From what I understand of vegan discourse, it is dominated by two main narratives: the moral imperative to reduce suffering and the ecological necessity of mitigating industrial agriculture's environmental devastation. which are seemingly good argument for the adoption of a plant-based diets as the main and even singular ethical solution but when I look at it from the lenses of ecosemiotics (the study of the sign processes that bind living organisms and their environments) I can see the homogenizing and frankly anthropocentric framework of meaning that ironically disrupts ecological relationships it seeks to protect by prioritizing a global symbol over local, sustainable texts of meaning.
For those who are not familiar with ecosemiotics thought, their main concept is the concept of the *Umwelt*, the unique, subjective world of meaning experienced by each organism: Every living creature, from a human to a lamb, interprets its surroundings through its own sensory and cognitive filters, engaging in a perpetual dialogue of signs. It goes against a single objective ethical reality applicable to all ecological contexts. Moral value, from my perspective, is not a universal abstract vegan framework of "reducing suffering" but rather emerges from specific, situated interactions within a particular semiotic network. A universal ethical rule, such as the categorical avoidance of meat for example can very quickly turn into anthropocentrism, as in the end, an animal is not gonna perceive a human eating it as any different than a non-human animal doing the same, From a lamb's pov, a human eating it is no worse than a wolf doing the same, yet the suffering of the lamb is acceptable for vegans so as long as it is done by a non-human animal, making it so that ironically only humans care about the distinction, therefore you inadvertently recenter a specific Western, often post-industrial, moral framework, thereby overwriting indigenous and local epistemologies that have evolved in deep semiotic dialogue with their own environments as well as projecting a human perspective on animals.
Ecosemiotics says that meaning is produced locally; cultural practices surrounding food, hunting, and herding are not just subsistence strategies but also dense webs of symbols, narratives, and rituals that encode a community's relationship with its land. For example, to a Sámi reindeer herder, the practice is a complex signifying act of stewardship, identity, and cyclical reciprocity. Vegans create semiotic decay by labelling them as nothing more and nothing less than "unethical". You're replacing a rich, localized "text" (a lived narrative that evolved through millenias) with a simplified, global "symbol" of ethical consumption. You're shifting the focus from the health of a specific semiotic network to adherence to an abstract sign.
So what is your opinion?
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There are vegans who care about wild animal suffering that is not necessarily caused by humans. See r/wildanimalsuffering
Yeah, the OP has to tactically ignore how diverse veganism is to make a point about vegans doing something that they don't even do. Very dishonest argument from the OP.
You're wrong, I was simply ignorant on that type of veganism, my argument is sincere as I truly believe ecosemiotic to be a great system/thought process to deal with nature and I decided to debate veganism based on that front.
Sure, I could give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn't know that veganism is a diverse branch of belief systems, but it seems very implausible since people can choose to abstain from animal products for any series of personal reasons. The options that motivate people to do that are limited only by imagination.
Admittedly, it didn't occur to me but that still does not acknowledge the main point of my rant and that is the richness of such a system of meaning.
So the global industrialized meat production schema isn't hegemonic and anthropocentric in terms of turning living creatures into global market commodities raised, slaughtered and sold to satisfy human shareholder value?
Cause if it IS, your problem isn't with veganism, it's globalized markets which due to economies of scale, will always out-compete local anything: Mom and Pop stores, local culture, media and eating practices, all of it.
I guess you could say that my problem is with anything that takes away the richness of a semiotic system
Ok. I don’t care about the richness of the semiotic system that can only be decayed as humanity becomes more and more industrialized and efficient. I care about limiting the harm I cause sentient beings directly and indirectly as a moral agent. I don’t see how direct harm isn’t more important to you than the feelings and sense of meaning of the one doing it.
Never said it wasn't and I am against abuse in that context. I used the term hegemonic in a more abstract way, in the sense of causing a semiotic decay by subsuming the whole system into nothing more than a symbol, that symbol being "Ethical Consumption" without pondering about the recursive nature of said symbol. Essentially trying to put a stop to a dynamical system of meaning through a single symbol. It is hegemonic in that sense. as I said in another comment
Well, then go and protest against that industry, rather than ciriticizing 1% of population which is actually trying to dismantle that industry.
You might want to save your approbation for the Nonethical Producers and lack of pondering by actual policy in the real world than whatever "semiotic collapse" simple deontological linguistics has on food consumerism.
Do you think that animals have moral value? For me, they do because they can feel pain.
Okay, but an animal will definitely be aware of the conditions in which it lived. Like the extreme confinement on factory farms.
The umwelt of a wild boar that has freedom of movement and a chance to escape is a lot different from the umwelt of a domesticated pig on a corporate farm. A female domesticated pig kept for breeding is confined to gestation crates for most of her life, until she’s eventually gassed in the slaughterhouse.
Also, it’s not a categorical avoidance of meat. Like I’m sure I would hunt if I had to in a survival situation. I would also try lab-grown meat.
Well yeah, we have no control over the actions of wild animals. Veganism isn’t about trying to change their behavior. It’s about how we treat animal, because we have the ability to choose how to treat domesticated animals.
How is it projecting a human perspective on animals?
I’m really not concerned with edge cases like subsistence farming in places where food is scarce.
I’m mostly concerned with the corporations who keep billions of animals in cages like battery cages and gestation crates on factory farms. The majority of livestock animals worldwide live on factory farms.
What‘s an ecosemiotic perspective on factory farming?
I know and I am against anything that does not enrich the semiotic world of an animal, including confining them in such terrible conditions. As I have mentioned in my previous comments.
Oh I didn't think of lab-grown meat! I'd still wonder how that's gonna affect the semiotic relationship between us and other animals. Once lab-grown meat becomes widely available, there'd be no excuse for animal farming but what about cultural hunting in a prey-predator relationship? That's very interesting to think about, and honestly making me reconsider some things
Only humans care on whether an non-human animal or a human is consuming another animal. The non-human prey does not care on whether it's being killed by human or by any other predator. A predator's a predator.
