/lit/ - Literature

I haven't read him but aren't there animals that can't feel pleasure and pain? If it's the case, how are all animals equal?

>>12650847
I'm not trying to highjack this thread but same question to this book.

>>12650912

he refers to animals used in eating and experimenting, who mostly can feel pain. Main line of argument is that since we wont experiment or eat retards and mongs, we shouldnt do it to cows and dogs etc who might even be smarter

(I have not read and do not intend to read the text.)
Should we protect prey from predators? It seems likely that being hunted in the wild by other animals is more painful than being slaughtered in controlled conditions, so if that's your only basis for morality then why not?

I read an argument that said death was only bad for an organism who could understand and plan for their future. The suffering caused by death for humans was the "prevention of future goals," such as having a family, making money, finding purpose, etc. He argued that lower species had no understanding of their existence through time, and only ever thought of the future. For example, he suggested that if a fox was caught in a trap, the fox does not know "if I remain in the trap, I will die." Yet, the fox chews through their own leg to escape. He thinks it's more likely that the fox merely considered the pain of a lost limb to be superior to the pain and anxiety caused by lack of movement. When a cat meows to be fed, he isn't saying, "I want to be fed three hours from now." He is saying that he wants food NOW, and by now, he means as close to the present as possible. If a cow has to walk to a spot of grass to feed, the cow isn't concerned with getting grass fifteen minutes in the future, but simply wants grass now and is accomplishing the necessary activity to find pleasure in the moment.

Essentially, animals do not lose anything by dying. They may have future pleasures, but they don't expect or care about those future pleasures because they don't know such pleasures will exist, thus their will isn't being negated and they experience no sadness from dying aside from the physical pain of being killed.

>>12650927
oh ok. But then it's not actually 'all animals'. Anyway, whatever.

As a continental I wouldn't even take seriously someone that just ignores the notion of dignity. I know a lot of people will say dignity is a hack or is just 'sacred without God', but still, they're just not educated enough.

>>12650971 (I)
>>12650988 (II)

(I)i agree, i somewhat said something about his assumption of negativity of death even though his view crumbles, the animals dont care and as long as its not painful, the animal does not suffer in any sense.


(II)Also i thought to say that but this is a descriptive essay so i cant go into the concept of dignity. His premise that the only requirement for an interest of no pain is literally not wanting to be hurt and enjoying certain pleasures (which literally all animals qualify for), i cant deny it. Its like saying all who breathe need air. I actually used this as a strongpoint in his argument, that once he uses this it becomes really hard to attack him in the matter of who's deserving of satisfaction of these interests.

>>12650971
you can apply this to humans too

>>12651029
>once he uses this it becomes really hard to attack him in the matter of who's deserving of satisfaction of these interests.
I agree. I can't agree with his utilitarian premise though.
If I anesthetize a cow and cut off her legs to eat em, and give it wheels instead, I think the lack of pain wouldn't make it a significantly better action.

>>12651118
If you could make both yourself and the cow happier by cutting its legs off, that would be a utilitarian action, this example does not refute utilitarianism. The fact is that you probably would not improve a cow's life by cutting its legs off.

>>12651118

the thing is he has established a very absolutist term. We can get nutrition and macros from foods like onions, no matter how (might need to eat more of it etc, but we can still find protein). So we do not need meat per se, other than our own interests.
The response will probably be that wheels meddle with its natural state, to which any different is worst (unless improved biomedically), and so putting wheels on it is some sort of pain too. Unless you gave it robot legs which functioned in the exact same way

Singer's axioms are :
-All animals are equal
-All animals deserve not to be killed/exploited.

This induces antispecism and a vegan way of life.

Veganism.
That precisely is where a problem will emerge.

While a "traditional farm", i.e. a farm where you also raise and exploit animals (bees, poultry, sheep, cattle) will be able to be highly self-sufficient thanks to the possible exploitation of animal dejections as fertilizer, a vegan farm will not be able to do so. The animals being exploited are also capable of stopping certain kind of insects from destroying parts of your farm (chickens eat wasps that could kill your bees, they also eat snails, slugs and other insects that can do damage to your vegetables, cattle will eat weeds, and so on).

