tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2813374309936624938.post2420197912820937096..comments2011-10-08T09:38:35.501-05:00Comments on (no subject): Animals are tasty, but hurting them is wrong(-ish)spontaneous generationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06862570641627963684noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2813374309936624938.post-81236927727328300512011-08-30T13:26:14.666-05:002011-08-30T13:26:14.666-05:00To the first, yeah, I meant to use "hurt"...To the first, yeah, I meant to use "hurt" and "cause pain" synonymously, but that's not the only possible interpretation. To the second, I'm not sure I want to assert that there's no inherent value in having more of a species. I'm not at all convinced that a world with 10 super-happy people is better than a world with a billion fairly happy people. To the third, yes, though this argument wasn't presented when the subject arose; people arguing against vegetarianism are usually fighting for their right to eat cows and/or pigs, which are pretty high up on the "probably feels pain" scale. To the fourth, absolutely, though for me to accept that premise I'd have to believe that animals on free-range farms live in decent conditions (I don't know whether this is true or not).spontaneous generationhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06862570641627963684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2813374309936624938.post-2393255128311945732011-08-30T12:26:23.040-05:002011-08-30T12:26:23.040-05:00If we're being precise, Conclusion 2 does sugg...If we're being precise, Conclusion 2 does suggest something stronger than the assertions. Assertion 2 says that it is undesirable to "Cause" unnecessary animal pain, whereas the conclusion says that animal pain in general is undesirable. That conclusion could be taken to refer not just to the pain of animals we raise, but also to the pain of animals in the wild, and one might say that animals struggling against each other for survival in the wild is just what it means to have a healthy ecosystem.<br /><br />I think that rather than suggesting that some lives are not worth living, it'd also be more effective to suggest that there isn't an inherent value in there being more or less of a species of animal in the world, but for those creatures that are, in fact, in the world, we may have a duty to minimize their suffering. <br /><br />It's also worth pointing out that an objection can be raised to Assertion 1, that "in some manner" is being used to make it difficult to object to, but it reads as implicitly meaning "in some manner significantly similar to human pain." The fact of the matter is, animals exhibit behaviors that we read as pain, but we know that other species, even intelligent ones, think very differently from how we do, and it may be an open question as to what kind of experience of pain different animals are capable of having. Maybe other mammals have an experience of pain that's sufficiently similar to ours to carry moral weight analogized from a claim about human pain, but then fish and birds might not. The fact that a fish tries to avoid certain stimuli doesn't show that it has pain - viruses on my computer might also try to avoid being deleted, but I've never heard someone argue that computer viruses feel pain.<br /><br />My final thought is that the "free-range" argument can be taken further. Not only might it be just as good to be free-range as vegetarian, it might be better. That's because factory farms are the result of economic influence, not any kind of sinister intent, and that buying free-range meat not only absolves you of the guilt of supporting such a practice, but also actively supports a better practice. This falls into a larger category of replies to Conclusion 1 that it's not clear what effect YOUR choosing to be vegetarian actually has on animal pain.Ellipsishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.com