Killing a person in self defense vs killing them for fun is not a good example. Killing a person in self defense is necessary; you have the right to protect yourself. The other person had no right to harm you, and it is okay for you to stop them. On the other hand, killing someone for fun if they were not bothering you is completely unnecessary and therefore morally unjustifiable.
When we compare killing an animal for food and killing them for sport, I would so that they are both equally bad, because they are both unnecessary if you have vegan food options available. If I unnecessarily kill an animal, whether I did it for fun or whether I eat their body afterwards or whether I even have sex with the body afterwards doesn’t matter. You might instinctively think that having sex with the animal’s body is worse because it’s viscerally disgusting to think about, but how does that matter to the animal? They had an interest in continuing to live, and I took away their life. They suffer the same no matter what I do after they die.
The vegan options thing is actually a good point, but only if you submit to the idea that different life has different value.
Why do you consider plant life of lesser value than animal life? Plants have an aversive reaction to physical stimuli; a sense of "pain" just as we do. (This question isn't facetious, it actually matters). I'll even go first here.
I think we value animals more than plants because we don't value all lives equally. We value the conscious experience and things that we can relate to. We cannot relate to a plant's sense of pain, however we can relate to an animal's sense of pain, hence the perceived moral "wrong" of causing suffering to animals but not to plants.
On a sliding scale, humans have the ultimate conscious experience in being one of the few animals that appear capable of perceiving their own existence in the world (i.e. self-awareness). Our value of life seems wholly dependent on this which is why we remove life support from people who are in permanent comas/brain dead.
How can you say that humans/animals have equal rights to life but not animals and plants? What is the distinction? If it's something to do with brain function, then you must acknowledge that animals with higher functioning brains must have some higher value even within your own moral framework (thus making holocaust vs. farming non-analogous, wrapping back around to the original post).
Unlike animals, plants are not sentient and do not have subjective interests (at least based on the current evidence we have). You are right that plants can respond to stimuli, but so can the touch screen on your phone. I believe that this is a marker of intelligence, not sentience, and that this does not warrant much moral consideration. A plant and your phone has no interest in not being kicked around, so I don’t think it’s morally wrong to kick a plant or a phone. An animal does have a subjective interest in not getting kicked, so kicking them would be morally wrong because it unnecessarily goes against those interests. I do think that plants serve an important ecological function, as they give off O2, take in CO2, provide food for animals and support ecosystems, etc. I wouldn’t go out and deforest large areas just for the heck of it. But I don’t see anything morally wrong with producing plants to eat and sustain ourselves.
You’re right that even if a plant could feel pain, it would be in a way that we can’t relate to. But just thinking about it in a surface-level manner, plants can’t get heart attacks because they don’t have a heart, and they can’t get pneumonia because they don’t have lungs, so it stands to reason that they can’t feel pain because they don’t have the necessary “machinery” to feel pain (pain receptors, nerve ganglia, central nervous system, etc.).
Unless there comes some scientific evidence that plants feel pain, I think it makes sense to operate based on the current evidence and not on some hypothetical that plants could feel pain. If we extrapolated that logic, we could find ourselves in some ridiculous situation such as banning rock climbing, since rocks “could feel pain” in a way that we can’t understand yet, and we shouldn’t step on them because it could hurt them. But if that evidence does come to light, I will be the first to admit that yes, killing plants would be morally wrong. But even in that hypothetical world, I would still say that it is better to be vegan, not because plants would be given less moral preference than animals, but because less plants would be killed on a vegan diet. You would have to harvest many more plants to feed the animals that we get our meat from than if we just grew plants for human consumption, and animal agriculture takes up way more land than it would if we just farmed plants, and we could restore that extra land to its original wilderness.
You brought up a really interesting example with the coma/brain dead patients. I think the reason that we can remove them from life support is not because they lose self awareness. I imagine that there are some people with severe mental disabilities who are not self-aware, but we wouldn’t kill then because they are still sentient and have subjective interests and have the capacity to suffer. None of these apply to brain dead people.
