IF killing animals is ok BUT we are not ok with arbitrarily high amounts of suffering, THEN" (hunting is ok)
I've been thinking about the statement you made in another thread, that killing is "morally neutral" and is OK as long as it doesn't cause suffering. I don't think I agree.
If you encounter a friendly hermit in the woods who never interacts with other people, it would not be morally permissible to murder him for fun, even if you did it in such a way that he didn't suffer or know he was being murdered.
Killing someone might sometimes be the least bad option - perhaps it is morally permissible to euthanize a dog who has a painful terminal disease - or to shoot a human who is shooting innocent people. But I operate under the assumption that all sentient life is precious and all things being equal, it is better to preserve a life than end it.
I don't think many would agree with my ethical system, which is sort of weird and full of arbitrary stuff for some sort of strange reasons.
I also think your point is somewhat compelling, but you run into issues of the context of hunting - their death is going to happen, and is probably going to be much worse than what I'd provide, and you weigh that against the general good feelingness/utility they'd have for living longer, assuming it's mostly good, and then there's the ecology, and the effects on others, and.. it gets much messier than the clean hermit analogy.
I think somewhere in the back of my mind, there's a sort of Buddhist awareness of the impermanence of things, the knowledge that it will end at some point, and that's why killing appears to be so much less of an issue to me than to others, while suffering and net utility/happiness weighs much more heavily on me than it appears to on others. I suspect (though who really knows their own psychology) that a successful argument to convince me is going to either utilize this framing or show it to be inadequate (which is far, far less likely, as I'm a human and human biases on morality are pretty severe).
If there's an argument that turns me around on hunting it's going to be the argument that it reduces animal suffering. Because while I hate the thought of animals being shot - I also hate the thought of them being ripped apart by predators or starving to death.
Yeah, me too, generally. I approached this from the other side (initially, almost a decade ago), where I was eating meat and was like "shit this is wrong... but is it inherently so?" and came to the conclusion that hunting was the least bad way to get meat. I am far too biased to actually give an appraisal of the situation, but my intuition is that animal suffering is reduced in most cases of hunting, because without natural predators (in this case, we fill that role), the boom-bust cycles devastate ecology and ruin environments for other creatures, and you have periods of mass starvation (weeks of suffering! So much worse than a hunter's bullet) and overpopulation leading to outbreaks of plague stuff. Dying to a pack of coyotes or whatever is also super bad, but I'm not sure it's at the same level as starvation and disease death, though I think it's worse than hunting.
It seems to me that death is a part of life, and the biggest argument against hunting, specifically (as opposed to meat consumption generally, where we are actively making more things to eat) is either deontological and unconvincing to me (it's just wrong to kill, regardless of context), or that it's shortening animal lives. I think that shortening lives unnecessarily is not laudable, but I also don't really think it's unnecessary in this case, given the widespread devastation that would occur if we just.. stopped.
I think there is also some tension in here between the individual act seeming wrong (is it really ok to kill a thing just because it is probably going to suffer worse later? And does the period of time before that later begins weigh in?) and the act on a wider scale being pretty ok (we may, as a group, be obligated to kill X number of things so that Y>>X do not undergo horrible suffering before their deaths). I am thoroughly convinced of the latter, and think that because of that, the former is also true, even if it's not a thing we can easily see, because the jump definitely is not as intuitive as it should be. In the end, though, I think that may be a defect of human psychology, rather than a morally relevant fact.
I think this is all sound.
Hunting is the least bad way to get meat. To that end, it should be as efficient as possible and we should avoid primitivism if it increases the chances of a messy kill or a wounded animal escaping. There is also value in the immediacy of the experience insofar as connecting oneself to food and I'm glad to hear the values expressed by @Gooey and others in thanking the deer for its life (I've done the same thing with plants for ceremony). So, hunting for meat is morally permissible if one has moral justification for eating meat at all within the context of their own health, socioeconomic position, access to non-meat nutrition and the externalities implied there, etc.
Hunting as part of a pest control solution is also morally permissible , but only insofar as we are failing to address the pest problem that we are creating.
Why is hunting the "least bad" way to get meat? I would think that Farming would be the best way? The major issue with current farming strategies is that animal suffering is not a metric that is measured, and inhuman things are done to the animals to increase the metrics that are (animal size, raise time, profitability, etc). But that could be addressed through legislation.
Also, why do folks keep saying "least bad"? What is inherently bad about obtaining meat? Do you judge the wolf or the whale for the same actions?
Ideally hunting would cause zero pain and fear, but at least the animal gets to run around the woods first. Discomfort-free hunting is not available.
As a personal opinion, I don't have an issue with violent death in service to feeding myself or my family. I don't view it as a question of justice/injustice and I don't believe that there's a moral component to the act.
I don't believe you can be unjust to a chicken.
I don't view meat eating as a question of need. Reducing "legitimate" consumption to only needs, and rendering everything over an above them as morally questionable or even by default morally worth examining, is a mistake imo.
Do you believe that you can be cruel to a chicken (i/e animal cruelty)? I do, and if that's the case, then you can be just to a chicken. Simply because it's going to be a meal for me doesn't justify causing unnecessary pain in the pursuit of maximizing profits.
Being cruel to animals dehumanizes the people who have to administer such systems.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
As a personal opinion, I don't have an issue with violent death in service to feeding myself or my family. I don't view it as a question of justice/injustice and I don't believe that there's a moral component to the act.
I don't believe you can be unjust to a chicken.
I don't view meat eating as a question of need. Reducing "legitimate" consumption to only needs, and rendering everything over an above them as morally questionable or even by default morally worth examining, is a mistake imo.
Do you believe that you can be cruel to a chicken (i/e animal cruelty)? I do, and if that's the case, then you can be just to a chicken. Simply because it's going to be a meal for me doesn't justify causing unnecessary pain in the pursuit of maximizing profits.
Being cruel to animals dehumanizes the people who have to administer such systems.
While true, you also have to assume to a certain degree cruelty takes a backseat in relation to the need of producing sufficient food for a sufficient amount of the population. You could certainly have only free range chickens, but then prices would skyrocket and the poorest wouldn't be able to afford that nutrition. Ethics in food sourcing is definitely a luxury question. That doesn't mean it is an invalid question! But it isn't as simple as "be kind to animals or be a monster." It's not even necessarily about profits rather than production numbers.
There are very many humans, and we all have to eat.
This viewpoint is alien and discomforting to me. It's like saying "you can't be unjust to a dog." Chickens are thinking, feeling, social creatures who can suffer and feel pain, just like dogs or cats or parakeets or humans. Regardless of how you feel about eating meat, animals deserve our compassion and we have a moral responsibility towards them.
I believe you can be cruel to an animal however I think I would be closer to Spool in that I do not feel "bad/sad" for ending it's life to sustain my own.
edit: to put a finer point on this, Human lives are more important than Animal lives.
Can we all agree that intentionally causing an animal to suffer (beyond the necessary suffering that must come with the ending of ones life) is bad and people that do that are Gooses?
I feel like there is common ground on the "don't be cruel" front but that we just disagree regarding what is cruel and why.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
So, I'm going to try to avoid a gigantic thread tree here.
I think we can all agree that things that are worse for the environment are bad and things that are better for the environment are better, but also that there are some limits to what we can do because we have other things that are also important to us. I think it would be best to focus on deaths that don't get into Captain Planet territory.
Meat consumption is kind of a given unless you want to start getting into how hunting is more ethical than farming because the animal is free until it's killed.
Population control hunting is a thing regardless of the cause. You can't just guilt all the wolves and forests back - you have to actually devote resources to it.
Yep, our power generation kills a lot of animals one way or another. Is it unethical to use power since it kills animals?
I don't feel that hunting needs to be specifically justified in and of itself. It is the killing of animals using certain methods. The details of that process, such as the swiftness of the kill, the target, and so on, seems more useful to me. Why does hunting itself need justification as a particular way in which humans kill animals, compared to the way we kill them by building houses or generating power?
any particular way of killing animals needs to be justified with regards to the humanity of it's methods and with regards to the extent of it and the reasons for it.
as a method of killing animals hunting doesn't strike me as particularly bad, there are more humane ways of killing but none that are practical in the wild. if done in a way that minimizes harm, hunting animals is an acceptable method of killing.
with regards to the extent and reasons though, our actions seem to be limited by necessity and a duty to minimize harm. Animals will die to sustain our life, what is at issue is how many need to die, or what the limit is to our claim to a need to sustain our life. yes, we need power and houses, but do we need this much power and this many (inefficient) houses? we need to control populations, yes, but this is different from hunting so as not to hurt populations. the former points towards trying to do as little hunting as possible, and emphasizing the health of the population above else. The latter allows for more hunting, limited only by the sustainability of the practice.
