One week of vacation and I miss such a cool topic? Bah!
Well, I know how resistant people are when we talk about vegetarianism, so I´ll try to be as diplomatic as possible.
First of all, I´m a vegan. I became one after watching the documentary ´´earthlings´´ .
1- If you don´t see your cows and pigs being killed, then you are unconsciously treating meat as food, and cows as animals. Even if you don´t wanna be a vegetarian, try to change that in your mind.
2- I didn´t become vegan in order to feel better than others . I myself ain´t making slaughterhouses less rich by not buying burgers.
Its a matter of principles , though. Same way I dont like the fact that dogs are eaten in some countries, it makes no sense that I should eat cows in my country.
Does it mean that I´ll fight everyone ? No. But I´d like to see people choosing healthier foods and restaurants providing more non-animal products.
@Anduin: Of course I don't mind you changing the topic title. It's your topic, afterall. Yet I find it a pity how we went off-topic so quickly. I mean, have you ever had a kid in your class ask 'why do we eat meat?'. Just curious. If meat really were that bad, it wouldn't be part of the so-called 'food pyramid'. It wouldn't be advised as part of the diet by doctors, medics and food specialists. But that's just me, I guess. I mean, why not discuss rather about how kids behave in class? What they like doing and not doing? How making up rhymes is educative to their learning process? What other things they come up with while writing? Things like that. But well, if you want to adapt your topic to another debate which will likely die off in the end as there's no real conclusion to make (except maybe for people eating wht they want to eat), fine by me. It will be impossible to convert whole the world to a vegan's ideals. It simply is a dream. People will never give up their meat and fish. Simple as that.
@kitteh_on_a_cloud I understand... I too would have like to discuss the topics you mentioned, which would have all been valud... But this is where the the thread of fate took us... We could fight it...
...
But then it is just easier to start another thread.
@elminster, *singing* "Spider-pig, spider-pig, does whatever, a spider-pig does..." Now who could ever eat pig again, after walking their pet pig across their ceiling? I bet Spider-Pig will come and beat you up if you eat pigs!
I've had a long busy week, thus I had little or no time to answer, and now I'd really like to enjoy the weekend. So, I will first of all thank you for the long, detailed answer; then proceed to acknowledge only the most interesting (to me) points, hope you won't mind
Oh its coming! Its coming! I was so sure you studied a Human Science or Humanities when you said you recognised Malthus... I had to study these guys, but never have met anyone else who has! (I also had to study that *rse Marx as well...)
Actually I studied Computer Sciences so my knowledge about Malthus and Darwin comes entirely from being passionate about ecology and social issues.
I must admit, I don't think I could eat meat raw like the Aluets, but there was no wood for them to cook on so, you would be forced to. Eskimos also are forced to forgo vegetables and fruit and eat only fish and seal, however it is the fat that is important. All the goodness, vitamins and minerals is in the fat.
Interesting article, with a funny footnote: "these studies were supported in part by a research grant from the Institute of American Meat Packers"... talk about bias (Also ironically this link is in the more section, I wonder if it's just tag-based or put there on purpose)
You can definately survive, most likely with better body odour [as a vegan]
That's a common notion, but I must admit that my BO still varies significantly over what I eat. Specifically, if I eat lots of fruit I get a pleasant odour or none at all, while a lot of starch (pizza!) makes me definitely stinkier. I never paid any attention to that kind of things when I used to eat animal products, though, so I can just assume that it was even worse :P
Dark Chocolate does not have that extra creamy texture or milk, I presume you scoff Dark Choccies
Dark one - with or without hazelnuts - has always been my favourite, but if I want variety I can easily find soy/rice milk chocolate. And of course delicious Gianduja (the real one, not modern-day Nutella) is also vegan.
I think, and you have already said, you view animals as equals (as in they have an equal right to life). Killing children and killing animals are two wholly different things in my head.
I'm aware of that, but we were talking about the definition of "humane slaughter". And "slaughtering" is a term that can be applied both to human and non-human animals.
Animals are not sentient beings like humans. They do not follow rules so don't feel aggrieved when they are treated unfairly. Jealousy, outrage, anger, love and other feelings we continually, and perhaps wrongly, personify in animals. But they do not feel these emotions as they are human emotions.
