Philosophical Vegan Forum

James wrote: If we cannot make people happier by any appreciable amount except by global improvements in our way of life, why then should happiness have any esteem in a system of ethics?

Global improvements? What do you mean?

If we can make others happier, even if it takes "global improvements", that is an important goal. I don't see the relevance of something being "global" though. Please clarify.

James wrote: If anything you do for another person, including getting them out of situations where their basic rights are in jeopardy can be nullified by the fact that they would not be happier in the long term, then this wide framed ethics becomes a very passive set of guidelines.

"Rights" I don't know what you're talking about. I don't believe in basic rights. These are social and political constructs which exist to serve an end -- and not always a good end -- and are not necessarily correlated to anybody's happiness.
The only "rights" I would advocate are those that would actually serve to make the world a better place by reducing suffering and increasing happiness, and more specifically reducing violation of sentient will.
So, by nature, if a "right" is not useful to that end, I don't advocate it.

I think you may have mixed up my criticism of Randian 'Objectivism' with my position.

There are many things required for happiness. Getting somebody out of prison only to enter into debt and be locked into a tedious job and unhappy marriage may not be in itself productive. But that's like saying that if your goal is baking a cake, there's no point in tilling the soil and planting wheat, since that won't in itself give you a cake.
It is a step in the right direction that is important. The combination of steps does have an effect, even if we may not see it on the grand scale in our lifetimes, we share in the responsibility of the collective harm and good we do.

James wrote: Not adhered to for the benefit of you and the people around you but for those wide social groups, again neglecting the individual.

I don't know what you're saying here.

James wrote: First of all I know animals behave happier when in open environments, but if we analogize animals in poor environments with prisoners, you get a similar set of qualities. Both are deprived of stimuli, but only in scarce cases is this deprivation to an extent where it imposes on those basic rights

Again with the rights... I don't know what you're talking about. If it impedes happiness and causes misery, if it violates the wills of sentient beings, I have a problem with it. Otherwise, if it doesn't meaningfully violate the wills of those beings, it's not a problem.
If you lock an animal in a small space, it tends to make that animal miserable. Once the space becomes a certain size, the effect of that confinement is reduced drastically, and then there are diminishing returns for additional space. This varies greatly by species.

James wrote:both are bored and frequently tightly confined, both show signs of lethargy, but the human has normalized the situation and is approximately equally happy to his free counterparts.

I don't quite agree with that, although human prisoners have it a lot better than the non-human animals we use. I don't think they're as happy as they could be free, except that free humans also tend to be incompetent and get locked into debt and addiction, which is another form of imprisonment.

If it's actually true that free people are only equally happy, I think that's a bigger commentary on the general unhappiness of people.

James wrote:Don't get me wrong I'll argue for better zoo habitats if only for the more natural representation of the animal but you seem to think the plateau of happiness happens much further in than I do.

You might want to look into the stress exhibited by these confined animals that is not exhibited in an open environment with more stimulation.
As I said originally, misery is an exception, wherein returns on increased goods are quite reasonable -- these returns do make animals (humans and non) happier. It is the point beyond satisfaction where the returns are diminished. I think you're setting this plateau very low.

Take the typical big cat enclosure. Multiply the size by ten, and you might halve the anxiety. Multiply it by a hundred, and then you might cut it down to a quarter.
The largest space one might reasonably expect them to need to feel as comfortable as they can is that they have in the wild:

Wikipedia wrote:The size of the home range mainly depends on prey abundance, and, in the case of males, on access to females. A tigress may have a territory of 20 km2 (7.7 sq mi), while the territories of males are much larger, covering 60 to 100 km2 (23 to 39 sq mi). The range of a male tends to overlap those of several females, providing him with a large field of prospective mating partners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger#Biol ... _behaviour

They might not need that much, but we can't really make assumptions. It's an empirical question with an empirical answer. The current arrangement is miserable, though, and results is ongoing anxiety and pacing in the confined area. Even tiny increases can decrease misery substantially.

James wrote:People getting used to things is the justification for atrocities, and should not factor in to our decision making.

You can get used to being miserable to an extent, but that doesn't make you happy. That's not what I was saying.
I'm saying material input increases happiness only up to a certain point, at which point it has diminishing returns and plateaus.

That point at which the returns start diminishing is by it's nature not atrocious.
It's a point of being satisfied.

Saltier, fattier, sweeter food won't make you happy.
A gigantic mansion won't make you happy.
100 supermodel mistresses won't make you happy.
A billion dollars in your bank account won't make you happy.

But in order to be happy, there are certain minimum things that do have an effect, and the very low end of material good and physical satisfaction with life.

We need clean water.
We need a safe place to sleep.
We need to neither be extremely cold nor extremely hot.
We need enough food to be healthy.
We need a little variety in food (not exactly the same thing every meal). That doesn't mean we need zebra meat, shark fins, tiger gallbladders and rhinoceros horns: it can be as simple as meaning different spices, or a mix of salty and sweet dishes, a hand full of different fruits and veggies to mix and match. The need for variety has sharply diminishing returns.
We need something meaningful to keep us occupied.
We need a certain level of emotional engagement with others.
Some people argue that we need sex.

