5 ms·

I agree that killer whale's shouldn't be kept in captivity, but than on the other hand, I also love me some bacon. Pigs are also sentient creatures with high in

I agree that killer whale's shouldn't be kept in captivity, but than on the other hand, I also love me some bacon. Pigs are also sentient creatures with high intelligence yet we see them as a food source, and thus don't really care about their conditions in captivity.

schoen 11y ago
That seems like an excellent example of "one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens".
scoofy 11y ago
So, there is animal rights, and animal welfare. I think one of the main problems for orcas is size. Creating an appropriately sized habitat for them would be a gargantuan endeavor, however, if we could, i think a lot of us would be less vehemently opposed to keeping them in captivity. For pigs, this is entirely plausible. While i'm also very opposed to our current factory farming practices, since i'm fairly nihilistic about ending meat consumption for high functioning mammals in my lifetime, we could absolutely and trivially easily make their lives pleasant before slaughtering them for their delicious bacon. Yes, it would cause bacon to be more expensive, but it's definitely doable. This is simply impossible for orcas under the current paradigm. Even as someone who supports animal rights and welfare, i could see myself being okay with orcas in captivity, if we're talking about oceanic reservations, say, the size of Connecticut, but at that size, it'd be impossible for us to make them do tricks and crap that people go to sea world for.
- asciimo 11y ago
  It sounds like you support animal welfare, but not animal rights. I would expect someone who supports animal rights to not be OK with captivity for human gain.
  - scoofy 11y ago
    This is why i pointed out that i was generally a nihilist on the subject. If we lived in a world in which the possibility that a ban on captivity for human gain could possibly exist, then it would be worth having that discussion. The fact is that we don't, and we very very probably won't within our lifetimes or our grandchildren's lifetime for that matter. To discuss the subject on those grounds seems counterproductive to me. I try to take a more game-theoretic approach. Support those that are doing more to change the culture of how we treat animals to minimize the harm that exists and will persist. This may even arguably go as far is purchasing potentially objectionable animal products from those that are trying to change the social norms of farming. The animal rights argument is perfectly good to have in the halls of academia, but in the world we live in, those of us who are good consequentialists may vastly differ in our approaches to how we should respond to the marketplace we live in to most effectively reduce the suffering that persists. It's also arguable that a diversity of approaches will be more effective due to the vast open-ended questions of how approaches will be accepted by the greater population. I for one think that convincing people that we should raise our "bacon" humanely will do vastly more for the reduction of suffering in the world than would telling people we should ban it because it's clearly immoral to consume.
- noondip 11y ago
  How would you feel if the moment you were born someone else had already planned the day of your execution?
  - scoofy 11y ago
    This is such a sophomoric approach to ethics it hardly deserves a response. Animals are not humans. They are hardly likely to have the same capacity to suffer. Anthropomorphizing them is not a credible way to talk about the issue. At best they ought to be compared to a severely mentally disabled human. Still deserving of dignity, but hardly treated as equal.
    - noondip 11y ago
      Rather than conjecture, why not educate yourself with free films such as Earthlings (available on YouTube) to learn what the experience of others really is like? Edit: your assumption that animals' capacity to suffer and experience fear, pain and misery is dissimilar to ours is rooted in ignorance. If it's academic proof you're desperately after, a great jumping off point is by reading The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, signed by a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge in 2012. http://www.earthintransition.org/2012/07/scientists-declare-nonhuman-animals-are-conscious/ http://www.earthintransition.org/2012/07/scientists-declare-... http://www.livescience.com/39481-time-to-declare-animal-sentience.html http://www.livescience.com/39481-time-to-declare-animal-sent...
      - scoofy 11y ago
        I don't understand what this means. I'm a stanch advocate of animal welfare and rights. I think factory farms are absurdly ludicrously immoral. I think that the vast majority of ways we currently raise our mammals and birds is absurdly immoral. Why would watching an animal rights advocacy film help. I was simply objecting to your anthropomorphizing of the way our fellow mammals perceive the world. It's a ludicrous position to take in a serious conversation about ethics. Physical capacity to suffer is one thing, and it's not difficult to argue that mammals suffer similar to the way we do physically, but asking "how I would feel," as though their conscious experience with regards to knowledge of mortality would be similar to ours is speaking nonsense. Furthermore, pointing to an advocacy documentary film to assert a position that even our best academic researchers have little if any way of speaking to seems flippant.
DanBC 11y ago
