1. Comment #387834 by adamd164 on June 15, 2009 at 11:20 am

Thank you so much for this. Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins are two of the greatest champions of animal rights out there and two of the most knowledgable opponents of speciesism alive.

Really looking forward to watching. This is exactly why I will keep donating to RDFRS whenever I possibly can. You are the best. :-)

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2. Comment #387849 by NewMind on June 15, 2009 at 12:08 pm

This one really made me think. Very interesting. I wish it were easier to be a vegetarian in today's society... I guess we have to start somewhere.

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3. Comment #387854 by Diacanu on June 15, 2009 at 12:32 pm

That was pretty cool.
Actually got me thinking along new lines.
Doesn't happen often enough these days.
:P

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4. Comment #387855 by kraut on June 15, 2009 at 12:33 pm

Hey, why stop at there - what about the right of plants not be eaten? Be consequent, stop feeding yourself. And do not touch the fungi, please.
They demand equal rights.

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5. Comment #387857 by Sciros on June 15, 2009 at 12:37 pm

Jack Daniels Sauce > arguments for vegetarianism

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6. Comment #387859 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 12:44 pm

kraut- I'm an omnivore and I've heard the old plant's rights joke, but they touched on that subject. Did you listen to the whole thing?

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7. Comment #387862 by adamd164 on June 15, 2009 at 12:54 pm

@Kraut:

did you even watch the video?!

It's nothing to do with the act of actually EATING the organism, it's how they are treated in our care and should be judged on the capacity for pain.

Dawkins points out repeatedly that there is a continuum in the biological world of neurological complexity.

And you clearly haven't studied biology because fungi and plants don't even posess nervous systems; this can only be a discussion about the morality of farming ANIMALS.

However, I really don't know why I'm bothering as you've either not watched the video or are a complete moron.

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8. Comment #387864 by Valjean on June 15, 2009 at 1:02 pm

So if the criterion is the capacity to feel pain, why not just administer anaesthetic or morphine to kill the pain and then more morphine to kill the sufferer?

What about those who suffer from the kind of mental illness that locks the sufferer in the present and makes them incapable of conceiving the future?

If the criterion is "planning for the future", does this also mean that killing a baby who has not yet begun to imagine the future let alone plan for it is equivalent to killing any other organism that cannot plan for the future?

So buying a chunk of meat in the butcher's is colluding with the mass slaughter of other sentient beings and therefore morally much worse than assenting to the destruction of a human fetus, (and indeed, if we follow the logic, assenting to or even participating in the murder of ONE other human being. Is this really a sophisticated moral argument as Dawkins claims that it is?

EDIT:
This final paragraph refers more or less exactly to what Singer says about meat-eaters also protesting against abortion.

Not being able to propose an absolute distinction between human beings and other sentient beings, Dawkins finds himself sliding all the way down the slippery slope that he himself claims to be worried about.

By the way, I think there are all kinds of good reasons for vegetarianism, and even more good arguments for opposing cruelty to animals. But the absence of an absolute, essential distinction between human beings and other sentient animals is not one of them!

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9. Comment #387865 by Ygern on June 15, 2009 at 1:03 pm

This is the first full interview I've seen of Peter Singer, and he is very thought-provoking.

I'm less confident that humans are going to be able to look at some of these issues quite as logically and dispassionately as needed to explore them properly. Too many of these ideas are engrained as taboos even in modern, liberal societies for rational discussion to take place.

Still, that does not mean that one should not try.

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10. Comment #387866 by adamd164 on June 15, 2009 at 1:05 pm

@ Valjean

The criterion for whether or not it is moral to subject another organism to needless pain is surely the capacity of that organism to feel pain.

The criterion for KILLING (if done sans horrible prior pain, e.g. by a bullet to the head) should be capaicty to 'plan for the future'. But not necessarily just of the person being killed; also of relations, friends, etc.

I'm not sure what your final paragraph is trying to say though, could you perhaps restate it? Thanks.

