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> not because we are humans and therefore more valuable to each other I value my children more than I value your children, but you will likely disagree with my

> not because we are humans and therefore more valuable to each other I value my children more than I value your children, but you will likely disagree with my assessment, even though it isn’t unexpected. And I would have to admit my assessment is not objective. > Never mind the fact that we have consciousness and ego and complex nervous systems, whereas lobsters do not. That’s how speciesism works: we try to find some kind of difference between us and other creatures, and then say, because they lack X they are not worthy of consideration. It’s okay if they suffer. This is precisely the same logic that was used to justify slavery, for example. The other problem is that the line keeps moving, because we keep discovering how similar we are to other animals. There was a time when science claimed that animals did not have emotions, which any dog owner could tell you is nonsense. The truth is that we do not really know exactly what a lobster experiences. Shouldn’t we therefore be cautious? I honestly believe that at some point, the majority of humans will look at our system of factory farming and “harvesting” of wildlife in much the same way that today we view slavery, colonialism and other egregious examples of human disregard for other lives. I am not saying they are the same thing, but I do think that they are in the same category.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
That's why we try to deal with killings in a most humane way possible (basically a bullet to the head for larger animals, and cutting the neck for smaller ones).... not always, not everywhere, but we try, and we point the fingers at those who don't. Animals on the other side really don't care: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464
- jacquesm 5y ago
  And boiling lobsters alive.
glenstein 5y ago
>because they lack X they are not worthy of consideration. It’s okay if they suffer. This is precisely the same logic that was used to justify slavery, for example. Wowzers, this is the most strawmanny characterisation of this view I think I've seen outside of scifi villains in B movies. I don't think the most charitable view is that species "deserve to suffer." It's that they have different capacities for suffering, and that differences in the complexity of the nociceptive and the nervous systems are inputs into our understanding when we try to figure this stuff out. That leads to, say, jellyfish being treated with different moral urgency than mammals, or eggs being treated differently than hatched birds. The B-Movie scifi villian characterization also is problematic not just because of it's anti-intellectual shallowness, but also because it considers moral assessment in it's negative sense but not it's positive. Namely, that this is about tending to the needs and moral well-being in cases where the urgency in protecting it is greatest, and we can make good choices to do the most good. We make choices that prioritize the well-being and safety of our children in ways that take their well-being seriously, and we prioritize saving our children from a burning building in a way that we don't prioritize saving the mice living in the basement of that burning building. To treat them equally, or to prioritize the other way around, would find someone facing the moral condemnation of the community as well as legal consequences, and nobody would be convinced to withhold those judgments by speeches about speciesism.
- boston_clone 5y ago
  Morality doesn't necessarily require deep intellectualism, I think. Much of the urgency in the vignettes of moral assessment isn't realistic, either. To say it simply, there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do. There is much about our practices that absolutely reflects an absence of consideration - shouldn't we be working to improve that? Saying that there is an inverse prioritization is not the matter at hand. We're not even on equal ground. It's just raising the bar for a thankfully growing number of different animals off the floor. I maybe didn't grok your point of view on speciesism, though - could you try to reframe it?
  - glenstein 5y ago
    >Morality doesn't necessarily require deep intellectualism I don't think that a statement about avoiding pitfalls of anti-intellectualism needs to be read as endorsing the opposite extreme, and I don't making that kind of assumption contributes to constructive conversation. >To say it simply, there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do. This response to the burning building example is fascinating and strange to me for a number of reasons. For one I started by providing a simple, clear cut, face value example of a case where doing good means considering how to prioritize wellbeing of different species. And as far as the example itself is concerned, you're just not engaging with it at all, and asking about a different example. I mean, fair enough, we can get to your chosen example, but I already feel like we're a bit off kilter. If that were not already strange enough, you are saying "there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do." Well, maybe not in your chosen example, but in some other cases there is, quite literally as in the example I just mentioned. And to be clear, it's not just that I want my example to be seen because I think I'm special. It's that if someone says there is no such thing as that proverbial burning burning (e.g. no reason to treat species differently), and I show an example showing exactly that, it would seem important to engage with that example, not just to switch to consideration of other examples. So I don't know what the disconnect is here. As to your example, well, sure. I think you are right, there is no proverbial burning building requiring harmful farming practices, and in my opinion those should be abolished, as you can argue there is no calculus in which they are neccessary Perfectly