I would argue that hunting (stalking an animal so that you can kill it) is a trivial aspect of the killing animals for our benefit thing. The average hunter is probably responsible for more animal deaths from powering their XBox than from shooting.
I'm happy to have people hunt deer as much as they can, it keeps population down so I don't hit them with my car.
Same with nuisance animals in other parts of the country such as wild pigs or alligators.
I'm happy that Native Americans can continue their cultural traditions and harvest enough to feed their families year round.
However, I've known way too many elk hunters who claimed they were doing it for the meat but the economics just don't add up. I worked with people who spent $1000 per year at least for tags and gear, for maybe a couple hundred dollars worth of meat. And I never once heard them bragging about how much meat they'd brought home but they always talked about the Boone and Crockett score.
Yeah anyone that hunts elk or moose and kills a number of elk/moose that is > 0 and doesn't own a butcher shop is lying and in it for the trophies.
I'd like to take one in my life just to see what a freezer/cabinet full of frozen and cured meat that could feed me for like six months would look like, and use the antlers for various tools/projects and have a huge blanket. I'd likely be done after that unless I needed to do it to survive (i.e. I move to Alaska)
In many areas there's a butcher-on-wheels service that will drive out to you, take your kill, and cut and clean it for you. It's also usual that they get a portion of the meat, on top of the fee, for good service.
I don't hunt, but I've bought deer meat off of my coworkers after their hunting trips, and they often prepare, package, and ship it to family. My experience has been that even the people who brag solely about scores keep the meat.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
There is no other situation in which after taking something by violent force you give a little, "Hey thanks for letting me take a thing from you, which you would never give if given the option."
Thanks for collecting all these calories for me and then dying when I killed you.
By all means hunt things, but don't pat yourself on the back and pretend you've been given a thing. You took it and given the choice the animal would have told you to fuck right off.
And by all means feel free to not eat meat, but please stop being goosey with the constant judgements in this thread everytime someone says they do. This is not a vegan/vegetarianism thread.
It seems strange to have a debate thread about hunting if you want to banish this particular viewpoint. Might as well move it to SE and rename it "Yay Hunting".
It isn't a debate thread when it its a constant derailing of judgemental snark with no actual substance. Multiple times earlier in thread dispatch has been presented with actual facts as to why humans do in fact need meat only to ignore them or tell the people (who have provided citations) that they are wrong.
except by most accounts we don't really need meat (we can eat eggs or just pop vitamins), and if we did we certainly wouldn't need to hunt for it.
also thanking dead animals is just silly. It won't make the animal feel any better, and it has no bearing on the moral permissibility of the act.
The post directly above yours indicates that the cost of needing to rely on vitamins is prohibitive to many and vegans don't eat eggs.
my point is not about the correctness of veganism or the socio-economic factors that cause people not to be able to afford vitamin pills, but specifically about the need for humans to eat meat.
we don't need to eat meat. humans can be perfectly healthy while vegan.
...by taking pills they can't afford.
Edit: The point is there is no way to have a well balanced diet sans meat without supplementing with vitamins ergo humans need meat. I am not bashing people who choose to not eat it and be vegetarian/vegan. That is their choice and I don't judge them for it in the least (I know with my love of bacon I couldn't do it), but trying to say that humans don't need meat and shouldn't eat it (which dispatch said and/or implied several times) is false. I would much rather have a well balanced diet and not need to supplement to get all of my nutrients than get some moral satisfaction from not eating meat and don't appreciate people trying to tell me how and what I should eat.
This is not the veganism thread, but please stop pretending that vitamins are more expensive than food. A 200 count bottle of B12 can be had for ~$10. Also, the subject of this thread is "Ethics of Hunting". If you're disinterested in discussing the implications of eating meat as they relate to that topic beyond "I like it and don't like when people say I shouldn't do it", then perhaps you might like to discuss other facets of the subject.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
As a personal opinion, I don't have an issue with violent death in service to feeding myself or my family. I don't view it as a question of justice/injustice and I don't believe that there's a moral component to the act.
I don't believe you can be unjust to a chicken.
I don't view meat eating as a question of need. Reducing "legitimate" consumption to only needs, and rendering everything over an above them as morally questionable or even by default morally worth examining, is a mistake imo.
If that's the case, then feeding your family is irrelevant and it wouldn't be morally questionable for you to just walk through a chicken coop with a hammer killing all the chickens for no reason at all, presumably as long as they weren't someone else's property. That strikes me as a fairly fringe sentiment, and not just because we've identified gratuitous animal killing with sociopathy / serial killing.
If that is your view, then I'd be curious whether you feel you can be just to a human, or a golden retriever, or a chimpanzee, and what criteria that judgment is based upon.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
Some others in this thread have talked about how hunting is at least somewhat ethical for population control as long as primitive means aren't used so it reduces suffering.
I'd like to touch on that. I primarily use blackpowder and bow and arrow to hunt.
I personally feel like hunting with a high powered rifle with a large magnification scope and a stabilizer mount on the front is cheating. Yes, it makes it possible to make sure your shot is accurate and clean, but it also lets hunters pick a deer off at 100+ yards.
To me primitive is relative to advanced hunting methods. I'm not sitting in a tree above the scent line with military grade camo and scent protection. I have a bow, and I take shots at well under 20 yards.
At that distance I can routinely and easily hit the lethal zone on an animal with about as much risk of missing and just wounding it as someone firing a scoped rifle at 80+ yards would.
With a blackpowder I shoot open sight and usually not past 30 or so yards so it's the same difference.
I don't begrudge people that use more advanced tools to hunt, but my methods don't necessarily imply I'm just randomly shooting at something to hit it and will need to track it as it runs of bleeding for half a mile either.
I think both methods are equally humane in terms of animal suffering provided you're skilled enough in either of them.
If we're taking the "least bad way to get meat" route, then it becomes necessary to justify sportsmanship versus efficiency. Using a scent lure or similar and guaranteeing a kill shot at 10 feet could be argued to be less cruel than even a "pretty good" shot with more traditional methods, yes? Taken to the logical conclusion, a drone that lures deer in and then kills them instantly with a blow to the head could be said to be even less cruel than any human hunting, at which point we're asking ourselves 'to what degree do the personal benefits of hunting outweigh some amount of animal suffering?'
IF killing animals is ok BUT we are not ok with arbitrarily high amounts of suffering, THEN" (hunting is ok)
I've been thinking about the statement you made in another thread, that killing is "morally neutral" and is OK as long as it doesn't cause suffering. I don't think I agree.
If you encounter a friendly hermit in the woods who never interacts with other people, it would not be morally permissible to murder him for fun, even if you did it in such a way that he didn't suffer or know he was being murdered.
Killing someone might sometimes be the least bad option - perhaps it is morally permissible to euthanize a dog who has a painful terminal disease - or to shoot a human who is shooting innocent people. But I operate under the assumption that all sentient life is precious and all things being equal, it is better to preserve a life than end it.
I don't think many would agree with my ethical system, which is sort of weird and full of arbitrary stuff for some sort of strange reasons.
I also think your point is somewhat compelling, but you run into issues of the context of hunting - their death is going to happen, and is probably going to be much worse than what I'd provide, and you weigh that against the general good feelingness/utility they'd have for living longer, assuming it's mostly good, and then there's the ecology, and the effects on others, and.. it gets much messier than the clean hermit analogy.
I think somewhere in the back of my mind, there's a sort of Buddhist awareness of the impermanence of things, the knowledge that it will end at some point, and that's why killing appears to be so much less of an issue to me than to others, while suffering and net utility/happiness weighs much more heavily on me than it appears to on others. I suspect (though who really knows their own psychology) that a successful argument to convince me is going to either utilize this framing or show it to be inadequate (which is far, far less likely, as I'm a human and human biases on morality are pretty severe).
If there's an argument that turns me around on hunting it's going to be the argument that it reduces animal suffering. Because while I hate the thought of animals being shot - I also hate the thought of them being ripped apart by predators or starving to death.
