Empathy is great, but unfortunately it's not a fix. There's only so much empathy we can have for the environment around us without giving away everything and getting nothing in return. Having empathy for the needs of your fellow human beings is still empathy, even if it comes at the cost of empathy for animals. Empathy for animals at the cost of empathy for your fellow humans is no more a solution than the other way around. So empathy just doesn't fix everything.
Typically, people who have a higher-than-average concern for the welfare of animals also have a higher-than-average concern for welfare of people. Compassion and empathy seems to grow for both, not be a trade-off.
Compare an analogous concern to the one you raise: "what if caring about people of color comes at the cost of empathy for your fellow whites?"
I walk past PETA’s west coast headquarters in Los Angeles every week, and they have inset windows behind a small ledge that’s raised from the street and protected from the weather [1]. They have the raised metal studs near the edge of the ledge, which are called “skateboard deterrents” [2], but given that the ledge is a couple inches high and unsuitable for any sort of grind trick, the purpose is clearly to prevent the homeless from sleeping on the ledge comfortably. My take on the vegan debate is that people who do it are making a good choice both practically and morally, and I wish I had the willpower to make it, and I also understand that PETA represents a very specific brand of veganism and animal welfare, but I always feel pretty sad when I see that PETA building and its unethical treatment of humans.
do you shed a tear when you walk past a homeless shelter that serves meat, clothes their homeless in wool and doesn't have bird safety film on all the windows? Oh you don't. When it comes to supporting animal welfare, you have to be considered "perfect" for some reason.
See my note below about spoon theory. I guess I could've been clearer that I meant not a total fix, it won't fix everything on it's own. I didn't mean that it's not part of the solution.
Nobody's advocating less empathy for humans, what I'm suggesting is that according to spoon theory, there's only so much in a day you can give a shit about before you burn out [YMMV]. I'm suggesting that when you put all your empathy into caring for one thing at the cost of another, typically yourself, it's a hard path to walk. Empathy as a fix all, isn't. There needs to be balance between what's reasonable, feasible and practical, for our environment, for the eco-system and for us as humans. Empathy for sure is necessary, but it's only part of the solution, not the whole solution.
The spoon theory definitely applies as you change your behavior but once you’ve made new habits, it’s not the same. Spoons aren’t used up by category of empathy, if you heard detailed life stories of those dying of war or COVID it would be equally as taxing. I care about animal welfare and changed my habits to reflect that (when I felt I could, slowly over years) but like everyone, there is a line where there additional changes are “too much”. Eg, I’m not going to live without electricity or live purely offgrid, to me this is not practical and the positive impact that may have doesn’t outweigh the negative impact to my life.
If you have a lot of pressures in your life, adding a diet change to that is not realistic. Pushing for meat alternatives in convenient places and making it easy for large groups of people to have small cognitive load (low cost of spoons) to go without meat for a meal is far more impactful than trying to convince everyone to go “full vegan or you are a monster”. If you have the time to consider your options and make a change to your habits that match your values, great, otherwise power to those trying to make those choices easier for everyone. Don’t let it weigh on you, take care of yourself and create space to make the changes you want to see in yourself.
As a vegan myself I think appealing to empathy is probably counterproductive because it implies that meat eaters don't have empathy. It's basically the vegan-mirror-equivalent of slothtrop's "Nothing's ever enough for vegans." comment. I feel like "meat eaters don't have empathy" is the common judgment that vegans cast on meat eaters, and "vegans are unrealistic, holier-than-thou perfectionists" is the common judgment that meat eaters cast on vegans.
I didn’t try to imply anything. I’m no vegan myself. Empathy is a great quality to cultivate; I don’t know if an ideal world is a vegan one, but I’m sure an ideal world treats humans, animals and living systems (intentionally avoiding the plants debate going on) with a great deal of empathy and respect.
Ah, OK. For the reasons I mentioned earlier I did assume you were vegan. We're on the same page and we want the same thing. My goal was to point out to my fellow vegans that empathy seems to be a trigger word for meat/dairy eaters and usually doesn't lead to productive debate.
You can't equivocate chicken sentience with human sentience. What you can do is suggest they have a high enough level of sentience to warrant that certain treatments be immoral. I think infliction of constant stress and suffering certainly would be immoral, however, raising chickens does not necessitate it. And moreover, the level of sentience is not so high that captivity in itself / exploitation be problematic. If that were true keeping domestic pets ought to be just as problematic.