true, both in the literal sense, and as a matter of principle that it's a case where you don't have to think of it in terms of tradeoffs. But here again, I am wondering where this is coming from? Do you think "save humans from fire before mice" means ignore harmful farming practices? Where are you getting that? >Saying that there is an inverse prioritization is not the matter at hand. Again, very strange to me. I feel like my comments are anchored to reality by the fact that I try to stick closely to responding directly to specific things that someone else said. In this case, the commenter I was replying to was speaking generally about speciesm. I felt this was narrow, and that a more fair characterization about what drives this way of thinking is that it's how to make positive, morally good choices, in contrast to their one-sided view that only talked about it in the negative sense, in terms of inflicting harm. For some reason, you have come in and decided that me responding directly to that is "not the matter at hand." But again, it very much was, because the subject was speciesm writ large, and I was speaking to that. So I just don't know what you are talking about, at least not without a bit more framing.
syberiyxx 5y ago
Just as well look at computers as equally worthy of our empathy? There are two sides to the equation, one is our desire to survive, conquer, etc. The other is our concern for what is alive. Both are part of being human. Neither will win out because both traits are more successful than either by itself.
stathibus 5y ago
This is not at all the same logic that was used to justify slavery, unless you're trying to claim that actually lobsters are people? But it seems like you are just grandstanding and not trying to address the actual point here.
Gwarzo 5y ago
"I honestly believe that at some point, the majority of humans will look at our system of factory farming and “harvesting” of wildlife in much the same way that today we view slavery, colonialism and other egregious examples of human disregard for other lives. I am not saying they are the same thing, but I do think that they are in the same category.' Do you believe that in our current world state we have some magical alternative we could use to feed the near 8 billion human beings that currently inhabit this planet?
- pell 5y ago
  Animals are by far the most unsustainable food source. If you wish to feed 8 billion people you'd be foolish to rely on animals.
- ornornor 5y ago
  We apparently won’t be able to feed 10 billion in the near future. Because using 40% of the worlds landmass to grow plants to feed animals to feed humans is as inefficient as it gets. If we skipped the animals and ate the crops directly it would be far more efficient in every dimension (calories/area, protein/area, environmental impact)
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    You're not talking about animals in general though. You're talking about cows. Because every other animal we eat, eats something we can't eat. Sheep and goats eat hay, pigs and chicken eat garbage basically and fish eat ... ocean garbage. And while it's trut that we can't feed 10 billion people on cows, that's also true for the fewer billions we have today: the most commonly consumed kinds of meat are chicken and pork, not beef. Beef is the most commonly consumed kind of meat in affluent western countries that are also home to the most vocal vegan and animal rights movements, which goes a long way to explain why many of the discussions about what we eat say "meat" when they mean "beef".
AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
In your definition of speciesism, you are doing exactly what you accuse your-defined "speciesists" of. You are manufacturing ("try to find some") a definition of speciesism to paint other-people as the bad guy. Your comparison of their actions with slavery is just to demotivate any response. In animal kingdom, animals kill each other ruthlessly. African dogs and other animals eat their prey from back-to-front while they are alive. Are all animals speciesists? Are all animals committing an act equivalent to slavery? Humanity survived on hunting for tens of thousands of years. So the only reason we survived is because we were "speciesists"? If that's the case, then I am okay with being a speciesist. We have to value our species over other species - if it ever came to choosing 1 human being or a million <insert animal>, we would always choose a human being (given that killing those animals won't destroy the ecosystem, thus harming human beings).
- ornornor 5y ago
  > In animal kingdom, animals kill each other ruthlessly Not that long ago, humans routinely tortured, killed, raped other humans sometimes even just for fun (and in some places of the world very much still do). Humans (as a species) are destroying their ecosystem past the point of no return, putting their very existence in question. These two things can also be interpreted as lack of self awareness or any other property you deem worthy in a living being, thus making them inferior to another species.
  - AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
    > Humans (as a species) are destroying their ecosystem past the point of no return, putting their very existence in question. I strongly disagree. We have more food than ever before. More clean water than ever before. More safety and prosperity than ever before. More innovation than ever before. As for our ecosystem, humanity has solved any and every calamity ever before. And we will solve this one as well. Don't get me wrong - we should not take climate change lightly just because of the belief that we will solve it. We should take it seriously and tackle it head-on, but with the belief in our ability in problem solving and innovation. We cannot solve a problem if we believe that humanity is going to destroy itself. >These two things can also be interpreted as lack of self awareness or any other property you deem worthy in a living being, thus making them inferior to another species. I don't understand this sentence. Can you clarify?

