane, and being to the market milk priced at 25% of its original cost.
Do you see where this is going.

It's designed to maximize profit, and that's all. There is no maliciousness in it.

The lack of maliciousness is what's rather sinister about food companies, because it finds a loophole in human morality. The idea that you're only doing wrong if you had intended on doing wrong. (There is actual evidence for this in human psychology) It's why non-vegans play the innocence card, and why they get offended if you try to explain what they're partaking in is as bad as it really is.

If zeello believes that it is the intent which makes something moral or immoral,

I think it is a valid stance to simply respect the animal's right not to be used. If you want to use the animal for personal gain, it is arguably wrong even if you don't abuse the animal, because not abusing the animal was not your primary motive, and if it comes to a situation where you are abusing the animal, this results in a conflict of interest. You will lament the fact, not that the animal is abused, but the fact that the animal has the capacity to be abused, and you wish it were not so, because it inconveniences you.

Granted, you could just stop using the animal at that point, but it's probably already too late. There is no place left to go but down, and you will not snap out of it until it comes crashing down on you.

[brimstoneSalad]

Hi zeello, I hope you know I'm not ignoring you by just talking to EquALLity and Volenta, it's just a lot easier and more effective for me to provide feedback than to address a whole post.

I'm sure EquALLity will address all of your points later, but I will address this one:

Its like if slave owners came out and promised to treat their human slaves better.

That would have been fine, and even preferable, and here's why:

1. It would have prevented the civil war. While the civil war was not entirely about slavery, it was the most pressing issue that triggered the hostility. This would have saved almost a million lives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/scien ... .html?_r=0
More than half of all U.S. citizens who have ever died in any war in history.

That's nothing to sneeze at. And an extreme and polarizing deontological stance toward veganism -- where it is clear that it can not be reasoned with (as with abolitionists) -- would be just the kind of thing to provoke such a conflict.

2. It would likely have prevented an ongoing socioeconomic disparity between 'blacks' and 'whites' in the United states that has bred poverty and crime for well over a hundred years, which is still only slowly being rectified.
This derived largely from a lack of knowledge and education infrastructure among the newly liberated black communities, a cause of poverty, which causes poor education in children, which causes poverty, which causes poor education, etc. It also derived from a deep resentment created during the course of the civil war, by whites against blacks (it may have even prevented the holocaust, but that's more speculative).
Many people, including Lincoln, wanted to solve this issue by shipping blacks to Africa to colonize. I won't comment on that, but the consequences of actions are important to consider.
With animal agriculture (breeding out of existence), as it would have been for slaves (in terms of educating into society and slowly growing social acceptance, not breeding out of existence), a gradual change is much more plausible.

3. It still would have virtually ended the common practice of legal slavery. See the prior post where I talked briefly about the economics of good animal treatment and environmental consciousness. Slavery would have become economically non-viable. Inventions like the cotton gin would have pushed this along even faster as the economic pressure mounted (just as inventions like mock meats and dairy replacements are pushing along vegan adoption and making meat less viable).
At a certain point, it's much more economical to just free people and pay them a really shitty wage they can barely survive on, rather than provide for every need with an exceptional standard of treatment. Because it would have been a choice to free slaves, and it would have been more gradual (with one of the most important rights for slaves being education), the issues mentioned in point #2 wouldn't have been serious problems.
There might be a few hundred legal slaves in the country, being treated better than most of us can make a living at.
And it's also important to note that slavery is NOT actually ended even now, even in the U.S.A., it's just illegal.
The world over, IIRC there are more slaves now than there have ever been, despite it being illegal (potentially millions in the US alone). Like the gun and drug trade, it's a big business. It's almost entirely our fault, and I could go on about why that is and wax political, but I like to avoid politics (particularly online) so I'll leave it at that.
Here's a link with a decent summary:
http://www1.salvationarmy.org/ihq/www_i ... enDocument

[Viking Redbeard]

As far as I'm concerned (and I apologise if I'm covering old ground) the issue boils down to the concept of ownership as a legal right rather than 'What if we treat them like this?' and 'How about if we were to treat them like that?'.

It may well be possible to milk a cow without causing her any harm. The problem is that when cows are owned and treated as milk-producing entities, whatever rights they have will in almost every case be trumped by the rights of her owner to use her in this way or that. This, in the real world, will inevitably result in abuse and cruelty. It's hard enough to get people to treat their own kids well in a lot of cases, for crying out loud; and think about the amount of abuse that mentally ill people get. The idea of allowing a human being the right to own and extract the milk of another being - I just can't see it ever not being unpleasant. Human beings simply aren't cut out for that kind of responsibility, although there may be exceptions.

