For us, fortunate ones, and unlike carnivorous wildlife, what we eat is not a struggle for survival, but rather a matter of bountiful options-- the justification of necessity to kill other sentient beings for food is completely lost. The presence of choice fundamentally alters the moral landscape. It is not life-giving sustenance for survival, but rather the triviality of mere taste and habit.
Hmmm.... what if vastly superior intelligent life forms came to earth from some other planet in another galaxy and thought of us the way we think of animals b/c humans would just be so dumb in comparison to them? Also, my philosophy professor had to point out that since we base the idea of humans deserving more rights than animals on our higher intelligence, what about human beings who have the same IQ of a chimpanzee? If it's all based on intelligence, what kind of implications does that have for rights? Mmmhmm...
midnight15086 You're right, humans without the ability to reason shouldn't be allowed to vote or carry guns and they must be taken care of like we take care of animals. Note: this is already what we do.
BobWidlefish yeah, but can we eat them? or euthanize them when it would lessen their suffering, but we had no indication of their will? what makes a human that has the mental capacity of a pig- for example a 3 year old child that wont develope more- more worth of survival and care than the actual pig?
Firmicute s "can we eat them" One would be ill advised to eat humans for purely practical reasons. Since our genetics are vastly closer to fellow humans, I think that puts us at greater risk of some diseases. If it were possible to safely consume some foodstuff made from humans (e.g. soylent green) then the question as to whether we should eat our dead is essentially a practical one that's not specific to those who are severely mentally disabled. When someone dies for any reason should we find a way to use their body to help others? Some people favor scientific research on cadavers, others do not. I'm not aware of any modern movements to use humans as food, but this seems like an issue of squeamishness, not an ethical question.
midnight15086 Good point about the mentally challenged. We don't slaughter them just because they have a low intelligence, so yes, clearly there is more to it. When it comes to meat, you say, "Would you eat your dog or cat?" No, there is no difference between eating a dog or cat or cow or any other animal. If you had a pet cow, you wouldn't want to eat it either. It's this disconnection between how we receive our food. I personally don't eat meat anymore based on this.
We deem it right to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain, suffering, harm and death to other humans not because they are sapient, but because they are sentient. Being that animals, too, are sentient, we should extend the same treatment to them.
A lot of people don't cause physical harm to others not beconse humans are sentient but because the law forbids it and they don't want to face the consequence
There is really no rational explanation to inflict unecessary pain, suffering or death upon humans and animals alike, especially if it is just for pure pleasure. Vivisection and animal experimentation is a whole other topic I don´t want to touch too much on, because there it at least some logical reasoning behind it. But saying "Animals can´t think, lack inteligence or don´t have reason, therefore I can kill them or let them have killed (in a "nice" way) and eat their seasoned and cooked corpses" is pure and utter hypocrisy, since no one would proppose such a treatment to a let´s say a mentally challenged human who also lacks reason and intelligence (not minding the fact that canibalism isn´t so much of a thing besides in survival scenarios).
I don't think that's how most people justify eating meat. They do it by stating, correctly, that it is the natural way of things. People need protein, and the best natural source of that is meat. Lots of people can't afford to live on a meat free diet, and see nothing wrong with their actions anyway, the principle of me eating an animal is no worse than a lion or wolf doing the same. Whilst you might consider our method of doing this to be unethical, I fail to see how anyone could consider consumption of our natural preys to be wrong.
Alex Zarandi yourveganfallacyis(dot)com/en/animals-eat-animals I'm leaving this here in case you want to know the vegan counterarguments for this particular line of thinking. As to the "can't afford to live on a meat free diet" part, I can only share my personal experience as a vegan in a Latin American 3rd world country (Chile), by stating that it's definitely cheaper, because meat around here is really expensive and fresh vegetables are easily and cheaply acquired. I can even afford my B12 supplement while spending less than what I used to spend on meat. Good day, sir.
Alex Zarandi "They do it by stating, correctly, that it is the natural way of things." Are you seriously suggesting that lions(or any other carnivore/omnivore) mass produce the animals they are going to eat in a factory farm like humans do?If not what humans are doing when eating meat is as unnatural as it gets(unless you hunt for food).More importantly appeal to nature,google it. "Lots of people can't afford to live on a meat free diet, and see nothing wrong with their actions anyway,..." First part is demonstrably false,second part proves nothing(ex:racists think what they are doing is perfectly okay).I'm not calling you a racist btw,just pointing out flaws in your argument.
mert kocak Lions would mass produce meat if they could. They just lack the mental, physical, or technological prowess to do so. Any being would try to make their own food sources if possible. And a quick philosophical for anyone who decides to not eat meat for moral reasons: Would you eat meat if it were grown in a lab, from cells, that wouldn't be able to feel pain? That is actually a legitimate question I have.
Gothicfan51 The more I think about it...the more I want to try some Pikachu bacon wrapped in Pork Belly which has been stuffed with some slow roasted chicken infused marbled eye fillet...mmm can't think...Pika Pika bacon !
Most people are to stupid to even take this question seriously. They would rather try to be funny by saying something ridiculous, like "mmm Pikachu Bacon... Delicious" Humans are actually pretty stupid, we are the only animal dumb enough to destroy the Earth, so why do we deserve rights?
Franco Gonzalez Despite some of things humans have done, we have also done a plethora of good things. Don't devalue a entire species because of some wrong doings. Besides, who would take our rights away? The animals?? I don't think so.
Franco Gonzalez Well humans are the only species which, if it went extinct, would make things better for the planet, so maybe we aren´t so special after all if our overall main effect is to harm, enslave and kill each other, the animals as well as destroying the planet while we are at it
Austin Texas True and we need to change that. However, the guy who commented said we deserve no rights for what we have done. We messed up big time, but does that mean we should give up our rights to planet earth to compensate? Just give up? Nope, that is not the solution.
Rights are a human construct applied to humans by humans for humans. Animals have no concept of rights. When an animal is hurt it doesn't scream "that's not fair it's against my rights" because it cannot understand them, nor can it articulate if it could. Life is a process which is the result of nature, and nature gives literally zero shits about life, and life has evolved to have a very good understanding of this. That's what pleasure and pain are. We are a product of nature, and historically we too have given literally zero shits about life outside of those who were immediately important to us (that's seeking pleasure however.) The social nature of humanity, however, has resulted in human rights. Here is the key difference between humans and animals however; A self-preservation system like rights or laws or pacts only works if all members respect that pact. Having a right to life is worthless if nobody respects it. Having a law against murder is similarly useless if nobody follows it. Having a non-agression pact between countries is of no value if one country attacks the other. For this reason, extending rights to animals cannot work. They will not respect the rights of themselves, or of others. An extension of rights to animals who DO respect the rights of others is the only reasonable course of action. Those individuals are no doubt quite a small proportion. I suppose Dogs, having co-evolved with us ought to have some rights. It's senseless to give the cat and mouse rights because there can be no peace between cats and mice. Some people might argue that animals are abused by us, and that may be true, but before they were abused by us they were abused by nature. Just as nature caused countless animals to be born and to suffer and to die, so did we. However.... As originally stated rights are a human system. If our human social senses are upset by the pain experienced by animals, then that could be seen as an impingement upon our rights. If humans have a right to live in the best world that is possible with the resources at our disposal then perhaps humans have the right to live in a world without gratuitous cruelty to animals. tl;dr: Humans invented rights. They serve humans alone. Animals cannot understand their rights so they can't respect those of others. However, it could be argued that humans have a right to not be exposed to the upset of seeing animal cruelty.
Pokemon is a weird example because not only are many at least semi-sentient, but certain ones (like Alakazam) are exponentially more intelligent than any human could ever be.
wow, nice and well thoughtout input based on empirical evidence.. back in the day people didn't give human children anesthesia because they didn't think they were sentient anyway.. you seem less sentient than a ringworm
Animals cannot engage in complex and diverse mental tasks like humans. Pokemon, however can. Pokemon are capable of complex reasoning, both spatial and linguistic, as well as things like the use of tools. Aside from a few species of primates, no animal comes close to that.
The pain/pleasure dichotomy breaks down when you consider that some people derive pleasure from pain, like the pain that comes from strenuous exercise for example. There are also instances where pleasure can be a bad thing, as in the case of a heroin addict. So I would disagree with the idea that the only intrinsically good thing is pleasure and the only intrinsically bad thing is pain. Good and bad are pretty arbitrary terms that depend entirely on perspective. They don't really mean anything.
Nihilistic Misanthrope if pain brings them pleasure then it becomes good and if pleasure (through drugs) brings them pain eventually then it becomes bad.it's not a simple thought but it still works
Nihilistic Misanthrope Pleasure isn't what's wrong with being a heroin addict, the addiction and the negative life and health consequences are. Surely you can see how, on balance, this would increase a person's suffering, and vice versa with your strenuous exercise example (it might inflict some pain but it's net pleasure).
Nihilistic Misanthrope That's just the cliffnotes version. It's like thinking that the Big Bang was actually an explosion. There's an entire philosophy behind this, and it's not so easily dismissed.
Knight Solaire I was just high when I wrote this one, lel. And I don't usually play yo momma jokes, this one just seemed too appropriate ;v.... check some other ones out :0.. you perv..
A lot of vegetarians and vegans make this argument, but there's a problem. Plants suffer as well. Granted, their nervous systems are far more rudimentary than those of animals, and thus their ability to feel pain is reduced or at least works differently, but still, pain is pain. Freshly-cut grass exudes a certain scent because it is "bleeding" in a sense. Some plants are spicy because its meant to be a defense mechanism against herbivores. Fruits are an inversion of this, because fruit trees WANT US to eat their fruits - the fruits are full of seeds, so the idea is that when we eat the fruits and the seeds, we eventually poop the seeds out in the woods somewhere, where the seed has enough fertilizer to grow into a new plant. Trouble, most humans nowadays flush this evolutionary plan down the toilet - literally. Not to mention that some fruits, like the pineapple, evolve hooks and spikes because they don't WANT to be eaten, at least not by certain animals. Plant, animal, you're still ending a life at the end of the day. We are what scientists call Heterotrophs - we eat other organisms in order to meet our nutritional needs. That is an irreconcilable part of our evolutionary identity, and it's something we just have to make peace with, like it or not.
the "avoiding pain" thing is called homeostasis, and is a characteristic of life, which, according to this, would mean that sponges and insects have rights as well, but of course, we only look at dogs because they are cute. When you say something, you have to be consistent. Animal rights means that crushing a bug is the same as killing a dog.
Crispy Toast I would agree with that. Pain isn't the right metric for determining the moral treatment of animals. Just because an animal behaves as though it feels pain (avoidance behaviors) doesn't mean that it has the subjective experience necessary to actually feel pain (sentience).
Crispy Toast I agree, right down to crushing a bug being the same as killing a dog. But if a neurotoxic dog makes it into my house and starts crawling about on my bedroom ceiling... i'm not entirely certain that i won't react in a "kill it! kill it" fashion... though my more likely reaction is to run away screaming...
Because like CrispyToast said, all the animals do that down to the bottom of the chain. Ants avoid pain and I would think it's pretty clear that they aren't sentient. Same thing with seeing. Some animals may be able to detect differences of light in order to avoid predators but that doesn't mean they have an experience of 'seeing'. It's an entirely robotic process for them.
Plants try to avoid pain as well, so if you went by this reasoning, you would starve or die of malnutrition. Also, if you gave animals human rights, you would need to enforce those rights among them as well, indirectly killing (nearly) all carnivores by not allowing them to hunt (some would probably be kept alive by letting them eat recently deceased animals). If you accept that plants also experience and try to avoid pain, you'd also need to protect them, and everything we could get our hands on except bacteria and fungi would starve.
I'm pretty sure plant's don't feel pain but they do try and survive. Furthermore many plants we eat want us to eat them. The reason fruit is so sweet is so that animals eat it and spread their seeds. Also this video isn't talking about interfering when animals attack each other. When they say animals should have rights is that we should treat them humanely, and not be unnecessarily cruel. We as a species can decide that while animals will continue to hunt each other, we won't torture them, test on them, or cause them unnecessary pain. I mean there's a reason those videos where people stomp on and crush small animals is illegal, yet putting down a dog at the pound isn't. Crushing a puppy to death in high heels serves no purpose aside from cruelty. Euthanasia is a necessary evil.
I know right! Even grass knows when its being cut for fuck sake, if everything was actually equal everything would end up dead pretty quick unless it can photosynthesize
@Alejandro Narváez (SaintMiracle), if capability to experience pain is our measuring stick for ethic behavior, then anesthetizing and killing a person would be totally O.K. No pain, no foul, right? Also, having a CNS doesn't necessarily grant an organism the capability to experience pain - a prime example being most invertebrates. On the other hand, there are a numerous plants without a CNS that would show a severe reaction to an assault or any sort of induced harm. Who are we to judge how different organisms deal with what we, with our severe anthropomorphic world view, call pain? After all, pain is just a bio-chemical reaction evolved from the primitive self-preservation mechanisms we can see in all other organisms (as those who didn't have it died off a long time ago). The nature has set the stage in which all living organisms must consume other living organisms in order to sustain their life. There are only two substances that we absolutely require to sustain life which are inorganic - salt and water. Everything else must come from a living organism. Since that's the case, there is nothing inherently ethical or unethical in consuming other organisms - we have to do it least we want to sentence ourselves to extinction. No other organism on this planet would ever be in a dilemma should they or should they not consume some other organism - or consume you, for that matter - if they had the ability, opportunity and the need for it. I'd bet that no sane human would, either, if they are placed in a 'do or die' situation. Heck, most of us would easily consume another human if there is no other option. The overabundance of food is what gave us the opportunity to theorize and cherry-pick what goes into our plates, not our misplaced ethical considerations and cringe-worthy 'holier than thou' syndrome mixed with virtue signaling. That's why you didn't have vegans, raw-foodists and other hipsters of that sort 'til the past several decades. Somewhat paradoxically, GMO research and agricultural advances of that nature is what enabled us the overabundance of food in the first place, yet the aforementioned hipsters are the first to throw a stone at GMO. Oh, the irony... But I digress...
