| > Do you mean to imply that you have zero problem with this? I really do have zero problem with animals killing and consuming other animals. > When you watch a big cat torture and eat a prey animal, I don't think it's fair to say that a big cat 'tortures' a prey animal. I suspect it's practice. Torture to me requires intent that I don't think the big cat has. > do you not have any sense at all that maybe the prey would prefer that not to happen? I do have a sense that the prey does not want to die. What they want doesn't really matter though to the carnivore. > Or that, all else being equal, if the tiger could eat something that doesn’t seem to mind being eaten, that would be at least as good for everyone? If the world could exist in a different state that had less suffering, that might be good. Not sure what it would cost though. > But — again, genuinely asking — does the intractability of that problem really force you, personally, to assign zero moral weight to the experience of animals? I think you misunderstood me, or I failed to explain well. I don't see any moral problem with animals consuming other animals. Killing animals for no reason I would find morally wrong. Killing animals for food I find morally neutral. Reducing sufferring where possible is morally good (whether in raising the animal, or the mechanism of killing the animal), but is separate from actually killing the animal in my opinion. If you killed an animal painlessly, would there be any moral problem in consuming animals? > Or do you sincerely just... not care? I care immensely in making sure animals do not suffer needlessly. I care that animals are well taken care of while they are alive and that they are killed humanely and for a purpose. My livestock has, without question, healthier, more secure and more prolific lives than they would in the wild. |
> I really do have zero problem with animals killing and consuming other animals.
> If the world could exist in a different state that had less suffering, that might be good. Not sure what it would cost though.
The first sounds like you agree with my posit “I sincerely don’t care.” The second sounds like you agree with my posit “I care a small amount, but not enough to make the unworkable solutions attractive.” The rest of your comment makes the latter seem more likely, and I’m inclined to believe that since it seems like a more coherent and defensible ethical framework.
If that’s the case, I think we’re basically in agreement: there is some problem with wild animals eating other wild animals. Terminology aside, predation clearly involves unnecessary suffering. (Not only on the prey, but on sick or injured predators, who painfully starve for want of prey!)
All else being equal, it would be preferable for that suffering not to happen, but since we can’t make it any better, we tacitly consent to the current state of affairs.
The only part I find curious is that where I would call that “a slight moral force”, you would call it “morally neutral”. Why is that? Why does the question “do you have any problem with this” make sense to you, when it sounds like you agree there is a self-evident — though nuanced, and relatively minor — problem?
I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m arguing with you. In fact, to reinforce our agreement:
> If you killed an animal painlessly, would there be any moral problem in consuming animals?
Speaking for myself, I certainly do have far less issue with eating an animal that I can be personally assured has only had “one bad day”. I don’t think animals care that they live in a cage, iff the cage is big enough; in fact, they probably prefer it. This opinion is overwhelmingly common among the other vegetarians I know. Those who dissent are generally worrying about other less-humane-seeming things such as premature separation of young from parents— and those concerns are always tempered with the acknowledgement that it’s still far more humane than the common practice.
(Primary reasons such people still do not eat meat: One, this type of meat is prohibitively expensive in most urban areas, and would be very infrequent; two, eating meat that infrequently has a tendency to make folks feel ill.)
Again, I’m mostly curious why you would have expected any other answer, since it seems like it’s the answer you believe is reasonable. Why do you expect us to disagree, here?
Digressing, I’ve noticed something curious about the cultural perception of vegetarians, in these comments and elsewhere. Folks like yourself, who have clearly thought quite a bit about the ethics of your practice, I think see vegetarians basically eye-to-eye, and we can agree to disagree about exactly where to draw the line personally.
But think about your typical suburban meat eater who deliberately avoids learning more about how livestock is raised or slaughtered, since that makes them feel uncomfortable about eating meat. I think that person is genuinely a bit concerned that if they thought too hard about it, they would realize that it’s wrong in their own moral code to thoughtlessly consume factory-farmed meat, and then they’d have to change their lifestyle in an unpleasant way.
So maybe it’s soothing for that person to believe that all vegetarians are pursuing some radical or fallacious reasoning to an absurd conclusion. But the thing is... we’re really just not.
Myself, and every (ethical) vegetarian I know, we’re using the same boring moral principle that applies to pre-verbal infants, PVS patients, chimps and dolphins, mammals culturally coded as pets, and so on: if it is not absolutely necessary to save another life, it is respectively [impermissible..very not-ok] to kill and eat that thing.
Yes, we expand the circle of concern by a single logical step. The rest is just... normal ethics. Whatever are the moral beliefs you think a reasonable person would consistently hold after taking that step, yeah, of course we hold those. Why on earth wouldn’t we?