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11. Comment #387869 by Cyboman on June 15, 2009 at 1:07 pm

Peter Singer is one of my favorite intellectuals. Right up there with Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.
Wish I had time to watch this now.

Valjean: As far as I know, farm animals are never given anesthetics when they are mutulated (castration, dehorning, branding, mulesing, debeaking, etc...). The most likely reason is that there is no financial insensitive to the CAFO. On the contrary, these humane efforts would put a CAFO at a competitive disadvantage to it's competition if it (for some reason) decided to buy anesthetics for it's animals.

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12. Comment #387872 by FSMTeapot on June 15, 2009 at 1:19 pm

Urrrgh.

Stupid exams!! There has suddenly been an influx of programmes and things like this I want to watch.

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13. Comment #387874 by Dhamma on June 15, 2009 at 1:20 pm

There's heaps of things I do of which I'm aware are immoral, but bloody hell I can't quit on meat!

Artificial meat should solve most of the problems, so let's hope it comes soon.

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14. Comment #387876 by Sciros on June 15, 2009 at 1:22 pm

The criterion for KILLING (if done sans horrible prior pain, e.g. by a bullet to the head) should be capaicty to 'plan for the future'.

Should be? Says who?

A bird making a nest can plan for the future better than an infant. I wonder if the bird considers its future as important as an elephant does its own, despite it seeming that the elephant's future-planning ability is more sophisticated. Should that matter?

Anyway I find it a rather arbitrary metric to determine "level of suffering," which is objectively hard to pin down.

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15. Comment #387881 by adamd164 on June 15, 2009 at 1:25 pm

@ Valjean

I don't think your interpretation of Singer's point is necessarily an accurate one. He says that having an abortion is typically something a mother will think long and hard about and have very good reasons for but that buying meat in a store is not something that people pause for a second to think about.

His point, to my mind, is that meat eaters have a moral responsibility to consider their actions carefully. He doesn't make s statement about which is morally worse; just that both should be given due consideration.

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16. Comment #387882 by Sciros on June 15, 2009 at 1:26 pm

adamd164, your avatar is making me hungry! mmmm bacon

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17. Comment #387883 by adamd164 on June 15, 2009 at 1:28 pm

@Sciros

Sorry, I should clarify that that's to my own mind (and also to Singer's/Dawkins').

I don't believe in such thing as objective morality so naturally people will differ.

Just with regards to your last point,

"Anyway I find it a rather arbitrary metric to determine "level of suffering," which is objectively hard to pin down."

True; but are you saying that therefore, because it's hard to pin down how much suffering something undergoes that you just ignore it completely and eat all meat anyway?! (if not, apologies).

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18. Comment #387884 by adamd164 on June 15, 2009 at 1:32 pm

@Sciros

Hilarious, I've my work cut out as you're clearly a wit.

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19. Comment #387885 by Valjean on June 15, 2009 at 1:38 pm

adamd164, if you don't believe in objective morality then there's nothing to argue about really. "Naturally" people differ, as you say. One man's (or rather sentient creature's) beer is another's poison (whether administered to oneself or to whomever we feel it incumbent on us to dispense with). There is no slippery slope - in fact, because there is no mode of behaviour towards one's fellow human or other being that is intinsically superior to any other, it is meaningless to talk about a slope at all. This means that Singers' own concern for sentient animals who suffer is entirely misplaced. It is just a matter of what he finds "distasteful" (like insipid beer or sour cream)!

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20. Comment #387886 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 1:39 pm

adamd164- although I'm an unapologetic omnivore, when people constantly make adolescent jokes about vegetarianism and go overboard to try to trivialize the suffering of animals it's usually them just playing devil's advocate out of insecurity or just advertising their lack of compassion and I try to ignore them.

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21. Comment #387887 by Gregg Townsend on June 15, 2009 at 1:40 pm

16. Comment #387882 by Sciros

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaK9bjLy3v4

[edit] Should be ignored by KRKBAB and adamd164

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22. Comment #387891 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 1:48 pm

Gregg Townsend- I think you misunderstood me. I found that bacon bit-o-humor hilarious. I eat lots of it. My only point is I don't mock and/or trivialize the suffering caused by some horrible food farming techniques like some people tend to revel in.