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

That's why we try to deal with killings in a most humane way possible (basically a bullet to the head for larger animals, and cutting the neck for smaller ones).... not always, not everywhere, but we try, and we point the fingers at those who don't. Animals on the other side really don't care: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/olga-moskalyova_n_930464

jacquesm 5y ago
And boiling lobsters alive.

glenstein 5y ago

>because they lack X they are not worthy of consideration. It’s okay if they suffer. This is precisely the same logic that was used to justify slavery, for example. Wowzers, this is the most strawmanny characterisation of this view I think I've seen outside of scifi villains in B movies. I don't think the most charitable view is that species "deserve to suffer." It's that they have different capacities for suffering, and that differences in the complexity of the nociceptive and the nervous systems are inputs into our understanding when we try to figure this stuff out. That leads to, say, jellyfish being treated with different moral urgency than mammals, or eggs being treated differently than hatched birds. The B-Movie scifi villian characterization also is problematic not just because of it's anti-intellectual shallowness, but also because it considers moral assessment in it's negative sense but not it's positive. Namely, that this is about tending to the needs and moral well-being in cases where the urgency in protecting it is greatest, and we can make good choices to do the most good. We make choices that prioritize the well-being and safety of our children in ways that take their well-being seriously, and we prioritize saving our children from a burning building in a way that we don't prioritize saving the mice living in the basement of that burning building. To treat them equally, or to prioritize the other way around, would find someone facing the moral condemnation of the community as well as legal consequences, and nobody would be convinced to withhold those judgments by speeches about speciesism.

boston_clone 5y ago
Morality doesn't necessarily require deep intellectualism, I think. Much of the urgency in the vignettes of moral assessment isn't realistic, either. To say it simply, there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do. There is much about our practices that absolutely reflects an absence of consideration - shouldn't we be working to improve that? Saying that there is an inverse prioritization is not the matter at hand. We're not even on equal ground. It's just raising the bar for a thankfully growing number of different animals off the floor. I maybe didn't grok your point of view on speciesism, though - could you try to reframe it?
- glenstein 5y ago
  >Morality doesn't necessarily require deep intellectualism I don't think that a statement about avoiding pitfalls of anti-intellectualism needs to be read as endorsing the opposite extreme, and I don't making that kind of assumption contributes to constructive conversation. >To say it simply, there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do. This response to the burning building example is fascinating and strange to me for a number of reasons. For one I started by providing a simple, clear cut, face value example of a case where doing good means considering how to prioritize wellbeing of different species. And as far as the example itself is concerned, you're just not engaging with it at all, and asking about a different example. I mean, fair enough, we can get to your chosen example, but I already feel like we're a bit off kilter. If that were not already strange enough, you are saying "there is no proverbial burning building that requires us to farm animals in the way that we currently do." Well, maybe not in your chosen example, but in some other cases there is, quite literally as in the example I just mentioned. And to be clear, it's not just that I want my example to be seen because I think I'm special. It's that if someone says there is no such thing as that proverbial burning burning (e.g. no reason to treat species differently), and I show an example showing exactly that, it would seem important to engage with that example, not just to switch to consideration of other examples. So I don't know what the disconnect is here. As to your example, well, sure. I think you are right, there is no proverbial burning building requiring harmful farming practices, and in my opinion those should be abolished, as you can argue there is no calculus in which they are neccessary Perfectly true, both in the literal sense, and as a matter of principle that it's a case where you don't have to think of it in terms of tradeoffs. But here again, I am wondering where this is coming from? Do you think "save humans from fire before mice" means ignore harmful farming practices? Where are you getting that? >Saying that there is an inverse prioritization is not the matter at hand. Again, very strange to me. I feel like my comments are anchored to reality by the fact that I try to stick closely to responding directly to specific things that someone else said. In this case, the commenter I was replying to was speaking generally about speciesm. I felt this was narrow, and that a more fair characterization about what drives this way of thinking is that it's how to make positive, morally good choices, in contrast to their one-sided view that only talked about it in the negative sense, in terms of inflicting harm. For some reason, you have come in and decided that me responding directly to that is "not the matter at hand." But again, it very much was, because the subject was speciesm writ large, and I was speaking to that. So I just don't know what you are talking about, at least not without a bit more framing.