Plants don't have nociception. But even if they were to have it, the reasonable thing would still be to go vegan, in order to minimize killing of plants to which one contributes to. Vegan diet is much more efficient in that regard, due to absence of forage and fodder eaten by animals used for human diet.
Ice King Damn it, I read it in the Ice King's voice, then I had to make sure if your avatar and and username were in fact - the Ice King, and they were; all it took was a glimpse.
Iana Grace You should be laughing your ass out metaphorically instead, seeing the overwhelming desperation of people to jump onto some mockery or brain-dead one-liners, to erase the realisation of one's own moral filth. *like little worms, wiggling about trying to remove the cognitive dissonance*. It's like showing the Cross to an old woman possessed by lucifer himself, and then to retort, she mocks you, and throws her boogers at you, acting like the cross didn't just fuck her shit up.... Stretching the analogy, but one can gather..
Here's a question for you all: if a species that had a much higher intellect than humans chose to process and eat us through conditions similar to that of the slaughterhouses we get meat from, would this be morally permissible or not in your opinion?
PathOfVirtue , given that my imperative is self-preservation not only that I would consider the behavior of the said species immoral, but also unethical and downright barbaric. However, for the species in question (under the assumption that they are the same type of life as we are just of immensely higher intellect) it would be perfectly permissible as they have to consume other life in order to sustain their own. After all, I'd be consuming them if I could and had the opportunity and/or the need for it. Same goes for species of much lower 'intellect' - I don't think that a sharks are immoral if they eat a human, but I don't think humans are immoral if they eat a shark either. Neither sharks, nor humans prefer to be eaten but that's the circle of life as we know it.
An interesting question, but ignoring morals for a moment, would it be practical? Morality is subjective. Would it be sustainable? I am leaning towards not. The gestation period and slow growth of humans would make them undesirable as a farmed species. It's the same reason we don't farm elephants. It's not worth the effort. Hunting as a game species, and being eaten in that way, would be far more practical for humans. As for morality, I don't think most people want to be eaten, but then we don't, for the most part, eat intelligent animals. Most animals eaten are naked, barely communicate, don't use tools, and are virtually indistinguishable from any other animal. I think it would be different if animals were capable of communicating and manipulating their environment.
We chose in what we eat. The food 99% of us eat is artificially produced, whether that's plants being grown in fields or animals in a cage. We are no longer a part of the food chain. Since we chose what we grow, why chose organisms that feel pain, and treat them so poorly, when we could survive just as well (in fact better) through eating plants? Also want to point out that the life leading to the slaughter of an animal is full of pain and trauma too (again, in 99% of circumstances), and the slaughter itself is not the worst part - in my eyes
Blood Angel, human babys are not able to do any of the barometers of intelligence you mention, so would you be okay enslaving and killing a baby? Some adult humans are also incapable of these, would you do the same to them? Claiming that killings and poor treatment of others is fair because they look different to you, or act differently to you, has been a justification for atrocities throughout history. Here is a experiment shwoing rats saving other rats from drowning, and they were more likely to save other rats if they had come close to drowning themselves (showing empathy). www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150514-rats-save-mates-from-drowning Pidgeons mate for life, and when their partner dies it is not uncommon for the other to become dispondant and lose the will to live themsleves. This is evidence of grief, mourning, despair. These are emotions that most animals are capable of. Pls get back to me, both of u, I am open to discussion
I'm sure part of why we eat animals is culture. I grew up killing and butchering animals we ate, and it was just part of food preparation, much like we would wash and peel a vegetable. Moral issues were never a consideration. As far as I know, the only intelligent species humans have shared the planet with are Neanderthals. We didn't hunt and eat them. We traded, fought, competed for food, and interbred with them. There's no species alive today where any of that would be possible. I don't have a moral issue with eating animals. Animals will happily kill and eat other animals. Bacteria will infect animals, some symbiotic, others parasitic. Various species will infest and destroy our homes, all of which we will kill without a second thought. You're right about young, old and disabled people, many of them are not capable of any of the things I mentioned in my first post, but it's clear that those are not the majority. Also, as far as young specifically, most will grow into being able to.
"Would you still eat bacon if it came from Pikachus". Depends -Is it good bacon? -Is there an overpopulation of Pikachus? If yes and yes then final answer is yes.
+Heavenlyhounds96 There's currently an overpopulation of humans (that have the collective similarities to parasites/cancer on the Earth) therefore an alien might decide to kill and eat your flesh. - Using your logic this is OK.
Awakening to oneness Let's just hope the aliens are smart enough to go after the humans that are self-centered or just plain idiotic and won't think twice about whether to exploit power and resources for themselves...cause they will.
If we are arguing from the stand point that the capacity to suffer is enough to give equal moral weight to inflicting suffering, then consider this hypothetical. A man, is recovering after surgery, he can't feel pleasure or pain, be it emotional or physical. A man walks into the room to kill him. Given that protection from harm is predicated on the capacity to suffer why should the would be murderer not kill the recovering patient.
I believe it was C.S. Lewis who once said that one can tell a great deal about the moral quality of a nation by how it treats its animals. But as the most intelligent, evolutionarily successful and potentially creative and destructive species on the planet humans have the responsibility to rule and manage the planet wisely. I think purposefully tormenting animals of any kind is cruel and evil. Be it bullfighting, burning ants with a magnifying glass or forcing sixty cats to live in a small apartment. But I also think humans do have the right to consume animals because, in the long run the animals are better off for it. Animals cannot manage their own population without predators they will expand till they consume all their resources and starve to death. Also if humans have a use for a species we will domesticate it manage its evolution and increase its population. Cows are probably the second most numerous mammal species on the earth because humans have many uses for them and so we breed and protect them. the knee-jerk reaction to the notion of animal rights is condemn human's for using animals or for injuring them. But the real relation any governing system has with rights is to protect them. If humans truly want to protect the lives of animals and prevent their suffering then our main goal should be to domesticate the planet. Nothing humans have ever done is as cruel or as random as natural evolution.
emptank So what you're saying is that it's better off for a species to survive in horendous conditions rather than be extinct? Your moral arguement is basically that as long as you help a living being survive it becomes morally justifiable to do whatever you want to it.
Ben Shabtai Well I'm sure that the animals don't want to be extinct. And besides, it's not that we want to purposefully hurt them. There are reforms in the meat and food industry going on now.
Ben Shabtai From an evolutionary perspective all that matters is the species survival. From a moral stand point it is pointlessly cruel and unethical for a species to survive in a horrendous condition. To make any creature suffer more than it should is wrong. But from a practical standpoint humanity is only going to invest in protecting creatures that our useful to us. It just a fact, humans are driven by incentives. Cattle are better off as a species being herded and pastured by humans. they are more numerous better adapted to a more diverse number of environments, and at less risk to wild predators. But humans will only do that because it is profitable for us to consume them. I think the benefits ultimately out weigh the price, so long as the suffering of the individual is minimized. I would condemn factory farms but I would admit that slaughter houses are necessary. Obviously it would be better is they could be used in a different way than food like dogs, cats or horses and therefore humans would promote their well being without killing and eating them. And obviously in a truly utopian society killing creatures for food would be unnecessary and humans could coexist with all nature in true peace. But Utopia mean 'no place' in Latin for a reason doesn't it? If you remove all incentives for humans to care for animals and expect us to protect a species while expecting no benefits from them. Then you are forcing that species to compete for the resources of the planet with humanity. And that isn't good to the animals at all. We humans have this evolution thing whipped they don't.
emptank Factually, if the world consumption of animal products would gradually decline factory farmed animals would die out. They would not compete with anyone for resourced for the simple fact that they would not survive in nature due to being breeded by humans, gentically modified and domesticated for so many years. Your arguement for "Utopia = No place" is basically a strawman, but I'll take it on never the less. Even if veganism will never take over the entire human culture, that does not make it morally justifiable in my mind. Is it in yours?
Ben Shabtai I don't think you can assume that domesticated animals will not persist with out human intervention. Often domesticated dogs and cats that are released thrive in wild environments to the point that feral packs of such creatures are a major problem in many areas. I couldn't prove it since I'm not a environmental scientist but I think at this point humans releasing control over domesticated animals would probably do a lot of harm to the environment since humans have bred most animals to the point that they are superior to their wild counterparts. It's not that I don't think that veganism would never take over human culture and therefore such utopian ideals are unrealistic, It's that I think veganism taking over human culture would be bad for animals. We all live on the same planet therefore we all compete for the same resources. It is in the name of that competition that mankind inflicts the majority of its damage on wild species. They need forests and plains to live and hunt in, we need those same areas to build homes and farms. So we sieze those area for ourselves and drive the creatures in them to extinction. Humans are selfish, preaching about how cruelty to animals is wrong will not get them to change. Look at the other comments here and how many people will proudly claim that they would still kill and eat a creature that is repeatedly portrayed as intelligent, cute and friendly. If you want to preserve the lives and well being of animals you have to give humans and actual reason to do. You have to make it so that the animal is useful to humans.
I would be really interested in seeing your take on sociology concepts. It just seems like a natural progression going from philosophy to sociology, since they are so closely intertwined.
This is an interesting philosophical point, but it gets complicated on further analysis. Scientists have shown that plants also have a "pain" response, and become "stressed" in the presence of other plants being destroyed. Most if not all living organisms has a pain/injury response- it's there as a guard to protect themselves from harm. This gets really complicated if you expand it to nuisance species like mosquitos or other pests that either bother humans or attack plants. Science will soon have a solution for the animal meat problem, as they are working on creating bio-meat in the lab . Here's another thought - with the advent of genetic research - what would happen if scientists were able to create animals that felt no pain at all. Would Wisecrack approve of killing/eating these animals? If humans were created that felt no pain, would it be okay to treat them as less than human?
Plants have no brain, no nervous system, no subjective experience known. Animals do. As humans we have to justify our actions of killing animals for food or else it's unethical. To do so we need to present a logical argument for killing someone that can be applied to not only animals but to humans as well for moral consistency. As this can not be done, it's clear that eating someone when we could instead eat plants is unethical. We can apply the same line of thinking to other actions. This is how we determine what is ethical and what is unethical. As people are waking up to the horror of the animal agriculture world which we have been born and indoctrinated into, they are changing to live vegan and to educate others on the benefits of living a life aligning one's actions with their values, living ethically and improving the world.
Assuming that the degree of consciousness is irrelevant and also pleasure is good and pain is bad, would you consider carnivorous animals to be bad? or for that matter many herbivorous males of a species compete to mate, often resulting in the death of their rivals, would you consider them bad? Just a thought. I'm not trying to start a war mates ;-)
I consider moral systems to exist for the sole purpose of furthering the survivability of the society or species which uses them. So specisism is entirely valid, as the whole point of properly applied utilitarianism ought to be to improve human lives.
***** Many humans do not have the mental capacity to apply a moral code themselves, yet we should apply our moral code to them only because they belong to our species? How does helping these people aid in the survivability of our species? I mean, don't stop at being speciesist if your goal is survivability - there are plenty of other prejudices you could be subscribing to! We care for the infirm or severe mentally challenged not because they necessarily advance our race, but out of compassion. We empathize with their pain or suffering or just generally care about their well-being because we all understand what it means to suffer. But we know humans aren't the only beings with the ability to suffer. Other sentient animals do too. And plenty of humans do exhibit moral consideration for pet-friendly animals, but less cuddly animals usually get little to none. I'm not saying we need to treat humans and pigs (for example) the same, but doesn't their intellectual and emotional capacity warrant them at least some ethical consideration? Why can't we show compassion across species?
***** "I consider moral systems to exist for the sole purpose of furthering the survivability of the society or species which uses them." What if a group of humans has a different moral code (or no moral code, like sociopaths, severely mentally disabled people, or children)?
adubya25 It's rare that a mentally challenged human is totally useless, and in the cases that they are, the sentimental value for their family makes their treatment subjectively worthwhile. The systemic cost of incorporating eugenics is not worth the benefits. The capacity to suffer doesn't enter into it in my opinion. From a utilitarian standpoint, the only time removing human rights from the hopelessly disabled would be worth the marginal economic benefit would be when popular opinion is overwhelmingly for it. And since most people don't use a purely utilitarian moral system, that is unlikely to happen.
Plants lack nervous systems, and yet respond in certain ways (through pheromonal release, etc.) when under duress. Do plants suffer? Isn't drawing the line at the nervous system boundary just as arbitrary as drawing the line at the species boundary? Can life be sustained without exchange and sacrifice?
Drawing the line at a nervous system is called acknowledging facts and realtiy. Plants have responses and reactions but they're not concious decisions, they don't think or feel, unlike animals.
I am so glad this subject was handled well. As someone who feels very strongly about abusing animals and discrimination, I always assume the worst when I see a youtuber I don't know talk about animal rights, but this video was on point.
Despite the fact that I like meat (and I ever will), I only eat meat that came from certain animals. And yet, I don't have the heart to kill or hurt any of those creatures to get that food.