Yeah, me too, generally. I approached this from the other side (initially, almost a decade ago), where I was eating meat and was like "shit this is wrong... but is it inherently so?" and came to the conclusion that hunting was the least bad way to get meat. I am far too biased to actually give an appraisal of the situation, but my intuition is that animal suffering is reduced in most cases of hunting, because without natural predators (in this case, we fill that role), the boom-bust cycles devastate ecology and ruin environments for other creatures, and you have periods of mass starvation (weeks of suffering! So much worse than a hunter's bullet) and overpopulation leading to outbreaks of plague stuff. Dying to a pack of coyotes or whatever is also super bad, but I'm not sure it's at the same level as starvation and disease death, though I think it's worse than hunting.
It seems to me that death is a part of life, and the biggest argument against hunting, specifically (as opposed to meat consumption generally, where we are actively making more things to eat) is either deontological and unconvincing to me (it's just wrong to kill, regardless of context), or that it's shortening animal lives. I think that shortening lives unnecessarily is not laudable, but I also don't really think it's unnecessary in this case, given the widespread devastation that would occur if we just.. stopped.
I think there is also some tension in here between the individual act seeming wrong (is it really ok to kill a thing just because it is probably going to suffer worse later? And does the period of time before that later begins weigh in?) and the act on a wider scale being pretty ok (we may, as a group, be obligated to kill X number of things so that Y>>X do not undergo horrible suffering before their deaths). I am thoroughly convinced of the latter, and think that because of that, the former is also true, even if it's not a thing we can easily see, because the jump definitely is not as intuitive as it should be. In the end, though, I think that may be a defect of human psychology, rather than a morally relevant fact.
I think this is all sound.
Hunting is the least bad way to get meat. To that end, it should be as efficient as possible and we should avoid primitivism if it increases the chances of a messy kill or a wounded animal escaping. There is also value in the immediacy of the experience insofar as connecting oneself to food and I'm glad to hear the values expressed by @Gooey and others in thanking the deer for its life (I've done the same thing with plants for ceremony). So, hunting for meat is morally permissible if one has moral justification for eating meat at all within the context of their own health, socioeconomic position, access to non-meat nutrition and the externalities implied there, etc.
Hunting as part of a pest control solution is also morally permissible , but only insofar as we are failing to address the pest problem that we are creating.
Why is hunting the "least bad" way to get meat? I would think that Farming would be the best way? The major issue with current farming strategies is that animal suffering is not a metric that is measured, and inhuman things are done to the animals to increase the metrics that are (animal size, raise time, profitability, etc). But that could be addressed through legislation.
Also, why do folks keep saying "least bad"? What is inherently bad about obtaining meat? Do you judge the wolf or the whale for the same actions?
The ideas supporting hunting being superior to farming, even setting aside the gross cruelty of factory farms, are:
-an animal having lived free in the woods is a morally preferable situation to one having been kept in a pen.
-the environmental impact of killing a wild animal is less than that of having raised and fed one on a farm.
As a personal opinion, I don't have an issue with violent death in service to feeding myself or my family. I don't view it as a question of justice/injustice and I don't believe that there's a moral component to the act.
I don't believe you can be unjust to a chicken.
I don't view meat eating as a question of need. Reducing "legitimate" consumption to only needs, and rendering everything over an above them as morally questionable or even by default morally worth examining, is a mistake imo.
Do you believe that you can be cruel to a chicken (i/e animal cruelty)? I do, and if that's the case, then you can be just to a chicken. Simply because it's going to be a meal for me doesn't justify causing unnecessary pain in the pursuit of maximizing profits.
Being cruel to animals dehumanizes the people who have to administer such systems.
While true, you also have to assume to a certain degree cruelty takes a backseat in relation to the need of producing sufficient food for a sufficient amount of the population. You could certainly have only free range chickens, but then prices would skyrocket and the poorest wouldn't be able to afford that nutrition. Ethics in food sourcing is definitely a luxury question. That doesn't mean it is an invalid question! But it isn't as simple as "be kind to animals or be a monster." It's not even necessarily about profits rather than production numbers.
There are very many humans, and we all have to eat.
Do you think it is controversial to say, from a public health point of view that most Americans eat too much, particularly red, meat and we offer direct and indirect(corn) subsidizes? Or that factory farming results in excessive use of antibiotics and is environmentally harmful?
It is not black and white, but I think there is a reasonable argument to be made for shifting those subsidizes to direct assistance for the poor and allowing the price of meat, and specifically factory farmed meat, to increase compared to other agriculture.
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
edited August 2016
How far down the tree of sentience and humanly comprehensible minds do we want to stop assigning value to creatures such that we have to avoid killing them?
It seems to me the line is drawn where avoiding harm would be a hassle, rather than through any sort of confident value judgment. Most of us wouldn't want to kill a hedgehog when making a bonfire, but probably wouldn't bat an eyelid at a rabbit warren being destroyed for a building site, and the rabbits dying as they abandon their safety.
There is no other situation in which after taking something by violent force you give a little, "Hey thanks for letting me take a thing from you, which you would never give if given the option."
Thanks for collecting all these calories for me and then dying when I killed you.
By all means hunt things, but don't pat yourself on the back and pretend you've been given a thing. You took it and given the choice the animal would have told you to fuck right off.
And by all means feel free to not eat meat, but please stop being goosey with the constant judgements in this thread everytime someone says they do. This is not a vegan/vegetarianism thread.
It seems strange to have a debate thread about hunting if you want to banish this particular viewpoint. Might as well move it to SE and rename it "Yay Hunting".
It isn't a debate thread when it its a constant derailing of judgemental snark with no actual substance. Multiple times earlier in thread dispatch has been presented with actual facts as to why humans do in fact need meat only to ignore them or tell the people (who have provided citations) that they are wrong.
except by most accounts we don't really need meat (we can eat eggs or just pop vitamins), and if we did we certainly wouldn't need to hunt for it.
also thanking dead animals is just silly. It won't make the animal feel any better, and it has no bearing on the moral permissibility of the act.
The post directly above yours indicates that the cost of needing to rely on vitamins is prohibitive to many and vegans don't eat eggs.
my point is not about the correctness of veganism or the socio-economic factors that cause people not to be able to afford vitamin pills, but specifically about the need for humans to eat meat.
we don't need to eat meat. humans can be perfectly healthy while vegan.
...by taking pills they can't afford.
Edit: The point is there is no way to have a well balanced diet sans meat without supplementing with vitamins ergo humans need meat. I am not bashing people who choose to not eat it and be vegetarian/vegan. That is their choice and I don't judge them for it in the least (I know with my love of bacon I couldn't do it), but trying to say that humans don't need meat and shouldn't eat it (which dispatch said and/or implied several times) is false. I would much rather have a well balanced diet and not need to supplement to get all of my nutrients than get some moral satisfaction from not eating meat and don't appreciate people trying to tell me how and what I should eat.
This is not the veganism thread, but please stop pretending that vitamins are more expensive than food. A 200 count bottle of B12 can be had for ~$10. Also, the subject of this thread is "Ethics of Hunting". If you're disinterested in discussing the implications of eating meat as they relate to that topic beyond "I like it and don't like when people say I shouldn't do it", then perhaps you might like to discuss other facets of the subject.
That was in response to a topic that dispatch brought up, not me (one that a page prior to that quote I had tried to point out was a little off topic and was shut down on). It was also referencing him saying that not eating meat is not always financially feasible. But feel free to keep acting like I'm just making shit up or replying to strawmen. It's probably a lot easier than just accepting not everyone agrees with your point of view.
Ethically I see no problem with hunting as long as the meat is used and it isn't just trophy hunting. I'm a pretty big fan of it when it comes to population control. A deer is going to die one way or another and I'd much rather it be to a hunter than to my car when one jumps out in front of me while driving. At least when it's a hunter they can use the meat and it doesn't damage my car.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
How far down the tree of sentience and humanly comprehensible minds do we want to stop assigning value to creatures such that we have to avoid killing them?
It seems to me the line is drawn where avoiding harm would be a hassle, rather than through any sort of confident value judgment. Most of us wouldn't want to kill a hedgehog when making a bonfire, but probably wouldn't bat an eyelid at a rabbit warren being destroyed for a building site, and the rabbits dying as they abandon their safety.
Depends on how bbq'd hedgehog tastes.
