NationStates Jolt Archive

Well, to be fair, you are a mammal. You and a cow share a similar circulatory system, similar skeletal system (though not similarly shaped), respiratory system, and other biological factors. It may be a safe assumption that you and a cow share a nervous system, as well, and that it experiences pain in a similar way.

Were that true it would also be a safe assumption that we both have four stomachs, despite that we both don't. The ability of an organism to percieve itself as finite [and thus evalute pain as a threat to existence as we see it rather than just a 'stop that' reflex trigger] is, as far as we know, limited to higher primates like ourselves.

How many lion- or wolf-managed factory farms are there?

Factory farming is not a necessary attribute of the consumption of meat. At any rate, criticizing one species for its ruthless practices by appealing to two other species not exactly known for gentleness when dealing with prey seems rather ineffective. I can't recall when was the last time I personally tore the life out of something with my bare teeth.

Practices associated with the factory farm happen to sicken me, but I also happen to enjoy steak. It would be easy to dismiss me as some idiot hypocrite who enjoys torturing bunny rabbits made of lolipops and sunhine, etc. Or we could recognize that the issue isn't really that simple.

And you can't assume the same thing of an animal that reacts in a similar manner?

No. Without knowing how the animal in question processes data, I cannot say with any certainty how any given animal responds to pain reflexes. I will limp slowly if I have two damaged legs, as will a spider. Does that mean the spider is feeling what I am feeling, or simply that the spider is walking slowly because it is damaged?

You can't assume feelings are the same because reactions are similar, it's nonsense.

It seems to me that you are still drawing an arbitrary line at wherever homo sapiens ends - I respond in a certain way when I feel pain, so a human that responds in that way is probably feeling pain, but a non-human mammal that responds in that way is not?

No, I am drawing the only sane line available to me here. I am a human; because other humans respond the same way I do to something, I assume they percieve it the way I do. I am not a cow. I have no idea what the world looks like to a cow, or even if a cow is more than just a ball of complex instincts. I therefore cannot say that just because a cow is acting in a manner that appears familiar to me it must be identical to how I experience whatever that is. Therefore, I can only say that I feel it may be so, not that it is so.

You can anthropomorphise animals all you like, but drawing a line regarding which animals you think feel pain based purely on familiarity of actions is absolutely insane. There is no sane place we can draw a line and say 'these things certainly feel pain and these things certainly do not' and claim we have done so for anything but the most arbitary of reasons.

Why not just narrow it down to your family members? Being a member of your family, you know how members of your family respond to pain, but you can't be sure if others outside of your family feel pain in the same way. So why bother caring about their suffering?

Nice slippery slope fallacy, there.

Nor do you have experience being anyone but yourself.

Solipsism is intellectual masturbation, unfortunately. On the other hand, we have no clear idea of how lower mammals percieve the world around them, or even if they have a concept of being a finite 'self' rather than just processing data their body gathers and reacting to it by strict instinct.

No. Without knowing how the animal in question processes data, I cannot say with any certainty how any given animal responds to pain reflexes. I will limp slowly if I have two damaged legs, as will a spider. Does that mean the spider is feeling what I am feeling, or simply that the spider is walking slowly because it is damaged?

No, because any being with damaged legs would limp, regardless of whether or not it felt pain. This is true for both humans and non-humans.

You can't assume feelings are the same because reactions are similar, it's nonsense.

Only you are perfectly willing to do so for other humans.

No, I am drawing the only sane line available to me here. I am a human; because other humans respond the same way I do to something, I assume they percieve it the way I do. I am not a cow. I have no idea what the world looks like to a cow, or even if a cow is more than just a ball of complex instincts. I therefore cannot say that just because a cow is acting in a manner that appears familiar to me it must be identical to how I experience whatever that is. Therefore, I can only say that I feel it may be so, not that it is so.

No, you are drawing one particular line of countless ones available to you.

You are a human - but you are also a mammal, to move outward, and GMC Military Arms specifically, to move inward. Why draw the line of legitimate empathy at the species line, and not elsewhere? After all, different humans respond to pain in different ways, too.

You can anthropomorphise animals all you like, but drawing a line regarding which animals you think feel pain based purely on familiarity of actions is absolutely insane. There is no sane place we can draw a line and say 'these things certainly feel pain and these things certainly do not' and claim we have done so for anything but the most arbitary of reasons.

Then, if certainty is your standard, we should not treat suffering as a morally relevant factor at all - human or non-human.

Of course, that also means that we should not treat any kind of mental state as relevant, meaning that pretty much all the bases for rights of personhood are illegitimate.

Nice slippery slope fallacy, there.

It is only a slippery slope if there is a relevant distinction that I've overlooked. What is that distinction?

Solipsism is intellectual masturbation, unfortunately.

I did not advance solipsism. I pointed out that we cannot know how other beings - human or non-human - experience the world, because we are not them.

On the other hand, we have no clear idea of how lower mammals percieve the world around them, or even if they have a concept of being a finite 'self' rather than just processing data their body gathers and reacting to it by strict instinct.

Perhaps not, but as I recall we were discussing pain, not the precise nature of non-human animal psychology.

No, because any being with damaged legs would limp, regardless of whether or not it felt pain. This is true for both humans and non-humans.

Correct, but we take limping to be a sign that a creature is in pain; indeed, 'he limped painfully' is fairly commonly used as a description of the act.

Only you are perfectly willing to do so for other humans.

Yes, because I have experience of being one. I can generalise based on my own experiences.

You are a human - but you are also a mammal, to move outward, and GMC Military Arms specifically, to move inward. Why draw the line of legitimate empathy at the species line, and not elsewhere?

I'm not. If you'd actually bother reading my posts, you'd realise my point is there is no sane place we can draw a line and say that 'creatures of group X feel pain and creatures of group Y do not' because the only group we can speak with any knowledge of is the species we are part of. Past that, we're just guessing, and claiming otherwise [ie that there is 'available scientific evidence' somewhere] is dishonest.

Then, if certainty is your standard, we should not treat suffering as a morally relevant factor at all - human or non-human.

Certainty is not my standard. You should try reading what I was originally replying to.

It is only a slippery slope if there is a relevant distinction that I've overlooked. What is that distinction?

You apparently believe there is some difference between members of my family and other people I may be familiar with. This is nonsense in the terms you're attempting to put forth.

Without reading the entirity of this thread, I'll give my opinion.

I'm a chef at a rather high-end restaurant, and it bothers me to no end when a server brings me an off-the-menu order from a vegitarian, or vegan when we go to more effort than other restaurants to have appropriate choices already ON the menu. Alergy, and food intolerances are one thing, but these two dining styles are ones of pure choice. And to inflict those choices on an already balls-to-the-wall busy kitchen when there are already menu items that can accomodate your style is not only rude, but also awfully self-centered IMO

Wow you must be a crap chef. Any good chef would love a challenge and a chance to create something imaginative - the fact that it bothers you means you must have no imagination, and thus make crappy meals in general, veggie or not.

If you don't like people asking for certain stuff, all you have to do is say either "we only serve what's on the menu (because I'm a crap chef)" or "we don't cater for vegetarians/vegans (because I'm a crap chef)"

I doubt very much you would be happy if you wanted to eat animals and not humans, and most places served mostly dead humans to eat. It's a similar thing with (most) vegetarians and with (virtually all) vegans - to us, a dead body is a dead body, and being offered a human or animal one is equally distressing.

Nor do you have experience being anyone but yourself.


And you do not have any experience of being a plant.

Can you prove a plant is not sentient?
Can you prove a plant does not have senses?

Why do you feel it is morally OK to end the life of a plant but not of an animal?

It seems like you are drawing a very arbitary line between what is OK to kill and what is not OK to kill.

Correct, but we take limping to be a sign that a creature is in pain; indeed, 'he limped painfully' is fairly commonly used as a description of the act.

And one that implies a distinction between "he limped" and "he limped painfully."

Yes, because I have experience of being one. I can generalise based on my own experiences.

You have the experience of being a mammal, too. Why not draw the line there?

I'm not. If you'd actually bother reading my posts, you'd realise my point is there is no sane place we can draw a line and say that 'creatures of group X feel pain and creatures of group Y do not' because the only group we can speak with any knowledge of is the species we are part of.

No, we can speak with certainty only of ourselves individually, and with knowledge, to a greater or lesser degree, of any being fairly similar to us.

Certainty is not my standard. You should try reading what I was originally replying to.

I did. What's the connection?

You apparently believe there is some difference between members of my family and other people I may be familiar with. This is nonsense in the terms you're attempting to put forth.

Sure there are - genetic ones, most obviously. But what difference does it make? I could have just as easily suggested that you draw the line at "people you know" versus "people you don't know."

Wow you must be a crap chef. Any good chef would love a challenge and a chance to create something imaginative - the fact that it bothers you means you must have no imagination, and thus make crappy meals in general, veggie or not.

That's like saying you must be a crap Ford mechanic because you have thirty cars to work on this week when someone demands you service his Chrysler. Special orders are fine and good in a quiet restaurant, but when the come in during the rush when you're struggling to fill out the things people are ordering that actually are on the menu they're just a pain in the ass.

If you think a bad chef is one who goes to work in the morning only expecting to have to make food that his restaurant trained him how to make, you have very odd standards of badness.

And you do not have any experience of being a plant.

Can you prove a plant is not sentient?
Can you prove a plant does not have senses?

Why do you feel it is morally OK to end the life of a plant but not of an animal?

It seems like you are drawing a very arbitary line between what is OK to kill and what is not OK to kill.

I already suggested a potential alternative test that would avoid this problem - namely, the way we deal with other human beings, considering how we would respond to pain, or the circumstances under which we would feel pain, and extrapolating from there.

There is of course a second - comparing nervous systems.

Wow you must be a crap chef. Any good chef would love a challenge and a chance to create something imaginative - the fact that it bothers you means you must have no imagination, and thus make crappy meals in general, veggie or not.

If you don't like people asking for certain stuff, all you have to do is say either "we only serve what's on the menu (because I'm a crap chef)" or "we don't cater for vegetarians/vegans (because I'm a crap chef)"

I doubt very much you would be happy if you wanted to eat animals and not humans, and most places served mostly dead humans to eat. It's a similar thing with (most) vegetarians and with (virtually all) vegans - to us, a dead body is a dead body, and being offered a human or animal one is equally distressing.I just find it odd that a chef in a high-end restaurant is objecting to cooking something that isn't on the menu. I thought the point of high-end restaurants was that you could order anything you liked and the menu was mere suggestions.

Anyway, me, I don't meat because
1) It's hideously expensive. In can literally double or treble the cost of cooking.
2) I don't like how my body responds to red meat. It makes me stink, and it makes my skin all oily and horrible.
However, I do eat white meat and fish, just not frequently. Normally only when I have to buy a sandwich for lunch (most vegetarian options such, but then so do most sandwiches) or if someone else has prepared a meal for me - I have no objections at all to someone cooking for me.

I already suggested a potential alternative test that would avoid this problem - namely, the way we deal with other human beings, considering how we would respond to pain, or the circumstances under which we would feel pain, and extrapolating from there.

There is of course a second - comparing nervous systems.

So pain is your ONLY objection to meat?

So pain is your ONLY objection to meat?

No, the needless killing of sentient beings bothers me as well.

So does the waste involved in feeding animals for slaughter.

And one that implies a distinction between "he limped" and "he limped painfully."

The two can be used interchangably, though.

You have the experience of being a mammal, too. Why not draw the line there?

Because I am a specific mammal with a specific brain structure which I share with a given species. I can say with a fair degree of certainty that any given individual within that species is very similar to myself, since that is the only species I am genetically compatible with and they only species that can tell me how it's feeling.

