Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Ishkah wrote: January 6th, 2021, 5:28 am

Hey all, I‘m working on a video script of a comedy ethical dialogue. So it's ethical arguments to encourage a big lefty political youtuber into seeing the moral responsibility in going vegan, dressed up in a funny way so he'll watch when he's live-streaming.
I think it would be much funnier if you set aside your rather childish prejudices and did a sketch on RIGHT WING vegetarianism
You could start with Hitler and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

Post by Count Lucanor »

Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:22 am
Count Lucanor wrote: January 22nd, 2021, 11:08 pm
No, you presented a bunch of arguments for vegetarianism, not for veganism. Socialism? Other than putting that label, I don't see anything that would allow to identify socialist views in these arguments.
Oh my holy Jebus, all I’m trying to ascertain Is what you hope to achieve from this conversation.

I was explaining how in my initial post, I presented a bunch of arguments indexed 1-3 and asked for feedback.

You appear not to have read any of it and just knee jerk reacted to a misunderstanding of the title.
I'll grant you one thing: I refused to read ALL of that long initial post and focused only on what I was interested: the awkward association of socialism with veganism, the fact that you were actually presenting arguments for vegetarianism, not veganism, and the manipulative, sophistic nature of the arguments, constructed as practical reasons to convince people of the need to impose veganism, while in reality the motivations are entirely different.
Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:22 am I never argued one needs the other, as I said in my initial reply to you “So there’s many reasons someone could desire to be part of both political campaigns, including simply desiring to act on more than the one principle in life.”
Still I find such contingent association awkward, since they are not just different political campaigns, but entirely different approaches to social action. One might be a legitimate political stance, while the other looks more like a religion or a cult.
Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:22 am
Count Lucanor wrote: January 22nd, 2021, 11:08 pm Those prohibitions are generally agreed rules: not causing harm to other people's lives of property, respecting their freedom, their dignity, etc.
Right, and many people believe it would be good to extend some of those rules to animals,
I wish them good luck with their advocacy, but they are still far from convincing that many people as to make it a collective social goal, so that it becomes sensible to put it into laws.
Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:22 am which is why we have laws against some bloodsports like dog fighting and badger baiting, or animal welfare laws.
You mean in some places. I tend to agree with reasonable regulations against unnecessary cruelty, which have risen from the process of domestication of animals and the projections people make of their human issues over the natural kingdom, especially when people start treating the pets they own AS if they were persons, even though they are not. That is fine, as this is their private life and their personal possessions, but that does not extend to the rest of society and to all human relations with animals.
Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:22 am And why in 500 years or so we might see a majority vote on a law granting collective legal rights to non-human animals to have a refuge in dense wildlife habitat where they aren’t subject to human cruelty. With the few exceptions where the law is overridden by right to self-defence or special dispensation from the government for example to practice some scientific testing to cure diseases, as well as breed and keep guide dogs for the blind.
This natural utopia doesn't seem to care about animals on which humans cannot easily project themselves. Poor arthropods, among others not lucky enough to resemble mammals, will end up being discriminated.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:22 am And why in 500 years or so we might see a majority vote on a law granting collective legal rights to non-human animals to have a refuge in dense wildlife habitat where they aren’t subject to human cruelty. With the few exceptions where the law is overridden by right to self-defence or special dispensation from the government for example to practice some scientific testing to cure diseases, as well as breed and keep guide dogs for the blind.
This natural utopia doesn't seem to care about animals on which humans cannot easily project themselves. Poor arthropods, among others not lucky enough to resemble mammals, will end up being discriminated.
Has nothing to do with fetishising what’s natural, anthropomorphising, reducing suffering or reducing discrimination.

It would likely emerge simply from a desire to see animals free from being born into a life of confinement and early death who are unable to express their capabilities in the wild. And would follow from an argument against unjustified killing like so:

If the wonder that we experience in viewing wild animals is not ‘how similar to us they are’, but their ‘real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value’ and one sufficient reason we grant this freedom at least to a basic extent to humans is they have a desire to achieve what they find valuable then; the fact non-human animals experience this desire too means we ought extend these freedoms to animals.

Further explanation of this capabilities approach by its originator Martha Nussbaum:
The basic moral intuition behind the approach concerns the dignity of a form of life that possesses both deep needs and abilities; its basic goal is to address the need for a rich plurality of life activities. With Aristotle and Marx, the approach has insisted that there is waste and tragedy when a living creature has the innate, or basic capability for some functions that are evaluated as important and good, but never gets the opportunity to perform those functions. Failures to educate women, failures to provide adequate health care, failures to extend the freedoms of speech and conscience to all citizens, all these are treated as causing a kind of premature death, the death of a form of flourishing that has been judged to be worthy of respect and wonder. The idea that a human being should have a chance to flourish in its own way, provided it does no harm to others, is thus very deep in the account the capabilities approach gives of the justification of basic political entitlements.