Horrendous and causes semiotic collapse/decay. I'm pro-hunters (although I'm reconsidering) and pro-sustainable small-scale ethical farming (very much reconsidering given the point of lab-grown meat)
The bulk of this is about defining ecosemiotics, which makes it difficult to discern what your argument is or what point you’re making.
It's a very complex and interesting field that I could spend hours talking about but I've opted for a concise definition in the second paragraph of my original post. My point is that living beings communicate through signification, representation and recursive reference (see Peircean Semiotics). It's a whole network of signs and symbols. Vegans are causing a semiotic decay by subsuming the whole system into nothing more than a symbol, that symbol being "Ethical Consumption" without pondering about the recursive nature of said symbol. Essentially trying to put a stop to a dynamical system of meaning through a single symbol. It is hegemonic in that sense. It is also anthropomorphic as animals do not conceptualize us any different from any other predator, it is only humans who care about that distinction and project it on animals thus, ignoring the animals own internal semiotic system. Essentially, the act of eating animal product is not inherently worse when done by a human being than by any other species
That last line is interesting. Animals do rape and murder within their own species. Do you think that people who are anti rape and anti murder are also causing a semiotic decay?
Certainly not, from an ecosemiotic view the murderers and rapists are the ones causing semiotic decay by subsuming what could have been a rich and complex system of human-to-human interaction into annihilation of personhood (murder) or dignity and autonomy (rape), by using a person as a mean of self-gratification without an ounce of empathy. Humans are different from animals (and each animals species is also different from each other) and we should be mindful of that difference so as to not project our morals on animals or the opposite: we should not take our morals from other animals either. We are what we are
So you recognize that earlier when you said that what we do is no different from animals that this was an invalid appeal to nature. That we don't get our morality from nature?
We are just as much part of nature as any other animal, but each species is unique. We shouldn't project our morals on animals but we should not necessarily take them from animals. But regardless our morals (key-word: our) are just as natural to us as fungi farming is natural to some ant species or salmon hat fad is to Orcas. Each with a unique ecosemiotic system. Think of it as an ecology of symbols
You're contradicting yourself. Should we base our morality on the natural world or not?
There's no contradiction in what I said, we are part of nature but we have our own semiosis process, just like every other species. Just because some species have violent copulation does not mean we should do the same just because we're both animals. We have our own practices of significance that we should enrich instead of impoverishing by decaying a shared human meaning through abuse. On the other hand, we should not project our human meaning-making onto other animals, but instead try to understand it through human-decentered semiosis
Should we base our morality on the natural world or something else?
Also,
" It is also anthropomorphic as animals do (sic) not conceptualize us any different from any other predator,"
No other predators breed and farm their prey.
That is a good point but I see that as part of the enrichment of their semiotic system. As I said in another comment
It's about the quality of their system, if an ethical farmer breeds his animals in an enriching environment, I see nothing wrong with it. Or at least no anymore wrong than any other prey-predator relationship. But of course different and unique because not all animals behave the same.
Okay. So. You're arguing that eating animals bodies is the same whether by hunting, farming, or otherwise is all equal. Or at least that's my best guess.
For me, and prob most others defending veganism, the idea behind veganism is as follows:
If I was starving and the only thing I could eat was you, I'd eat you.
If I was starving and I could eat you or a pig, I'd prefer to eat the pig than you.
If I was in a stable first world economy with the choice between eating you, a pig, or ample fruits and vegetable from the grocery store, I'd rather eat the fruits and veggies.
I'm not talking about subsistence farmers. I'm not talking about hunter-gatherer societies.
Does our ability for choice not matter?
Of course it matters, we have a choice to enrich their semiotic world, which is what indigenous hunters do by associating their cultural narratives with the prey's own semiotic system
Does killing someone enrich their semiotic system?
This post skips over concept of moral agents and moral patients.
Replace cows with dogs or children ans everything falls intonthe right place
cows and dogs and children, each have different semiotic systems, you cannot replace one or the other, that causes semiotic collapse and decay, that is the whole point of my rant
Not replacing them physical space, but replacing them in moral equation
If you understand the concept of moral agents (adult humans) and moral patients (animals, children, other sentient ecosystems) you can understand the equation
I was not talking in physical space but semiotic one.
And I find the semiotic model to be more interesting and deeper than the moral agent and moral patient though admittedly I was unfamiliar with the terminology of moral patient. Currently reading Moral typecasting: divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients by Gray and Wegner to get a stronger conceptual grasp on that.
And if you understand that morality is relative, you can understand that there is no equation.
It is not necessarily true, but yes there is a strain of philosophy that claims that.
Even if true - we can still discuss and operate in the construct we humans built. It's pretty much a charted territory among humans
You don't eat meat because of a rich symbolic and situated relationship to nature. You eat it because factory farming made it cheap and easy. Your situation is that you grew up in a culture of conspicuous consumption centered around a subsidized industry.
If it matters, I only eat meat from local farmers who work on what used to be my grandfather's land. They take great care of their cows, lambs and chicken. They are not cooped and roam everywhere. I live in a developing country.
But regardless, I am against anything that creates an impoverished system of meaning so I am against mass-scale industrial abuse of animals but I don't see anything wrong with interacting with animals in a prey-predator relationship or even a unique farmer-farmed relationship so as long as it is enriching for the animal and the human both.
How is it ever “enriching” to cut someone’s life off against their will at adolescence or earlier, taking them from family, flock, or herd?
Being a prey is part of semiotic model. The prey's Umwelt is fundamentally structured around interpreting signs of predatory threat which exist on a continuum from innate to learned. Being "prey" is just as much biological category that we interpret through a web of signs as it is a subjective, interpretive mode of being for the animal. It can be innate such as interpreting the sudden crack of a twig or the absence of ambient noise (the landscape growing silent) as a sign of predator activity or something learned like group swirling for some species. Our prey's Umwelt is filled with signs of "otherness" that signify danger.
