Philosophical Vegan Forum

At the risk of ruining your day . . .

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/201 ... rotesters/

Eating animals in general is wrong, but consuming dogs is so gut-wrenchingly horrific. Dogs evolved from wolves, with human intervention, to be our companions. They want to be around us; they want to love us and us to love them. Eating them is a betrayal. (If that's speciesist, so be it.)

If there's any good news here it's that the practice of eating dogs in China seems to be on the decline. It's become an embarrassment to a country so concerned about its image abroad. Embarrassment can be the mother of change.

While I agree that it's good that demand is in recline, I do not understand why this should be so noteworthy. Here in Britain you won't find anyone who supports the consumption or killing of dogs yet won't hear a word said against meat from other animals. At the end of the day pigs, cows and dogs are all reasonably intelligent and should not have to suffer/ be eaten.

It's good to see Chinese animal welfare activists building up around this issue every year; young people in China are starting to think less about money, and more about what's right.

I think more important than the festival itself is that the fact that some people eat dogs reminds us that animals aren't food.

I often ask people if they eat dog and cat; it highlights that point.

It's understandable that the gut reaction against eating dogs and cats is stronger, but only because people keep them as pets and hold them in special favor. Once you get at where the actual difference is (say, compared to pigs, who are even more intelligent), the excuses for eating animals in general are weakened.

In the end, after shaving away all of the other excused through the socratic method, people usually either admit that eating animals is wrong, or defend their objection to eating dogs and cats as a matter of personal taste. Although in the latter case, it's sad to see people retreat from their values instead of facing their implications.

It's a fact of human nature that people care more about what's closest to them--close in both the geographic and the emotional sense. Maybe in an ideal universe our empathy would go out equally to all our fellow creatures, regardless of location or species, but in the world we're living in, people care more about the welfare of their family members than they do about strangers. So in the burning-building scenario, with a scientist on the brink of finding the cure for cancer at one end of the building and your father at the other, most people (at least I think so) would choose to rescue their father.

Dogs and cats are seen by many as family members, which is why the thought of eating them inspires such revulsion. It's almost tantamount to cannibalism. Needless to say, the vast majority of people do not feel this way about killing a chicken for food. Should they? I think there are good reasons for considering it wrong to kill both dogs and chickens, but also that the two acts are not equivalent. There is a hierarchy of value of life, if you will, with dogs and primates at a higher point on the scale than chickens, which are in turn higher than shrimp and sea scallops. That's a personal assessment--because all value judgments are ultimately personal--and reasonable people can disagree about it. My point, though, is that if we're going to develop more vegans, the way to do it is not to tell meat-eaters, "You know how you feel about eating dogs and cats? You should feel exactly the same way about eating cows and chickens!" They don't feel that way, and telling them that they should is going to drive them away.

Rather, we can urge people to extend their compassion to animals they don't necessarily relate to as strongly as they do to companion animals. Help them see that the lives of pigs and cows and chickens also deserve respect and protection, without claiming that all animal lives are equivalent. That, it seems to me, is the more workable strategic approach.

I do indeed agree that you can rationally argue for both sides. I also think that mentioning a persons feelings on eating dogs is a good way of questioning their views on other animal eating. However the problem that I have faced several times is that they just don't care :/ They aren't willing to think about the suffering of what goes into their food...

cufflink wrote:It's a fact of human nature that people care more about what's closest to them--close in both the geographic and the emotional sense.

Absolutely. And that makes it understandable as part of human nature- but no less illogical when it's used as an appeal to nature fallacy.
The guy in the other thread is doing something like that- arguing that because he feels something, it is therefore moral.

I think we can point out the logical fallacy, without failing to appreciate the human nature that lends itself to it.

cufflink wrote:So in the burning-building scenario, with a scientist on the brink of finding the cure for cancer at one end of the building and your father at the other, most people (at least I think so) would choose to rescue their father.

Certainly. And in the same sense, most would choose themselves over the scientist. Or even kill 'innocent' people to survive. This is innate to human nature, and that makes it understandable, and maybe even forgivable, but I don't think it makes it moral.

Morality is something ideological, aside from material nature, which must by its own philosophical nature be equitable, even when our natural inclinations are not to be. Although being equitable doesn't mean it's not proportional.

cufflink wrote:I think there are good reasons for considering it wrong to kill both dogs and chickens, but also that the two acts are not equivalent. There is a hierarchy of value of life, if you will, with dogs and primates at a higher point on the scale than chickens, which are in turn higher than shrimp and sea scallops. That's a personal assessment--because all value judgments are ultimately personal--and reasonable people can disagree about it.

Chickens and dogs are almost certainly not equivalent - even two individuals within chicken or dog kind wouldn't likely be perfectly equal - but it may not be so straight forward to determine which is of higher moral value.

Leaving these matters entirely to personal opinion pretty much negates their utility -- what if somebody decides that shrimp are of higher value than humans? Clearly there is a limit to what is reasonable, and in that sense, there is also an empirical basis that determines what is or is not reasonable; and if there is, then this is a matter of lack of information, not opinion.

In that case, I should think reasonable people would simply agree on that uncertainty.

Lack of information should properly be viewed as lack of precision, or uncertainty of accuracy. In other words, some provisional value, contained within error bars.

If it is not clear whether dogs or chickens are of higher value, that lack of clarity is proportional to the extent of overlap of those error bars.

The error bars of dogs and shrimp, however, do not seem to overlap. Dogs are more valuable than shrimp, and it would be difficult for reasonable people to disagree on that.

When we're dealing with things in the same order of magnitude, it's not quite as clear.

cufflink wrote: My point, though, is that if we're going to develop more vegans, the way to do it is not to tell meat-eaters, "You know how you feel about eating dogs and cats? You should feel exactly the same way about eating cows and chickens!" They don't feel that way, and telling them that they should is going to drive them away.

You ask them why they eat chickens, cows, and pigs, but not dogs and cats.

If they say they just don't like the taste, that's one thing, and you can't argue against that. You can ask them why they don't eat babies, and if they say it's because babies aren't available to eat at restaurants, then you give up.

But usually, they will make a series of logical fallacies instead, to try to qualify a fundamental difference between the different animals, and assert its moral relevance.

You don't have to tell them they should feel exactly the same way, you just have to show that it's the same general sort of thing, and there's no categorical excuse for any of it.

cufflink wrote: Help them see that the lives of pigs and cows and chickens also deserve respect and protection, without claiming that all animal lives are equivalent. That, it seems to me, is the more workable strategic approach.

I don't think I've ever said all animals are equivalent. If I have, I misspoke. I don't believe that, and never have.

I just debunk the assertions of fundamental categorical differences between types, as they are used to excuse binary moral judgments.

Argh... Joined the forum and the first thing I do, is acting as a grave-digger

Anyway, I didn't want to open a new topic, since it kinda belongs in here: Dining on Dogs in Yulin
This is the new Vice short-documentary about the topic above. The comments are as usual pretty messy.

It's a fact of human nature that people care more about what's closest to them--close in both the geographic and the emotional sense.

Absolutely. And that makes it understandable as part of human nature- but no less illogical when it's used as an appeal to nature fallacy.

/sigh, and this makes the whole topic insanely difficult to find common ground.