I don't know that sentience is the best filter as Pig's are very intelligent and I would still kill one for food.
I agree that the line seems to be how much hassle/effort is required on the humans part.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
How far down the tree of sentience and humanly comprehensible minds do we want to stop assigning value to creatures such that we have to avoid killing them?
It seems to me the line is drawn where avoiding harm would be a hassle, rather than through any sort of confident value judgment. Most of us wouldn't want to kill a hedgehog when making a bonfire, but probably wouldn't bat an eyelid at a rabbit warren being destroyed for a building site, and the rabbits dying as they abandon their safety.
That's a worthwhile topic of discussion and touches on the 'there is nothing at all immoral with killing animals' argument - what makes a human life meaningfully different than an animal life? Proximity or similarity to one's own family? Intelligence? Does that mean that especially stupid people are less morally relevant than the very smart?
How far down the tree of sentience and humanly comprehensible minds do we want to stop assigning value to creatures such that we have to avoid killing them?
It seems to me the line is drawn where avoiding harm would be a hassle, rather than through any sort of confident value judgment. Most of us wouldn't want to kill a hedgehog when making a bonfire, but probably wouldn't bat an eyelid at a rabbit warren being destroyed for a building site, and the rabbits dying as they abandon their safety.
That's a worthwhile topic of discussion and touches on the 'there is nothing at all immoral with killing animals' argument - what makes a human life meaningfully different than an animal life? Proximity or similarity to one's own family? Intelligence? Does that mean that especially stupid people are less morally relevant than the very smart?
Once you get into measuring human worth, you start having to deal with things like empathy and a desire to not have bad things happen to you yourself. It's hard to maintain a moral calculus when your instincts are screaming at you to be egotistical.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
As a personal opinion, I don't have an issue with violent death in service to feeding myself or my family. I don't view it as a question of justice/injustice and I don't believe that there's a moral component to the act.
I don't believe you can be unjust to a chicken.
I don't view meat eating as a question of need. Reducing "legitimate" consumption to only needs, and rendering everything over an above them as morally questionable or even by default morally worth examining, is a mistake imo.
Do you believe that you can be cruel to a chicken (i/e animal cruelty)? I do, and if that's the case, then you can be just to a chicken. Simply because it's going to be a meal for me doesn't justify causing unnecessary pain in the pursuit of maximizing profits.
Being cruel to animals dehumanizes the people who have to administer such systems.
While true, you also have to assume to a certain degree cruelty takes a backseat in relation to the need of producing sufficient food for a sufficient amount of the population. You could certainly have only free range chickens, but then prices would skyrocket and the poorest wouldn't be able to afford that nutrition. Ethics in food sourcing is definitely a luxury question. That doesn't mean it is an invalid question! But it isn't as simple as "be kind to animals or be a monster." It's not even necessarily about profits rather than production numbers.
There are very many humans, and we all have to eat.
Do you think it is controversial to say, from a public health point of view that most Americans eat too much, particularly red, meat and we offer direct and indirect(corn) subsidizes? Or that factory farming results in excessive use of antibiotics and is environmentally harmful?
It is not black and white, but I think there is a reasonable argument to be made for shifting those subsidizes to direct assistance for the poor and allowing the price of meat, and specifically factory farmed meat, to increase compared to other agriculture.
I think we do, as a people, eat too much and eat too much corn and beef. That isn't controversial at all. It also isn't the same issue here as talking about ethically sourcing food in comparison to poverty.
Ethically sourcing food impacts far more than just your prices of beef and corn goods though. Eggs, especially. If you free range all eggs in the US, prices for all breads, most pre-made goods, condiments, and other items that use eggs in them will skyrocket. It also will indirectly cause vegetable oils and the products they use to skyrocket as well as they are used in greater quantities by businesses in place of eggs for binding agents in products. This will spill doubly into the restaurant scene, particularly at low end restaurants which feature eggs heavily as cheap and available protein options. Depending on how legistlation is written, this could also impact chicken meat production (which is the largest by volume consumed protein in the US), mostly because it is very cheap and affordable.
It also will require far more space than we have for crop production at present to even maintain our present levels of production, which means the primary meal product would cut down on other forms of production (most likely grains and larger animals) for less profits, which will probably cut supply as farmers switch to more lucrative products compared to the resources.
It's a really big issue, and our economy is so diverse now that something that seems quite small and isolate, like eliminating cage farming altogether. Government grants could soften this blow, but it would be an insanely huge amount of money needed to subsidize the entire nation against a massive increase in food prices at a time where we are already seeing considerable food deserts from these products we are talking about. If anything, the end result here would be in more corn based products taking up more of the main diets of more people.
Changes in diets, I think, will have to come about only voluntarily through cultural change or through direct and unavoidable market pressures (ie, Great Depression-esque, "we don't eat meat because we don't have any money" scenarios).
Eating is such a basic and fundamental need, and is so directly plugged in to what we find pleasurable at the most evolutionary level, that Western people in large numbers are not going to change dietary patterns unless absolutely forced. People will give up nearly anything to maintain eating patterns they find enjoyable. Hell, many wars, conflicts, and colonial settlements (with all their incipient misery) in the medieval and early modern period were driven in no small part by a desire to gain access to affordable and diverse food products.
The "best" part is that there's about 100 years of marketing, social engineering, and science that has been invested in making huge numbers of people deeply attached to eating some of the worst shit imaginable (both from a nutritional and environmental standpoint), as frequently as possible. We don't actually need to eat meat all that frequently, certainly not on a daily basis. The vast majority of people throughout history did not do so (sometimes to the opposite extreme, leading to vitamin-deficiency related diseases). But we've trained ourselves to do so.
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
This whole "Stop eating meat" debate is useless to this topic, because even if we do stop eating meat it won't remove the ecological necessity of hunting game as a conservation method.
If everyone on earth stops eating meat, invasive pigs will still be destroying the american south, and invasive rabbits will still be destroying the Australian everywhere.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
This whole "Stop eating meat" debate is useless to this topic, because even if we do stop eating meat it won't remove the ecological necessity of hunting game as a conservation method.
If everyone on earth stops eating meat, invasive pigs will still be destroying the american south, and invasive rabbits will still be destroying the Australian everywhere.
That's been discussed and people are largely in agreement about hunting as a justifiable pest control method.
I'm probably an outlier in the degree to which I would inconvenience suburbanites with the reintroduction of predators to help alleviate that issue.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
You're reading too much into it.
Eh. I mean, I don't think you literally, truly believe that the plants are listening.
But I do think that you assign an additional, spiritual value to all things that lots of people don't. You've got some religious underpinnings associated with life that are impacting your views. You may not consider it religious, but it's not something grounded in pure rationality either, which is ok, but of course it's harder to debate when thoughts and ideals that are built partially on faith are part of the discussion as well.
Meanwhile on the other side, we have people coming at this almost entirely from a utilitarian perspective, which is fraught with its own problems. But ultimately we'll end up with a really circular argument on "the ethics of hunting" unless we can much more narrowly define what's being debated.
The ideas supporting hunting being superior to farming, even setting aside the gross cruelty of factory farms, are:
-an animal having lived free in the woods is a morally preferable situation to one having been kept in a pen.
-the environmental impact of killing a wild animal is less than that of having raised and fed one on a farm.
I don't agree with either of these statements. A pen raised animal can have a comfortable life free from fears of things like predators and starvation. That life will end when the animal is killed for food, but it would end at some point in the wild and most likely would end in a manner that involves much more suffering such as disease or starvation.
I certainly thing my dogs have better lives because I adopted them than they would have had if they had been left at the shelter, at the puppy mill, or in the wild.
As for the environment, nature isn't static, and we could come up with a relatively neutral way to raise animals for human consumption if we were willing to invest the resources. Again, this is a place where legislation should come in to play to address the terrible conditions of modern animal farming.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
You're reading too much into it.
Eh. I mean, I don't think you literally, truly believe that the plants are listening.
But I do think that you assign an additional, spiritual value to all things that lots of people don't. You've got some religious underpinnings associated with life that are impacting your views. You may not consider it religious, but it's not something grounded in pure rationality either, which is ok, but of course it's harder to debate when thoughts and ideals that are built partially on faith are part of the discussion as well.