Animals suffer in the wild, that is a constant. They require vigilance over a) predators, b) constant search for food, c) other natural threats. In captivity, these issues don't exist.
Notwithstanding the symbiotic evolution of chicken with humans, a chicken is arguably better off in a free-roam farm than in the wild. This is constantly ignored.
The vegan solution is such that these animals basically cease to exist (i.e. are killed) because they are more dependent on humans than their ancestors. That's what letting them be "sentient" beings instead of commodities would mean.
There is a whole lot of citation needed on this reply, not to mention you’re talking about consciousness as something that can be clearly defined and measured.
This is not physics. If you think it’s ok to breed beings that clearly look to avoid suffering and care for their offspring with the sole purpose of exploiting them, and that’s fine because life > death, there you have it. Just don’t try to push a pseudoscientific scale to vegans just to prove their fallacy.
> There is a whole lot of citation needed on this reply, not to mention you’re talking about consciousness as something that can be clearly defined and measured.
With sentience it's speculation, and that's part of the point I'm making. I responded to an ethical claim on the basis of sentience (no citation) by bringing to question what it means to be sentient when some beings e.g. insects demonstrate it.
Notwithstanding immeasurability, our perception of this level of sentience is relied on to determine our moral standing. We see this through actions we take for granted.
It might be regarding insects, but I don’t think it is that much regarding farm animals. Also, not being able to nail it in a materialistic framework does not put it in the nothing can be known/fair game territory.
But let me set this aside since it might obscure our dialog. What surely can be measured is the degree of immune system depression this animals experience, how far do their life cycles deviate from control, and what health an behavioral consequences they experience from being forced to live the way we make them live. We can also measure the impact this ways have on ourselves and the environment.
Would we put the family dog trough this experience just because it is not clear (to us) if it fully understands or experience what is happening, ignoring all the fairly obvious signals that it will experiment a great deal of suffering?
I once witnessed an organic cow’s sacrifice and no one in its right heart can argue it didn’t experience an great deal of distress and suffering.
I don’t judge people from being meat eaters, I’m no vegan myself, but I won’t play conceptual games to ease people’s minds. If you have the heart to kill this animals and eat them (and I don’t mean this pejoratively or disrespectfully), go ahead. Just don’t pretend there is a gray area in what this animals will be experiencing and what does this means in terms of their lives. I mean, we eat calves that have been kept all their short lives strained in cages just for the taste, and we do this in mass scale.
This is not something to run from.
(To clarify, I’m not trying to make it personal, english is not my native language. On the contrary, I’m very open to talk about this topic with an open mind and a warm heart).
> Just don’t pretend there is a gray area in what this animals will be experiencing and what does this means in terms of their lives.
To reiterate, this is a fair assessment as per pain, stress. This is easily detected in the animals. Where a gray area exists to me is commodification, i.e. there is no reason to believe captivity in a safe environment would lead to some sort of existential crisis for the animals. There's a persistent argument from a sizable base that holding animals in captivity is inherently immoral, with sentience as the basis. This is the usual response to the notion that animals can and should be killed fairly painlessly/quickly without persistent stress.
Octopus have a pop culture reputation for being intelligent owing to lab maze experiments, but their intelligence isn't well known or defined. They have an average lifespan between 3-6 months to a few years depending on the species.
"Until the 1970s, researchers tried to classify the intellectual abilities of different animals and rank them within a universal intelligence scale with humans at the top. That view crumbled as it became obvious that the abilities of different animals were tuned to the circumstances in which they live.
Rats learn some things slowly and others very rapidly. Just one experience with a novel food that makes them ill will put them off that food for life, even if they only become sick many hours after eating it. It's a useful memory feat for an animal that survives by scavenging. Honey bees remember the location of a flower that is producing nectar after a single visit and with just a few trips will learn at what time of day the nectar flow is at its peak.
Octopuses are not very social so we should not expect their intelligence to show itself in observational learning. [...] True, octopus have huge brains. But they look nothing like the brains of the vertebrates that are so adept at learning. [...] some critics suspect that their intelligence has been grossly exaggerated by anthropomorphising observers-"they watch my every move, therefore they must be curious". On the other hand, because cephalopod behaviour and brain structure are so foreign, others argue that their greatest cognitive feats are probably still being overlooked. " -- https://web.archive.org/web/20120407062518/http://www.fortun...