That's simply not true, and everyone who has ever lived with a dog or cat can confirm that each individual has his or her own personality. Animals are definitely sentient beings, capable of emotions just as much as humans, and I'm truly amazed that someone can think otherwise.
On the other hand, I believe I am very lucky to live in such a democratic nation.
I'm sure that the fact I, on the contrary, live in such a banana republic (no offence to actual ones intended) has influenced a lot my feelings on the matter...
Becoming a vegan is NOT a personal choice. [...] And, believe it or not, it has an impact on the society much larger than any amount of lobbying.
How?
For starters, it does change other people's perception of the issue on a level that is not achieved by political discussions. And it's happening fast: five years ago I still got astonished stares every single time I said I was vegan, nowadays the most frequent reaction is along the lines of "oh, also my nephew's fiancée is" or something like that. It means that, at the very least, most people are getting in touch with the subject.
@alnair: You say that animals are capable of emotions. Then why have I never seen a real pig smile? Why are cows not jumping around from happiness in a broad piece of land with lots of healthy grass? Why have I never seen a horse cry? I wouldn't say animals are capable of emotions. I'd rather say they got instincts. A dog, for example. If he barks at you when you come home, do you really think it's out of happiness of seeing you? Maybe that bark means he is expecting food from you now. There is no way to tell. A cat purrs. But is it out of 'happiness'? Also here it is difficult to say what the purring really indicates, as purring in itself serves no purpose. Also, cats don't cry. They sometimes seem to smile, but that could just be the shape of their mouth being in a particular position. There's no real way to tell without hearing them tell us themselves they are happy. When a cat curls around your legs, is it because she likes you? Or because she knows you are the food-provider? Or maybe she is just branding you as her property by rubbing her scent on your pants. I wouldn't say animals have emotions like us humans do, rather instincts that guide them in situations such as when there is danger.
Animals don't express their emotions the same way humans do, but that doesn't mean they don't have any. There's plenty of scientific evidence about it, but if you want first-hand experiences...
My dog pees on the floor with excitement every time I come back home (once every few months). My mother gives him food, my father walks him, my brother pets him daily... yet he reacts that way only when he sees me.
I used to live with four cats. One of them was shy, one of them was lazy, one of them was a cuddler and one of them was an explorer. It was pretty clear who got along with whom, in that bunch, and who didn't.
And I did see pigs smile, having lived in a sanctuary for liberated farm animals. They smile with their eyes, which are surprisingly similar to human ones.
I would argue that animals are certainly capable of something we can reasonably call emotion, though generally there also tends to be a lot of anthropomorphizing going on (I would also point out that having emotions isn't a prerequisite for having a personality; an entity could have the latter but not the former). If nothing else, the nature of how evolution brought us here suggests that difference between more closely related species is going to be one of degree rather than of discrete cut-offs. If human babies, hardly the most cognitively overdeveloped of creatures, can be ascribed emotions, then we can reasonably do so with (adult) primates as well (whether they can be called 'sentient' or have subjective experience however, is a further question).
Having said that though, how is it relevant to the present debate? By itself, animals having (some degree of) capacity for emotion doesn't imply a moral imperative not to eat them. That requires a further argument (I haven't read the entire thread though, so I may just have missed said argument).
I would also point out that having emotions isn't a prerequisite for having a personality; an entity could have the latter but not the former
Can you expand on that? How can someone have a personality without feeling differently about different things?
whether they can be called 'sentient' or have subjective experience however, is a further question
In the EU at least, that question has been legally answered once and for all by the Lisbon Treaty. Side note: as I already said before in this thread, I don't care if something is legal or not. I'm just pointing out that the debate at issue has already took place in more "serious" places. (Also, I would like to underline that I don't agree with the main concern of the site I took that link from, i.e. having more compassionate farmers. In my opinion, animals shouldn't be bred at all.)
By itself, animals having (some degree of) capacity for emotion doesn't imply a moral imperative not to eat them. That requires a further argument
My point is just that it's wrong to harm other sentient beings for selfish reasons. And since eating animals is not necessary for us to survive, I believe it falls in the "selfish reasons" category.
Can you expand on that? How can someone have a personality without feeling differently about different things?