This is why the myriad laws to promote slave rights (whatever you want to call them) in the American South were never able to ensure that said rights were not trampled by property owners with regards to their rightful property. It was also why folks such as Jefferson Davis were constantly trumping about how good the slaves had it in the South - keeping the facade healthy.

The second thing is that most people who get something out of animal exploitation - be that milk or fur or whatever - are very often inclined to believe and very easy to persuade that the animals they exploited led good lives and didn't suffer. I don't see the problem with saying, very simply, 'I don't think it's okay to own and use animals - even if you do it nicely'. I can't see how this is an extreme position.

The alternative, as I see it, is cases like my mum, who lives in this perpetual fantasy world where the animals SHE paid people to exploit all lived happy joyful lives, and she knows this because animal people have told her that it's all down to the way they were treated, and, look, the label says "Freedom Food", and, anyway, they wouldn't exist if not for us, so really we're doing them a favour. RSPCA know what they're doing, she says. Well, yes, they know how to make a quid or two by selling labels to meat producers, I'll give them that. Point is, people are too easily lulled into believing what's so isn't really so with regard to exploitation.

It may appear to be a slippery slope argument, but I really have yet to be persuaded that moral animal exploitation can exist anywhere outside of a philosophical conversation.

Nevertheless, I learned a lot from this thread about deontology and the views of Francione. I agree with a lot of what he says, but I have to admit he's said things in the past which made me want an anvil to drop on his head.

[brimstoneSalad]

Great post, thanks for that!

It may appear to be a slippery slope argument, but I really have yet to be persuaded that moral animal exploitation can exist anywhere outside of a philosophical conversation.

Well, it's like the idea of an honest politician. It's all hypothetical; you don't have to think it's likely that it would ever happen.
The point is to be open to the possibility as a matter of intellectual honesty. Francione is not, and that kind of thinking doesn't sit well with skeptics.

Say "Show me a system that's likely to work", rather than "Impossible, animal liberation or bust."
The latter paints the whole concept as too ideological and unreasonable.

As far as I'm concerned (and I apologise if I'm covering old ground) the issue boils down to the concept of ownership as a legal right rather than 'What if we treat them like this?' and 'How about if we were to treat them like that?'.

Not exactly. Ownership is not absolute; it's contingent on certain responsibilities. Animals can be taken away from bad owners. The issue comes down more to practical enforcement of the standards.

It may well be possible to milk a cow without causing her any harm. The problem is that when cows are owned and treated as milk-producing entities, whatever rights they have will in almost every case be trumped by the rights of her owner to use her in this way or that. This, in the real world, will inevitably result in abuse and cruelty.

Not inevitably (at least in any significant measure), just probably, but mainly due to difficulties of enforcement. It is a difficult problem, however, it's not an inherently insoluble problem.

It's hard enough to get people to treat their own kids well in a lot of cases, for crying out loud; and think about the amount of abuse that mentally ill people get.

These abuses are harder to catch and regulate in decentralized institutions that are granted privacy rights.

The most important thing, the first thing anybody should be thinking about, is overturning the draconian laws that shield these companies from transparency.
Slaughter houses need to have glass walls, absolutely.
The technology exists. 24/7 video feed to the internet from farms. It wouldn't be overly difficult.

The idea of allowing a human being the right to own and extract the milk of another being - I just can't see it ever not being unpleasant. Human beings simply aren't cut out for that kind of responsibility, although there may be exceptions.

As a thought experiment, the systems I have suggested are all inherently non-profit. Farmers can get paid for the work they do, and only the work they do. Because net profits can not inure to any individual, there's no motivation to cut corners unless the farm is failing -- and to that end, all you need is to do a little price fixing to make sure the margins are always high enough to provide a safety net.

It's not something that's unachievable, it just means a little thinking outside the box.

This is why the myriad laws to promote slave rights (whatever you want to call them) in the American South were never able to ensure that said rights were not trampled by property owners with regards to their rightful property. It was also why folks such as Jefferson Davis were constantly trumping about how good the slaves had it in the South - keeping the facade healthy.

They would have had to think outside the box too, in terms of viable enforcement.

Such as, sending somebody around to interview the slaves, and if they had complaints, removing them from the owner and transferring them to another (like witness protection). The owner could then be tried. If found innocent, he could receive a different slave as compensation. If found guilty, he could lose all of his slaves and be fined or jailed, and lose the right to own slaves thereafter.
A slave would have to motive to complain about a decent owner, because the best he or she could get would be to be transferred to another house or plantation.
As a point of necessity, a slave would have to be able to transfer without pressing charges or testifying too.