If you cant, go vegan? Please.... I'll tell you what, friend, if you were on a farm, starving, you'd learn fast. Just because we've been separated from this aspect of our biology doesn't mean it's immoral. The real immorality is that we as a species handed over our ability to control our own food to giant corporations who have a vested interest I'm making you squeamish about the thought of slaughtering for food.
You can't feel pain unless you are conscious. This guy's argument is the consciousness argument except worded differently and actually giving animals a consciousness, however primitive. Great video!
I think the main problem with the meat industry these days is how mechanical in nature it is; there's so much shit around it its not funny, but de-industrializing it would make meat prices skyrocket. Animals deserve rights, not human rights, but some of the things people do to animals when they slaughter them is outright wrong (leaving the heart pumping to drain the blood from the muscles quicker) I mostly just eat organic and meat I know that hasn't been in CAFOs, to be honest. but let's be real if you're proud of what you eat you're probably like twelve
@@KillersWalkFree Not true, if Humans weren’t meant to eat meat than we simply wouldn’t have the capability to. Animals deserve to be treated a whole lot better in this world, but every creature has a circle of life that they belong to. We eat our animals, then the maggots eat us when we’re buried.
I eat meat. However, I should want any animal to end up on my plate to have been processed with as little suffering as necessary. That's why I disagree with battery farms, and that's why anaesthetics should be applied to the animal so they feel as little pain as possible. I'm holding out hope for when synthetic meat becomes standard, and its taste and price is authentic and cheap enough respectively for a poormun like myself to afford. With regards to vegetarianism, it seems similar to eating healthily, like there is a moral push to do both, but because healthy food is often expensive compared to unhealthy food, and frankly, unhealthy food unfortunately tastes better, most of us don't have that necessary will to rise above both the high prices and the urge for certain flavours.
What planet are you living on. 1st vegan or vegetarian foods don't equal healthy. Oreos are vegan yet i wouldn't consider them healthy. Also since when is fresh fruit and vegetables more expensive than meat and eggs. 1kg of beef costs around £8.77/kg. While carrots cost £0.43/kg.
If inflicting pain is intrinsically bad, then why do people have children? Everyone experiences pain and suffering in life, and the only way to avoid that is to avoid having children!
Um, no. Children do not cause all the pain and suffering in the world. It is caused by a lot of things, like governments, schools, death, disease, famine, etc.
Tariq Muhammad But if you have a child, you know that they will feel pain from the moment they are born. They'll also give you stress, pain, and unhappiness from the moment the baby is born. And maybe they'll be miserable and suicidal. Therefore, according to utilitarianism, it would be more ethical to not have children an avoid the pain. Personally, I think utilitarianism is nonsense. Robert Nozick's utility monster and Brave New World taught me that much.
GT6SuzukaTimeTrials Because a woman having a child is not automatically inflicting pain upon others, but takes the pain herself in order to have a child...
Jack Ronesto i get the feeling you have some traumatic experience with children.... sounds almost like you should consult someone :/ but just to give you a little push into the right direction - children don't cause suffering. it's the way you handle things with them that might cause it..
John Smith He isn't saying that children cause suffering (though indeed they do) he's saying that bringing a child into this world is inflicting suffering on said child because it will inevitably encounter some.
Yasss!! I love this! Thank you!! My theology teacher said that animals don't have souls and that they are just here for our pleasure! Thank you for making this video!!! I agree with everything in it!!!
The thing that trouble me is that we as a specie only value other lives that are similar to us and resemble elements of us. Because animals have the ability to feel pain, hunt, breed and other qualities that are close to us, we feel sympathy for them and argue to treat them with kindness and not eat them. Whereas other objects like plants and fruits are okay to eat because they're are unable to feel pain or communicate. But is it selfish to only save what is similar to us? If so do we have a superiority complex to only deem what resembles us as "important"? Aren't we playing "god" and choosing what is important(and what we save happen to resemble us)? When we're saving similar species, aren't we doing this just to make ourselves feel better? Then isn't this a selfish and self-important gesture? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure this out.
***** I'm sorry, it was a bit difficult to understand your comment due to the composition and grammar of the writing. I understand your point, but I make mine from an existentialist point of view. The thing that troubles me is that we only deem creatures that are similar to us(have a central nervous system that can feel pain, communicate, reproduce through sex ect.) worthy enough to be saved. I feel as if we are playing "god" to say that those who resembles us are sacred and other lives like plants and fruits are not because they are not like us.
***** I am doing my very best to understand you but I feel as though you are entirely missing my point. There is a lot pathos in your argument but I hope you'll speak with more logos to prove valid points. I'm not sure if you understand what existentialist arguments are and how to respond to them. Also, we are omnivores because we have canines. Please evaluate my point of view before you respond, I'm sorry but I'm finding it really difficult to continue a logical, rational argument to find the truth.
In the end it's all about the circle of life. We eat them after they eat something else. We all die at the end of the day anyway. The only thing we can do is try and stop suffering and pain. People try and boost their own morals to try and be better than others, I think. Just because you won't eat meat doesn't mean you're jesus. You probably have some health issues now. While it may be a choice to eat another animal, it has been the natural order of things. Suffering in the world is balanced out with happiness. There is no possible way to end all suffering unless there is death. Trying to be vegan/vegetarian is in no way going to change the world, it only makes people feel better about themselves.
***** Your first sentence is slightly confusing still... sorry if I'm just not following. I think anyone who feels animals feel nothing is simply lying to themselves. They all know they do. Would I kill to survive? In a heartbeat, no thoughts given. Would I torture the animal or prolong it's suffering in anyway? No. I would wish the same dignity shown upon me in my death if possible.
***** All the same in my book. If I was starving and I had to eat a human corpse I would. I know that's raw and "dirty", but ain't no one killing me me but me, and that includes you nature *shakes fist violently* Lol
pipuk3 I like how you say if... go kill a human, and make some bacon. Go ahead and look up the news stories of restaurants serving human flesh and then be all excited for your big mac. Evolutionarily we're so close you cannot visibly tell the difference between our cuts of meat. Cows, pigs, humans, we're all fucking mammals. Just like cannibalism mammalian meat consumption is bad for our health. Do some research and grow out of your bacon addiction.
David Westrup Mammalian meat isn't bad for you. We just eat it in bad (read: oily) ways and in far too large of quantities. If mammalian meat was inherently bad for us, we'd have a long tradition, all the way back to the hunter-gatherers, of disease from eating something that made up so much of their diet. And why would mammalian meat be bad for us, but not poultry? Or fish? Or even insects, which could be considered meat, seeing as they're animals.
Spider58x I suppose. But the concept remains interesting. Why is a human worth more than an insect? Than a bacteria? It's a subjective scale, but on a long enough timeline everything becomes irrelevant. More than ninety percent of the genetic information in any human being belongs to the things that live on us and in us. Does that mean that any rights given to me, the carrier of said creatures, also apply to my creatures? What even am I? A cloud of atoms held together by nuclear force, again on this scale it becomes arbitrary. To more directly answer your question, human rights? Maybe not. But rights, yes. For some reason we can ask these questions, and for that very reason we must seek to answer them.
Spider58x Well plants and bacteria do not have a nervous system, so they don't have the same capacity to suffer like animals. Insects can suffer on the other hand, so you could argue it's just as morally wrong to kill an insect with bug spray than to drown a box of kittens, and in fact that insect will probably suffer for longer.
I actually believe most living creatures are conscious. You can observe many animals think and decide things when they're solving problems. Most animals don't understand speech but they can still tell what emotions we're having from our body language. They're aware of their environment, they have personalities, they know they themselves exist, they are conscious. I still eat bacon though, and most meats. I want our food animals to be treated better and have more comfortable lives and deaths, and I like it when people keep food animals as pets, and I wish people didn't hunt for sport, but I still eat meat. Then again, in a emergency situation I would eat a human, or let a human eat me.
That's right I would do whatever to keep myself alive even if it means eating my own kind. Who cares whether humanity starts depleting itself? Countless species have been going extinct for eons.
John Jackson Dude I said emergency situations, unless the entire planet starts flying planes through the mountains, crashing on deserted islands, and getting lost in the woods, I think we’re good. I wish that lab grown meat was more common and easily accessible, I get sick without meat but I feel like everything except for sport hunters would prefer not to have to kill to get it.
The ability to discriminate between 'self' and 'object' carries with it inherent suffering. It is a spectrum. It is not black and white. "Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself" may seem vague and confusing with respect to animals. So let us understand it this way. Animals suffer to varying degrees. Humans suffer to varying degrees. There is no definite boundary in evolutionary terms between the animal and the 'human' animal. Therefore we ought to be compassionate towards all sentient beings to the best of our understanding. The spiritually 'unfolded' human will thus instrinsically treat all animals with a considerate reverence as they would do all humans. This reverence is born from their understanding of interaction and is spontaneous .
I think rights are an inherently human concept that does not apply to non-humans. However, we should seek to use animals in a way that minimizes their suffering, understanding that they do have the capacity to suffer that we do. But things like equality, freedom, the right to vote, and the right to make political decisions and form political opinions and similar rights are only based on the understanding of the uniquely human capacity for reason and higher thinking. The right not to suffer unnecessarily, I would grant. The right never to be used by humans for human needs? I would not grant.
Rachael Lefler by that way of thinking human rights don't apply to alien species even if they show a higher level of reasoning than ours if they cannot convey their thought to us.so if one shows up that can only talk by thong clicks he's kinda screwed by your parameters
Rachael Lefler Agreed. Animals don't breach their prey's rights, however much they suffer. The only way that animals have rights is to the extent that we allow them to identify with us.
Well, it might be necessary in that we can't simply let cattle currently being slaughtered go free, and it will be quite difficult economically to deal with a transition to a plant-based diet. I agree that people should be vegetarian because it is an inefficient use of land and resources to produce meat, and it's also probably not nutritionally necessary for humans (even though many nutrients in meats that are harder to come by in plant sources are good for our brains). However, since it's not economically realistic to think that the meat industry is going away anytime soon, I stopped being a vegetarian because one person being a vegetarian doesn't change anything, and we may be biologically wired to derive much more pleasure from eating meat than from getting our biological energy in more eco-friendly and humane ways. I think eating meat is probably ok, the idea is that 1) I won't eat a baby animal, I want them to have a fuller life span 2) we should encourage farmers to do everything possible to treat the animals humanely, not just with a merciful slaughter, but with as little confinement as possible and optimal living conditions. We may eventually evolve beyond meat consumption, but I don't see it going away in my lifetime.
The fact that porygon was used as an example pokemon brings up more questions. since he is purely artificial, can he too feel pain? and does he have the right to not suffer (whether he can feel it or not)?
If you had the choice of eating real bacon and eating bacon grown in a lab (otherwise identical in taste, texture and appearance) which would you eat? What if your choice was more expensive? How expensive would it have to be before you swapped? Singer's work is great, I recommend it. Also the documentary Earthlings.
Do cows or chickens have the desire to live? Not just an INSTINCT to live (a bacteria has an instinct"to live, as it shys away from a potential threat). I mean an actual emotional desire, at least somewhat similar to that of an ape or a dolphin? And if it doesn't, is it ok for me to eat them so long as I kill them painlessly?
+Sideeq Mohammad They do, or at leat many studies and even Cambridge believes animals are conscious, as can be read in it's ''declaration of consciousness'' (implying by that that they don't only work on instinct and therefore have desires) And even if they were only flesh machines, eating more plants and less meat would be better for the environment (a good starting point to learn about it is the documentary called ''Cowspiracy'')
Yes animals are sentient, they have a brain and can think just like you can, even if they aren't as intelligence as you. A difference in intelligence is not a justified reason to kill someone as we see with humans who are less intelligent, babies, some elderly people and the mentally ill. It's easy to decide if it's ethical if we put ourselves in the place of the victim.
the moment an animal can communicate dynamically(not just shown through muscle memory what to say) that it wants rights like apes learning a full sign language vocabulary and using it to ask questions. or a horse tapping out morse code i'd eat a meowth but i wouldnt eat the team rocket meowth
piratecheese13 I bet a lion must have to go through such loops of illogic to be morally satisfied to eat you... or they simply have the pure physical capability to do so and feel no remorse and question no morals. The best part of your statement is trying to imagine a first world piratecheese even trying to kill a meowth with his bare hands. I'm thinking he'd kick your ass.
How can we expect animals to communicate based on our concepts though? We're barely able to understand their social structures, which are smaller than ours, so even if they are intelligent enough to understand ours, or the concept of Rights at all, those concepts are way outside anything they have a frame of reference for. Some animals have language, but they have the ability to describe things they encounter, just like we do. Whales have dialects, and crows can describe what people look like, but without a language that contains the concept of Rights, we can't say with certainty that they aren't intelligent enough to ask for them when language as they understand it wouldn't allow them to. Even gorillas can invent new words on their own, like combining the signs for fruit and juice when nobody told them the sign fire watermelon, but still, they don't have a frame of reference for rights when all they see is their home and their handlers.
Either way, there's only been like, one animal other than us that has actually asked a question it wasn't taught to ask. Was a grey parrot named Alex. He asked what color he was, and when the caretaker told him 'grey', he replied by saying "I am grey".
