Stephen T-B

More Meaty Affairs.
West Yorkshire Farmacueticals has been forced to call a hurried press conference in order to correct a serious misunderstanding. and make a sensational new announcement.
A spokesperson dressed up like a dead chicken appeared on the podium and told the assembled journalists that due to a “temporary communications dislocation problem,” the media had gained the completely-erroneous impression that the company was marketing a four-legged chicken with fur and ears.
Before any questions could be asked, the Dead Chicken Spokesperson vanished through a suddenly-opened trap door, and a spokesperson dressed up to look like a fat carrot promptly stepped up to take her place.
The new spokesperson said that the company was proud to announce a revolutionary breakthrough in food science. Thanks to the ground-breaking work of the company’s geneticists, the product which had hitherto been marketed as a four-legged chicken was in actual fact a genetically-engineered carrot - at which point several hundred carrot-shaped helium-filled orange balloons rose to the ceiling of the works canteen where the press conference was being held.

Stephen T-B

More Meaty Affairs
West Yorkshire Farmacueticals has been forced to make a second embarrassing
retraction.
The claim that its scientists had genetically engineered a furry four-legged
carrot which might easily be confused with a rabbit were based on an unfortunate
misunderstanding.
Firstly, the scientist with a minor speech defect who is thought to have been
responsible for the development is not a geneticist. He is an electrician.
The conversation which gave rise to the misunderstanding took place between him
and the company's chief executive, who has impaired hearing, during a loud
rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus by the massed choirs of Upper, Lower and Mid
Calderdale.
It turns out that the electrician did not say that the laboratory rabbits were
carrots. He said the laboratory rabbits liked carrots.
The original claim concerning chickens seems to have stemmed from another
conversation between the chief executive and the electrician when they were
going over Hardraw Force in a barrel, which itself requires some explanation.
Some of the chief executive's foot appears to have been in most of the
electrician's mouth, but when the electrician said: "Excuse me, but you've got
your foot in my mouth," the chief executive thought he was saying: "I've
genetically engineered a four-legged chicken," and when he got back to the
office he put out a press statement to that effect.
Yorkshire's vegetarians can hardly believe any of this. The purists, who had
advocated treating the "four-legged" carrots as they would any other root crop,
are hanging out of their kitchen windows shrieking with remorse. Others are
simply refusing to believe there has been a mistake at all and can be seen
shoving bits of rabbit in their mouths, saying: "That's a very tasty carrot."
For all of us, it has been a sad and confusing episode

Valmorian

Considering that the other option, not killing the animal, would mean the animal would go on to indirectly killing far MORE plants, I find this a dubious line of reasoning.. ..even if it is tongue in cheek.


It's like saying that executing a criminal who has killed 20 people somehow means you're responsible for the death of those 20 people.

Rusting Car Bumper

Then it comes down to what counts as "another" in the definition.

DC

Rusting Car Bumper

It should be obvious. If the person bases anobjection on condition X and we can remove condition X then the objection should dissappear. If it doesn't then we have a case where objection X wasn't the real reason.

No. Poor reasoning and ad hoc justification. I have no problem with that as long as there is truth in advertising. If a vegan says "I just feel bad eating or using animals and I don't really know why" then this seems more honest than the moral argument.

It depends on what the generalizations are. I have frequently said that many atheists are their own worst enemies and that part of our poor image is our own fault.

The Vegans I've met are not likable. OK. so? I'm not going to ignore my experience and play politicaly correct like it didn't happen. However, I *have* met nice fundies and I meet nice fundies frequently.

The views or feelings are subjective but the arguments based on what is considered to be true are not. I have no problem with a vegan saying their view is subjective. That woud be fine because then we could dispense with the fantasy that its all based on some well reasoned moral argument.

DC

Valmorian

I have no reason to pretend I have the faintest idea of what it is like to be a chicken. How can I have an "understanding of another’s feelings" for such a creature?

Feather

Well, hypocritical/irrational, yes. It's intellectually dishonest.

Why protect one class of non-humans but not another?

Feather

I'm not arguing that empathy can be different for different things. I'm arguing that therefore using it as a basis of moral judgement is irrational--which is true. One can not say "I empathise, therefore X is immoral" and claim any sort of rational argument.

Degree is not a valid rational argument, in other words.

No, I'm not ignoring this. In fact, it's part of my argument. It isn't rational to empathize with one class of living things and not another. The distinction is entirely arbitrary and therefore any moral judgement based on the feeling is whimsy.

Well, this helps. I honestly thought your intent was to ad hominem based on my response.

I would not personally torture an animal (or any other living thing) for fun. But if somebody else wants to, as long as the living thing weren't of value to me, I wouldn't care.

Maybe this is a better way to phrase my response: I don't believe life has any inherent value.

