Plutarch on animal ethics

[StCapps]

Some people are healthier with a vegan diet, other people are healthier with a carnivore diet, some people are healthier with a more balanced diet, one size, does not fit all. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?

I'm not a nutritional expert, I simply repeat what studies have shown, which is that the vegan diet is nutritionally adequate and is associated with many health benefits.

Even if you were right that some people are healthier on meat, that wouldn't be a justification for killing animals if they were already healthy.

Studies have shown that every single person on the planet would be healthier with no meat in their diet? If so, I'd like to see those studies.

How isn't it some people being healthier when they eat meat not justify killing animals? People should wait until they get sick before eating meat is justified? That doesn't make any sense.

How about eating the meat of animal populations that have grown too large and are damaging the ecosystem and the environment? Is that not justified?

[StCapps]

No one is healthy with a carnivore diet.
Meat does not contain all the nutrients needed.
Eat only meat and you will die.
A vegan or vegetarian diet on the other hand is perfectly sustainable.

Tell that to Jordan Peterson and his daughter. Plants do not contain all the nutrients either, yet not every vegan dies, and not everyone on the carnivore diet dies. Different diets for different people, one size does not fit all, including veganism.

[JohnDonne]

Were all waiting for those reasons. Maybe next thread.

I don't know how basic or philosophical you want me to go. I have the sneaking suspicion you'll retreat to moral nihilism as soon as I appeal to any descriptive definition of ethics.

If that's what you plan to do, ask yourself this: You presumably are subject to ethical appeals in other situations, why question the validity of ethics now? Anyway...

Here's a simple way of talking about it:
Animals are sentient beings and don't want to die. Any action which has a victim requires a moral justification. An animal's life matters to itself more than the taste of meat matters to humans.

If you want the philosophical take:
The whole genesis of ethics is that there are these subjective points of view that have these interests.

Sometimes interests between subjective points of view conflict.

Ethics looked at these interests, and tried to discern which interest was more necessary to each subjective point of view's well-being, (which of course included survival, as without survival, there could be no interests and therefore no well-being.) It was called unethical when one subjective point of view sacrificed the greater interests of another subjective point of view for their own lesser interests.

So hierarchically, A might want to kill B for fun, but because B had a greater interest in being alive than A had in having fun, it was called unethical for A to kill B.

Cows are a subjective point of view, and they have a greater interest in being alive than humans do in eating them.

[JohnDonne]

Some people are healthier with a vegan diet, other people are healthier with a carnivore diet, some people are healthier with a more balanced diet, one size, does not fit all. Do you agree or disagree with that statement?

I'm not a nutritional expert, I simply repeat what studies have shown, which is that the vegan diet is nutritionally adequate and is associated with many health benefits.

Even if you were right that some people are healthier on meat, that wouldn't be a justification for killing animals if they were already healthy.

Studies have shown that every single person on the planet would be healthier with no meat in their diet? If so, I'd like to see those studies.

How isn't it some people being healthier when they eat meat not justify killing animals? People should wait until they get sick before eating meat is justified? That doesn't make any sense.

How about eating the meat of animal populations that have grown too large and are damaging the ecosystem and the environment? Is that not justified?

There's no study that proves every single last person will be healthier with one diet than another. There are simply studies showing the vegan diet is nutritionally adequate and associated with many health benefits.

If a person can be healthy on plants, then trying to be healthier wouldn't be a moral justification to kill animals. The animal has its own health that has ethical value, right? If you can both be healthy, where's the justification for killing brother pig?

I think the idea of balance in nature is ultimately a human one, which serves human convenience. But I'm realistic, humans are going to favor forces of stability in the environment and in how they manage wildlife. In a vegan society I believe they would try to get around killing animals as much as possible if not entirely.

Supposing a situation occurred where an animal needed to be killed "for the greater good" or some such. It seems to me that it doesn't follow that you should make a sport of it or eat its dead body for flavor. When someone's going to be executed, you don't say, "hey, now's a good time to have some fun with it." To me, that seems evil. The meat wouldn't be wasted either, other animals that are trying to survive would get sustenance from it.

[StCapps]

I'm not a nutritional expert, I simply repeat what studies have shown, which is that the vegan diet is nutritionally adequate and is associated with many health benefits.

Even if you were right that some people are healthier on meat, that wouldn't be a justification for killing animals if they were already healthy.

Studies have shown that every single person on the planet would be healthier with no meat in their diet? If so, I'd like to see those studies.

How isn't it some people being healthier when they eat meat not justify killing animals? People should wait until they get sick before eating meat is justified? That doesn't make any sense.

How about eating the meat of animal populations that have grown too large and are damaging the ecosystem and the environment? Is that not justified?

There's no study that proves every single last person will be healthier with one diet than another. There are simply studies showing the vegan diet is nutritionally adequate and associated with many health benefits.

