You mean the centre square? It’s a convention that centre squares are free. I don’t know if that means it’s a “good argument”.
It isn’t a real bingo game anyway – or, it could be, but you’d need to make up multiple sheets which had different reasons on them, or at least in different orders.
The rebuttle to “I didn’t climb to the top of the food chain to eat plants” is particularly bad, unfortunately:
“If you think you have the right to eat any nonhuman animal you can catch and kill, you must grant that any nonhuman animal who can catch you has the right to kill and eat you too. If your justification for killing and eating animals is that it’s all a part of the cycle of life, I must assume that you would accept large free-roaming carnivores coming into your cities and neighborhoods and hunting you too.”
It’s easy for an omnivore to grant the right to eat people to animals. But, this doesn’t stop us from having the right to keep them out of cities so they don’t eat us. Similarly, it’s easy to grant to animals the right to keep humans from coming into the wild to hunt them. It’s easy to play the game of trading rights with animals because they are all purely hypothetical – in reality, there are no rights either way, just bodies of various strength and social organization interacting with each other without any rule other than the possible.
The reason you should question whether or not it’s right for you to eat meat has nothing to do with “if I eat meat, maybe an animal would eat me”. This trades on the mistaken supposition that we could engage in moral conflict with animals, that there is something like a “war” between humans and animals. Rather, the reasons for not eating animals are human reasons – we have ideals which demand us to consider as morally relevant the suffering of things that suffer. You wouldn’t raise a race of humans who had their intelligences reduced to that of animals for food, and neither should you raise a race of animals for food.
I’m more and more coming to the conclusion that rights discourse is inappropriate for discussing what we mean when we say “animal rights”. No one seriously believes we can have reciprocal moral relations with animals, we should stop pretending our ethical interaction with them could be grounded such.
I didn’t include which argument was valid because I thought it might be fun to see if anyone else can differentiate. Anyways, the counter to the argument in question (Animals are different from humans) is simply a Wikipedia link to speciesism. I am aware of the position, just as I am aware of the arguments Peter Singer, and Thomas White make. Unfortunately it doesn’t make their arguments right, or widely accepted. Linking to an obscure, and highly contested intellectual position isn’t a rebuttal, any more than linking to Wikipedia’s page Nazism should fill you with race hate.
But is it a good argument?
In short order, two premises which are unlikely to be contested: Humans are different than other animals. Differences (in position, properties, situations) do affect moral obligations – The argument enjoys prima facie validity.
There are plenty of issues that can be raised moving from a cursory inspection (which the other arguments on the ridiculous chart fail) to a valid argument. One might wonder whether there are morally relevant differences between animals and humans, and argue that there are not between humans and certain types of animals. In this regard, I am not entirely hostile to White. (Up with dolphins? But then again, I stopped eating those a long time ago) However those questions are points of contention, and merely wiki-linking an ideology that has assumed answers for them in one direction doesn’t decisively settle the matter. Is it really surprising giving that I think the assessment of argument is incorrect, that I assert speciesism is incorrect? – although I did enjoy the rebuttal since simply assert wiki-link as rebuttal is beyond humorous (imo).
Speciesism isn’t “correct” or “incorrect” unless your a cognitivist. In the real world, morality is about values. And torturing animals comes into conflict with a pretty central human value – it’s just evidently bad (all things held equal) to make things that can feel pain, feel pain. Of course, in the real world, nothing is held equal – values come into conflict.
There is a lot to unpack in that very bizarre reply:
You cannot replace eating or killing with torture. These are not equivalent. E.x. Note the conceptual confusion of the following sentence: I came across a wounded animal and decided I should put an end to its suffering, so I tortured it restlessly for the next three days.
If you are a non-cognitivist then there are no moral facts. Any moral utterance isn’t an expression of belief (in the traditional sense), but a disclosure of an attitude (most likely agreeing or disagreeing with a particular action). But if you are going to prompt an anti-realist approach to ethics, then you can’t offer reasons for why another position is wrong. Offering rebuttals certainly is not in line with this claim. It is also somewhat odd that you appeal to non-cognitivism to be able to express utilitarian values.