The richness in question is paradoxically, honed by the ever-present possibility of a violent end in non-human controlled nature and a less violent one in human controlled nature. The predator (including us) is not just a killer "out there" in a semiotic framework but also an active participant in a web of signs that shapes how the prey perceives its world
The point that I'm arguing is that ethics emerge from specific ecological relationships, not universal rules and we should avoid imposing a single cultural sign-system that can erase sustainable, semiosis-based ways of life. From this view, a death can be "meaningful" if it functions as a reciprocal sign within a cultural or ecological network, unlike industrial slaughter which is semiotic violence and I agree with vegans on this one. To me, the true ethical imperative is to judge our actions by the health of the entire web of meaning, not just by a single principle of "harm" which can too easily be deconstructed unlike a more robust semiotic framework.
"Being a potential r*pe victim is part of semiotic model. The potential r*pe victim's Umwelt is fundamentally structured around interpreting signs of predatory (sexual assault) threat which exist on a continuum from innate to learned. Being "potential r*pe victim" is just as much biological category that we interpret through a web of signs as it is a subjective, interpretive mode of being for the women. It can be innate such as interpreting the sudden crack in a dark alley or the absence of ambient noise (the alley growing silent) as a sign of predator (rapist's) activity or something learned like screaming to deter the threat. Our prey's (potential sexual assault vistim) Umwelt is filled with signs of "otherness" that signify danger."
You're really not trying to interact with my point or even understand what semiosis and umwelt are, but trying to make emotionally charged false equivalence between Human-to-human semiosis and human-to-nonhuman animal semiosis, that I've already addressed in my other comments.
EDIT: A prey umwelt is shaped by evolved instincts for species survival whereas the heightened vigilance women (me included) have to employ is a tragic adaptation to a patriarchal system that subsumes a woman's rich inner world into nothing more an object for the socially ill, not a natural ecological role. It's more of a defensive semiosis against a breakdown of shared human meaning, not participation in a functional ecological sign-system.
You are not understanding the point of analogy. These don't need too be comparable in every respect. It doesn't matter that prey's animal's hypervigilance is evolved, while women's is adaptation to social settings (although there is evolutionar component likely as well). My point is that both are stresfull and bad, animals and women would likely be better off if there was no one preying on them, so they don't have to experience constant fear and stress.
Natural =/= good.
So you only eat vegan at restaurants and only buy vegan at grocery stores?
I have contamination OCD and don't eat at any restaurants at all when I have the choice and not forced (so honestly not for any rational or ethical reason, I just can't stand it) and only buy meat from a butcher locally supplied by our farmer family friends. Never bought meat from a grocery store aside from pet food.
It sounds like you'd be vegan most days of the week. What's the motivation for you?
I don't understand, You mean the motivation of the debate? I'd like to see how vegan people interact with ecosemiotic as a concept to critique veganism and maybe get a different point of view, that will make me reconsider (one comment so far mentioned lab-grown meat and I thought that was a good point).
Why do you seem to be mostly vegan or avoid meat except from specific places?
Honestly? Upbringing. I don't actively avoid anything as I'm surrounded since childhood by meat sourced from subsistence farmers. It's relatively recently that I've begun to apply a semiotic framework to the question of veganism. Before that I just ate what everybody else in my family ate: meat and eggs from local farmers, most of whom are family friends. It never occurred to me that their farming practices were cruel, because their animals seemed well-cared for, clean and free not staying in enclosed spaces. and since the animals were gonna die regardless, I might as well get nutrition from them.
But the vegan mindset interests me. hence why I came here.
The only places I actively avoid are because I have OCD (and autism but that's not too relevant) not because of a reasonable framework.
Is it good or bad to genocide indigenous communities while burning down the rainforest in order to ensure people in rich countries have access to abundant meat?
Even if that's the case the minute factory farming goes away that local "ethical" meat is going to skyrocket in price. It will never meet the demand and essentially become a luxury item out of the reach of most people on any regular basis. Supporting local "ethical" meat is support for factory farming whether you partake in it or not.
/u/Sea_Step3363 wrote
I am absolutely imagining one of your ancestors being kept in horrible slavery and the slave-owner going around telling people "I believe that 'not keeping slaves' in most of its forms is ironically hegemonic and anthropocentric from an ecosemiotic perspective."
What's actually important here? -
- Being able to come up with a pretentious postmodernist justification for keeping slaves?
or
- Not keeping slaves?
Same with veganism. The billions of animals that are suffering and dying don't care about pretentious postmodernist justifications.
.
Ethics means that we should do the ethical thing today and avoid doing the unethical thing today.
Its probably fair to say that the basic premise of ethics is "Don't cause unnecessary harm or suffering."
- Maybe some people used to do unethical things. I shouldn't do those unethical things just because some other people did them.
- Maybe my ancestors used to do unethical things. I shouldn't do those unethical things just because my ancestors did them.
.
The important thing is to stop causing unnecessary suffering and death.
The semiotics of human-to-human interaction are different from the semiotics of human-to-prey interactions. There is no semiotic justification for slavery as it robs people of their rich internal system of signs and reduces them to a single symbol. Not comparable with a respectful hunter-prey relationship
/u/Sea_Step3363 wrote
You are either trolling or you have an unhealthy view of these topics.
Causing unnecessary death and suffering is ethically wrong because it causes unnecessary death and suffering, not because it "robs people of their rich internal system of signs and reduces them to a single symbol".
I'm not trolling, I'm entirely behind the wholistic way of seeing things that a semiotic framework gives and it is inescapable. We all have a concept of signs and their interpretation; it's ecology but for meaning.
