Philosophical Vegan Forum

brimstoneSalad wrote: In the same sense, the human blood on your hands for each steak you eat can also be calculated.
This isn't some abstract agent acting outside of the bounds of your control. It's your choice to drive rather than take public transit or bike, and it's your choice to eat meat rather than plants. You make these choices for convenience and personal pleasure, and the consequence is that there is blood on your hands for doing it.
If you in any way consider human death and suffering a bad thing, you have to acknowledge that, all other things being equal, a person who for purposes of pleasuring and convenience his or herself consumes more fossil fuels and eats more meat is a worse person based on a value system as described.

Third, your pleasure, in exchange for the suffering and death of other human beings. If you think that's a good trade in principle, then you're a bad person, indulging in the same excuse a pedophile may use to cause suffering to children to get his orgasm on.
Anybody can arbitrarily rank the importance of their own personal pleasure as infinitely more important than anybody else's suffering; any "moral" system that permits that is inherently broken -- it is not a true system at all, because in order to be a system it must restrict actions to consistency within its parameters, if those parameters are infinite, arbitrary, or undefined that simply does not work.
It's not a good thing to harm others to gratify yourself -- you won't understand that concept, though, it's a little too high level for you.
So, I'll dumb it down even more and grant the moronic assumption that a hedonistic prerogative has positive moral value:
What you're doing is much worse and even more irrational than just that, because you're completely ignoring the fact that you could get pleasure doing something else entirely, and causing much less harm.

Let's do a thought experiment in attempt to make you less ignorant (which I expect won't work, but I have to try):

There are two cakes, equally available, accessible, edible, etc. (every pragmatic consideration)
Cake A and cake B are also equally delicious and pleasurable to eat in every way. (every hedonistic one)
Cake A is attached to a pressure mechanism, such that when you lift it to take it, it will kill a million children. (assume this is not a good thing)
Cake B is not attached to any such mechanism, and will harm nobody.
You can choose to take one cake, the other will be destroyed (and any pressure mechanisms diffused without triggering if they have not already been triggered by your choice of cake).
You estimate, in your perversely inflated sense of self-importance, that the pleasure you will receive from eating one of the cakes is greater than the minor misfortune of killing a million children.

Which cake should you eat?

According to your twisted sense of reasoning and mathematical incompetence, it doesn't matter, since your pleasure exceeds the wrong of killing the million children, so cake A and B would both be fine (in both cases, according to you, you are doing a GOOD thing by eating the cake and pleasuring yourself, so whichever you elect you are a clearly a cake eating saint).
Anybody with half a brain and the capability to reason, however, can understand that given the option, eating cake A would be WRONG because cake B will provide the same pleasure while harming nobody (so overall, much greater good).

Can you understand even that basic concept?
If not, you're probably completely hopeless.

I'm going to address this diatribe before I move to what will likely be my final point unless we keep arguing this one:

You are still, STILL, basing your assumption that I am a bad person and that my actions are bad that what you think are "good" and "bad" are statements of fact. As in, what you believe is "bad" IS, factually speaking, "bad". You claim I don't understand that it's bad, but that isn't true - I object to the very idea that anything is objectively "bad" or "good". It is all in the mind of whomever assigns those values. Good and bad are only defined within your mind. If I don't think something is bad, on what grounds do you have to say I'm wrong other than your own moral compass, which is as arbitrary as mine? Because there isn't one.

You overrate consistency - there is nothing consistent about the arbitrary. Consistent moral theories are all well and good, but since they too are based on arbitrary axioms they have no more objective value than any other non-consistent moral compass.

So is it bad to harm others to pleasure oneself? Well, from your point of view yes. From the view of a sociopath he has no empathy for human suffering, so he doesn't really see such events as negative, and won't care. For him, it isn't bad. You can sit there and tell him it's bad all you want, his mind tells him otherwise and you won't get him to care. And as for me? Well as you point out below I do in fact have a "double standard" as it were, as in I'm willing to accept any environmental damage that cannot be mitigated from the meat industry if it means people get to eat meat. And I know most people, even the ones who houses, as you say, might be washed away, would agree. They eat it too. The last thing on anyone's agenda to stop climate change is going to be getting rid of the meat industry. Argument from majority is a fallacy, but I'm simply pointing out that this "hypocrisy" is widespread, mostly unconsciously. The idea of not eating meat to most of the world is utterly baffling and they won't do it. It doesn't matter if you don't think it makes sense.