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23. Comment #387892 by kraut on June 15, 2009 at 1:50 pm

And you clearly haven't studied biology because fungi and plants don't even posess nervous systems; this can only be a discussion about the morality of farming ANIMALS.

No, I haven't watched the video, and I wasn't responding to it at all.
That was an "ass" umption on your part
I haven't studied biology, I just was a labtech at biophysical research lab and studied agrology for four years.

I was responding to the contention that vegetarianism is a somehow more moral way to feed yourself.
The question simply is: were do you draw the line? How small has a nervous system to be to be considered morally exempt from being used as food? Plants clearly have a sensory system allowing them to respond environmental threats.

And invectives really make a strong argument.
Keep up the good work.

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24. Comment #387893 by jonsmizzle on June 15, 2009 at 1:51 pm

Where does the physiological reality of predator/prey relations come into this discussion? Not to be facetious, but surely, no one would call a Lion immoral for eating a Gazelle, because that is how Lions survive. I agree that humans can survive without meat (and perhaps this alone provides the moral impetus to do so), but I still think the fact that we are biologic omnivores needs to factor in here somewhere. If a carnivore is justified in his infliction of suffering, at what point is an omnivore? Or if Lion's developed the intelligence necessary to adapt their biology to a vegetarian diet, would we say they are morally bound to do so?

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25. Comment #387894 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 1:53 pm

Kraut- Exactley what you're talking about is discussed in the video. You should (unless you're opposed to it) listen to the discussion. You don't have to agree with every point in it to still find it interesting

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26. Comment #387895 by huzonfurst on June 15, 2009 at 1:54 pm

Fantastic! Peter Singer is as eloquent as Richard and the two of them together are an absolute joy to listen to.

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27. Comment #387897 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 2:02 pm

jonsmizzle- I always wonder why such an obvious point like yours is not brought into the discussion more often. Although there might be some environmental advantages to humans becoming vegetarians, I'm still a happy omnivore. I think for the near future, it's enough to try to limit the amount of animal suffering while there being raised for food. Slowly moving towards a diet with less animal flesh seems to me to also be a good general concept. If humans ever become all or mostly vegetarians, that's something that will take hundreds of years in not thousands. And if religion doesn't diminish enough before then, we might become extinct by then anyhow!

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28. Comment #387898 by Valjean on June 15, 2009 at 2:02 pm

I agree huzonfurst. Music to our ears, right? It's only when one listens to what they are actually saying that the joy sort of evaporates.

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29. Comment #387899 by Sciros on June 15, 2009 at 2:04 pm

True; but are you saying that therefore, because it's hard to pin down how much suffering something undergoes that you just ignore it completely and eat all meat anyway?! (if not, apologies).

Well since morality isn't objective I think that potentially a case can be made for that. I wouldn't endeavor to make that case, because even the simple rebuttal that it would be at odds with contemporary "moral sensibilities" is, I imagine, sufficient to strike it down. (There may be, or have been, a time when that rebuttal could not have been made.)

Cats toy with their prey. Most predatory animals care not a bit for any suffering of their prey (or at least don't seem to care very much!). Our modern moral system (maybe in part reflecting an instinctive sense) compels us to find that [needless suffering] positively unappealing. Even those of us who eat meat do not relish at the thought of what happens in slaughterhouses, and find it even difficult to be apathetic to it upon giving it any thought.

Basically, I think that if not for this sort of conditioning (that is, having, understanding, and willingly accepting the particular value system we live by), I would not consider it even slightly important that we treat our "prey" at all different from how any other apex predator treats theirs. But since I do have this conditioning, I find the reduction of suffering consistent with what I find important.

The reduction of suffering that I find important may be different than what you find important, since our value systems are not the same (almost no two people's are).