The species norm is evaluative, as I have insisted; it does not simply read off norms from the way nature actually is. The difficult questions this valuational exercise raises for the case of non-human animals will be discussed in the following section. But once we have judged that a central human power is one of the good ones, one of the ones whose flourishing defines the good of the creature, we have a strong moral reason for promoting its flourishing and removing obstacles to it.

Dignity and Wonder: The Intuitive Starting Point

The same attitude to natural powers that guides the approach in the case of human beings guides it in the case of all forms of life. For there is a more general attitude behind the respect we have for human powers, and it is very different from the type of respect that animates Kantian ethics. For Kant, only humanity and rationality are worthy of respect and wonder; the rest of nature is just a set of tools. The capabilities approach judges instead, with the biologist Aristotle (who criticized his students’ disdain for the study of animals), that there is something wonderful and wonder-inspiring in all the complex forms of animal life.

Aristotle’s scientific spirit is not the whole of what the capabilities approach embodies, for we need, in addition, an ethical concern that the functions of life not be impeded, that the dignity of living organisms not be violated. And yet, if we feel wonder looking at a complex organism, that wonder at least suggests the idea that it is good for that being to flourish as the kind of thing it is. And this idea is next door to the ethical judgment that it is wrong when the flourishing of a creature is blocked by the harmful agency of another. That more complex idea lies at the heart of the capabilities approach.

So I believe that the capabilities approach is well placed, intuitively, to go beyond the contractarian and utilitarian views. It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain, but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:18 pm
This natural utopia doesn't seem to care about animals on which humans cannot easily project themselves. Poor arthropods, among others not lucky enough to resemble mammals, will end up being discriminated.
Has nothing to do with fetishising what’s natural, anthropomorphising, reducing suffering or reducing discrimination.

It would likely emerge simply from a desire to see animals free from being born into a life of confinement and early death who are unable to express their capabilities in the wild.
This is clearly, undoubtedly, a psychological projection of human affairs into the affairs of brute nature. While some of that projection could be well justified, and we could and should regulate our behavior towards animals in the sense that how we treat them works at the same time in our humanization process, promoting a total ban on animal products for a pure idealization of animalhood and pretending that animals can be free agents just as humans, goes well beyond a rational and compassionate approach to the subject.
Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:18 pm And would follow from an argument against unjustified killing like so:

If the wonder that we experience in viewing wild animals is not ‘how similar to us they are’, but their ‘real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value’ and one sufficient reason we grant this freedom at least to a basic extent to humans is they have a desire to achieve what they find valuable then; the fact non-human animals experience this desire too means we ought extend these freedoms to animals.
Animals simply do not conceptualize in the abstract their desires, they don't have reason and values other than innate brute instincts. All talk about their potential and opportunities to construct their historical being is 100% human talk, pure human projection.
Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:18 pm Further explanation of this capabilities approach by its originator Martha Nussbaum:
The basic moral intuition behind the approach concerns the dignity of a form of life that possesses both deep needs and abilities; its basic goal is to address the need for a rich plurality of life activities. With Aristotle and Marx, the approach has insisted that there is waste and tragedy when a living creature has the innate, or basic capability for some functions that are evaluated as important and good, but never gets the opportunity to perform those functions.
What deep needs of the animal? There is no such thing, except human projection of their own needs. While the argument works for the human form of life, it does not work for every other species. What are the needs and potential capabilities of the parasitic worms that infect humans? Are we supposed to grant them immunity on the basis of their dignity as a life form?
Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:18 pm
The same attitude to natural powers that guides the approach in the case of human beings guides it in the case of all forms of life.
Another way of saying projection of human affairs into natural affairs.
Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 5:18 pm
So I believe that the capabilities approach is well placed, intuitively, to go beyond the contractarian and utilitarian views. It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain, but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is.
Flourishing? It would be flourishing from the standpoint of humans, since animals, and nature in general, don't care about anything, nature has no purpose and goals, it simply is. And the entire history of nature is a massive statement about the inevitability of death and extinction.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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More complex forms of life have more and more complex capabilities to be blighted, so they can suffer more and different types of harm. That is what is meant by flourishing beyond pain & pleasure.

Your ability to misread text and throw up a 100 tangents is impressive, so will have to end it here.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 8:31 pm More complex forms of life have more and more complex capabilities to be blighted, so they can suffer more and different types of harm. That is what is meant by flourishing beyond pain & pleasure.
So you end up confirming what I've been arguing, "more complex forms of life" = those who resemble humans.
Ishkah wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 8:31 pm Your ability to misread text and throw up a 100 tangents is impressive, so will have to end it here.
You mean perhaps my ability to cut through the impressive amount of cultish nonsense.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Alright I regret insulting you, I wish this could have been a lot more productive and will try to learn from what went wrong.

I won’t try and retrieve a central theme to this thread as I don’t think there is one, so will just give my broad position on veganism, so it’s clear what foundation I’m working from.