> and thus don't really care about their conditions in captivity. Several vigorous campaigns existed to improve the conditions for pigs. Look at England for an example, where changes in English law were voluntarily followed by Danish and Dutch pig farmers so they could compete on welfare standards. See also "free range" eggs and higher welfare farm standards. Plenty of people like eating meat but will only buy meat from animals that have higher welfare standards.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  As soon as vat grown meat surpasses traditional meat sources in cost and quality, it'll make life a whole lot easier for everyone.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    Except farmers, and the business eco-system that's grown around them. Oh, and possibly everyone else if vat-grown is more expensive and/or more energy intensive causing the economies of scale for traditional meat production to alter ... will vat-grown be able to beat insects as a source of protein?
funkyy 11y ago
Pigs are meant to be kept as farm animals. They were selectively domesticated. Same with chickens, sheep, cows etc. Problem with Orcas is that they are not use to live in captivity. They were just caught in the sea and forced to do tricks. Its same with large wild cats - they have been not selectively chosen over decades to join the human society.
- rosser 11y ago
  Nothing is "meant" to be kept as a farm animal. The choices we've made about which animals we keep as livestock, which we keep as pets, and which we keep in zoos (or, per TFA, only slightly oversized swimming pools) are in absolutely no way derived from some sort of teleological mandate.
  - vacri 11y ago
    > Nothing is "meant" to be kept as a farm animal. Modern sheep are. If they're not sheared regularly and their fleece is allowed to grow, they end up suffering quite a lot - they are not suitable for living in the wild, and in the other direction, are also not particularly suitable as pets. Yes, nature is not a thing with intentions, but modern sheep are a combination of natural processes and humans (who do have intentions) meddling with things.
- rubber_duck 11y ago
  While I agree with you I feel like that's a technical problem - if you want to argue from that position it should be a question of "how do we keep them in captivity efficiently/safely" both for them and humans rather than "should we keep them" and phrasing it as a moral question. Also the article's point and general theme seems kind of weak : >In line with this, several decades of observation show that orcas are not naturally violent towards humans. There are no recorded cases of a wild orca killing a human. This implies (and the surrounding text) - that this behavior is a result of captivity changing their behavior. How often do orcas and humans meet in a setting that would allow them to harm a human in a similar way they would - say a penguin ? Would it be plausible that they would do a similar thing in the wild in a similar setting given enough opportunities (since trainers interact with them constantly) ?
azakai 11y ago
But we should. Future generations will judge us very poorly on this.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  >Future generations will judge us very poorly on this. Generally, I find such speculative statements worthless. It's another way to say "I really think this should be obvious and that my idea will eventually be widely accepted to be correct". That's all well and good, but everyone thinks that about their own thoughts. It really doesn't contribute anything to the argument; it's an attempt to shame your opponent into agreeing with you by invoking his future childrens' potential disdain. I also think that if you really want to know what future generations will think of something, you should refer to what prior generations thought of it. By this standard, future generations are likely to taunt us mercilessly for caring so much about what we imagine to be a whale's internal monologue.
  - azakai 11y ago
    I disagree. I think we do have ways to think about what future generations will judge us harshly about. Obviously some things we can't tell, like what clothes fashions will be in 50 or 100 years. But when you get down to matters of morality and ethics, I believe we do see a clear progression over time. And we can predict it, to some extent. That's the first reason I think we'll be judged harshly here. A second reason is that we can already see this trend happening. More and more people care about cruelty-free farming, as well as are becoming vegetarians or vegans. Of course, that trend might stop or reverse. But we have reasonable grounds to think it might continue. If it does, then eventually current society will look pretty bad. A third reason is that this isn't an arbitrary issue that we happen to see a trend on. A lot of people that eat meat realize there is something wrong with things like factory farming. They ignore it, and it's easy to ignore for the most part. But when they think about it, they realize it's immoral. Most people are good in the sense that they do not want to harm other living beings; caring about animal suffering is just a natural outcome of that. In other words, most people don't need to be convinced on the merits of the issue. What most don't yet realize is the huge extent of the problem, and that there are good alternatives. See also this article for further reasoning along these lines: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35667355 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35667355
ProAm 11y ago
It's different for animals that naturally migrate hundreds of thousands of miles a year and forcing them to live in a few thousand cubic meters of water.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Why? Can't they swim hundreds of miles within their enclosures, just as humans can walk hundreds of miles on the treadmill? Is the primary complaint that the orca won't be able to enjoy the scenery of the open ocean, and thus, will no longer find joy in its "migration"? This is the main reason some humans prefer to run outdoors instead of in the gym on the treadmill.
  - ProAm 11y ago
    If a treadmill was a humans only existence your argument would be valid.