To make a long answer short, I do not ignore suffering entirely, and I don't want to. But I don't have a problem with eating meat, so I don't place animal suffering as high on my list of important values as others do.

I wonder how many shark attack survivors are vegetarian, btw. Would be curious to see if the proportion was higher or lower than that of the general beach-going population.

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30. Comment #387900 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 2:08 pm

Valjean- all of your points seem to deal with absolute extremes of the points being made in the discussion between Singer and Dawkins. They're not trying to develop a dogma on killing, it's a philosophical discussion. You come across as a slippery slope conservative (in the USA), as in "If they allow gay people to marry- next they'll allow people to marry ANIMALS!"

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31. Comment #387902 by Diacanu on June 15, 2009 at 2:10 pm

Valjean-

It's only when one listens to what they are actually saying that the joy sort of evaporates.

Look Val, it's the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song.

Now cry me a river of bitter little tears.
Y'know, do something productive for a change.

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32. Comment #387903 by root2squared on June 15, 2009 at 2:12 pm

8. Comment #387864 by Valjean

But the absence of an absolute, essential distinction between human beings and other sentient animals is not one of them!

And what is this absolute essential distinction?

There's quite a few people in this world whose lives I would consider of much less worth than an innocent pet's.

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33. Comment #387905 by Valjean on June 15, 2009 at 2:19 pm

comment 387903 by root2squared

"There's quite a few people in this world whose lives I would consider of much less worth than an innocent pet's."

That's what Hitler thought. And he did something about it. His treatment of his Alsatian dogs remained exemplary right to the bitter end.

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34. Comment #387906 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 2:20 pm

Diacanu- thanks for the hint. I just read "other comments by valjean". communication with valjean over

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35. Comment #387907 by Sciros on June 15, 2009 at 2:20 pm

DUN DUN DUUUUNNN...

Time to invoke Godwin's Law. Valjean you lose, as usual.

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36. Comment #387910 by root2squared on June 15, 2009 at 2:27 pm

33. Comment #387905 by Valjean

That's what Hitler thought. And he did something about it. His treatment of his Alsatian dogs remained exemplary right to the bitter end.

Note that you haven't answered my question.

In case you missed it in my two line post, here it is again - And what is this absolute essential distinction?

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37. Comment #387911 by root2squared on June 15, 2009 at 2:30 pm

33. Comment #387905 by Valjean

And since you've brought up Hitler (Overkill really - Bush would have sufficed), here's a simple question.

If someone had to pick between the life of their beloved pet and Hitler, who should they pick?

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38. Comment #387912 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 2:34 pm

root2squared- I'll pretend I'm valjean and answer your question. The pet should die because of the absolute essential distinction. No, wait- Hitler should die because he was a subhuman Atheist (or a Catholic- one of the two).

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39. Comment #387917 by rationalthomas on June 15, 2009 at 2:55 pm

"No, I haven't watched the video, and I wasn't responding to it at all.
That was an "ass" umption on your part

...

And invectives really make a strong argument.
Keep up the good work."

How foolish of him to make an assumption that you were responding to the video when you make a post in the thread of the video and phrased your post as though you were responding to it.

There is no particular reason to revel in ignorance.

jonsmizzle and KRKBAB have some points worth discussing. I'd rather ignore Valjean and try to keep the thread from being Godwin'd to hell just yet.

"Where does the physiological reality of predator/prey relations come into this discussion? ... if Lion's developed the intelligence necessary to adapt their biology to a vegetarian diet, would we say they are morally bound to do so? "

If lions developed the intelligence to do so - why wouldn't they be morally 'bound' to do so? It's a bit silly to reflect your own question back at you but what I mean is - I think there would be a moral obligation on them in that circumstance. I would be interested to know if you disagree.