OneQuestion wrote: We want meat - and no amount of environmental damage is going to stop us from getting it.

Don't worry about what other people do, that's not your responsibility. You are responsible for YOUR actions. You could stop eating meat now, today, if you gave a shit about other human beings. But you don't.

OneQuestion wrote: Could it clean up it's act sometimes? Yeah, it could, and should.

Why should it? You don't care.
If you did, you'd stop eating it now, and then pick back up eating it only if and when it "cleaned up its act". A lot of vegans are actually in that position, boycotting animal products until there's a way to produce them ethically. That's how economics work. Unless you make that kind of commitment, you're fully responsible for all of the harm you're doing to get your jollies (when you know FULL WELL you could easily get jollies doing something much less destructive, which I ALSO mentioned in my first post and that you ignored).

OneQuestion wrote:It is perfectly possible to raise livestock without damaging the environment in any unmanagable way.

Hurr durr, and it's perfectly possible to wage war with teleportation guns that upload the enemy soldier into a computer matrix internment camp with the luxuries of a five star hotel to wait for the war to be over instead of killing them.
Therefore war is good and we should support it and not feel guilty about killing people!? YAY!!!?

What kind of moronic argument is that supposed to be, exactly?
This is one of the stupidest things I've seen on the internet, congratulations.

Speculating on some bizarre science fictional future technology or infrastructure that doesn't currently exist in no way changes the current situation, or your culpability for the harm done by the current system which you wholeheartedly support.

OneQuestion wrote:Game theory has nothing to do with moral axioms. "Win-win" behaviour is only objectively good if we agree on what a "win" is.

You missed the point. I will school you on this later, assuming you can prove you have enough functioning brain cells to understand everything above, and the honesty to admit your mistakes.

OneQuestion wrote:I know exactly what Nihilism is [...]

You don't understand what you're talking about. As I said, if you prove you can understand what I have already explained and have the honesty to admit your mistakes, we can move onto this topic, and those like it.

OneQuestion wrote:I guess I should have addressed the environmental argument for veganism, but the fact is that the world itself proves most people are willing to accept possible environmental damage if it means they get to eat meat.

I repeat, it's not just "possible", that's incredibly ignorant.

Also, it's irrelevant what the world does. Stop worrying about what other people are doing beyond your control. Whether or not YOU are a good person is about what YOU choose to do.

The world might fuck itself anyway, but what you can do is choose whether or not you're going to be one of the dicks.

OneQuestion wrote:We don't NEED to damage the environment to do so,

Then don't. Help invent the magnificent technology that will produce green meat. And go vegan until it's ready to start churning out sustainable meat.

OneQuestion wrote:but the point is that just because the industry does cause some environmental damage does not mean that people would be better off going vegan - because they value eating meat as well, very much so in fact.

I have already covered this. Something you don't seem to grasp is that the people who are suffering the consequences are not the ones eating the vast majority of the meat.

It's not one person going "Oh no, it is le hot. But oh the meat is yummy, so it's worth having to walk across the room and turn on the air conditioning."

It's one person going "Oh god fuck no my house is gone and I'm drowning in this flood, and starving from the fall of local government and agricultural infrastructure, and dying of cholera, who is doing this?"
And another person going "Oh meat is yummy, crank up the AC, change the channel the news is depressing."

You're the latter fucker.
The only consequences rich apathetic fuckers like you will probably see will be economic, where stuff gets a bit more expensive but you can still afford it. You might have to live in a smaller house, because real-estate will go a little crazy. Also, you won't be able to travel, since the borders to a lot of countries will be closed. It may actually get pretty shitty (like World War shortages shitty), but otherwise, you'll just change the channel and ignore billions of people suffering and dying the in developing countries and the third world.

But that's OK, because who cares about poor brown people. Certainly not you, you have better things to worry about like complaining about these fucking vegans trying to make you feel bad for eating steak just because it's killing stupid poor brown people. Man, what a drag.
Whatever, you don't care, and that's your ultimate checkmate "you can't argue with this" rebuttal.