+Abdou Yousfi yeah, everyone does have their own point of view, i don't agree with animal cruelty, and i know animals go through that a lot for the sake of our food. but it's not my fault, so i still eat chicken and stuff. if i had the power to change conditions for animals i would.
funny thing is in order for life to sustain itself it needs the life of other things the lion eats the zebra zebras eat plants plants consume nutrients from the earth the earth absorbs the nutrients back from what's left over of the dead things such as the zebra. so that leaves the question is it still wrong to consume animals yes in order to do so one must cause pain but a lion does not think if it's right or wrong to eat a zebra it just does because it knows it's necessary for survival
lemme guess you're all vegans through and through. all i was asking is why is ok for an animal to eat other animals but it's wrong for a human to do so? in case you forgot we are not the only species that are omnivores so why is that bears mice badgers hedgehogs skunks squirrels and all manner of other omnivores are allowed to eat other animals but not humans?
David Westrup fine then replace lions with bears or squirrels or any other omnivorous animal. why is ok for them to eat meat but it's wrong for a human to do so?
In this day and age it is fairly simple to create a robot that experiences pain and actively tries to avoid it.. Do these simplistic robots deserve the same rights? Where exactly do you draw the line? Because you can guarantee the species just above the line will most likely be almost identical to the one slightly below the line. _In terms of intellect, or capacity to feel pain_
Azurren To answer your questions; yes and the line is drawn where it needs to be drawn or redrawn. Lines are more like suggestions anyhow, nothing to be taken too seriously.
Azurren i don't think we should give robots like that human rights, if all it does is avoid pain whats the point? we only elude pain long enough so we can continue our species and improve our selfs after that most of us welcome death and pain if this is noting else to enjoy, if this robot has no pleasure that its life has no meaning, if you could die at 30 but have the funnest most pleasurable life, or life forever with no happiness no pleasure no pain and live forever which would you choose?
I prefer animal welfare to animal rights. If we are better than animals, we have a right to make sure they are treated with kindness. If animals are conscious, feel, and think, then it is horrendous to stuff them in gestation crates and battery cages. It's an immoral act! The act of eating another animal, however, is not immoral. This is because we ourselves are avoiding pain by killing and eating the animal - the pain of starvation.
But if you kill and eat the animal you always hurt it so you don't really avoid pain only your own. Unless you choose to eat something nonsentient which would be the truly moral choice
Killing is cruelty. Killing is causing harm. If the act of eating another animal is not moral (why?) then the act of eating a human animals is also not moral. You can't hold a double standard. Be consistent with your morals. Humans do not require to kill and eat an animal to avoid pain. that's nonsense. If you really believe this then that also justifies killing a human to eat them including you, but obviously this is not a good argument since it's not even based on facts.
Plants have senses and can learn to differentiate dangerous stimuli from harmless ones, however it has not been showed as of now that they have feelings and toughts like animls do. Anyhow, plant based diets actually saves more plants than one that includes meat because you feed plants to farmed animals and deforestation is in part caused by animal agriculture (in the case of the rainforest it's 90%)
No plants can not feel pain. Plants have no brain, no nervous sytem, and are not sentient. Drawing a line based on species is speciesist. It does not make sense. How about drawing a line based on color of the skin? or based on sex? If you put yourself in the victim's point of view it becomes obvious that it's wrong to kill someone just because they are not your species.
+Nick Shaw it's not wrong to kill a different species, carnivores eat other species of animals. That have to eat them to survive. So why can't I eat that pig over there? Because it's alive? It's alive but it is also at the bottom of the food chain. The one we are on top of.
*Rights do not exist!* In the hypothetical scenario that alien intelligent life exist: Do they have rights? Do they need rights? Which rights? Do they'll give us rights? The same rights within their species or different ones? Someone forgot that human beings are animals. So, yes, animals "have" rights.
If aliens exist and they can travel through space, they have far beyond advanced technology that at least could "ignore" some physical laws. We cannot win that, Rusty Shackleford.
Ral Crux You sure? You'd be surprised just what a hammer can do. And besides, you don't know what kind of aliens they are. We could already be enslaved by hyper-competent shades of blue, but that doesn't mean we're following their orders. We wouldn't even know they existed.
This is actually partly why I'm a vegetarian, my beliefs are tied to the philosophies talked about in the video. Also, it's funny how all of the meat-eaters are freaking out over this. Relax guys, it's cool. Don't stop eating meat unless you want to.
+Rosalie Kitchen totaly nailed it. In fact babies dont have "rights" , instead, they benefict from a welfare guarantee regime, rather than exercise/claim rights
right. but what we're talking here is granting someone that is human the right to have "their" animals protected (put elderly, babies, retarded instead of animals if you wish), since that human is the only one that might be able to claim those rights. one has to be considered responsible in order to claim rights. I get what you mean, but legal rights dont work like that. you're talking ethics and moral, not law. And if your talking law, then it works the way I discussed above, in this paragraph.
I also think ethics are supreme. but law is practical and has lots of pratical requisites that ethics dont have. in that way, it things work more indirectly with law than with ethics, I guess
One does not have to be a morale agent to be granted rights. For ethics we need moral consistency. If one has an argument for the ethical killing someone and eat them for pleasure then this must be applied to not only all animals, but human animals as well. Since 1. Humans thrive off plant based diet and 2. Animals are sentient it makes it difficult near impossible to justify harm to animals that we ourselves would not reject if done to us which helps us define ethics and see that it's unethical to cause unjustified harm to sentient animals such as eating them.
+Ninja lemur and who decides that priority? and what is it based on ? and even if some humans dont have rights the majority do wheras animals have none ...
I took a class on Critical Thinking in college, and our main text was Jonathan Safran Foer's _Eating Animals_, which echoes a lot of Singer's philosophy. I didn't particularly like the class because the teacher was clearly trying to turn us all into vegetarians.
I think the reason people are happy to treat animals in the ways they do isn't from any form or construct of maliciousness they've developed, rather, a part of human behaviour passed down through generations (examples include Cock fights, riding horseback, captivity in Zoos and the most important example, eating animals.) Our position on the food chain and the history we've had with animals lends itself to young, malleable minds from their parents; it's normal to eat meat because your parents ate it, and their parents ate it and so on.Therefore, when asked to defend their actions, 'meat-eaters' say that they're better than animals because that's all they've known. So in a sense, animals DO have rights in the eyes of those who care, but equally don't have rights in the eyes that don't care. Of course, it's possible nowadays to see different beliefs because the world is becoming more and more liberal. My point is it isn't heartless to not recognise animal rights as it is a school of thought passed down for thousands of years. In a few developed nations it is illegal to abuse an animal rights, so take that how you want.
+AcerMacIrish I agree, maybe in the future things that we do today will be see as archaic/malice/racism/etc and we will not be able to tell the difference.
Farm animals are excluded from such laws if you look into them. There is also no oversight. It's just an illusion to make people feel good about killing animals feeling like they are good people when in reality it's unethical and causing extreme harm.
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Peter Singer is a utilitarian. For a deonthological approach I recommend Tom Regan. And for intersectional approaches I recommend Breeze Harper, Carol J. Adams, Aph Ko and Syl Ko. Also, just a reminder: humans are animals too. We'd do well to delete that divide. It's more useful to distinguish between human animals and non-human animals.
I'm down with there being videos on sociology esp.if there done in the "8 bit" style. I kind of feel a bit more inclined to specifically ask for "8 bit cultural criticism" but I think that we get bits and bobs of that already in the philosophy videos and we'll surely get that in sociology videos
The way I see it is that most animals like ants, chickens, fish don't have conciseness but animals like dogs/wolves, cats, whales, elephants, birds of prey, octopi/squids have just a lower level of conciseness. They have advanced communication skills, social structures and are capable of basic emotions like joy, sadness and anger. I really don't have any science to back it up other than observations from nature shows but these are just my beliefs.
17spyguy Octopi squids have a lower level of conciseness? Man you don't know what you are talking about, celaphodos are more intelligent than many mammals, but you just don't give a shit cause they taste sooo good. Just be honest.
17spyguy 17spyguy isn't conscious unlike me. I don't have any evidence other than observation but it's just my belief. Therefore it's ok to kill 17spyguy. :)
Darkarix I care about them and acknowledge their intelligence but it's not enough to consider them my equal. I think that Humans should work to protect these creatures from extinction. I never said they were stupid or that its OK to kill them , I'm just saying that (at the moment) they can't to most of the things that make us advanced, they can' build cities, or build tools or establish a society.
2:30 *REACTION* a lion. a mammal. a zebra. a mammal. lion eats zebra. they are both mammals. and you're saying that humans eating other mammals witch is animals, is SPECIESISM!?
Thank you for encouraging people to consider animal rights, Wisecrack . At this point ethical veganism yet seems like a horrendous idea to many who are still attached to their particular habits and belief-systems, but a little research online will quickly reveal both the extreme and unnecessary suffering non-human animals undergo by the billions, and how easily one can stop supporting such atrocities with a few lifestyle modifications. If reason and compassion are values you believe in to any extent whatsoever, start acting on those principles today, or else they remain nothing but intellectual abstractions. Check out the works of Peter Singer and Gary L. Francione.
i love you disembodied British voice guy !
For us, fortunate ones, and unlike carnivorous wildlife, what we eat is not a struggle for survival, but rather a matter of bountiful options-- the justification of necessity to kill other sentient beings for food is completely lost. The presence of choice fundamentally alters the moral landscape. It is not life-giving sustenance for survival, but rather the triviality of mere taste and habit.
That was...beautiful. Have a thumbs up
Exactly, humans can make a moral choice, carnivores can't.
Hmmm.... what if vastly superior intelligent life forms came to earth from some other planet in another galaxy and thought of us the way we think of animals b/c humans would just be so dumb in comparison to them?
Also, my philosophy professor had to point out that since we base the idea of humans deserving more rights than animals on our higher intelligence, what about human beings who have the same IQ of a chimpanzee? If it's all based on intelligence, what kind of implications does that have for rights? Mmmhmm...
midnight15086 You're right, humans without the ability to reason shouldn't be allowed to vote or carry guns and they must be taken care of like we take care of animals. Note: this is already what we do.
BobWidlefish yeah, but can we eat them? or euthanize them when it would lessen their suffering, but we had no indication of their will?
what makes a human that has the mental capacity of a pig- for example a 3 year old child that wont develope more- more worth of survival and care than the actual pig?
Firmicute s "can we eat them" One would be ill advised to eat humans for purely practical reasons. Since our genetics are vastly closer to fellow humans, I think that puts us at greater risk of some diseases.
If it were possible to safely consume some foodstuff made from humans (e.g. soylent green) then the question as to whether we should eat our dead is essentially a practical one that's not specific to those who are severely mentally disabled. When someone dies for any reason should we find a way to use their body to help others? Some people favor scientific research on cadavers, others do not. I'm not aware of any modern movements to use humans as food, but this seems like an issue of squeamishness, not an ethical question.
BobWidlefish Yes, like prions, which is horrifying.
midnight15086 Good point about the mentally challenged. We don't slaughter them just because they have a low intelligence, so yes, clearly there is more to it. When it comes to meat, you say, "Would you eat your dog or cat?" No, there is no difference between eating a dog or cat or cow or any other animal. If you had a pet cow, you wouldn't want to eat it either. It's this disconnection between how we receive our food. I personally don't eat meat anymore based on this.
We deem it right to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain, suffering, harm and death to other humans not because they are sapient, but because they are sentient. Being that animals, too, are sentient, we should extend the same treatment to them.
I would like your comment if I could. You're totally right
A lot of people don't cause physical harm to others not beconse humans are sentient but because the law forbids it and they don't want to face the consequence
Sure, but that's not a serious position those people are taking. Also, I wouldn't say "a lot", I'm not that much of an anthropological pessimist..
zeleni sok Clearly we know different people, over half of the people I know would hurt other people if the law allowed it. Like in a purge scenario
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There is really no rational explanation to inflict unecessary pain, suffering or death upon humans and animals alike, especially if it is just for pure pleasure. Vivisection and animal experimentation is a whole other topic I don´t want to touch too much on, because there it at least some logical reasoning behind it. But saying "Animals can´t think, lack inteligence or don´t have reason, therefore I can kill them or let them have killed (in a "nice" way) and eat their seasoned and cooked corpses" is pure and utter hypocrisy, since no one would proppose such a treatment to a let´s say a mentally challenged human who also lacks reason and intelligence (not minding the fact that canibalism isn´t so much of a thing besides in survival scenarios).
I don't think that's how most people justify eating meat. They do it by stating, correctly, that it is the natural way of things. People need protein, and the best natural source of that is meat. Lots of people can't afford to live on a meat free diet, and see nothing wrong with their actions anyway, the principle of me eating an animal is no worse than a lion or wolf doing the same. Whilst you might consider our method of doing this to be unethical, I fail to see how anyone could consider consumption of our natural preys to be wrong.
But bonsai is A ok?
Alex Zarandi yourveganfallacyis(dot)com/en/animals-eat-animals I'm leaving this here in case you want to know the vegan counterarguments for this particular line of thinking. As to the "can't afford to live on a meat free diet" part, I can only share my personal experience as a vegan in a Latin American 3rd world country (Chile), by stating that it's definitely cheaper, because meat around here is really expensive and fresh vegetables are easily and cheaply acquired. I can even afford my B12 supplement while spending less than what I used to spend on meat. Good day, sir.
Alex Zarandi
"They do it by stating, correctly, that it is the natural way of things."
Are you seriously suggesting that lions(or any other carnivore/omnivore) mass produce the animals they are going to eat in a factory farm like humans do?If not what humans are doing when eating meat is as unnatural as it gets(unless you hunt for food).More importantly appeal to nature,google it.
"Lots of people can't afford to live on a meat free diet, and see nothing wrong with their actions anyway,..."