There is this Netflix movie “my octopus teacher” where the octopus develops rather advanced hunting and camouflage techniques. Like how it knows how to handle sharks or how to build a shell for itself to hunt a particular type of food. That seems quite intelligent and beyond observing humans studiously in labs.
* unscrew the lid of a peanut butter jar to get a treat without training
* hop from one tank to another to prey on the fish in the tank. This was observed quite by accident and not part of an experiment at first. In fact the octopus waited for its human handlers to leave the room before going in for the kill; the incident was caught on camera.
* gently grasp the hand of a friendly human with their tentacles, and squirt water through their siphon at a disliked human
All spontaneously, without training or prompting.
That last bit is particularly interesting to me, because they are recognizable signs of affection and dislike. Octopuses show some semblance of an ability to bond with us, despite having vastly different brains from us.
This is a reducto ad absurdum takeaway, but I wonder if at some point will we consider the humans required to create said food, part of the "animals treated as commodities"?
Unless humans are somehow exempt from the list, I don't see how this argument is feasible in the realistic sense. Humans are frequently treated as commodities, as any team over the size of 1 needs to delegate responsibilities to people. Hence, "doctor, lawyer, police officer, teacher, pilot" are all words that describe a delegated responsibility of a human, and therefore the commodity that they represent. "We need more firefighters!" is a phrase that literally treats humans as commodities - showing how replaceable they are. How about whenever you ask a friend, or a family member to pick something up for you from the grocery store? Are they not being treated as a commodity to suit a need in that moment?
However idealistic the notion, being a "sentient being" isn't mutually exclusive from being treated as a commodity.
I understand the empathic argument in support of veganism full well (and I empathize with it), but there is such a thing as runaway-empathy, to the point that it becomes unproductive conversation.
This is a win in an aim to reduce unnecessary suffering and pain. I'll take it as such.
Seeking some sort of absolutism though, I can't wrap my mind around that. It gives me some serious Sith vibes...
Firefighters get something in return for being firefighters. Otherwise, it is slavery, and it is indeed feasible to argue against any slavery. The animals in the farm get nothing in return, don't have a choice. It is hard to argue their life is better than no life at all.
No matter how philosophical you get, it is possible to be vegan, you only have to sacrifice some pleasure. If you value your pleasure over the miserable life of the animal, that certainly is something one can criticise without being inconsistent because "humans also need to work to buy food".
If you actually want to argue for better workers' rights and redistribution from the rich to the poor, to end the missery of the working man: I think that is a good point :)
Well, there are whole continents where people are treated as commodities. Working 16 hours a day for one or two dollars while living in unhealthy, unmerciful environments is not drastically different from being breeded for exploitation.
I invite you to come to my country and see how farmers/maquila workers live, in what conditions do they work, who they work for and which populations most benefit from this farmers/workers living conditions.
As I said before, empathy is a great quality to cultivate, and so does awareness.
A first-hand account of farmers' living conditions in your local area isn't a reliable source that shows that there are "whole continents where people are treated as commodities". Nor do I see how this specifically relates to the underlying topic of veganism. Perhaps you can link the two topics so that I can see the point you are making?
> As I said before, empathy is a great quality to cultivate, and so does awareness.
I don' see why you have to be rude, but since we are here, if you need citations from a prestigious peer review journal to acknowledge this fact, you need to read more, travel more, hell, just change the channel more.
The world bank defines people living below its poverty line as persons living in households where the total income is below 1.9 US dollars, and acknowledge 689 million people living there[0].
"At higher poverty lines, 24.1 percent of the world lived on less than $3.20 a day and 43.6 percent on less than $5.50 a day in 2017"[0]
I you had read carefully, you might have noticed that my response was to the questioning on treating people as commodities, and since we are now on rude territory, you appear to me to be living in a cozy bubble, and can use some new knowledge. In my country, México, 52.4 million people are estimated to be in poverty (7.4 mill in extreme poverty)[1]. In rural areas, 29% of the population (2013 data)[2] had food shortages so no, this is not anecdotal.
I could go all academic, citations included, and tell you where does the avocado you eat comes from, who controls its growth and in which situation the people who grow it live, but I think it’s easier for me and maybe life changing for you to take a trip to Michoacán and see it for your(anecdotal)self.
I don't find it rude to point out that you asked for citation in this exact thread, and then didn't provide any yourself while making some pretty serious claims.
Thank you for the citations.
