Non-violence is a social contract made among consenting adults. Animals are unable to consent and therefore cannot reciprocate.
Wild animals that are not aggressive and not depending on humans should probably be given some extra respect. Animals whose very life depends upon our investment in their care have no more standing than the bacteria in our gut.
Of course, I totally empathize with animals and would find it hard to kill them myself.
I'm going to try to sow the seeds of reflection. Disclaimer, I currently work in a chicken slaughterhouse. I've worked in a pig farm for 2 weeks. I'm vegan.
My understanding is that the non-violence social contract we have among consenting adults and the fact that animal can't (which could be argued) reciprocate doesn't justify us causing unnecessary suffering. If it is then wouldn't it legitimize slaughtering human which are in a vegetative state? This isn't my point.
I don't see your justification. My guess is that you imply we shouldn't hurt animal but this isn't enough. It is my understanding that killing someone while they're asleep and claiming they didn't feel anything doesn't make it moral. Shouldn't the fact that if a living being value their life and enjoy waking up, be what should be considered here? The fact that we doesn't value the lives of the animal doesn't cut it either.
Morality dictate us that it isn't okay to kill someone even if we don't know the person we would kill or even if nobody knows that person.
When I worked at the pig farm I held the piglets while someone was cutting 2 little incisions and then proceeded to rip off their testis without the use of any anesthesia. (This is standard practice.) I would then release the piglets in the little enclosure where I took them. They would all pile up one over the other in the farthest corner of the enclosure just as they would do every time anyone would enter the room.
Looking back at this I consider this to be the action I'm most shameful of myself. It is on part with nothing else I did in my life. How animal are treated is another subject altogether but I felt inclined to share nonetheless.
I'll check out the video later. Thanks Luke.
Have you watched conversations with Koko? You may be making a selection bias justification for the capabilities and conscious awareness limitations (or lack thereof) of non-human animals. Dolphins, elephants, primates, etc... What if they did have the capacity for consent?
Even the concept of "consent" was created within our species understanding of social contract and social norms. Given the veil of ignorance philosophical test, if a powerful, vastly superior alien species were to come down and treat us as we treat cows (because their consciousness is so far beyond ours), wouldn't we want them to come down to our level, understand our consciousness, our pain, our desires, etc?
So a species ability to feel pain (i.e. their level of consciousness by which I mean arousal, awareness, memory, etc) has no bearing on the moral nature of our actions toward them? I find that to be a very difficult position to defend, ethically. Bacteria don't feel pain. Cows, dogs, pigs, etc surely do. That said, your point about the symbiotic relationship there is a good one.
Thanks for commenting, Dan. Greatly appreciated.
That's one way of putting it I guess. Personally, I would avoid using the term "social contract" in this case and refer to the the fact that morality only is possible to the single, thinking, autonomous individual.
To the extent that any other individual ("animal" or else) is able to reason, their individual moral rights should be fully respected.
(it get's trickier to explain the actual details once we get to things such as emotion and human handicaps, but this would apply even then)
Well said. And yes, it's tricky mainly because of our ignorance. We don't know what we don't know regarding consciousness, the brain, and how that impacts our understanding of morality. We can't even agree on which moral framework is the "best" one.
I think we can and that it's important to emphasize that we can, but I agree that it is very difficult to find any such agreement and that it would take a ton of work.
I try to make the same arguments. Hopefully we can at least make progress toward that goal. :)
There was an old Welsh farmer, a neighbour maybe 40 or 50 years ago, who cried when his lambs went off to market and would never eat their meat, and there are many others living and working with farm animals who treat them with deep reverence. (Yes, apart from the whole killing and eating bit.) I've worked with animals for more than a few years, but never once did I dream of lumping bacteria and domesticated mammals into one moral category.
I too found that rather strange. Seems @dantheman has moved on from this conversation, but I would appreciate clarification there. Seems like a pretty scary moral framework to me.