I already admitted above my hypocrisy on this point. Yes, not eating meat would help the environment. I don't care. So if you want to put it that way, YES, I VALUE EATING MEAT MORE THAN PEOPLE WHO MAY/WILL BE KILLED AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS. You see this as bad, I'm am perfectly fine with it. Hypocritical given that I generally value human life? Selective? Yes, affirmative, roger roger. Own it, love it. Not ashamed at all.

Trying to find consistency in things that are arbitrary like morality is a fruitless exercise.

Well, we're making a little bit of progress, but not much.

First, stop trying to bring up moral relativism, or that you don't believe moral propositions represent true objective positions. I know you think that.
I'm asking you to assume a particular axiom for the sake of argument, and participate in a thought experiment within that context. Can you understand that concept?

I need you to reply to the cake scenario. If you want, I'll switch it around to make it easier for you to understand the concept of a thought experiment, and even bold the important assumptions:

There are two cakes, equally available, accessible, edible, etc. (every pragmatic consideration)
Cake A and cake B are also equally delicious and pleasurable to eat in every way. (every hedonistic one)
Cake A is attached to a pressure mechanism, such that when you lift it to take it, it will kill a million children. (assume this IS a good thing)
Cake B is not attached to any such mechanism, and will harm nobody.
You can choose to take one cake, the other will be destroyed (and any pressure mechanisms diffused without triggering if they have not already been triggered by your choice of cake).
You estimate, in your perversely inflated sense of self-importance, that any minor discomfort you will receive from killing a million children is less than the good that would be done by ridding the world of those vermin.

Given those assumptions which I have provided, Which cake should you eat?

This is not a challenging problem. You even indicated before an understanding that certain conclusions actually follow from certain axioms, but now you seem confused by it.
Before we consider moving on, I need to confirm that you aren't a complete moron, or there's no point in discussing these things with you.

OneQuestion wrote:You overrate consistency - there is nothing consistent about the arbitrary. Consistent moral theories are all well and good, but since they too are based on arbitrary axioms they have no more objective value than any other non-consistent moral compass.

You don't understand what I mean by consistency. This is important to understand.
I'm talking about logical internal consistency; the lack of contradictions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion
Chances are, you even reject the validity of logic, and consistent axiomatic systems like mathematics.

This is incredibly easy to understand if you have two properly functioning brain cells to rub together.
When an axiomatic system is internally consistent, it can come to conclusions based on those axioms.
When an axiomatic system is logically inconsistent, it produces contradictions, and those contradictions "explode", invalidating any conclusions the system creates.

A moral system is an axiomatic system.
Like mathematics -- we make certain axiomatic assumptions or proclamations about what operators mean and how they work (+, -, /, etc.), and about numbers, and how they work, and if they are consistent, the system is valid.

If you're a relativist, you can try to start with whatever 'moral' axioms you want:

Assume saving human life is good.
Assume killing children is good.
Assume all green things are evil and it's good to destroy them.
Assume the only good in the universe is maximizing the number of rocking chairs.
Assume the only good is producing pleasure for yourself.

Take any assumptions you want. Take a mixture of assumptions, and rank them in importance, or give them relative weights. Try to create a consistent system (internally consistent, not necessarily consistent with others), and then it actually is a system.
If it's inconsistent, it's incoherent, and it's incapable of actually producing conclusions from its rules -- it is no longer a system.

Are you capable of understanding that concept, or are you too stupid to have conversations with adults?

If it's the latter, you have no business pretending to put on your big boy pants and making philosophical sounding noises.
If it's the former, and you can understand that concept, and you're capable of correctly understanding the cake example above (and in my prior post), then you may actually have the prerequisite brain power to engage in this subject.

OneQuestion wrote:So is it bad to harm others to pleasure oneself? Well, from your point of view yes. From the view of a sociopath he has no empathy for human suffering, so he doesn't really see such events as negative, and won't care. For him, it isn't bad.

If this weren't so pathetic, it would be cute. Like a five year old trying to explain space ships to a NASA engineer.

I know more about moral relativism than you do, and the fact that you don't even understand that we're not even discussing that subject at the moment is very telling.

OneQuestion wrote:And I know most people, even the ones who houses, as you say, might be washed away, would agree.