These make a very strong case for showing poor living conditions in your area, and I empathize with that - please don't think that I'm debating this fact.
I'm not entirely sure how it relates to my comment which is a nit about veganism's fundamental issue with defining it's own belief systems effectively. Are humans considered animals? Is the issue that some things are treated as commodities at all, or just that living things are? Are we okay with treating people as commodities, but just not "animals"? As in, it's okay to buy human-animal created products (like a phone or a computer), but not to buy wool socks because that is animal cruelty?
I'm not suggesting that people aren't treated as commodities, I'm suggesting the opposite. Your citations (unfortunately) add to my point.
The rudeness was not in the citation request, but in the “I think you don’t know how a citation works” comment. I find hard to believe you really needed/wanted a citation on what I stated just to equiparate my post to a citation request on a sentientness scale on a different comment. I’ve read Hofstader and I know some of the origins of these scales and their are based on all but true scientific method.
That aside, how can we expect to treat animals better than we treat ourselves? And that’s why veganism without ethics is just another form of consumerism. It’s late at night and I will fail to provide citation, but you can google how quinoa prices skyrocketed when became part of the superfood/healthy eating/vegan culture of rich populations, and what this meant for the locals that used to grow it and eat it.
I say the above (the google it part) without trying to be offensive and with an olive branch, looking forward to go deeper in this reflections.
The moral dilemma that vegans/vegetarians face is at what size we consider them sentient. Does the same apply to the micro-organism that vegans consume everyday on their salad? Or they are simply not sentient enough because we can't see them with naked eyes?
For me it's not about trying to nail down sentience but rather a basic heuristic about the creature's ability to feel pain. If I cut it or take its babies and it produces a response that indicates it doesn't like that, then I don't eat it. Fruits easily pass this test because the plant encourages us to take them (although I recognize that we've gamed that system and it's not like we're hunter gatherers anymore accidentally spreading seeds for the plant's benefit). Vegetables less so, but the response is nowhere near as visible as mammals and birds and fish and even bees. I recognize that pain is also a squishy, debatable concept but personally this is a situation where I don't think we'll have a rigorous intellectual framework in our lifetime so we just have to trust our intuitions; which is why there's so much disagreement (your intuition might be the opposite of mine).
I'll also mention however that I'm not solely vegan for ethical purposes so my conviction in veganism doesn't hinge on being perfect here. When I realized the health, environmental, and spiritual benefits of veganism, in addition to the ethical angle, it was a pretty easy decision to make.
But to your point, yes I do think we (everyone, not just vegans) are biased towards bigger creatures that we can see with the naked eye.
> although I recognize that we've gamed that system and it's not like we're hunter gatherers anymore accidentally spreading seeds for the plant's benefit
I don't know, I bet the tree's fore-bearers think a tended orchard with consistent water is a pretty sweet deal in exchange for a few apples.
The animal kingdom is quite clearly defined and vegans are pretty consistently defined as not consuming animals or animal products.
If you wish to take a more extreme position that considers other forms of life (and almost nobody appears to), that's no longer just veganism: it's something more extreme.
I'm not sure that counts as "consumption." We also "cultivate" countless microscopic animals such as bacteria in the gut and on the skin but that doesn't really count as it is both unavoidable and requires no choice. Vegans choose not to consume animals to the greatest extent possible and that's what is being discussed.
This is such hand-wavy bullshit. It's such a lazy response to OPs point...
Are humans animals? If so, should we not consume the products that humans create, in order to achieve perfect veganism? And if people are not animals, and I'm feeling a bit hungry........?
The computer or phone you used to post your comment is an animal product. Unless, yet again, we consider humans to be above animals, and therefore exempt from all the rules, and veganism is cannibalizing itself, philosophically.
Absolutist veganism (which is a beautiful idealism) exists heavily in a state of cognitive dissonance.
That's such a strange way to argue. We use heuristics all the time. As I said elsewhere, the farmer is not a slave, that changes the equation. If all salads were made by slaves, beef might be the ethical superior choice. But it isn't. If you find someone who wants you do eat them: I guess that's fine? You cannot li ve 100% without harming animals - so it is cognitive dissonance to call for ending 95% of animal suffering (that, again, serves no good reason)?
The cognitive dissonance is the perfectionist idealism of veganism, and the assumed "ethical superiority" that constantly gets thrown around while taking zero constructive criticism that the people promoting it are in fact, living at complete odds with it.
