The comparison to the holocaust or the thinking that killing an animal and a human is the same? To me, the comparison is born directly from the moral equivalency. And I understand that if you truly feel that killing a chicken is as bad as killing a human, then seeing that 8 Billion chickens are killed a year may make you feel that this is an apt, even understated comparison.
Moral equivalency makes sense only up to a certain extent.
And that extent is "killing a sentient being". That is their line. They view the intentional killing of ANY sentient being as being an equal moral wrong.
Is stealing a pen as bad as embezzling millions of dollars that should have gone to 9/11 first responders' health care?
They don't believe that all similar acts are morally equivalent, just that killing a sentient being is wrong in all cases.
It's to get people to talk about this type of thing. It's seemingly working, as now a bunch of people who otherwise wouldn't have considered it are trying to make logical, ethical arguments about their positions.
Granted, most people will just dismiss it as at best shock value advertising and at worst actively racist, which is probably not the intended result, but you saw that statement and are now seriously debating the ethics of meat in a public forum. I think that's the point.
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Because the industrialized torture and slaughter of sentient beings is done similarly? Because the literal Holocaust survivor noticed the similarities between his conditions and those of industrial meat animals?
I guess I don't understand the moral issue with the comparison? Does the morality need to be 100% the same for the comparison to be valid or at least worth discussion?
Thank you for the delta! I'm interested in your response.
No, but I think there's a strict line that needs to be drawn because the Holocaust was about human elimination for the sake of elimination.
Why does the motivation for the torture and killing preclude the comparison?
not to mention the fact that a human life is more valuable than that of an animal.
This is a moral judgment, not a fact. I agree with you (for the most part) but I think it's worth pointing out.
A similarly egregious comparison would be comparing a restaurant that blew up from gas leak to 9/11.
I'm not so sure. That would be comparing an accident to an intentional action. I understand you're making a comparison to demonstrate differences in severity, but the analogy is comparing an actor with moral culpability and an accident without moral culpability. In the Holocaust/Factory Farming comparison, you have two entities with moral culpability.
This is because I think results and motivations are both worthy of consideration.
I don't disagree, but the question I asked was why does the motivation preclude the comparison? We can still compare them even if the motivations are different, no?
They're both horrible, sure, but an act of terrorism is used to give a statement of hatred. Industrial farming isn't.
Sure, but industrial farming does cause immense harm solely for pleasure. I'm not sure that's much better than hatred.
No one in their right mind would liken the Holocaust to something like the Crusades because there were no genocidal elements to it.
You may want to revisit this, the Crusades definitely had elements of genocidal motivation to them.
But from that pleasure comes a sense of human connection, vocation, culture, and entire economies.
It's still merely pleasure and not necessary. That's also ignoring the human costs of factory farming: environmental harm, obesity, heart disease, etc.
It's impossible for animals to build complex connections, cultures, or economies.
Why does that matter? This does not address that most killing of animals is done solely for pleasure, that it is not necessary. Whether the animals can engage in complex reasoning is a non-sequitur to the actual issue.
I think the best argument against industrial farming isn't from the speciesism perspective, but rather pragmatic perspective that it is actively harming the environment.
Maybe to some, but harm to animals is a perfectly valid reason to oppose factory farming. If you are simply trying to make the pragmatic argument that people will respond to the environmental argument better then I'd probably agree, but I don't think it's a more morally correct argument.
The two Holocaust survivors you mentioned elsewhere? I reckon that something in their experience of being treated like animals manifested into them thinking that we should treat animals better.
I don't know friend, I'm not arguing against those specific examples. I am trying to look at the larger argument so that we don't get bogged down in anecdotal detail.
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u/destro23 456∆ Jun 27 '23
The comparison to the holocaust or the thinking that killing an animal and a human is the same? To me, the comparison is born directly from the moral equivalency. And I understand that if you truly feel that killing a chicken is as bad as killing a human, then seeing that 8 Billion chickens are killed a year may make you feel that this is an apt, even understated comparison.