I also have the experience of being a life form, does that mean I should assume brotherhood with my fellow leaf molds and fungi?

No, we can speak with certainty only of ourselves individually, and with knowledge, to a greater or lesser degree, of any being fairly similar to us.

No, we can't even speak with certainty of ourselves individually, since we don't know our senses are real either. Again, solipsism much?

The only beings with brain structures analogous enough that we can assume similar thought processes are other humans. Ouside that, we are guessing.

I did. What's the connection?

The claim given was that there was 'scientific evidence' that certain animals felt pain and certain animals did not; this is nonsense, since not all animals feel pain the same way and pain-like reflexes can be found as far down the sentience ladder as trees.

Sure there are - genetic ones, most obviously. But what difference does it make? I could have just as easily suggested that you draw the line at "people you know" versus "people you don't know."

But people I know know people I don't know, and can assure me they are like themselves. I believe them, because they are people I know and I know them to be sentient. Those people know people, and I think you only have to do that seven or eight times before you've netted the entire human race.

Now, starting with all the cows I've conversed with...I get zero. They're not so good with the talking, you see, so it's kinda hard to have a conversation regarding the precise nature of their existence.

I think there is a lot of reson to assume that aninmals feel pain.

(when you cut me do I not bleed, when you kill my child do I not enrage and when you threaten my existence do I not defend my people)

Wherever humans roam they usually have no respect whatsoever for the existing culture and we eaven play that game in outerspace right now.

(space tourism, yuck)

But to keep on the subject, have you ever murderd a couple of young kittens in front of their parents?

What do you think the reaction of the adult cats will be. Do you think they are not going to care about that action. No, the adult cats are gonna try to make an end to your existence, because they will be infuriated.

Well, cats have very small brains, but if they outnumber you, you probably will die in the proces, and I am not going to mourn you, I will defend the cats from being punished for killing a human, because they would be damm right to make an end to your existence.

What do you think a cow feels when yuo torture her child? Well if you cant imagine, observe, show a couple of cows some images of the bioindustry, meassure their stress level before and after. That is what we call intelligent science, or arrogant intuition denying behaviour. In any case you will find, whitout a doubt, thaty the cows will be, pretty pissed of.

So what do you think the effects of eating such an animal will be to your own health. It is probably the animals dieyng wish that whoever is responsible for her torture will suffer for eternity, I share that feeling with them.


:mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5:

Have you ever done any of those things? You seem awfully sure of the results...

What i tend to do is get high on hash and tellepatically communicate with whatever organism. They tell you some terrible things, you will have to find out for yourself, because as a human you will probably not take my word for it.

Animals on the other hand are very open and not that arrogant, i tend to find them more pleasant company to talk with.

I think there is a lot of reson to assume that aninmals feel pain.

(when you cut me do I not bleed, when you kill my child do I not enrage and when you threaten my existence do I not defend my people)

Wherever humans roam they usually have no respect whatsoever for the existing culture and we eaven play that game in outerspace right now.

(space tourism, yuck)

But to keep on the subject, have you ever murderd a couple of young kittens in front of their parents?

What do you think the reaction of the adult cats will be. Do you think they are not going to care about that action. No, the adult cats are gonna try to make an end to your existence, because they will be infuriated.

Well, cats have very small brains, but if they outnumber you, you probably will die in the proces, and I am not going to mourn you, I will defend the cats from being punished for killing a human, because they would be damm right to make an end to your existence.

What do you think a cow feels when yuo torture her child? Well if you cant imagine, observe, show a couple of cows some images of the bioindustry, meassure their stress level before and after. That is what we call intelligent science, or arrogant intuition denying behaviour. In any case you will find, whitout a doubt, thaty the cows will be, pretty pissed of.

So what do you think the effects of eating such an animal will be to your own health. It is probably the animals dieyng wish that whoever is responsible for her torture will suffer for eternity, I share that feeling with them.


:mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5: :mp5:
Did you seriously suggest showing a cow some pictures and then watch them for a reaction? Because... that's not going to work. Maybe with a Gorilla. But not a cow.

I typically defend anyones right to eat whatever they want and to not eat anything they don't want to eat for whatever reason but if you've been showing cows pictures and then detecting sadness... well, cows always look like this:
http://www.talisman-activities.co.uk/summer/images/Daisy%20the%20Mont%20Blanc%20cow.jpg

The two can be used interchangably, though.

No, they mean different things.

Because I am a specific mammal with a specific brain structure which I share with a given species. I can say with a fair degree of certainty that any given individual within that species is very similar to myself, since that is the only species I am genetically compatible with and they only species that can tell me how it's feeling.

So genetic similarity is the test, not membership in homo sapiens. That is a better standard, but one that requires you to consider species genetically similar to us (or more specifically, with similar nervous systems to ours) as likely to have similar sensations of pain.

No, we can't even speak with certainty of ourselves individually, since we don't know our senses are real either.

But we know we sense what we sense, tautologically.

The only beings with brain structures analogous enough that we can assume similar thought processes are other humans. Ouside that, we are guessing.

If you want to adopt similarity of brain structures as a standard, you will have to acknowledge that if we can do more than "guess" with regard to humans, then we can do more than "guess" with regard to non-human animals as well. Our assessments may be less accurate, but we still have a basis upon which to make judgments.

The claim given was that there was 'scientific evidence' that certain animals felt pain and certain animals did not; this is nonsense, since not all animals feel pain the same way and pain-like reflexes can be found as far down the sentience ladder as trees.

Unless you make the reasonable assumption that the poster was referring to the sensation of pain, not to "pain-like reflexes."

But people I know know people I don't know, and can assure me they are like themselves. I believe them, because they are people I know and I know them to be sentient. Those people know people, and I think you only have to do that seven or eight times before you've netted the entire human race.

You can program a computer to say it feels pain, too. Does it?

They tell you some terrible things, you will have to find out for yourself, because as a human you will probably not take my word for it.

Well, no. I'll accept that many members of the cat family do indeed kill kittens and suffer absolutely no consequences for it: for example, when a male lion takes over a pride he will invariably kill all the cubs that are left because the females looking after them will be eating into his mating schedule; I believe it's the same for feral cats.

And IIRC cows can't even perceive a two-dimensional image represents a three-dimensional object, so showing them photos will do all of jack and squat.

Well Amish people usually look like this

But I do remember them being pretty upset when someone murdered a couple of their kids. Isnt that interesting, a primmitive culture with actual modern responses to stress.

What i tend to do is get high on hash and tellepatically communicate with whatever organism. They tell you some terrible things, you will have to find out for yourself, because as a human you will probably not take my word for it.

Animals on the other hand are very open and not that arrogant, i tend to find them more pleasant company to talk with.

Oh... you're a puppet.

No, the needless killing of sentient beings bothers me as well.
Given you assume a sheep is sentient how can you prove a plant is not?

Well Amish people usually look like this

But I do remember them being pretty upset when someone murdered a couple of their kids. Isnt that interesting, a primmitive culture with actual modern responses to stress.

Actually, they were very forgiving.

No, they mean different things.

Really? How do you limp painfully as opposed to just limping? Is it anything like the dreaded Bolero?

So genetic similarity is the test, not membership in homo sapiens. That is a better standard, but one that requires you to consider species genetically similar to us (or more specifically, with similar nervous systems to ours) as likely to have similar sensations of pain.

Which they are more likely to have due to similar brain structure, yes. But we don't eat monkeys anyway.

But we know we sense what we sense, tautologically.

No, we think we know. 'I think therefore I think I am' is probably the best way to phrase it.

If you want to adopt similarity of brain structures as a standard, you will have to acknowledge that if we can do more than "guess" with regard to humans, then we can do more than "guess" with regard to non-human animals as well. Our assessments may be less accurate, but we still have a basis upon which to make judgments.

Yes, but there's very little similarity between a large herbivore's brain and our own, so it's going to be a difficult one to call regardless. There's even less similarity between our brains and those of spiders or goldfish.

Unless you make the reasonable assumption that the poster was referring to the sensation of pain, not to "pain-like reflexes."

Yes, but the sensation of pain is only applicable here if it's 'painful' as such. If it's not, then it's no different from the damage reflex of a tree.

You can program a computer to say it feels pain, too. Does it?

That would depend entirely on how sophisticated the program in question was, really.

The main argument I have against vegetarianism is that, if everyone was vegetarian, all of the livestock would have to be slaughtered anyway, since they would be of no use to the farmers who would then need to use the land to grow crops and make money. It's more efficient that way, but many breeds could face extinction as a result.

Saying that, it does seem a little hypocritical to eat meat that I have bought from others, who have probably mistreated and neglected the animal through its life, when I could not kill and eat an animal that I have raised myself, even when it would have had a much better life. Actually, I doubt I could kill an animal at all. I went fishing in Yorkshire last year and watched this guy beat a fish I caught to death with a stick (which, interestingly enough, is known as a 'priest') . I never actually knew fish had so much blood, and I certainly didn't catch anymore.

But I do remember them being pretty upset when someone murdered a couple of their kids. Isnt that interesting, a primmitive culture with actual modern responses to stress.

Amish people haven't been noted not giving a damn with other people kill their children so they can mate with them. Lions and cats have.

Whenever I speak more truth than you can handle :upyours: the nose of you arrogance just grows like cancer on capitalism.

:gundge: :rolleyes:

Cool, right? Have you seen me puff the cheeks of my arrogance?

Given you assume a sheep is sentient how can you prove a plant is not?

We can't prove it, but since the plant has no brain or nervous system and does not act sentient, we can assume that it is less likely to be sentient than a sheep. If I had to eat one or the other based on only that, I would go for the seemingly less sentient of the two.

We can't prove it, but since the plant has no brain or nervous system and does not act sentient, we can assume that it is less likely to be sentient than a sheep. If I had to eat one or the other based on only that, I would go for the seemingly less sentient of the two.

But many plants clearly do not seem to want to be eaten - poisons, hard bark, spikes, rock hard shells on their seeds...

coconut anyone?

And who are we to declare something is not sentient based on our limited perception of the world.

Just becase they don't struggle when you kill them does not meant they are not alive and don't want to stay alive.

But many plants clearly do not seem to want to be eaten - poisons, hard bark, spikes, rock hard shells on their seeds...Got it backwards. Unless plants can alter their genetic makeup before they grow, thorns, poisons & whatnot don't indicate a desire to be/avoid being eaten. OR do you think nearsighted humans are trying to be blind?

coconut anyone?Mmm. Yes please :)

And who are we to declare something is not sentient based on our limited perception of the world.We are humans. Didn't you know?

We haven't declared anything. We, based on available evidence, have deduced most of the other lifeforms we've come across, aren't sentient. If others are sentient as well, they would be well advised to let us know - that is, if they mind getting chewed on. IF they like being eaten, they should probably keep quiet. I'm pretty sure most people have a problem eating something they know is thinking of them.

Just becase they don't struggle when you kill them does not meant they are not alive and don't want to stay alive.True enough. And just because no evidence suggests dragons might exist, it's no reason not to run screaming to the nearest bombshelter :p

I think a better question is whether something needs to be sentient to feel. Measuring heartrates, brainwaves & the like, it seems pretty obvious that a good chunk of the animals we gobble down, aren't overly comfortable with our treatment of them. Even if they are oblivious to their impending doom.
It's what makes us mercykill animals too hurt to recover.

Got it backwards. Unless plants can alter their genetic makeup before they grow, thorns, poisons & whatnot don't indicate a desire to be/avoid being eaten. OR do you think nearsighted humans are trying to be blind?
A coconut tree goes to considerable effort to make it's seeds as hard to eat as possible. It would appear the tree does not want to have it's seeds eaten.