schoen 11y ago

That seems like an excellent example of "one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens".

scoofy 11y ago

So, there is animal rights, and animal welfare. I think one of the main problems for orcas is size. Creating an appropriately sized habitat for them would be a gargantuan endeavor, however, if we could, i think a lot of us would be less vehemently opposed to keeping them in captivity. For pigs, this is entirely plausible. While i'm also very opposed to our current factory farming practices, since i'm fairly nihilistic about ending meat consumption for high functioning mammals in my lifetime, we could absolutely and trivially easily make their lives pleasant before slaughtering them for their delicious bacon. Yes, it would cause bacon to be more expensive, but it's definitely doable. This is simply impossible for orcas under the current paradigm. Even as someone who supports animal rights and welfare, i could see myself being okay with orcas in captivity, if we're talking about oceanic reservations, say, the size of Connecticut, but at that size, it'd be impossible for us to make them do tricks and crap that people go to sea world for.

asciimo 11y ago
It sounds like you support animal welfare, but not animal rights. I would expect someone who supports animal rights to not be OK with captivity for human gain.
- scoofy 11y ago
  This is why i pointed out that i was generally a nihilist on the subject. If we lived in a world in which the possibility that a ban on captivity for human gain could possibly exist, then it would be worth having that discussion. The fact is that we don't, and we very very probably won't within our lifetimes or our grandchildren's lifetime for that matter. To discuss the subject on those grounds seems counterproductive to me. I try to take a more game-theoretic approach. Support those that are doing more to change the culture of how we treat animals to minimize the harm that exists and will persist. This may even arguably go as far is purchasing potentially objectionable animal products from those that are trying to change the social norms of farming. The animal rights argument is perfectly good to have in the halls of academia, but in the world we live in, those of us who are good consequentialists may vastly differ in our approaches to how we should respond to the marketplace we live in to most effectively reduce the suffering that persists. It's also arguable that a diversity of approaches will be more effective due to the vast open-ended questions of how approaches will be accepted by the greater population. I for one think that convincing people that we should raise our "bacon" humanely will do vastly more for the reduction of suffering in the world than would telling people we should ban it because it's clearly immoral to consume.
noondip 11y ago
How would you feel if the moment you were born someone else had already planned the day of your execution?
- scoofy 11y ago
  This is such a sophomoric approach to ethics it hardly deserves a response. Animals are not humans. They are hardly likely to have the same capacity to suffer. Anthropomorphizing them is not a credible way to talk about the issue. At best they ought to be compared to a severely mentally disabled human. Still deserving of dignity, but hardly treated as equal.
  - noondip 11y ago
    Rather than conjecture, why not educate yourself with free films such as Earthlings (available on YouTube) to learn what the experience of others really is like? Edit: your assumption that animals' capacity to suffer and experience fear, pain and misery is dissimilar to ours is rooted in ignorance. If it's academic proof you're desperately after, a great jumping off point is by reading The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, signed by a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge in 2012. http://www.earthintransition.org/2012/07/scientists-declare-nonhuman-animals-are-conscious/ http://www.earthintransition.org/2012/07/scientists-declare-... http://www.livescience.com/39481-time-to-declare-animal-sentience.html http://www.livescience.com/39481-time-to-declare-animal-sent...
    - scoofy 11y ago
      I don't understand what this means. I'm a stanch advocate of animal welfare and rights. I think factory farms are absurdly ludicrously immoral. I think that the vast majority of ways we currently raise our mammals and birds is absurdly immoral. Why would watching an animal rights advocacy film help. I was simply objecting to your anthropomorphizing of the way our fellow mammals perceive the world. It's a ludicrous position to take in a serious conversation about ethics. Physical capacity to suffer is one thing, and it's not difficult to argue that mammals suffer similar to the way we do physically, but asking "how I would feel," as though their conscious experience with regards to knowledge of mortality would be similar to ours is speaking nonsense. Furthermore, pointing to an advocacy documentary film to assert a position that even our best academic researchers have little if any way of speaking to seems flippant.

