Sorry, just saw your question. No, I only have the pdf link.

Vegetable produce is inherently more expensive than grains and legumes. — VagabondSpectre

And you assume vegans eat only vegetables? Huh? And I'm not sure I follow your reasoning...meat may be the least efficient thing to produce of all the foods, but grains are more efficient than veggies...therefore eat meat? Makes no sense.

You're failing to examine what an actual plant-based diet would look like.

I think you must be confused. Different soil and climate profiles benefit and hinder different sorts of plants (which is why we see the bulk of the field corn in the US being grown in a coherent cluster). To be profitable, farmers choose crops by weighing out the costs/market value of the crops they plant along with the risk of crop failure. Furthermore we get more servings AND calories from an acre of grains than we do tomatoes or any other vegetable. — VagabondSpectre

Again...vegans eat grains.

Just a lot fewer than are needed to make the same amount of calories and nutrition from animal-based products. I shouldn't have to explain that: your own article explains that:
" Specific to animal agriculture is the inherently energetically inefficient conversion of feed to usable products. Because animals (and humans) obey the laws of thermodynamics, energy that is converted to heat through metabolic processes is lost and not retained in tissues "

To be profitable, farmers choose crops by weighing out the costs/market value of the crops they plant along with the risk of crop failure. — VagabondSpectre

Yeah, and if the market went vegan, they would plant vegan foods. D'oh.

I only bothered to call them biased (a secondary point) because they had the nerve to do so themselves in their own paper with reference to the authors of the article I cited (which shows their hand completely; such an attack has no place in the peer review process). — VagabondSpectre

The article states: " Their use of irrelevant economic information in the abstract,1 unrelated to the design of their study or any of their findings, shows evidence of bias in favor of the livestock industry."
They didn't accuse the others of bias outright. They merely suggested that the way the first article is written has some evidence pointing to bias.

The rebuttal essay you linked does not acknowledge this whatsoever, it merely assumes that market forces alone would force farmers to come up with adequate variety of plants without stopping to wonder how feasible it might be for them to do so. Furthermore, growing vegetables is more expensive than growing wheat or field corn for flour or animal feed/processing into syrup. If you don't believe me, just go to the grocery store and compare the price of processed foods to whole foods. Healthy diets are more expensive because healthy foods tend to be harder to grow in the same volume and for the same cost. — VagabondSpectre

So much wrong in so few sentences. Where to begin?

For one, wheat, corn, meat, and milk products are subsidized by the government and that is why those products are cheap. Most people could not afford meat, and definitely not much of it, if that weren't the case. I thought everyone knew that by now.

And not only can you grow all sorts of foods on the exact same land used for animal feed, you need a lot less land to do so. It's pretty obvious to anyone who's grown even a single tomato plant before.

The paper you linked comes from a group of people who didn't like their conclusions, and therefore wrote what they could to discredit it. — VagabondSpectre

That sounds more like you, actually. They used science to counter science. You're claiming, without any proof whatsoever, that they are biased. Just because YOU don't like THEIR conclusions.

Being monocultural is one thing, and it can easily slip into the kind of thing white nationalism is, but it's different in some significant ways. Insisting that one's culture shouldn't necessarily mix with other cultures is often a conservative stance, but can be progressive (like not wanting to compromise on women's rights just cause older Muslim immigrants object).

White nationalism is not only about culture, it is more about race. The idea is that whites are different in meaningful ways (usually seen as better) than non-whites. They don't just insist on total behavioral assimilation-they don't want other races to mix with their own.

It's very close to black nationalism, which also insists on meaningful differences, but of course the history and psychology behind it is different. BNs (in America at least) are/were trying to reestablish an identity that had been taken from them by force by whites.

Is she told what day it currently is when she is awakened?

To assume that an equivalent amount of nutriment could be passed directly to humans as is currently passed to to animals from livestock feed is indeed an assumption that merits further testing and modeling, but it might turn out that most of the pasture/forage and animal feed farmland is simply not suitable for nutritional plant-based production. — VagabondSpectre

The burden of proof rests on you--there is nothing to suggest that the arable land used for animal feed is not equally usable for human food.

