Dietary (and related) ethics [split from Do plants have minds?]

I don't like to eat raw vegetables. It bothers me to cut up living things and grind them into paste with my teeth and then swallow them.

I would rather eat dead meat then live plants.

I don't like to eat raw vegetables. It bothers me to cut up living things and grind them into paste with my teeth and then swallow them.

I would rather eat dead meat then live plants.

The problem here is that the dead meat got to that condition by a cruel process of factory farming the steers or pigs under terrible circumstances and then brutally slaughtering them. The steers and pigs are definitely conscious beings. That seems to me to be much more cruel than eating live plants which only maybe have at least some form of rudimentary consciousness. It seems to me that being a thoughtful meat eater today requires the ability to tolerate a considerable cognitive dissonance about eating. That is the case for myself. I have found meat eating necessary for my health, and I very much like it; those two factors outweigh the discomfort of the cognitive dissonance. 

It is interesting that some societies (such as the Japanese) make a regular practice of blessing and thanking the animal or plant and its spirit which contributed its substance to the meal. This practice could be a recognition of the true nature of our relationship with our living foods which are actually living beings with spirit, or (cynically) it could just be an unconsciously motivated way of rationalizing and relieving the cognitive dissonance.

It is interesting that some societies (such as the Japanese) make a regular practice of blessing and thanking the animal or plant and its spirit which contributed its substance to the meal. This practice could be a recognition of the true nature of our relationship with our living foods which are actually living beings with spirit, or (cynically) it could just be an unconsciously motivated way of rationalizing and relieving the cognitive dissonance.

Yeah I've been thinking sometimes I should go back to some kind of prayer thanking my food for giving its life to me.

The problem here is that the dead meat got to that condition by a cruel process of factory farming the steers or pigs under terrible circumstances and then brutally slaughtering them. The steers and pigs are definitely conscious beings. That seems to me to be much more cruel than eating live plants which only maybe have at least some form of rudimentary consciousness. It seems to me that being a thoughtful meat eater today requires the ability to tolerate a considerable cognitive dissonance about eating. That is the case for myself. I have found meat eating necessary for my health, and I very much like it; those two factors outweigh the discomfort of the cognitive dissonance. 

It is interesting that some societies (such as the Japanese) make a regular practice of blessing and thanking the animal or plant and its spirit which contributed its substance to the meal. This practice could be a recognition of the true nature of our relationship with our living foods which are actually living beings with spirit, or (cynically) it could just be an unconsciously motivated way of rationalizing and relieving the cognitive dissonance.

I bless the butchers who incur bad karma for me so I can eat bacon.

The problem here is that the dead meat got to that condition by a cruel process of factory farming the steers or pigs under terrible circumstances and then brutally slaughtering them. The steers and pigs are definitely conscious beings. That seems to me to be much more cruel than eating live plants which only maybe have at least some form of rudimentary consciousness. It seems to me that being a thoughtful meat eater today requires the ability to tolerate a considerable cognitive dissonance about eating. That is the case for myself. I have found meat eating necessary for my health, and I very much like it; those two factors outweigh the discomfort of the cognitive dissonance. 

It is interesting that some societies (such as the Japanese) make a regular practice of blessing and thanking the animal or plant and its spirit which contributed its substance to the meal. This practice could be a recognition of the true nature of our relationship with our living foods which are actually living beings with spirit, or (cynically) it could just be an unconsciously motivated way of rationalizing and relieving the cognitive dissonance.

I used to live about a quarter of a mile away from a slaughterhouse and as kids we would sit and watch live pigs being driven in, saw the unloading of the animals. A few minutes later the doors would open and we'd see the carcasses hanging, sliced in two from end to end.

Yet one of the farm animals I meet on my travels are sheep. In Britain they inhabit some of the roughest terrain, great hiking country. As I'm standing there taking in the sky and rolling hills, with the gentle bleating of sheep in the background, I can't help but feel that for much of their lives they are able to roam free in such beautiful places, I almost envy them.