We know many academies of nutrition say we can be healthy being vegan:
It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes. Plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable than diets rich in animal products because they use fewer natural resources and are associated with much less environmental damage. Vegetarians and vegans are at reduced risk of certain health conditions, including ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, certain types of cancer, and obesity. Low intake of saturated fat and high intakes of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, soy products, nuts, and seeds (all rich in fiber and phytochemicals) are characteristics of vegetarian and vegan diets that produce lower total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and better serum glucose control. These factors contribute to reduction of chronic disease. Vegans need reliable sources of vitamin B-12, such as fortified foods or supplements.

- Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Vegetarian Diets
And overwhelming evidence suggests almost all animals are conscious beings, capable of having positive and negative experiences:
The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.
- The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness
So I advocate we not cause suffering to non-human animals, for them and us.

And that on a spectrum of biological complexity we are doing greater and different harm to pigs by forcing them to live their whole lives in a shed with a concrete floor, rather than being able to express their capabilities roaming the forest, than we are to chickens of lesser intelligence.

But that the solution to both is to let all animals who are raised in the wild and know how to survive be allowed to express their capabilities to their full extent allowing for an emotional flourishing beyond low level gratification like taste pleasure.

And that we let the domesticated animals we’ve bred to limit their capabilities and experience higher risk of numerous health problems like mastitis, being egg bound, etc. To simply go extinct with no one breeding them to be eaten. So that their wilder common ancestor species can flourish with more land freed up including buffalo, mouflon, wild jungle fowl and wild boar.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Ishkah wrote: January 25th, 2021, 3:19 am Alright I regret insulting you, I wish this could have been a lot more productive and will try to learn from what went wrong.
Peace. I want to be tough on veganism, not on vegans or vegetarians.
Ishkah wrote: January 25th, 2021, 3:19 am I won’t try and retrieve a central theme to this thread as I don’t think there is one, so will just give my broad position on veganism, so it’s clear what foundation I’m working from.

We know many academies of nutrition say we can be healthy being vegan:
And yet you can also be unhealthy being vegan. If you drink lots of sugary and alcoholic beverages, smoke tobacco, eat too much tortilla chips fried in palm oil, and live a sedentary life with little exercise, you're still strictly a vegan, but unlikely to get healthier. On the other side, you can also be healthy with an omnivorous diet, which means that better nutrition has more to do with the way food is processed and diet planning, than with the prime source of food.
Ishkah wrote: January 25th, 2021, 3:19 am
It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.
There are many opinions on the pros and cons of each type of diet, either vegetarian, vegan or omnivorous. I have no reason to believe any of such opinions holds the incontestable truth about nutrition issues, but I expect people freely making up their own minds and making their life choices. A diverse, pluralistic society, which I hold as the ideal every society must strive for, allows the coexistence of all these views, even when they are in dispute with each other. It seems OK that vegans will want to convince other people to go vegan using arguments about health, or that omnivores do the same. What I don't find OK is that vegetarians, vegans or omnivores try to eliminate the choices available to the other people that do not subscribe to their lifestyles.
Ishkah wrote: January 25th, 2021, 3:19 am
Plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable than diets rich in animal products because they use fewer natural resources and are associated with much less environmental damage.
That is disputable. It seems that it only becomes an argument when we compare any form of exploitation of natural resources with the production of cattle meat, which is vastly inefficient, but there are plenty of other meat sources that do not require extensive land use. Plant-based diets do not eliminate crops, so the environmental impact of agriculture is not really reduced.
Ishkah wrote: January 25th, 2021, 3:19 am
Vegetarians and vegans are at reduced risk of certain health conditions, including ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, certain types of cancer, and obesity. Low intake of saturated fat and high intakes of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, soy products, nuts, and seeds (all rich in fiber and phytochemicals) are characteristics of vegetarian and vegan diets that produce lower total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and better serum glucose control. These factors contribute to reduction of chronic disease. Vegans need reliable sources of vitamin B-12, such as fortified foods or supplements.
This is just a comparison between healthy, planned approaches to vegetarian/vegan diets vs unhealthy, unplanned approaches to omnivorous diets. Since omnivorous diets are the natural human tendency and the majority of people is omnivorous, it follows that they are also the diets most people take for granted and exercise little care in their planning. It makes sense that a minority of people that have gained concern about health and nutrition will move away from customary eating habits, but that is not necessarily reduced to vegetarians/vegans, there can be healthy lifestyles without sacrificing the consumption of meat and other animal products. Because of the 95%/5% proportion between omnivores and vegetarians, it is more likely to find junk food among the options of the majority, but that does not prevent junk food to become more frequent as vegetarian options get more popular. In fact, that is actually happening:
Why vegan junk food may be even worse for your health