The Good Food Institute is a non-profit lobby group, and while it's amply clear their hearts are in the noblest of places, they outright accuse the authors of showing bias towards animal agriculture and fail to substantiate their reasons. Very clearly the Good Food Institute is biased to begin with. If I've misread or misrepresented either the study I referenced or the document you linked, please point out how. — VagabondSpectre

Their whole paper explains how the other authors are wrong, by the way, works for --which substantiates their claim of bias. You, however, merely claim they are biased on the basis of being a non-profit lobbying group....the operative word being "non-profit." To claim they are biased on that basis alone is like accusing MADD of being biased against drunk driving. Having a preference for or against something is not the same as a bias.
By the bye, the authors of the article you posted work for the VT Department of Animal and Poultry Science and the US Dairy Forage Research Center respectively--which on the basis of your definition of bias would make them biased as well. But I will settle for the fact that their paper is just wrong and poorly researched/written.

http://www.gfi.org/images/uploads/2018/03/EmoryAlmyPNASFullReply.pdf

Point by point rebuttal of your article.

Raw potatoes are dormant, not dead.

Animals who can feel pain and value life shouldn't be harmed or killed based on those qualities. Same thing applies to humans. Basic. Why don"t you kick Bobby in the shins? Because it hurts, and hurting others is wrong.

Singer draws the line at oysters because they do not seem to possess a nervous system capable of pain and suffering. He says they are in those ways closer to plants than animals.

Sooo, on what basis do YOU think it is wrong to kick an innocent person in the shins?

We cannot afford that many animal sanctuaries, so euthanize them we must. — VagabondSpectre

Yes we can afford it. And if the whole world miraculously turned vegan overnight, obviously we would care enough to find a way to fund these. But of course this is a far-fetched hypothetical scenario that we don't really need to discuss, because it's not going to happen that way. As people's awareness grows, the whole factory farm system will simply be phased out.

Furthermore, you continuously presume without justification that the lives of all farm animals contain nothing but suffering and death. It is easy to demonstrate that farm conditions are not all equal, and in some examples farm animals might actually enjoy their existence. Would you disagree? — VagabondSpectre

Two things:1) factory farms raise 99.9 percent of chickens for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle currently sold in the United States. So the conditions of factory farming are of utmost importance to this discussion. 2) A cow who enjoys her life still would like not to be murdered--you consistently seem to think that a good life, or an adequate one somehow means it's okay to harm someone. It does not.

going full vegan would cost us too much money — VagabondSpectre

Sigh.
The costs of producing meat versus plants have been thoroughly discussed in this thread numerous times. For the details, please go back, read, and inform yourself. Long story short: a vegan diet requires much much much fewer resources than an omnivorous one.

Calling me anecdotal and demanding scientific evidence of my personal dietary observations is a bit much don't you think? — VagabondSpectre

Nope. Without evidence, I have no reason to be convinced. And you're the one trying to convince me of your experience...

Would you be morally justified in going through with the pregnancy knowing beforehand what the outcome must be? — VagabondSpectre

No.
But it's not a perfect analogy either--we're not talking about 7 month old fetuses when we talk about ending meat-eating--we're talking about creatures who don't exist yet at all, not even as fetuses, zygotes, or embryos...

You're just all sorts of confused. I have not advocated for killing animals--you have. I'm advocating for not putting them in this world if all we're gonna do is cause them suffering and murder them anyway. And I'm advocating for letting the existing animals live in peace.

Adopting a global vegan diet would require fewer resources than the meat-intensive ones that are currently wide-spread.

Argue for your anecdote all you want--as you point out, all it can do is have any meaning to you--but it has no meaning to me or anyone with whom you are trying to engage in a philosophical conversation. You simply don't have any solid evidence to back you up, thus I have no reason to believe you.

And how does it make any sense to argue that the value of life outweighs the tragedy of death, therefore murder is acceptable? Again, you can't go up to someone on the street and kill them with that logic...that would just be insane.

Humanity at large doesn't have to treat animals like humans. But they can treat them with the basic decency of not murdering them in order to harvest their flesh.

I will concede that this is not an accurate portrayal of 100% of Christians, and that Christianity does not say they will let you do whatever you want in so many words.
However, it's historically been a part of Christianity--Martin Luther's beef was in part about indulgences! You can get out of hell for a price cards.
And now? The right wing theists say they can vote for Trump precisely because he has accepted Jesus and has therefore changed--not that there has been any evidence for this.