A coconut tree goes to considerable effort to make it's seeds as hard to eat as possible. It would appear the tree does not want to have it's seeds eaten.It would appear Similization goes to considerable effort to make his balls & nostrils hairy & his feet ridiculously large. It would appear Similization hates having his balls sucked & wants to be known as Bigfoot.

Or perhaps Similization, a sentient being, doesn't have any control over his genetical makeup - regardless of how much he enjoys having his balls sucked & hates spending extra money on oversized footwear & nosehair trimmers.

Your argument is illogical. The sentients we've positively identified (humans) can't alter their genetic makeup. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't grow 20 feet tall & have your nuts hang 'round your neck. Hell, lots of people would rather have been of the opposite gender, but no amount of desire makes it so.
Likewise, mutated fuckers with no arms or such, didn't choose to be mutants. And you didn't choose not to be one either.

Finally, we already know of a process responsible for the appearance of things like humans & coconut palmtrees. It's called evolution & involves no sentience, at least not on the individual level. It just positively discriminates things that are likely to survive & propagate themselves.

So you have some reason to believe there's no sentience involved, and no reason to believe there is sentience involved.

How many times does it need to be said that a vegetarian diet results in less plants being killed than a meat diet? It's a pretty obvious point.

It would appear Similization goes to considerable effort to make his balls .It would appear Similization hates having his balls sucked.
It's not like you couldn't use a razer.


So you have some reason to believe there's no sentience involved, and no reason to believe there is sentience involved.
I should probably make it clear just in case... I don't think coconuts or plants are sentient. Nor do I really think many non human animals are.

You're still killing something, if you lose sleep over killing a non human living thing then it seems strange to view some things as OK to kill and some things as not OK to kill.

To me there are a couple of animals that I'd prefer not to eat, some monkeys doga, cats. But if it came down to it I would quite happily eat them and not feel guilty about it one bit.

It just raises my hekles when someone starts saying - "you can't eat all these things - it's practically genocide! you'll be eating babies next!!111uno and you can't eat this and you can't eat that. BUT you can eat this, this and this. Because I am the universal morality measurer who has definitive knowlege of what is and is not sentient and OK to eat"

It's not like you couldn't use a razer.Yea, opposable thumbs & technology are just two of the reasons I'm rather pleased with not being a coconut palmtree :p I should probably make it clear just in case... I don't think coconuts or plants are sentient. Nor do I really think many non human animals are.Nor many humans, for that matter. You're still killing something, if you lose sleep over killing a non human living thing then it seems strange to view some things as OK to kill and some things as not OK to kill.Indeed. And following that reasoning, if you're prepared to kill & eat some things, you should be prepared to kill & eat all things. And wasn't it Jesus who said "Humans are like grass"? Go forth & smoke 'em. To me there are a couple of animals that I'd prefer not to eat, some monkeys doga, cats. But if it came down to it I would quite happily eat them and not feel guilty about it one bit.I think the crux of the argument is that it doesn't "come down to it" for people in modern countries. All of us could easily live as vegetarians or vegans. It's a matter of preferrence, not necessity. I won't defend the argument, however, because I don't agree with it. It just raises my hekles when someone starts saying - "you can't eat all these things - it's practically genocide! you'll be eating babies next!!111uno and you can't eat this and you can't eat that. BUT you can eat this, this and this. Because I am the universal morality measurer who has definitive knowlege of what is and is not sentient and OK to eat"Well.. The sentient/non-sentient thing smells like bullshit to me. I initially became a vegan for two reasons. It was cheaper, and it causes less suffering (for humans & other animals).

These days it's not a matter of choice for me though. I've developed a sort of phobia about eating animal products for some reason. Nothing rational about it, but that's how it goes. And no, I'm not prepared to take any shit about that, unless you ate your dead mother. It's the same thing, just on a different scale. And since my irrational bullshit harms no-one, I fail to see how it can be anyone's problem.

Be that as it may, doesn't the meat industry disgust you?

http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=pilgrims_web&Player=wm&speed=_med


Outsourcing your dirty work is cowardly. See video above.

I thought I made it clear that I don't consider "icky" to be equivalent to "immoral." So why do you continue to try to use the ick-factor on me?

If it makes you feel better, I do kill things on a regular basis as part of my job. Mostly chick embryos, but sometimes hatchlings too. Cute ones.

http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=pilgrims_web&Player=wm&speed=_med



Ah yes the PETA arguement. :rolleyes:

You'll have to pardon me if I don't buy the PETA 'free all the animals and let them make their own decisions' spiel.

I personally don't care one way or another whether you are a vegetarian or not. I love animals and would rather not see them suffer, however, I am an omnivore. It's just something I have to deal with.

I love ham, bacon and sausage more than I like pigs.
I love burgers, steaks, and roasts more than I like cows.
I love meat more than I like animals.
Peta can go screw.

I think it is odd that vegetarians find their version more moral somehow - they still kill living things.


btw - probably been asked - but where do vegans get B12 from?

Do what you like, we'd rather kill less then more, it is close to impossible to not kill anything ever these days but that doesn't mean you can't make an effort not to.

Just because it doesnt have nervs doesnt mean they dont feel pain. They may have another way of feeling and sensing things.

How? Until you provide proof I'm gonna have to call bullshit.

BULLSHIT!

1) Lots of field animals are killed when plants are harvested, yet those deaths are acceptable. You're either against the killing of all animals, or animal death is all right with you.

2) The vegetarians I know own shoes, belts or other things made of leather. Last I checked, leather is made of dead animals.

1) You still have to eat/survive. You try and limite it where you can but sometimes if is nessicairy, is this such a hard concept to grasp?

2) They're choice, maybe they're vegi. for other reasons maybe they can't find other shows and need shoes, maybe they had it sense before they were vegitarian, maybe they are hypocritical but unless they're forcing their views on you, why does it matter. If they are pushing their views on you: carry on.

How much intelligence and skill does it take to hunt a leaf?

Vegetarian is an old [insert culture/nationality] word for "bad hunter".

Omnivores are made to eat both animals and plants. Excluding either from an omnivore's diet is poor nutrition.
1. None, do you hunt your meat?
2. Again you consider the average meat eater a good hunter?
3. Now you can limit your diet somewhat and be fine.

I love ham, bacon and sausage more than I like pigs.
I love burgers, steaks, and roasts more than I like cows.
I love meat more than I like animals.
Peta can go screw.

You love meat more than you love humans. You'd rather take the food from a starving child than cut down on your meat consumption. Hopefully you'll get rectal cancer.

You love meat more than you love humans. You'd rather take the food from a starving child than cut down on your meat consumption. Hopefully you'll get rectal cancer.

Well we need to reduce the surplus population somehow. Whether it happens through rectal cancer or starvation it's got to happen.

And how should vegetarians avoid this? By not eating vegetables, perhaps? :rolleyes:

Stop supporting the corrupt agriculture industry and go grow and pick your own damn veggies? Nothing like hypocrisy in action, folks. ;)

(sorry, but I just could not resist after all the 'evil meat industry' comments - not even gonna touch the rest being a very content omnivore - yay, variety - yay steak & potatoes)

You love meat more than you love humans. You'd rather take the food from a starving child than cut down on your meat consumption. Hopefully you'll get rectal cancer.

If food destined for human consumption was evenly distributed, every person would get five pounds of food per day. Starvation is a matter of poor food distribution. Meat has nothing to do with it.

You have a better definition? Other definitions I found include "to make unfit or harmful for living things". The definition still fits.
I'd limit it to direct harm. Otherwise all the natural byproducts of life (like water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide) count as pollutants, and that's just silly.

You love meat more than you love humans. You'd rather take the food from a starving child than cut down on your meat consumption. Hopefully you'll get rectal cancer.

If food destined for human consumption was evenly distributed, every person would get five pounds of food per day. Starvation is a matter of poor food distribution. Meat has nothing to do with it.

Cthulhu is right. The European Union countries produce enough food to feed 18 billion people...

Cthulhu is right. The European Union countries produce enough food to feed 18 billion people...


Really, that's a cool statistic(not sarcasm, I could see that being true), could I get a source?

Well, since you have to feed the cow on stuff from the garden anyway, it comes to the same with an extra dead animal on top. The meat-eater just doesn't pretend this extra dead animal for some reason matters vastly more than any of the others just because they then go on to eat it. But since the cow eats vastly more food in order to fatten up than the human would require if they consumed it directly, then vastly more deaths result.

I'd limit it to direct harm. Otherwise all the natural byproducts of life (like water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide) count as pollutants, and that's just silly.
And if you limit it in the way you are proposing, then it excludes things like CFC's, which are clearly harmful to human health (albeit indirectly) and which fit within most accepted definitions of pollutants.

Even if you take the narrowest dictionary definition (e.g. something which contaminates air, water or soil) the basic thrust of it is something which makes the ecosystem less viable for human habitation. And excessive CO2 levels clearly do that as well.

The problem is this includes a hasty generalisation: to the effect that if an animal feels pain, it must process that feeling in the precise same conscious manner a human does.No, it doesn't.

You may want to insist on that, but most vegetarians don't care whether animals process pain in "the precise same conscious manner" that a human being does. What they care about is the fact that there is good reason to believe that an animal feels pain at all--that it hurts, that this sensation is unpleasant, and so on. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that animals feel such sensations (and, for that matter, that they feel them in much the same way humans do). Certainly there is better reason to believe this than to believe that plants "feel" pain in anything remotely like the way humans do.

Pain is a signal that the organism is being damaged: trees have such responses, but tree-pain is obviously very different to the pain reflex of any animal, which in turn can be markedly different from the pain reflex of another animal.Right. And the question is whether the animal's response is similar to a human's in morally relevant ways. This may be a claim that non-vegetarians dispute; be that as it may, the fact that a vegetarian concludes (based on scientific evidence) that animals feel pain does NOT in any way "require" her/him to believe that plants feel pain in a similar way. You make this point yourself.

One can't make a meaningful distinction between creatures that can and can't feel pain because we don't know what that feeling actually is for any creature but ourselves.First, I could point out that we actually DO know what kinds of nerves carry the pain response to our brains, we DO know the kinds of reactions our nervous system has to pain... and we are fully capable of comparing those reactions to what we see in non-human animals.

You may hold on to the fact that we can never "really, truly" get inside the head of an animal... but for that matter, we can never "really, truly" get inside the head of another human being. Instead, we suppose that others feel pain the way we do because their behavioral reactions are similar--they cry out, they wimper, they scream--and their physiological reactions are similar. The same can be said of animals, far less so of plants.

Were that true it would also be a safe assumption that we both have four stomachs, despite that we both don't. The ability of an organism to percieve itself as finite [and thus evalute pain as a threat to existence as we see it rather than just a 'stop that' reflex trigger] is, as far as we know, limited to higher primates like ourselves.

So? Since when was the moral relevance of pain based on the fact that people understand that pain may lead to death?

Young children generally don't know anything about death--does that mean that it's okay to cause them pain?

Pain is bad in itself, regardless of whether one "understands" that pain is a "threat."

No. Without knowing how the animal in question processes data, I cannot say with any certainty how any given animal responds to pain reflexes.Fortunately for the vegetarian argument, then, we know that the neurology of pain processing comes down to us from our pre-primate ancestors (just like MOST of our other physiological characteristics). Perhaps you're not aware of how much DNA we share with mice--this being the reason that we use them in medical experiments, even *gasp* psychology experiments?