As opposed to the complex biotope that a farm brings and makes operating, a vegan farm will be unfunctional at some level, you will usually never be able to cultivate all you need by yourself and you'll be obligated to use non-animal (chemical) fertilizer and insecticides to make your own farm running.
That means killing soil fauna, which means (indirectly) disminishing the number of pests, which means (indirectly) disminishing the number of pests' predators.
To produce massive amounts of veggies for the whole population, same thing but at a larger scale : whole biotops will be destroyed due to the mandatory use of chemicals.

In the end, you'll kill far more animals when you live as a vegan than living as a localist, nature-respecter non-vegan.

Therefore, living as an antispecist "abolitionnist" vegan contradicts the moral exigencies of being an antispecist "abolitionnist" vegan.

>>12651158

Thing is Singer says he opposes e.g. the goose feeding for pattee, or how pigs are stored and fed, or chicken put in cages etc making their existence painful.

An argument against this is that if you raise them painlessly, relatively free, or even if they grow up free, a painless death collapses his argument since all the possible cases of pain have been eradicated. (also, there is an issue with his assumption that death is bad in itself. For animals who dont understand the concept of ceasing of existing, death is bad initself only if physically painful. And if its painless, eg immediate death from lethal injection which does not hurt, his argument of specieism in food does not stand.)

The reason humans have rights that other animals don't is that we have a rational nature. A rational animal is an intelligent being who can articulate why they believe and act the way they do and compare other beliefs and actions. They're also capable of rejecting beliefs. Singer recognizes this when talks about how the right to vote can only be given to a being who understands what that means, but he falsely turns this rationality into a sliding scale, meaning the more rational an animal is the more rights it deserves.

He might bring up some of the seemingly semi-rational animals like dolphins to illustrate his point, but this would be false. A dolphin may mimic some rationality that humans exhibit but the similarities are superficial. Dolphins cannot formulate ideas and compare or reject them. Rationality is a dichotomy, either an animal does or doesn't have it by nature.

>>12651197
Then ok, but why be vegan then ?
That's just common sense :
-do no hurt animals if you can not hurt them,
-exploit them as humanely as possible, so don't cut them from their natural milieu,

From that point, you can chose 2 paths, based on your understanding of his doctrine : trad localist lifestyle or vegan/antispecist messianism .

>>12651197
A lot of Singer's positions also look really inconsistent when placed next to each other. He was really gung ho about animal rights, but he was also for euthanizing disabled newborns.

The premise of his argument being that disability necessarily comes with suffering.
Singer doesn't conceive that animals, who are similarly unable to gain certain physical or intellectual capabilities, and so are unable to experience certain pleasures or avoid certain pains are similarly impaired. His reasons why death for the disabled is merciful don't cross over to animals who are similarly impaired but supposedly don't suffer for it.

>>12651220

yes but then he talks about mongs and retards, and says that since we dont perform experiments or eat them etc, its unfair to do it to animals. Since the problem is rationality, we should have the same attitude towards all lower rationality creatures, not protect the few humans.

>>12651232


its his issue that he brings up death. I can find a way around this. He said "its not merely that we are prepared to kill them". Before talking about the conditions

>>12651243
Retards will still have that human nature which is rational even if it doesn't manifest itself to its full potential.

