subtleknifewield wrote:Eating a hamburger does not cause the animal pain. It is very simple, in fact, to kill without causing pain.
Two relevant responses here. One is that while it may be "simple" to kill without causing pain, this does not occur at virtually any slaughterhouse I am aware of, because the welfare of the animals is very far from an important concern at such places. The other is that if the animal suffers while living and was bred expressly for the purpose of being eaten, then any suffering that occurs up while it is alive is something you are responsible for when eating the hamburger. It would never have been born if we as society didn't want to eat its meat, and so it never would have lived a life of misery. Indeed, I am far more worried about the pain caused during the animal's life than I am about the pain caused during its death.
If you consider the ramifications of looking at animals exactly the same as people, where do you stop?
Why do you think that my position entails treating non-humans in exactly the same way as humans? I don't even look at all humans exactly the same way.
Animals seem just as capable of cruelty, abuse, neglect, and other traits humans consider negative.
Yes, but none of them that we know of can construct a moral system or understand the concept of right and wrong. In the same way, human children are actually capable of acts of immense cruelty on each other, because at a young age one is almost entirely self-interested and doesn't learn until later to empathize with others and to rationally understand why it is wrong to kill others.
Do you believe, hypothetically speaking, if we find, say, the chimp is capable of as much rational thought as a human, that he should be held accountable for beating another to death?
Well, not necessarily. If the chimpanzee is as intelligent as the average adult human, she might still not have ever encountered the concept of morality if she was not properly socialized and enculturated. But, supposing that she was and that she understood the concept that killing was wrong, then yes, of course.
In practice this is not a concern as the best estimate from studying adult chimp behavior is that they have similar levels of intelligence to young human children, maybe three to five years old on average. So I would endorse similar ethics for adult chimpanzees and young human children: they should have protection from harm, but probably it doesn't make sense to hold them morally responsible for most of their actions.
The supposition that animals are like us, aside from the admittedly similar DNA that we share even with PLANTS, is laughable when humans are not even all entirely the same from one culture to the next, or even within a SINGLE culture.
One must consider what it is about being human that warrants what we consider the most basic protections. It is not simply intelligence or anything like that; most of us would violently reject the concept that it is OK to harm a five-year-old child simply because the child is not as intelligent as an adult human. What the child shares with adults is much more basic desires, like the desire to avoid pain, and the desire to have adequate access to resources like food and shelter. By the same token, if I am smarter than someone else, that doesn't really give me a greater right to freedom from pain and torture than that other person. A great deal of non-human animals feel these basic desires too. It is not the things that divide humans and many non-human animals that are relevant for morals, it is precisely the things that unite us.
Does this mean I believe we should be cruel to animals? No. I do believe animals have feelings and moods (just look at the way a dog growls when they are angry or threatened, or its tail wags wildly when happy, or the way a cat's tail twitches when it's fascinated by something), and they are clearly capable of feeling pain and emotional neglect. However, this does not mean I view raising an animal to be food is cruel, as long as the conditions they are kept in are humane--i.e. a chicken being allowed free range, or a cow being put out to pasture regularly.
The conditions most of us would consider humane occur almost none of the time when raising animals for food. For example, a "free range" chicken in the US literally is
only required to have been allowed "access to the outside". There is no requirement on how long it must occur, or when, or whether they can walk on grass as opposed to gravel. So indeed, most "free range" chickens spend most of their time in cages. Here is a photo taken of a "free range" chicken at a supplier for Whole Foods.
And by the by, using all these algebraic terms does not automatically validate your argument.
By the by, making this statement does not automatically free you from the responsibility to think about my argument.