What is on this list is another empirical matter, although it is up for debate.
No rational person seriously believes we need meat to be happy, though.

These are basic things, not rights, which are needed to achieve a certain level of satisfaction -- beyond which, more material goods will not make a person happier.

James wrote:A position I no longer stand by, though it hasn't lead me to want to abolish all the animal industry, merely to reform it and cut off the more egregious ends, indeed making it a smaller industry.

I hope you see, most of us are saying that same thing.
There are many vegans who will eat meat when it becomes ethical and sustainable.
In that sense, it's a very appropriate boycott. I hope you will consider joining in that, until such a time as those products are actually available.

The reforms required would be radical, and are unlikely to be seen any time soon (they would be too expensive for the meat to be affordable for most people). The more likely form of ethical and sustainable meat will be bioreacted meat. We may start seeing some in the next five years (cheese will probably come first).

https://realvegancheese.org/
I don't know if they'll make it to market or not, but it's one of the simplest processes.

James wrote:Objective morality became relevant when people made claims like:

brimstoneSalad wrote:You don't have to draw any lines. The more accurate approach is a gradient of increasing moral value based on degree of sentience.

I could be quick to claim that the gradation is no better than a distinct line.

We are not left completely stranded. There are reasonable methods to arrive at some kind of comparison.
When looking at sentience, we can see that it is reliant on processing power towards the intelligence involved in decision making, and that's something that is crudely measurable.
We can look at brain activity scans, comparing deep thought against being idle, we can look at oxygen consumption while thinking, we can consider volume, and number of neurons, and number of nerve connections, and proficiency at solving certain cognitive tasks. We can break thought down into different types of process, such as metacognition, and look at the degree to which these are expressed.

It's relatively easier to determine overall ranking, but it's harder to normalize that scale. That does not mean it's as useless or arbitrary as a distinct line.
The important upgrade is recognizing degrees of importance, and general ranking, regardless of the scale used. Only the worst possible scale of normalization is equivalent to an arbitrary line.

Currently, we're dealing with large error bars, and dealing with matters of scale.

Is a fish is 1, a chicken 2, a cow 4 and a human 8?
Or is a fish 1, a chicken 8, a cow 64, and a human 512?
Or what?

Locating two reference points along that line, however, can help establish a precedent and ensure consistency in application.

James wrote:Unfortunately, extreme ideologies also get equal treatment under subjective morality as well, and even nihilistic and religious morality claims hold the same sway, although it seems an easy chore to apply a psuedo-Occam's Razor to the more contradictory or random ideas. (It does not however cleanse complicated systems, for obvious reasons.)

That's how you narrow things down and gain knowledge of objective morality.
It is a process of elimination.

We know the religious bullshit is out, and we have to base it on scientific knowledge of actual reality, which is the only reliable knowledge we have.
On the same lines, we know this must involve some form of consequentialism, since deontology is incoherent at its foundation.
We know it must involve concern for the other, in order to have any meaning (selfishness as morality is semantically incoherent).
We know that concern must reflect actual wants, in order for it to be non-arbitrary.
We know actual wants derive only from sentience.

That gets you very close, and any system based on those premises will agree on an awful lot. Those are the blacks and whites of morality. Where we fall in the error bars still, for imprecise scientific knowledge or uncertainty in philosophical application, that's our grey area.
Those are shrinking all of the time, with advances in science and philosophy.

James wrote:I can define my morality any way I want so long as it is contradiction free or qualifies the importance of each contradictory value

It must also be non-arbitrary. Arbitrarily declaring lists of values is consistent with whim, not morality; the two are distinct.
What you're talking about is contriving a blue-orange 'moral' system based on random assertions that just happen not to contradict each other; that doesn't make it a moral system.
It's a system, yes, but not a moral one; all you're doing is codifying whim. The distinction is semantic, sure, but also essential.
Here's the brunt of why: when you form an arbitrary system, you lose all ability to criticize others who are doing the same thing.

This is the critique we leveled against Matt Dillahunty in part two of the letter:
https://theveganatheist.com/an-open-let ... illahunty/
Scroll down past the videos, to Point 2.

It's something most people didn't understand.

Basically, at best what you're defining as objective morality here (in creating an arbitrary system for yourself), is the act of following any arbitrary system that happens not to contradict itself.
You lose the ability to criticize fundamentalists, for example, who may happen to be consistent in their atrocious behavior.

The example given:

You can't criticize rapists for behaving immorally, because for their own personal morality, rape is acceptable (as long as they are consistent).
Or if you do call the rapist immoral, you have to admit that is only your opinion and not objectively true, and that the rapist is equally right to call you immoral for not raping, or for wearing shoes, or for whatever his opinion is.
You're both right and/or wrong equally, as long as you're both consistent.

You may see how this causes morality to lose all meaning and utility as a concept.

In order for a moral system to be in any way useful for evaluating the behavior of others or useful in a society at large is for it to be objective and non-arbitrary.
This is why arbitrary systems can and must be ruled out.

James wrote:it is in fact necessary for me to draw arbitrary lines if what I (and I suspect many of you) believe to be true of objective morality.