Are farm animal lives worth living? This is the question; it's not nonsense. You have no excuse to keep saying this is nonsense. — VagabondSpectre

I didn't say that question was nonsense. I said comparing existence to non-existence is nonsense. I said the question of whether life is worth living is besides the point, because you're trying to find a way to justify harming and killing them.

For an already existing being, yes, life is worth living and thus you have the obligation to let them live and thus you ought not to kill them.

For a non-existent being, life is neither worth living nor not worth living, because non-existent beings don't value anything.

For a creature who is living in pure agony because we have fattened her up so much her legs break beneath her, and she never sees sunlight, and she can hardly breathe because there are so many of her kind stuffed in a barn, and she will never get the chance to raise her babies, or enjoy a fresh breeze.... that's not a life you should condemn any creature to, but it is what we do to billions of farm animals every year.

So release my chickens into the wild where they will be swiftly set upon by starvation and predation? Nonsense. — VagabondSpectre

I didn't say that. I said let them live--I mentioned animal sanctuaries-- if you want to put them in this world, you have the obligation to make sure they are safe, and healthy, and as happy as possibly until the end of their natural lifespan.

it's not morally praiseworthy to not cause something to exist either. — VagabondSpectre

I didn't say it's morally praiseworthy. Abstaining from meat eating is not about doing a positive thing as much as it is about avoiding doing or participating in a negative one. Similarly, I do not join or support the KKK--that doesn't mean I'm doing anything praiseworthy, it just means I avoid doing something condemnable.

I think in many cases they are. The pleasures and joy of life can outweigh the pain. — VagabondSpectre

Just like you do not get to go up to someone, stab them to death, steal their wallet, and tell them "you've lived a good enough life to outweigh this little thing", so too you ought not kill animals for your own gain no matter how well you've treated them.

Christianity focuses mostly on the next world in practice--it's about accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Believing in God is the ticket to heaven, not necessarily what you do.

Racism arises from a misunderstanding, not evil intent. Perhaps the most abysmal aspect of racism is that it's nothing personal. The target race is just "vermin" or what have you. It's no more evil than identifying rats as pests. — frank

Racists, like everyone else are not evil. I don't usually recommend regular crime novels, but John Grisham's book The Chamber really makes a good case as to how racists are people too. (And, yes, the book IS better than the movie ;)).
That being said, racism does arise from some fundamental psychological traits. I think most racists are insecure about themselves (yes, even loud-mouthed bullies like Trump can be insecure...in fact, especially such people are insecure). Whatever the issue is that they feel poorly about, they like having someone or some group to point to and tell themselves "I may be stupid/poor/fat/alone/a criminal/whatever, but at least I'm not one of them!"

I think there is a way to both escape racism and escape being a racist.

Just don't identify oneself as any race.

And if you come across someone who wants to define you as a race then merely regard them as either a bit unintelligent (thereby merely has particular limitations) or is just a bit silly. — Dalai Dahmer

Funny story: I took a class in post-colonialism taught by a black Jamaican professor. When I told her about reading how race doesn't exist according to science, she told me that those findings were white, male privileged attempts to erase people's identities...

Well, I've always said that conservative so-called Christians nowadays would hate Jesus if he were around today--the ultimate dirty, long-haired, sandal-wearing, bleeding-heart liberal.

That being said, Marx also pointed out how religion works against progressive causes:
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself." (Marx, "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right")

In other words: religion stops people from caring about changing the status quo or the conditions of this world, because they rely on the promise of the next one.

calling the straw-man version of my question nonsense — VagabondSpectre

Do you call everything you simply can't counter a strawperson? Because I very directly was addressing your argument that it is better to live and suffer than never to have lived. Which is nonsense.

"that's not really the question" is quite unsatisfying. — VagabondSpectre

Satisfying or not, it's true. If you're so concerned about animals having a life to live, go ahead and open an animal sanctuary--just don't kill them for food.

If I've decided killing animals to eat their meat is wrong, what must I do with my hypothetical chickens? — VagabondSpectre

You let them live the rest of their natural lives in peace--is being kind really so unfathomable to you?

The resources we dispense in the raising of the animals must be recuperated, else we cannot affords to raise the animals. — VagabondSpectre

Easy solution: don't cause them to exist. Non-existent entities also do not care about existing--you can't harm anyone by choosing not to cause their existence. That would be nonsensical (as explained previously).