You can't assume feelings are the same because reactions are similar, it's nonsense."Assume" may be strong, but certainly this piece of evidence is relevant to building a case. Neurological evidence is, perhaps, even more important.

Of behavioral evidence, perhaps the most significant is not this merely structural/biological behavior--limping to favor wounded appendages--but rather those areas of ethology that examine the emotional responses of animals: the fact that the faces and sounds mammals make when they feel pain are rather consistent across species, including humans.

You say it's "nonsense" to assume that animals "feel" anything when they are hurt. I say it's absurd to ignore the extensive evidence that they do.

No, I am drawing the only sane line available to me here. I am a human; because other humans respond the same way I do to something, I assume they percieve it the way I do. I am not a cow.No, but you are a mammal. There are plenty of "lines" you can draw, the question is always "which line is relevant to the question being asked."

White people used to draw such a distinct line at race that they claimed their treatment of blacks was justified because "these creatures" do not really suffer, because they have no souls. Their arguments were remarkably similar to yours: "I am white, thus I can have no idea what it would be like to be in a black body. We are certainly not 'the same'... and I find it hard to believe that God would put a soul into such an ugly body as theirs." Never mind that we respond in the same ways to stimuli, never mind that we are physiologically the same in those respects important to emotional experience. Let's not "assume" that based on this evidence we are really "the same."

(Think I'm exaggerating the argument? Check out Montesquieu's ideas on slavery... He takes several chapters to explain why slavery is not only repugnant but inherently unjust, because no person can alienate his liberty... then in a few paragraphs he easily justifies African slavery by pointing out that Africans have no souls.)

I therefore cannot say that just because a cow is acting in a manner that appears familiar to me it must be identical to how I experience whatever that is.It doesn't have to be "identical." It just has to be similar enough for me to sympathize with it. A dog does not have to understand "being kicked" in the same way I do for me to sympathize with a dog when I see someone kicking it--in fact, for me to rush to its defense, because no creature should be so abused.

You can anthropomorphise animals all you like, but drawing a line regarding which animals you think feel pain based purely on familiarity of actions is absolutely insane. There is no sane place we can draw a line and say 'these things certainly feel pain and these things certainly do not' and claim we have done so for anything but the most arbitary of reasons.

No, but you're the only one asking for "certainly." Vegetarians (and most people who care about animals) are generally satisfied with "probably." We'll defend the animals that most clearly suffer, based on the available evidence. We'll be far less likely to defend creatures that almost certainly do not (e.g. plants, bacteria, etc), based on similar evidence.

Moral distinctions are almost never "certain." What they need to be is "reasonable," which this one is.

More to the point, you cannot claim that your distinction between humans and non-human animals is any the less arbitrary. You have decided (for no very good scientific reason), that this animal species experiences sensations in a certain way that others do not, despite the evidence that physiologically and behaviorally we respond similarly to most mammals.

Nice slippery slope fallacy, there.I believe Soheran was ironically reversing the slippery slope merely to demonstrate yours. The slippery slope fallacy is simply a refusal to draw distinctions: it is the argument that, if you admit X, you will have to admit "all these other things" because there is "no way" to distinguish between them and X. This is what you do with respect to treating animals as sufferers: you say that if one accepts this, one will have to accept that plants suffer as well. This is utter nonsense: we can make very reasonable distinctions based on behavioral and physiological criteria. Things that do not meet those criteria we treat as unlikely to feel pain.

Solipsism is intellectual masturbation, unfortunately. On the other hand, we have no clear idea of how lower mammals percieve the world around them, or even if they have a concept of being a finite 'self' rather than just processing data their body gathers and reacting to it by strict instinct.

First, we have very good ideas of how mammals perceive the world around them, which is precisely why we use them in psychological research intended to understand humans. Your ignorance of science is your own affair: don't try to make an argument out of it.

Second, who cares if they have a sense of "self"? The issue is whether they feel pain, not whether they ponder the meaning of life.

I <3 steak. Now when it comes to vegetarians/vegans/etc they can eat whatever they want to and it won't bother me just as long as they don't force me to give up eating what I enjoy.

By GMC's argument, I should be allowed to abuse infants all I want.

After all, the fact that an infanct cries when I drop it or cut it does not prove that it feels pain the same way I do. Nor does the fact that we share the nervous system that receives and processes pain tell me anything about the infant's experience.

I don't remember my own infancy, so I have no immediate comparison of our experience: I have no subjective reason to believe that what matters in my experience of pain is present for an infant. Indeed, I have very good reasons to believe that infants do not share my sense of "self"--that they do not understand pain as a threat to their existence. Rather, they merely react instinctively to their environment.

Cognitively, lower primates, dogs, cats--in fact, most mammals--are more advanced than this little creature. Clearly I should not be any more concerned with its experience of pain than I am with theirs. And I am not concerned with theirs, because they are not like me.

:rolleyes:

If it makes you happy.

I eat whatever I need to survive, I think Vegatarians look frail.

I eat whatever I need to survive, I think Vegatarians look frail.

Oddly enough, my brother has been fat all his life, and we were both raised vegetarian.

Pain is bad in itself, regardless of whether one "understands" that pain is a "threat."

No, pain is not bad in itself. Way to fail to understand biology, there. Pain is a reflex that is supposed to inform a creature that it is damaged, so that it can take action to remove itself from the source of that damage. We only have to look at the hideous harm lepers who do not feel pain can do to themselves to realise just how much good pain actually does for us.

Further, I could point out that some people [and, presumably, animals, though the latter probably don't last long for it] actually enjoy it. Pain is bad when it is caused needlessly and without the organism's consent, it isn't bad in itself by any means.

Fortunately for the vegetarian argument, then, we know that the neurology of pain processing comes down to us from our pre-primate ancestors (just like MOST of our other physiological characteristics). Perhaps you're not aware of how much DNA we share with mice--this being the reason that we use them in medical experiments, even *gasp* psychology experiments?

I'm entirely aware of it, actually. What you're ignoring is the vast increase in complexity of mind that comes from the DNA we do not share with lower mammals and that most of the 'shared' DNA is actually useless junk and inactive genes. Are you aware you share over 50% of your DNA with a tree? Does that mean the tree should also be spared because it has simplistic versions of pain responses?

You say it's "nonsense" to assume that animals "feel" anything when they are hurt. I say it's absurd to ignore the extensive evidence that they do.

That's an nice strawman you've got there. Sadly, I didn't say that at all. I said it's nonsense to assume it purely on the basis of similarity of response and anthropomorphisation, which is all you really have other than vague assumptions about neurology.

None of this is valid to build a useful case for an animal's experience of pain being similar to a human's, therefore your conclusion is shaky at best.

White people used to draw such a distinct line at race that they claimed their treatment of blacks was justified because "these creatures" do not really suffer

Awesome, so you think there's evidence that the difference between a human and a cow is even remotely comparable to the difference between a human and another human? I'd love to see that. Unless you're just just throwing out ad hominems, of course.

It doesn't have to be "identical." It just has to be similar enough for me to sympathize with it. A dog does not have to understand "being kicked" in the same way I do for me to sympathize with a dog when I see someone kicking it--in fact, for me to rush to its defense, because no creature should be so abused.

Why? Do you know what the dog did to cause the person to kick it? Why do you instantly assume that the dog is innocent and the human guilty, even though the human may be attempting to defend themselves from an attack by the dog?

More to the point, the human kicking the dog is in no way productive unless it is self defence: it is senseless violence, indicating the human in question is a dick. Pointlessly harming creatures rather than doing so for food or to control their numbers is wrong, because it serves no purpose and reflects a personality interested in cruelty for cruelty's sake. This is generally regarded as a sign of a warped mind.

Judging whether you should respond to someone deliberately abusing something based on your sympathy for the object of abuse rather than the fact that abuse is happening is an odd way to deal with things. Are you saying if you didn't sympathise with what the person was kicking you would just let them carry on pointlessly destroying it?

No, but you're the only one asking for "certainly." Vegetarians (and most people who care about animals) are generally satisfied with "probably." We'll defend the animals that most clearly suffer, based on the available evidence.

Given this standard, you should therefore defend humans above all other creatures because they are the ones you can most clearly tell are suffering. However, in your example, you clearly stated if you saw a human kicking a dog, you would defend the dog.

Hole in your reasoning, here.

More to the point, you cannot claim that your distinction between humans and non-human animals is any the less arbitrary. You have decided (for no very good scientific reason)

Since when is direct observation not a good scientific reason? There's also significant additional evidence that human perception of the world is very different from that of other animals, even those closely related to us.

that this animal species experiences sensations in a certain way that others do not, despite the evidence that physiologically and behaviorally we respond similarly to most mammals.

Actually, it's easy to do that because we are clearly extremely different from any other animal species in terms of our mind, hence our creation of art, mathematics, science, technology, language and so on. The fact that certain reflexes remain the same doesn't allow us the sweeping generalisation that pain is also the same sensation, or even a sensation as we know them at all, for all creatures.

This is what you do with respect to treating animals as sufferers: you say that if one accepts this, one will have to accept that plants suffer as well.

No, I say that if one is willing to anthropomorphise a reflex designed to report damage in some creatures, one should have a specific set of criteria regarding why they do so in some creatures but not others, and where, precisely, this line is drawn between 'does suffer' and 'does not suffer.'

Your argument is that such a line exists. Ok, where is it, and why there rather than anywhere else? Your vague handwaving about 'behavioral and physiological criteria' is so much hot air.

This is utter nonsense: we can make very reasonable distinctions based on behavioral and physiological criteria. Things that do not meet those criteria we treat as unlikely to feel pain.

Behavioural and physiological criteria tell us nothing about what an animal is actually feeling; anyone can pull faces, and the entire acting profession is based on producing behavioural traits that are not being felt. The real things needed here would be neurological and psychological criteria, if you wish to pull this 'criteria' nonsense.

First, we have very good ideas of how mammals perceive the world around them, which is precisely why we use them in psychological research intended to understand humans. Your ignorance of science is your own affair: don't try to make an argument out of it.

Marvellous non sequitor. That would be your ignorance of science. We know that some psychological traits of animals are similar to those found in humans and therefore we can roughly extrapolate the results of testing on them to apply to humans: this does not by any means mean they percieve the world in the same way. We can do some psychology experients [mostly regarding the behaviour of crowds] using colonial insects and even computers, that certainly doesn't mean they do.

Second, who cares if they have a sense of "self"? The issue is whether they feel pain, not whether they ponder the meaning of life.

If a creature is simply a box of instincts that operates purely by complex stimulus-response hardwiring, as we know very well many animals are, said creatures are really nothing more than biological machines. Pain itself is meaningless if the creature has no perception of it above 'damn, something's wrong with that leg now, I'd better get out of here.'

By GMC's argument, I should be allowed to abuse infants all I want.

After all, the fact that an infanct cries when I drop it or cut it does not prove that it feels pain the same way I do. Nor does the fact that we share the nervous system that receives and processes pain tell me anything about the infant's experience.

You love strawman arguments, no? The infant is a human, the same way you are. It is entirely reasonable to treat it as such. Further, damaging it is still wrong because harming a creature pointlessly is never correct.

Cognitively, lower primates, dogs, cats--in fact, most mammals--are more advanced than this little creature. Clearly I should not be any more concerned with its experience of pain than I am with theirs. And I am not concerned with theirs, because they are not like me.

Right, because the fact that said creature is not fully grown means that it should be regarded as an entirely different thing. This is the classic slippery slope fallacy.

Further, I never said we should have no concern for an animal's pain whatsoever. Your strawman is showing. I guess I'm not being unreasonable enough for your liking, so you figure you can be unreasonable enough for the both of us.