Ishkah wrote: January 25th, 2021, 3:19 am And overwhelming evidence suggests almost all animals are conscious beings, capable of having positive and negative experiences:
I'm pretty aware that sentience is not limited to humans, not even to mammals. Yet, the kind of sentient experience found in humans is not the same as the rest of species. We not only have affective states and intentional behaviors, but enjoy a high level of abstract thought, language and symbolic processing that produces a different relation with nature and with ourselves. As Habermas once said, a fly behaves in a certain way, a human acts in a certain way.
Ishkah wrote: January 25th, 2021, 3:19 am So I advocate we not cause suffering to non-human animals, for them and us.
I find the projections of our own suffering into the animal kingdom permissible, but not to absolute limits. We would like to minimize the suffering of animals, but never make it equal to human suffering. Human interests have the priority, and we must ensure our priorities are rational, sensible, but that includes our freedom to act according to our needs and resources.
Ishkah wrote: January 25th, 2021, 3:19 am And that on a spectrum of biological complexity we are doing greater and different harm to pigs by forcing them to live their whole lives in a shed with a concrete floor, rather than being able to express their capabilities roaming the forest, than we are to chickens of lesser intelligence.
I'm pretty sure pigs are more concerned about eating and having sex than about "expressing their capabilities". That is entirely a human projection, a baseless one. I would be glad pigs get as comfortable conditions as practical matters allow it, so I'm not against regulations to minimize animal suffering, especially physical pain, but a ban purely on the basis of suffering I don't find it justifiable. There is lots of suffering and lack of compassion in the wild among those same animals, without they being held morally accountable, because intuitively we know they cannot be raised to the same standard and treated equally as if they were humans.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Count Lucanor wrote:
Ishkah wrote:And that on a spectrum of biological complexity we are doing greater and different harm to pigs by forcing them to live their whole lives in a shed with a concrete floor, rather than being able to express their capabilities roaming the forest, than we are to chickens of lesser intelligence.
I'm pretty sure pigs are more concerned about eating and having sex than about "expressing their capabilities". That is entirely a human projection, a baseless one.
Ability and desire to have sex would be an example of a capability many domesticated animals never get to express. Same with getting to search out the food they like most like truffles.
Count Lucanor wrote:I would be glad pigs get as comfortable conditions as practical matters allow it, so I'm not against regulations to minimize animal suffering, especially physical pain, but a ban purely on the basis of suffering I don't find it justifiable. There is lots of suffering and lack of compassion in the wild among those same animals. . .
The difference is, animals chose to risk great pain for great pleasure like goats traversing a sheer cliff edge for tasty mineral salt. Having to live a life being fenced in is always going to be a net negative as they desire to roam, form their own social relationships and not be rounded up and driven to a slaughterhouse with the screams and smell of death.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Ishkah wrote: January 26th, 2021, 3:26 am
Ability and desire to have sex would be an example of a capability many domesticated animals never get to express. Same with getting to search out the food they like most like truffles.
Ishkah wrote: January 26th, 2021, 3:26 am
The difference is, animals chose to risk great pain for great pleasure like goats traversing a sheer cliff edge for tasty mineral salt. Having to live a life being fenced in is always going to be a net negative as they desire to roam, form their own social relationships and not be rounded up and driven to a slaughterhouse with the screams and smell of death.
These ideas of animals having aspirations and self-determination entails the attribution of teleological processes to nature, which is of course wrong, not consistent with our scientific knowledge of how nature operates. And even if we attributed to animals such level of agency as you describe, it would never equal human agency, something we don't need to argue much, since even those who promote animal rights causes agree that animals themselves can't act in anyway in pursue of them, they cannot show any interest to claim and exercise such rights autonomously. They are incapable of doing it and are completely dependent of humans doing the fight. You'll never see a cow in court.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Count Lucanor wrote: January 27th, 2021, 10:33 pm
Ishkah wrote: January 26th, 2021, 3:26 amThe difference is, animals chose to risk great pain for great pleasure like goats traversing a sheer cliff edge for tasty mineral salt. Having to live a life being fenced in is always going to be a net negative as they desire to roam, form their own social relationships and not be rounded up and driven to a slaughterhouse with the screams and smell of death.
These ideas of animals having aspirations and self-determination entails the attribution of teleological processes to nature, which is of course wrong, not consistent with our scientific knowledge of how nature operates.
Not at all, we’re simply talking about different and more complex types of suffering based on the blighting of different and more complex types of capabilities. And concepts like the hedonic treadmill.

If you feed a dog tastier food than he’s used to, he will be extra happy, and you feed him tastier food again he will be extra happy again, but you try to go back to the second type of food you gave him he will now be unhappy because he’s gotten accustomed to the 3rd type of food.

But you try feeding him tastier food in exchange for never going on walks again, that’ll just make him miserable, because you have to work from the baseline of what his instincts tells him he desires and what his capabilities would allow.

So until lab grown meat comes along we have 3 categories of choices on a spectrum:

1) We can keep buying animal products at near the same rate we are doing, which means confining animals in sheds and so living a life of suffering for our taste pleasure/nostalgia.

2) We can buy animal products as a monthly treat, where we set up herbivore wildlife parks, and pick a few off in exchange for not letting predators eat them alive.