Well I AM the anecdote, so it's not quite fallacious. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, it still is fallacious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

Sorry, but just as it wouldn't matter in a philosophical argument about gods or ghosts or unicorns that you personally testified to seeing any of these things with your own eyes, it doesn't matter here that you claim to suffer when abstaining from meat. Even if I believe that you did everything nutritionally correct, the placebo effect is real as well as strong, not to mention coincidental other factors of illnesses or stressors or hormonal fluctuations could all account for your experience. Without controlled experiments or strong statistical evidence, all your personal experience tells me is that it is possible that we might want to do some studies in the case that perhaps there are a couple of exceptions to the general rule.

But the question still stands as to whether a painless animal kill is equivalent to a plant or insect kill. Which removes the variable of an animal's capacity to feel pain. Do we now determine what to consume based on intellectual capacity? — NasloxiehRorsxez

If a person kills another human after administering a drug to make it painless, does that mean it is less wrong? Humans and other animals like cows, chickens, and pigs all value their lives. In part, yes, being capable of valuing life is an intellectual capacity--we can obviously see that pigs sunning themselves oinking for joy, or cows nuzzling each other, and dogs playing fetch are happy. To deny this is just stubbornness. I've said it before: it's just plain ridiculous to compare the value of an animal's life to that of a plant. It's obvious that beheading even an unconscious kitten is not the same as dicing a potato.

"Nonsensical" is the only way to describe something that makes no sense. Talking about what is better or worse for non-existing entities makes no sense.

And whether life is worth living is not really the question--the question is whether we have the right to cause suffering and to end that living. Your statements imply that you agree that animals like cows, pigs, and chickens have lives which have worth to them. In order to justify taking these from them, we would have to have something more important to gain. But if you look at what we gain, it is merely a momentary sensory pleasure which is easily both nutritionally and aesthetically (taste being an aesthetic value) replicated by plant-based foods.

You claim to have some sort of medical issue that makes meat-eating a necessity--I am sympathetic to the fact that you may even actually believe this. However, there are no documented cases of medical conditions that I am aware of that absolutely necessitate the consumption of meat for optimal health. Until there is science to show that what you are claiming is true, I'm afraid for the purposes of this discussion, it can only be seen as anecdotal, which just doesn't count for much.

It is nonsensical to compare qualitatively non existence to existence. There is no individual for whom it is better or worse that he or she does not exist, because there exist no non existent individuals.

Ummmm, it's like you can't process what I said. It's NOT a problem for vegans, because even IF we cared about plants, a vegan diet would be reducing the number of plant and animal deaths.

Ought implies can. We CAN'T survive without eating anything. But we CAN survive, as well as thrive, while reducing the total amount of harm done.

Besides which, as has been repeatedly explained here (not that it seems you have bothered to read the whole thread), even IF it were true that plants deserve near or equal consideration to animals, veganism would STILL be better, because fewer plants need to be used for a vegan diet than an omnivorous one. — NKBJ

You keep pretending that all animals can feel pain, while plants can not and thus it's unethical to grow and kill animals for food but it's ok to do the same with plants and bacteria without providing any argument for this assumption. The biological evidence is clear and contradicting your assumptions on this — Tomseltje

What exactly does the science show? It shows that plants have chemical reactions, and there is no evidence that they feel pain or can suffer.
If you're stuck on the phrase "all animals feel pain," because grubs are animals too and you're not convinced that they should be given ethical consideration...well, have fun with your grub sandwich. We're obviously talking about cows, pigs, chickens and other animals that are most commonly eaten--animals which have been proven to be highly intelligent and capable of feeling physical and emotional pain.

Besides which, as has been repeatedly explained here (not that it seems you have bothered to read the whole thread), even IF it were true that plants deserve near or equal consideration to animals, veganism would STILL be better, because fewer plants need to be used for a vegan diet than an omnivorous one.

xD I gave up talking to Pseudonym a while ago--when it became clear that he would happily negate anything and everything he said, go in endless circles of the argument just in order to avoid giving even an inch. Your current conversation is a prime example. This whole thread he kept insisting "but where's the science?!" and now he's all "this is philosophy and science is worthless"....as if it wasn't clear to anyone with a brain that he's just sore that the science doesn't work out in favor of his own argument.

Ah, but we are the cult-like ones unable to conceive of a moral position other than our own...

:rofl:

Exactly what it says-- you're getting defensive about an online discussion with strangers that is entirely theoretical and only can have an impact on your actual life if you personally choose to let it...AND you willingly, of your own accord decided to participate in this conversation--and yet you choose to go on the attack "vegans this, vegans that, why won't those evil vegans just leave me aloooooone."