Think of it in meta-way, "Unnecessary Death" is itself a symbol, that can be picked and taken apart alone. You'd have to define unnecessary and go into a loop. But when you take an ecosemiotic perspective it is extremely hard to justify human-to-human violence within the context of slavery.
If I'm being honest, the fact that almost everyone except a few commenters chose to avoid tackling the framework I used in my OP and instead ignoring without even trying to deconstruct it shows that it is robust and it is indeed robust. Semiotic is the basis of much of what call information theory, it is the basis of a lot of thought systems including ones that deconstruct slavery etc.
I'm debating on that basis. No trolling and genuinely interested in debate and so far someone brought up the point of lab-grown meat which made me reconsider a lot of things.
My ethical values only apply to humans. What makes my ethics less valid than yours? What universal and objective ethics do we compare them to in order to determine who has the more "correct" ethics?
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Low effort answer with zero arguments. I didn't even use "big words". I've simplified the concept as much as possible without losing its innate academic nature.
This topic doesn't have an "innate academic nature".
In fact I would say that this topic innately has a non-academic nature -
- Don't cause unnecessary deaths.
- Don't cause unnecessary suffering.
A little kid can understand that. Nothing "academic" about it.
They aren’t wrong.
Not all vegans are utilitarians or even consequentialists. They advocate for animal autonomy or treating animals with some concept of respect, not preventing any sort of harm to animals or the environment.
I don't know if your post would apply to these non-utilitarian "liberation" vegans at all.
There is a difference between something being bad and something being wrong. I don't think there are vegans out there who thinks it's good that lambs suffer when predated. They just don't see how this becomes an ethical obligation for them.
Actors care about their actions or inactions.. This isn't a terribly surprising thing.
This honestly is pretty inscrutable and sounds like knee-jerk antiwesternism. You aren't providing a contrasting example here. You are just complaining in vague and overly complicated terms. If you want to make your point, be more clear and specific. What non-Western "epistemology" do you think is a good contrast here? You do understand that "Western" is also indigenous, if we are talking about Western Europe, right?
Sure, whatever... I mean that in the most polite way I can make that sound. Given such a scant few of us arguing on Reddit are doing that while taking time away from herding wild animals or performing hunting rituals, I am not sure who you are defending from us Vegans or what you are recommending vegans do about it.
Are you a Reindeer herder? Why do you feel compelled to white knight for them? Do you think they give half a shit about what vegans think of them?
"the moral imperative to reduce suffering"
Well, that's just not true. It is a concept that is present but it certainly isn't a main narrative which is a moral imperative for most.
"I can see the homogenizing and frankly anthropocentric framework of meaning that ironically disrupts ecological relationships it seeks to protect by prioritizing a global symbol over local, sustainable texts of meaning."
Ok, let's hear the reasoning.
"A universal ethical rule, such as the categorical avoidance of meat for example can very quickly turn into anthropocentrism, as in the end, an animal is not gonna perceive a human eating it as any different than a non-human animal doing the same, From a lamb's pov, a human eating it is no worse than a wolf doing the same, yet the suffering of the lamb is acceptable for vegans so as long as it is done by a non-human animal"
Well, that's also not true. Many vegans take issue with the entire natural processes that result in lambs being brutally slaughtered by non-human animals. The view that abstaining from animal-products reinforces a hegemony and is anthropocentric is confused since veganism is not hegemonic in the mainstream culture, and it is obviously anthropocentric since it has to do with human dietary choices and ethical beliefs. Animals cannot have ethical beliefs, so I guess that whole idea is anthropocentric. But that isn't really informative.
"therefore you inadvertently recenter a specific Western, often post-industrial, moral framework,"
Veganism, or abstaining from animal products, isn't bound by Western social norms or post-industrial societies. This is also just confused.
" For example, to a Sámi reindeer herder, the practice is a complex signifying act of stewardship, identity, and cyclical reciprocity. Vegans create semiotic decay by labelling them as nothing more and nothing less than "unethical"."
Yeah, because killing animals for food is unethical to a vegan. Vegans aren't interested in ad hoc rationalizations for how in-touch with nature the people who slice the throats of animals are, that's just completely irrelevant to their ethical values.
There's no need to whitewash what these cultures do: when you behead an animal and consume its corpse, that's what vegans object to. That's what is happening in these cultures, so that's what vegans are objecting to. No vegan is suggesting traveling over to them and chastising them about ethics, though, so I'm not sure what the point of this thread about hegemony is.
This starts with an idea that quickly dissolves while ignoring the thrust of the main argument IE that suffering is bad and to be avoided. You start with a good premise (suffering is to be avoided) and then fall quickly into the trap you yourself have made (suffering can only be perceived by humans) while ignoring the main problem of suffering exists outside of our own perspective and must be extrapolated. "How much suffering exists" is a different question than "how much suffering have I, directly or indirectly, been a casual factor for."
I don’t justify my actions based on the fact that the result would be the same if someone else does a similar thing. Imagine all the horrors I could easily justify if I did! I’m not in control of what a wolf’s going to eat, nor do I want to be. I’m in charge of how I treat others and how I take care of my own needs
exactly, so factory farming animals is not moral because it causes all sorts of unpleasantness before death
That’s a pretty good summary of the animal’s perspective. Then it causes a lot of unpleasantness after death for those of us who still live on this planet
that makes sense, like the people who are poor because of the structure of corporate agriculture? I'm not saying the suffering of animals is less or more than the suffering of humans, but you kinda have to use your imagination here. most humans aren't confined to cages and force fed nutrient slop/hormones until they are bloated and sick. I mean there are artistic correlations to be made to Western civilization and late stage capitalism hyper processed foods and stuff but I think if most meat eaters were to spend a day in a chicken coop they'd pretty quickly determine this is basically evil how we treat them.
