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For me, an almost-always vegan who eats cheese or meat in social settings, it was a general despair that the moral argument for veganism is so simple. It's easy

by ahelwer 10y ago

For me, an almost-always vegan who eats cheese or meat in social settings, it was a general despair that the moral argument for veganism is so simple. It's easy to intellectually coast in this area for a while, because all the arguments meat-eaters present in favor of eating meat are so astonishingly and universally dumb - we evolved to eat meat, meat gives me pleasure (ignoring consequences of that maxim), some distinction between humans and animals which falls apart under scrutiny or has consequences for treatment of the mentally disabled, etc. I've seen even very intelligent people put these forward. Converting from meat-eating to veganism carries with it a component of acknowledging an underlying personally-applicable horror in the world which is similar, I would say, to becoming atheist. It's thus nearly impossible to reason with reasonable people here, simply because the psychological consequence of losing the argument is so strong. PETA recognizes this, which is why their videos focus on the graphic ugliness of the meat industry to provoke an emotional reaction. Anyway. I originally really liked the moral arguments for veganism as forwarded by Peter Singer, which of course is very similar to his argument in Famine, Affluence, and Morality - it's pretty much impossible to accept one but not the other. I have more problems with the consequences of the FAM argument - that we inexorably ought to use all our life for the benefit of others if we profess to care for others at all. This, to me, is such an absurd consequence as to throw the entire enterprise of morality as a chain of material implication following from axioms (very attractive to a computer scientist!) into doubt. Which, I've been told, casts me out into the great despair of postmodernism where we don't have access to any meaning or oughts at all. I'd love to talk about this with someone who knows more about it, since my philosophical education pretty much comprises a single ethics course in university, some existentialist literature, some SEP reading, and a whole lot of PEL episodes.