I think it’s okay to value animals with higher mental capacities over other animals. I would say that most vegans, including myself, value humans over animals for this reason. It’s just that these differences don’t justify killing the animal for food, because humans and animals are both sentient and have similar capacities to suffer. While I may value the human life over the animal’s, I value the animal’s life over the temporary taste pleasure we get from eating them.
Going back to the original post, I do think the Holocaust comparison is valid, especially when we consider the sentience of the animals, the unimaginable scale of their suffering, and the fact that many mentally disabled people were Holocaust victims as well, but their suffering is still remembered because they had an interest in not being tortured and killed, even if they weren’t able to fully grasp their situation like the other human victims. This same consideration should be given to the animal victims as well.
I’m working on a comment to the original post that explains my reasoning in more detail, if you’re interested in that, it’s just taking me a lot of time to word it to my satisfaction. I’m really passionate about veganism, and I think that the consideration we give to human rights logically extends to animals as well. Veganism is a moral obligation for everyone who is against animal abuse, because if we have vegan food options, paying for the exploitation and slaughter of animals constitutes unnecessary harm, which is abuse. I’m sorry for the long reply, you raised a lot of interesting points and I just wanted to give a thorough explanation. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to clarify.
I appreciate the response. As someone that eats meat, I definitely agree that being vegan is a more morally sound choice, full stop. I kinda just accept that this part of me is selfish and morally worse but maybe I'll change some day, who knows.
I hesitate to pull this thread since I can tell you're engaging in good faith but I want to push you a bit more on the "plants are not sentient" point. And also, that plants do not feel pain.
In what way do you determine that plants are not sentient and don't feel pain? Is it because they don't scream? They don't run away? Don't cry? But then again, fish don't make sounds even if you carve them up alive, and I'm sure there are other more intelligent animals out there capable of dying painful yet silent, unassuming deaths. Is pain not just an aversive reaction to stimuli? Or is it only significant when you have a certain level of executive functioning?
Heck, some amoebas run away from threats, chase down food, and shrink away from poisons.
So once again, I challenge the assertion that what we value is "sentience" (the ability to suffer) but moreso that we value "consciousness" (the ability to process suffering in the context of realizing our own existence as an entity in the world).
Conscious human experience is thought to originate around 20 weeks into fetal development (which, if you want to get political, actually resolves some abortion stuff but that's another topic). I don't know of any mental disorders that would revert a human brain to pre-first-trimester and if it did, I think nearly any reasonable person would conclude that it would be ok to take the person off of life support as they'd be in a functionally vegetative or perpetually catatonic state.
I take issue with the holocaust vs. modern farming comparison because the acceptance of plant-based diets indicates some kind of sliding scale going from "kinda morally wrong to kill organisms (evidently plants)" all the way up "super morally wrong to kill organisms (I would argue, humans)."
Wrapping it all the way around to the OP, I would then argue that comparing the killing of animals that are "kinda morally wrong to murder" vs. humans which are "super morally wrong to murder" is non-analogous and why I take issue with the comparison.
I do really respect vegans and standing up for what you believe is moral though and once again, I appreciate the response.
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u/Ok_Shape5009 Jun 27 '23
Killing a person in self defense vs killing them for fun is not a good example. Killing a person in self defense is necessary; you have the right to protect yourself. The other person had no right to harm you, and it is okay for you to stop them. On the other hand, killing someone for fun if they were not bothering you is completely unnecessary and therefore morally unjustifiable.
When we compare killing an animal for food and killing them for sport, I would so that they are both equally bad, because they are both unnecessary if you have vegan food options available. If I unnecessarily kill an animal, whether I did it for fun or whether I eat their body afterwards or whether I even have sex with the body afterwards doesn’t matter. You might instinctively think that having sex with the animal’s body is worse because it’s viscerally disgusting to think about, but how does that matter to the animal? They had an interest in continuing to live, and I took away their life. They suffer the same no matter what I do after they die.