This provides a nice bridge to a thought I had. Tristan, given the type of morality you have expressed a belief in (in the past) how can you be against the eating of animals? This is not consistent with Vernon’s conception of morality whereby the rightness or wrongness of an act is decided by societal consensus. I don’t necessarily agree with his characterization, but under those conditions appeal to popular opinion gains an inappropriate weight. You might claim that the self-alienation implicit in the historical dialectical movement forces us to a new level of consciousness, but strangely I do not remember the chapter in The Phenomenology Of Spirit where we must recognize animal rights. I think you have to choose which you love more, Hegel or a cow. (and before everyone flies off the handle, I was being facetious with the phrasing – but the problem [for you] is real)
“If you are a non-cognitivist then there are no moral facts”
Nope. Read some Aristotle before you repeat the absurd nonsense that passes for truth in 20th century ethics.
” This is not consistent with Vernon’s conception of morality whereby the rightness or wrongness of an act is decided by societal consensus. ”
Social consensus can be wrong because a society might not fully grasp its own principles. That’s why we can say there is such thing as moral progress.
“You cannot replace eating or killing with torture. These are not equivalent. E.x. Note the conceptual confusion of the following sentence: I came across a wounded animal and decided I should put an end to its suffering, so I tortured it restlessly for the next three days.”
So, I like eating meat on a daily basis. So, I decided to raise a slave class of feeling beings, in such a way that they are “tortured restlessly”, just so I can eat them.
Also, the act of killing is usually a form of torture. Maybe not always, but the way it is done in the current meat industry, it is largely torture.
A Hegelian can be a vegetarian just like a Hegelian can be pro-life or pro-late term abortion. You can think the current social censuses is wrong and try to destabilize it. Do you not think that the American liberal elite trying to gut Roe V. Wade are Hegelians? It’s evident to me that the Republican party has been largely Hegelian (in strategy) for a long time.
“If you are a non-cognitivist then there are no moral facts”
Do you not think there could be facts which were not propositional? Do you not think your foot knows “for a fact” how high the first step is at your front door? What about emotional facts – are these cognitive as well? Is everything knowable, factual, real, a proposition?
I want to apologize for the tone I used here, and before – it was quite rude. Now – we both know it was rude, that’s a “fact” – but it’s not cognitive! See – I’m still doing it!
I share your concern over animal welfare. However, that is not enough to establish that eating meat is wrong. The concessions you offer when you note that killing is not always a torture ([1]which I think you must offer to be reasonable. [2] I would like to point out that my thinking enjoys a certain consistency as I argue that physician assisted suicide should be legalized. Part of my strict insistence that killing must not always treated as a moral wrong comes from – what are far removed, but nevertheless – strong arguments in bioethics, and legal precedent.) I think at best, you might have established that I do too little to change the current factory conditions, but the gradient is likely to be related to the characteristics I ascribe to animals, i.e., how much and how sophisticated their feelings are. We are likely to vary considerably on those subsequent (I would say “facts” of animal consciousness and self-consciousness, but not in the sense of asserting them as incontestable knowledge, but as cognitive – see below) Suffice it to say, regardless of the fine tuning of the conditions, your argument isn’t capable of supporting the stated conclusion.
Of course I think someone might decide that the societal consensus on an issue is immoral. I accept the distinction between critical and positive morality. However, you do not. Or at least that is my assumption. Vernon’s presentation on Hegelian morality clearly indicated that the rightness or the wrongness of an action was decided by the consensus decision of a society. I don’t agree with this claim, but I believe it stemmed from the fact that moral disputes necessarily arise in complex societies (i.e., once the historical movement of consciousness has reached a certain level of development) and societal consensus sorted issues and actually inscribed the action as right or wrong, because the categories are only enforced with consciousness coming to terms with itself (until the next irresolvable conflict). His abortion example was not fact dependent because it only rested on social declaration. We watched the lecture a long time ago, but when it was over, you turned to me and said – roughly – ‘Yup, that’s what morality is… Vernon’s got it completely right.’ So I don’t think any of the rejoinders you offered can be made consistent with such a position. However, you are always free to inform me that this is not your position. (which is far simpler and what I was actually expecting)
I know you have been doing work on Aristotle. I don’t know what work you have been doing on Aristotle. I can only refer you to the conventional definitions of non-cognitivism, which does insist that there are not moral facts or properties, and the conventional interpretation of Aristotle. You seem to disagree with the former by citing Aristotle as a counter example. You are able to cite Aristotle as a counter example, because I am almost certain you disagree with the conventional interpretation of Aristotle. So maybe your appropriation of Aristotle is non-cognitivist, and somehow fact based (in which case I would very much like to see a detailed explaination of your interpretation of Aristotle). I can only operate under the conventional understandings of both terms until some other form of private understanding has been reached between us.