What you would end up with is a circulating pool of slaves, prosecuting and leaving the worst of the owners, and motivating the others to improve conditions to certain standards to keep up and avoid losing their slaves or rights. Kind of a restricted free market.

Anyway, that's just an example. They would have had to have had some pretty revolutionary ideas for there to be a viable system to prevent abuse. Of course, that doesn't work for cows, since cows can't communicate those problems to us (or, humans can't understand them).

Once you have a system in place that works, it's just a matter of progressive reform.
At a certain point, as with slavery, alternatives just become cheaper (like just giving a really shitty salary instead of having slaves, or buying vegan meat substitutes).

[brimstoneSalad]

+TheVeganAtheist​ You talked about Deontology and Consequentialism and you frown on Deontology but I have a question about that: if it is okay to experiment on animals, for the betterment of man (curing disease, etc), does that not presuppose that humans are inherently superior to all other beings?

It doesn't.
You could also argue for experimenting on humans if it would save many more lives. However, that would ignore the social and legal consequences of doing so.

So, this issue isn't necessarily as simple as it might seem.
Humans have a privileged position, as well as a position of responsibility, in not just being subject to morality, but also subject to society and the laws of mankind -- that is by necessity, and it is not necessarily a bad thing.

For example:
Sometimes the police know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a person is a murderer and dealer of hard drugs to children, or trafficker of child sex slaves.
There are nasty people out there, and often the authorities KNOW who they are.

If they knew, and had proof, but couldn't lock the criminals up due to legal loopholes and technicalities, it would be morally right for the police to just grab them and lock them up, or if they couldn't, to kill them to protect others.
But that's only for that one case. It becomes wrong when you look at it in the social context, because those laws are there to protect us from a police state, and ultimately have much better consequences overall, even though they sometimes let profoundly evil criminals slip through the cracks.

Is that not subjective and somewhat woo?

Speciesism is arbitrary nonsense at best, and more often woo. But politics, and the consequences in society, are quite real.

It is not an objective fact that humans are superior to any animal; in fact, the ecosystem would thrive without humans but would collapse without ants or bees. One could argue that there are animals that are more important to the greater good of all living beings on the planet as opposed to humans and therefore these animals would be superior.

No, but your environmental utility argument is strained.
Animals have moral value on the basis of their sentience. And sentience is not a black and white matter. There is a gradual gradation of sentience, from worms to humans, and maybe beyond.
Those more sentient beings have more intrinsic moral value, because they have a greater sense of want, pain, pleasure, suffering, and satisfaction.

We can say that at least the average human may have greater moral value than the average non-human of a certain species, let's say mice (since they're commonly used in research).
It's much harder to quantify, though. And we also have to look at the effects of each individual human. Some humans may be more or less harmful, thus having side-effects from removing or adding them to the world. That does not speak to their intrinsic moral worths, but it does speak to the overall moral value of an action that affects them.

I also wonder if by categorizing humans in such a way, defining humans as inherently superior, by default other being are inferior and this relationship of superior vs inferior is a fixed relationship. It affixes a value to human beings. We become a quantifiable, measurable, commodity. We lose our transcendence and all other beings also lose their transcendence.

Absolutely. This is spot on. It's also a feature, not a bug.

By being unable to quantify moral value, you lose the ability to say it's worse to kill a million people than it is to kill one. You lose the ability to justify the killing of the world's most wicked, or the protection of the most innocent, no matter the cost.

The "transcendence" you speak of is a nice idea, but it's not a functional idea in reality, and neither is it based on anything empirical or rational -- it's just an assertion, and if you try to justify it, it veers quickly into woo.

We can no longer become more than the sum or our parts.

The correct quote is:

"The whole is other than the sum of its parts."
http://www.intropsych.com/ch04_senses/w ... parts.html

I'm not sure how that's relevant.
But clearly systems have interacting pieces that form larger information structures.

A computer is also "more" than the sum of its mechanical parts in that sense, because it also contains information.

We become like stones and rocks: inanimate objects with a strictly defined definition. In a way destroying all living beings and turning everything to nothing more than bits and pieces. So what I am saying, from a purely philosophical standpoint, not scientific (obviously), is that: by defining yourself as a superior being, you inadvertently destroyed all mankind.

This is very much what theists say when you tell them they don't have magical ghosts inside them and that their god doesn't exist and didn't create them for a special purpose.

I'm sorry if you feel that makes life meaningless, but we are material in nature. We are also information systems; we are not rocks.
We can think and process information, we can learn, we have wants, and we can even (sometimes) reflect. Our lives can be rife with meaning and great significance if we allow them to be, and don't get caught up in the Materialism-blues.

Please somebody let John Dow know there's a reply for him here. (thanks!)