I was thinking more of the environmental and health consequences, but the you’re right that corporate agriculture contributes to the poverty of parts of the world’s population. Those impoverished people are then disproportionately affected by the environmental impact and the health consequences of the food. But, yeah, I agree that a lot of meat eaters would feel differently if they came into physical contact with what actually goes on
That is not what I said. I said animals have their own inner system of perceiving suffering and in that system, humans are no worse than other predator. From an ecosemiotic basis, I claimed that to understand suffering, we must attempt the (always imperfect) task of interpretation across umwelten. We cannot simply extrapolate from our own neural and emotional model of suffering. We must look for the signs of semiotic collapse unique to that being's way of being in the world.
How much suffering exists is an unanswerable and I did not seek to answer it. An ecosystem is not a ledger of net suffering versus happiness. It is a dynamic, and yes ofen brutal, web of Umwelten in constant interpretive interaction be it predation, decomposition, symbiosis, competition etc. As for "how much suffering have I caused", I believe a more interesting question that replaces it is: "How high quality is our interpretive relationships?" For example I can see how industrial animal agriculture can be conceptualized as an act of semiotic violence. A cows Umwelt is reduced to a bare minimum: signs of overcrowding, artificial light, etc. It systematically destroys the animal's capacity to live according to its own world of signs. however a respectful hunter, by contrast, enters into a predatory semiotic relationship. The prey's Umwelt is: alertness, forage, and flight instinct. The hunter's success depends on interpreting the signs of that Umwelt (tracks, behavior). So, while it causes death, this relationship can exist within a larger cultural code that sees the exchange as meaningful and reciprocal, not merely exploitative, or not anymore exploitative than any other predator-prey relationship in the animal kingdom that the animal didn't evolve for. The suffering is real but not preceded by a lifetime of semiotic impoverishment. It's not about suffering but rather about a rich system of meaning
ok but you're trying very hard to escape the fact that you aren't hunting your own meat
if you only ate animals you yourself killed, this would be a different argument
you're trying to excuse atrocities by what-about-isms and reframing the argument so you aren't responsible for the heinous acts your financial choices support
I don't hunt my own meat, that's true, but I don't partake in the overly industrialized western farming practices either. as I 've mentioned in another comment, I only eat from meat by local farmers (friends of my family) and I see first-hand how healthy and well-cared for their animals are. Clean, lean, roaming free, etc. Those animals are not immortal, they're gonna die regardless but I might as well get to enjoy good nutrition from them after they've lived a nice semiotically enriched life. And I'm probably gonna sound weird but my finances don't go for my food or anything. My parents take care of that, which is normal in the developing country I live in. Though after another commenter mentioned it, I hope lab-grown meat will be widely available as soon as possible. But it makes me wonder how that's gonna change our semiotic relationships with farm animals
that's honestly admirable, I wish I had a lifestyle where that was possible. I live in a city in America where you basically have to have a car to make a living, which seems so backwards to me.
Lab grown meat will be huge once it's economical and I don't think this is an ethical argument, it's just business
As soon as suffering isn't profitable we will stop doing it
I just hope we don't find out lab grown meat can scream for its mother 🥺
When I can have a conversation with a wolf about why they shouldn't treat lambs as objects to be used and consumed, I promise I will. In the meantime, you can't exactly claim to care more about the lamb by treating them like an object. I see no way to ground it as more ethical to treat someone like an object than not to.
“Yet the suffering of the lamb is acceptable for vegans so as long as it is done by a non human animal.”
No, only some vegans would hold that view. You’re using a strawman to try and build some weird argument here, many vegans are against predators existing at all or if they are okay with the predators existing it’s to balance an ecosystem.
I also don’t really care about the argument of “eating meat is ethical because it’s part of my culture.” Do you think child marriage is ethical because it’s deeply ingrained in some cultures? Or genital mutilation?
What if I say the genital mutilation is a cultural practice that is part of a dense web of symbols, narratives and rituals that encode a community’s relationship with its children?
Does that justify committing harm?
No…
I think the arguments of “but my culture says it’s okay so I can do whatever I want” are useless forays into moral relativism that people conveniently try to use against vegans but then immediately reject when it’s applied to something like genital mutilation. The reductios are very easy.
Humans mass breed billions of animals and slaughter them, a wild animal does not. As a vegan I would definitely not view wolves breeding billions of animals to eat them for fun as acceptable lmao.
And have you tried asking the same question to someone who actually belongs to a culture where genital mutilation is practiced and accepted, instead of to someone you know beforehand doesn't belong to that culture and will therefore give you the answer you expected?
Why is your culture objectively the right culture and the others objectively wrong cultures?
I didn’t say my culture was objectively the right one.
I don’t believe any morals are objective.
I feel strongly enough about my moral views on things like genital mutilation that I would feel justified using force to stop it.
Anti realism does not mean you can’t judge or police others.
People will justify and argue any and every which way to harm animals. We're not indigenous hunters anymore. We're a force by the billions capable of devastating an entire planet with systems in place that fuel this kind of cognitive dissonance. We're closer to parasites; hell we shame parasites. For the betterment of your health, agricultural system, and the livelihood of animals in general - that we torture, rape, and kill by the tens of billions on an annual basis - go vegan. It's easier than the post you made. But yeah justify and rationalize eating meat all you want, and if we start dropping nukes and go back to being indigenous and devolve, I'll be hunting with you. Probably hunting each other too.
PART 1 (/2) Note: getting error, when posting the whole comment
Not neccesarily. Firstly, there is also a health aspect, but (self-identified) ethical vegans would often not categorize people who are on plant-based diets for health/environment as vegans. Secondly, ethical vegans (i.e., "vegans for the animals") would not necessarily be vegans for "suffering reduction", that might naturally follow, but ethical vegans would often characterize (their version of) veganism as being against the exploitation (or commodification) of animals, or as extending basic rights to animals.