Ambiguity in factual claims does not make them non-factual in nature. If you say you are being rude and it is a fact, then it is cognitive. I didn’t know you were being rude, and I think it was this ambiguity you tend to pray on, but the ambiguity would merely mean that I am able to get an incorrect answer. If the question actually hinged on opinion, e.g., if we recorded statements from ten people about whether they agree it was rude, how rude they thought it was, etc – without believing one to be right due to reasons or facts, than it would be non-cognitive. Unfortunately, if it is, then your mere utterance that it was rude, cannot possibly establish it as a fact. Your example doesn’t seem to work – FACT!
Even if killing isn’t wrong, the real-existent world of meat production, which gives very little concern for an animal’s welfare, would be enough to call for an end to the consumption of animal products.
I think getting stuck on principles like “killing is wrong” is not always the greatest way to do eithics. Again – Aristitotle – take any principle, and if you try to apply it universally you’ll find exceptions where it does not produce justice. This is just a characteristic of the universality of law, which requires the supplement of judgement which A calls equity (to epiekes).
As for Vernon’s Hegel, I usually agree with Jim on most things (as long as he’s not talking about Heidegger, and even then I often agree with him, we just emphasize different periods of H’s work). I agree with him here. However, rather than settling the debate – the Hegelian frame of setting moral conflict to be the source of morality means we are in the stage of decision with regards to whether we should consume animal products. Principles we do accept (that one should not torture animals – we have laws about this) conflict with our everyday practices, and the solution to this paradox (do not “needlessly” torture animals) is plainly inadequate. The fact people don’t pay attention to this does not mean society has decided, but rather that society has not decided.
“Even if killing isn’t wrong, the real-existent world of meat production, which gives very little concern for an animal’s welfare, would be enough to call for an end to the consumption of animal products.”
To repeat, “I share your concern over animal welfare.” However, your appeal does not call for an end of the consumption of animal products. It calls for a chance in the social practice. We should treat animals bred for consumption as humanely as possible, but until you conclusively demonstrate that killing them is wrong (just look at the concessions I’ve been able to eke out of you so far), then eating animals can be justified; Torturing them cannot. Maybe even the current farming conditions cannot. But unless you establish killing as wrong, your argument cannot go further than advocating a change in our meat eating practices.
I don’t think I am getting stuck on unrelated principles. I’ve always kept my eye on the prize. Take your concession that killing isn’t necessarily wrong, and answer the question, if killing humans is wrong, why is killing some animals not wrong? It is because humans are different than animals…. See how neatly it comes back to the central point:
“Argues that humans are different from other animals, and therefore eating them is morally justified.”
“We should treat animals bred for consumption as humanely as possible,”
It might be that we can’t treat them humanely enough. In that case, the animal welfare argument also necessitates an end to the consumption of animals.
The test case is, would you affirm the production, breeding, killing, and distribution for food of a race of babies who do not evolve past the capacities of a cow? Even abstracting from your intuition that it’s “a person”, because of course it isn’t.
“if killing humans is wrong, why is killing some animals not wrong?”
This is far too general. When is killing humans wrong? When it is does systematically and with no regard for the specificity of persons (as well as other times). The human killing which animal killing most represents is genocide, although obviously it has a contrary intent (we are not trying to kill of races of animals).
“if killing humans is wrong, why is killing some animals not wrong?”
Both humans and animals are sentient. I can see justifying killing either one in honest self defense. But otherwise, why kill? There is no good reason, so it must be wrong.
But the biggest source of suffering imo, is the way animals are raised.
One overlooked problem with killing: the animals and people left behind that mourn the victim.
Nice chart. I’ve heard most of these.
Putting a strong argument in a chart with other terrible arguments doesn’t undermine it.