First part is demonstrably false,second part proves nothing(ex:racists think what they are doing is perfectly okay).I'm not calling you a racist btw,just pointing out flaws in your argument.
mert kocak Lions would mass produce meat if they could. They just lack the mental, physical, or technological prowess to do so. Any being would try to make their own food sources if possible. And a quick philosophical for anyone who decides to not eat meat for moral reasons: Would you eat meat if it were grown in a lab, from cells, that wouldn't be able to feel pain? That is actually a legitimate question I have.
Pikachu bacon, electrifyingly good!
Hmmm Pikachu Bacon, I'd have to taste it first
Gothicfan51 In this day and age, I'm shocked you'd make such a pun...
Gothicfan51 The more I think about it...the more I want to try some Pikachu bacon wrapped in Pork Belly which has been stuffed with some slow roasted chicken infused marbled eye fillet...mmm can't think...Pika Pika bacon !
Gothicfan51 This is appalling, i am shocked sir, i am shocked.
SHOCKED I SAY
Will Ferrous stop that
Most people are to stupid to even take this question seriously. They would rather try to be funny by saying something ridiculous, like "mmm Pikachu Bacon... Delicious"
Humans are actually pretty stupid, we are the only animal dumb enough to destroy the Earth, so why do we deserve rights?
Franco Gonzalez Despite some of things humans have done, we have also done a plethora of good things. Don't devalue a entire species because of some wrong doings. Besides, who would take our rights away? The animals?? I don't think so.
Franco Gonzalez Well humans are the only species which, if it went extinct, would make things better for the planet, so maybe we aren´t so special after all if our overall main effect is to harm, enslave and kill each other, the animals as well as destroying the planet while we are at it
Abdi Hired Dude, we are responsible for earth's upcoming 6th mass extinction. Hundreds of species go extinct every single day because of us.
Austin Texas True and we need to change that. However, the guy who commented said we deserve no rights for what we have done. We messed up big time, but does that mean we should give up our rights to planet earth to compensate? Just give up? Nope, that is not the solution.
Franco Gonzalez We're not the only animal dumb enough to destroy Earth, we're the only animals smart enough to do so.
Rights are a human construct applied to humans by humans for humans. Animals have no concept of rights. When an animal is hurt it doesn't scream "that's not fair it's against my rights" because it cannot understand them, nor can it articulate if it could. Life is a process which is the result of nature, and nature gives literally zero shits about life, and life has evolved to have a very good understanding of this. That's what pleasure and pain are.
We are a product of nature, and historically we too have given literally zero shits about life outside of those who were immediately important to us (that's seeking pleasure however.) The social nature of humanity, however, has resulted in human rights.
Here is the key difference between humans and animals however; A self-preservation system like rights or laws or pacts only works if all members respect that pact. Having a right to life is worthless if nobody respects it. Having a law against murder is similarly useless if nobody follows it. Having a non-agression pact between countries is of no value if one country attacks the other. For this reason, extending rights to animals cannot work. They will not respect the rights of themselves, or of others.
An extension of rights to animals who DO respect the rights of others is the only reasonable course of action. Those individuals are no doubt quite a small proportion. I suppose Dogs, having co-evolved with us ought to have some rights.
It's senseless to give the cat and mouse rights because there can be no peace between cats and mice.
Some people might argue that animals are abused by us, and that may be true, but before they were abused by us they were abused by nature. Just as nature caused countless animals to be born and to suffer and to die, so did we.
However....
As originally stated rights are a human system. If our human social senses are upset by the pain experienced by animals, then that could be seen as an impingement upon our rights.
If humans have a right to live in the best world that is possible with the resources at our disposal then perhaps humans have the right to live in a world without gratuitous cruelty to animals.
tl;dr: Humans invented rights. They serve humans alone. Animals cannot understand their rights so they can't respect those of others. However, it could be argued that humans have a right to not be exposed to the upset of seeing animal cruelty.
Pokemon is a weird example because not only are many at least semi-sentient, but certain ones (like Alakazam) are exponentially more intelligent than any human could ever be.
how is it a weird example then? all pokemon are sentient, and so are all real animals
No they aren't.
wow, nice and well thoughtout input based on empirical evidence.. back in the day people didn't give human children anesthesia because they didn't think they were sentient anyway.. you seem less sentient than a ringworm
Animals cannot engage in complex and diverse mental tasks like humans. Pokemon, however can. Pokemon are capable of complex reasoning, both spatial and linguistic, as well as things like the use of tools. Aside from a few species of primates, no animal comes close to that.
complex linguistic reasoning such as "pika pika"?
The pain/pleasure dichotomy breaks down when you consider that some people derive pleasure from pain, like the pain that comes from strenuous exercise for example. There are also instances where pleasure can be a bad thing, as in the case of a heroin addict. So I would disagree with the idea that the only intrinsically good thing is pleasure and the only intrinsically bad thing is pain. Good and bad are pretty arbitrary terms that depend entirely on perspective. They don't really mean anything.
Also, I would totally eat Pikachu bacon.
Nihilistic Misanthrope if pain brings them pleasure then it becomes good and if pleasure (through drugs) brings them pain eventually then it becomes bad.it's not a simple thought but it still works
Nihilistic Misanthrope Pleasure isn't what's wrong with being a heroin addict, the addiction and the negative life and health consequences are. Surely you can see how, on balance, this would increase a person's suffering, and vice versa with your strenuous exercise example (it might inflict some pain but it's net pleasure).
Right, I realize that. I was just addressing the simplistic way that it was said that pain/pleasure is intrinsically bad/good.
Nihilistic Misanthrope That's just the cliffnotes version. It's like thinking that the Big Bang was actually an explosion. There's an entire philosophy behind this, and it's not so easily dismissed.
Pikachu bacon would have a shocking flavor
Scarmigliodon Eat too much and you might develop some real thunder-thighs
Your puns are delightful.
Scarmigliodon But it would be full with electrolytes which would be good for the human body XD
Devil's Advocado
What are you?
Twelve?
Knight Solaire I was just high when I wrote this one, lel. And I don't usually play yo momma jokes, this one just seemed too appropriate ;v.... check some other ones out :0.. you perv..
A lot of vegetarians and vegans make this argument, but there's a problem.
Plants suffer as well.
Granted, their nervous systems are far more rudimentary than those of animals, and thus their ability to feel pain is reduced or at least works differently, but still, pain is pain. Freshly-cut grass exudes a certain scent because it is "bleeding" in a sense. Some plants are spicy because its meant to be a defense mechanism against herbivores.
Fruits are an inversion of this, because fruit trees WANT US to eat their fruits - the fruits are full of seeds, so the idea is that when we eat the fruits and the seeds, we eventually poop the seeds out in the woods somewhere, where the seed has enough fertilizer to grow into a new plant. Trouble, most humans nowadays flush this evolutionary plan down the toilet - literally. Not to mention that some fruits, like the pineapple, evolve hooks and spikes because they don't WANT to be eaten, at least not by certain animals.
Plant, animal, you're still ending a life at the end of the day. We are what scientists call Heterotrophs - we eat other organisms in order to meet our nutritional needs. That is an irreconcilable part of our evolutionary identity, and it's something we just have to make peace with, like it or not.
the "avoiding pain" thing is called homeostasis, and is a characteristic of life, which, according to this, would mean that sponges and insects have rights as well, but of course, we only look at dogs because they are cute. When you say something, you have to be consistent. Animal rights means that crushing a bug is the same as killing a dog.
Crispy Toast I would agree with that. Pain isn't the right metric for determining the moral treatment of animals. Just because an animal behaves as though it feels pain (avoidance behaviors) doesn't mean that it has the subjective experience necessary to actually feel pain (sentience).
Nihilistic Misanthrope The same goes for all of these P-zombies around me claiming to be people.
Crispy Toast I agree, right down to crushing a bug being the same as killing a dog. But if a neurotoxic dog makes it into my house and starts crawling about on my bedroom ceiling... i'm not entirely certain that i won't react in a "kill it! kill it" fashion... though my more likely reaction is to run away screaming...
Nihilistic Misanthrope Then why would it avoid the pain? And why is it behaving as though it feels pain if it doesn't actually feel pain?
Because like CrispyToast said, all the animals do that down to the bottom of the chain. Ants avoid pain and I would think it's pretty clear that they aren't sentient. Same thing with seeing. Some animals may be able to detect differences of light in order to avoid predators but that doesn't mean they have an experience of 'seeing'. It's an entirely robotic process for them.
Plants try to avoid pain as well, so if you went by this reasoning, you would starve or die of malnutrition. Also, if you gave animals human rights, you would need to enforce those rights among them as well, indirectly killing (nearly) all carnivores by not allowing them to hunt (some would probably be kept alive by letting them eat recently deceased animals). If you accept that plants also experience and try to avoid pain, you'd also need to protect them, and everything we could get our hands on except bacteria and fungi would starve.
I'm pretty sure plant's don't feel pain but they do try and survive. Furthermore many plants we eat want us to eat them. The reason fruit is so sweet is so that animals eat it and spread their seeds.
Also this video isn't talking about interfering when animals attack each other. When they say animals should have rights is that we should treat them humanely, and not be unnecessarily cruel. We as a species can decide that while animals will continue to hunt each other, we won't torture them, test on them, or cause them unnecessary pain.
I mean there's a reason those videos where people stomp on and crush small animals is illegal, yet putting down a dog at the pound isn't. Crushing a puppy to death in high heels serves no purpose aside from cruelty. Euthanasia is a necessary evil.
I know right!
Even grass knows when its being cut for fuck sake, if everything was actually equal everything would end up dead pretty quick unless it can photosynthesize
@Alejandro Narváez (SaintMiracle), if capability to experience pain is our measuring stick for ethic behavior, then anesthetizing and killing a person would be totally O.K. No pain, no foul, right? Also, having a CNS doesn't necessarily grant an organism the capability to experience pain - a prime example being most invertebrates. On the other hand, there are a numerous plants without a CNS that would show a severe reaction to an assault or any sort of induced harm. Who are we to judge how different organisms deal with what we, with our severe anthropomorphic world view, call pain? After all, pain is just a bio-chemical reaction evolved from the primitive self-preservation mechanisms we can see in all other organisms (as those who didn't have it died off a long time ago).
The nature has set the stage in which all living organisms must consume other living organisms in order to sustain their life. There are only two substances that we absolutely require to sustain life which are inorganic - salt and water. Everything else must come from a living organism. Since that's the case, there is nothing inherently ethical or unethical in consuming other organisms - we have to do it least we want to sentence ourselves to extinction. No other organism on this planet would ever be in a dilemma should they or should they not consume some other organism - or consume you, for that matter - if they had the ability, opportunity and the need for it. I'd bet that no sane human would, either, if they are placed in a 'do or die' situation. Heck, most of us would easily consume another human if there is no other option.
The overabundance of food is what gave us the opportunity to theorize and cherry-pick what goes into our plates, not our misplaced ethical considerations and cringe-worthy 'holier than thou' syndrome mixed with virtue signaling. That's why you didn't have vegans, raw-foodists and other hipsters of that sort 'til the past several decades. Somewhat paradoxically, GMO research and agricultural advances of that nature is what enabled us the overabundance of food in the first place, yet the aforementioned hipsters are the first to throw a stone at GMO. Oh, the irony... But I digress...
where is your source that plants try to avoid pain?
Im asking because plants do not have a nueral system to presive pain.
Plants don't have nociception. But even if they were to have it, the reasonable thing would still be to go vegan, in order to minimize killing of plants to which one contributes to. Vegan diet is much more efficient in that regard, due to absence of forage and fodder eaten by animals used for human diet.
Would I still eat bacon if it comes from Pikachus? Of course I would! Who wouldn't want Pikachu bacon strips?!
I would eat dogs, but they taste terrible.
Ice King Damn it, I read it in the Ice King's voice, then I had to make sure if your avatar and and username were in fact - the Ice King, and they were; all it took was a glimpse.
JaksiTaxi Maybe you just haven't found a good cook, I suggest a trip to China.
I wonder- would the bacon cook itself with electricity? I'd try some!
"Hello dearest viewer, disembodied british voice here" -- I lost my shit at this point.
I like the way he says "Pikachus"
I'm feeling physically sick from the lack of compassion I'm seeing in the comments so far...
Iana Grace it's people like you that annoy me the most.
Welcome to RUclips! The home of anonymous assholes!
thewh00ster Thanks!
Iana Grace You should be laughing your ass out metaphorically instead, seeing the overwhelming desperation of people to jump onto some mockery or brain-dead one-liners, to erase the realisation of one's own moral filth. *like little worms, wiggling about trying to remove the cognitive dissonance*. It's like showing the Cross to an old woman possessed by lucifer himself, and then to retort, she mocks you, and throws her boogers at you, acting like the cross didn't just fuck her shit up....
Stretching the analogy, but one can gather..
utubrGaming The internet in general is full of anonymous assholes.
Here's a question for you all: if a species that had a much higher intellect than humans chose to process and eat us through conditions similar to that of the slaughterhouses we get meat from, would this be morally permissible or not in your opinion?
PathOfVirtue , given that my imperative is self-preservation not only that I would consider the behavior of the said species immoral, but also unethical and downright barbaric. However, for the species in question (under the assumption that they are the same type of life as we are just of immensely higher intellect) it would be perfectly permissible as they have to consume other life in order to sustain their own. After all, I'd be consuming them if I could and had the opportunity and/or the need for it. Same goes for species of much lower 'intellect' - I don't think that a sharks are immoral if they eat a human, but I don't think humans are immoral if they eat a shark either. Neither sharks, nor humans prefer to be eaten but that's the circle of life as we know it.