Because, at least in my view, the personality of someone/something refers to his/her/its characteristic patterns of behaviour and such, not necessarily the psychology (if any) behind it. I could observe that different kittens in a litter exhibit distinct personalities, with necessarily being committed to the claim that they have emotions/feelings/sentience/subjective experience. They might 'just' be complicated biological machines, such as eg. Descartes thought (yeah, not the first time he was wrong).
My point is just that it's wrong to harm other sentient beings for selfish reasons. And since eating animals is not necessary for us to survive, I believe it falls in the "selfish reasons" category.
I'd say even if eating them *was* necessary for survival, the reasons are still selfish. At any rate... we can establish that a pig is a sentient being, and that killing it for food is (at least typically) borne from selfish reasons. You posit that this is wrong, but what is missing is the argument for why this is wrong. Why is sentience such a distinct moral category? Is sentience indeed a categorical property, or does it admit of degrees? If the former, whereabouts in the animal kingdom is the cut-off? If the latter, does the wrongness of the killing scale with the degree of sentience of the victim?
Anyway, my point is, these kinds of moral discussions often tend to focus overly on factual/conceptual/definitional issues (the typical abortion debate being an obvious offender), rather than the normative ones like whether, how and to what extent harming sentient beings is indeed wrong. Which is a pity, since as far as I can tell that's usually where the most fundamental disagreements actually are.
You get a like for using anthropomorphizing in a post... I agree with your post... I think some reasearch has been done. Will dig it out when I have time.
@FinneousPJ I understand you role play chaotic evil Possibly not the most tactile post in this thread however...
@Alnair Can you clear something up. Are you from Italy? Are you from Italy and a vegan. The only reason I bring it up is that this must be the hardest country in the world to be a vegan!!!!.
Perhaps other readers of this thread will prove me wrong.
In Britain, being vegan is a choice, and most restaurants have a vegan menu (or at least the vegan options highlighted, but this is now becoming rarer, with the separate menu being more widespread now...)
@Alduin They have whole vegan menus in most restaurants in the UK? How surprising. Don't think there's much of that here (Netherlands), in my experience. There's usually some vegetarian courses available, but I've never seen a separate vegetarian (let alone vegan) menu. Though admittedly, since none of my friends or family is vegetarian, I haven't paid too much attention to it.
Because, at least in my view, the personality of someone/something refers to his/her/its characteristic patterns of behaviour and such, not necessarily the psychology (if any) behind it. I could observe that different kittens in a litter exhibit distinct personalities, with necessarily being committed to the claim that they have emotions/feelings/sentience/subjective experience.
But since we know that in humans personalities come from feelings (don't we?), why should we assume they could come from something else? Occam's razor and all that considered...
At any rate... we can establish that a pig is a sentient being, and that killing it for food is (at least typically) borne from selfish reasons. You posit that this is wrong, but what is missing is the argument for why this is wrong. Why is sentience such a distinct moral category? Is sentience indeed a categorical property, or does it admit of degrees? If the former, whereabouts in the animal kingdom is the cut-off? If the latter, does the wrongness of the killing scale with the degree of sentience of the victim?
I can, of course, just answer for myself. I think sentience does admit degrees, but I personally feel that the wrongness of the harming doesn't scale at all with it. It may scale with the inevitability of the act, with its purposefulness, with the intentions of the wrongdoer, but not with the sentience of the victim, no.
As for why it's wrong to hurt sentient beings... I think that as much as we don't enjoy pain, we should understand that it's not right to inflict it unto others, simple as that.
Anyway, my point is, these kinds of moral discussions often tend to focus overly on factual/conceptual/definitional issues (the typical abortion debate being an obvious offender), rather than the normative ones like whether, how and to what extent harming sentient beings is indeed wrong. Which is a pity, since as far as I can tell that's usually where the most fundamental disagreements actually are.
Right, so... can we take for granted that animals are indeed sentient beings, capable of feeling emotions, and discuss why humans feel entitled to treat them as objects instead?
@Alnair Can you clear something up. Are you from Italy? Are you from Italy and a vegan. The only reason I bring it up is that this must be the hardest country in the world to be a vegan!!!!.
