Horselord posted:At the end of the day I'm not going to feel guilty for killing and eating something that would not feel guilty if it did it to me.
i guess ill put these naziburgers back in the fridge then
Horselord posted:The question is if these species are have, or are capable of having, the concept that it's possible to kill another living being in an immoral (or moral) way? Would it's idea of when it's morally right or wrong to kill even remotely resemble ours?
this consideration seems to be off the table :) when we're talking about humans who can't understand mortality. if the folks who murdered ricky ray rector were shitty cunts for this reason where do we stand regarding folks who justify killing other species that lack abstract reasoning ability on that basis. i don't think moral reason is pulling a lot of weight here
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招瑤 posted:if the folks who murdered ricky ray rector were shitty cunts for this reason where do we stand regarding folks who justify killing other species that lack abstract reasoning ability on that basis. i don't think moral reason is pulling a lot of weight here
that ones already been answered in the post you're referring to, so i guess you have to go back and read it again
toyot posted:i would just say that this view is behind the times. in the last 30 years of technical discovery, our species has falsified the notion that life appeared independently in flora, fauna, bug, man, tree, and the billions of instances of life that we are too large to see. all life here has a common ancestor that used a ribozyme. trees share half the DNA as us -- another very recent discovery -- but they are obviously not objects like rocks, that's a more recent ideological invention. bees are not aliens, they evolved on earth. you're just completely wrong but sometimes a sleepy thread needs that.
if you want to tell me i'm completely wrong it would help you a lot if you understood what i said. for example, "the notion that life appeared independently in flora, fauna, bug, man, tree" etc is not one that support or proposed. That all life on earth has a common ancestor has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about, at all. You know that neither you nor a lumberjack gives a shit how much DNA he shares with the tree he's cutting down, the tree isn't a meaningful relative as he experiences life, the tree is a resource.
when someone describes something as "alien" it does not mean "from space", it means "very different from us". I guess bees aren't alien to you as they are to me, you being as you are destined to die at your first orgasm
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So it comes down to middle class humans saying what animals need, why no element of animal liberation applies to plants and why these are necessary aspects of environmental activism. In actual practice, tacking on animal liberation or even ethical veganism to anti-capitalist environmental activism only adds pointless confusion and divisiveness to discussion of a problem which is not only very important but imo needs immediate resolution.
Re patriarchy and meat consumption here too animal activists try to make their worldviews a necessary extension of an actually legitimate issue. There are patriarchal religious-vegetarian communities in India, as well as matriarchal tribal societies/cultures which kill animals for food. Patriarchal hierarchies determining access to quality and quantity of food is totally unrelated to the consumption of meat per se.
toyot posted:you're right, you were talking about how you relate to other life as a person. and here i thought you meant you were interested in how you're related to other life as a person!
My social relation to a tree is that I need some wood to make a chair, so I cut the tree down and use it for lumber.
This has nothing to do with genetic relation.
What do you gain by pretending not to understand the distinction?
Horselord posted:You know that neither you nor a lumberjack gives a shit how much DNA he shares with the tree he's cutting down, the tree isn't a meaningful relative as he experiences life, the tree is a resource.
hi, former "lumberjack" here again, so basically,
pogfan1996 posted:I think this is why the Marxist left has such a disdain for animal liberation, most of the writing and activism done on it today is entirely within the liberal ethical framework. For example, Singer frames the entire basis of animal liberation on reducing suffering as the ultimate good in the world, and exploiting animals causes suffering.
My impression is that alot of the difficulty sorrounding animal-rights discourse is that it goes around two difficult to reconcile points. One is the 'rationalist' perspective that treats animals as a natural resource and draws all of the different arguments that are implicit from this perspective, such as the above argument about the qualitative nature of animal cognition, which is more generally an arugment about what their capacity for 'suffering' is, and how that squares with leftism's position against the barbarism of capitalism. The question in this case is less about the exploitation of natural resources as such and more about whether conscious beings qualify as a natural resource. On the other hand, there's an argument against animal suffering which is more fundamental which concerns the aforementioned 'treating as means opposed to ends' of animals, which is important precisely because it dislodges itself from the incoherence and brutality that emerges from the quasi-rationalist perspective of utilitarian suffering arithmetic taken to its conclusion. The argument gets sidelined, I think, under the suspicion of mystification, but it seems evident that even setting aside the particular animal issue of conscious beings treated as means, the conception of nature as means ('natural resources') leads smoothly into destructive hyper-exploitation via rational decisions made in a rational framework.