No, pain is not bad in itself. Way to fail to understand biology, there. Pain is a reflex that is supposed to inform a creature that it is damaged, so that it can take action to remove itself from the source of that damage. We only have to look at the hideous harm lepers who do not feel pain can do to themselves to realise just how much good pain actually does for us.No, pain is bad in itself. Way to fail to understand basic logical distinctions, there.

See, what you have shown (very accurately, I might add), is that pain is good for things it provides. This is very different from being good in itself.

Further, I could point out that some people [and, presumably, animals, though the latter probably don't last long for it] actually enjoy it.This is a more complex argument, but I'll point out two things:

1) If we are to preserve the meanings of the words "pain" and "pleasure," then what we have to presume about such people is that painful sensations are accompanied, for them, with pleasurable ones--which sensations may be as much in the imagination as in the body--and that the pleasures they derive outweigh the pain involved. It is useful to note that masochists generally have very clear limits as to what they can/do enjoy.

2) Such individuals generally do NOT desire that people harm them without their consent; and since consent does not carry over in a very meaningful way to non-human animals, which have fewer means through which to express it, masochists are irrelevant to the argument.

Pain is bad when it is caused needlessly and without the organism's consent, it isn't bad in itself by any means.No, you just admitted that it is bad in itself. If it is bad "when it is caused needlessly," then it must be good ONLY as a "necessary evil." Note the "evil" implied in your statement.

I'm entirely aware of it, actually. What you're ignoring is the vast increase in complexity of mind that comes from the DNA we do not share with lower mammals and that most of the 'shared' DNA is actually useless junk and inactive genes. Are you aware you share over 50% of your DNA with a tree? Does that mean the tree should also be spared because it has simplistic versions of pain responses?Again, you're unwilling to draw reasonable distinctions.

First, yes I am aware that I share a lot of DNA with a tree. No, I do not think that I share the DNA associated with the cognitive sensations of pain, because I know enough physiology to identify which parts of my neuro-physiology produce such responses and I can see that a tree does not have them.

You want to argue that because I will admit chimpanzees, with whom I share 99% of my DNA, to the moral fold, I must admit ANY animal that "shares some DNA"... what a ridiculous slippery slope, and how far from anything I have indicated. I have indicated that I want to draw a line at those animals for which it is reasonable to believe that they feel pain sensations similar to the ones I feel. That does not mean that I care about ANY "simplistic version" of the pain response. And why should it?

That's an nice strawman you've got there. Sadly, I didn't say that at all. I said it's nonsense to assume it purely on the basis of similarity of response and anthropomorphisation, which is all you really have other than vague assumptions about neurology.What "vague assumptions"? Are you saying we don't know enough about the neurology of pain to identify which animals do (and which do not) have the appropriate physiology?

Taken together, the behavioral and the neurological evidence should be more than sufficient to suggest, if not certainty, then the strong likelihood that many animals feel pain in a manner similar to us.

It takes an almost religious belief in the uniqueness of human beings to ignore this evidence. At the very least, it should give a moral creature pause before inflicting pain on other feeling creatures. (Or do you really require the certainty that you are causing pain before you are willing to forebear?) It is, at any rate, certainly not an unreasonable conclusion.

Note that I'm not saying you have to accept this conclusion, or that if you accept it a vegetarian conclusion necessarily follows. What I am asking you to admit is that it is a reasonable conclusion--that is, I want you to give up your ridiculous insistence that vegetarians must be essentially crazy to believe that non-human animals feel pain in a way similar to humans.

In the first place, I think it's an extremely hard case to make that there is only "shaky" evidence that non-human animals experience pain in a way similar to humans. I cannot say for sure without a literature review, but I think you would find a fair scientific consensus to this effect--and I am quite sure that you would be hard pressed to find professional biologists or ethologists who would insist that the burden of proof is decidedly against those making such a claim.

In the second place, you might admit that animals feel pain, but that this is not sufficient in itself to make the vegetarian case--an assertion with which I happen to agree. You might insist that although animals feel pain, other things (like the ability to do math) are morally important--perhaps even more important. Or you might insist that while animals feel pain, it is nevertheless justifiable to consume them for food--an assertion with which, given certain conditions, I would certainly agree. This is a natural part of the "food chain."

Thus, I think your arrogant insistence that human beings are unique in their perceptions of pain (among other things) is somewhat misplaced and unnecessary.

Awesome, so you think there's evidence that the difference between a human and a cow is even remotely comparable to the difference between a human and another human?As with all comparisons, it depends on what you're trying to compare. If we're comparing mathematical ability, I'd say there is little evidence to make a close comparison. If we're comparing the experience of pain, there is quite a bit more evidence.

You need to learn that one similarity need not imply others. To be scientific about things, you need to take them one comparison at a time.

Why? Do you know what the dog did to cause the person to kick it? Why do you instantly assume that the dog is innocent and the human guilty, even though the human may be attempting to defend themselves from an attack by the dog?Irrelevant to the discussion at hand. You seem to imply (especially by your use of the term "guilty") that there is a moral wrong in kicking a dog, but that in some circumstances a person may be justified or excused for that wrong--just as killing a human is wrong, but courts may regard a person as justified or excused under certain circumstances.

More to the point, the human kicking the dog is in no way productive unless it is self defence: it is senseless violence, indicating the human in question is a dick. Pointlessly harming creatures rather than doing so for food or to control their numbers is wrong, because it serves no purpose and reflects a personality interested in cruelty for cruelty's sake. This is generally regarded as a sign of a warped mind.Your argument seems to be slipping here. You admit that harming an animal is, in itself, a bad thing--presumably because it causes them pain, and senseless pain is "cruelty for cruelty's sake." This is really all I have been pressing for here: admitting this, it is another matter to show that this leads to a vegetarian conclusion. In itself, I do not believe that it does.

Many vegetarians, in fact, hold that there is nothing wrong with eating meat in itself: it is often necessary, and it is common for one animal to consume another to meet its needs. In the modern world, however, many vegetarians object to the treatment of animals in meat production--they view it as unnecessary, and therefore cruel. (Some people stop short, arguing that certain kinds of free-range farming are acceptable... in which case they are not, obviously, vegetarians. Vegetarians may sometimes take the argument further, arguing that raising animals specifically for slaughter is a wrong no matter how you do it. In other words, hunting is okay, but not farming. In this case, their "vegetarianism" may simply depend on their lack of opportunity or interest in hunting.)

Given this standard, you should therefore defend humans above all other creatures because they are the ones you can most clearly tell are suffering.I would, and I do. Given the choice between saving a human and saving an animal, chances are I'll take the human (unless, of course, he's a particularly nasty example of our species). However, in your example, you clearly stated if you saw a human kicking a dog, you would defend the dog.I would, assuming the human were in no immediate danger. I thought that had been implied, but I suppose I should have made it clear: I agree entirely with your earlier assertion that if a human is attacked by a dog, she is justified in whatever actions are necessary to averting the threat.

Of course, if she continues to kick the dog beyond what it takes to defend herself--e.g. as it lies bleeding in the street--I will endeavor to stop her.

Hole in your reasoning, here.Nope.

Since when is direct observation not a good scientific reason?Direct observation is excellent scientific evidence... it would be fantastic if we could have direct, subjective experience of what animals feel. Since we do not, however, we'll have to make do with the evidence we have... and this all tends to the conclusion that many non-human animals share something very similar to the human experience of pain. There's also significant additional evidence that human perception of the world is very different from that of other animals, even those closely related to us.I agree! Yet the differences do not seem to be relevant to the experience of pain.

Some differences do not imply others any more than one similarity implies others.

Actually, it's easy to do that because we are clearly extremely different from any other animal species in terms of our mind, hence our creation of art, mathematics, science, technology, language and so on.Yep. The fact that certain reflexes remain the same doesn't allow us the sweeping generalisation that pain is also the same sensation, or even a sensation as we know them at all, for all creatures.You need to get over this idea that it is a "sweeping generalization." It is not. It is a conclusion based on centuries of careful scientific observation, and it should be significant to you that scientific opinion tends to drift closer to the opinion that humans share many experiences with animals rather than farther away.

Four hundred years ago, non-human animals were viewed as pure automata, driven from one activity to another by instinct, with no "experience" to speak of. They were thought of as masses of matter that happen to move around.

Two things have happened since then. First, careful observation and an abandonment of human arrogance have established that animals do, with little doubt, feel. Second, careful observation and experiments on the human brain have revealed that we are much more like automata than we previously believed. In other words, hundreds of years of careful analysis have steadily tended to the conclusion that human beings and non-human animals are more alike than different.

No, I say that if one is willing to anthropomorphise a reflex designed to report damage in some creatures, one should have a specific set of criteria regarding why they do so in some creatures but not others, and where, precisely, this line is drawn between 'does suffer' and 'does not suffer.'And yet you have completely ignored my assertion that such a distinction can be based, at least in part, on whether or not animals share with humans the neurological apparatus that we know to be responsible for the experience of "pain."

There may, of course, be variations in this apparatus as we look at other animals, and I deny for this reason that any line has to be drawn "precisely." It's a mystery to me why you think it should be: few other lines are, either in biological science or (certainly) in ethics. If we could draw such sharp lines between right and wrong, the courts would have a much easier job than they do.

Behavioural and physiological criteria tell us nothing about what an animal is actually feeling; anyone can pull faces, and the entire acting profession is based on producing behavioural traits that are not being felt.Right. But since faces and behaviors and (if you like) physiological criteria are all you have to go on in the case of other human beings, the problem is fundamentally the same. So we can speak: that's just another set of behaviors, which may serve similar functions to facial expressions.

Yet you are willing to say that other human beings share your experience of pain, because they are "like" you. This "like" is just the drawing of a line: you draw it at the species, but you provide no compelling reason that this should be so. Why there, and not somewhere else? The answer should be that you are interested in evidence of similarity in respects relevant to the sensation in question... but in that case it is not unreasonable to note that we are similar in such respects to non-human animals as well.

Otherwise, your line is simply arbitrary: you "decide" that you are "like" others of your same species in this respect, and "unlike" others of related species, but for no particular reason. That's just where you decide to draw the line.

The real things needed here would be neurological and psychological criteria, if you wish to pull this 'criteria' nonsense.What are psychological criteria, but discussions of behaviors and physiology? Many psychologists would go so far as to say that human psychology deals ONLY in behaviors: there is nothing else that we can "get at."

We know that some psychological traits of animals are similar to those found in humans and therefore we can roughly extrapolate the results of testing on them to apply to humans: this does not by any means mean they percieve the world in the same way.

Do you think you are making a point by throwing "by any means" or "in no way" into your argument wherever it is convenient? You are willing to admit similarities, but then you assert that anyone who takes them seriously is confused. You are willing to admit that we can "extrapolate" from animal experience to human experience, but then you want to pretend that we don't really understand animal experience. The practice of extrapolation only works, of course, if you understand reasonably well that from which you extrapolate.

You love strawman arguments, no? The infant is a human, the same way you are. It is entirely reasonable to treat it as such. Further, damaging it is still wrong because harming a creature pointlessly is never correct.If you are admitting that harming a creature pointlessly is never correct, then you are really admitting all that I have desired to prove. You are admitting that the suffering of these creatures is morally relevant, even if in your opinion human needs ultimately justify the use of animals for food.

This is a weighing of moral goods and bads. You admit that animal suffering is bad in itself, even if it may be necessary to some other (more important) good.

Right, because the fact that said creature is not fully grown means that it should be regarded as an entirely different thing. This is the classic slippery slope fallacy.You are absolutely right: it is. But it is a parallel of yours, which is why I made it--in full ironic form. I certainly don't believe that the pain of infants is morally irrelevant, but according to the moral criteria you suggested--having an experience of pain similar to mine--it should be.