Yes, I'm from Italy, I wrote that somewhere And I don't think it's so difficult to be vegan here... sure, there are countries where it's easier, but if the worst comes to the worst, I can always live off pasta and pizza (yes, without mozzarella: actually the most widespread flavours here in Rome are plain, or "white pizza", and just tomato sauce, or "red pizza"... not kidding). Also, as I already mentioned, our regional cuisine is full of completely vegan traditional recipes. As for restaurants and the like, we are indeed a bit lagging behind compared to England (which is, after all, the country where veganism was born) but we are regaining fast... totally vegan venues are appearing more and more frequently, while traditional ones start to add vegan options to their menu and/or highlighting them.
I can, of course, just answer for myself. I think sentience does admit degrees, but I personally feel that the wrongness of the harming doesn't scale at all with it. It may scale with the inevitability of the act, with its purposefulness, with the intentions of the wrongdoer, but not with the sentience of the victim, no.
As for why it's wrong to hurt sentient beings... I think that as much as we don't enjoy pain, we should understand that it's not right to inflict it unto others, simple as that.
...
Right, so... can we take for granted that animals are indeed sentient beings, capable of feeling emotions, and discuss why humans feel entitled to treat them as objects instead?
So effectively, you would say humans and animals have the same moral 'value'. As in, suppose I feel in a killing mood: would it be equally wrong (all else being equal) to kill a human adult, and to kill a dormouse? That would make it a rather extreme position, and I think largely untenable in practice. It also raises the question, how far down do we go? We could loosely order different species of animal in decreasing degree of sentience. Would there be a cut-off, beyond which the degree of sentience can be considered 0 (say, at the fruit fly)?
An issue with it I think is that it seems somewhat contradictory. If sentience is a morally important property, then surely the degree of sentience must matter as well. Moreover, even aside from that, a priori moral equivalence does not in my view lead to equally weighted moral obligations in practice. I have a greater moral obligation towards friends and family to do good unto them, and protect them from harm, than I have towards a perfect stranger. Similarly, I have a greater obligation towards my own community, my country, etc., than I do to the rest of the human world. And again, more towards fellow humans than to the rest of the natural world.
With regards to veganism and vegetarianism, there is also a further consideration. In your view, killing animals for food is wrong. However, in our industrialized world, many of the people who eat the meat don't do any of the killing themselves. By the time the meat gets to them, the animal it stemmed from is long gone. The consumer thus does not violate the moral principle you posit. A common argument is of course that even so, the meat-eaters are complicit in the killing since their demand creates the supply in the first place. But while that is certainly true at a societal level, this generally doesn't apply at an individual level. Like an individual vote in election, precisely because of the large scale of the meat industry an individual's decision not to eat any meat (or otherwise partake in animal products, etc.) is not going to have any effect on the that industry. The number of animals killed is not affected by whether I eat meat or not, therefore there is no apparent moral obligation (at least not one stemming from the moral imperative you posit) to refrain from eating meat.
@Alnair But... (Please don't take this the wrong way... This may be an Italian sterotype which you may not like) in Britian, Italy is seen a bit like France. A counrty rich in history, with fine wine and good food, except in Italy, the food is better!
You have shops, shops totally devoted to and only sell ice cream!
You also have so many meats to eat, one website lists 36 different types of cured meats such as salami and pancetta! (I found it just looking for information on parma ham, and sort of got blown away...) http://garrubbo.com/salumi-italian-cured-meats/
Lastly. The signature dish of Italy in my head is Spaghetti and meatballs.
Perhaps you see your country differently as you know it better than a person looking with a tourists gaze. (I wanna visit it as often as possible!)
Mayhaps you see Britannia as constantly wet, bright green grass and having shops that only sell cut up bits of potato with fish!
(Totally different in reality! We have seen the sun here 3 days in a row!)
Mayhaps you see Britannia as constantly wet, bright green grass and having shops that only sell cut up bits of potato with fish!
Implying it is not constantly wet, and that we don't eat a staple of fish and chips, as well as fried breakfast. In fact, we also have a guide to the top 10 fsh and chip shops. We also have crap towns, and, when all else fails, we have Argos.