You mean the centre square? It’s a convention that centre squares are free. I don’t know if that means it’s a “good argument”.
It isn’t a real bingo game anyway – or, it could be, but you’d need to make up multiple sheets which had different reasons on them, or at least in different orders.
To give proper credit, this was created by Brian Vanderveen. Just in case anyone thinks any of these are strong arguments, a collection of rebuttals.
Thanks jessica!
The rebuttle to “I didn’t climb to the top of the food chain to eat plants” is particularly bad, unfortunately:
“If you think you have the right to eat any nonhuman animal you can catch and kill, you must grant that any nonhuman animal who can catch you has the right to kill and eat you too. If your justification for killing and eating animals is that it’s all a part of the cycle of life, I must assume that you would accept large free-roaming carnivores coming into your cities and neighborhoods and hunting you too.”
It’s easy for an omnivore to grant the right to eat people to animals. But, this doesn’t stop us from having the right to keep them out of cities so they don’t eat us. Similarly, it’s easy to grant to animals the right to keep humans from coming into the wild to hunt them. It’s easy to play the game of trading rights with animals because they are all purely hypothetical – in reality, there are no rights either way, just bodies of various strength and social organization interacting with each other without any rule other than the possible.
The reason you should question whether or not it’s right for you to eat meat has nothing to do with “if I eat meat, maybe an animal would eat me”. This trades on the mistaken supposition that we could engage in moral conflict with animals, that there is something like a “war” between humans and animals. Rather, the reasons for not eating animals are human reasons – we have ideals which demand us to consider as morally relevant the suffering of things that suffer. You wouldn’t raise a race of humans who had their intelligences reduced to that of animals for food, and neither should you raise a race of animals for food.
I’m more and more coming to the conclusion that rights discourse is inappropriate for discussing what we mean when we say “animal rights”. No one seriously believes we can have reciprocal moral relations with animals, we should stop pretending our ethical interaction with them could be grounded such.
I didn’t include which argument was valid because I thought it might be fun to see if anyone else can differentiate. Anyways, the counter to the argument in question (Animals are different from humans) is simply a Wikipedia link to speciesism. I am aware of the position, just as I am aware of the arguments Peter Singer, and Thomas White make. Unfortunately it doesn’t make their arguments right, or widely accepted. Linking to an obscure, and highly contested intellectual position isn’t a rebuttal, any more than linking to Wikipedia’s page Nazism should fill you with race hate.
But is it a good argument?
In short order, two premises which are unlikely to be contested: Humans are different than other animals. Differences (in position, properties, situations) do affect moral obligations – The argument enjoys prima facie validity.
There are plenty of issues that can be raised moving from a cursory inspection (which the other arguments on the ridiculous chart fail) to a valid argument. One might wonder whether there are morally relevant differences between animals and humans, and argue that there are not between humans and certain types of animals. In this regard, I am not entirely hostile to White. (Up with dolphins? But then again, I stopped eating those a long time ago) However those questions are points of contention, and merely wiki-linking an ideology that has assumed answers for them in one direction doesn’t decisively settle the matter. Is it really surprising giving that I think the assessment of argument is incorrect, that I assert speciesism is incorrect? – although I did enjoy the rebuttal since simply assert wiki-link as rebuttal is beyond humorous (imo).
Speciesism isn’t “correct” or “incorrect” unless your a cognitivist. In the real world, morality is about values. And torturing animals comes into conflict with a pretty central human value – it’s just evidently bad (all things held equal) to make things that can feel pain, feel pain. Of course, in the real world, nothing is held equal – values come into conflict.
There is a lot to unpack in that very bizarre reply:
You cannot replace eating or killing with torture. These are not equivalent. E.x. Note the conceptual confusion of the following sentence: I came across a wounded animal and decided I should put an end to its suffering, so I tortured it restlessly for the next three days.
If you are a non-cognitivist then there are no moral facts. Any moral utterance isn’t an expression of belief (in the traditional sense), but a disclosure of an attitude (most likely agreeing or disagreeing with a particular action). But if you are going to prompt an anti-realist approach to ethics, then you can’t offer reasons for why another position is wrong. Offering rebuttals certainly is not in line with this claim. It is also somewhat odd that you appeal to non-cognitivism to be able to express utilitarian values.