An interesting question, but ignoring morals for a moment, would it be practical? Morality is subjective. Would it be sustainable? I am leaning towards not. The gestation period and slow growth of humans would make them undesirable as a farmed species. It's the same reason we don't farm elephants. It's not worth the effort. Hunting as a game species, and being eaten in that way, would be far more practical for humans.
As for morality, I don't think most people want to be eaten, but then we don't, for the most part, eat intelligent animals. Most animals eaten are naked, barely communicate, don't use tools, and are virtually indistinguishable from any other animal. I think it would be different if animals were capable of communicating and manipulating their environment.
We chose in what we eat. The food 99% of us eat is artificially produced, whether that's plants being grown in fields or animals in a cage. We are no longer a part of the food chain. Since we chose what we grow, why chose organisms that feel pain, and treat them so poorly, when we could survive just as well (in fact better) through eating plants?
Also want to point out that the life leading to the slaughter of an animal is full of pain and trauma too (again, in 99% of circumstances), and the slaughter itself is not the worst part - in my eyes
Blood Angel, human babys are not able to do any of the barometers of intelligence you mention, so would you be okay enslaving and killing a baby? Some adult humans are also incapable of these, would you do the same to them? Claiming that killings and poor treatment of others is fair because they look different to you, or act differently to you, has been a justification for atrocities throughout history.
Here is a experiment shwoing rats saving other rats from drowning, and they were more likely to save other rats if they had come close to drowning themselves (showing empathy). www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150514-rats-save-mates-from-drowning
Pidgeons mate for life, and when their partner dies it is not uncommon for the other to become dispondant and lose the will to live themsleves. This is evidence of grief, mourning, despair. These are emotions that most animals are capable of.
Pls get back to me, both of u, I am open to discussion
I'm sure part of why we eat animals is culture. I grew up killing and butchering animals we ate, and it was just part of food preparation, much like we would wash and peel a vegetable. Moral issues were never a consideration.
As far as I know, the only intelligent species humans have shared the planet with are Neanderthals. We didn't hunt and eat them. We traded, fought, competed for food, and interbred with them. There's no species alive today where any of that would be possible.
I don't have a moral issue with eating animals. Animals will happily kill and eat other animals. Bacteria will infect animals, some symbiotic, others parasitic. Various species will infest and destroy our homes, all of which we will kill without a second thought.
You're right about young, old and disabled people, many of them are not capable of any of the things I mentioned in my first post, but it's clear that those are not the majority. Also, as far as young specifically, most will grow into being able to.
"Would you still eat bacon if it came from Pikachus".
Depends
-Is it good bacon?
-Is there an overpopulation of Pikachus?
If yes and yes then final answer is yes.
+Heavenlyhounds96 There's currently an overpopulation of humans (that have the collective similarities to parasites/cancer on the Earth) therefore an alien might decide to kill and eat your flesh. - Using your logic this is OK.
Awakening to oneness Let's just hope the aliens are smart enough to go after the humans that are self-centered or just plain idiotic and won't think twice about whether to exploit power and resources for themselves...cause they will.
is it bacon
Francis Bacon
If we are arguing from the stand point that the capacity to suffer is enough to give equal moral weight to inflicting suffering, then consider this hypothetical.
A man, is recovering after surgery, he can't feel pleasure or pain, be it emotional or physical. A man walks into the room to kill him. Given that protection from harm is predicated on the capacity to suffer why should the would be murderer not kill the recovering patient.
I believe it was C.S. Lewis who once said that one can tell a great deal about the moral quality of a nation by how it treats its animals. But as the most intelligent, evolutionarily successful and potentially creative and destructive species on the planet humans have the responsibility to rule and manage the planet wisely.
I think purposefully tormenting animals of any kind is cruel and evil. Be it bullfighting, burning ants with a magnifying glass or forcing sixty cats to live in a small apartment.
But I also think humans do have the right to consume animals because, in the long run the animals are better off for it. Animals cannot manage their own population without predators they will expand till they consume all their resources and starve to death. Also if humans have a use for a species we will domesticate it manage its evolution and increase its population. Cows are probably the second most numerous mammal species on the earth because humans have many uses for them and so we breed and protect them.
the knee-jerk reaction to the notion of animal rights is condemn human's for using animals or for injuring them. But the real relation any governing system has with rights is to protect them. If humans truly want to protect the lives of animals and prevent their suffering then our main goal should be to domesticate the planet. Nothing humans have ever done is as cruel or as random as natural evolution.
emptank
So what you're saying is that it's better off for a species to survive in horendous conditions rather than be extinct?
Your moral arguement is basically that as long as you help a living being survive it becomes morally justifiable to do whatever you want to it.
Ben Shabtai Well I'm sure that the animals don't want to be extinct. And besides, it's not that we want to purposefully hurt them. There are reforms in the meat and food industry going on now.
Ben Shabtai From an evolutionary perspective all that matters is the species survival. From a moral stand point it is pointlessly cruel and unethical for a species to survive in a horrendous condition. To make any creature suffer more than it should is wrong. But from a practical standpoint humanity is only going to invest in protecting creatures that our useful to us. It just a fact, humans are driven by incentives.
Cattle are better off as a species being herded and pastured by humans. they are more numerous better adapted to a more diverse number of environments, and at less risk to wild predators. But humans will only do that because it is profitable for us to consume them. I think the benefits ultimately out weigh the price, so long as the suffering of the individual is minimized. I would condemn factory farms but I would admit that slaughter houses are necessary.
Obviously it would be better is they could be used in a different way than food like dogs, cats or horses and therefore humans would promote their well being without killing and eating them. And obviously in a truly utopian society killing creatures for food would be unnecessary and humans could coexist with all nature in true peace. But Utopia mean 'no place' in Latin for a reason doesn't it?
If you remove all incentives for humans to care for animals and expect us to protect a species while expecting no benefits from them. Then you are forcing that species to compete for the resources of the planet with humanity. And that isn't good to the animals at all. We humans have this evolution thing whipped they don't.
emptank Factually, if the world consumption of animal products would gradually decline factory farmed animals would die out.
They would not compete with anyone for resourced for the simple fact that they would not survive in nature due to being breeded by humans, gentically modified and domesticated for so many years.
Your arguement for "Utopia = No place" is basically a strawman, but I'll take it on never the less.
Even if veganism will never take over the entire human culture, that does not make it morally justifiable in my mind.
Is it in yours?
Ben Shabtai I don't think you can assume that domesticated animals will not persist with out human intervention. Often domesticated dogs and cats that are released thrive in wild environments to the point that feral packs of such creatures are a major problem in many areas. I couldn't prove it since I'm not a environmental scientist but I think at this point humans releasing control over domesticated animals would probably do a lot of harm to the environment since humans have bred most animals to the point that they are superior to their wild counterparts.
It's not that I don't think that veganism would never take over human culture and therefore such utopian ideals are unrealistic, It's that I think veganism taking over human culture would be bad for animals.
We all live on the same planet therefore we all compete for the same resources. It is in the name of that competition that mankind inflicts the majority of its damage on wild species. They need forests and plains to live and hunt in, we need those same areas to build homes and farms. So we sieze those area for ourselves and drive the creatures in them to extinction.
Humans are selfish, preaching about how cruelty to animals is wrong will not get them to change. Look at the other comments here and how many people will proudly claim that they would still kill and eat a creature that is repeatedly portrayed as intelligent, cute and friendly. If you want to preserve the lives and well being of animals you have to give humans and actual reason to do. You have to make it so that the animal is useful to humans.
I would be really interested in seeing your take on sociology concepts. It just seems like a natural progression going from philosophy to sociology, since they are so closely intertwined.
This is an interesting philosophical point, but it gets complicated on further analysis. Scientists have shown that plants also have a "pain" response, and become "stressed" in the presence of other plants being destroyed.
Most if not all living organisms has a pain/injury response- it's there as a guard to protect themselves from harm. This gets really complicated if you expand it to nuisance species like mosquitos or other pests that either bother humans or attack plants.
Science will soon have a solution for the animal meat problem, as they are working on creating bio-meat in the lab .
Here's another thought - with the advent of genetic research - what would happen if scientists were able to create animals that felt no pain at all. Would Wisecrack approve of killing/eating these animals? If humans were created that felt no pain, would it be okay to treat them as less than human?
Plants have no brain, no nervous system, no subjective experience known. Animals do.
As humans we have to justify our actions of killing animals for food or else it's unethical. To do so we need to present a logical argument for killing someone that can be applied to not only animals but to humans as well for moral consistency.
As this can not be done, it's clear that eating someone when we could instead eat plants is unethical. We can apply the same line of thinking to other actions. This is how we determine what is ethical and what is unethical.
As people are waking up to the horror of the animal agriculture world which we have been born and indoctrinated into, they are changing to live vegan and to educate others on the benefits of living a life aligning one's actions with their values, living ethically and improving the world.
Assuming that the degree of consciousness is irrelevant and also pleasure is good and pain is bad, would you consider carnivorous animals to be bad? or for that matter many herbivorous males of a species compete to mate, often resulting in the death of their rivals, would you consider them bad? Just a thought. I'm not trying to start a war mates ;-)
I consider moral systems to exist for the sole purpose of furthering the survivability of the society or species which uses them. So specisism is entirely valid, as the whole point of properly applied utilitarianism ought to be to improve human lives.
***** Many humans do not have the mental capacity to apply a moral code themselves, yet we should apply our moral code to them only because they belong to our species? How does helping these people aid in the survivability of our species? I mean, don't stop at being speciesist if your goal is survivability - there are plenty of other prejudices you could be subscribing to!
We care for the infirm or severe mentally challenged not because they necessarily advance our race, but out of compassion. We empathize with their pain or suffering or just generally care about their well-being because we all understand what it means to suffer. But we know humans aren't the only beings with the ability to suffer. Other sentient animals do too. And plenty of humans do exhibit moral consideration for pet-friendly animals, but less cuddly animals usually get little to none. I'm not saying we need to treat humans and pigs (for example) the same, but doesn't their intellectual and emotional capacity warrant them at least some ethical consideration? Why can't we show compassion across species?
*****
"I consider moral systems to exist for the sole purpose of furthering the survivability of the society or species which uses them."
What if a group of humans has a different moral code (or no moral code, like sociopaths, severely mentally disabled people, or children)?
kissfan7 what do you mean what if? We call people who are sociopaths and psychopaths mentality ill and we try to isolate these people away from socity
adubya25 It's rare that a mentally challenged human is totally useless, and in the cases that they are, the sentimental value for their family makes their treatment subjectively worthwhile. The systemic cost of incorporating eugenics is not worth the benefits.
The capacity to suffer doesn't enter into it in my opinion. From a utilitarian standpoint, the only time removing human rights from the hopelessly disabled would be worth the marginal economic benefit would be when popular opinion is overwhelmingly for it. And since most people don't use a purely utilitarian moral system, that is unlikely to happen.
Davis Hagli
Do we then eat them?
And young kids don't have a moral code either. Neither do the severely mentally disabled.
Plants lack nervous systems, and yet respond in certain ways (through pheromonal release, etc.) when under duress.
Do plants suffer? Isn't drawing the line at the nervous system boundary just as arbitrary as drawing the line at the species boundary? Can life be sustained without exchange and sacrifice?
Drawing the line at a nervous system is called acknowledging facts and realtiy. Plants have responses and reactions but they're not concious decisions, they don't think or feel, unlike animals.
@@sachinraghavan4556 who made you the final judge on this? You're just a moron on the internet.
Damn, Now I have craving for some Pikachu bacon, which doesn´t exists.
yes
I am so glad this subject was handled well. As someone who feels very strongly about abusing animals and discrimination, I always assume the worst when I see a youtuber I don't know talk about animal rights, but this video was on point.
Maybe not Pikachu bacon, but Pikachu sausage is another matter.
Fantastic episode! Definitely my favorite one so far :)
Yes... I would totally eat Pikachu bacon. 0.o that sounds so awesome, I really wish that was a thing now! ^u^
ALL NEW EPISODE OF 8-BIT MIX!!
Despite the fact that I like meat (and I ever will), I only eat meat that came from certain animals. And yet, I don't have the heart to kill or hurt any of those creatures to get that food.
You aren't the only one.
I dare say that you should be able to, but if you cannot, be vegan.
You DO kill One the moment you buy meat.
If you cant, go vegan? Please.... I'll tell you what, friend, if you were on a farm, starving, you'd learn fast. Just because we've been separated from this aspect of our biology doesn't mean it's immoral. The real immorality is that we as a species handed over our ability to control our own food to giant corporations who have a vested interest I'm making you squeamish about the thought of slaughtering for food.
Vito Digiesi from a metaphorical or technical aspect? Because neither are true.
You can't feel pain unless you are conscious. This guy's argument is the consciousness argument except worded differently and actually giving animals a consciousness, however primitive. Great video!
I think the main problem with the meat industry these days is how mechanical in nature it is; there's so much shit around it its not funny, but de-industrializing it would make meat prices skyrocket.
Animals deserve rights, not human rights, but some of the things people do to animals when they slaughter them is outright wrong (leaving the heart pumping to drain the blood from the muscles quicker)
I mostly just eat organic and meat I know that hasn't been in CAFOs, to be honest.
but let's be real if you're proud of what you eat you're probably like twelve
There's no necessity for eating meat, therefore supporting the meat industry is unethical
@@KillersWalkFree Not true, if Humans weren’t meant to eat meat than we simply wouldn’t have the capability to. Animals deserve to be treated a whole lot better in this world, but every creature has a circle of life that they belong to. We eat our animals, then the maggots eat us when we’re buried.
@@holzman00 according to your logic, humans should be able to enslave other humans because we have the capability to do so..