In fact, I think Bill Bailey just about sums it up:
"What's England like? Uhh, well... nah, s'alright... We've got, uh, Nectar Points. They're quite handy. Um... we've got understatement... We're tough on slogans, tough on the causes of slogans... We have strong prevailing south-westerly winds... 52% of our days are overcast, so as a nation we're infused with a wistful melancholy, but we remain a relentlessly chipper population prone to mild eccentricity, binge drinking and casual violence. Breakfast is served 7 til 9 and not a minute later."
More on topic, Bill Bailey also has a vegetarian segment in his "Part Troll" DVD.
"I'm a bit of a vegetarian. Any vegetarians in? Hwah! Any vegans in? Any hardcore vegans? Yeah, the ones that won't even drive through towns with ham in the name? Hardcore. Um, I'm a vegetarian. I'm not strict—I eat fish... and duck... well, they're nearly fish, aren't they? I mean... they're semi-submerged a lot of the time, they spend a lot of time in the water, they're virtually fish, aren't they, really? And pigs, cows, sheep, anything that lives near water. So, I'm not strict. I'm sort of like a post-modern vegetarian, I eat meat ironically."
@DJKajuru: That image is so biased against meat eaters that it isn't even funny. Want me to post a picture bashing vegans too? Way to make this topic go down the flames then, eh? Why not show some pictures of cannibalism just as well, eh?
So effectively, you would say humans and animals have the same moral 'value'. As in, suppose I feel in a killing mood: would it be equally wrong (all else being equal) to kill a human adult, and to kill a dormouse? That would make it a rather extreme position, and I think largely untenable in practice.
Is it that extreme to say that killing is wrong (self-defence aside) regardless of who is being killed? Did you know that an human infant (under 18 month old) has less self-awareness than a magpie? So, does this make it "less wrong" to kill a newborn baby than a magpie? I'm not suggesting it should, I'm just saying we shouldn't create rankings at all.
It also raises the question, how far down do we go? We could loosely order different species of animal in decreasing degree of sentience. Would there be a cut-off, beyond which the degree of sentience can be considered 0 (say, at the fruit fly)?
But do we really need to establish such a cut-off? Why? Is it really important to be able to hurt fruit flies without having to worry about their sentience?
I have a greater moral obligation towards friends and family to do good unto them, and protect them from harm, than I have towards a perfect stranger. Similarly, I have a greater obligation towards my own community, my country, etc., than I do to the rest of the human world. And again, more towards fellow humans than to the rest of the natural world.
The basic premise of this argument is a faulty one, in my opinion: I don't think moral obligations should be influenced by kin or nationality (or, of course, species). I care more about my brother than about my neighbour, but that doesn't mean I'm allowed to harm the latter, right? Also, I specifically disagree with the idea that the place where one is born should have a special significance for that person... in other words, I don't believe in borders.
In your view, killing animals for food is wrong. However, in our industrialized world, many of the people who eat the meat don't do any of the killing themselves.
Which makes it even worse... actually, I believe we've already covered this part in the thread.
Like an individual vote in election, precisely because of the large scale of the meat industry an individual's decision not to eat any meat (or otherwise partake in animal products, etc.) is not going to have any effect on the that industry.
Then why have elections at all, if the individual votes don't count at all? -_- [Ironically, I really believe that elections are useless, but in a different sense...]
The number of animals killed is not affected by whether I eat meat or not
This is, of course, not true. The animals are killed because soneone wants to buy their meat, they wouldn't be killed at all if people wouldn't eat them. In fact, the single chicken whose corpse I'm not buying is already dead, that's true, but otherwise yet another one would have to be slaughtered to become the supermarket's next customer's dinner.
@Alnair But... (Please don't take this the wrong way... This may be an Italian sterotype which you may not like) in Britian, Italy is seen a bit like France. A counrty rich in history, with fine wine and good food, except in Italy, the food is better!
What's not to like about that stereotype?
You have shops, shops totally devoted to and only sell ice cream!
Yup. And that's what makes it so easy to find vegan ones... actually almost every gelateria (ice cream parlour) has at least 3-5 different flavours without milk, and some of them have 10 or 15. (Of course, I realise that the reason behind this is that more and more people are becoming lactose-intolerant... which, by the way, is another proof of the fact that drinking milk post-weaning is not something nature intended...)
You also have so many meats to eat, one website lists 36 different types of cured meats such as salami and pancetta!