I don't force myself into a rigid pattern but very often I do give thanks for the creatures which will be part of my meal. There is certainly a case for giving thanks to plants too. In my case it would probably extend to a giving of thanks for everything from a glass of water to the sunshine and rain, a sense of gratitude is not out of place for it all.

The problem here is that the dead meat got to that condition by a cruel process of factory farming the steers or pigs under terrible circumstances and then brutally slaughtering them. The steers and pigs are definitely conscious beings. That seems to me to be much more cruel than eating live plants which only maybe have at least some form of rudimentary consciousness. It seems to me that being a thoughtful meat eater today requires the ability to tolerate a considerable cognitive dissonance about eating. That is the case for myself. I have found meat eating necessary for my health, and I very much like it; those two factors outweigh the discomfort of the cognitive dissonance. 

It is interesting that some societies (such as the Japanese) make a regular practice of blessing and thanking the animal or plant and its spirit which contributed its substance to the meal. This practice could be a recognition of the true nature of our relationship with our living foods which are actually living beings with spirit, or (cynically) it could just be an unconsciously motivated way of rationalizing and relieving the cognitive dissonance.

There is a profound problem here. I mean cats and dogs arguably make the best pets, they are obviously conscious, and eat a carnivorous diet (particularly cats). I think it is kinder to let a car enjoy an outside life, and that in turn means that he/she will torture and kill a fair few animals over his/her lifetime.

If we were all vegan, it isn't even clear to me whether we could maintain crops without animal dung (does anyone know) unless we kept farm animals just for their dung!

Eating meat is probably necessary for health, as you say, so I eat meat and also serve meat products to our cat!

I'd certainly like farming to be done humanely, but I doubt whether it is reasonable to go further than that.

As for your final suggestion, imagine that we discovered that we were being farmed for a breed of super-intelligent animals. Would we a appreciate any blessing they bestowed on us?

David

There is a profound problem here. I mean cats and dogs arguably make the best pets, they are obviously conscious, and eat a carnivorous diet (particularly cats). I think it is kinder to let a car enjoy an outside life, and that in turn means that he/she will torture and kill a fair few animals over his/her lifetime.

If we were all vegan, it isn't even clear to me whether we could maintain crops without animal dung (does anyone know) unless we kept farm animals just for their dung!

Eating meat is probably necessary for health, as you say, so I eat meat and also serve meat products to our cat!

I'd certainly like farming to be done humanely, but I doubt whether it is reasonable to go further than that.

As for your final suggestion, imagine that we discovered that we were being farmed for a breed of super-intelligent animals. Would we a appreciate any blessing they bestowed on us?

David

I don't think these additional considerations or ramifications of the problem change the apparent moral dilemma we experience in merely the necessity of eating in order to survive. Presumably wild predator animals' apparently cruel killing of other animals for food constitute a much reduced or nonexistent moral dilemma, since being animals they do not enjoy having spiritual/moral principles to contend with - they simply do not and cannot know any better - their predatory behavior is hardwired into them so to speak. Whereas humans have a spiritual dimension through which they have a moral obligation to at least minimize the suffering inherently  involved in their eating to survive, and hence invoking some form of cognitive dissonance in some humans.

If we somehow discovered that we ourselves are really food animals being raised for consumption by some sort of very technologically advanced and superintelligent beings, we being somewhat intelligent technologically advanced humans of course would hardly appreciate any supposedly palliative blessings they might bestow in the cruel process. Aside from the impossibility of this actually being the case in that the facts of our society and biology and history totally contradict the surmise, the blessings being given in Japanese and other foreign cultures onto the living entities being used out of necessity for food (and other purposes) all assume a spiritual world dimension in which food animals and plants have an intended place in some sort of heirarchy of life in which they exist as intended in order to allow humanity to survive and exist. This could also involve Intelligent Design of nature by higher and more  spiritual beings that could not acheive perfection, just a complicated best tradeoff. This spiritual system may not be just superstition, but a sensing of the true nature of things, and of course precludes your suggested superior beings farming humans scenario.