Further, I never said we should have no concern for an animal's pain whatsoever. Your strawman is showing. I guess I'm not being unreasonable enough for your liking, so you figure you can be unreasonable enough for the both of us.Actually, it wasn't a strawman: at least, not intentionally so.

My honest understanding of your position was that because (for you) we cannot know that animals experience "pain" as we do, we should not be concerned with hurting them--they are probably just a bundle of reflexes or something.

If I misunderstood you... mea culpa. Of course, forgive my ego if I cannot help but believe that my arguments subtly shifted your position to the point at which you would make this admission. I'm only human.

;)

Really, that's a cool statistic(not sarcasm, I could see that being true), could I get a source?

I don't know about 18 billion people, but all through Europe farmers are paid by the government to NOT produce food on their land as there is so much over production. Even with this vastly more food is produced in Europe than could ever be eaten by Europeans.

The 18billion may have been an overstatement (though could be true) but the general premise of his point is correct - starvation in the third world is not due to the inability of the world to feed it's population but due to poor food distribution.

No, pain is bad in itself. Way to fail to understand basic logical distinctions, there.

No, it's not. Pain is neutral, it just is.

See, what you have shown (very accurately, I might add), is that pain is good for things it provides. This is very different from being good in itself.

Not really, no. The 'badness' of pain is your cue to deal with the source of it; as a group-based animal with complex social structure, dextrous fingers and a wide range of movement, you can generally access the source of pain to deal with it.

Incidentally, it would actually be massively disadvantageous for a ruminant with four-legs-under to have the same response, since there would be nothing it could do about it most of the time and it would have to simply sit there in pointless agony.

If we are to preserve the meanings of the words "pain" and "pleasure," then what we have to presume about such people is that painful sensations are accompanied, for them, with pleasurable ones--which sensations may be as much in the imagination as in the body--and that the pleasures they derive outweigh the pain involved. It is useful to note that masochists generally have very clear limits as to what they can/do enjoy.

Others argue that pain and pleasure are the same thing, you realise? Indeed, fizzy drinks trigger a pain response, yet it's so mild that people find drinking them pleasurable.

Such individuals generally do NOT desire that people harm them without their consent; and since consent does not carry over in a very meaningful way to non-human animals, which have fewer means through which to express it, masochists are irrelevant to the argument.

Well, aside from that if even one individual exists who enjoys pain for pain's sake you're wrong about it being necessarily bad. Remember that guy who was eaten by the German cannibal?

No, you just admitted that it is bad in itself. If it is bad "when it is caused needlessly," then it must be good ONLY as a "necessary evil." Note the "evil" implied in your statement.

No, no such thing is implied. Causing harm to living things is bad because they are clearly damaged by it. Therefore, we should only harm them if there is some tangible benefit to doing so. We don't have to recognise they feel pain like we do, or at all, to know that damaging them will cripple or kill them, and that crippling or killing a creature needlessly is both wasteful and stupid.

You want to argue that because I will admit chimpanzees, with whom I share 99% of my DNA, to the moral fold, I must admit ANY animal that "shares some DNA"... what a ridiculous slippery slope, and how far from anything I have indicated.

Glad you ignored my actual point, there. Watch this.

Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Now is the winter of our discontent Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger

Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Buy cars from your local dealership, people! Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger

Ok. Now, we have a 90% similarity between these two blocks of words. So that means they're saying the same thing, right? Well, no. There's 55 useless copies of the word 'Badger' in each, but the 7 words actually saying something are completely different.

The point is, most of the 'shared' DNA is worthless non-coding junk. The active parts of your DNA are vastly different, only the padding makes it look like there's a great degree of similarity.

I have indicated that I want to draw a line at those animals for which it is reasonable to believe that they feel pain sensations similar to the ones I feel. That does not mean that I care about ANY "simplistic version" of the pain response. And why should it?

Ok, how simplistic does a pain response have to be before it stops mattering?

What "vague assumptions"? Are you saying we don't know enough about the neurology of pain to identify which animals do (and which do not) have the appropriate physiology?

Yes.

Taken together, the behavioral and the neurological evidence should be more than sufficient to suggest, if not certainty, then the strong likelihood that many animals feel pain in a manner similar to us.

But it doesn't. We can tell that some nerves are designed to carry pain responses and the facial gestures and sounds are used to signal others that a member of the group is in distress, either as a call for help or a warning to keep away. These are hard-coded responses that remain partly in us, but it doesn't follow that the animals have all the extra processing baggage we do that requires pain to be agonising before we'll get off our asses and get away from it.

It takes an almost religious belief in the uniqueness of human beings to ignore this evidence.

This evidence you haven't bothered to present, only vaguely alluded to the existence of? It takes an almost religious belief to accept an argument on the basis of handwaving assurances that 'there's lots of evidence' without being shown any of it. And bear in mind I have a higher-level school qualification in Biology and would presumably have seen it by now if it was as elementary as you keep claiming.

At the very least, it should give a moral creature pause before inflicting pain on other feeling creatures. (Or do you really require the certainty that you are causing pain before you are willing to forebear?) It is, at any rate, certainly not an unreasonable conclusion.

I don't require knowledge that I'm inflicting pain at all to forebear damaging something for no reason, regardless of what it is. This is why I haven't destroyed everything I own. I don't need to know if a spider has feelings to realise pulling off its legs one by one would only be showing what a shitty human being I am.

Note that I'm not saying you have to accept this conclusion, or that if you accept it a vegetarian conclusion necessarily follows. What I am asking you to admit is that it is a reasonable conclusion--that is, I want you to give up your ridiculous insistence that vegetarians must be essentially crazy to believe that non-human animals feel pain in a way similar to humans.

It's not a reasonable conclusion, though. It's based purely on a belief that any animal that feels pain must feel it the same way a human does: anthropomorphism. If you want to believe that, fine, it's as good a way to arrive at the conclusion that mindlessly killing things is bad as any other, I suppose. But it's not rational.

In the first place, I think it's an extremely hard case to make that there is only "shaky" evidence that non-human animals experience pain in a way similar to humans.

Well, that's the 'I think' argument out of the way. Want to go for the 'I believe' argument while you're at it for the Brucie Bonus?

I cannot say for sure without a literature review, but I think you would find a fair scientific consensus to this effect--and I am quite sure that you would be hard pressed to find professional biologists or ethologists who would insist that the burden of proof is decidedly against those making such a claim.

The burden of proof always rests on the one making the positive claim. That's you. Vague appeals to the authority of nameless experts won't cut it.

In the second place, you might admit that animals feel pain, but that this is not sufficient in itself to make the vegetarian case--an assertion with which I happen to agree.

Or you might argue that feeling pain in some manner isn't sufficient case to judge that pain based on how much pain we think we would be under in similar circumstances.

Or you might insist that while animals feel pain, it is nevertheless justifiable to consume them for food--an assertion with which, given certain conditions, I would certainly agree. This is a natural part of the "food chain."

You might also note that the food chain [particularly the parts involving parasites] operates in a manner so brutal, disgusting and utterly vicious that if any human slaughterhouse were to operate in a similar manner it would be closed down and its operators given long prison sentences.

Thus, I think your arrogant insistence that human beings are unique in their perceptions of pain (among other things) is somewhat misplaced and unnecessary.

I'm not insisting it. I happen to believe that many animals are able to perceive and feel pain. However, I recognise I believe this purely on the basis that they act in a manner that reminds me of the way humans act, and therefore I don't want them hurt because they remind me of little humans.

That's the heart of your case too, you're just jacking the word 'science' into it and acting like that makes it less irrational.

As with all comparisons, it depends on what you're trying to compare. If we're comparing mathematical ability, I'd say there is little evidence to make a close comparison. If we're comparing the experience of pain, there is quite a bit more evidence.

Not nearly enough, sadly.

You need to learn that one similarity need not imply others. To be scientific about things, you need to take them one comparison at a time.

Nope, it's still the Ad Hominem because of the subject ['that sounds like what RACISTS!!11 said'] chosen. Comparisons to racists, Hitler, Stalin and so on are all the 'guilt through association' form of that fallacy. I could equally counter that your argument sounds just like what Hitler [!!1] would say, since he was a vegetarian.

Irrelevant to the discussion at hand. You seem to imply (especially by your use of the term "guilty") that there is a moral wrong in kicking a dog, but that in some circumstances a person may be justified or excused for that wrong--just as killing a human is wrong, but courts may regard a person as justified or excused under certain circumstances.

No, there is no moral wrong in kicking a dog. There's a moral wrong in kicking a living creature that has done nothing to deserve it, because they're easily damaged and very difficult [often impossible] to repair. It doesn't matter if it's a dog [A CAT IS FINE TOO]. In fact, it doesn't really even matter if it's living; destructiveness for the sake of destructiveness is behaviour that achieves nothing useful. Even war manages better off in the stakes of actually doing something than kicking a dog.

And yes, that leaves me able to believe, barring atrocities, that war is less morally wrong than kicking a dog, without having to believe the dog has feelings.

Your argument seems to be slipping here. You admit that harming an animal is, in itself, a bad thing--presumably because it causes them pain, and senseless pain is "cruelty for cruelty's sake." This is really all I have been pressing for here: admitting this, it is another matter to show that this leads to a vegetarian conclusion. In itself, I do not believe that it does.

No, actually, it doesn't require that, and I almost added a section on that precise argument. It is enough that the person kicking the dog believes he is inflicting pain for us to realise he is wrong to do it. It doesn't really matter as much if he actually is, his crime is that he believes it's ok to inflict pain on something whenever he feels so inclined. From the point of view of establishing the individual is clearly unhinged and should be stopped, it wouldn't matter if he thought he was inflicting pain on a roadsign by bashing it with a hammer.

Equally, if he does not think he is inflicting pain, we would still regard it as wrong in this case because what he is doing lacks any clear purpose. Unless he is acting according to an irrational fear of dogs, something for which he would require therapy, what he is doing is pointlessly ending the life of a creature. Since as conscious creatures ourselves we recognise being alive is probably better than not being, we determine ending any life for no reason at all is bad.

Many vegetarians, in fact, hold that there is nothing wrong with eating meat in itself: it is often necessary, and it is common for one animal to consume another to meet its needs.

That would be the Natural Law Fallacy. The fact that something happens in nature doesn't mean it isn't wrong: for example, albino creatures are commonly ostracised by others and left to die, but I doubt anyone would want to see humans emulating this model.

In the modern world, however, many vegetarians object to the treatment of animals in meat production--they view it as unnecessary, and therefore cruel.

One could point out to such people that the treatment of animals by their predators and parasites in nature is hardly a box of snuggles either.

Of course, if she continues to kick the dog beyond what it takes to defend herself--e.g. as it lies bleeding in the street--I will endeavor to stop her.

Actually, if it was lying bleeding in the street you could make a case for kicking it to ensure it died quickly as opposed to slowly, if you believed its injuries were necessarily lethal.

Direct observation is excellent scientific evidence... it would be fantastic if we could have direct, subjective experience of what animals feel.

We do have direct observational evidence of being human. Unless you're claiming you don't, in which case I would ask you to get off the furniture and stop typing because you don't have opposable digits anyway.

Yep. You need to get over this idea that it is a "sweeping generalization." It is not. It is a conclusion based on centuries of careful scientific observation

It is a sweeping generalisation, actually. And that would be interesting, since modern biology has only thought of shared common ancestry as being valid since the beginning of the 20th century.

Two things have happened since then. First, careful observation and an abandonment of human arrogance have established that animals do, with little doubt, feel.