Meanwhile on the other side, we have people coming at this almost entirely from a utilitarian perspective, which is fraught with its own problems. But ultimately we'll end up with a really circular argument on "the ethics of hunting" unless we can much more narrowly define what's being debated.
I feel like this is an ad hom, unless you'd like to take issue with any of my arguments?
This whole "Stop eating meat" debate is useless to this topic, because even if we do stop eating meat it won't remove the ecological necessity of hunting game as a conservation method.
If everyone on earth stops eating meat, invasive pigs will still be destroying the american south, and invasive rabbits will still be destroying the Australian everywhere.
That's been discussed and people are largely in agreement about hunting as a justifiable pest control method.
I'm probably an outlier in the degree to which I would inconvenience suburbanites with the reintroduction of predators to help alleviate that issue.
I don't think reintroduction of dangerous animals to populated areas is best described as an "inconvenience".
And acceptance over hazards associated with that seems bizarre when it's lone purpose is to prevent hunting (which you agree would be utilized to the same end). You're opposition to hunting doesn't even appear to be from a risk standpoint, which makes it doubly confusing as to why introducing predators to places where people live (which is dangerous) is preferable to hunting.
This whole "Stop eating meat" debate is useless to this topic, because even if we do stop eating meat it won't remove the ecological necessity of hunting game as a conservation method.
If everyone on earth stops eating meat, invasive pigs will still be destroying the american south, and invasive rabbits will still be destroying the Australian everywhere.
That's been discussed and people are largely in agreement about hunting as a justifiable pest control method.
I'm probably an outlier in the degree to which I would inconvenience suburbanites with the reintroduction of predators to help alleviate that issue.
Reintroducing predators doesn't necessarily work, though, at least if we define "work" as "restoring a pre-existing ecology". Even a fairly rural environment with people living in it (much less the suburbs) is drastically different than what the originally undisturbed environment would have been like, and that reflects in that there's never really a cycle of relative equilibrium in the local environment. Surface water is used by people, re-directed, contaminated. Old-growth forest is replaced by open fields and new-growth/scrub territory, which can be very different from the perspective of an animal species adapted to living in a particular setting. Fences, roads, and extraction sites are introduced. And, of course, the people living on the land themselves make things much more complicated.
The woods around my house are thick with coyotes, and even larger predators like cougars. They're also extremely thick with deer. Despite the presence of natural predators we'd still be seeing a very pronounced overpopulation-starvation cycle absent if hunting were not a (very popular) thing.
I think as long as people are coexisting with animals there's going to be, by necessity, an ongoing process of careful monitoring, evaluation, and conservation.
As a personal opinion, I don't have an issue with violent death in service to feeding myself or my family. I don't view it as a question of justice/injustice and I don't believe that there's a moral component to the act.
I don't believe you can be unjust to a chicken.
I don't view meat eating as a question of need. Reducing "legitimate" consumption to only needs, and rendering everything over an above them as morally questionable or even by default morally worth examining, is a mistake imo.
Why do you believe this? Do you have any specific reasoning to support it, or a coherent ethical framework that leads to this conclusion, or is it a gut reaction (as many or most of our ethical positions are)?
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
You're reading too much into it.
Eh. I mean, I don't think you literally, truly believe that the plants are listening.
But I do think that you assign an additional, spiritual value to all things that lots of people don't. You've got some religious underpinnings associated with life that are impacting your views. You may not consider it religious, but it's not something grounded in pure rationality either, which is ok, but of course it's harder to debate when thoughts and ideals that are built partially on faith are part of the discussion as well.
Meanwhile on the other side, we have people coming at this almost entirely from a utilitarian perspective, which is fraught with its own problems. But ultimately we'll end up with a really circular argument on "the ethics of hunting" unless we can much more narrowly define what's being debated.
I feel like this is an ad hom, unless you'd like to take issue with any of my arguments?
Right. I disagree with just about every argument you've put forward. Starting with meat eating consumption being unethical and rolling down from there. So to focus on a particularly small point, how about focusing the debate exclusively on whether there's a difference between hunting for sport because the killing is entertaining, or hunting for meat because that particular meat is tasty.
If we're maximizing utility across all of our food, it'd be difficult to defend allowing any person who wants to cook their own meals to do so. Individual meal preperation is inefficient, and every bit of inefficiency and food waste increases suffering to some degree. But we defend that reduction in utility to some degree because people have food preferences.
What is this I don't even.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
You're reading too much into it.
Eh. I mean, I don't think you literally, truly believe that the plants are listening.
But I do think that you assign an additional, spiritual value to all things that lots of people don't. You've got some religious underpinnings associated with life that are impacting your views. You may not consider it religious, but it's not something grounded in pure rationality either, which is ok, but of course it's harder to debate when thoughts and ideals that are built partially on faith are part of the discussion as well.
Meanwhile on the other side, we have people coming at this almost entirely from a utilitarian perspective, which is fraught with its own problems. But ultimately we'll end up with a really circular argument on "the ethics of hunting" unless we can much more narrowly define what's being debated.
I feel like this is an ad hom, unless you'd like to take issue with any of my arguments?
Right. I disagree with just about every argument you've put forward. Starting with meat eating consumption being unethical and rolling down from there. So to focus on a particularly small point, how about focusing the debate exclusively on whether there's a difference between hunting for sport because the killing is entertaining, or hunting for meat because that particular meat is tasty.
If we're maximizing utility across all of our food, it'd be difficult to defend allowing any person who wants to cook their own meals to do so. Individual meal preperation is inefficient, and every bit of inefficiency and food waste increases suffering to some degree. But we defend that reduction in utility to some degree because people have food preferences.
You're strawmanning; I've only said that animal suffering is of moral relevance and ergo eating meat requires justification. I'm not even putting a line in the sand of how much justification would be required, nor am I making any arguments from strict utilitarianism.
I'm not straw manning; it's a reductio ad absurdum. You already acknowledge that suffering on a small scale is acceptable for pleasure. You then fail to defend why hunting is too much suffering. And your recent posts bring in spiritual ideals which are difficult to parse if they aren't shared.
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
You're reading too much into it.
Eh. I mean, I don't think you literally, truly believe that the plants are listening.
But I do think that you assign an additional, spiritual value to all things that lots of people don't. You've got some religious underpinnings associated with life that are impacting your views. You may not consider it religious, but it's not something grounded in pure rationality either, which is ok, but of course it's harder to debate when thoughts and ideals that are built partially on faith are part of the discussion as well.
Meanwhile on the other side, we have people coming at this almost entirely from a utilitarian perspective, which is fraught with its own problems. But ultimately we'll end up with a really circular argument on "the ethics of hunting" unless we can much more narrowly define what's being debated.
I feel like this is an ad hom, unless you'd like to take issue with any of my arguments?
Right. I disagree with just about every argument you've put forward. Starting with meat eating consumption being unethical and rolling down from there. So to focus on a particularly small point, how about focusing the debate exclusively on whether there's a difference between hunting for sport because the killing is entertaining, or hunting for meat because that particular meat is tasty.
If we're maximizing utility across all of our food, it'd be difficult to defend allowing any person who wants to cook their own meals to do so. Individual meal preperation is inefficient, and every bit of inefficiency and food waste increases suffering to some degree. But we defend that reduction in utility to some degree because people have food preferences.
You're strawmanning; I've only said that animal suffering is of moral relevance and ergo eating meat requires justification. I'm not even putting a line in the sand of how much justification would be required, nor am I making any arguments from strict utilitarianism.
Trying to call it "strawmanning" is a joke. You've made your stance very clear and refuse to actually debate anytime anyone calls you on it. Justification for eating meat despite animal suffering isn't needed due to its nutritional value. Multiple people have told you why supplementation is not feasible (which you ignored). Two people (including myself) pointed out why reintroduction of predators is a bad idea/ not worthwhile (which again, you ignored).
I'm not straw manning; it's a reductio ad absurdum. You already acknowledge that suffering on a small scale is acceptable for pleasure. You then fail to defend why hunting is too much suffering. And your recent posts bring in spiritual ideals which are difficult to parse if they aren't shared.
That bit of flavor was a counter to the idea (expressed by an adamant vegan) that thanking an animal after killing it is improper and serves to abdicate responsibility for the killing, and has nothing at all to do with the arguments surrounding animal suffering, etc.
There are multiple concurrent conversations happening in this thread and you may need to read back a few pages or at least follow quote trees to their root in order to follow along.
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
You're reading too much into it.