Funnily enough, I became a vegan while living in the heart of Emilia-Romagna, the most renowned region for that kind of "food"...
Lastly. The signature dish of Italy in my head is Spaghetti and meatballs.
I never met any Italian who would as much as suggest the idea of eating spaghetti with meatballs... both of them are quite usual dishes, of course, but never together, no sir.
Mayhaps you see Britannia as constantly wet, bright green grass and having shops that only sell cut up bits of potato with fish!
That's more or less the stereotype for the UK here, yes! I haven't visited yet, but I watched lots of Doctor Who and Hustle... not that much raining going on there, nor a lot of green grass, actually.
That image is so biased against meat eaters that it isn't even funny.
Interesting... so, while we had to endure the finest "humour" of @FinneousPJ and @elminster (uh, nice roasted strips of a pig's carcass, really funny!), @DJKajuru posts a picture of a hypothetical alien race who is just acting exactly as humans do, and he instantly becomes a troll?
Comments
Well, I know how resistant people are when we talk about vegetarianism, so I´ll try to be as diplomatic as possible.
First of all, I´m a vegan. I became one after watching the documentary ´´earthlings´´ .
1- If you don´t see your cows and pigs being killed, then you are unconsciously treating meat as food, and cows as animals. Even if you don´t wanna be a vegetarian, try to change that in your mind.
2- I didn´t become vegan in order to feel better than others . I myself ain´t making slaughterhouses less rich by not buying burgers.
Its a matter of principles , though. Same way I dont like the fact that dogs are eaten in some countries, it makes no sense that I should eat cows in my country.
Does it mean that I´ll fight everyone ? No. But I´d like to see people choosing healthier foods and restaurants providing more non-animal products.
Where is @MedullaOblongata when we need him to defend this delicious product?
...
But then it is just easier to start another thread.
Which I have! Look at poems here at http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/20053/poetry-for-bhaalspawn
Apologies to the seriousness of the topic, but I couldn't resist injecting a bit more levity. *ducking thrown tomatoes*
I would still eat spider pig! Does he come with extra legs?
He's so cute... You just gotta munch on his tiny trotters!
On topic: I've great admiration for the passion and knowledge of @alnair
Thanks for the support/help/hugs/kudos
@Anduin
I've had a long busy week, thus I had little or no time to answer, and now I'd really like to enjoy the weekend. So, I will first of all thank you for the long, detailed answer; then proceed to acknowledge only the most interesting (to me) points, hope you won't mind
(Also ironically this link is in the more section, I wonder if it's just tag-based or put there on purpose) That's a common notion, but I must admit that my BO still varies significantly over what I eat. Specifically, if I eat lots of fruit I get a pleasant odour or none at all, while a lot of starch (pizza!) makes me definitely stinkier. I never paid any attention to that kind of things when I used to eat animal products, though, so I can just assume that it was even worse :P Dark one - with or without hazelnuts - has always been my favourite, but if I want variety I can easily find soy/rice milk chocolate. And of course delicious Gianduja (the real one, not modern-day Nutella) is also vegan. I'm aware of that, but we were talking about the definition of "humane slaughter". And "slaughtering" is a term that can be applied both to human and non-human animals. That's simply not true, and everyone who has ever lived with a dog or cat can confirm that each individual has his or her own personality. Animals are definitely sentient beings, capable of emotions just as much as humans, and I'm truly amazed that someone can think otherwise. Killing animals is something you do when they're still living, so...
Thanks... I guess
Animals don't express their emotions the same way humans do, but that doesn't mean they don't have any. There's plenty of scientific evidence about it, but if you want first-hand experiences...
My dog pees on the floor with excitement every time I come back home (once every few months). My mother gives him food, my father walks him, my brother pets him daily... yet he reacts that way only when he sees me.
I used to live with four cats. One of them was shy, one of them was lazy, one of them was a cuddler and one of them was an explorer. It was pretty clear who got along with whom, in that bunch, and who didn't.
And I did see pigs smile, having lived in a sanctuary for liberated farm animals. They smile with their eyes, which are surprisingly similar to human ones.
Oh and by the way, pigs are the most intelligent animals we eat (in the West, that is).