I don't think these additional considerations or ramifications of the problem change the apparent moral dilemma we experience in merely the necessity of eating in order to survive. Presumably wild predator animals' apparently cruel killing of other animals for food constitute a much reduced or nonexistent moral dilemma, since being animals they do not enjoy having spiritual/moral principles to contend with - they simply do not and cannot know any better - their predatory behavior is hardwired into them so to speak. Whereas humans have a spiritual dimension through which they have a moral obligation to at least minimize the suffering inherently  involved in their eating to survive, and hence invoking some form of cognitive dissonance in some humans.

I suspect that all life is conscious to varying degrees, and that there is a lot of continuity between us and other animals. Some of the evidence for a spiritual dimension suggests this. NDE experiences often include dead pets. Strange friendships sometimes develop between animals that would normally think of each other purely as food or a source of deadly danger.

Some zealots would indeed like us to eat a "plant based diet", and if they got their way, we would all end up eating a very artificial, and probably unhealthy diet. Meanwhile, food animals would be phased out, and the lack of dung to fertilise the fields might become a serious problem.

I think moral arguments need to be balanced by a recognition of how those arguments are likely to be used.

If we somehow discovered that we ourselves are really food animals being raised for consumption by some sort of very technologically advanced and superintelligent beings, we being somewhat intelligent technologically advanced humans of course would hardly appreciate any supposedly palliative blessings they might bestow in the cruel process. Aside from the impossibility of this actually being the case in that the facts of our society and biology and history totally contradict the surmise, the blessings being given in Japanese and other foreign cultures onto the living entities being used out of necessity for food (and other purposes) all assume a spiritual world dimension in which food animals and plants have an intended place in some sort of heirarchy of life in which they exist as intended in order to allow humanity to survive and exist. This could also involve Intelligent Design of nature by higher and more  spiritual beings that could not acheive perfection, just a complicated best tradeoff. This spiritual system may not be just superstition, but a sensing of the true nature of things, and of course precludes your suggested superior beings farming humans scenario.

Oh dear, my remark was partly meant as a joke, but also to point out that if we really did discover something of that sort, we would presumably decide that life was still worth living, even if we would be culled at the end of it.

I do agree that ID almost certainly involved some complicated tradeoffs - because the entities that did it were not omniscient or omnipotent gods.

David

[Laird]

I agree with @Sciborg_S_Patel when it comes to consciousness being present across all biological life. The alternative is to conceive of identical behaviour having two different types of explanation: one motivated by feeling and sentience in general - curiosity, playfulness, determination, personality, etc - and the other - despite having the identical appearance of being so motivated - in fact being merely programmed to appear as such. There seems to me to be no good justification for positing these two different explanations. The simpler explanation is the better one.

I also disagree with the idea that some life forms have "lesser" consciousness compared to others: although there are undoubtedly different conscious capacities between different organisms, I see no reason - assuming the universal existence of consciousness across all life in the first place - to then posit that the degree of raw consciousness - intensity of awareness itself - varies significantly across life forms.

Various supposed justifications have also been expressed in this thread so far for eating meat. They seem to me instead to be rationalisations. Considering them one by one:

1. Meat is generally not necessary for health. There are millions of us around the world who do not eat any animal products whatsoever and who do just fine on that diet. I say "generally" only because one occasionally encounters those - and perhaps @nbtruthman is one - who claim to genuinely have some sort of health problem that only resolves when dropping a plant-based diet. I am skeptical that solutions cannot be found in all such cases where there is a genuine commitment to finding them, with, if necessary, the assistance of a similarly-committed plant-based dietitian, and possibly other similarly-committed health-care professionals, such as one's general practitioner. Because I can't rule it out, though, I have left in the qualifier.
   