That's important, almost central to veganism. The whole point of veganism (from the perspective of many ethical vegans) hinges on the fact that many animals we breed, confine, exploit, and kill are sentient. In other words, they have first-person (subjective) experiences. Many vegans think this is the crux of moral significance, i.e., sentience matters morally, sentient beings are deserving of moral consideration.
Not neccesarily, many people would argue that objective morality (meta-ethical realism) is true, even though they may accept your previous point. Similarly, there are many vegans, even prolific, who are moral-antirealist (they don't believe in stance-independent moral truths) - this doesn't matter. Veganism is not a meta-ethical framework; it concerns applied ethics. If you think it does matter, then your point would undermine any applied ethics on whatever issues (r*pe, murder, slavery, etc.).
Personally, I don't know any vegan who would see avoiding meat as a categorical ethical rule. Yes, in practice, we avoid meat all the time, but many vegans think there are situations in which it might be permissible to eat it (e.g., roadkill, lab-grown meat).
Vegans usually don't view wild animals as a guide to morality, even though, from the victimized animal's perspective, it might not matter whether it gets stabbed by humans or killed by a wolf. A lioness getting r*ped by a lion doesn't morally excuse humans doing the same.
PART 2 (/2)
This is just talking about two different things. Veganism is generally about ending the exploitation of animals by humans. We focus on the consequences of our actions. Discussion about wild animal suffering (including predation) is usually seen as a separate thing. Some vegans also focus on that, but it's not really a subject matter of veganism. Veganism is not just negative utilitarianism but with a sole focus on animals.
Please explain the relevance of this paragraph, and if you could also apply it to other Western ethical ideas that are generally acceptable, and whether you are then willing to criticize those as well. I don't care that other cultures have their "deep semiotic dialogue with their own environments" if it includes human sacrifices for their gods or something. I still would see such practice as morally wrong, and would like it to stop.
That's descriptively interesting, but normatively inert for me. I don't give a shit that human sacrifices are done in the context of "dense webs of symbols, narratives, and rituals that encode a community's relationship with its land". I still think they are wrong, just as I think it's wrong to kill cows to turn them into hamburgers.
Not neccesarily. I could do both - appreciate these cultures, their symbol and practices, on an intellectual level, read all the information as an interesting piece of anthropology, and describe them as "rich", "diverse" etc., while also seeing them as morally abhorrent, while acknowledging that (some) people within that culture would see their practices as fine.
This is a well-written piece of text; yet this is a surprisingly brittle argument all the same. It does not matter that it is 'hegemonic' or 'anthropocentric' in the sense of humans applying moral standards to themselves because they consider themselves as moral agents - a status not given to animal usually. Even the reindeer herder or whatever also has a choice by status of him being human, and being a moral agent and not merely a victim of his primal Umlaut - unless you want to claim otherwise, which would be.. minimally- quite incoherent, given he is also a human evolved as we are and we consider ourselves able to make said choice (vegans exist for example) - so unless you want to relegate the tribesman to an animal or arbitrarily deprive him of his moral agency - you cannot really exclude him from such moral judgements. It is not to reduce suffering period, but reduce suffering - and hold morally accountable, those able to be held morally accountable (moral agents) - for acting otherwise.
Morality, generally, is anthropocentric, in that we consider ourselves as moral agents; the anthropocentrism relevant to vegans is rather that we consider ourselves only morally accountable to immoralities toward other humans and not animals - and the likes. [Atleast lobsters - or something similar - and above (in 'complexity') are considered by science to be able to experience pain past simple nociception so they are infact, valid moral subjects - though not valid moral agents]
And finally, you seem to be tending towards a sort of cultural relativism - which I certainly do not hold, and I'm not even a vegan. I hold a more emotivist stance, where, yes, I can and will judge them based on what I feel right. And in anycase, cultural relativism seems to be a quite awkward and arbitrary moral framework - because it is arbitrarily awkward betwixt personal subjectivism and moral non-subjectivism.
[sorry if i seemed rude, just the way i argue, because you seem otherwise quite mannerly - cheers]
EDIT:
{ reading some other comments/your response, I do wanna say, you could definitely have made your point in simpler terms but I don't think you were being deliberately obstruse or whatever }
Your understanding is incorrect. Veganism is a philosophy/creed of justice and the moral imperative to control one’s own behavior with respect to the rights of nonhuman animals. It is a behavioral self-control mechanism for moral agents.
Anthropocentrism is the primary driver of the morality that undergirds veganism. Only normal adult humans are capable of controlling their behavior with respect to their morals.
Irrelevant to the premise of the anthropocentric framework of behavioral self-control for moral agents with respect to the rights of nonhuman animals. Veganism is a framework for moral agents, not for moral patients.
As I mentioned earlier, veganism is not about reducing suffering but about behavior self-control. What moral patients do to each other is irrelevant to the moral agents.
This is an invalid claim. Plant-based diets and frameworks of nonviolence existed in non-Western societies long before it was articulated as veganism by Watson and Cross for Western audiences in 1950s.
There is no projecting of anything if nonhuman animals are left alone to begin with.
"an animal is not gonna perceive a human eating it as any different than a non-human animal doing the same"
I don't see how this matters as in either case the Umwelt of the animal is in jeopardy. They aren't ants that don't mind dying to save the queen.
"overwriting indigenous and local epistemologies that have evolved in deep semiotic dialogue with their own environments"
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but this sounds like I should respect cultures. I do not. Culture has no place in morality. If it doesn't hurt anyone, go ahead and do what you wish, but if it does...
"For example, to a Sámi reindeer herder, the practice is a complex signifying act of stewardship, identity, and cyclical reciprocity"
The Sami can believe this but no matter how they frame it an innocent (I guess all non-human animals are innocent by definition) being is murdered.
"You're shifting the focus from the health of a specific semiotic network to adherence to an abstract sign"
So is the universal-ish rule of not doing harm to animals abstract or "universal" and "categorical"?
