I was enjoying a yuri sci-fi light novel lately, inspired by Strugatsky brothers classic Roadside Picnic - it's title being Otherside Picnic.
I was disgusted by the heroines easy appreciation of the act of killing an animal (deer) with a rifle in volume 5 and then feasting on the corpse when the heart is still warm, which an old lady did after being a kind host to them in a Mayoiga (basically a mysterious house of opulence which rewards you upon taking an item for yourself from it, an element of real Japanese folklore).
The killing was not for survival but thrills and sensory pleasure.
To not dilly-dally with the introduction too much, I reflected on what a moral agent (or a pair of moral agents) should do in this situation, and found the situation similar to stopping an execution of cognitively impaired human. I also remembered Gary Yourofsky saying something in one of the interviews that in a slaughterhouse, you demand from the abuser to drop their weapons, and then try to take them down if they don't comply, similarly to stopping a gestapo operative from abusing a Jew (it was an interview for Israeli television).
In a sovereign country there is a rule of law, more or less (constitutional or Realpolitik in the style of Carl Schmitt, which privileges state of emergency to strip right-bearers from just treatment — for non-human animals it's one and the same as the law stands now unfortunately) — so one needs to consider consequences of state reprisal and it's effect on their ability to attend to other moral obligations (if harming the hunter gets discovered of course)
So where is the moral baseline on non-state territory and state territory? Situation from the book was non-state btw.
Also, does the Peter Singer's thought experiment with a drowning child applies? If we live close by and know about the hunt, do we try to rescue the animal like we would try to rescue a toddler incapable of swimming right next to us, as a matter of moral obligation?
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Human ethics would have to equal to animal ethics for that to even be a consideration based on the arguments you made. Many vegans do not equate human and animal ethics; a prime example is the abortion of an otherwise sentient fetus (like one that could be induced and adopted out).
So, either make an argument that your vegan axioms force pro-life (at some point in gestation) as well as other human ethical issues that conflict or use non-human examples to build the case (eg a domesticated dog going after a rabbit; that could work depending how you formulate).
For everyone else note that most jurisdictions that permit hunting have hunting harassment laws. (Trapping too, which is why they aren’t require to mark traps such that they are obvious from far away. If jerks stopped harassing them we could have regs making traps more obvious. Please stop.)
My post is, first and foremost, an open question. A question that you fail to give a meaningful answer to. I do not need to protect pro-lifers with my arguments because occupation of someone else's body (fetus to the pregnant person) is worlds apart from killing for pleasure.
If it is justified to protect your wheat field from mice it is likewise justified to forcibly expel a singular sentient being from your organism, as they hold no right to be there in the first place, as without bodily autonomy, we cannot exercise our basic rights as humans and citizens - and no one can be made into an unwilling gestation sack for pronatalist political agendas.
This question of mine is also not an invitation to justify hunting. Mainly because it's quite specific. If you feel like it, start your own post for it.
Veganism consider non-human animals as worthy of basic rights, obviously they won't be able to drive cars if that is your idea of equality, and you can always try to name the trait if you feel that cognitively impaired human is morally superior to a deer. Are you able to?
I’m not pro-life but many vegan arguments push into the realm of forcing it or at least at some stage in development with at least some causal paths to pregnancy.
Eg the mice analogy doesn’t work. Mice wound up in your field, and so you can do something about it seems to be the set up.
(1) Can you yourself put the mouse there and then kill it?
(2) If you put the mouse there if there was an option to remove it without killing it, would you take it?
So, if humans and animals get the same rights it seems we’re a little stuck here.
IMo there two dimensions to abortion: intent and fetal development. Pro-choice and pro-life disregard them as it’s either always life or always choice. 90%+ of people are somewhere in between. Wouldn’t vegan ethics inform constraints on where a vegan could wind up on the 2+ dimension criteria for when life is forced vs choice allowed?
1) Pregnancy does not create moral obligation to give birth. It happens, even with best protection it is the embodiment of the lottery of life (of course please everybody, use protection).
2) Yes, but if mice assaulted my body and were inside I wouldn't hesitate with a lethal solution.
3) Sentient vulnerable non-humans would receive rights according to their capacities, but I suppose the baseline is: guarantee of bodily integrity, anti-commodification law, freedom of movement with similar limitations as humans, right to life (that can be superseded for a select few reasons, like the right to free speech can be superseded in a busy theater when somebody wants to scream "FIRE!" for no real reason).
I suppose veganism does not argue so much for "same rights" but to rights born from equal moral consideration of interests, without playing favoritism in similar cases.