First, you don't know that. If they were properly informed, they may decide differently as many vegans already have.

And second, if you think you've discovered that people can behave irrationally and self-destructively, meth addicts might also agree that doing meth is worth being poor, homeless, jobless, stealing from people, losing teeth, having sores all over their faces, and dying a very early death; shouldn't you go join in on the fun?

This is irrelevant. And you know it's irrelevant. Other people behaving like idiots isn't an excuse to be an idiot yourself.

OneQuestion wrote:Argument from majority is a fallacy, but I'm simply pointing out that this "hypocrisy" is widespread, mostly unconsciously.

Yes, it is a fallacy, and none of that matters. Not one jot.

Fundamentalist Muslims probably won't stop killing people for Allah. Why don't you go join them?

OneQuestion wrote:The idea of not eating meat to most of the world is utterly baffling and they won't do it.

No, it isn't. When people are informed, they largely understand and sympathize -- many even try.

Ten percent of the population were vegetarian at one time, which indicates that they understand some of the concept. In most cases, social pressure, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc. compounded with lack of availability of convenient healthy vegan food, pushed them back to eating meat.
And most of the population don't even know half of this stuff.

It's a bit of a catch 22 -- many people only won't go vegetarian because it's 'too hard', and it's 'too hard' because more people aren't vegetarian so there's less availability and more peer pressure against it.
There's a certain critical mass of both information and social acceptance that's necessary. We've seen it very recently with, for example, gay rights in the states. It's something that takes a very big push to overcome.

There will always be psychopaths, and people like you who value their personal pleasure over preventing suffering to others. You really are in the minority there; most people feel bad about it when they understand what's going on.
Most people, when presented with the information, can understand that it doesn't make sense to eat meat.
Even you can apparently understand a little of that.

OneQuestion wrote: YES, I VALUE EATING MEAT MORE THAN PEOPLE WHO MAY/WILL BE KILLED AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS.

I need you to confirm that you know that:

1. Meat is unhealthy, and that this is not controversial (fish is more of a matter of debate, but there is consensus that tetrapod meat is unhealthy).

2. There are plant based meats which are healthier, more environmentally sustainable, and if prepared correctly are indistinguishable from animal meats.

OneQuestion wrote: You see this as bad, I'm am perfectly fine with it.

No, YOU would see this as bad IF you actually valued human life as you claimed.
The reason you are fine with it, is because you do not in fact value human life. You value your personal whims, habit, and steadfast position of carnism as a point of faith.
This is a matter of ego for you, you identify irrationally as a "meat eater", and though the world burn you will not change. You value your ego. You do not value human life.

OneQuestion wrote: Hypocritical given that I generally value human life?

Hypocritical given your claim to value human life.

You probably don't actually know what hypocrisy means:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy

That is to say, you are lying (to others, and maybe to yourself), and you do not actually value human life.
The idea that you value human life is a fabrication, a fiction that you maintain.
It may make you feel uncomfortable when you see humans suffering in front of you. Most people don't like to watch bugs get squished either and see the guts fly everywhere, it looks gross. That's not the same as legitimately valuing something.

OneQuestion wrote: Trying to find consistency in things that are arbitrary like morality is a fruitless exercise.

Only if you're a moron.

We can get to this, and I will show you how fruitful it can be, if you will prove you aren't a complete moron.

1. Respond to the cake thought experiment.
2. Correct your views on what consistency means.
3. Confirm that you understand meat is unhealthy.
4. Confirm you understand that there are equally delicious and more nutritious plant based meats available.

Reply acceptably to these points four, and about moral relativism can we finally discuss more.

If you have trouble understanding objective morality, you may want to watch this lecture by Sam Harris: http://youtu.be/sTKf5cCm-9g

it's somewhat atheism focused, but it gets the basic principles across quite well in my opinion.