Eh. I mean, I don't think you literally, truly believe that the plants are listening.
But I do think that you assign an additional, spiritual value to all things that lots of people don't. You've got some religious underpinnings associated with life that are impacting your views. You may not consider it religious, but it's not something grounded in pure rationality either, which is ok, but of course it's harder to debate when thoughts and ideals that are built partially on faith are part of the discussion as well.
Meanwhile on the other side, we have people coming at this almost entirely from a utilitarian perspective, which is fraught with its own problems. But ultimately we'll end up with a really circular argument on "the ethics of hunting" unless we can much more narrowly define what's being debated.
I feel like this is an ad hom, unless you'd like to take issue with any of my arguments?
Right. I disagree with just about every argument you've put forward. Starting with meat eating consumption being unethical and rolling down from there. So to focus on a particularly small point, how about focusing the debate exclusively on whether there's a difference between hunting for sport because the killing is entertaining, or hunting for meat because that particular meat is tasty.
If we're maximizing utility across all of our food, it'd be difficult to defend allowing any person who wants to cook their own meals to do so. Individual meal preperation is inefficient, and every bit of inefficiency and food waste increases suffering to some degree. But we defend that reduction in utility to some degree because people have food preferences.
You're strawmanning; I've only said that animal suffering is of moral relevance and ergo eating meat requires justification. I'm not even putting a line in the sand of how much justification would be required, nor am I making any arguments from strict utilitarianism.
Trying to call it "strawmanning" is a joke. You've made your stance very clear and refuse to actually debate anytime anyone calls you on it. Justification for eating meat despite animal suffering isn't needed due to its nutritional value. Multiple people have told you why supplementation is not feasible (which you ignored). Two people (including myself) pointed out why reintroduction of predators is a bad idea/ not worthwhile (which again, you ignored).
Just for the record, I don't think reintroducing predators is a bad idea in and of itself. I think if done properly it can actually be quite a good thing, at least from my perspective, since I think an important part of conservation is to attempt to reestablish and maintain an "undisturbed" local ecology as much as possible. Predators, of course, are a crucial part of any working food web.
I just don't think the reintroduction of predators would ever make hunting unnecessary w/r/t prey animal populations, at least not in populated or semi-populated areas, based on my own experience living in an area that's been subject to fairly extensive reintroduction initiatives.
I'm not straw manning; it's a reductio ad absurdum. You already acknowledge that suffering on a small scale is acceptable for pleasure. You then fail to defend why hunting is too much suffering. And your recent posts bring in spiritual ideals which are difficult to parse if they aren't shared.
That bit of flavor was a counter to the idea (expressed by an adamant vegan) that thanking an animal after killing it is improper and serves to abdicate responsibility for the killing, and has nothing at all to do with the arguments surrounding animal suffering, etc.
There are multiple concurrent conversations happening in this thread and you may need to read back a few pages or at least follow quote trees to their root in order to follow along.
Yes an adamant vegan who isn't vegan at all, has never claimed to be and doesn't find certain kinds of hunting especially troublesome. I find the justification of much of it as an ethical practice inconsistent. The argument was framed as it's an ethical thing by default, which doesn't really make sense for ANY action. Then people who like hunting a lot needed a villain.
It's a lot easier on the palate to consider it a gift instead of the spoils of violent death. The notion that you've been gifted something takes away the weight of responsibility. Don't cheapen the experience of killing a thing by figuring it somehow did you a kindness, or you did one for it.
It's also not even snark. Own up to killing shit for pleasure and meat, the ceremony isn't for the benefit of the animal. It's so the person who took its life can wash away the responsibility of it.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
You're reading too much into it.
Eh. I mean, I don't think you literally, truly believe that the plants are listening.
But I do think that you assign an additional, spiritual value to all things that lots of people don't. You've got some religious underpinnings associated with life that are impacting your views. You may not consider it religious, but it's not something grounded in pure rationality either, which is ok, but of course it's harder to debate when thoughts and ideals that are built partially on faith are part of the discussion as well.
Meanwhile on the other side, we have people coming at this almost entirely from a utilitarian perspective, which is fraught with its own problems. But ultimately we'll end up with a really circular argument on "the ethics of hunting" unless we can much more narrowly define what's being debated.
I feel like this is an ad hom, unless you'd like to take issue with any of my arguments?
Right. I disagree with just about every argument you've put forward. Starting with meat eating consumption being unethical and rolling down from there. So to focus on a particularly small point, how about focusing the debate exclusively on whether there's a difference between hunting for sport because the killing is entertaining, or hunting for meat because that particular meat is tasty.
If we're maximizing utility across all of our food, it'd be difficult to defend allowing any person who wants to cook their own meals to do so. Individual meal preperation is inefficient, and every bit of inefficiency and food waste increases suffering to some degree. But we defend that reduction in utility to some degree because people have food preferences.
You're strawmanning; I've only said that animal suffering is of moral relevance and ergo eating meat requires justification. I'm not even putting a line in the sand of how much justification would be required, nor am I making any arguments from strict utilitarianism.
Trying to call it "strawmanning" is a joke. You've made your stance very clear and refuse to actually debate anytime anyone calls you on it. Justification for eating meat despite animal suffering isn't needed due to its nutritional value. Multiple people have told you why supplementation is not feasible (which you ignored). Two people (including myself) pointed out why reintroduction of predators is a bad idea/ not worthwhile (which again, you ignored).
Just for the record, I don't think reintroducing predators is a bad idea in and of itself. I think if done properly it can actually be quite a good thing, at least from my perspective, since I think an important part of conservation is to attempt to reestablish and maintain an "undisturbed" local ecology as much as possible. Predators, of course, are a crucial part of any working food web.
I just don't think the reintroduction of predators would ever make hunting unnecessary w/r/t prey animal populations, at least not in populated or semi-populated areas, based on my own experience living in an area that's been subject to fairly extensive reintroduction initiatives.
I'm not wholly against it either depending on the predator as long as it is in a rural sparsely populated area. What was posited however was a suburb. Introducing an aggressive animal in the be unity of a populated area is a recipe for disaster as the animal would naturally migrate into the area people are living which would result in an animal attack.
I'm not straw manning; it's a reductio ad absurdum. You already acknowledge that suffering on a small scale is acceptable for pleasure. You then fail to defend why hunting is too much suffering. And your recent posts bring in spiritual ideals which are difficult to parse if they aren't shared.
That bit of flavor was a counter to the idea (expressed by an adamant vegan) that thanking an animal after killing it is improper and serves to abdicate responsibility for the killing, and has nothing at all to do with the arguments surrounding animal suffering, etc.
There are multiple concurrent conversations happening in this thread and you may need to read back a few pages or at least follow quote trees to their root in order to follow along.
No, I'm following along. You misread. My statements over flavor/pleasure are constrained entirely to my argument and not related.
Assuming you allow that people should be allowed to prepare their own meals, even though it's less utilitarian than standardizing, is allowing for some degree of unnecessary suffering in exchange for a degree of pleasure. So I argue that some hunting has had similar value, in that we exchange some unnecessary suffering for individual pleasure.
I then put forward the question, not to you but to everyone, why we think that safe, limited harm hunting for some pleasure, that obtained through unique flavors, is more valuable than other safe, limited harm hunting for pleasure, that obtained through the thrill of accomplishing a challenging, unusual task.
What is this I don't even.
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amateurhourOne day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered Userregular
edited August 2016
Personally, we're the dominant life form on this planet (at this time). Who knows if one day spiders will grow to the size of house cats and murder us all, but for now we're in charge. The fact that we (although sadly only in the last 100 years or so) even make an effort toward conservation and preservation of endangered species shows that we care. My personal stance is that's just the right amount of caring. I enjoy being able to go out and hunt my own food and use the spoils for other material goods as much as I enjoy being able to donate to a wildlife conservation fund (or more realistically, the state and national park system since I'm a frequent visitor)
There's no side of me though that's going to agree with "lets loose the wolves!" to fix the problem, mostly because it's not a problem. It's a change to the ecosystem. We caused it, yes, with our civilizations and advancement. In making it easier to live longer, healthier, more comfortable lives, we destroyed wide swaths of the world so that now the balance of predators to prey has changed. It's our responsibility to manage that new balance and take up the mantle of the former predators, or be okay with the consequences of the overpopulated prey. We've found a solution for that too, wildlife conservation and management, or hunting. It's licensed, it brings in dollars to fund better wildlife preservation techniques, and it's better than trying to fight fire with a bigger, hungrier, angrier, furrier fire.
