We have agency over our actions and the ability to reduce the negative impacts we have on the world. We are unique in this ability, and we should exercise it
Would you kick a dog in the street? Shoot a cat with a bb gun? These are things that happen with frequency, but I wouldn’t do because I think that causing pain to another animal, senselessly, is a bad thing.
Would you raise a chicken in complete darkness for its whole life? Would you raise a cow in a suffocatingly small pen among its excrement? Impregnate a cow constantly and steal its babies away for meat so you can continue to milk it until it dies? Animals feel pain. They communicate, they suffer, they mourn.
If you can supply an argument that causing suffering of innocent animals is good/doesn’t matter, I’m all ears.
Would you kick a dog in the street? Shoot a cat with a bb gun?
no. these are cruel. practicing cruelty toward animals may create a habit, and end with practicing cruelty toward people, which would be immoral. it is best not to practice cruelty at all.
Animal agriculture is necessarily cruel. It is efficient. By your logic, this cruelty is negative. It sounds like we are very close to agreeing, frankly
cruelty would be inflicting pain for its own sake. in so-called factory farming, the pain is still only incidental. that is, if it were possible to create the same outputs with no additional inputs, and that process had no pain, there is no reason why a factory farming operation would prefer the painful process. so it is not cruel, it is only indifferent.
i’m not saying it’s a moral good. i’m saying it’s amoral. as in it is neither good or bad in itself.
We have agency over our actions and the ability to reduce the negative impacts we have on the world. We are unique in this ability, and we should exercise it
it’s not clear that animal suffering is a negative.
Would you kick a dog in the street? Shoot a cat with a bb gun? These are things that happen with frequency, but I wouldn’t do because I think that causing pain to another animal, senselessly, is a bad thing.
Would you raise a chicken in complete darkness for its whole life? Would you raise a cow in a suffocatingly small pen among its excrement? Impregnate a cow constantly and steal its babies away for meat so you can continue to milk it until it dies? Animals feel pain. They communicate, they suffer, they mourn.
If you can supply an argument that causing suffering of innocent animals is good/doesn’t matter, I’m all ears.
sure. battlefield amputations cause suffering. sometimes it saves a life. it’s good.
no. these are cruel. practicing cruelty toward animals may create a habit, and end with practicing cruelty toward people, which would be immoral. it is best not to practice cruelty at all.
Animal agriculture is necessarily cruel. It is efficient. By your logic, this cruelty is negative. It sounds like we are very close to agreeing, frankly
i disagree.
Please show me that factory farming is overwhelmingly not cruel
cruelty would be inflicting pain for its own sake. in so-called factory farming, the pain is still only incidental. that is, if it were possible to create the same outputs with no additional inputs, and that process had no pain, there is no reason why a factory farming operation would prefer the painful process. so it is not cruel, it is only indifferent.
“innocent” here is an appeal to emotion, since we don’t regard non-human animals as moral agents.