Incidentally regarding Sam Harris' book, the same chap on the skeptic vegan discussion group on fb had this to say:

"
Unfortunately in writing his book Sam Harris didn't feel it necessary to study moral philosophy at all, or to publish with a peer-review publisher. He has an unfortunate disdain for scholarly methods and processes. His theory, utilitarianism, is actually one that was first proposed a couple of hundred years ago, and there has been quite a lot of work in moral theory in the last couple of hundred years, so Harris's book not only lacks anything original but also contains a host of errors that a little familiarity with the subject matter would have avoided. It's similar to a book on the nature of physics by a person with a BSc in chemistry who doesn't read any physics in preparation for writing but just works some stuff out in their head, and comes out with something that's like Newtonian physics but with lots of errors (the difference being that Newtonian physics is universally accepted, but utilitarianism isn't).

For an argument for Harris's conclusion that is actually well-informed and well-worked out, I recommend J. S. Mill's 'Utilitarianism', published in 1861 as a series of magazine articles. It's only 70 pages, is easy to read, and has been hugely influential, not only within philosophy, but in public policy and society at large. There are a lot of problems with Mill's theory, but it's still very relevant and is immeasurably superior to Harris's version. I think Julia Driver's 'Ethics: The Fundamentals' is the best short introduction (on ethics)"

https://www.facebook.com/groups/skepticvegan/?fref=ts

garrethdsouza wrote:Incidentally regarding Sam Harris' book, the same chap on the skeptic vegan discussion group on fb had this to say:

His theory, utilitarianism, is actually one that was first proposed a couple of hundred years ago, and there has been quite a lot of work in moral theory in the last couple of hundred years, so Harris's book not only lacks anything original but also contains a host of errors that a little familiarity with the subject matter would have avoided.

What he proposes is consequentialism, not utilitarianism. I am not as well-versed as brimstone on the differences, but they exist. I am not convinced the writer knows what he's talking about.

He seemed pretty well read, he had an MA in metaethics and pursuing a PhD in the field. I've heard similar responses to this particular work by Sam Harris from others as well. I dont know if this is Harris' field/specialty (he has a PhD in cognitive neuroscience) and I'm not convinced he's an expert on the topic.

garrethdsouza wrote:He seemed pretty well read, he had an MA in metaethics and pursuing a PhD in the field.

You should invite him here to discuss it.

Also, see my reply here: https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... 8444#p8444

miniboes wrote:If you have trouble understanding objective morality, you may want to watch this lecture by Sam Harris: http://youtu.be/sTKf5cCm-9g

It's a great lecture, and I agree with Sam for the most part (although not always on word usage), but Harris does not do a very good job of substantiating his premises. Sam is coming at it from a more scientific perspective, and more just accepts that as a semantic given.

See the question at 1:08:11
That's the kind of thing this poster would reject.

I'll get into it if "OneQuestion" proves he isn't a complete moron by correctly answering the four points I put to him at the end of my reply to him. If not, we can discuss it among ourselves in another thread.

miniboes wrote: What he proposes is consequentialism, not utilitarianism. I am not as well-versed as brimstone on the differences, but they exist. I am not convinced the writer knows what he's talking about.

Correct, and I don't think he has any idea what he's talking about. My guess (although it's not completely clear from what I've read), is that he's a stuck up Academic pseudophilosopher who wouldn't know logic if he got run over by it, and doesn't understand the first thing about science. But, maybe he'll come here to clarify his points, I could be mistaking him.

You are correct, I will not argue. Your choices cause suffering of animal victims and you do not care. People like you are the majority and there are few laws protecting animals. So we vegans wish to change the legal situation. In the past few hundred years, paedophilia, slavery and other forms of cruelty have become illegal in the west. Illegality does not prevent these practices, of course, but it does reduce the acceptance and occurrence.

Welcome mserror! You should post an intro.

mserror wrote:You are correct, I will not argue.

Actually, he has a number of factual misconceptions, and is operating on several logical fallacies. Those can be corrected.
If you follow the thread, you can see that his argument has changed to include that he doesn't even care about human suffering.

mserror wrote:Your choices cause suffering of animal victims and you do not care. People like you are the majority and there are few laws protecting animals.

I think people who pretend to care about animal suffering, but rationalize meat consumption, are the majority -- at least in the West.

mserror wrote:So we vegans wish to change the legal situation.

Well, the way to do that would probably be through democracy. So, we do need to rely on the majority's acceptance. Which is a good thing that the majority at least superficially support animal welfare, even if they cause the vast majority of animal suffering as a matter of hedonistic preference without admitting it.