I eat meat.
However, I should want any animal to end up on my plate to have been processed with as little suffering as necessary. That's why I disagree with battery farms, and that's why anaesthetics should be applied to the animal so they feel as little pain as possible.
I'm holding out hope for when synthetic meat becomes standard, and its taste and price is authentic and cheap enough respectively for a poormun like myself to afford.
With regards to vegetarianism, it seems similar to eating healthily, like there is a moral push to do both, but because healthy food is often expensive compared to unhealthy food, and frankly, unhealthy food unfortunately tastes better, most of us don't have that necessary will to rise above both the high prices and the urge for certain flavours.
What planet are you living on. 1st vegan or vegetarian foods don't equal healthy. Oreos are vegan yet i wouldn't consider them healthy.
Also since when is fresh fruit and vegetables more expensive than meat and eggs. 1kg of beef costs around £8.77/kg. While carrots cost £0.43/kg.
If inflicting pain is intrinsically bad, then why do people have children? Everyone experiences pain and suffering in life, and the only way to avoid that is to avoid having children!
Um, no. Children do not cause all the pain and suffering in the world. It is caused by a lot of things, like governments, schools, death, disease, famine, etc.
Tariq Muhammad But if you have a child, you know that they will feel pain from the moment they are born. They'll also give you stress, pain, and unhappiness from the moment the baby is born. And maybe they'll be miserable and suicidal. Therefore, according to utilitarianism, it would be more ethical to not have children an avoid the pain.
Personally, I think utilitarianism is nonsense. Robert Nozick's utility monster and Brave New World taught me that much.
GT6SuzukaTimeTrials Because a woman having a child is not automatically inflicting pain upon others, but takes the pain herself in order to have a child...
Jack Ronesto
i get the feeling you have some traumatic experience with children....
sounds almost like you should consult someone :/
but just to give you a little push into the right direction - children don't cause suffering. it's the way you handle things with them that might cause it..
John Smith He isn't saying that children cause suffering (though indeed they do) he's saying that bringing a child into this world is inflicting suffering on said child because it will inevitably encounter some.
Yasss!! I love this! Thank you!! My theology teacher said that animals don't have souls and that they are just here for our pleasure! Thank you for making this video!!! I agree with everything in it!!!
The thing that trouble me is that we as a specie only value other lives that are similar to us and resemble elements of us. Because animals have the ability to feel pain, hunt, breed and other qualities that are close to us, we feel sympathy for them and argue to treat them with kindness and not eat them. Whereas other objects like plants and fruits are okay to eat because they're are unable to feel pain or communicate. But is it selfish to only save what is similar to us? If so do we have a superiority complex to only deem what resembles us as "important"? Aren't we playing "god" and choosing what is important(and what we save happen to resemble us)? When we're saving similar species, aren't we doing this just to make ourselves feel better? Then isn't this a selfish and self-important gesture? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure this out.
***** Yes, it should not be about us. I think you missed my point there.
Eric Cartman That is exactly what's been keeping me from going vegan.
***** I'm sorry, it was a bit difficult to understand your comment due to the composition and grammar of the writing. I understand your point, but I make mine from an existentialist point of view. The thing that troubles me is that we only deem creatures that are similar to us(have a central nervous system that can feel pain, communicate, reproduce through sex ect.) worthy enough to be saved. I feel as if we are playing "god" to say that those who resembles us are sacred and other lives like plants and fruits are not because they are not like us.
***** I am doing my very best to understand you but I feel as though you are entirely missing my point. There is a lot pathos in your argument but I hope you'll speak with more logos to prove valid points. I'm not sure if you understand what existentialist arguments are and how to respond to them. Also, we are omnivores because we have canines. Please evaluate my point of view before you respond, I'm sorry but I'm finding it really difficult to continue a logical, rational argument to find the truth.
In the end it's all about the circle of life. We eat them after they eat something else. We all die at the end of the day anyway. The only thing we can do is try and stop suffering and pain.
People try and boost their own morals to try and be better than others, I think. Just because you won't eat meat doesn't mean you're jesus. You probably have some health issues now.
While it may be a choice to eat another animal, it has been the natural order of things. Suffering in the world is balanced out with happiness. There is no possible way to end all suffering unless there is death. Trying to be vegan/vegetarian is in no way going to change the world, it only makes people feel better about themselves.
Pikachu Bacon? Hell yeah. Electrify me chef.
Objectively speaking, nobody *deserves* rights, but nevertheless we do like to have them.
Loved it, great video!
Kill to survive, do not inflict unnecessary pain. No more, no less. Why does it need to be more complicated than that?
I'm talking about killing... what're you getting at ya know?
***** Your first sentence is slightly confusing still... sorry if I'm just not following.
I think anyone who feels animals feel nothing is simply lying to themselves. They all know they do. Would I kill to survive? In a heartbeat, no thoughts given. Would I torture the animal or prolong it's suffering in anyway? No. I would wish the same dignity shown upon me in my death if possible.
***** Idk if there's a rank in the first place. I try not to rank things like that. Both are relevant to life ya know?
***** All the same in my book. If I was starving and I had to eat a human corpse I would. I know that's raw and "dirty", but ain't no one killing me me but me, and that includes you nature *shakes fist violently*
Lol
***** I wouldn't kill the person, but if they died... :D hahahaha.
So glad you took on this topic.
I'd still eat bacon if it came from people , its delicious ! >
pipuk3 I like how you say if... go kill a human, and make some bacon. Go ahead and look up the news stories of restaurants serving human flesh and then be all excited for your big mac.
Evolutionarily we're so close you cannot visibly tell the difference between our cuts of meat. Cows, pigs, humans, we're all fucking mammals. Just like cannibalism mammalian meat consumption is bad for our health. Do some research and grow out of your bacon addiction.
David Westrup I've carefully considered your arguments and I've come to the conclusion that no matter what, I will always love eating meat
pipuk3 That is false.
David Westrup Mammalian meat isn't bad for you. We just eat it in bad (read: oily) ways and in far too large of quantities. If mammalian meat was inherently bad for us, we'd have a long tradition, all the way back to the hunter-gatherers, of disease from eating something that made up so much of their diet. And why would mammalian meat be bad for us, but not poultry? Or fish? Or even insects, which could be considered meat, seeing as they're animals.
pipuk3
How delectable,
also undetectable
How choice
How rare
Do insects deserve human rights? Do plants deserve human rights? Do bacteria deserve human rights? Down the slippery slope we go.
Spider58x I suppose. But the concept remains interesting. Why is a human worth more than an insect? Than a bacteria? It's a subjective scale, but on a long enough timeline everything becomes irrelevant. More than ninety percent of the genetic information in any human being belongs to the things that live on us and in us. Does that mean that any rights given to me, the carrier of said creatures, also apply to my creatures? What even am I? A cloud of atoms held together by nuclear force, again on this scale it becomes arbitrary. To more directly answer your question, human rights? Maybe not. But rights, yes. For some reason we can ask these questions, and for that very reason we must seek to answer them.
Spider58x Well plants and bacteria do not have a nervous system, so they don't have the same capacity to suffer like animals. Insects can suffer on the other hand, so you could argue it's just as morally wrong to kill an insect with bug spray than to drown a box of kittens, and in fact that insect will probably suffer for longer.
You get human rights! You get human rights! EVERYBODY GET HUMAN RIGHTS!!!
For now I shall only eat dark matter to avoid hurting animals or plants.
I shall soon become a god.
a god? pffft thats cute
just a weird person you do realize that I'm joking right?
yeah I know
Meh, good luck being obliterated...
Wait! By cancelling your mass you may transcend phisical form!
Take me with ya!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Love this series!
I actually believe most living creatures are conscious. You can observe many animals think and decide things when they're solving problems. Most animals don't understand speech but they can still tell what emotions we're having from our body language. They're aware of their environment, they have personalities, they know they themselves exist, they are conscious.
I still eat bacon though, and most meats. I want our food animals to be treated better and have more comfortable lives and deaths, and I like it when people keep food animals as pets, and I wish people didn't hunt for sport, but I still eat meat.
Then again, in a emergency situation I would eat a human, or let a human eat me.
That's right I would do whatever to keep myself alive even if it means eating my own kind. Who cares whether humanity starts depleting itself? Countless species have been going extinct for eons.
John Jackson Dude I said emergency situations, unless the entire planet starts flying planes through the mountains, crashing on deserted islands, and getting lost in the woods, I think we’re good. I wish that lab grown meat was more common and easily accessible, I get sick without meat but I feel like everything except for sport hunters would prefer not to have to kill to get it.
It is to hear about a Pikachu bacon though it's taste is so it's gone quick.
The ability to discriminate between 'self' and 'object' carries with it inherent suffering. It is a spectrum. It is not black and white.
"Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself" may seem vague and confusing with respect to animals.
So let us understand it this way.
Animals suffer to varying degrees. Humans suffer to varying degrees. There is no definite boundary in evolutionary terms between the animal and the 'human' animal.
Therefore we ought to be compassionate towards all sentient beings to the best of our understanding.
The spiritually 'unfolded' human will thus instrinsically treat all animals with a considerate reverence as they would do all humans.
This reverence is born from their understanding of interaction and is spontaneous .
Great video! I love it
I think rights are an inherently human concept that does not apply to non-humans. However, we should seek to use animals in a way that minimizes their suffering, understanding that they do have the capacity to suffer that we do. But things like equality, freedom, the right to vote, and the right to make political decisions and form political opinions and similar rights are only based on the understanding of the uniquely human capacity for reason and higher thinking. The right not to suffer unnecessarily, I would grant. The right never to be used by humans for human needs? I would not grant.
Rachael Lefler by that way of thinking human rights don't apply to alien species even if they show a higher level of reasoning than ours if they cannot convey their thought to us.so if one shows up that can only talk by thong clicks he's kinda screwed by your parameters
Rachael Lefler Agreed. Animals don't breach their prey's rights, however much they suffer. The only way that animals have rights is to the extent that we allow them to identify with us.
Well, it might be necessary in that we can't simply let cattle currently being slaughtered go free, and it will be quite difficult economically to deal with a transition to a plant-based diet. I agree that people should be vegetarian because it is an inefficient use of land and resources to produce meat, and it's also probably not nutritionally necessary for humans (even though many nutrients in meats that are harder to come by in plant sources are good for our brains). However, since it's not economically realistic to think that the meat industry is going away anytime soon, I stopped being a vegetarian because one person being a vegetarian doesn't change anything, and we may be biologically wired to derive much more pleasure from eating meat than from getting our biological energy in more eco-friendly and humane ways. I think eating meat is probably ok, the idea is that 1) I won't eat a baby animal, I want them to have a fuller life span 2) we should encourage farmers to do everything possible to treat the animals humanely, not just with a merciful slaughter, but with as little confinement as possible and optimal living conditions. We may eventually evolve beyond meat consumption, but I don't see it going away in my lifetime.
Rachael Lefler
a very logical thought to which i can agree in full.
+brortao oh you would be surprised.... you would be surprised indeed. go look up Animal Liberation or Peta Kills Animals. And you will be in shock.
The fact that porygon was used as an example pokemon brings up more questions. since he is purely artificial, can he too feel pain? and does he have the right to not suffer (whether he can feel it or not)?
Would I still eat bacon if it came from Pikachu?
No.
But if it came from Spoink or Grumpig then yes.
+SpikeStarkey What you should have said was.
"If it tastes like bacon, then I'll eat it".
xErikTheRedx
I'd like to apologize for my insult to bacon. All bacon is created equal.
If you had the choice of eating real bacon and eating bacon grown in a lab (otherwise identical in taste, texture and appearance) which would you eat? What if your choice was more expensive? How expensive would it have to be before you swapped? Singer's work is great, I recommend it. Also the documentary Earthlings.
Do cows or chickens have the desire to live? Not just an INSTINCT to live (a bacteria has an instinct"to live, as it shys away from a potential threat). I mean an actual emotional desire, at least somewhat similar to that of an ape or a dolphin?
And if it doesn't, is it ok for me to eat them so long as I kill them painlessly?
+Sideeq Mohammad They do, or at leat many studies and even Cambridge believes animals are conscious, as can be read in it's ''declaration of consciousness'' (implying by that that they don't only work on instinct and therefore have desires) And even if they were only flesh machines, eating more plants and less meat would be better for the environment (a good starting point to learn about it is the documentary called ''Cowspiracy'')
ifer lyf I'll look more into it. Do u know the name of the studies by any chance?
Yes animals are sentient, they have a brain and can think just like you can, even if they aren't as intelligence as you. A difference in intelligence is not a justified reason to kill someone as we see with humans who are less intelligent, babies, some elderly people and the mentally ill. It's easy to decide if it's ethical if we put ourselves in the place of the victim.
They have lymbic system, as all the flies and ants you have killed in your life.
"Disembodied British Voice" -- totally reminds me of the narrator from The Stanley Parable. Similar mannerisms, too. 10/10
the moment an animal can communicate dynamically(not just shown through muscle memory what to say) that it wants rights like apes learning a full sign language vocabulary and using it to ask questions. or a horse tapping out morse code
i'd eat a meowth but i wouldnt eat the team rocket meowth
piratecheese13 I bet a lion must have to go through such loops of illogic to be morally satisfied to eat you... or they simply have the pure physical capability to do so and feel no remorse and question no morals.
The best part of your statement is trying to imagine a first world piratecheese even trying to kill a meowth with his bare hands. I'm thinking he'd kick your ass.