It's like beating your children to try and instill core values that abuse is bad. "Don't hit, Timmy. Hitting is bad! I'm going to spank you to get my point across."
OP made a good point about the imperfections of idealistic veganism and it was dismissed with a, "Nope. This isn't a thing. Our ideals are perfectly defined. You are the problem", which goes directly against the belief that one's ideals are perfectly defined if someone is questioning holes in the definition - i.e, cognitive dissonance...
I interpret OPs point to be one that highlights the already existing Nirvana Fallacy that is the core of idealistic veganism. My analogy adds directly to that point.
Vegans don't have to be vegan for ethical reasons. They can be vegan for health reasons, or environmental reasons, or any combination of reasons.
Vegans in general choose to not consume animals or (non-human) animal products, by definition. There is a large variety of adherence and some variety in self-definition, just as there is in any common human community.
The Nirvana Fallacy lies in claiming that all vegans are vegan because they wish to be perfectly ethical, or follow a particular definition strictly, and are therefore failing on their own terms.
But vegans in general make no such claim to be perfectly ethical. They are not failing on their own terms - they are failing on your invented terms: ones which only highlight your own cognitive dissonance.
Individuals have all kinds of reasons for doing the things that they do, which is why I wouldn't use the phrase "vegans in general", and why I haven't addressed my comments to vegans at all.
Veganism, however, has strong ethical foundations, and any amount of research shows this.
Unless we are considering the mental health benefit that comes with feeling ethically superior by being vegan, there are no valid health conditions that support unilateral veganism. It's akin to swearing off all liquids because of a lactose intolerance when consuming milk.
Veganism relies on the assumption that commodification of animals and products created by animals is considered unethical and should be rejected. I don't disagree with the sentiment to a degree, but I also don't agree with it absolutely. I do feel the need to point out that there is a Nirvana Fallacy within veganism itself, as it fails to truly define what is considered an "animal", and what is considered "commodification", and this is where conversations frequently turn into splitting hairs. Many animals (humans and not) engage in symbiotic relationships. Dogs will guard a home, and as a result, will be fed and protected by people in that home. It's how families work, friends, etc.
If a sheep sheds wood, naturally, is it anti-vegan to use that wool to create a coat? What about skinning a dead cow (natural causes) for its leather? There's a ton of gray area.
Veganism, at face value, is an idealistic platitude based on a beautiful notion, but it doesn't work on its own. There are a lot of great things about it, but it has never held much sway in my mind besides, "That's a cool idea, and I like seeing strides being made to make it easier to make 'vegan' choices, but I cannot bring myself to promote it".
> There are a lot of great things about it, but it has never held much sway in my mind
On the contrary, it feels like veganism holds quite a lot of sway in your mind.
Based on my understanding, you have created an imaginary idealised version of veganism, so that you can mentally reject its imperfections, while recognising that this version would still hold some value. All the best.
It holds enough sway that any time a conversation about veganism comes up, I find it easy to point out the flaws, again. Beyond that, it holds incredibly little.
For a short while I dated a vegan, and that was the most veganism has had any impact on my life. Planning meals together required more work to find viable options. I enjoyed the few vegan meals that I ate during that time, but it never changed my personal eating/purchasing habits. Nor have my beliefs been affected by any conversations I've had on the subject.
> you have created an imaginary idealised version of veganism
I'm pointing out glaring holes in its fundamental philosophy. You didn't respond to any points I raised about Nirvana Fallacy being a core part of veganism. Nor have any of my points been debated or addressed in this thread. Just a lot of "Pro veganism! Yay! Shun the non-believer" talk, which does nothing to actually support it.
The olive branch I offer from the other side of this argument is that there are positives to reducing the commodification of animals and animal products. It doesn't mean that I believe it's a solid, effective, or feasible philosophy to live by.
> It holds enough sway that any time a conversation about veganism comes up, I find it easy to point out the flaws, again.
But why are you spending your life doing this?
Again - I am not a vegan, why do you assume that anyone in this thread is a vegan?
>It doesn't mean that I believe it's a solid, effective, or feasible philosophy to live by.
And yet people do live by it, as a lifestyle practice, and that's fine. What other philosophies are solid, effective, and feasible? I don't think there are any, and I'm not sure why you would get to decide this anyway.
You keep suggesting that veganism (your own selective definition of veganism) is philosophically imperfect. But that's not an argument for anything. What's your actual point?
Empathy is a great quality to cultivate.