Having said that though, how is it relevant to the present debate? By itself, animals having (some degree of) capacity for emotion doesn't imply a moral imperative not to eat them. That requires a further argument (I haven't read the entire thread though, so I may just have missed said argument).
I'm sure writing that made you feel very mature.
@Morte50 Can you expand on that? How can someone have a personality without feeling differently about different things? In the EU at least, that question has been legally answered once and for all by the Lisbon Treaty.
Side note: as I already said before in this thread, I don't care if something is legal or not. I'm just pointing out that the debate at issue has already took place in more "serious" places.
(Also, I would like to underline that I don't agree with the main concern of the site I took that link from, i.e. having more compassionate farmers. In my opinion, animals shouldn't be bred at all.) My point is just that it's wrong to harm other sentient beings for selfish reasons. And since eating animals is not necessary for us to survive, I believe it falls in the "selfish reasons" category.
Anyway, my point is, these kinds of moral discussions often tend to focus overly on factual/conceptual/definitional issues (the typical abortion debate being an obvious offender), rather than the normative ones like whether, how and to what extent harming sentient beings is indeed wrong. Which is a pity, since as far as I can tell that's usually where the most fundamental disagreements actually are.
You get a like for using anthropomorphizing in a post... I agree with your post... I think some reasearch has been done. Will dig it out when I have time.
@FinneousPJ I understand you role play chaotic evil
@Alnair Can you clear something up. Are you from Italy? Are you from Italy and a vegan. The only reason I bring it up is that this must be the hardest country in the world to be a vegan!!!!.
Perhaps other readers of this thread will prove me wrong.
In Britain, being vegan is a choice, and most restaurants have a vegan menu (or at least the vegan options highlighted, but this is now becoming rarer, with the separate menu being more widespread now...)
They have whole vegan menus in most restaurants in the UK? How surprising. Don't think there's much of that here (Netherlands), in my experience. There's usually some vegetarian courses available, but I've never seen a separate vegetarian (let alone vegan) menu. Though admittedly, since none of my friends or family is vegetarian, I haven't paid too much attention to it.
As for why it's wrong to hurt sentient beings... I think that as much as we don't enjoy pain, we should understand that it's not right to inflict it unto others, simple as that. Right, so... can we take for granted that animals are indeed sentient beings, capable of feeling emotions, and discuss why humans feel entitled to treat them as objects instead? Yes, I'm from Italy, I wrote that somewhere
And I don't think it's so difficult to be vegan here... sure, there are countries where it's easier, but if the worst comes to the worst, I can always live off pasta and pizza (yes, without mozzarella: actually the most widespread flavours here in Rome are plain, or "white pizza", and just tomato sauce, or "red pizza"... not kidding). Also, as I already mentioned, our regional cuisine is full of completely vegan traditional recipes.
As for restaurants and the like, we are indeed a bit lagging behind compared to England (which is, after all, the country where veganism was born) but we are regaining fast... totally vegan venues are appearing more and more frequently, while traditional ones start to add vegan options to their menu and/or highlighting them.
An issue with it I think is that it seems somewhat contradictory. If sentience is a morally important property, then surely the degree of sentience must matter as well. Moreover, even aside from that, a priori moral equivalence does not in my view lead to equally weighted moral obligations in practice. I have a greater moral obligation towards friends and family to do good unto them, and protect them from harm, than I have towards a perfect stranger. Similarly, I have a greater obligation towards my own community, my country, etc., than I do to the rest of the human world. And again, more towards fellow humans than to the rest of the natural world.
With regards to veganism and vegetarianism, there is also a further consideration. In your view, killing animals for food is wrong. However, in our industrialized world, many of the people who eat the meat don't do any of the killing themselves. By the time the meat gets to them, the animal it stemmed from is long gone. The consumer thus does not violate the moral principle you posit. A common argument is of course that even so, the meat-eaters are complicit in the killing since their demand creates the supply in the first place. But while that is certainly true at a societal level, this generally doesn't apply at an individual level. Like an individual vote in election, precisely because of the large scale of the meat industry an individual's decision not to eat any meat (or otherwise partake in animal products, etc.) is not going to have any effect on the that industry. The number of animals killed is not affected by whether I eat meat or not, therefore there is no apparent moral obligation (at least not one stemming from the moral imperative you posit) to refrain from eating meat.