DanBC 11y ago

> and thus don't really care about their conditions in captivity. Several vigorous campaigns existed to improve the conditions for pigs. Look at England for an example, where changes in English law were voluntarily followed by Danish and Dutch pig farmers so they could compete on welfare standards. See also "free range" eggs and higher welfare farm standards. Plenty of people like eating meat but will only buy meat from animals that have higher welfare standards.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
As soon as vat grown meat surpasses traditional meat sources in cost and quality, it'll make life a whole lot easier for everyone.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Except farmers, and the business eco-system that's grown around them. Oh, and possibly everyone else if vat-grown is more expensive and/or more energy intensive causing the economies of scale for traditional meat production to alter ... will vat-grown be able to beat insects as a source of protein?

funkyy 11y ago

Pigs are meant to be kept as farm animals. They were selectively domesticated. Same with chickens, sheep, cows etc. Problem with Orcas is that they are not use to live in captivity. They were just caught in the sea and forced to do tricks. Its same with large wild cats - they have been not selectively chosen over decades to join the human society.

rosser 11y ago
Nothing is "meant" to be kept as a farm animal. The choices we've made about which animals we keep as livestock, which we keep as pets, and which we keep in zoos (or, per TFA, only slightly oversized swimming pools) are in absolutely no way derived from some sort of teleological mandate.
- vacri 11y ago
  > Nothing is "meant" to be kept as a farm animal. Modern sheep are. If they're not sheared regularly and their fleece is allowed to grow, they end up suffering quite a lot - they are not suitable for living in the wild, and in the other direction, are also not particularly suitable as pets. Yes, nature is not a thing with intentions, but modern sheep are a combination of natural processes and humans (who do have intentions) meddling with things.
rubber_duck 11y ago
While I agree with you I feel like that's a technical problem - if you want to argue from that position it should be a question of "how do we keep them in captivity efficiently/safely" both for them and humans rather than "should we keep them" and phrasing it as a moral question. Also the article's point and general theme seems kind of weak : >In line with this, several decades of observation show that orcas are not naturally violent towards humans. There are no recorded cases of a wild orca killing a human. This implies (and the surrounding text) - that this behavior is a result of captivity changing their behavior. How often do orcas and humans meet in a setting that would allow them to harm a human in a similar way they would - say a penguin ? Would it be plausible that they would do a similar thing in the wild in a similar setting given enough opportunities (since trainers interact with them constantly) ?

azakai 11y ago

But we should. Future generations will judge us very poorly on this.

cookiecaper 11y ago
>Future generations will judge us very poorly on this. Generally, I find such speculative statements worthless. It's another way to say "I really think this should be obvious and that my idea will eventually be widely accepted to be correct". That's all well and good, but everyone thinks that about their own thoughts. It really doesn't contribute anything to the argument; it's an attempt to shame your opponent into agreeing with you by invoking his future childrens' potential disdain. I also think that if you really want to know what future generations will think of something, you should refer to what prior generations thought of it. By this standard, future generations are likely to taunt us mercilessly for caring so much about what we imagine to be a whale's internal monologue.
- azakai 11y ago
  I disagree. I think we do have ways to think about what future generations will judge us harshly about. Obviously some things we can't tell, like what clothes fashions will be in 50 or 100 years. But when you get down to matters of morality and ethics, I believe we do see a clear progression over time. And we can predict it, to some extent. That's the first reason I think we'll be judged harshly here. A second reason is that we can already see this trend happening. More and more people care about cruelty-free farming, as well as are becoming vegetarians or vegans. Of course, that trend might stop or reverse. But we have reasonable grounds to think it might continue. If it does, then eventually current society will look pretty bad. A third reason is that this isn't an arbitrary issue that we happen to see a trend on. A lot of people that eat meat realize there is something wrong with things like factory farming. They ignore it, and it's easy to ignore for the most part. But when they think about it, they realize it's immoral. Most people are good in the sense that they do not want to harm other living beings; caring about animal suffering is just a natural outcome of that. In other words, most people don't need to be convinced on the merits of the issue. What most don't yet realize is the huge extent of the problem, and that there are good alternatives. See also this article for further reasoning along these lines: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35667355 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35667355

ProAm 11y ago

It's different for animals that naturally migrate hundreds of thousands of miles a year and forcing them to live in a few thousand cubic meters of water.

cookiecaper 11y ago
Why? Can't they swim hundreds of miles within their enclosures, just as humans can walk hundreds of miles on the treadmill? Is the primary complaint that the orca won't be able to enjoy the scenery of the open ocean, and thus, will no longer find joy in its "migration"? This is the main reason some humans prefer to run outdoors instead of in the gym on the treadmill.
- ProAm 11y ago
  If a treadmill was a humans only existence your argument would be valid.