On a side note, I'm not too familiar with the literature on the subject in general, but I like John Berger's essay on animals precisely because he points out the precedence of animals in society as cohabitants of the earth over the retroactive view of domestication as a purely economical and utilitarian transformation in productive modes.
So I don't respect animal "liberation" because animals are incapable of understanding what liberation is, at the same time that doesn't mean it's okay to go into a field with some power tools and see what interesting noises daisy the cow makes. It just means I don't feel bad that these useful animals we own die to turn into our food.
Horselord posted:招瑤 posted:if the folks who murdered ricky ray rector were shitty cunts for this reason where do we stand regarding folks who justify killing other species that lack abstract reasoning ability on that basis. i don't think moral reason is pulling a lot of weight here
that ones already been answered in the post you're referring to, so i guess you have to go back and read it again
other species don't seem to humans to have the ability to understand morality or justice & can be killed & eaten guilt-free. their primitive societies, undeveloped or neglected intellects, & internonpersonal relationships have not crossed a threshold we would recognize as civilized & morally conscious
ricky ray rector's inability to comprehend death makes it fucked up that he was executed because he is a human, a species uniquely capable of abstract thought, although not all humans have this ability. in general those folks are particularly vulnerable & are especially protected on the basis of their disability. well in a perfect world anyway, same place we find "things going properly"
suggesting there's a red herring here, that's what i was getting at. the basis for exceptional treatment despite lacking higher reasoning is simply that humans are humans, not because of what humans at the right point in their lives in a perfect world when things are going properly might be capable of. even the idea that we should treat people perceived as deficient in intellect or morality as fully human is relatively new but we still didn't eat them
we don't extend special protection to animals simply because they are not human. talking about the ability to understand the morality of murder is working backwards from a conclusion. we eat meat and treat animals like shit because we've always done that, they taste good, and can't defend themselves adequately because we're apparently uniquely clever and cooperative murderers. it's unpopular to call folks who eat meat shitty cunts because they're just killing animals, not humans
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dizastar posted:it's clear that changes need to be made, for example i plan to propose to the jdpon executive board, once it is established, that all housepets be expropriated from euro-amerikkkan homes (along with the homes) to be fed to the hungriest and meat deprived third worlders. another proposition i have, maybe a little bit more risqué, is simply to feed all white people to the subsistence famers of the global south. Just think about it, you know how much nutrients are locked inside of our organs, muscles and so on? period blood and placenta are already known to be superfoods, but a whole human heart? think about it... one of the worst parts of so called civilized society is that we aren't allowed to engage in cannibalism anymore, and i dont care much for animal liberation but if it can help us solve that problem then im all for it
dizastar posted:another proposition i have, maybe a little bit more risqué, is simply to feed all white people to the subsistence famers of the global south.
pork is haram
blinkandwheeze posted:Note that in these hypotheticals, our subject contrives stories about torturing other livestock but shies away from mentioning horses or what they wish to do to them
i know that this is technically an offsite but that doesn't mean that you have to behave like a malicious dickhead from somethingawful, a website and culture that i think everyone here already understands is bad. That's the last time I'll respond to remarks like this.
招瑤 posted:suggesting there's a red herring here, that's what i was getting at. the basis for exceptional treatment despite lacking higher reasoning is simply that humans are humans, not because of what humans at the right point in their lives in a perfect world when things are going properly might be capable of.
Humans are humans, so they get treated as them, yes I agree, and how do you define humans? I do it with the thing the human species has that no other species has.