1) There’s a spectrum: unconscious coma patient inseminated to having willfully having sex for pleasure with zero birth control. We all know what sex does. Maybe 1% of the population doesn’t understand how babies are made; put that aside. But for the rest aren’t we doing exactly what veganism says not to do: exploiting another life for pleasure and convenience? Sex = pleasure; not doing inducing to adopt = convenience. Now that’s not what I personally advocate, but how can veganism square it for those that knowingly have sex, know it leads to pregnancy, don’t take 99%+ prevention measures, and are prepared to protect the life in that 1% off chance. If the chance is higher the obligation to favor life seems even higher.
2) But how did the mice get there. What if you were offered an amazing pleasure experience and told that a mice might wind up in your body?
3) This is very honest. Animals are in fact not deemed the same as humans as humans have higher level capacities. Therefore, ethics regarding those capacities could trump ethics in lower capacities. That sound about right/fair? I have no follow up gotcha to that. Just summarizing what a think is an honest vegan’s view that animals and humans don’t get the same moral considerations (yes lots of overlap but ultimately different).
Transgender male or cis woman having a pregnancy if they don't want a child, are not going to carry an embryo or fetus for the fun of it - they want to abort as soon as possible, but are usually not able to do so. That is enslavement as you lack control over your own body as it is collectivized for the nation. Just as the bodies of billions of animals are collectivized for it. This is part of the intersectional dimension of it.
Yes I agree with you, women (idk why you mention transgender here rn) should have the right to choose what to do with their body whatever they want. It's only problematic around the end of the pregnancy, not not far away of the end and not at all at around the beginning of said pregnancy. Idk for sure if it's a person/alive early in the pregnancy, but since no one labelles guys masturbating as mass murderes, there's no difference for me.
Any chance I worded my earlier take confusingly and you took it the wrong way?
I'm fine with your position, maybe that "feel like it" could have been suggesting that pregnant people are whimsical about matters crucial for them.
Transgender people can be pregnant.
1) You cannot exploit a life that does not exist and is not sentient. Forcing humans to give birth is a historic injustice against women and therefore they are right to stand against centuries of oppression – no being has the right to colonize someone else's body, not a parasitic wasp, and not a fetus. Even if fetus is very advanced, pregnant people deserve remuneration of harms from the state legislation that does not allow them to abort early, during 5-6 first months, as a matter of redistributive justice. And again, no bodily integrity for oneself, no basic rights protected.
2) If my state actively persecutes me for protecting myself from mice growing sentient in my body, I am made into live hostage and need to defend myself. It's not dissimilar from the state shoving those mice down my reproductive organs.
3) You tend to generalize too much. What is "humans"? Da Vincis holding greater rights than construction workers? Construction workers holding greater rights than comatose people? Forget about the species, it is an irrelevant criterion in itself. We are talking basic rights here, bread & butter, not fine wine.
1) Sure but it can still be deemed immoral. Eg many buddhist monks (i’m thinking of a vegan one in particular) thinks we should not charge crimes or even socially punish. Yet it’s still deemed immoral and we ought to have compassion for the suffering including the mother.
1b) At a certain point of gestation human fetus’s are sentient. It’s a debate exactly where. Second at say 7 months suppose the safest abortion option is delivery (where fetus is terminated first); ok well why not deliver it live and adopt it out if that’s the case? Thats not a body autonomy issue.
2) I’m not tracking here. The example was you put the mice in yourself to get pleasure. And I’m talking personal or social morality…not what the state could or should do. In fact I think state has less involvement than they currently do or gave in recent decades in the general realm of topics we are on.
3) You stated that humans have different rights than animals. Thus, the rights aren’t equivalent as the dynamics of their capacities are different? So, are you saying we can look to different traits of life forms and then ascribe moral reasoning on each trait one at a time disjointly.
1) Abortion up to say the 7 month does not require killing a sentient being. Why engage in whataboutism for the sake of it?
2) Please track the fact that people in many countries in the world are not granted bodily autonomy to decide on an abortion early, when fetus is not sentient. That injustice exist for a long time. Killing animals for pleasure and protecting your own bodily integrity are completely dissimilar. By guilt-tripping state victims you are participating in human oppression – there is no moral connection between sex and obligation to carry on pregnancy, because in a just world an unwanted pregnancy can be easily taken care of early.
3) Yes. Humans also have different rights from humans, and non-human animals from other non-human animals. I had already presented you my baseline, listed it.
1) It’s. it whataboutism. All I’m asking is does veganism force some kind of constraint (any constraint whatsoever) on abortion or does the human ethics totally override veganism such that veganism cannot. Again morality not legally/enforcement.
2) That country example is whataboutism. Again I’m not really about debating abortion here. It’s an example to figure out if veganism can, has to, or cannot say anything moral about human life or are human ethics totally different.
2b) You keep focusing on the state or me. Again I’m not pro life and I think state power should get out of abortion more or less altogether. This is a moral question (not law) about what the vegan framework concludes or not. There are tons of things in life we may agree or individually determine are immoral yet we don’t want the state to have anything to do with it. Actually most things in life are that way.