wutbrodo 10y ago
> It's thus nearly impossible to reason with reasonable people here, simply because the psychological consequence of losing the argument is so strong. I'd dispute the characterization of these people as reasonable, but given how common it is, I suppose I'm descending into pedantry a bit here. It may seem enormously childish (and it is), but I know very few people who seem able to acknowledge that an action of theirs may not be the optimally moral one. Almost universally, this baseline of ethical maturity is replaced with twisted, desperate contortionate reasoning as to why their actions are actually in the morally superior one. I personally still eat meat; I tried vegetarianism a few years ago but started weightlifting shortly after, which tends to have a pretty profound effect on my appetite and dietary needs. The difference is that I acknowledge that this is a moral failing of mine: I'm not a morally perfect being.
- dTal 10y ago
  I am not sure you get to claim any points for acknowledging your own moral failing. If anything, this kind of ethical "living in sin" is even worse than contortionist justification because you debase your own ethics, turning them into something that can be cast aside when convenient. You have two options - change your morals (accept and embrace that your desire to lift weights outweighs your concern for other beings). Or change your behaviour (stop either lifting weights or eating meat).
  - joveian 10y ago
    I think this desire to feel like you are living a morally perfect life is strong in most people but incompatible with an honest observation of the world from just about any ethical standpoint. There are an endless number of Very Bad Things in the world and an endless number of things you can personally do to improve them. Really improving how your life reflects your ethics will necessarily involve a huge amount of failure, false starts, and half measures. The best results possible will never get you that far on an absolute scale. Even when a better path is fairly clear, human beings rarely make lasting changes in behavior instantly; there tend to be a lot of details and that need to be worked out and new movement patterns to learn. It is not clear from a brief message on the internet what a person has or has not done to make such changes. Even without intentionally making changes over time, you can recognize things that other people do that are better than what you do and be more likely to copy them or otherwise be inspired from them.
  - wutbrodo 10y ago
    > I am not sure you get to claim any points for acknowledging your own moral failing. I get where you're coming from philosophically, but have a couple major points of disagreement. 1) I don't consider willful ignorance and dishonesty to be preferable to honesty 2) I'm speaking specifically of people whose actions contradict their own stated moral preferences. An ethical system that's brittle enough to fall apart with a couple pointed questions barely meets the definition of an ethical system. 3) Consequentially speaking, lying to protect your own self-image has consequences beyond your own life. We're social animals and bullshit causes collateral damage.
abtinf 10y ago
For a practical moral philosophy, one in which the "enterprise of morality as a chain of material implication following from axioms" is foundational and embraced, try learning about Objectivism. As a student of Objectivism, I find it to be a powerful tool in everyday decision making. For a quick 1-hour introduction, see this Dave Rubin interview with Yaron Brook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=089xOB9bbhU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=089xOB9bbhU For fiction illustrating the principles, you could read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145/ https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145... https://www.amazon.com/Fountainhead-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191153/ https://www.amazon.com/Fountainhead-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191153/ Or for non-fiction, try The Virtue of Selfishness. https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0451163931/ https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversa... Or if you prefer podcasts addressing practical questions, try The Peikoff Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/peikoff-com-q-a-on-ayn-rand/id305318840 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/peikoff-com-q-a-on-ayn-r... Or search for specific questions here http://www.peikoff.com/podcasts/ http://www.peikoff.com/podcasts/
pseudonom- 10y ago
You may already know both of these things, but due to your request for more info, I'll err on the side of overinforming: > I have more problems with the consequences of the FAM argument - that we inexorably ought to use all our life for the benefit of others if we profess to care for others at all. This, to me, is such an absurd consequence as to throw the entire enterprise of morality as a chain of material implication following from axioms (very attractive to a computer scientist!) into doubt. This line of argument is called "the demandingness objection". There's a decent bit of philosophical literature under that heading. If one embraces the implications of FAM rather than rejecting them, that probably ends up looking something like "effective altruism". (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/extreme-altruism-should-you-care-for-strangers-as-much-as-family https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/extreme-altrui... is an article about effective altruism that seems relevant to your concerns)
lsd5you 10y ago
Not claiming to 'know' anything, but I do have a view. I think unfortunately the post-modernist view is ultimately correct. We can have ever more sophisticated debates but the same arguments made by 18 year old philosophy students are ultimately unassailable. Similar to the way a 10 year olds athiest (as great as Richard Dawkings is) holds all the key arguments about the non-existence of god. Utilitarianism is fundamentally rooted in the human as a platonic ideal and not just some clever animal. Once you invite other animals on to the continuum, what do we do? Bulldoze all the natural habitat to prevent predation and cruelty (whilst softly euthanasing all the animals)? Do we want to live in a (totalitarian) world with zero suffering? Is there a value on genuine diversity of thought? Do we diversity of thought - to have a robust society? i.e. past a point does utilitarianism itself provide disutility? Utilitarianism like all ethical systems isn't wrong, it is just a limited perspective more a rule of thumb or a model that only works between certain parameters. That is it is a good system for determining train ticket prices or infrastructure planning, but less useful as a complete life philosophy. The same could be said for libertarianism. Great idea ... but you still need property laws ... and police ... and so on. Philosophy is in many cases just a kind of intellectual accessory. One version may be right in the same sense that a certain pair of jeans look great. I think if you truly care about the truth and not social status ... etc. the valid scope of philosophy is greatly reduced. The further you look at it our true norms come practical realities and from what we grow up believing. The same lense can be applied to programming philosophies (Waterfall, Agile ... etc.). I think as programmers (at least the experienced ones amongst us) we do eventually learn that things are never as simple as just that and so we instinctively know to moderate our observance of platonic ways of thinking. This extends to ethical systems.
- jdietrich 10y ago
  >Utilitarianism is fundamentally rooted in the human as a platonic ideal and not just some clever animal. Once you invite other animals on to the continuum, what do we do? No, it really isn't. Peter Singer is both the leading utilitarian philosopher of our age and our most eloquent advocate for animal welfare. A utilitarian calculus that includes animal welfare really isn't very complex. You simply expand "the greatest good to the greatest number of people" to include all animals. That might lead to a lot of uncomfortable and counter-intuitive conclusions, but it's not some sort of moral alchemy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer
akud 10y ago
I've also encountered arguments along the lines of "there's this other suffering you _aren't_ preventing". Emotionally it has the same feel as the drowning child argument[1] by Pete Singer. That argument engenders a feeling of hopelessness for me, because I can't assail its logic but it implies a vast array of suffering for which I am morally culpable. I think meat eaters feel similarly. When faced with the cognitive dissonance, they shrink. Now, I mostly shrug and say, "I'm doing the best I can." [1]: https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704--.htm https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704--.htm

by ahelwer 10y ago

wutbrodo 10y ago

> It's thus nearly impossible to reason with reasonable people here, simply because the psychological consequence of losing the argument is so strong. I'd dispute the characterization of these people as reasonable, but given how common it is, I suppose I'm descending into pedantry a bit here. It may seem enormously childish (and it is), but I know very few people who seem able to acknowledge that an action of theirs may not be the optimally moral one. Almost universally, this baseline of ethical maturity is replaced with twisted, desperate contortionate reasoning as to why their actions are actually in the morally superior one. I personally still eat meat; I tried vegetarianism a few years ago but started weightlifting shortly after, which tends to have a pretty profound effect on my appetite and dietary needs. The difference is that I acknowledge that this is a moral failing of mine: I'm not a morally perfect being.

dTal 10y ago
I am not sure you get to claim any points for acknowledging your own moral failing. If anything, this kind of ethical "living in sin" is even worse than contortionist justification because you debase your own ethics, turning them into something that can be cast aside when convenient. You have two options - change your morals (accept and embrace that your desire to lift weights outweighs your concern for other beings). Or change your behaviour (stop either lifting weights or eating meat).
- joveian 10y ago
  I think this desire to feel like you are living a morally perfect life is strong in most people but incompatible with an honest observation of the world from just about any ethical standpoint. There are an endless number of Very Bad Things in the world and an endless number of things you can personally do to improve them. Really improving how your life reflects your ethics will necessarily involve a huge amount of failure, false starts, and half measures. The best results possible will never get you that far on an absolute scale. Even when a better path is fairly clear, human beings rarely make lasting changes in behavior instantly; there tend to be a lot of details and that need to be worked out and new movement patterns to learn. It is not clear from a brief message on the internet what a person has or has not done to make such changes. Even without intentionally making changes over time, you can recognize things that other people do that are better than what you do and be more likely to copy them or otherwise be inspired from them.
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  > I am not sure you get to claim any points for acknowledging your own moral failing. I get where you're coming from philosophically, but have a couple major points of disagreement. 1) I don't consider willful ignorance and dishonesty to be preferable to honesty 2) I'm speaking specifically of people whose actions contradict their own stated moral preferences. An ethical system that's brittle enough to fall apart with a couple pointed questions barely meets the definition of an ethical system. 3) Consequentially speaking, lying to protect your own self-image has consequences beyond your own life. We're social animals and bullshit causes collateral damage.