How can we expect animals to communicate based on our concepts though? We're barely able to understand their social structures, which are smaller than ours, so even if they are intelligent enough to understand ours, or the concept of Rights at all, those concepts are way outside anything they have a frame of reference for. Some animals have language, but they have the ability to describe things they encounter, just like we do. Whales have dialects, and crows can describe what people look like, but without a language that contains the concept of Rights, we can't say with certainty that they aren't intelligent enough to ask for them when language as they understand it wouldn't allow them to. Even gorillas can invent new words on their own, like combining the signs for fruit and juice when nobody told them the sign fire watermelon, but still, they don't have a frame of reference for rights when all they see is their home and their handlers.
Either way, there's only been like, one animal other than us that has actually asked a question it wasn't taught to ask. Was a grey parrot named Alex. He asked what color he was, and when the caretaker told him 'grey', he replied by saying "I am grey".
Xsixx0 i know that parrot
he died too young
***** something arround the lines of "stop hurting me please" i would consider asking for rights
I don't feel that any animal deserves death to fill my stomach for a few hours.
yes, i would still eat that bacon, even if it came from pikachu.
+Abdou Yousfi yeah, everyone does have their own point of view, i don't agree with
animal cruelty, and i know animals go through that a lot for the sake of
our food. but it's not my fault, so i still eat chicken and stuff. if i
had the power to change conditions for animals i would.
I'd really like to know more about our beloved disembodied British narrator. He could make the phone book sound fascinating.
funny thing is in order for life to sustain itself it needs the life of other things the lion eats the zebra zebras eat plants plants consume nutrients from the earth the earth absorbs the nutrients back from what's left over of the dead things such as the zebra. so that leaves the question is it still wrong to consume animals yes in order to do so one must cause pain but a lion does not think if it's right or wrong to eat a zebra it just does because it knows it's necessary for survival
experimentx9035 You could have proven your intellectual hollowness by using fewer words.
experimentx9035
That arguement is logically fallacious, it's the Apeal to Nature fallacy.
Devil's Advocado You could saved yourself from looking like an ass by not commenting in the first place.
lemme guess you're all vegans through and through. all i was asking is why is ok for an animal to eat other animals but it's wrong for a human to do so? in case you forgot we are not the only species that are omnivores so why is that bears mice badgers hedgehogs skunks squirrels and all manner of other omnivores are allowed to eat other animals but not humans?
David Westrup fine then replace lions with bears or squirrels or any other omnivorous animal. why is ok for them to eat meat but it's wrong for a human to do so?
In this day and age it is fairly simple to create a robot that experiences pain and actively tries to avoid it.. Do these simplistic robots deserve the same rights? Where exactly do you draw the line?
Because you can guarantee the species just above the line will most likely be almost identical to the one slightly below the line.
_In terms of intellect, or capacity to feel pain_
Azurren To answer your questions; yes and the line is drawn where it needs to be drawn or redrawn. Lines are more like suggestions anyhow, nothing to be taken too seriously.
Azurren i don't think we should give robots like that human rights, if all it does is avoid pain whats the point? we only elude pain long enough so we can continue our species and improve our selfs after that most of us welcome death and pain if this is noting else to enjoy, if this robot has no pleasure that its life has no meaning, if you could die at 30 but have the funnest most pleasurable life, or life forever with no happiness no pleasure no pain and live forever which would you choose?
I prefer animal welfare to animal rights. If we are better than animals, we have a right to make sure they are treated with kindness. If animals are conscious, feel, and think, then it is horrendous to stuff them in gestation crates and battery cages. It's an immoral act! The act of eating another animal, however, is not immoral. This is because we ourselves are avoiding pain by killing and eating the animal - the pain of starvation.
You don't have to eat animals to survive though.
But if you kill and eat the animal you always hurt it so you don't really avoid pain only your own. Unless you choose to eat something nonsentient which would be the truly moral choice
+Raven Spirit So is it ok 4 me 2 eat a cow if I kill it painlessly?
Killing is cruelty. Killing is causing harm.
If the act of eating another animal is not moral (why?) then the act of eating a human animals is also not moral. You can't hold a double standard. Be consistent with your morals.
Humans do not require to kill and eat an animal to avoid pain. that's nonsense. If you really believe this then that also justifies killing a human to eat them including you, but obviously this is not a good argument since it's not even based on facts.
+Sideeq Mohammad there is no death without pain
Easy way to counter this is that if you don't practice giving rights to people, you should not get rights.
If Pikachu tasted like bacon, yes I would eat it.
+Randy Randalman ...you monster
you're a piece of shit
Sans the Skeleton: Your going to have a b a d t i m e....
DDD033
niggas gotta eat - just saying
+Randy Randalman Why not eat plants then? (excluding plant type pokemons of course XD)
Nathan Lowe's voice is fantastic.
Awesome video Wisecrack!
I love animals and pokemon! Go #vegan :D
bananiac I would eat bacon if it came from pekachus. Also plants feel pain and try to avoid it
Plants can also feel pain though. And we have to eat something. Also drawing a line based on species makes perfect sense.
+hedgehog3180 Nothing without a central nervous system can feel/think. There's something it's like to be a cow. There's nothing it's like to be corn.
+My Dog Smells Real Bad well recent science might beg to differ.
Plants have senses and can learn to differentiate dangerous stimuli from harmless ones, however it has not been showed as of now that they have feelings and toughts like animls do. Anyhow, plant based diets actually saves more plants than one that includes meat because you feed plants to farmed animals and deforestation is in part caused by animal agriculture (in the case of the rainforest it's 90%)
No plants can not feel pain. Plants have no brain, no nervous sytem, and are not sentient.
Drawing a line based on species is speciesist. It does not make sense. How about drawing a line based on color of the skin? or based on sex?
If you put yourself in the victim's point of view it becomes obvious that it's wrong to kill someone just because they are not your species.
+Nick Shaw it's not wrong to kill a different species, carnivores eat other species of animals. That have to eat them to survive. So why can't I eat that pig over there? Because it's alive? It's alive but it is also at the bottom of the food chain. The one we are on top of.
*Rights do not exist!*
In the hypothetical scenario that alien intelligent life exist: Do they have rights? Do they need rights? Which rights? Do they'll give us rights? The same rights within their species or different ones?
Someone forgot that human beings are animals. So, yes, animals "have" rights.
Ral Crux They'll give rights to us when we rise up and give them the war to end all wars. Just because they're smarter doesn't make them stronger.
If aliens exist and they can travel through space, they have far beyond advanced technology that at least could "ignore" some physical laws. We cannot win that, Rusty Shackleford.
Ral Crux You sure? You'd be surprised just what a hammer can do. And besides, you don't know what kind of aliens they are. We could already be enslaved by hyper-competent shades of blue, but that doesn't mean we're following their orders. We wouldn't even know they existed.
Ok, that is pretty far away from the original topic.
Ral Crux Sure it is. It doesn't matter if they're more intelligent than us. We just have to be deadlier than they are.
Thumbs up for the disembodied British voice....(I really dig this narrator!) More please, yes, thank you.
a wild Pikachu appeared! it's Super tasty!
If the question begins with "Would you eat bacon if..."
The answer is ALWAYS yes!
Yes. I can't click cause I'm on my phone but yes
They provided a link in the show notes that is clickable.
2:32 the question is "would you still eat bacon made from a Pikachu." I respond back with "does it taste good? because if it does I would.
This is actually partly why I'm a vegetarian, my beliefs are tied to the philosophies talked about in the video. Also, it's funny how all of the meat-eaters are freaking out over this. Relax guys, it's cool. Don't stop eating meat unless you want to.
your videos are awesome!
The problem with animal rights on the level of human rights, is that they cannot hold human responsibility.
+Rosalie Kitchen totaly nailed it. In fact babies dont have "rights" , instead, they benefict from a welfare guarantee regime, rather than exercise/claim rights
of course not. etics and moral are independant from rights
right. but what we're talking here is granting someone that is human the right to have "their" animals protected (put elderly, babies, retarded instead of animals if you wish), since that human is the only one that might be able to claim those rights. one has to be considered responsible in order to claim rights. I get what you mean, but legal rights dont work like that. you're talking ethics and moral, not law. And if your talking law, then it works the way I discussed above, in this paragraph.
I also think ethics are supreme. but law is practical and has lots of pratical requisites that ethics dont have. in that way, it things work more indirectly with law than with ethics, I guess
One does not have to be a morale agent to be granted rights.
For ethics we need moral consistency. If one has an argument for the ethical killing someone and eat them for pleasure then this must be applied to not only all animals, but human animals as well.
Since 1. Humans thrive off plant based diet and 2. Animals are sentient it makes it difficult near impossible to justify harm to animals that we ourselves would not reject if done to us which helps us define ethics and see that it's unethical to cause unjustified harm to sentient animals such as eating them.
Really good video!
I am feeling sick from people in this comment section equating animal life to human life.
No life is great to be honest.
One does not simple resist bacon.
(Unless it's against your religion.)
There are too many people in the world who don't have proper human rights yet.
so? thats why animals shouldnt either?
Logan Barry Priority
+Ninja lemur and who decides that priority? and what is it based on ? and even if some humans dont have rights the majority do wheras animals have none ...
Hamdi Neffati We need to look out for our own species. Also humans are more sentient and important.
sentient yes , important , debatable
I took a class on Critical Thinking in college, and our main text was Jonathan Safran Foer's _Eating Animals_, which echoes a lot of Singer's philosophy. I didn't particularly like the class because the teacher was clearly trying to turn us all into vegetarians.
And that’s why I’m vegan....
I think the reason people are happy to treat animals in the ways they do isn't from any form or construct of maliciousness they've developed, rather, a part of human behaviour passed down through generations (examples include Cock fights, riding horseback, captivity in Zoos and the most important example, eating animals.) Our position on the food chain and the history we've had with animals lends itself to young, malleable minds from their parents; it's normal to eat meat because your parents ate it, and their parents ate it and so on.Therefore, when asked to defend their actions, 'meat-eaters' say that they're better than animals because that's all they've known. So in a sense, animals DO have rights in the eyes of those who care, but equally don't have rights in the eyes that don't care. Of course, it's possible nowadays to see different beliefs because the world is becoming more and more liberal. My point is it isn't heartless to not recognise animal rights as it is a school of thought passed down for thousands of years.
In a few developed nations it is illegal to abuse an animal rights, so take that how you want.
+AcerMacIrish I agree, maybe in the future things that we do today will be see as archaic/malice/racism/etc and we will not be able to tell the difference.
Farm animals are excluded from such laws if you look into them. There is also no oversight.
It's just an illusion to make people feel good about killing animals feeling like they are good people when in reality it's unethical and causing extreme harm.
im sensing ulterior biased motive in this vid
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Peter Singer is a utilitarian. For a deonthological approach I recommend Tom Regan. And for intersectional approaches I recommend Breeze Harper, Carol J. Adams, Aph Ko and Syl Ko.
Also, just a reminder: humans are animals too. We'd do well to delete that divide. It's more useful to distinguish between human animals and non-human animals.
I'm down with there being videos on sociology esp.if there done in the "8 bit" style. I kind of feel a bit more inclined to specifically ask for "8 bit cultural criticism" but I think that we get bits and bobs of that already in the philosophy videos and we'll surely get that in sociology videos
You guys should do a philosophy video about opinions! Please! It would be awesome! And amazing!
pikachu bacon must be shockingly good
The way I see it is that most animals like ants, chickens, fish don't have conciseness but animals like dogs/wolves, cats, whales, elephants, birds of prey, octopi/squids have just a lower level of conciseness. They have advanced communication skills, social structures and are capable of basic emotions like joy, sadness and anger. I really don't have any science to back it up other than observations from nature shows but these are just my beliefs.
17spyguy Octopi squids have a lower level of conciseness? Man you don't know what you are talking about, celaphodos are more intelligent than many mammals, but you just don't give a shit cause they taste sooo good. Just be honest.
17spyguy 17spyguy isn't conscious unlike me. I don't have any evidence other than observation but it's just my belief. Therefore it's ok to kill 17spyguy. :)
Darkarix I care about them and acknowledge their intelligence but it's not enough to consider them my equal. I think that Humans should work to protect these creatures from extinction. I never said they were stupid or that its OK to kill them , I'm just saying that (at the moment) they can't to most of the things that make us advanced, they can' build cities, or build tools or establish a society.
Skovac I never said that its OK to kill them, I'm just saying I don't see them as equal to humans.
Do dogs build societies?
Go to a pet store and make eye contact with some of the puppies and you'll believe they have consciousness.
2:30 *REACTION*
a lion. a mammal.
a zebra. a mammal.
lion eats zebra. they are both mammals.
and you're saying that humans eating other mammals witch is animals, is SPECIESISM!?
Sarah The Shepherd and yes, if I wanted to eat a Pikachu stake I would.
Could you please do a video on Max Stirner's nihilism/egoism?
No, not craving pikachu bacon...but maybe some spoink bacon
I feel bad for those ducks that were run over recently.
Thank you for encouraging people to consider animal rights, Wisecrack . At this point ethical veganism yet seems like a horrendous idea to many who are still attached to their particular habits and belief-systems, but a little research online will quickly reveal both the extreme and unnecessary suffering non-human animals undergo by the billions, and how easily one can stop supporting such atrocities with a few lifestyle modifications. If reason and compassion are values you believe in to any extent whatsoever, start acting on those principles today, or else they remain nothing but intellectual abstractions. Check out the works of Peter Singer and Gary L. Francione.
I would absolutely LOVE trying that pikachu bacon.
Bacons from pikachus would be the same as meat from rat so no, bacon from a spoink, sure why not?