I don't understand why you say the fact that we're omnivores should factor into this. There are plenty of purely biological urges or functions we could be argued to have 'built in', if you like, that we gladly suppress or otherwise disregard. I don't think this needs a particular amount of discussion, I'm sure you know what I'm getting at.
Why would having canine teeth (just as a superficial example) necessarily factor into this discussion? Or have I misunderstood your point.
(I do think it's an interesting question and I don't think you're being facetious at all, though as I suppose is obvious from my post I don't feel it is a particular road block to the vegetarian argument.)

KRKBAB, I don't really understand your chain of logic. Here is the impression I have gained. I mean no offence by this, so correct me if I'm wrong:

(i) a lion cannot be held responsible for killing to eat.

(ii) this is (apparently) a topic not raised often in discussions of vegetarianism.

(iii) it is morally acceptable to eat meat at this stage. (?)

(iv) having said (iii), it still seems favourable to cut down on meat.

(v) it will likely take so long for humanity to stop eating meat altogether the species will have died out. (?)

I don't understand on what basis it is favourable to cut down on meat - yet it is not favourable to cut it out altogether.
It also seems completely irrelevant how long it may or may not take the world to rearing and slaughtering animals for meat. What difference does that make to moral decisions right now?

I appreciate you have been nothing but civil and willing to discuss the issue and I'm not trying to accuse you of any misdeeds here. I just don't understand your thinking yet.

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40. Comment #387919 by yyy on June 15, 2009 at 3:16 pm

The size of the food animal is a variable that can affect net pain caused. For example, one might eat 20 shrimp in one meal so multiply whatever pain an individual shrimp feels by 20. One might only eat 1/20th of a tuna's body in one meal so divide whatever pain tuna feel by 20, but not sure how the net pain is ultimately calculated. I would normally prefer to eat eggs since single cells can't feel pain, but its hard to trace the true living conditions of the hens that lay them beyond the anthropomorphicized cartoon chickens on the packages (advertising traiters to their species). Their prolonged stress might even outweigh butchered animals.

Being a vegetarian is kind of futile if one has offspring, because 2 kids grow up to create 2 kids each who create.. in an exponential growth of future human mouths, some (or even the majority) of which will eat meat. So in that case, the vegetarian would reduce meat eating during their own *single* life, but multiply meat eating times some potentially exponentially large number of *future* human lives. The latter obviously has far greater impact. Its pretty safe to assume the world is fucked up when its more ethical to not reproduce, which our entire dna construction is based on doing.

Growing meat tissue could help reduce the mass industrial psychological/physical pain of factory farms (though a slightly creepy concept itself perhaps). Still, we pretty much already destroyed the natural habitat/lives/species of pigs/etc. The artificial human world will likely continue to grow around a few pockets of national parks until they are isolated zoos of sorts, if their ecologies can even survive with human caused invasive species and such. Brains allow exploiting nature like farming which ultimately is evil imo (compare the net biohappiness of earth life a million years ago to today when species are industrially stamped out for our benefit). It is normal for one to purchase 'ground meat' at the store, but its a horror term if you think about it- technology/industry stamping out.. ground meat, just seems massively soulless relative to nature like sharks grinding meat. Human brains are the metaphorical equivalent of the dinosaur killing asteroid; they break ecological systems, food webs.. the current earth situation is pretty much gene-based beings being wiped out by a new form of technological replication they can't evolutionarily keep up with.

We're in tune to pain of other animals from our own introspection. It makes me wonder if aliens could similarly have some sort of unique internal quality of their own that we wouldn't be able to make sense of due to lack of our own subjective introspection about it. There is some evolved symmetry between humans and other animals, but aliens might be.. alien.

It might be good if human leaders could be chosen based on their proven past morality/philanthropy. The current people in power can stay so due to wielding a military power (and its not like moral leaders are likely potent enemies/competitors to them due to their morality). The next time a moral scientist invents power like an atomic bomb, they should use it as a political lever for their own benefit to shift all earth power to moral people/scientists instead of just having political leaders steal/exploit their efforts. Its really sick that that human politics actually devolves to situations like north korea. So much of human history has been so ill.