If a person can be healthy on plants, then trying to be healthier wouldn't be a moral justification to kill animals. The animal has its own health that has ethical value, right? If you can both be healthy, where's the justification for killing brother pig?

I think the idea of balance in nature is ultimately a human one, which serves human convenience. But I'm realistic, humans are going to favor forces of stability in the environment and in how they manage wildlife. In a vegan society I believe they would try to get around killing animals as much as possible if not entirely.

Supposing a situation occurred where an animal needed to be killed "for the greater good" or some such. It seems to me that it doesn't follow that you should make a sport of it or eat its dead body for flavor. When someone's going to be executed, you don't say, "hey, now's a good time to have some fun with it." To me, that seems evil. The meat wouldn't be wasted either, other animals that are trying to survive would get sustenance from it.

The meat would be wasted, because the humans get more out of it, than other animals get eating it's carcass, we use more of the animal than other animals. Eating that meat is not evil, nice try ethics boy.

As for eating brother pig, more pigs exist because of animal husbandry than if humans stopped practicing animal husbandry altogether, so we are creating the conditions that allow more pigs to live than we are taking, in the long run. You would rather less pigs live on this planet, as long as human eat them. Who is really looking out for the pig? Not vegans.

[Smitty-48]

I will agree to stop hacking the pigs up.

If/when we are allowed to hack the vegans up instead.

And then feed them to the pigs.

[JohnDonne]

No one is healthy with a carnivore diet.
Meat does not contain all the nutrients needed.
Eat only meat and you will die.
A vegan or vegetarian diet on the other hand is perfectly sustainable.

Tell that to Jordan Peterson and his daughter. Plants do not contain all the nutrients either, yet not every vegan dies, and not everyone on the carnivore diet dies. Different diets for different people, one size does not fit all, including veganism.

"Not every vegan dies" is rather high praise, but I'd have to go further and point to the evidence that veganism has significant health benefits.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662288/

[JohnDonne]

Studies have shown that every single person on the planet would be healthier with no meat in their diet? If so, I'd like to see those studies.

How isn't it some people being healthier when they eat meat not justify killing animals? People should wait until they get sick before eating meat is justified? That doesn't make any sense.

How about eating the meat of animal populations that have grown too large and are damaging the ecosystem and the environment? Is that not justified?

There's no study that proves every single last person will be healthier with one diet than another. There are simply studies showing the vegan diet is nutritionally adequate and associated with many health benefits.

If a person can be healthy on plants, then trying to be healthier wouldn't be a moral justification to kill animals. The animal has its own health that has ethical value, right? If you can both be healthy, where's the justification for killing brother pig?

I think the idea of balance in nature is ultimately a human one, which serves human convenience. But I'm realistic, humans are going to favor forces of stability in the environment and in how they manage wildlife. In a vegan society I believe they would try to get around killing animals as much as possible if not entirely.

Supposing a situation occurred where an animal needed to be killed "for the greater good" or some such. It seems to me that it doesn't follow that you should make a sport of it or eat its dead body for flavor. When someone's going to be executed, you don't say, "hey, now's a good time to have some fun with it." To me, that seems evil. The meat wouldn't be wasted either, other animals that are trying to survive would get sustenance from it.

The meat would be wasted, because the humans get more out of it, than other animals get eating it's carcass, we use more of the animal than other animals. Eating that meat is not evil, nice try ethics boy.

As for eating brother pig, more pigs exist because of animal husbandry than if humans stopped practicing animal husbandry altogether, so we are creating the conditions that allow more pigs to live than we are taking, in the long run. You would rather less pigs live on this planet, as long as human eat them. Who is really looking out for the pig? Not vegans.

You wouldn't need the meat for survival, you'd be nice and healthy as a vegan, like me, a stout firefighter, but the animals in the forest could probably use the meat.

I said it seems evil to me, you're not only killing the animal that did nothing wrong, in a premeditated way, but you're making sure to make a little ritual out of its death, having a good time with it's dead body. It's like the executioner that has an extra skip in his step the day after. But that's just how I see it, other vegans might differ in opinion.

Just breeding more pigs isn't in the interest of any of the pigs or their well-being, nice try though.

Unless you think it's in the interests of humans to have a trillion more people on earth, simply because there'd be more people, even though everyone would be suffering. But nobody thinks that.

[JohnDonne]

I will agree to stop hacking the pigs up.

If/when we are allowed to hack the vegans up instead.

And then feed them to the pigs.

It's a hard thing to contend with, I understand.

Jaysus lads, you've kept me up.

[StCapps]

Just breeding more pigs isn't in the interest of any of the pigs or their well-being, nice try though.

Is a pig's life valuable, or isn't it? If it is, then more living pigs is clearly of interest to the pigs who get to live that otherwise wouldn't without people to eat them, or if it isn't, then there is nothing immoral about killing a pig.

Either way killing a pig to eat it, not immoral. You might think it's immoral, but that doesn't make it so.