1.) Humans have moral obligations to fulfill towards both animals and plants.
2.) Since animals and plants lack rationality, language, self-consciousness, and many other things required for them to be moral agents, they are always innocent in their actions.
3.) Humans are moral agents, and therefore, they can commit morally atrocious actions.
4.) It is better to be innocent than to be morally atrocious.
5.) By virtue of their innocence (along with their beauty, majesty, etc.), animals and plants have more rights and are more deserving of ethical treatment than are most humans, who are almost always vicious if not evil.
6.) There is good reason to think that animals and plants have more rights than your average nigger does, since a nigger is just human enough to be morally disgusting, but not animal enough to be innocent in his actions.
7.) In the hierarchy of the species, animals and plants are higher above many humans, by virtue of their many good qualities, namely their beauty, majesty, elegance, perfection, etc.
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8.) Over-population is the biggest source of harm to plants and animals.
9.) On the scale of humanity, white Europeans are the best, followed by Asians, Hispanics, and Africans (niggers and those like them).
10.) The lower on the scale of humanity, the worse that given race treats animals (niggers treating animals by far worse than any other race); basically, the browner and more animal-like you are, the more likely you will behave like an animal towards other animals and not like a man possessed with divinity.
11.) The populations that have the most children are those which are least deserving of life and which treat animals and plants worse (brown people and niggers).
12.) To truly create a world in which plants and animals are respected to the highest extent possible, the population of niggers and brown people must be eliminated or severely mitigated; furthermore, all remaining populations must accept Aryan overlords and the the Aryans must be ruled by the best among their race.
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13.) The ability to suffer pain isn't ipso facto a reason to treat someone well (niggers can feel, but often they deserve only the harshest of treatment, including mass sterilization).
14.) When talking about the ethics of animal treatment, we cannot rely on any sort of equality criterion; the best of humanity outshines the best of all the animal world; animals among themselves have no equality in terms of beauty, character, majesty; some humans are worse than animals and some animals better than some humans; basically, there is no equality anywhere in the world, no matter how hard you look. You will not even find equality among identical twins.
15.) We should treat animals well because they are innocent, beautiful, divine, majestic and in many cases better than humans themselves (I would also save a beautiful dog over a nigger).

>>12651344
>By virtue of their innocence (along with their beauty, majesty, etc.), animals and plants have more rights and are more deserving of ethical treatment than are most humans, who are almost always vicious if not evil.
Nicely pulled out of your ass but it's purely sophistic.

>>12651344
>14. The best of humanity outshines the best of all the animal world
>15. animals are innocent, and, in many cases, better than humans themselves

This is just a list of contradictory statements. Don't just list things that you wish were true and pretend its a coherent argument.

>>12651357
You fail to refute the point.
>>12651395
There is no contradiction between those two points. The first states that at the peak of humanity, there are men who outshine all life; the second acknowledges that below that peak of humanity there are masses and masses of vicious and mediocre humans that are hierarchically worse than many animals (usually due to their moral or aesthetic shortfalls, or in other words, they are vicious or ugly or even dumb like you, since you conflate subtlety with contradiction).

delusional anti-life nonsense with extremely bizarre knock-on effects (lifestock is morally wrong, but post-birth abortion of undesirables IE: fucking murder) is fine!

reminder that the wolf cares not a whit for the sheep as it tears the sheep limb from limb, and that any sort of suffering=evil conclusion means that we should just detonate our nuclear stockpile and exterminate the planet as there is no way life can exist without suffering (at least in the short-mid term)

In the hierarchy of the species, animals and plants are higher above many humans, by virtue of their many good qualities, namely their beauty, majesty, elegance, perfection, etc.

kek, all those characteristics are of human-dependent.

>>12650847
Animal liberation is an equivocation fallacy. Animals are equivocated to the ontological status of humans, and then human morality is equivocated back to animals.

>>12651495

the issue is animals meet a requirement of suffering. We can avoid this by eating plants. Morally thus, we are in fault since we choose to cause the "unnecessary" suffering they go through by eating them. Unnecessary because there are other options.

>>12650927
Another equivocation fallacy. A human with defects is still a human. An animal with higher animal intelligence is still an animal.

>>12651587
You assume discreteness between the categories of "human" and "animal" which certain individuals may not grant you. If a pig is capable of the intelligence of a very small child we may have similar duties to it. You're concept of what constitutes human essence isn't one that Singer puts any stock in.

Animals don't have a transcendental self, therefore they have no access to rights.

>>12651602
Can you see the equivocation fallacy here
>Animals are humans because XYZ
>Now that we have established animals are humans, the human moral precepts of ABC apply to animals

There is no argument being made about the ontological status of animals-in-themselves, only an equivocation that animals are humans and therefore human ethics ought to apply to them.

>>12651644
It's more like squares and rectangles. All squares (a shape with 4 even sides) are rectangles (a shape with 4 sides). All humans are animals, but all animals are not humans. The same way that all dogs are animals but not all animals are dogs.