You have shops, shops totally devoted to and only sell ice cream!
You also have so many meats to eat, one website lists 36 different types of cured meats such as salami and pancetta! (I found it just looking for information on parma ham, and sort of got blown away...)
http://garrubbo.com/salumi-italian-cured-meats/
Lastly. The signature dish of Italy in my head is Spaghetti and meatballs.
Perhaps you see your country differently as you know it better than a person looking with a tourists gaze. (I wanna visit it as often as possible!)
Mayhaps you see Britannia as constantly wet, bright green grass and having shops that only sell cut up bits of potato with fish!
(Totally different in reality! We have seen the sun here 3 days in a row!)
With the way things are advertised in the UK, you would think the signature dish was spaghetti bolognese and a glass of olive oil. Implying it is not constantly wet, and that we don't eat a staple of fish and chips, as well as fried breakfast. In fact, we also have a guide to the top 10 fsh and chip shops. We also have crap towns, and, when all else fails, we have Argos.
In fact, I think Bill Bailey just about sums it up:
"What's England like? Uhh, well... nah, s'alright... We've got, uh, Nectar Points. They're quite handy. Um... we've got understatement... We're tough on slogans, tough on the causes of slogans... We have strong prevailing south-westerly winds... 52% of our days are overcast, so as a nation we're infused with a wistful melancholy, but we remain a relentlessly chipper population prone to mild eccentricity, binge drinking and casual violence. Breakfast is served 7 til 9 and not a minute later."
More on topic, Bill Bailey also has a vegetarian segment in his "Part Troll" DVD.
"I'm a bit of a vegetarian. Any vegetarians in? Hwah! Any vegans in? Any hardcore vegans? Yeah, the ones that won't even drive through towns with ham in the name? Hardcore. Um, I'm a vegetarian. I'm not strict—I eat fish... and duck... well, they're nearly fish, aren't they? I mean... they're semi-submerged a lot of the time, they spend a lot of time in the water, they're virtually fish, aren't they, really? And pigs, cows, sheep, anything that lives near water. So, I'm not strict. I'm sort of like a post-modern vegetarian, I eat meat ironically."
Did you know that an human infant (under 18 month old) has less self-awareness than a magpie? So, does this make it "less wrong" to kill a newborn baby than a magpie? I'm not suggesting it should, I'm just saying we shouldn't create rankings at all. But do we really need to establish such a cut-off? Why? Is it really important to be able to hurt fruit flies without having to worry about their sentience? The basic premise of this argument is a faulty one, in my opinion: I don't think moral obligations should be influenced by kin or nationality (or, of course, species). I care more about my brother than about my neighbour, but that doesn't mean I'm allowed to harm the latter, right?
Also, I specifically disagree with the idea that the place where one is born should have a special significance for that person... in other words, I don't believe in borders. Which makes it even worse... actually, I believe we've already covered this part in the thread. Then why have elections at all, if the individual votes don't count at all? -_-
[Ironically, I really believe that elections are useless, but in a different sense...] This is, of course, not true. The animals are killed because soneone wants to buy their meat, they wouldn't be killed at all if people wouldn't eat them. In fact, the single chicken whose corpse I'm not buying is already dead, that's true, but otherwise yet another one would have to be slaughtered to become the supermarket's next customer's dinner.
@Anduin What's not to like about that stereotype?
(Of course, I realise that the reason behind this is that more and more people are becoming lactose-intolerant... which, by the way, is another proof of the fact that drinking milk post-weaning is not something nature intended...) Funnily enough, I became a vegan while living in the heart of Emilia-Romagna, the most renowned region for that kind of "food"... I never met any Italian who would as much as suggest the idea of eating spaghetti with meatballs... both of them are quite usual dishes, of course, but never together, no sir. That's more or less the stereotype for the UK here, yes! I haven't visited yet, but I watched lots of Doctor Who and Hustle... not that much raining going on there, nor a lot of green grass, actually.
@Kitteh_On_A_Cloud Interesting... so, while we had to endure the finest "humour" of @FinneousPJ and @elminster (uh, nice roasted strips of a pig's carcass, really funny!), @DJKajuru posts a picture of a hypothetical alien race who is just acting exactly as humans do, and he instantly becomes a troll?