3) We don’t buy any animal products and create large enough wildlife zones with big walls to get to enjoy studying balanced ecosystems, where wolves can take pleasure in a skilful kill and deer respond by not grazing in plain sight by the river, more trees grow back, etc. And people can put their mind and time towards greater pursuits than herding sheep or hunting other sentient beings of equal or lower intelligence to some mentally disabled humans that we love.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

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Ishkah wrote: January 28th, 2021, 1:54 am
Count Lucanor wrote: January 27th, 2021, 10:33 pm
Ishkah wrote: January 26th, 2021, 3:26 amThe difference is, animals chose to risk great pain for great pleasure like goats traversing a sheer cliff edge for tasty mineral salt. Having to live a life being fenced in is always going to be a net negative as they desire to roam, form their own social relationships and not be rounded up and driven to a slaughterhouse with the screams and smell of death.
These ideas of animals having aspirations and self-determination entails the attribution of teleological processes to nature, which is of course wrong, not consistent with our scientific knowledge of how nature operates.
Not at all, we’re simply talking about different and more complex types of suffering based on the blighting of different and more complex types of capabilities. And concepts like the hedonic treadmill.
It is one thing to talk about physical pain and even distress, which are basic, innate reactions to stimuli, something all animals share (even ourselves) and talk about existential agony, concerns about the future, life possibilities etc., which is something entirely human. Animals cannot have a life project, they just simply live the here and now and very much as instinctive direct reaction to stimuli from the environment.
Ishkah wrote: January 28th, 2021, 1:54 am If you feed a dog tastier food than he’s used to, he will be extra happy, and you feed him tastier food again he will be extra happy again, but you try to go back to the second type of food you gave him he will now be unhappy because he’s gotten accustomed to the 3rd type of food.
But you try feeding him tastier food in exchange for never going on walks again, that’ll just make him miserable, because you have to work from the baseline of what his instincts tells him he desires and what his capabilities would allow.
That an animal's response to certain stimuli can be conditioned by humans doesn't mean the animal cannot learn behavior by itself and survive without humans. Anyway, the dog is already an animal domesticated, owned by humans. Its fate is controlled by humans, so it can't hardly be argued that human intervention cannot interfere with the animal's free development of its capabilities. It is always humans deciding, making the choices and putting the limits to the domesticated animal. Perhaps vegans are against domestication, I don't know, but to be consistent with that philosophy, one should expect that they would advocate that all animals are to be set free in the wild.
Ishkah wrote: January 28th, 2021, 1:54 am So until lab grown meat comes along we have 3 categories of choices on a spectrum:

1) We can keep buying animal products at near the same rate we are doing, which means confining animals in sheds and so living a life of suffering for our taste pleasure/nostalgia.
A privilege humans have enjoyed over other species for millennia, and a privilege every predator has always enjoyed over its prey. It may be reasonable to change the habit, but if that cultural consent cannot be reached yet, it cannot be imposed by law now by a minority.
Ishkah wrote: January 28th, 2021, 1:54 am 2) We can buy animal products as a monthly treat, where we set up herbivore wildlife parks, and pick a few off in exchange for not letting predators eat them alive.

I don't get why, from a vegan point of view, depriving a predator of its natural preys, aligns with the idea of not causing suffering and allowing an animal to develop its natural capabilities.
Ishkah wrote: January 28th, 2021, 1:54 am 3) We don’t buy any animal products and create large enough wildlife zones with big walls to get to enjoy studying balanced ecosystems, where wolves can take pleasure in a skilful kill and deer respond by not grazing in plain sight by the river, more trees grow back, etc. And people can put their mind and time towards greater pursuits than herding sheep or hunting other sentient beings of equal or lower intelligence to some mentally disabled humans that we love.
Although this romantic utopia might seem attractive to us alienated humans living in modern times, it most likely would mean even more suffering of what humans have endured for the past centuries. It would take such a radical regressive shift towards conditions of life that we were happy to leave behind, that it starts being quite unreasonable. It is true, however, that more moderate forms of exploitation of natural resources are required and that the myth of eternal economic growth is a pernicious one. I would advocate for more modest lifestyles where all the basic needs are guaranteed and there's room to expand for greater pursuits. I don't think you need to go vegan to do that.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Ishkah
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

Post by Ishkah »

I'm sorry, I give up again, maybe I've been spoiled by good voice debates on discord where you can just interject with a simple 'that's not what I believe' to prevent miscommunications, but this is just too frustrating.

Final clarifiers; I said we should create some large wildlife parks with big walls to make clear that people would be safe to go about their lives on the other side of the wall. And the second category option was of course not vegan for vegan meaning 'an animal products boycott', it was to get you to think about the morality of a middle ground between the vegan ideal to decide whether half-measures are satisfying enough.