This provides a nice bridge to a thought I had. Tristan, given the type of morality you have expressed a belief in (in the past) how can you be against the eating of animals? This is not consistent with Vernon’s conception of morality whereby the rightness or wrongness of an act is decided by societal consensus. I don’t necessarily agree with his characterization, but under those conditions appeal to popular opinion gains an inappropriate weight. You might claim that the self-alienation implicit in the historical dialectical movement forces us to a new level of consciousness, but strangely I do not remember the chapter in The Phenomenology Of Spirit where we must recognize animal rights. I think you have to choose which you love more, Hegel or a cow. (and before everyone flies off the handle, I was being facetious with the phrasing – but the problem [for you] is real)
“If you are a non-cognitivist then there are no moral facts”
Nope. Read some Aristotle before you repeat the absurd nonsense that passes for truth in 20th century ethics.
” This is not consistent with Vernon’s conception of morality whereby the rightness or wrongness of an act is decided by societal consensus. ”
Social consensus can be wrong because a society might not fully grasp its own principles. That’s why we can say there is such thing as moral progress.
“You cannot replace eating or killing with torture. These are not equivalent. E.x. Note the conceptual confusion of the following sentence: I came across a wounded animal and decided I should put an end to its suffering, so I tortured it restlessly for the next three days.”
So, I like eating meat on a daily basis. So, I decided to raise a slave class of feeling beings, in such a way that they are “tortured restlessly”, just so I can eat them.
Also, the act of killing is usually a form of torture. Maybe not always, but the way it is done in the current meat industry, it is largely torture.
A Hegelian can be a vegetarian just like a Hegelian can be pro-life or pro-late term abortion. You can think the current social censuses is wrong and try to destabilize it. Do you not think that the American liberal elite trying to gut Roe V. Wade are Hegelians? It’s evident to me that the Republican party has been largely Hegelian (in strategy) for a long time.
“If you are a non-cognitivist then there are no moral facts”
Do you not think there could be facts which were not propositional? Do you not think your foot knows “for a fact” how high the first step is at your front door? What about emotional facts – are these cognitive as well? Is everything knowable, factual, real, a proposition?
I want to apologize for the tone I used here, and before – it was quite rude. Now – we both know it was rude, that’s a “fact” – but it’s not cognitive! See – I’m still doing it!
I share your concern over animal welfare. However, that is not enough to establish that eating meat is wrong. The concessions you offer when you note that killing is not always a torture ([1]which I think you must offer to be reasonable. [2] I would like to point out that my thinking enjoys a certain consistency as I argue that physician assisted suicide should be legalized. Part of my strict insistence that killing must not always treated as a moral wrong comes from – what are far removed, but nevertheless – strong arguments in bioethics, and legal precedent.) I think at best, you might have established that I do too little to change the current factory conditions, but the gradient is likely to be related to the characteristics I ascribe to animals, i.e., how much and how sophisticated their feelings are. We are likely to vary considerably on those subsequent (I would say “facts” of animal consciousness and self-consciousness, but not in the sense of asserting them as incontestable knowledge, but as cognitive – see below) Suffice it to say, regardless of the fine tuning of the conditions, your argument isn’t capable of supporting the stated conclusion.
Of course I think someone might decide that the societal consensus on an issue is immoral. I accept the distinction between critical and positive morality. However, you do not. Or at least that is my assumption. Vernon’s presentation on Hegelian morality clearly indicated that the rightness or the wrongness of an action was decided by the consensus decision of a society. I don’t agree with this claim, but I believe it stemmed from the fact that moral disputes necessarily arise in complex societies (i.e., once the historical movement of consciousness has reached a certain level of development) and societal consensus sorted issues and actually inscribed the action as right or wrong, because the categories are only enforced with consciousness coming to terms with itself (until the next irresolvable conflict). His abortion example was not fact dependent because it only rested on social declaration. We watched the lecture a long time ago, but when it was over, you turned to me and said – roughly – ‘Yup, that’s what morality is… Vernon’s got it completely right.’ So I don’t think any of the rejoinders you offered can be made consistent with such a position. However, you are always free to inform me that this is not your position. (which is far simpler and what I was actually expecting)
I know you have been doing work on Aristotle. I don’t know what work you have been doing on Aristotle. I can only refer you to the conventional definitions of non-cognitivism, which does insist that there are not moral facts or properties, and the conventional interpretation of Aristotle. You seem to disagree with the former by citing Aristotle as a counter example. You are able to cite Aristotle as a counter example, because I am almost certain you disagree with the conventional interpretation of Aristotle. So maybe your appropriation of Aristotle is non-cognitivist, and somehow fact based (in which case I would very much like to see a detailed explaination of your interpretation of Aristotle). I can only operate under the conventional understandings of both terms until some other form of private understanding has been reached between us.