Overall, I don't get how this isn't trying to argue that 'culture though'. You could call it semiocide, I don't care, if you hurt animals you are doing something bad, stop it,
I'm not a vegan and not a native English speaker, so I can't articulate my thoughts as well as you (sorry about that).
I learned a new word today, "Ecosemiotic" and it makes sense to me because it sounds more like a holistic approach (if I understood it correctly) rather than a moral or individual perspective way of thinking.
So, predation is a natural kind of dialogue or information between species? For example, a predator in a natural environment can create change of behaviours from his prey and then those changes can also impact the forest too.
If we leave the animal kingdom, it can also apply to any plants or vegetables then ? I mean cutting a lettuce from a moral perspective can be seen as an act of killing a plant that can "feel", differently than a mammals but can feel in is own way.
But If I understand the concept, everything that is unnatural, like vegan highly processed food for example, is then "anti-semiotic"? So it's cultural or ethic/moral biases versus the natural ways (or processes) ?
So if you wouldn't describe the rich cultural practices as "unethical", would you class them as "ethical"?
What difference would it make?
Well western or colonial veganism is strongly based in the analytic philosophy tradition which is almost always presupposes substance metaphysics, essentialist, and anti-ontology.
Substance vs process: biology and evolution switched to process metaphysics over 100 years ago. Physics move to process over the last 50 or so years (there are no particles anymore in physics). That is the universe, biomes, habitats, and down cells and atoms are dynamic processes. They are not a bunch of entities bouncing into each other with some kind of Newtonian mechanics.
Essentialism: objects, persons, animals, have something unchanging and core about them that defines them. This presumed stability. Process science tells you that variability and randomness is the unchanging core and stabilities emerge out of that. It’s ok to talk about and work with stabilities. But taking them to be essential misses the dynamics of how that stability emerged and how what we’re talking about interacts. This one I’m really not good at explaining honest, but next one is trivial.
Anti-ontology: western/colonial vegan frameworks (at least the most popular one’s) have no argument for soundness. Yes the ecological optimization one’s can have a utilitarian argument (a heuristic), but all the axiomatic one’s cannot show soundness. For the axioms are merely postulates out of thin air. This directly falls into Hume’s trap. We can derive moral frameworks from biological evolution though.
Alternatives for vegans to consider that don’t fall into the same traps:
1) Process metaphysics derivation of morality from biological using more familiar western methods.
2) Borrow metaphysics from Eastern philosophy/religion frameworks like Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, etc. You can investigate the metaphysics and begin to inform a secular metaphysics to derive morality.
3) Native American / First Peoples / Indian ecological frameworks. They are perhaps the most intensely focused frameworks we know of regarding compassion, responsibility, and moral treatment of animals.
All of the above are highly process oriented, do not fail Hume, and even have strong ontological and epistemological soundness.
“We can derive moral frameworks from biological evolution though.”
Writing all that just to affirm naturalistic fallacies as valid is weird.
Well yes we can use supernatural access to morality through a religion or just postulate axioms. There are other options too.
But we seem to be most confident of is that we are capable of moral thinking in some capacity and that that emerged somehow biologically. No? It may not yield as strong of prescriptions as the other two mentioned, but it’s a framework we can at least recognize as existing common to all of us.
Plus, even if one of the other two are correctly pointing to some (super)universal truths, our biological moral capabilities still have to reconstruct in within our meatbags.
I also have two of three other options. So, here’s now 6 (only one being western naturalism), and all I’m claiming is that the first two lead to impossible debates as they are based on personal beliefs/postulates that are taken as true:
1) Western religion
2) Western substance secular a priori based reasoning; arbitrary axioms that can’t be debated which are necessary without alluding to another framework
3) Utilitarian heuristics
4) Western (ish) process frameworks
5) Eastern philosophy/religion but that’s debated. Thich Nhat Hahn I would say was vegan (not just plant only eater)
6) Native American frameworks
So, ok throw out 1 and 2 due to not being debatable. 3 and 4 are usually weaker than 1 and 2. Why not 5 and 6 then?
Sorry why can’t we just debate from an anti realist mindset and index morality to preferences exactly?
You are just throwing it away and I assume it’s due to a presupposition you have that morality MUST be objective.
We can. I’d say that would fall under something close to utilitarianism. We agree of ABC preferences and then therefore based on XYZ evidence do these actions and not those.
That works only if people agree on what those preferences are. It doesn’t inform what those preferences should or must be.
So, yes on whether or not industrial livestock works functionally from a preferences and utility perspective we could hash that out through cooperating towards our basic common self interests. That would probably also work under the framework you argue against above (#4).
But I don’t see how we can use the above to deal with issues regarding exploitation and sentience axioms/rules/rights of non-humans.
But what’s wrong with 5 and 6? They seem to not fail the typical western secular philosophy challenges such as a lack of necessity (or sound normativity altogether in the case of 2 and 3). You can have normativity without objective norms floating around in the ether somewhere (like Plato’s forms).
Could you use “Native American ethics” to justify genital mutilation or child brides the same way OP wants to use it to justify eating meat?
I think my problem is that the only things people want to justify with some secret mysticism are things they already want to do and already think are okay. I see literally no difference between “ooh we did a ritual and thanked the animal so it’s okay to kill and eat it” and “ooh we did a ritual and thanked the child so we get to mutilate their genitals” in terms of the reasoning being used.
It’s a simple reductio and you have to either accept or reject both if “ooh we did a ritual and also spiritual mumbo jumbo oooh” is sufficient justification.
Is there anything we couldn’t justify with “ooh we did a ritual and thanked someone” and if so how do we draw the line?