So, where we grant some animals equal or even better quality lives than they have in the wild, but one in which A) Exludes predators pleasure. B) Exludes a balanced eco-system for which is more interesting to study and creates interesting evolution for future generatons. And C) Where we still have people going out and chosing to kill animals for taste pleasure/nostalgia reasons, having to live with the memory and character vice of having caused harm to another sentient being for no good reason.
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Re: Niche vegan socialist arguments and counter-arguments

Post by Count Lucanor »

In the end, it boils down to whether the particular preferences of vegans can be or should be enforced unto the rest of society by political coercion, or not. The answer is, of course, a big NO. Vegan's arguments to justify it simply do not hold water:

- The moral argument fails, because you cannot prove a moral argument as an objective fact. You can prove consensus or lack of it against a given social norm. Most of the vegan's arguments along these lines rest on the assumption that animals have the same status as humans, and while this is a respectable ideal, it meets a bunch of difficulties from the biological and historical point of views, which take us to the unavoidable fact that any measure taken for the fate of animals, is decided among humans, a fact that already puts humans as their masters.

- The practical or utilitarian argument fails, because there are other middle-ground options, which are just as practical. Also it is made obvious that the vegan stance is not as radical as it pretends to be, since they are ready to leave alone other aspects of modern lifestyle, even though modern living as a whole is not compatible with the natural nirvana they say they strive for.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
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Niche vegan arguments and counter-arguments

Post by Ishkah »

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I've got some more niche vegan arguments and counter-arguments, so this time it's puritan vegans vs. legal animal rights advocates who sometimes will use rescued animal products as part of their advocacy (freegans = vegan + free)

If anyone knows formal logic and would like to help make the formal arguments valid I end them all with modus ponens, but other premises are probably all over the place.

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Re; ‘Freeganism Is Evil’ (Vegan Footsoldier vs. Ishkah)

Intro


Yo, so this is a response to Vegan Footsoldiers video entitled 'Freeganism is Evil'. My understanding - extrapolating from his story analogy - was that he believes you can't both be a great human rights advocate and not care about humans interests as a species norm during a humans life time, to then go against them by eating them. And that the same applies to animal rights advocates and animals. But basically I disagree, because animals aren't worrying about events past their death, so they aren't suffering a worse quality of life imagining maybe they'll be eaten by humans after they're dead.

He also wrote in the comments he uses Kant’s indirect principle to justify calling freeganism immoral, so I’ll flash up on the screen my formal refutations of that for anyone curious.

But the point of this video is I’d just like to tell a story analogy back, because I think narratives as intuition pumps are useful.

So here we go...

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The Story

Once upon a time a girls genital mutilation ring was discovered in London, this jarringly unethical group of families and surgeons had forced children to have their clitoris's chopped off and it had been in the news that multiple children had been subjected to the practice, but due to an undertrained and inarguably incompetent police force they had yet to be prosecuted.

After it came to light what had been transpiring the people of Great Britain were horrified, they shuddered at what was one of the most ethically repugnant operations continuing to exist in Great Britain.

The surgeons, the elders and parents responsible who had been able to cause unquantifiable tragedy during its short existence thankfully all were arrested by the police. In the courtroom they all admitted guilt and were each sentenced to prison.

Justice! Justice! The repulsed crowd of onlookers shouted as the perpetrators were escorted in handcuffs out of the courthouse and stuffed into the police vehicle. Two human rights activists stood together gravely feeling a sense of deep tragedy for the victims while shedding bittersweet tears of resolution knowing that the foul people responsible would be put behind bars where they belonged, where they would have the time to contemplate such heinous crimes.

Jane and Billy were their names, it was these two human rights activists who played the most important part in the story for they had taken it upon themselves to infiltrate the genital mutilation ring and alert the police.

They already knew what had been going on well before the media picked up on the story and having had little faith in the police to do something about it, thankfully Jane and Billy had become vigilantes to track down the perpetrators themselves, as without the help of these activists it would have likely taken much longer with much more bloodshed until the perpetrators were finally caught.

The police had broken down the door to the secret location in the middle of the night, the parents had already years ago mutilated their two eldest children's genitals and were in the process of mutilating the youngest two when the police stormed the building.

One of the children fortunately was unharmed but one wasn't so lucky, the girl was experiencing massive blood loss and had gone into shock, so she was rushed to the hospital accompanied by the human rights activists as they had been at the scene when the police made the raid.

They had frantically run to the police station after having received word of the mutilation that would take place that day to alert the police and point out who the doctor and parents responsible were.

At the hospital whilst the medical staff raced to save the injured child's life the human rights activist waited distraught in the corridor just outside the operating theatre, Billy paced up and down with a scowling face furious at himself not having been able to bring the police to the location sooner, Jane sat with her head in her hands, if only they had been able to arrive just five minutes earlier maybe even just one minute earlier, never before had 60 seconds meant so much to either of them.

It wasn't long before the medic walked glumly out of the operating theatre door and into the corridor where the activists waited now frozen, now unable to take a breath in anticipation of the news, looking up from her chair Jane burst into a whale of tears even before those six heartbreaking words could escape from the lips of the medic, we did all that we could.

Billy threw his arms around Jane in an attempt to comfort her as she cried engulfed in sadness and regret for not having been able to have saved the girl from this terrible fate. Holding back tears himself the surgeon mustered his most professional voice and said I'll give you some space, if you need me I'll be down the hall.