3) Ok we’ll disagree there. You have a western way of stacking discrete traits as disjoint phenomena. I don’t believe in biological life that that is possible. Eg pain/suffering for a rabbit, parrot, crow, turkey, lizard, monkey, human are all not the same in meaningful ways as pain is integrated into other biological processes and they all are different. We likely won’t find any agreement here as you seem to have a 20th analytic philosophy approach that has been decimated over the past 50-70 years. It’s still used as the “best game in town” by many though. So, I don’t fault you there at all.
1) Veganism is largely based on sentientism. Subjective awareness is a source of base dignity. Recognition of that dignity creates circle of moral concern. That circle of moral concern leads to rights or some efficient equivalent of them. Veganism speaks about animals, you need to refer to it's meta parents to receive those answers you seek.
2) You don't question my distinction between animal oppression and termination of pregnancies so I am fine with this point.
3) Pain is indeed felt differently by many sentients, and yet it serves the same basic evolutionary functions. Should beings more tolerant of pain be stripped from their rights, like women who have their pain "integrated into other biological processes" compared to men in a few relevant spheres, like childbirth? How is pain less scary and horrible for a pig than for a dog that you may love? It is fine to dislike a brand of philosophy as strongly as you, but it also merits consideration that our choices can enable oppression that is only as lofty as petty egotism that shaped it's creation. If you have a moral paradigm which decreases death, pain, desolation and misery on a planetary scale more than contemporary vegan ethics, I would genuinely like to receive more knowledge of it.
Morality is subjective therefore so is the answer. Obligations are imposed constructs.
I have so much to learn from wise free souls such as you.
Please explain in detail how three teenage boys raping little girl in the basement of a shoddy house are morally equal to her rescuers who handcuff the rapists.
That isn't what they said at all, and you implying otherwise is deceptive (arguing in bad faith).
Implies you think "morality is subjective" means "there is no morality" by giving the implication that this person believes the two acts you stated are in any way morally equal.
Morality being subjective does not mean there are no morals at all, it just means that the only morals that exist are the ones that we have imposed on ourselves. Subjective means that something is based on or influenced by personal feelings, emotions, opinions, etc. Objective means essentially representative of facts. But the universe does not have objective morality baked in. Nature does not have moral laws in place. We had to make those for ourselves to govern our own communities and cater to our human interests.
Objective morality does not exist.
WhTevwr you want to do, please don't go running around in the woods trying to stop hunters. This is a very bad idea, won't be effective and might get you killed.
Probably a better idea would be to go out as a "hunter" with blanks and every hour or two, fire a gun and scare anything nearby away, though then there's probably other hunters elsewhere you're driving them to instead... kind of no good solution beyond fighting for change really.
There is a lot of difference.
If you go & fight with a hunter or slaughterhouse worker, that would be considered as crime & you would be arrested.
If you were in the USA before Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation, would you be obliged to go fight with the Southern plantation owners who ens1aved humans? If you did that to free humans, you would be arrested for stealing their "property/commodity".
Currently, every non-human animal in every country is considered as property/community/object/s1ave. They can either be owned by individuals (like pets) or corporations (Animal Agriculture corporation) & if not, all free-roaming animals are considered to be in the trust of the state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_status_of_animals read about Gary Francione's Abolitionist Approach https://www.abolitionistapproach.com/about/the-six-principles-of-the-abolitionist-approach-to-animal-rights/.
The state considers wildlife as its commodities & it legally gives the right to hunt for the hunters. So what you need to do is not fight with individual hunters, you will need to try to convert the majority >50% into Abolitionists of the non-human commodity status. Once we become the majority, we can pass the 2nd Emancipation Proclamation by voting for the next Lincoln. In the 1800s, Abolitionists also didn't fight with the Southern plantation owners & tried to debate with people & also gave them pamphlets, etc. Nonviolence/Ahimsa is the key read principle 6 on Gary Francione's website.
No. It’s legal to kill animals. On another note, deer are very overpopulated where I am and causing severe ecological damage. So while I wouldn’t hunt, I don’t see deer hunting as the same as factory farming animals.
Deer need to be hunted whether you like it or not because humans have killed off most of the predators and the deer population will get out of control and cause great damage. Using logic is sometimes helpful.
Possibility of reintroduction of natural predators and the fact that 90% of the hunts are aimed against animals released specifically for the perverse pleasure of slaughter, as well as feeding forest animals in winter by hunters to accelerate population growth disprove that claim. In fact, these arguments had been disproven so frequently here that I am getting the impression you may be arguing in bad faith, even though Hanlon's Razor may still be more applicable.
