Feather

Agreed. Emotion as the basis for forming a moral system is not irrational, because humans are emotional beings. But unequal application of a given emotion as the basis for a moral judgement is irrational.

Thus, when a person declares that eating meat is immoral because of an empathy felt with animals, he is being irrational because, well, where is this empathy for plants?

It isn't. Unfortunately, this is not what "vegan moralists" do. They apply one criterion--empathy--unequally to two different categories of the same kind of thing.


It's a strawman because I never included the morality of torturing animals at any point in my response. In other words, you are setting up to debate an argument I never made in order to knock down or otherwise critique an argument I did make. And I will not humour your attempt to couch the debate in a strawman.

Kip

This position strikes me as willful blindness. Yes, all of the very many health benefits that vegetarians enjoy could possibly be the result of pure correlation. I do not think that there is anything about "meatness" itself that is inherently unhealthy and I can imagine that if a person had a sufficient motive (such as defending carnivorism is a discussion of vegetarianism) he or she could eat a healthy diet that did not entirely exclude meat.

There are hypothesized causal relationships between vegetarianism and health that are not "essential" to vegetarianism itself. For example, vegetarians "tend" to eat more high fiber, water based foods. High fiber foods are thought to aid digestion and decrease risk of colon cancer. High fiber, water based foods also tend to have fewer calories and be more satisfying that other foods. Eating fewer calories is the only method definitely known to extend lifespan (in many species and most probably humans). Eating fewer calories also prevents obesity (studies show that vegetarians have significantly lower rates of obesity), which is a major cause or predictor or heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

Vegetarians also eat food that is lower in the food chain and studies show that these foods are less processed and contain far lower concentrations of carcinogens. These fruits and vegetables also contain cancer-preventing phytochemicals that meat does not have. Finally, meat, especially beef, is very high in saturated fat and cholesterol, which have an undeniable causal role in heart disease, which is the number one killer of human beings today.

So, yes, there is nothing about vegetarianism itself that benefits health. A carnivore could also, with difficulty:

1. eat fewer calories
2. eat more fiber
3. eat food lower on the food chain (eat less meat)
4. eat more fruits and vegetables
5. eat ultra lean meat

In other words, a carnivor could APPROACH vegetarianism to receive the health benefits. I also realize that vegetarians may, overall, tend to be more health conscious people and that may play a significant role in improving health, besides avoiding meat. The idea, however, that this health consciousness and exercise (outside of vegetarianism) is an exhaustive explanation of the overwhelming health benefits vegetarians receive, seems to me to be stretching the imagination. Remember that these studies do not exclude "fat vegetarians" and these people may just as well munch on McDonald's french fries and Burger King chocolate shakes every day (and some vegetarians do). Your entire position seems to be a defensive compromise in the face of overwhelming evidence that vegetarianism is superior. Vegetarianism also has the benefits of being a much more efficient use of food (helping poverty and food prices go down) and not morally ambiguous (if you would only read a few of the many accounts of slaughterhouses and factory farming, you would realize that the industry is dirty, wasteful and cruel and not worth your money). Finally, even if the evidence is not absolutely conclusive that the relationship between vegetarianism and health is causal, why not err on the side of caution and animal rights? Why risk being wrong?

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]</p>

tronvillain

Feather:
Nonsense. There is nothing irrational about unequal aplication of a given emotion. Quite the reverse actually, as it is irrational to feel the same amount of love for everything, or the same amount of fear for everything, or in our case, the same amount of empathy for everything.

You are ignoring the possiblity that there are other criteria for feeling empathy than something merely being a "living object." The one usually mentioned is the ability to feel pain or suffer, hence the decreasing amount of empathy as neural complexity decreases, and the total exclusion of plants.

My questions are independent of the debate, as your responses have no bearing on its outcome, except perhaps to the degree that people's subjective opinion of you might be affected by your responses. I think that would be more of an ad hominem than a strawman, but as I didn't intend it as such I don't really care. Anyway, I am intrigued by your continued evasions: Do you or do you not have a quarrel with torturing animals for fun?

tronvillain

Kip:

*shrugs* What you call "willful blindness" I call a realistic assessment of the evidence.

What exactly do you mean by "with difficulty"? It is not clear that it is any more difficult for an omnivore to eat a healthy diet than it is for a herbivore, and the omnivore retains the enjoyment of eating meat.

Ah, but what does not stretch the imagination is that the "overwhelming health benefits" that vegetarianism are due to health consciousness within vegetarianism. That is, the vegetarian population has a higher percentage of people inclined to eat healthy diets.

That is how it appears to you because you have apparently defined "vegetarianism" as "eating a healthy diet that contains no meat" rather than simply "eating a diet that contains no meat."

It is not at all clear that a mass shift to vegetarianism would help poverty or decrease food prices. Exactly by what mechanism do you suggest this would be accomplished? As for accounts of slaughterhouses and factory farming, I have read them, and often found them completely innacurate. Having grown up on a ranch, the gross inacuracies in portrayals of the beef industry make me somewhat cynical. As for the portions that are accurate, they do not bother me enough to make a difference.

I should think the answer obvious: the risk is insufficient to overcome the enjoyment I derive from eating meat.

vixstile

I hung out with two vegans in high-school. There idea of a vegan diet consisted of generic cookies and soda. Since diet obviously wasn't the incentive for there veganism, and I never noticed them being morally conscious in any other matters, I believe they were vegans out of trend. Thats my only up-close experience with vegans, but other than that they were nice guys and were never preachy, they were just losers.

CuriosityKills

I don't understand how "nice guys" and "never preachy" equals "losers". Please explain?

The Sound of Dogs Barking

Surely you can imagine that a person could be fairly nice and non-preachy, while still being a loser? And the niceness and non-preachiness (is that a word?) is not the reason for being a loser?

The AntiChris

Feather

By this reasoning you must presumably find it irrational that most (all?) civilised societies have animal welfare legislation but no plant welfare legislation?

Chris

Agricola Senior

This is realy silly. By eating meat you kill (indirectly) 5-10 times more plants than if you do not eat meat.

[ October 17, 2002: Message edited by: Agricola Senior ]</p>

Stephen T-B

Meaty affairs:
A Leeds company called West Yorkshire Farmacueticals is in trouble with European Union bureaucrats for having genetically engineered a chicken with an extra pair of legs.
The news was broken by the company chairman at a press conference this week when he explained that demand for chicken legs has grown by 150 per cent over the
last two years, hence his company's new product.
The creatures, he said, were breeding well and their legs would soon be all over
our supermarket shelves.
The specimen he produced, however, looked remarkably like a rabbit.
When reporters pointed this out, the chairman told them: "It may look like a rabbit
to you but inside, it's made of chicken.'
And that's the cause of his problems with Brussels which has a directive requiring anything that looks like a rabbit to be made of rabbit and anything which looks like a chicken to be made of chicken.
Now Farmacueticals is hoping to get around the problem with a new and improved
product which not only looks like a rabbit, but tastes so like one that no-one,
not even an EU inspector, will suspect it's really a chicken.