abtinf 10y ago

For a practical moral philosophy, one in which the "enterprise of morality as a chain of material implication following from axioms" is foundational and embraced, try learning about Objectivism. As a student of Objectivism, I find it to be a powerful tool in everyday decision making. For a quick 1-hour introduction, see this Dave Rubin interview with Yaron Brook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=089xOB9bbhU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=089xOB9bbhU For fiction illustrating the principles, you could read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145/ https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145... https://www.amazon.com/Fountainhead-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191153/ https://www.amazon.com/Fountainhead-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191153/ Or for non-fiction, try The Virtue of Selfishness. https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0451163931/ https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversa... Or if you prefer podcasts addressing practical questions, try The Peikoff Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/peikoff-com-q-a-on-ayn-rand/id305318840 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/peikoff-com-q-a-on-ayn-r... Or search for specific questions here http://www.peikoff.com/podcasts/ http://www.peikoff.com/podcasts/

pseudonom- 10y ago

You may already know both of these things, but due to your request for more info, I'll err on the side of overinforming: > I have more problems with the consequences of the FAM argument - that we inexorably ought to use all our life for the benefit of others if we profess to care for others at all. This, to me, is such an absurd consequence as to throw the entire enterprise of morality as a chain of material implication following from axioms (very attractive to a computer scientist!) into doubt. This line of argument is called "the demandingness objection". There's a decent bit of philosophical literature under that heading. If one embraces the implications of FAM rather than rejecting them, that probably ends up looking something like "effective altruism". (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/extreme-altruism-should-you-care-for-strangers-as-much-as-family https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/extreme-altrui... is an article about effective altruism that seems relevant to your concerns)

lsd5you 10y ago

Not claiming to 'know' anything, but I do have a view. I think unfortunately the post-modernist view is ultimately correct. We can have ever more sophisticated debates but the same arguments made by 18 year old philosophy students are ultimately unassailable. Similar to the way a 10 year olds athiest (as great as Richard Dawkings is) holds all the key arguments about the non-existence of god. Utilitarianism is fundamentally rooted in the human as a platonic ideal and not just some clever animal. Once you invite other animals on to the continuum, what do we do? Bulldoze all the natural habitat to prevent predation and cruelty (whilst softly euthanasing all the animals)? Do we want to live in a (totalitarian) world with zero suffering? Is there a value on genuine diversity of thought? Do we diversity of thought - to have a robust society? i.e. past a point does utilitarianism itself provide disutility? Utilitarianism like all ethical systems isn't wrong, it is just a limited perspective more a rule of thumb or a model that only works between certain parameters. That is it is a good system for determining train ticket prices or infrastructure planning, but less useful as a complete life philosophy. The same could be said for libertarianism. Great idea ... but you still need property laws ... and police ... and so on. Philosophy is in many cases just a kind of intellectual accessory. One version may be right in the same sense that a certain pair of jeans look great. I think if you truly care about the truth and not social status ... etc. the valid scope of philosophy is greatly reduced. The further you look at it our true norms come practical realities and from what we grow up believing. The same lense can be applied to programming philosophies (Waterfall, Agile ... etc.). I think as programmers (at least the experienced ones amongst us) we do eventually learn that things are never as simple as just that and so we instinctively know to moderate our observance of platonic ways of thinking. This extends to ethical systems.

jdietrich 10y ago
>Utilitarianism is fundamentally rooted in the human as a platonic ideal and not just some clever animal. Once you invite other animals on to the continuum, what do we do? No, it really isn't. Peter Singer is both the leading utilitarian philosopher of our age and our most eloquent advocate for animal welfare. A utilitarian calculus that includes animal welfare really isn't very complex. You simply expand "the greatest good to the greatest number of people" to include all animals. That might lead to a lot of uncomfortable and counter-intuitive conclusions, but it's not some sort of moral alchemy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer

akud 10y ago

I've also encountered arguments along the lines of "there's this other suffering you _aren't_ preventing". Emotionally it has the same feel as the drowning child argument[1] by Pete Singer. That argument engenders a feeling of hopelessness for me, because I can't assail its logic but it implies a vast array of suffering for which I am morally culpable. I think meat eaters feel similarly. When faced with the cognitive dissonance, they shrink. Now, I mostly shrug and say, "I'm doing the best I can." [1]: https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704--.htm https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704--.htm