Not at all.
If it's legitimately objective (or at all useful), that means it's NOT arbitrary. By its very nature, it forbids arbitrary lines.
I hope I explained well enough why the gradient of value is not the same as an arbitrary line.
It does permit uncertainty, however, as I mentioned. We can know objective morality, but not know it as precisely as we would like. It may have error bars without being arbitrary.

James wrote:In deals of philosophy you CAN have it both ways so long as your statement is contradiction free.

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?

"Gradiation is no better than a distinct line"
Wrong. It is better.

"hasn't led me to want to abolish the animal industry, merely reform it"
I personally don't see much of a distinction between the two viewpoints. (Reform vs. Abolishment) Because:
1) that makes us on the same side. Welcome to animal rights! *shakes hand* Glad this board was able to have converted you.
2) If animal reform hasn't yet been adequately attained then you're stuck being vegan until it does. (And going vegan promotes animal rights anyway, rather than opposes it, since why would a community of non-vegans ever, ever talk about animal rights, until one of them comes out as vegan)
3) Whether you are a reformist or an abolitionist it means drastically changing your purchase habits in regards to food. (e.g. only buying the most ethical animal product, reading the label of everything you buy, etc) If you think animal rights matter, debating any further is unnecessary and just comes down to useless ideology and hypothetical mental images.

"Why should that system extend to certain groups?"
Before we were born, we were the same as the animals we torture before they were born. We were therefore lucky for being born human. We shouldn't treat our humanity as a justification to exploit animals because our human status was not something we ever deserved. Otherwise by that logic it is justifiable to opress woman and minorities. "But zeello, distinction between human and animals much?" Wrong. There was no distinction before we were born. Someone didn't choose to be human any more than they chose their race or gender, place of birth or time period.
Furthermore, if evolution is true then most if not all sentient animals are dumb humans. So, from an objective standpoint it is no better harming animals than it would be to harm a human peer since the first hand experience of the victim is identical either way. When you're under the knife, and your social status as human being and citizen is no longer there to protect you, you become the animal.
Lastly, if aliens came to this planet would you rather they make peace with us and/or protect us, or would you rather they enslave us, use us for animal testing and meat.

"I can define morality any way I want to"
These discussions are a diversion. You're trying to come up with exactly the right moral system for excusing the slaughter business, and you will try as many times as it takes. What's the use in a vegan trying to debate this.

When building your system of morality, rather than starting with the menu and working from there, why not think about whether you would personally do to animals every thing an animal has been subjected to in the name of business. And if the answer is no then why would it be different if others do it on your behalf, as if that makes it any different in the least from a moral standpoint. (From a moral standpoint, read that as "if you were the victim")

zeello wrote: Before we were born, we were the same as the animals we torture. We were therefore lucky for being born human.
Furthermore, if evolution is true then most if not all sentient animals are dumb humans. So, from an objective standpoint it is no better harming animals than it would be to harm a human peer since the first hand experience of the victim is identical either way. When you're under the knife, and your social status as human being and citizen is no longer there to protect you, you become the animal.

That was a little strange.

If you mean we were nothing before we were born, the same as non-human animals also being nothing before they were born?
Luck doesn't really have anything to do with it. The argument sounds very much like the presupposition of a soul or some kind of eternal self.

We are what we are -- who we are -- because we were made that way by our experiences. We couldn't have been something else, because then we wouldn't be us.

Evolution doesn't hold that all sentient animals are dumb humans; I'm not sure where you got that impression.
The quality of sentience, though, results in a certain inherent aspect of shared experience, since experience is a product of sentience, and in that regard we are the same.
Though there is a substantial difference in resolution of that experience. I wouldn't call that identical. Same general image, but one is very blurry, while one may be much more crisp.

zeello wrote:Lastly, if aliens came to this planet would you rather they make peace with us and/or protect us, or would you rather they enslave us, use us for animal testing and meat.

Some people actually insist that it would be the aliens' right to do the latter, if we were an inferior species. Disturbing.

zeello wrote:What's the use in a vegan trying to debate this.

None, unless you're willing to take a stand on the correct system of morality.
https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... ?f=7&t=785

That's one of the reasons why this whole deontology vs. consequentialism debate is so important. If there is no correct system of morality, then there's no argument to be made. But if there is, you can use reason to show people why their arbitrary moral systems are wrong.

I want to stop posting in this thread because I feel like I'm coming on too strong, that or embarrassing the forum with my weird views.

Like I said, nobody argued me into becoming vegan, I did it completely on my own, so I start to feel like a jackass after arguing with someone about it. I guess I can't help it since I seem to have strong opinions on almost everything.

this is a 5s graphic video NSFW, often the standard in the poultry industry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8-fiHHbdRs

i still don't see the moral conundrum as to how it is now a semantic exercise as to whether causing avoidable suffering should be deemed immoral or amoral. putting yourself in their persepective isnt it at least largely a no brainer that noone should have to go through this?

sure its legal does it mean its moral? speaking of moral consistency if you were a german in the time of the nazis what side do you think you would have chosen to be on, despite it all being perfectly legal and acceptable at the time?