syberiyxx 5y ago

Just as well look at computers as equally worthy of our empathy? There are two sides to the equation, one is our desire to survive, conquer, etc. The other is our concern for what is alive. Both are part of being human. Neither will win out because both traits are more successful than either by itself.

stathibus 5y ago

This is not at all the same logic that was used to justify slavery, unless you're trying to claim that actually lobsters are people? But it seems like you are just grandstanding and not trying to address the actual point here.

Gwarzo 5y ago

"I honestly believe that at some point, the majority of humans will look at our system of factory farming and “harvesting” of wildlife in much the same way that today we view slavery, colonialism and other egregious examples of human disregard for other lives. I am not saying they are the same thing, but I do think that they are in the same category.' Do you believe that in our current world state we have some magical alternative we could use to feed the near 8 billion human beings that currently inhabit this planet?

pell 5y ago
Animals are by far the most unsustainable food source. If you wish to feed 8 billion people you'd be foolish to rely on animals.
ornornor 5y ago
We apparently won’t be able to feed 10 billion in the near future. Because using 40% of the worlds landmass to grow plants to feed animals to feed humans is as inefficient as it gets. If we skipped the animals and ate the crops directly it would be far more efficient in every dimension (calories/area, protein/area, environmental impact)
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  You're not talking about animals in general though. You're talking about cows. Because every other animal we eat, eats something we can't eat. Sheep and goats eat hay, pigs and chicken eat garbage basically and fish eat ... ocean garbage. And while it's trut that we can't feed 10 billion people on cows, that's also true for the fewer billions we have today: the most commonly consumed kinds of meat are chicken and pork, not beef. Beef is the most commonly consumed kind of meat in affluent western countries that are also home to the most vocal vegan and animal rights movements, which goes a long way to explain why many of the discussions about what we eat say "meat" when they mean "beef".

AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago

In your definition of speciesism, you are doing exactly what you accuse your-defined "speciesists" of. You are manufacturing ("try to find some") a definition of speciesism to paint other-people as the bad guy. Your comparison of their actions with slavery is just to demotivate any response. In animal kingdom, animals kill each other ruthlessly. African dogs and other animals eat their prey from back-to-front while they are alive. Are all animals speciesists? Are all animals committing an act equivalent to slavery? Humanity survived on hunting for tens of thousands of years. So the only reason we survived is because we were "speciesists"? If that's the case, then I am okay with being a speciesist. We have to value our species over other species - if it ever came to choosing 1 human being or a million <insert animal>, we would always choose a human being (given that killing those animals won't destroy the ecosystem, thus harming human beings).

ornornor 5y ago
> In animal kingdom, animals kill each other ruthlessly Not that long ago, humans routinely tortured, killed, raped other humans sometimes even just for fun (and in some places of the world very much still do). Humans (as a species) are destroying their ecosystem past the point of no return, putting their very existence in question. These two things can also be interpreted as lack of self awareness or any other property you deem worthy in a living being, thus making them inferior to another species.
- AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
  > Humans (as a species) are destroying their ecosystem past the point of no return, putting their very existence in question. I strongly disagree. We have more food than ever before. More clean water than ever before. More safety and prosperity than ever before. More innovation than ever before. As for our ecosystem, humanity has solved any and every calamity ever before. And we will solve this one as well. Don't get me wrong - we should not take climate change lightly just because of the belief that we will solve it. We should take it seriously and tackle it head-on, but with the belief in our ability in problem solving and innovation. We cannot solve a problem if we believe that humanity is going to destroy itself. >These two things can also be interpreted as lack of self awareness or any other property you deem worthy in a living being, thus making them inferior to another species. I don't understand this sentence. Can you clarify?