That's like sending the mongoose after the snake and the coyote after the mongoose when they all get stuck down a hole.
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Ideally hunting would cause zero pain and fear, but at least the animal gets to run around the woods first. Discomfort-free hunting is not available.
Do you believe that you can be cruel to a chicken (i/e animal cruelty)? I do, and if that's the case, then you can be just to a chicken. Simply because it's going to be a meal for me doesn't justify causing unnecessary pain in the pursuit of maximizing profits.
Being cruel to animals dehumanizes the people who have to administer such systems.
While true, you also have to assume to a certain degree cruelty takes a backseat in relation to the need of producing sufficient food for a sufficient amount of the population. You could certainly have only free range chickens, but then prices would skyrocket and the poorest wouldn't be able to afford that nutrition. Ethics in food sourcing is definitely a luxury question. That doesn't mean it is an invalid question! But it isn't as simple as "be kind to animals or be a monster." It's not even necessarily about profits rather than production numbers.
There are very many humans, and we all have to eat.
I believe you can be cruel to an animal however I think I would be closer to Spool in that I do not feel "bad/sad" for ending it's life to sustain my own.
edit: to put a finer point on this, Human lives are more important than Animal lives.
Can we all agree that intentionally causing an animal to suffer (beyond the necessary suffering that must come with the ending of ones life) is bad and people that do that are Gooses?
I feel like there is common ground on the "don't be cruel" front but that we just disagree regarding what is cruel and why.
any particular way of killing animals needs to be justified with regards to the humanity of it's methods and with regards to the extent of it and the reasons for it.
as a method of killing animals hunting doesn't strike me as particularly bad, there are more humane ways of killing but none that are practical in the wild. if done in a way that minimizes harm, hunting animals is an acceptable method of killing.
with regards to the extent and reasons though, our actions seem to be limited by necessity and a duty to minimize harm. Animals will die to sustain our life, what is at issue is how many need to die, or what the limit is to our claim to a need to sustain our life. yes, we need power and houses, but do we need this much power and this many (inefficient) houses? we need to control populations, yes, but this is different from hunting so as not to hurt populations. the former points towards trying to do as little hunting as possible, and emphasizing the health of the population above else. The latter allows for more hunting, limited only by the sustainability of the practice.
In many areas there's a butcher-on-wheels service that will drive out to you, take your kill, and cut and clean it for you. It's also usual that they get a portion of the meat, on top of the fee, for good service.
I don't hunt, but I've bought deer meat off of my coworkers after their hunting trips, and they often prepare, package, and ship it to family. My experience has been that even the people who brag solely about scores keep the meat.
This is not the veganism thread, but please stop pretending that vitamins are more expensive than food. A 200 count bottle of B12 can be had for ~$10. Also, the subject of this thread is "Ethics of Hunting". If you're disinterested in discussing the implications of eating meat as they relate to that topic beyond "I like it and don't like when people say I shouldn't do it", then perhaps you might like to discuss other facets of the subject.
If that's the case, then feeding your family is irrelevant and it wouldn't be morally questionable for you to just walk through a chicken coop with a hammer killing all the chickens for no reason at all, presumably as long as they weren't someone else's property. That strikes me as a fairly fringe sentiment, and not just because we've identified gratuitous animal killing with sociopathy / serial killing.
If that is your view, then I'd be curious whether you feel you can be just to a human, or a golden retriever, or a chimpanzee, and what criteria that judgment is based upon.
If we're taking the "least bad way to get meat" route, then it becomes necessary to justify sportsmanship versus efficiency. Using a scent lure or similar and guaranteeing a kill shot at 10 feet could be argued to be less cruel than even a "pretty good" shot with more traditional methods, yes? Taken to the logical conclusion, a drone that lures deer in and then kills them instantly with a blow to the head could be said to be even less cruel than any human hunting, at which point we're asking ourselves 'to what degree do the personal benefits of hunting outweigh some amount of animal suffering?'
The ideas supporting hunting being superior to farming, even setting aside the gross cruelty of factory farms, are:
-an animal having lived free in the woods is a morally preferable situation to one having been kept in a pen.
-the environmental impact of killing a wild animal is less than that of having raised and fed one on a farm.
Do you think it is controversial to say, from a public health point of view that most Americans eat too much, particularly red, meat and we offer direct and indirect(corn) subsidizes? Or that factory farming results in excessive use of antibiotics and is environmentally harmful?
It is not black and white, but I think there is a reasonable argument to be made for shifting those subsidizes to direct assistance for the poor and allowing the price of meat, and specifically factory farmed meat, to increase compared to other agriculture.
It seems to me the line is drawn where avoiding harm would be a hassle, rather than through any sort of confident value judgment. Most of us wouldn't want to kill a hedgehog when making a bonfire, but probably wouldn't bat an eyelid at a rabbit warren being destroyed for a building site, and the rabbits dying as they abandon their safety.
That was in response to a topic that dispatch brought up, not me (one that a page prior to that quote I had tried to point out was a little off topic and was shut down on). It was also referencing him saying that not eating meat is not always financially feasible. But feel free to keep acting like I'm just making shit up or replying to strawmen. It's probably a lot easier than just accepting not everyone agrees with your point of view.
Ethically I see no problem with hunting as long as the meat is used and it isn't just trophy hunting. I'm a pretty big fan of it when it comes to population control. A deer is going to die one way or another and I'd much rather it be to a hunter than to my car when one jumps out in front of me while driving. At least when it's a hunter they can use the meat and it doesn't damage my car.
The way I was taught was that the gratitude is expressed to the being as a representative of all its relations - native people might talk to 'deer nation', or more generally to the Great Spirit. I've sat down next to a garden plot of sage and mint and laid down tobacco and told them that they are beautiful and that I'd come to take some of their lives to use in ceremony and to please help us. The plants certainly didn't have a choice in the matter, and probably weren't aware that I was speaking to them, but the important thing is taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifice of another being that's made so that you can live a better life.
A rather charming anecdote about this involves a retired high school teacher and a group of young men, out on a farm as he's explaining something about a project they're working on. At one point, the teacher stops what he's saying and looks up at a flock of migrating geese as they fly overhead, raising his hand and wishing them safe travels and thanking them for their beauty, etc. One of the young men speaks up and says "Oh, come on, you really think they can hear you?" The teacher replies "I don't know. But it's a beautiful way to live."
Depends on how bbq'd hedgehog tastes.
I don't know that sentience is the best filter as Pig's are very intelligent and I would still kill one for food.
I agree that the line seems to be how much hassle/effort is required on the humans part.
That's a worthwhile topic of discussion and touches on the 'there is nothing at all immoral with killing animals' argument - what makes a human life meaningfully different than an animal life? Proximity or similarity to one's own family? Intelligence? Does that mean that especially stupid people are less morally relevant than the very smart?
Once you get into measuring human worth, you start having to deal with things like empathy and a desire to not have bad things happen to you yourself. It's hard to maintain a moral calculus when your instincts are screaming at you to be egotistical.
I think we do, as a people, eat too much and eat too much corn and beef. That isn't controversial at all. It also isn't the same issue here as talking about ethically sourcing food in comparison to poverty.
Ethically sourcing food impacts far more than just your prices of beef and corn goods though. Eggs, especially. If you free range all eggs in the US, prices for all breads, most pre-made goods, condiments, and other items that use eggs in them will skyrocket. It also will indirectly cause vegetable oils and the products they use to skyrocket as well as they are used in greater quantities by businesses in place of eggs for binding agents in products. This will spill doubly into the restaurant scene, particularly at low end restaurants which feature eggs heavily as cheap and available protein options. Depending on how legistlation is written, this could also impact chicken meat production (which is the largest by volume consumed protein in the US), mostly because it is very cheap and affordable.
It also will require far more space than we have for crop production at present to even maintain our present levels of production, which means the primary meal product would cut down on other forms of production (most likely grains and larger animals) for less profits, which will probably cut supply as farmers switch to more lucrative products compared to the resources.
It's a really big issue, and our economy is so diverse now that something that seems quite small and isolate, like eliminating cage farming altogether. Government grants could soften this blow, but it would be an insanely huge amount of money needed to subsidize the entire nation against a massive increase in food prices at a time where we are already seeing considerable food deserts from these products we are talking about. If anything, the end result here would be in more corn based products taking up more of the main diets of more people.