   
2. "I very much like it" is pretty much the epitome of an unsound justification for behaviour that one otherwise recognises as immoral.
   
   
3. While - given that I agree that plants are sentient - I sympathise with the sentiment behind "I would rather eat dead meat then live plants", the problems with acting on this sentiment are that:
   
   • As @nbtruthman points out, the farming of animals generally entails far more cruelty and suffering than the farming of plants.
     
   • It is questionable anyway that a plant continues to be sentient for long after being cut down and pulled from the earth, or at least that it remains sentient by the time it reaches our plates (although this point does not ultimately hold: see immediately below).
     
   • Most importantly, one anyway need not eat plants: one can instead eat their produce (fruit, fruit-like vegetables, seeds, nuts, legumes, etc). It is unlikely that these are sentient in the same way that plants are, and, in the case of fruit and fruit-like vegetables, it is unlikely even if they are that death by being eaten while fresh is any worse than dying a slow death by decay, which is their otherwise fate, whether they are harvested by humans or not. One can also apply this reasoning to the point immediately above: even if a plant as such (in contrast with its produce) remains sentient by the time it gets to our plates, it is unlikely that its death by being eaten while fresh is any worse than dying a slow death by decay. Of course, the problem with that application of this reasoning is that, often, this is not otherwise its fate: we need not cut down plants for food in the first place given that we can instead eat their produce, and they would otherwise often live a long(er) life. This is why the previous point does not ultimately hold. The "eat only the produce of plants" approach is the approach that I take, and advocate for on an ethical basis.
     
   
   
4. "But they're free to roam" (paraphrased) is problematic for two reasons:
   
   • Most farmed animals in the modern world are not free to roam (and often are confined in extreme conditions).
     
   • More generally: this is their natural right, and granting a being his/her natural right does not grant the benefactor a right to then abrogate other of that being's natural rights, namely, to be free from avoidable harm, especially death (by killing), and to be treated as an end rather than a means, and especially not to be treated as property and commodified.
     
5. That we couldn't farm without animal dung is false: stock-free farming is a known and viable practice.
   

Blessing food or butchers is, it seems to me, motivated by noble sentiments, but it does not justify avoidable harm.

A few other specific responses:

Presumably wild predator animals' apparently cruel killing of other animals for food constitute a much reduced or nonexistent moral dilemma, since being animals they do not enjoy having spiritual/moral principles to contend with - they simply do not and cannot know any better - their predatory behavior is hardwired into them so to speak.

The problem is not that they don't know any better, but that they generally have no other option (lest they starve to death): mostly, they are either obligate carnivores or omnivores with limited access to plant-based foods such that they need to supplement by killing.

We have options that they don't have.

Some zealots would indeed like us to eat a "plant based diet"

Just like, a while ago, some zealots liked for us to engage labour only voluntarily. We all know, though, that slavery is necessary for the health of society, industry, the economy, and the family, don't we? Aren't zealots so silly?

and if they got their way, we would all end up eating a very artificial, and probably unhealthy diet

A wholefood diet consisting in fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes is artificial and probably unhealthy? That's a bizarre sentiment from my perspective.

That's the diet I mostly eat, it's the diet that in my experience most informed vegans would recommend even if (as I do) they sometimes non-ideally eat a little junk food, and in my experience it's the exact opposite of artificial and unhealthy.

I have always had an exrtgemely strong dislike of seeing food wantonly wasted.

Likewise. I very, very rarely waste food, and it's always accidental when I do: either forgetting that I need to use an item prior to its expiry, or mistakenly buying an item that includes animal products with the store refusing to take it back.

I've had a friend who genuinely tried to go vegetarian and did say she felt lightheaded.

I've had a similar issue, though I will also admit I've lived with vegetarians and done communal groceries without any problems so this may just not be trying hard enough to consume the right stuff.

All to say I am sympathetic to the idea humans should shift closer toward veganism, but I don't think every single person who has issues with the diet is making excuses?