This related 'earthlings' video is pretty fucked up:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6361872964130308142&ei=n8Q2SrGmNJKGqQPui8GSCw&q=earthlings&hl=en

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41. Comment #387923 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 3:35 pm

rationalthomas- I'm certainly not prepared or able to take the discusssion as deep as you want to. My intellect prohibits it! I was just trying to make an omnivores appeal to eventually have humans turn vegetarian. I'm not totally sold on the concept, but it's one I've heard prof. Dawkins suggest several times so since then I started thinking about it more seriously. It might be better for you to gloss over my comments, mental midget that I am.

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42. Comment #387924 by yakaru on June 15, 2009 at 3:38 pm

It's not just the suffering of the animal, but the comparison between animal's suffering and pleasure/benefit to the human.

On that scale it's a no brainer that meat-eating is morally indefensible.

Once we've realised this, the question is, do I want to be moral in this matter or not?

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43. Comment #387929 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 3:44 pm

yyy- you say: "in an exponential growth of future human mouths, some (or even the majority)of which will eat meat". That's one hugely broad assumption. How do you know this? And how far into the future will this be applicaple if vegetarianism starts becoming even more trendy than it is now?

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44. Comment #387941 by Sciros on June 15, 2009 at 4:17 pm

It's not just the suffering of the animal, but the comparison between animal's suffering and pleasure/benefit to the human.

On that scale it's a no brainer that meat-eating is morally indefensible.

Speak for yourself. You have no idea how much I LOVE a good rack of BBQ ribs.

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45. Comment #387942 by tsknorri on June 15, 2009 at 4:17 pm

Could someone familiar with the human evolutionary mammalian ancestry tell me how many thousands or millions of years we need to go backwards in time in order to find an ancestor that is on the cognitive level of or that is most comparable to a pig or a lamb or a cow? What kind of creature was it, and how did it look like?

EDIT:

Similarly, and also perhaps phrasing the question a bit differently, I would also be interested in the closest common ancestors of human vs. pig, human vs. lamb and human vs. cow. When did they live and what were they like?

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46. Comment #387943 by go swimmer on June 15, 2009 at 4:20 pm

It's easy being vegan. I've never heard a good argument for living in the west and not being vegan, in fact.

Not only do plants not have nervous systems/the capacity to suffer, but no human can surivive without eating them. It's about whether it's necessary to cause suffering as well, whether there's any justification for it. There's always a cost/benefit anaylsis. You can't say that liking how something tastes outweighs a life or justifies suffering. Maybe if you lived in the third world and had no other option, meat consumption would be congruent with the other moral rationales you live by; but as soon as anyone assumes a set of ethical principles (whether relative or not), as long as they are not arbitrary and deontologically divine, these will usually resist any artificial attempt at anthropocentric exclusivity.

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47. Comment #387944 by prolibertas on June 15, 2009 at 4:21 pm

Wow. This was mind-expanding. So most of us may be unthinkingly 'speciesist' and treat it as normal, in the same way people of the past were unthinkingly 'racist', and treated that as normal.

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48. Comment #387947 by Goldy on June 15, 2009 at 4:23 pm

I've never heard a good argument for living in the west and not being vegan, in fact.

Being born and bred there and not needing to move and bacon sandwiches.

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49. Comment #387948 by prolibertas on June 15, 2009 at 4:24 pm

'(i) a lion cannot be held responsible for killing to eat'.

I think the difference is we have a choice and lions don't.

Of course, I'm a total hypocrite on this issue. I eat meat. But I can't help but think that it's morally and intellectually indefensible.

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50. Comment #387949 by KRKBAB on June 15, 2009 at 4:24 pm

go swimmer- Excuse me? ever hear of the Massai? They primarily eat meat, and blood products- their environment is capable of very little fruits and vegetables. They generally have good cholesterol levels and virtually no heart disease.
I've also heard studies show (no, I can't produce them) that vegans suffer from a higher rate of depression, anxiety and the like from a lack of B(12?). No amount of dark green seaplants could produce it and it's still not the same as the B's from animal products.

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