招瑤 posted:we don't extend special protection to animals simply because they are not human. talking about the ability to understand the morality of murder is working backwards from a conclusion. we eat meat and treat animals like shit because we've always done that, they taste good, and can't defend themselves adequately because we're apparently uniquely clever and cooperative murderers. it's unpopular to call folks who eat meat shitty cunts because they're just killing animals, not humans
we don't extend special protection to animals simply because they are not human, yes, see above. We're using human here as synonymous with person, when person is the more important part. If he was real, would you eat Elim Garak?
dizastar posted:
A Maodest Proposal
dizastar posted:its pretty bizarre to be on a communist forum and see such jingoistic takes on the relationship between humyns and sentient animals. I'm not into the ethical tenet of animal lib either but claiming 'human exceptionalism' doesnt work when it comes to concepts such as liberation or empathy because they obviously dont have a universal meaning. YOu think tribesmen in amazonia have the same ethical/moral standpoint as you? or that theyre aware & sympathetic towards the same causes, ideals & so on as you or me? ethics & morals, like every aspect of social life, are entirely shaped by material conditions n thus differ from one social group to another. this is also where your pro animal subjugation argument falls fl
No it has nothing to do with them sharing the same moral system or culture. It doesn't matter which one you have, it just matters that you can have one. All peoples on this earth have one, even though they are different, but cattle don't have one, because they can't.
But this is another time where someone with sympathy to animal lib puts together an argument that equates non-whitey society to animals. It's not even the first time someone in this thread did it. I wonder why that keeps happening! Or if you would be brave enough to submit yourself to the reputation number of IRL by writing the sentiment on a sandwich board john mcclane style and wearing it in the relevant culture's high streets.
Horselord posted:Humans are humans, so they get treated as them, yes I agree, and how do you define humans? I do it with the thing the human species has that no other species has.
I think maybe this is where the disagreement is coming from. You say that the ability to understand abstract concepts like "murder" and "justice" is what makes it wrong to harm or kill something; it's pointed out that many, many humans don't have the ability to understand abstract concepts; well, the human species has the ability to understand that stuff. Well, ok, in the Platonic Realm of the Forms and in Catholic Natural Law all human beings have those abilities, sure. I'm a materialist, so that isn't a particularly compelling argument.
But anyway, you saying that torturing animals is bad means you agree with 70% of what animal liberation folks are getting at. You can cross another 15% or so by realizing that ~90% of the animal products you ever consumed came from an animal that was tortured to death with methods that are roughly as cruel or crueler than just carving them up with power tools.
karphead posted:instead of sending all teh bougie to teh countryside i would make them all vegans
THEN i'd send them to the countryside - they'd be so surprised
招瑤 posted:while i often exlclaim "fuck horses" i don't mean actually fuck horses & understand that it's not the horses' fault their dick "owners" coerced them via ritual abuse to shit where i walk & kick up mudholes. liberate horses for the sake of my boots, real deal false speciesism/false interspeciesism
in Vegantopia, this won't be a problem because the only way to make boots will be nice clean shiny all natural petroleum based plastic
filler posted:I think maybe this is where the disagreement is coming from. You say that the ability to understand abstract concepts like "murder" and "justice" is what makes it wrong to harm or kill something; it's pointed out that many, many humans don't have the ability to understand abstract concepts; well, the human species has the ability to understand that stuff. Well, ok, in the Platonic Realm of the Forms and in Catholic Natural Law all human beings have those abilities, sure. I'm a materialist, so that isn't a particularly compelling argument.
"A human can do X, except in cases where something went wrong" is a solid materialist statement to me. Having the front third of your brain destroyed by a bullet isn't a step in the life cycle of our species.
I could also say that "animals should be liberated" isn't a materialist statement. Why should they? Because they feel pain? Why is that important, other than that it makes you feel guilty to know about it? Is guilt materialist?
filler posted:But anyway, you saying that torturing animals is bad means you agree with 70% of what animal liberation folks are getting at. You can cross another 15% or so by realizing that ~90% of the animal products you ever consumed came from an animal that was tortured to death with methods that are roughly as cruel or crueler than just carving them up with power tools.
No not really. Animal liberation people think that torturing animals is bad because it's a crime against a living being. I think that it's bad because it's a symptom of a severe mental condition where you're not responding to empathy cues properly, and if you have that condition you're a danger to society.
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dimashq posted:like how our attitude towards cannibalism is based on our social circumstances rather than an innate distaste for human meat.
Has that been proven?
Horselord posted:Yes but I want to know how it showing up in those societies would happen if there's an instinctual avoidal of it, or how it could disprove there being one.
That’s a good point and there’s probably a fine line between ancient taboo and biological/genetic distaste, given our sociability as a species. I’m not an anthropologist so I’d be lying if I had an answer for you.