Good points. I don’t know anything about child mutilation. And I don’t think all of the arguments are rely on rituals. At least the current unresolved debate in the literature (paper below) doesn’t seem to be. The last 2 of iirc 4 arguments that I could find papers references it that refuted it seem particularly strong (note the author is a self proclaimed colonial/settler vegan and explicitly states many times that veganisms overall utility is not challenged by his arguments for he also advocates for that).
“Vegan Universalism and Indigenous Food Sovereignty: On the Socio-Cultural Limits of Moral Reasoning” by Thomas H. Bretz:
But you could also look to Native American frameworks that use the Native American underlying philosophy yet are still vegan.
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But what’s wrong about Thich Nhat Hahn’s framework? Not in comparisons to bio-naturalism or utilitarianism/realist but western axiomatic veganism. Seems utilitarianism could be used for the pragmatic but TNH offers way stronger (meta)ethics than the western axiomatic system.
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No science today supports substance metaphysics. So, why use a framework that explicitly assumes it or implicitly presupposes it? All the knowledge we have points to them being false (ontologically not just rationally or empirically). This is not an argument against veganism per se. It’s an argument that there are not yet defeated options beyond the dominate western veganism framework. In fact at least one is already explicitly vegan.
I’m mostly interested in debating OP’s view which seems to be “if a culture says it’s okay it’s ethical”. It just seems like really poor reasoning and the reductios are pretty bad.
I think viewing it as western vs eastern is kind of a red herring.
Regardless of framework if the logic is inconsistent I’m uninterested in it and if OP doesn’t similarly excuse child marriage or other various things we disagree with I can completely disregard their argument.
“If cultural practice, then X is morally permissible” is just worthless and it’s being selectively applied to veganism.
My framework doesn’t need to presuppose any specific metaphysical views to test internal consistency. Does my critique in any way presuppose any troublesome metaphysical views? Or any at all?
Regarding the OP’s arguments (will get to reductio’s). Bottom line here is that I don’t think OP hits a reductio in the terms you set up unless OP claims a universal. Other main point below. (1) We don’t have to change our laws to accommodate a new culture (probably exceptions to that). (2) Invading other countries to change is dubious and geopolitical capital has to be prioritized to things more important than non-humans imo as I plainly don’t believe animals should get as much moral consideration.
You can skip the rest if you want. It ended up being too long. So, I put the main points above.
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OP: Animal doesn’t know if it’s a wolf or human eating it. It’s human’s perspective that could make it different (OP argues against veganism’s). Ok so what? Pretty much all cultures do that in some capacity. In fact I believe it’s impossible for any agent not to frame everything from their perspective.
OP makes some claims about how western veganism doesn’t recognize other frameworks. That I agree with OP on. See the paper I cited earlier that goes exactly into that coming from a western vegan author.
Ok so does OP justify their framework. I don’t think so anymore than veganism as far as I can see. Notes:
1) I’m fairly ignorant of Sami but I do know a little (tiny amount) about Scandinavia ecological stewardship general framework. I don’t have all the answer, but in the modern world I personally think Scandinavia is closest to the mark of where we’d want to be.
2) OP argues indirectly about Veganism absolutism and I agree that philosophically it is highly problematic. I think absolute veganism and absolute conservationism are well meaning protest movements that apply to the western world as westerners latch onto to absolutes and to bring reform you often need to market absolutes. However, the whole idea of never managing habitat is naive. We can’t not interact with habitats if we remain on this earth. So, imo we have an ethical duty to be stewards of habitats. Scandinavia seems to be the most reasonable on that and animal treatment compromises generally. And hey if the blending of Germanic and Sami culture brought that about, there’s probably a lot you and I would agree with regarding the Sami.
3) Ok so suppose some culture does say forces children to marry their first cousins generation after generation. What do we do about that? I don’t think we conquer them and make new laws. But if they come to a culture that has socially agreed that it is highly unethical from all ethical camps (natural rights, science empiricism, utilitarian economics, etc) then no they can’t get an exception.
4) Ok suppose we all come to agree that the most painful practices (call them X) in industrial livestock in no longer to be permitted and we eliminate/restructure say 30% of our production. If some other country still does X do we conquer them or even pressure them geopolitically. I’d say no as there’s a long list of imo more egregious things in this world. I’d rather use any geopolitical capital on those (still child slave labor, slave labor, sexual slavery, ethnic war rape, etc). I’m not putting any energy into how Y country say treats their cows if 50% of women are still owned in that country.
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Do I think OP’s core point makes sense. Seems to be the case without knowing much about Sami (see paper I cited)? Does the fact that Sami hunt have any relevance: no. OP’s main point I think still makes sense if Sami ate only plants.
Cross cultural stuff is difficult. Domestically, no laws don’t have to change to accommodate. We avoid that issue in the US by giving enough sovereignty rights to Native Americans geographically. But we don’t need to accommodate new cultures. And even for animal cruelty laws I don’t we even need any kind of rights or legal claim. If someone comes here and drinks milk it’s fine (veganism is still like 1% in US). If someone comes here and runs dog fights it’s not. Why? Completely independent of sentient or biological capacities of any kind (so zero to do with veganism) willfully engaging in that causes creates/affirms callous and unemotional traits in humans which are highly anti-social things no society wants. That is a biological fact that you can do A in one culture and generate CU brain structures but doing A in another does not. That is one thing (development of CU traits) I am prepared to say is objectively bad.
I can’t refute OP like I can axiomatic veganism, but I also don’t have to support changes laws to accommodate someone that wants legal permission to pimp their child. I also am hesitant to even invade to attempt to change other countries. For if we think we should, someone should have toppled North Korea long ago.
Right on. If you are saying, “OP you are making an error because western veganism rights conception is universal” then yes I believe you are making major well known errors.
But now that you’re zeroing in (you did before Inthink but I went on a tangent; sorry) on that OP’s framework seems to force other things internal to itself that are absurd. I’ll pivot back to the OP and ponder that for a minute and address it.
Impressive. Very nice. Now let's name the trait.