A week later, Billy and Jane were walking round the supermarket together when Jane got a text from their daughter Sam asking for a razor. She turned round to Billy to read out the text and they both looked at each other concerned.

Sam was 14 years old and had been a mini advocate at school for girls not needing to shave their legs if they didn’t want to, so they worried had someone said something really mean to her for her to suddenly want to shave her legs now. They discussed the issue some more, but decided they better get the razor as it was her decision and if she changed her mind again she could always grow the hair back. They could hardly fight so hard for girls to exercise their rights over a cultural norm like FGM and yet not trust their daughter’s judgement in the matter of shaving her legs.

When they got home they talked to their daughter and found out someone had said some really mean things to her, but that that was a year ago and it had only made her even more determined to keep her leg hair, but that now it was summer she just wanted to try out shaving her legs to see what it felt like.

Billy and Jane still worried she was being influenced by advertisements or all the bullying over the years, but they were glad to have talked it through and furnished her with her very own razor blade.

The next day was a Saturday and Billy and Jane were busy setting up a Food Not Bombs stall in the town centre, having slaved away all morning on a massive pan of vegan stew that could feed 500 people. The bread to dip in the stew was rescued from a supermarket bin that night and contained the tiniest amount of whey from cows milk.

They put up two signs on the table, vegan stew and freegan bread. As well as tons of pamphlets and leaflets with helpful advice on living a low impact vegan or freegan lifestyle and the various campaign struggles in the city and internationally.

The vegan sign provoked lots of interesting conversations about the ethics of breeding and killing animals. While the freegan sign got people talking about a further layer, asking; how could it be ethical to harm animals when often it doesn’t even go towards feeding people? Which provoked another conversation about the evils of producing such an energy intensive product like meat to just become food waste while people are starving around the world.

So by the time it came to fold down the table and go home, a great day of advocating for human and animal legal rights, plus environmental protection had been had.

Driving home they got to talking about how Jane had used rescued cheese to help her stay strong in her decision to go vegan. And how she hoped that she wouldn’t have been so weak willed to fail without it, like convince herself that she didn’t need to go vegan, but that probably that happens to a lot of people, and so if more people had access to animal products from a source that is doing no harm to animals, which helped them in their transition to not buying it anymore, it could only be a good thing.

That reminded Jane of a documentary she’d watched which talked about a therapist who devised a technique in group therapy to help people quit cigarettes, which was to on day one, empty bags full of cigarettes in the centre of the group sitting in a circle, to show them the abundance, so that that stress about when am I going to be able to get my next rush is dulled.

And how freeganism had had that same effect of re-aligning the value of junk food for her, getting rid of low level addictions, when you see the mountains of packaged baked goods, croissants and doughnuts produced that day in the shop, stacked in a mountain all in front of you, you know you can get that sugar crash whenever you like, you stop seeing it as such a hot option.

Billy then remarked how interesting it is that buying cigarettes for that therapeutic technique is doing a little harm in the short term, but in actuality it serves a greater good long term. And yet with freeganism no harm is even being committed.

Then Jane said; I guess the perceived harm for many is cultural capital, like in most every culture on earth people would have a worse quality of life knowing you’re going to be eaten by other humans, because of how compassion for our fellow human beings works. But at the same time in Tibet, having your energy transferred into that of a bird is seen as a beautiful thing, so funerals at the top of mountains and your remains left as a tasty snack for the vultures is not so unusual.

Then Billy said; And it would be a great thing to move away from graveyards with cold gravestones in rows and more people choosing to be buried at a memorial woodland site where a tree is planted at the same time atop where you are buried, to be nutrients for the tree.

Finally Jane said; Right, so culture can be good or bad, we have to look towards something more concrete like what brings us happy flourishing and go from there.

Like it probably will be a better world when everyone is vegan and we’re all disgusted by thrown out animal products, in the same way as if no one ever felt pressured by sexist beauty standards to shave their legs again, but at the end of the day, it’s not like cannibalism where you’re causing worse quality of life in other humans by normalizing it and the same goes for normalizing the standard that women should have their genitals mutilated, neither the choice to shave your legs or eat thrown out animal products causes harm to anyone, so I don't really see why people ought not do it.

Even though I want that culture without any more domestic animals or carnism, I still just see a win in the political act of rescuing animals and food going to be thrown out, building relationships with people that can benefit from those calories or companionship, where no positive change would happen otherwise.

“Here, here” they both said while enjoying a little laugh. And laugh they did.