Established how, precisely? It's a nice empty assertion, but if you want to actually convince me you have a case as opposed to just bashing me over the head with empty rhetoric you're going to have to present actual facts here.

There may, of course, be variations in this apparatus as we look at other animals, and I deny for this reason that any line has to be drawn "precisely." It's a mystery to me why you think it should be: few other lines are, either in biological science or (certainly) in ethics. If we could draw such sharp lines between right and wrong, the courts would have a much easier job than they do.

Because the line you're trying to draw is the line where murder stops being murder, according to you. If you don't see why the line has to be incredibly precise, they you obviously don't care that much about the animals that may find themselves on the wrong side of it.

Yet you are willing to say that other human beings share your experience of pain, because they are "like" you. This "like" is just the drawing of a line: you draw it at the species, but you provide no compelling reason that this should be so. Why there, and not somewhere else?

Because I believe creatures of my own species are so similar I cannot reasonably regard them as worthy of unequal treatment. My closest genetic relatives apart from other humans tend to like to fling their own shit at each other, so I'm more disinclined to regard them as equals until they stop doing that.

The answer should be that you are interested in evidence of similarity in respects relevant to the sensation in question...

Particularly, in the case of humans, their ability to report and describe it. Language makes establishment of similarity very, very easy.

Otherwise, your line is simply arbitrary: you "decide" that you are "like" others of your same species in this respect, and "unlike" others of related species, but for no particular reason.

Well, for the particular reason that my own species is able to describe its experiences in speech or writing so I can make direct comparisons.

What are psychological criteria, but discussions of behaviors and physiology? Many psychologists would go so far as to say that human psychology deals ONLY in behaviors: there is nothing else that we can "get at."

Then why is there a specific sub-field of 'behavioural psychology?' According to you, that should be like 'structural engineer of structures.'

Do you think you are making a point by throwing "by any means" or "in no way" into your argument wherever it is convenient?

Yes, when you can't deal with your opponent's actual arguments, bitch about the presentation instead. Style over substance fallacy, yay!

You are willing to admit similarities, but then you assert that anyone who takes them seriously is confused.

There are similarities, but they are just that: similarities. An elephant and a frying pan are both grey. That's a similarity. You can perform experiments on the greyness of the frying pan and get results that tell you about grey, which you can apply to the elephant. Does that mean the frying pan shares all other qualities that make an elephant an elephant?

You are willing to admit that we can "extrapolate" from animal experience to human experience, but then you want to pretend that we don't really understand animal experience.

No, I simply note it isn't fully relevant and isn't necessarily fully transferable just because parts of it are. A frying pan doesn't have a trunk and you can't make fried toast in an elephant, but if both are the same shade of grey you can transfer results from one to the other.

The practice of extrapolation only works, of course, if you understand reasonably well that from which you extrapolate.

But it does not require that the thing being extrapolated from be similar to the other thing in any way but the thing being studied.

If you are admitting that harming a creature pointlessly is never correct, then you are really admitting all that I have desired to prove. You are admitting that the suffering of these creatures is morally relevant, even if in your opinion human needs ultimately justify the use of animals for food.

No. Destroying things for no reason is wrong regardless of what the things are, animal, mineral or vegetable. We can gauge the specific level of wrong by how much we like the item if we feel so inclined, but it is wrong to destroy things pointlessly because of the pointlessness, not because of what is being destroyed.

This is a weighing of moral goods and bads. You admit that animal suffering is bad in itself, even if it may be necessary to some other (more important) good.

Do I? I don't recall ever doing so, being as my primary argument against harming animals doesn't even require them to be capable of suffering.

You are absolutely right: it is. But it is a parallel of yours, which is why I made it--in full ironic form. I certainly don't believe that the pain of infants is morally irrelevant, but according to the moral criteria you suggested--having an experience of pain similar to mine--it should be.

And you then assumed that was the only criteria I would ever assess for morals. Gogo stupid leap in logic.

My honest understanding of your position was that because (for you) we cannot know that animals experience "pain" as we do, we should not be concerned with hurting them--they are probably just a bundle of reflexes or something.

No, my position is that we should avoid hurting them wherever it is practical to do so, and where it is not work to minimise whatever pain they do feel, regardless of how they feel it. But we do this purely because we believe it is unacceptable for a human to find inflicting needless harm on something ok. We believe this of animals, but we also believe it of trees and even inanimate objects. The same root is also why we despise vandalism.

To anthropomorphise the feelings of animals purely because we think we see something human in them is a dishonest way of arriving at sympathy: in your example of the dog, would you feel the same if someone was kicking a robotic dog, or a giant scorpion? I would; the fact that he feels he can, for no reason, screw up something that's done nothing to him is what the human has done wrong, and that applies to all cases.

If I misunderstood you... mea culpa. Of course, forgive my ego if I cannot help but believe that my arguments subtly shifted your position to the point at which you would make this admission. I'm only human.

Yes. The fact I used to have two dogs and two cats, which I didn't randomly harm because I believed it wasn't right to do so, is just your influence travelling back in time. Seriously, if I had the attitude you suggested I'd be posting from prison.

I am veggie (or not quite, I eat fish and seafood) because I said one day: I wanna try not to eat meat" and it kinda stuck. haven't eaten meat for some years now.

Really, that's a cool statistic(not sarcasm, I could see that being true), could I get a source?
I learned it in school, so I'll have to dig one up. Until that, the only source I can give you is "that social science book we used in 12th grade" ;)

I'll be back with a link. *breaks out his shovel*

Oddly enough, my brother has been fat all his life, and we were both raised vegetarian.

We were definately "made" to eat pretty much everything we're eating now, our intestines are longer than meat-only eating animals, while our intestines are shorter than plant-only eating animals.

I think Vegan food is nasty, I tried some. Vegan burgers tastes good at first, but then it just tastes terrible, weird after taste. If they're so anti-meat eating, then why package food as if it were a meat substitute? Why not just eat everything but meat (and dairy if you're vegan), why must you package things that have an "alternative" gimmick, or make things that try to taste as much like animal flesh as possible?

I'm not dead, so I must be consuming something right.

In Soviet Canada, vegetable eat YOU! :eek:

2. Plants don't feel pain.



Wow, that's one of the most ignorant things I've ever heard. Someone has yet to view FernGully: The Last Rainforest. :mad:

I have more of an issue with the meat industry than eating animals necessarily... the way animals are treated isn't very nice and the hormones and the like they're injected with probably isn't very good for people. I'm also not sure I want to be responsable for the deaths of animals if I can avoid it.

Plus you can feed more people off the land if they don't eat meat, so it is better for the environment.

I dont' give a shit what anyone else eats, so long as they don't cook their meat in my pots and pans.

I think Vegan food is nasty, I tried some. Vegan burgers tastes good at first, but then it just tastes terrible, weird after taste. If they're so anti-meat eating, then why package food as if it were a meat substitute? Why not just eat everything but meat (and dairy if you're vegan), why must you package things that have an "alternative" gimmick, or make things that try to taste as much like animal flesh as possible?
The best veggie burgers are the ones with little bits of carrots and peas and the like visible in them, the ones that are just brown soy aren't so great usually.

Nothing against vegatables, but I only get to live once and I don't want to waste my time just eating vegatables.

No, my position is that we should avoid hurting them wherever it is practical to do so,

It is quite practical to be a vegetarian. Millions do so everyday without a fuss.

It is quite practical to be a vegetarian. Millions do so everyday without a fuss.

+10 points for 'immunity to context of statement.' It is very clearly not practical for the meat industry to avoid harming animals, because it has to kill them somehow; where possible, it should therefore work to do so as quickly and efficiently as possible. Playing word games with half a sentence isn't a particularly impressive rebuttal.

Yeah, but what we've got the other animals don't is the .44 Magnum revolver.

My argument is that evolution and evolution alone gives us the right to do what we want, and that there is no intrinsic normative system out there, save for the social contract we make with other members of our own society.

I can't argue with that. I'll just outsmart you and kill you and take all your posessions - and because this theoretical me would be capable of doing this without getting caught, it would justify my actions. hitler subcribed to the philosophy that being more highly evolved than others justified your actions against them...of course, so have most other people (hitler also likely believed the sky was blue...doesn't mean it's not) but still, if you're arguing that there IS no morality, then that's allright - though I doubt if you were robbed or someone hurt your children or whatever that you would actually practice that belief "oh, well, someone with a circumstantial advantage killed everyone I loved...darn, better luck next time!" - you'd say it was wrong, cry out for justice...something like that. having an evolutionary advantage does not make it right. if "right" exists, anyway. insisting it doesn't exist is certainly a safe position, but again, I doubt you'd actually hold that consistantly in the real world.

What should we do with beef cows? they dont produce enough milk to be economicly sustanible, and if we let them free, they would probtly be slaughterd do to the fact they are not built to live in the wild.

Should we sentance them to death for no value, or sentance them to death for a value. They die no matter what

I move that since all humans die, no matter what, we start killing the stupid ones and making them into delicious and nutricious smoothies. there's no easier way to get all the nutrients you need for your own body than to let another member of your species do it for you! I am more intellegent than most people, my God told me it was ok, and I have more deeply fealt emotiosn than many - so I think you'll agree that it's only natural I put people to good use - I mean, they're just going to die anyway.

if I had a quid for every time a meat eater said something like "I love a nice big juicy steak" (in a completely irrelevant manner just to try to upset me) straight after I've mentioned my diet (eg. cus someone's asked me about it) or something equally stupid, I'd have a lovely bit of extra cash.[/B]

I'd be a f*cking millionaire. if I go out to dinner with friends, one of them will invariably be sure to mention how he loves to hunt - I've had them go into detail about breaking bird's necks and watching deer bleed to death and the like. if a friend happens to mention they're pro-life, do people feel compelled to describe in disgusting detail the abortion they had? seriously, the only reason I can think of for people being so obnoxious about it is that they find it threatening. the next person to wave his bacon in front of me when I haven't so much as wrinkled my nose at it will find themselves promptly slapped. not really, but I sure feel like it.

Do you get many off-menu orders from non-vegetarians? Do most vegetarians order on or off menu?

in 3 years I've never ordered something that wasn't on the menu - maybe once or twice I've ordered something like a salad or burrito that has chicken or beef thrown in, and asked them to hold the meat - but I don't think that's particularly obnoxious.

I don't eat out much, but when I find a place that has vegetarian orders, I enthusiastically order it exactly as it is. it's totally obnoxious and self-centered of them to expect you to whip up something at random - but I've never ordered something that wasn't on the menu, never seen a friend do it, nor did I even know people did it at *all* - seriously, that's why you have menus, isn't it? obviously you have some serious snobbage among your customers - we aren't all like that.

2) The vegetarians I know own shoes, belts or other things made of leather. Last I checked, leather is made of dead animals.

correct - people who do that are obnoxious hypocrits. I happen to have a leather wallet that was a gift from a foreign country (no returns available) and from someone I loved who didn't understand vegetarianism at all. the rest of it - my shoes, belts, jewlery, whatever - all of it is leather-free.

that steak kills 1 animal, the field kills say 10 rats and such animals
Steak seems like less animals die, it just died so you may eat it, the field animals died so they could become multch

yes, and the field that fed the cow killed just as many, turned half the food to shit, and made the local bacteria resistain to the constant doses of antibiotics given to the cow. the field animals are still multch - 9/10 of the field is now cow shit, the cow lived a horrible life and then died, and the theoretical eater of the steak is likely obese. veganism is still the lesser of two evils - anybody who says they live without causing death is ignorant or a liar, but the field-animal argument is just retarded.