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

Kip

We need to distingish between absolute vegetarianism and avoiding meat. A vegetarian could be described as "someone who avoids meat always". I am arguing that we should "avoid meat", arguing for the "always" is much more difficult. A person could eat a spoonful of meat once a month and technically be a meat eater. In my opinion, that person may as well be vegetarian or is approaching vegetarianism.

By "with difficulty" I mean that a meat can enjoy the health benefits that vegetarians enjoy with difficulty. I provided 5 probable CAUSAL explanations of why vegetarians enjoy better health. Of these, at least 5 are "difficult" for the meat eater to enjoy in the sense that meat does not provide any of these benefits. Meat is a high calorie food, meat has no fiber, meat is high on the food chain, and meat cannot provide the phytochemicals that vegetables and fruit do. As of today, the more meat you eat the less of these benefits you receive.

Again, there is nothing about vegetarianism itself that is necessarily healthy. Likewise there is nothing about smoking cigarettes that is necessarily unhealthy. I suppose in the future it may be possible to smoke tar-less, carcinogen free cigarettes and have nano-bots vacuum your lungs. The smoker could, with that difficulty, enjoy the same health as non-smokers. But why go to that trouble? Why not just abandon meat? You enjoy the taste of animal flesh too much?

And how are the vegetarian diets healthy? Could it be that the lack of meat contibutes to all of the causal explanations I have mentioned for better health and that this lack of meat is what makes them healthier? Or do you think that vegetarians are only avoiding saturated fats, cholesterol, eating low on the food chain, eating more fiber, less calories? If so, how do you think the vegetarian accomplishes these goals if not by abstaining from meat? In other words, how would the meat eater accomplish these goals, to the same extent, WITHOUT abstaining from meat?

Yes, the two are not equivalent. As I said before, fat vegetarians do exist. The question of whether the greater percentage of health conscious vegetarians, as opposed to nonvegetarians, is the sole, exhaustive explanation of their superior health (excluding abstaining from meat) is not entirely decided. At least, I know of no study to show you that vegetarianism itself causes better health (although I have given reasons why vegetarians enjoy better health and how vegetarianism contributes to that).

There is no mechanism - carnivorism is inefficient. How much fresh water and feed does a cow eat before being slaughtered? If you compared the calories of that grain (or the resources used to make feed that could produce grain) to the calories provided by the meat, which gives more? Millions and millions of people are starving and Americans enjoy hamburgers every day. This is simple math.

This is the heart of the matter. I am powerless to convert you if your taste for animal flesh is such that, even considering animal rights, food production, and the many health benefits that vegetarians enjoy (I have provided five probable CAUSAL explanations for these benefits), you still maintain eating your greasy hamburgers. I do not enjoy animal flesh nearly as much as you do, and I never have. Even if the flesh was aesthetically pleasing, the psychological pain, knowing what I know now about health and animal rights, would ruin whatever pleasure the taste brought me. I went walking through the butcher part of the grocery store and I felt ill. The place reeked. This is the only place in the entire grocery store that smells rotten with fish and flesh. You walk along, and there is row after row of red flesh, outlined with white fat, that was once a pig or cow or chicken, processed in mass production and cut up in machines like just another piece of bread. I can only hope that we are still living in the Middle Ages of animal rights and nutrition and that a future Enlightenment will look upon this chapter of history will sadness.

Devilnaut

Just wanted to weigh in to respond to some things in the thread:

Valmorian:
(in response to "this is realy silly. By eating meat you kill (indirectly) 5-10 times more plants than if you do not eat meat.")
We breed animals for the purpose of consumption. If we did not eat them, we wouldn't breed them, and they wouldn't exist to kill more plants. And your analogy of the criminal is downright bad.

I could say that I have no reason to pretend I have the faintest idea of what it is like to be you, yet for some reason I don't have the urge to kill and eat you. This is imprecise terminology. You do have an idea of what it is like to be a chicken, because you know that when it is hurt it suffers pain in a similar fashion to the rest of the higher animal kingdom.

Feather:
Have you ever killed a kitten for enjoyment? Would you kill a monkey if it looked like fun? Yes, I am making emotional appeals, but the answers to these questions are important.(i see these questions are answered by you later). Are you being honest in that you can't see how a person can revile the torture of an animal but not a plant?? Plants are not even sentient!

Says you! What if I feel that your exclusion of humans from your lack of empathy is an entirely arbitrary and whimsical judgement?

And do you admit that in your own view this is completely irrational?

Why don't you find it intellectually dishonest to abhor the eating of animals, but not the grinding of stones? What about the typing of keys on a keyboard? What about the visual processing of photons? Exactly what about being a "living thing" makes something worthy of empathy? If I can feel empathy for a friggin plant why the heck can't I feel empathy for a piece of clay?

I will tell you what my answer would be: it is not the "livingness" of an object that normally induces empathy, any more than it is the "existence" of an object that induces it. It is the behaviour of an object; specifically, an object that reacts to positive/negative circumstance in a similar fashion to the empathizer. We must be able to relate to the object in this way.

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