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Formal Arguments

A1) Kant’s Indirect Principle Against Advocating For Freeganism (Unsound)

P1) If I accept Kant’s axioms then I accept the indirect principle established in the groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals

P2) If I accept the indirect principle established in the groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals then I would agree that treating non human animals without dignity would harm myself

P3) If I accept the indirect principle established in the groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals then I have a moral duty to not harm myself

P4) If I agree that treating non human animals without dignity would harm myself and that I have a moral duty to not harm myself then I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity

P5) If I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity then I should reject consuming animal products (as it is the antithesis of treating animals with dignity)

P6) If I should reject consuming animal products then I shouldn’t promote freeganism (as to do so would constitute promoting self-harm)

P7) I accept Kant’s axioms

C) Therefore I should be against freeganism

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A2) Kant’s Indirect Principle For Advocating For Freeganism (Sound)

P1) If I accept Kant’s axioms then I accept the indirect principle established in the groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals

P2) If I accept the indirect principle established in the groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals then I would agree that treating non human animals without dignity would harm myself

P3) If I accept the indirect principle established in the groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals then I have a moral duty to not harm myself

P4) If I agree that treating non human animals without dignity would harm myself and that I have a moral duty to not harm myself then I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity

P5) If I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity then I should promote freeganism on rare occasions where it’s an effective advocacy tool at encouraging people to stop buying animal products because the principle that I should avoid very minor self-harm in the disgust it brings to mind shouldn’t override the principle that it’s wrong to breed animals to be killed for taste pleasure.

P6) I accept Kant’s axioms

C) Therefore I should be pro-freeganism.

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A3) Refutation of P5 of A1 through rejecting the utility of culturally specific disgust reactions

P1) Non human animals don’t experience a worse quality of life worrying about whether they’re going to be eaten by other humans after they’re dead

P2) In some cultures being eaten by animals after you’re dead is seen as a positive, for example in Tibet, having your energy transferred into that of a bird is seen as a beautiful thing or green burials where your body can more easily become nutrients for both animals and plants.

P3) It probably will be a better world when everyone is vegan and we’re all disgusted by thrown out animal products, in the same way as if no one ever felt pressured by sexist beauty standards to shave their legs again, but it’s not comparable to cannibalism where you’re causing worse quality of life in other humans by normalizing it or normalizing the standard that women should have their genitals mutilated as neither the choice to shave your legs or eat thrown out animal products causes harm to anyone.

P4) P3 entails if I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity then I should not reject consuming animal products (as it is not the antithesis of treating animals with dignity)

P5) I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity

C) I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity, and I should not reject consuming animal products (as it is not the antithesis of treating animals with dignity)

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A4) Refutation of P5 of A1 using Tom Regan’s worse-off principle

P1) If I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity then I should promote freeganism on rare occasions where it’s an effective advocacy tool at encouraging people to stop buying animal products because the principle that I should avoid very minor self-harm in the disgust it brings to mind shouldn’t override the principle that it’s wrong to breed animals to be killed for taste pleasure.

P2) I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity

P3) P1 entails if I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity then I should not reject consuming animal products (as it is not the antithesis of treating animals with dignity)

C) I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity, and I should not reject consuming animal products (as it is not the antithesis of treating animals with dignity)

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A5) Refutation of P5 of A1 using W.D.Ross’s principle of prima facie duties

P1) Any felt obligation is a prima facie duty, though it can be overridden depending on the circumstances by another one, that doesn’t mean that the original obligation disappears, it simply means that its defeasible and it usually continues to operate in the background.

P2) If I have a felt obligation that talking positively about the consumption of animal products is disgusting and would be an act of self-harm to myself AND I learn about people using freeganism as an effective advocacy tool in turning people vegan who wouldn’t otherwise have considered it, such that I now feel a stronger felt obligation to do the same THEN the duty to do the latter is overriding, but I’m going to work extra hard to advocate for veganism such that I can know I’ve contributed to a future world in which no one needs to talk about the positive effects of consuming animal products, because the initial obligation still operates in the background even though it was overridden.

P3) I have a felt obligation that talking positively about the consumption of animal products is disgusting and would be an act of self-harm to myself AND I learn about people using freeganism as an effective advocacy tool in turning people vegan who wouldn’t otherwise have considered it, such that I now feel a stronger felt obligation to do the same.

P4) P1 entails if I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity then I should not reject consuming animal products (as it is not the antithesis of treating animals with dignity)

P5) I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity

C) I should live in a way which treats animals with dignity, and I should not reject consuming animal products (as it is not the antithesis of treating animals with dignity)


---

Description Box

The video I’m responding to is called ‘Freeganism is Evil’ by Footsoldier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2wVcjYION0

The idea for the analogy came from this great video called Thoughts On Freeganism by Catherine Klein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-lr8XDrM_g

“I understand that shaving my legs and my armpits and everything is a sexist double standard, why are women expected to be completely hairless in order to be seen as attractive? It doesn't make sense and I think it's totally badass when women break this norm and go all natural. It does make me question my choices like I probably should be like **** the patriarchy and stop shaving, just like I probably should be horrified by my leather boots and throw them out because one could argue that shaving your legs is an example of internalized oppression, but at the end of the day, neither of my choices here are causing direct harm to anyone, so I don't really see changing my ways as a moral necessity.”

Freeganism article on the Philosophical Vegan Wiki:
https://philosophicalvegan.com/wiki/ind ... Freeganism

Freeganism video catalogue:
https://activistjourneys.wordpress.com/freeganism/

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