>>12651583
>animals suffer
And? There is no argument made as to why animals should not suffer. It's an equivocation that
>animals capacity to suffer makes them human
>humans ought not intentionally caused to suffer
>therefore animals - being humans - ought not suffer

Why ought animals qua animal not suffer?

>>12651654
>All humans are animals
There it is. The equivocation fallacy animal lib can not escape from.

>>12651436
I don't have to refute an unproven proposition.
There are a lot of logical errors too.

>3.) Humans are moral agents, and therefore, they can commit morally atrocious actions.
>4.) It is better to be innocent than to be morally atrocious.
This doesn't even take into account the fact that the possesion of reason (meaning we also possess free will) makes reasonable beings higher beings compared to unreasonable ones.

>5.) By virtue of their innocence (along with their beauty, majesty, etc.)
Then I guess a precious stone, being innocent, beautiful and majestic, deserves to be given rights too ?

>7.) In the hierarchy of the species, animals and plants are higher above many humans, by virtue of their many good qualities, namely their beauty, majesty, elegance, perfection, etc.
Unproved.
As they are purely material, they are less perfect than us. We possess a soul. The more immaterial a being is, the more perfect it is. Any human is higher in that hierarchy of perfection than any non-human animal, plant or lifeless thing.

>a man possessed with divinity
lol are you some kind of pantheist ?

>11.) The populations that have the most children are those which are least deserving of life and which treat animals and plants worse (brown people and niggers).
Conradictory with what you just said (9). Europeans made as much if not more children than Africans for thousands of years.

>some humans are worse than animals and some animals better than some humans
This is an analogy of >metaphorical< proportionality. Not an argument.

What you're doing is showing off as an aesthete, not philosophying.

>>12651700
See here
>>12651654
All humans (bipedal omnivorous creatures possessed of reason) are animals (multi-celled heterosexually reproducing organisms which survive by eating other organisms.) Not all animals are humans, but all humans are animals.

The argument is not that all animals are humans. The argument is that those categories are not very discrete and so humans, being possessed of reason, may have moral obligations to their fellow organisms, which I can agree with. Singer takes this to various extremes which I don't agree with though.

>>12650847
cockroach and are dog are equal i want to like environmentalists but they go full retard everytime

>>12650847
Animals have very little capacity for suffering and joy as compared to humans. Yes, we experience momentary pain when we both get cuts but they don’t know what it’s like to have an existensal crisis, to stay in a loveless marriage for the sake of your children, to spend your life fearing the nothingness of death or be rejected/hated by the people who are meant to love you unconditionally. The ability to consciously reflect on oneself gives humans enormous capacities for both pain and pleasure unmatched by another animal.

>>12651756
We don't really have a way to measure how animals experience pleasure or pain so this is unverifiable.

Animal liberation in theory
>animal suffering contravenes the rights of animals, therefore it is wrong.

Animal liberation in practice
>animal suffering offends human sensibilities, therefore animal suffering is wrong.

It's almost as if ethics are an entirely human domain.

>>12651197
He’s making a moral arguement for something that doesn’t even need it. In fact, I think the moral argument proposed by Vegans tends to hurt their cause rather than help it. Free range, grass-fed animals are much healthier for us and better for the environment. The side benefit being that animals live happy lives up until they are killed. We should eat less meat but of a higher quality, ideally sourced as locally as possible to cut down on emissions from transportation.

>>12651720
Again you're showing the dependence on the equivocation of animal and human and the category mistake of applying human ethics to animals based on the equivocation.

Human ethics belong to humans qua humaness. Animals do not possess humaness, and there is no argument made for animal rights or ethics that is not dependent on applying human ethics to animals.

Make an argument as why animal suffering is wrong within the domain of animals qua their non-human animality.

>>12651837
It's not an equivocation. Those categories aren't discrete. I don't know how you might define the quality of "humanness." Some might claim that humans possess "reason" and some might claim that the human capacity for language places them above animals.