Humans of different skin color do not have natural predators. They are out of control and cause great damage to our economic and colonial agenda. We need to kill them - using logic is sometimes helpful. Name the trait.
90% of the hunts are against animals specifically released for it to the wild. Hunters accelerate population growth through feeding in winter. Reintroduction of natural predators is very possible.
Arguments you use had been disproven on this sub with notable frequency, which suggests you may be arguing in bad faith, even though Hanlon's Razor may still be more applicable.
Different skin color humans are getting out of control and they threaten our white supremacist colonial agenda. They will cause us great damage, we need to kill them. Using logic is sometimes helpful. Name the trait.
You sound very paranoid. 90% of deer hunting is not released animals. Deer are literally breeding like crazy in many places, creating accidents and causing property damage. You really sound completely unhinged bringing race into it. My guess is your one Of those people that sees race in everything.
The default definition of veganism is
.
My own concept about veganism is that it isn't about trying to be responsible for the actions of other people,
its about being responsible for your own actions.
Vegans have the exact same moral obligation to stop someone from entering McDonalds to purchase a chicken sandwich as they have for stopping a hunter.
But in both cases vegans do not actually act on this moral obligation due to legal reasons.
I like this approach, it's very logical. Thank you
otherside picnic fan here.
“the killing was not for survival but thrills and sensory pleasure” — so this actually just isnt true… todate is implied to kill the deer she finds with sorawo and toriko specifically because she had shot it previously and didnt want it to suffer anymore (she says “i was worried about it”). they hadnt gone to find a deer with the intention of even killing one, she was trying to show them how to spot animals in the otherside. additionally, shes noted to kill and eat all the animals she finds, so she is doing it for survival. i think part of the reason sorawo admires it so much is because she was a homeless teen for several years, and finds the ability to care for yourself commendable (not to mention, she knows how difficult navigating the otherside is).
(side note. im not sure why this seems to bother you or even surprise you when sorawo and toriko literally abandon multiple people to die in the otherside in like. volume 1 or 2.)
also please dont compare an animal to someone who’s “cognitively impaired” ?? genuinely just kind of out of touch imo
Moral obligation? Yes. But legally that would get us into trouble, and lead to being convicted of assault. So in practice, it should not be done
You think people have a moral obligation to jump in front of a gunman? You’re out of your mind.
I'll remember that when a gunman has a gun trained on you!
Good lol. I don’t expect you to risk your life for me.
Lets say tomorrow the govt dissolved and we live in anarchy. Would you then stop the hunters? Lets be real here, no, because the real and immediate threat is them shooting back.
But also, why stop the hunters and not predator animals first? Kill the predator animals and youd save way more lives and from a much more painful fate.
No, because in a scenario like that the food would likely be needed, not just a luxury. Nobody (sane) blames humans for hunting animals when they need to, only when they want to. When stored and grown food becomes scarce, hunting makes sense.
Same reason. The point isn't just blindly saving all lives, it's reducing unneeded suffering and harm. You could stop predator animals from hunting to save their prey, but then the predators will suffer in turn. The natural cycle of life exists for a reason and veganism typically doesn't want to interfere with that, only with the industrialized suffering humanity has created, which has gotten out of hand in many ways.
Yea, no, predator animals are not remotely part of the discussion.
Neither is anarchy.
Lol. So predator animals get to maul something to death, but you want to kill or maim us (also predators) for doing it far more humanely.
Seems a bit ehh... inconsistent?
If you believe in the right to life of sentient beings and think causing them suffering is wrong, then yes. The issue is that following this logic all the way leads to thinking of wild animal suffering, which makes me head hurt when I think about it.
I'm a hunter. If you wanted to scare my prey away, I suppose I'd have to deal with it. If you decided to do something more drastic, I'd be inclined to defend myself.
Are you going to go and stop every predator? Or judge of it's a necessary hunt? Does practice count as necessary?
I mean, yes technically the same as any killing if one cares about the situation. Animals are sentient beings and vegans value their lives, so someone killing them ought to be treated in the same way. Hunters are somewhat unhinged though since killing another being is messed up in its own right. Chances are if you intervene they might use it on you or themselves. Still, some objection is in order to the killing.
"If we live close by and know about the hunt, do we try to rescue the animal like we would try to rescue a toddler incapable of swimming right next to us, as a matter of moral obligation?"
I would try and rescue the animal since it is very likely that the hunter will return to areas like that and continue to hunt. I have no reason to believe that other children will fall victim to that lake and drown. It is likely that someone pushed the child, or a gust of wind pushed him, or some other explanation. I am quite sure that the hunter intends to kill and will continue to do so (especially if he is hunting during a season which it is optimal to do so, showing his experience).
I would say, in a better world, absolutely.
A load of bumff . They need to be killed. So eat it .. it’s not that hard ..