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I didn't say "humans should never cause animals to suffer." I said that humans shouldn't oppress animals, meaning that we shouldn't treat them as commodities a

I didn't say "humans should never cause animals to suffer." I said that humans shouldn't oppress animals, meaning that we shouldn't treat them as commodities and we should respect their rights. Obviously it's impossible to never cause any animal suffer, just as it's impossible to never cause any human to suffer. For instance, if you don't donate all of your available organs, you're causing another human to suffer and die. We accept that, because we'd rather live in a society where people have rights over their own bodies, even if it hurts others. However, just because you can't avoid hurting other humans sometimes, that doesn't mean that you're justified in enslaving, murdering, and eating humans. Likewise, it's wrong to do any of those things to animals, even if human civilization inevitably hurts animals sometimes. If you want to go from a pure act-utilitarian perspective (which is psychologically impossible, hence rule-utilitarianism), then indeed, you would not technically be a vegan, because you wouldn't hold any special principal regarding the use of animal products. However, if you were maximizing utility, you still wouldn't eat meat or dairy products, because those things cause massive suffering to animals, and cause environmental damage, with no benefit (except taste and slightly easier access to B12) to humans living in developed economies.

noxer 6y ago
>humans shouldn't oppress animals, meaning that we shouldn't treat them as commodities and we should respect their rights. That however is not even veganism anymore. >However, if you were maximizing utility, you still wouldn't eat meat or dairy products, because those things cause massive suffering to animals... Humans have been doing animal population control since hundreds of years because we eat them. If we would not eat them we would need to find a non-lethal way to do that (which would probably still not respect their assumed rights), else many animals would have massive suffering too. Nature never optimizes to reduce suffering it optimizes for survival. That's why a prey population can grows drastically faster than "healthy" and then gets reduced either by a predator population or the lack of resources. These circles repeat forever and humans have been "counter hunting" since hundreds of years for food and other animal products but also because we do not want exploding populations followed by mass extinction (sometimes called plagues). So if you really would want to maximizing utility and minimize suffering you would almost certainly have to go some middle way that does justify killing animals if it reduces more death and at that point it would be unethical to let the killed animal go to waist. That however doesn't work if animals should have the same rights as humans. And it also doesn't work with any popular interpretation of veganism.

noxer 6y ago

>humans shouldn't oppress animals, meaning that we shouldn't treat them as commodities and we should respect their rights. That however is not even veganism anymore. >However, if you were maximizing utility, you still wouldn't eat meat or dairy products, because those things cause massive suffering to animals... Humans have been doing animal population control since hundreds of years because we eat them. If we would not eat them we would need to find a non-lethal way to do that (which would probably still not respect their assumed rights), else many animals would have massive suffering too. Nature never optimizes to reduce suffering it optimizes for survival. That's why a prey population can grows drastically faster than "healthy" and then gets reduced either by a predator population or the lack of resources. These circles repeat forever and humans have been "counter hunting" since hundreds of years for food and other animal products but also because we do not want exploding populations followed by mass extinction (sometimes called plagues). So if you really would want to maximizing utility and minimize suffering you would almost certainly have to go some middle way that does justify killing animals if it reduces more death and at that point it would be unethical to let the killed animal go to waist. That however doesn't work if animals should have the same rights as humans. And it also doesn't work with any popular interpretation of veganism.