A vegan who wanted to follow through on their own beliefs to the point they could lecture others should grow their own food. Most choose not to because this is inconveniant. In other words, by buying industrially cultivated foods harvested by heavy machinery, they are saying they don't mind animals being painfully killed by farm equipment because it would be inconveniant to them to do anything about it. It tend to irritate people if vegans then get on their high horse about animal suffering, since they're not doing everything they can to minimise it purely because it would require them to take steps that would disrupt their lifestyle. Much like it would tend to irritate a car-user if a smoker who didn't drive was lecturing them on pollution.

I completely agree. the Freegans are perhaps the only ones who aren't hypocritical about it - them and the few people who actually do grow their own food.

Vegetables don't taste as good as meat. It may be inefficient, but it's tasty so I'll continue to eat it.

obviously this is subjective, but to be frank american cuisine just doesn't know what the hell to do with them. the american cooking strategy seems to be to pour as much grease and salt onto something as possible, and then maybe make it edible. if you actually mix flavours and use herbs and spices other than salt and pepper - vegetables can be pretty damn good. indian and thai cuisine is a good example of this - I won't eat american peas, they're boring, gross, and usually barely beyond raw - but if I go to an indian resturaunt, they do things to peas that blow my mind...haha, it's entirely possible to make vegetables taste good - you just have to know how to cook them. this is rather like the old "ew, tofu!" reaction - plain tofu is disgusting, I would never eat it - but tofu cooked in a traditional japanese way is actually pretty good. americans just don't know how to cook...

Meat is more effecient to digest and to acquire energy. While cows have to eat 10 times their mass in food to get the meat, you have to eat ten times the mass in grain to get the energy that is in the meat. And for some people, it is physically impossible for them to consume enough grain to get the energy they need to live.

this is why I eat potatos. carbohydrates are the body's natural source of energy - and there's nothing in meat you can't get from a bowl of lentil soup - and that our ancestors haven't more frequently gotten from that sort of source, anyway. meat is too expensive for most people to eat it - most people throughout history heav eaten *mostly* vegetables, not necessarily by choice, but by simple economic necessity. you butcher a pig/calf/whatever for a party - this culture is one of the only ones that thinks every meal needs meat in it. subsistance farmers would rapidly run out of meat if they killed their domesticated animals all the time. even recently (ever read "little house on the prarie"?) most people were farmers who got meat mostly when they *hunted* it - eating domesticated animals on a daily basis is just plain unusual, historically speaking. I'd put my bet on the fuedal serf over you any day of the week, as far as strength goes. I sincerely doubt you expend more energy than the subsistance farmers who didn't get meat that often.

To forestall any future incarcerations, I'd like to point out that people do not taste good. Studies have shown that human flesh is an acquired taste.

actually, I heard that people taste like pork. the aztecs reportedly made this observation upon their first encounter with spanish pigs. I think they really did engage in ritual canibalism on rare occasions (much to the shock and horror of the spaniards, who promptly went to communion and ate the body and blood of jesus)

How much intelligence and skill does it take to hunt a leaf?

Vegetarian is an old [insert culture/nationality] word for "bad hunter".


yes, we vegetarians simply lack the intellegence and skill to order steak. I've tried so many times to order a big-mac, but the concept is just beyond me. I also simply could not figure out how to hide in a bush, aim at an almost entirely defenseless herbavore, and pull a trigger. the idea of facing the fearsome whitetail with nothing more than a gun and a pickup truck terrifies my paltry vegan heart. I stand in awe of your highly-developed and very macho hunter-skills. some day I aspire to being able to microwave a frozen chicken-pot-pie, but for now I'll leave that to you more skilled, intellegent folk.

"modern man" is an old word for "bad hunter", unless your idea of hunting is a trip to the grocery store - in which case I'm willing to bet most vegans know more about where their food came from and do alot more label-reading and the like than omnivores.


Omnivores are made to eat both animals and plants. Excluding either from an omnivore's diet is poor nutrition.

made? nobody "made" omnivores - at least in our case we were herbivores who happened to not get miserably sick when we ate small ammounts of meat. at the time we started, humans were omnivorous in the sense that they occasionally found a dead body and ate it - we also ate grubs and insects. this protein boost likely allowed us to evolve our brains - but our digestive systems have not yet evolved to the point where meat eating is purely healthy on a regular basis. if you compare the length of our digestive system to our size - we can stretch our intestines something like 30ft in the air, isn't it? I dont' remember, but it's very long. a tiger's digestive tract is only a fraction of that length - it's much simpler and foot stays in it for much shorter lengths of time, as dead flesh will usually rot and must be pushed through the body quickly. it's biologically quite fine for humans to eat carrion and insects every once in a while, as a supliment to a mostly vegetable diet, but it's not healthy for meat to be the base of the diet - as the results of the american diet show. we were hebavores for the vast majority of our evolution, and if we're slightly better at eating prepared, cooked flesh than a strict herbavore is - that does *not* mean we are naturally to eat a mostly-meat diet.

some day I aspire to being able to microwave a frozen chicken-pot-pie, but for now I'll leave that to you more skilled, intellegent folk.

Dare to dream, o unskilled ruminant. Dare to dream...

If they're so anti-meat eating, then why package food as if it were a meat substitute? Why not just eat everything but meat (and dairy if you're vegan), why must you package things that have an "alternative" gimmick, or make things that try to taste as much like animal flesh as possible?

Yeah, because every vegan and vegetarian eats meat substitutes. Not.

Vegetarians aren't trapped in the narrowminded meat and 2 veg world, but food producers are, so they think that they should produce meat substitutes to catch the vegetarian market.

Why would vegetarians really want to replicate the arseholes and ears and other reclaimed meat that go into burgers and sausages?

It's pretty much the same fallacy that vegetarians eat lots of soya. Says who? Why would vegetarians eat lots of soya when there are hundreds, if not thousands of different types of fruit and vegetables to choose from? Lack of imagination on your part does not equal a lack of imagination for vegetarians.

You won't find many meat substitute or soya recipes in a good vegetarian cookbook. In fact I can't think of any recipes in my cookbooks that include meat substitutes, and so few that include soya to be normal, i.e. it's just one of the many ingredients that are used, not something added to every meal to make it meat like.

Then there's the fallacy that tofu is a meat substitute. Says who? If I eat tofu it's because tofu would go well in a particular recipe. It's not like any meat that I remember.

I found that growing up I had far more negative comments about the way we lived from meat eaters than we did from vegetarians. People would be… ew.. how can you eat your own pets… that’s gross. You guys are freaks… etc etc. They would come around to our place, eat a chicken dinner, comment on how delicious it was then go ballistic when they see a headless chicken hanging up in the garage to drain the blood. Its that kind of hypocritical attitude that I really dislike. So hypocritical attitudes are certainly not exclusive to vegetarians.
Pussy meat eaters irritate me more than any other type. If you can't kill it, don't eat it.

Well, if your stated goal is to reduce deaths as much as is possible, that's what you should do.

I want to reduce animal life as much as possible. It's the carnivores that want to promote the existence of millions of animals.

Do you know if a spider with two missing legs is in pain as a human would be, or if it just has two lights on in it's head saying 'these are gone now, avoid whatever that was?' If not, do you know this would be different for a mouse, badger, squirrel or a cow?
I've always wondered that about spiders, but I'm sure the experience of cows and mice would be closer to that of humans since we're mammals like them.

Wow you must be a crap chef. Any good chef would love a challenge and a chance to create something imaginative - the fact that it bothers you means you must have no imagination, and thus make crappy meals in general, veggie or not.
You seem to have a rather romanticised idea of what a chef's job is like.

Meat is just an incredibly inefficient way to produce food. Why use so much energy, land and water fattening animals for humans to consume? you could use significantly less if you grew crops which were fed directly to humans.

Crops do not contain anywhere near enough protien

Pussy meat eaters irritate me more than any other type.

Try to avoid handing people easily warped lines like that.

Crops do not contain anywhere near enough protien

Yeah, that's why I'm a 7 stone weakling :rolleyes:

Yeah, that's why I'm a 7 stone weakling :rolleyes:

No, that's because you didn't eat your Wheaties. Obviously.

It completely overlooks all the facts - such as it takes 5 times as much land to feed a cowIncorrect and misleading.

While the "food ratio" needed could very well be 1:5 the land area or the amount of energy needed isn't. Cow is a herbivore capable of digesting foods that would be unusable or malnourishing for a human - More accurately cow is capable of digesting material that would not be food for a human. Secondly, cow is able to amass and/or synthesize vitamins and materials that would require special crops - ie. arable land in appropriate climate - or additional nutrients to be used if following strict vegan diet leading to a much higher energy cost total for pure vegan diet than balanced omnivorous diet.

Furthermore, it's good to note that many animals that are qualified as herbivores - like cattle - do eat meat if they have access to it.

I thought I made it clear that I don't consider "icky" to be equivalent to "immoral." So why do you continue to try to use the ick-factor on me?
So there's nothing immoral about torturing animals for your hedonistic pleasure? (which is what this comes down to, really)

If it makes you feel better, I do kill things on a regular basis as part of my job. Mostly chick embryos, but sometimes hatchlings too. Cute ones.
You're a chicken farmer?


I love meat more than I like animals.
Peta can go screw.
It's because I dislike animals that I'm a vegetarian. You are just supporting the existence of animals, I am not so much.

If food destined for human consumption was evenly distributed, every person would get five pounds of food per day. Starvation is a matter of poor food distribution. Meat has nothing to do with it.
We were definately "made" to eat pretty much everything we're eating now, our intestines are longer than meat-only eating animals, while our intestines are shorter than plant-only eating animals.

It's only in the last few decades that Americans and Europeans have been prosperous enough to eat meat every day. That's not natural, and it's not what we were made for.

The best veggie burgers are the ones with little bits of carrots and peas and the like visible in them, the ones that are just brown soy aren't so great usually.
Indeed, I regard soya as being evil, and shit.

It's only in the last few decades that Americans and Europeans have been prosperous enough to eat meat every day. That's not natural, and it's not what we were made for.

Er, no. We were "made" for eating meat as often as possible. That's why we have pronounced canines, relatively short guts, and extremely large brains.

I sincerely doubt you expend more energy than the subsistance farmers who didn't get meat that often.


I have an extremely hyperaccelerated metabolism. On a 4000 kcal/day diet I actually lost weight.

Furthermore, it's good to note that many animals that are qualified as herbivores - like cattle - do eat meat if they have access to it.

Yeah, cows & sheep will eat meat ground up into their feed so they have no choice, that's how we've ended up with scrapy and BSE. Leave a carcass in a field and they won't touch it. Maybe you'd like to show some links to back up your facts.

Er, no. We were "made" for eating meat as often as possible. That's why we have pronounced canines, relatively short guts, and extremely large brains.
Absolute crap. Most humans got meat rarely before the 20th century but we didn't die off. Vegetarians are generally quite healthy. Our guts are moderately long, we don't have pronounced canines (dogs do) and our brains are big because we're intelligent.

Absolute crap. Most humans got meat rarely before the 20th century but we didn't die off. Vegetarians are generally quite healthy. Our guts are moderately long, we don't have pronounced canines (dogs do) and our brains are big because we're intelligent.
Some people would say that we're intelligent because our brains are big. Who knows what the truth is, eh? :rolleyes:

...The human body can easily survive on say, three glasses of water a day. Does that mean we shouldn't consume any more than that? No. I don't care about all you fancy land ratios, animal cruelty, how much land we could feed Africa with. I like my pork, my lamb, and my steak. And I'll eat them in peace. Hopefully, someday, you will too.