In terms of biology, humans are mammals, they are animals by virtue of being multi-cellular, feeding on other organisms, and reproducing through sex, which is the definition of animal-ness, particularly as opposed to plant-ness. Not all animals are humans, but all humans are animals. Given that humans have certain similarities with other animals, and may be the only ones possessed of morality, humans may have duties to non-speaking irrational animals. Animals do not have to be your equals to be subject to morality or to have certain rights.

>>12651762
There have been plenty of studies showing various animals capacity for consciousness but this is irrelevant. It’s easily verifiable with some simple introspection, whilst some animals have a very simplistic form of language, it is no where near our capacity for reflection through verbal thought.

>>12650847
The idea that being a human is an "essence" and not being a fucking human is retarded. If cows talked, they would still be cows.

>>12651718
> This doesn't even take into account the fact that the possesion of reason (meaning we also possess free will) makes reasonable beings higher beings compared to unreasonable ones.

My point is that reason is not something that necessarily makes one a higher creature; reason is instrumental and is valuable depending on how it is used. If a man rapes and kills his own mother, at that point no one should give a damn whether or not he can form a syllogism or speak a human language. And he has degraded himself so much that one would be a fool to choose his life over a beautiful animal's.

> Then I guess a precious stone, being innocent, beautiful and majestic, deserves to be given rights too ?

I'm unsure whether it makes sense to speak of rights when it comes to non-sentient things; however, one should behave ethically with the mineral world as well, though typically people value these things enough that this isn't a problem. For example, if it were common for people to level mountains, then perhaps you'd hear more about ethics in relation to the mineral world. So, the precious stone perhaps doesn't get rights, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't cherish it. You'd be stupid to smash a nice stone, for example.

> As they are purely material, they are less perfect than us. We possess a soul. The more immaterial a being is, the more perfect it is. Any human is higher in that hierarchy of perfection than any non-human animal, plant or lifeless thing.

We disagree on some crucial metaphysical points. I'm not going to bother with this point. If you think a nigger-rapist with an IQ of 70 is better than a beautiful dog like the Irish wolfhound, then you're irredeemably gay and dumb.

> lol are you some kind of pantheist ?

No.

Okay, I'm getting tired so I'm not going to bother with the rest, I'll just say I'm an aesthete, yes and also all philosophy starting with Descartes is gay and blue-pilled.

>>12651858
>humans are animals
>there are special rules that apply to humans but not animals
Hmm either the first premise is an equivocation or humans are a separate category to animals and we can speak meaningfully of humaness as distinct from animality. Which is it?

>>12651900
Well dogs also have differences from most animals, like being domestic carnivores, and so are also subject to special rules which most animals are not, but this does not disqualify them from the category of animal.

>>12651899
*starting with Descartes and onward. Basically, modern philosophy is for low IQ niggers.

>>12650847
>Although humans differ as individuals in various ways, there are no differences between the races and sexes as such
Laughably wrong. Culturally they are different. Many races of peoples evolved according to their local ecology, and now hold differences. Women and men are psychologically very different as well and would act very differently if reborn given complete liberation. Fuck egalitarians.

>>12651934
>one race the human race

incredibly wrong. subgroups of humans are very different from each other, and this is borne out everywhere if you don't have your blinders on, anon.

>>12651974
Did you mean to reply to someone else? Because if you didn't, you clearly don't read that much as to the lack of your reading comprehension and should get the fuck off /lit/.

Holy fuck this screams of insecure second year college kid. Fuck man get some awareness you seem completely out of whack. You probably can’t even grow a beard

>>12651974
Why would you type "incredibly wrong" then restate and agree with everything the person you're replying to has just said? What kind of stupid is this?

>>12651899
>could have picked any race of dog to examplify beauty
>goes for irish wolfhound
And I was about to agree with your post.

Anyone ITT who is arguing over this and isn't some kind of vegan faggot should really just kill themselves. You're just letting them practice their shit rhetoric. Nothing will ever change the way they want. If you're the sort of person who plays devil's advocate regularly I can assure you probably everyone in your life wishes you would drop dead.

>>12651974
>having this little reading comprehension

>>12652119
What's your favorite dog breed, fren? juss swap it in!