Ambiguity in factual claims does not make them non-factual in nature. If you say you are being rude and it is a fact, then it is cognitive. I didn’t know you were being rude, and I think it was this ambiguity you tend to pray on, but the ambiguity would merely mean that I am able to get an incorrect answer. If the question actually hinged on opinion, e.g., if we recorded statements from ten people about whether they agree it was rude, how rude they thought it was, etc – without believing one to be right due to reasons or facts, than it would be non-cognitive. Unfortunately, if it is, then your mere utterance that it was rude, cannot possibly establish it as a fact. Your example doesn’t seem to work – FACT!
Even if killing isn’t wrong, the real-existent world of meat production, which gives very little concern for an animal’s welfare, would be enough to call for an end to the consumption of animal products.
I think getting stuck on principles like “killing is wrong” is not always the greatest way to do eithics. Again – Aristitotle – take any principle, and if you try to apply it universally you’ll find exceptions where it does not produce justice. This is just a characteristic of the universality of law, which requires the supplement of judgement which A calls equity (to epiekes).
As for Vernon’s Hegel, I usually agree with Jim on most things (as long as he’s not talking about Heidegger, and even then I often agree with him, we just emphasize different periods of H’s work). I agree with him here. However, rather than settling the debate – the Hegelian frame of setting moral conflict to be the source of morality means we are in the stage of decision with regards to whether we should consume animal products. Principles we do accept (that one should not torture animals – we have laws about this) conflict with our everyday practices, and the solution to this paradox (do not “needlessly” torture animals) is plainly inadequate. The fact people don’t pay attention to this does not mean society has decided, but rather that society has not decided.
“Even if killing isn’t wrong, the real-existent world of meat production, which gives very little concern for an animal’s welfare, would be enough to call for an end to the consumption of animal products.”
To repeat, “I share your concern over animal welfare.” However, your appeal does not call for an end of the consumption of animal products. It calls for a chance in the social practice. We should treat animals bred for consumption as humanely as possible, but until you conclusively demonstrate that killing them is wrong (just look at the concessions I’ve been able to eke out of you so far), then eating animals can be justified; Torturing them cannot. Maybe even the current farming conditions cannot. But unless you establish killing as wrong, your argument cannot go further than advocating a change in our meat eating practices.
I don’t think I am getting stuck on unrelated principles. I’ve always kept my eye on the prize. Take your concession that killing isn’t necessarily wrong, and answer the question, if killing humans is wrong, why is killing some animals not wrong? It is because humans are different than animals…. See how neatly it comes back to the central point:
“Argues that humans are different from other animals, and therefore eating them is morally justified.”
“We should treat animals bred for consumption as humanely as possible,”
It might be that we can’t treat them humanely enough. In that case, the animal welfare argument also necessitates an end to the consumption of animals.
The test case is, would you affirm the production, breeding, killing, and distribution for food of a race of babies who do not evolve past the capacities of a cow? Even abstracting from your intuition that it’s “a person”, because of course it isn’t.
“if killing humans is wrong, why is killing some animals not wrong?”
This is far too general. When is killing humans wrong? When it is does systematically and with no regard for the specificity of persons (as well as other times). The human killing which animal killing most represents is genocide, although obviously it has a contrary intent (we are not trying to kill of races of animals).
“if killing humans is wrong, why is killing some animals not wrong?”
Both humans and animals are sentient. I can see justifying killing either one in honest self defense. But otherwise, why kill? There is no good reason, so it must be wrong.
But the biggest source of suffering imo, is the way animals are raised.
One overlooked problem with killing: the animals and people left behind that mourn the victim.