My problem with vegans is not what they eat; I don't care, but I don't think they should care what I eat either since they are incapable of convincing anyone but themselves that the underlying assumptions of their morality stand up to ethical scrutiny. — Txastopher

It's pretty telling that you're getting so defensive in a theoretical argument about ethics.

Cool. Let me know :smile:

Jeff McMahan answers the question of whether giving animals a good life is sufficient to justify their killing.
He basically says that you can't argue that it's better for an animal to be caused to exist, even if that life is good. And also that if you did cause them to exist, you have obligations towards them not to harm them, including not following through with killing them.

https://philosophy.rutgers.edu/joomlatools-files/docman-files/Eating_Animals_the_Nice_Way.pdf

He makes the case more eloquently and thoroughly than I do. It's not a super long article, and it's pretty accessible language. If you read it, I'd be interested in what your thoughts are.

The horse broke its leg and could never fully recover. It was put down for its own benefit. (OK)
The human broke her leg and could never fully recover. She was put down for her own benefit. (Not OK) — Baden

That's a poor analogy in a couple of ways.

First of all, a horse's broken leg is the kind of thing that makes a horse's life miserable and often leads to their death anyway, whereas a human can live a happy and fulfilling life with a bum leg fairly easily.

But, more importantly, there's a huge difference in saving a horse from a life of misery for their own sake and killing them purely for the pleasure of eating them, i.e. our own and not in anyway the animal's sake.

A painless death would be better than a painful one, sure. But that doesn't mean killing isn't causing harm. Regardless of pain level, it's still obviously one of the most harmful acts you can commit.

Shooting my dog is clearly not better or more acceptable than kicking her.

That makes no sense. Killing is clearly one of the most obvious kinds of harm you can inflict on someone.

Pigs and cows though are certainly developed enough so that current treatment with regard to living conditions is probably often unethical. I don't believe killing and eating them is though as they are not agents — Baden

We shouldn't hurt them but we can kill them?

It's not quite the same thing, but this reminds me of the story of how Dido bought the land that became Carthage by agreeing to buy as much land as she could encompass with a single oxhide. By cutting the hide into extremely thin strips, she was able to section off quite a bit more than the sellers reckoned with.

She wasn't working with infinite amounts, but I wonder if there's a way to figure you could encompass an infinite area with a finite mass?

For example, non-lactating cows eat 25-30lbs of hay a day.
70% of plant agriculture in the US is used to feed the animals we eat.

I think you know as well as I do that we're not talking about insects in this discussion. Even though the word "animal" technically includes insects, colloquially it's used to refer to fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals.

You cannot both claim it is a strawperson and that it is true... Either you admit it's ridiculous, or you bite the bullet.

That's absurd and you know it. If this discussion weren't about food you'd never suggest that stepping on a halm of grass was the same as kicking a dog-which is the logical conclusion of saying they are equivalent.

No, I'm sorry, the same arguments do not apply. And it's kind of like you didn't read what I said. Even IF they did, you'd still be wrong to raise and kill animals for food.

But the fact remains that we have no good evidence to suggest that plants have anywhere near the awareness of pain and suffering that animals do. We have evidence to suggest that they can have chemical reactions. But that isn't the same as pain. To feel pain, you need a brain.

Well, Bitter Crank is right. It's not required of any parent to subsidize a dependent child, but it is assumed that you would want to.

But I'm still not quite clear what your particular criticism is. Are you criticizing that it lists you as dependent until 24 regardless of living situation? I imagine that is a rule in order to preempt people taking advantage of the system. People who would otherwise be able and willing to pay for their kid would just have them move out long enough to claim they were independent just to mooch off the system.

For the sake of argument, let's assume plants have "feelings" and the ability to "suffer" (which, by the way, none of this research shows), veganism still wins out against omnivorism.
In an omnivorous diet MORE plants are used than in a vegan diet, because the animals you eat must in turn eat first... obviously. So, eating fewer animals means causing harm to fewer plants as well. According to the Least Harm Principle, that's a pretty solid reason why veganism is more ethical than omnivorism.

And puh-lease don't start saying that plants and animals are somehow morally equivalent... like anyone could seriously believe that dicing a potato was the moral equivalent to beheading a kitten.