Eating is such a basic and fundamental need, and is so directly plugged in to what we find pleasurable at the most evolutionary level, that Western people in large numbers are not going to change dietary patterns unless absolutely forced. People will give up nearly anything to maintain eating patterns they find enjoyable. Hell, many wars, conflicts, and colonial settlements (with all their incipient misery) in the medieval and early modern period were driven in no small part by a desire to gain access to affordable and diverse food products.
The "best" part is that there's about 100 years of marketing, social engineering, and science that has been invested in making huge numbers of people deeply attached to eating some of the worst shit imaginable (both from a nutritional and environmental standpoint), as frequently as possible. We don't actually need to eat meat all that frequently, certainly not on a daily basis. The vast majority of people throughout history did not do so (sometimes to the opposite extreme, leading to vitamin-deficiency related diseases). But we've trained ourselves to do so.
It's a high hill to climb, to say the least.
It's... I'm trying to decide the word. Is it unsettling? Is it comical? It is very bizarre to me, at least, that you feel it necessary to say the plants probably aren't aware that you're talking to them. And it really seems to demarcate that two sides of this discussion aren't even arguing from the same fundamental beliefs about the world, which is why arguments keep getting so circular.
If everyone on earth stops eating meat, invasive pigs will still be destroying the american south, and invasive rabbits will still be destroying the Australian everywhere.
That's been discussed and people are largely in agreement about hunting as a justifiable pest control method.
I'm probably an outlier in the degree to which I would inconvenience suburbanites with the reintroduction of predators to help alleviate that issue.
You're reading too much into it.
Eh. I mean, I don't think you literally, truly believe that the plants are listening.
But I do think that you assign an additional, spiritual value to all things that lots of people don't. You've got some religious underpinnings associated with life that are impacting your views. You may not consider it religious, but it's not something grounded in pure rationality either, which is ok, but of course it's harder to debate when thoughts and ideals that are built partially on faith are part of the discussion as well.
Meanwhile on the other side, we have people coming at this almost entirely from a utilitarian perspective, which is fraught with its own problems. But ultimately we'll end up with a really circular argument on "the ethics of hunting" unless we can much more narrowly define what's being debated.
I don't agree with either of these statements. A pen raised animal can have a comfortable life free from fears of things like predators and starvation. That life will end when the animal is killed for food, but it would end at some point in the wild and most likely would end in a manner that involves much more suffering such as disease or starvation.
I certainly thing my dogs have better lives because I adopted them than they would have had if they had been left at the shelter, at the puppy mill, or in the wild.
As for the environment, nature isn't static, and we could come up with a relatively neutral way to raise animals for human consumption if we were willing to invest the resources. Again, this is a place where legislation should come in to play to address the terrible conditions of modern animal farming.
I feel like this is an ad hom, unless you'd like to take issue with any of my arguments?
I don't think reintroduction of dangerous animals to populated areas is best described as an "inconvenience".
And acceptance over hazards associated with that seems bizarre when it's lone purpose is to prevent hunting (which you agree would be utilized to the same end). You're opposition to hunting doesn't even appear to be from a risk standpoint, which makes it doubly confusing as to why introducing predators to places where people live (which is dangerous) is preferable to hunting.
Reintroducing predators doesn't necessarily work, though, at least if we define "work" as "restoring a pre-existing ecology". Even a fairly rural environment with people living in it (much less the suburbs) is drastically different than what the originally undisturbed environment would have been like, and that reflects in that there's never really a cycle of relative equilibrium in the local environment. Surface water is used by people, re-directed, contaminated. Old-growth forest is replaced by open fields and new-growth/scrub territory, which can be very different from the perspective of an animal species adapted to living in a particular setting. Fences, roads, and extraction sites are introduced. And, of course, the people living on the land themselves make things much more complicated.
The woods around my house are thick with coyotes, and even larger predators like cougars. They're also extremely thick with deer. Despite the presence of natural predators we'd still be seeing a very pronounced overpopulation-starvation cycle absent if hunting were not a (very popular) thing.
I think as long as people are coexisting with animals there's going to be, by necessity, an ongoing process of careful monitoring, evaluation, and conservation.
Why do you believe this? Do you have any specific reasoning to support it, or a coherent ethical framework that leads to this conclusion, or is it a gut reaction (as many or most of our ethical positions are)?
Right. I disagree with just about every argument you've put forward. Starting with meat eating consumption being unethical and rolling down from there. So to focus on a particularly small point, how about focusing the debate exclusively on whether there's a difference between hunting for sport because the killing is entertaining, or hunting for meat because that particular meat is tasty.
If we're maximizing utility across all of our food, it'd be difficult to defend allowing any person who wants to cook their own meals to do so. Individual meal preperation is inefficient, and every bit of inefficiency and food waste increases suffering to some degree. But we defend that reduction in utility to some degree because people have food preferences.
You're strawmanning; I've only said that animal suffering is of moral relevance and ergo eating meat requires justification. I'm not even putting a line in the sand of how much justification would be required, nor am I making any arguments from strict utilitarianism.
Trying to call it "strawmanning" is a joke. You've made your stance very clear and refuse to actually debate anytime anyone calls you on it. Justification for eating meat despite animal suffering isn't needed due to its nutritional value. Multiple people have told you why supplementation is not feasible (which you ignored). Two people (including myself) pointed out why reintroduction of predators is a bad idea/ not worthwhile (which again, you ignored).
Most utilitarian stuff I have seen goes the opposite way.
That bit of flavor was a counter to the idea (expressed by an adamant vegan) that thanking an animal after killing it is improper and serves to abdicate responsibility for the killing, and has nothing at all to do with the arguments surrounding animal suffering, etc.
There are multiple concurrent conversations happening in this thread and you may need to read back a few pages or at least follow quote trees to their root in order to follow along.
Just for the record, I don't think reintroducing predators is a bad idea in and of itself. I think if done properly it can actually be quite a good thing, at least from my perspective, since I think an important part of conservation is to attempt to reestablish and maintain an "undisturbed" local ecology as much as possible. Predators, of course, are a crucial part of any working food web.
I just don't think the reintroduction of predators would ever make hunting unnecessary w/r/t prey animal populations, at least not in populated or semi-populated areas, based on my own experience living in an area that's been subject to fairly extensive reintroduction initiatives.
Yes an adamant vegan who isn't vegan at all, has never claimed to be and doesn't find certain kinds of hunting especially troublesome. I find the justification of much of it as an ethical practice inconsistent. The argument was framed as it's an ethical thing by default, which doesn't really make sense for ANY action. Then people who like hunting a lot needed a villain.
I'm not wholly against it either depending on the predator as long as it is in a rural sparsely populated area. What was posited however was a suburb. Introducing an aggressive animal in the be unity of a populated area is a recipe for disaster as the animal would naturally migrate into the area people are living which would result in an animal attack.
No, I'm following along. You misread. My statements over flavor/pleasure are constrained entirely to my argument and not related.
Assuming you allow that people should be allowed to prepare their own meals, even though it's less utilitarian than standardizing, is allowing for some degree of unnecessary suffering in exchange for a degree of pleasure. So I argue that some hunting has had similar value, in that we exchange some unnecessary suffering for individual pleasure.
I then put forward the question, not to you but to everyone, why we think that safe, limited harm hunting for some pleasure, that obtained through unique flavors, is more valuable than other safe, limited harm hunting for pleasure, that obtained through the thrill of accomplishing a challenging, unusual task.
There's no side of me though that's going to agree with "lets loose the wolves!" to fix the problem, mostly because it's not a problem. It's a change to the ecosystem. We caused it, yes, with our civilizations and advancement. In making it easier to live longer, healthier, more comfortable lives, we destroyed wide swaths of the world so that now the balance of predators to prey has changed. It's our responsibility to manage that new balance and take up the mantle of the former predators, or be okay with the consequences of the overpopulated prey. We've found a solution for that too, wildlife conservation and management, or hunting. It's licensed, it brings in dollars to fund better wildlife preservation techniques, and it's better than trying to fight fire with a bigger, hungrier, angrier, furrier fire.
That's like sending the mongoose after the snake and the coyote after the mongoose when they all get stuck down a hole.