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People aren't going to start keeping the equivalent numbers of livestock as pets. If factory farmed animals fall out of fashion, most of these animals will all
by jonfw 7y ago
People aren't going to start keeping the equivalent numbers of livestock as pets. If factory farmed animals fall out of fashion, most of these animals will all die without reproducing and their bloodlines will cease to exist.
I agree that factory farming isn't ideal, but it seems to me that it is less ideal from the perspective of the animal for their entire bloodline to be terminated. To make a strong argument against factory farming, you have to provide a feasible alternative that IMO doesn't exist.
The question really comes down to whether or not you consider the opportunity to experience life, even a particularly difficult life, as a blessing.
- Half_pint 7y agoDo you think it's a blessing for dogs engaged in dogfighting to exist rather than not?
- Relys 7y ago"The question really comes down to whether or not you consider the opportunity to experience life, even a particularly difficult life, as a blessing." A life born of slavery, torture, and slaughter is not a life worth living. An animal doesn't really have the idea of a bloodline or legacy (just the primal urge to reproduce). The rationalization that a life of suffering is somehow doing the animal a favor is just asinine.
- jonfw 7y agoPersonally, I would accept any form of life before I chose not to exist at all, because I view life itself as a blessing. I understand that this isn't a philosophy that I share with everybody but you should still be respectful of it. Just how shitty of a life do you need to have to not be worth living? People who spend their lives in prison don't usually kill themselves. You can read stories about people captured as prisoners of war who have no hope that they will ever escape, but they don't attempt to kill themselves. Are they being "asinine"?
- bigwavedave 7y agoReally? Personally, if I died and there was a deity that gave me a choice to either be reincarnated into a slave that would be tortured from birth to death only to be eaten by my slavers at the end or the deity would go back in time to make it so my parents never met, I'd wholeheartedly choose the latter.
- jonfw 7y agoI'm not much of a philsopher, but if you're at all interested in the other side of thinking I would suggest Viktor Frankl. He was a jewish person in a nazi concentration camp and he make a much stronger argument than I can for this point of view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl > After enduring the suffering in these camps, Frankl concluded that even in the most absurd, painful, and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that, therefore, even suffering is meaningful.
- rhn_mk1 7y agoThank you for the link! After reading a little bit about meaning, it seems that it's something that has to be found first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_(existential) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_(existential) so even if there's meaning in the most miserable of lives, it's not guaranteed that it will be found. However, I haven't found anything suggesting that meaning makes life worth living, only a passing mention of it bringing happiness, which doesn't square with my understanding of torture or concentration camps. Am I misunderstanding what meaning is?
- GeneralTspoon 7y agoNot to minimize his suffering, but spending ~3 years out of his 92 year life being tortured isn't the same as a whole life of torture with no meaning or hope of escape.
- Relys 7y agoYeah, it's not like the Nazi's were breeding Jews for the express purpose of a life of slavery, torture, and slaughter. I think comparing it is a false equivalency. Also Godwin's Law.
- nojvek 7y agoI guess that's how the slaveowners thought back in the day too.
- taffer 7y ago> The question really comes down to whether or not you consider the opportunity to experience life, even a particularly difficult life, as a blessing. This seems to be an extreme pro-life point of view. You could ask exactly the same question about contraceptives.
- jonfw 7y agoJust because I don't think it's unethical to produce life in that circumstance, doesn't mean that I think it's your ethical imperative to produce life. Things don't go immediately from unethical to a moral imperative, there is a substantial gap that needs to be crossed.
- taffer 7y agoSo why do we inseminate animals artificially when there is no ethical imperative to produce life? And if you think life is so valuable by nature, why do we kill them then?
- jonfw 7y agoThe primary motivation to our livestock farming is certainly the utility, not some sort of ethical imperative. My argument isn't that it's virtuous to farm livestock, my argument is just that it isn't unethical.
- taffer 7y agoYou said: > it seems to me that it is less ideal from the perspective of the animal for their entire bloodline to be terminated I think if you compare the utility that livestock farming provides, with all the externalties and all the suffering it produces is indeed unethical.
- rhn_mk1 7y ago> Things don't go immediately from unethical to a moral imperative, there is a substantial gap that needs to be crossed. I would accept that in the general case, but since you let your utilitarian views slip, I have to ask: what's the difference? When something is immoral, it means it has a negative utility, and therefore it should be avoided. When something is moral, it has a positive utility, and therefore it's something that should be strived for, barring any other activity with greater utility. In my eyes, that makes every moral thing a utilitarian's moral imperative, with the only gap being things that have no moral value. How does my view differ from yours?