“Climate-friendly” beef could land in a meat aisle near you. Don’t fall for it.
“Climate-friendly” beef could land in a meat aisle near you. Don’t fall for it.
Tyson Foods and the federal government refuse to show their math for a new sustainability label.
Tyson Foods and the federal government refuse to show their math for a new sustainability label.
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Peter Singer the "father of the animal rights movement" and really interesting philosopher, is I think a vegan but he argues for a disclosure number on eggs and chicken saying how many chickens there were per acre, because he argues that IF the chickens lived a happy life and were killed without distress, it's ethical to eat them, and at some really low density the evidence shows they are happy.
He also makes a claim that there are circumstances where it's ethical to eat meat like if the airplane serves you the wrong meal and if you reject it they will throw it away, because the animal is already dead and your decision doesn't incentivize more death, and demanding a new meal wastes food.
So, that's what living true values sounds like to me. Not picking a rule and sticking by it, but taking each decision and weighing it against your values.
Yeah. This is how I live life. I don't create demand for meat. But I'm not vegetarian.
but taking each decision and weighing it against your values.
He also claimed that kids with disabilities should be executed and infanticide should be legal up to the age of 30 days.
It sounds like he took a few plane trip, which my explain the second part of that statement.
Har har, I must admit it is rather difficult being on a seven hour flight next to a baby. Especially when you hit lots of turbulence.
That doesn't invalidate the above statement, it just illustrates that he also has abhorant opinions.
People like him make a point of having full consistent systems of thought. So at best his opinion happens to be correct which is not the same as being correct for the right reasons. Even a stopped clock etc.
Also fuck his ablism bullshit
A modest proposal.
What ever happened to galoshes anyway?
Personally, I find a lot of Peter Singer's arguments to be pretty questionable. As for some of the ones you've mentioned:
For one, killing humans, no matter how humanely the means, is seen by most to be an act of cruelty. I do not want to be killed in my sleep, so why is it okay to assume that animals would be okay with it? While he is a utilitarian and doesn't believe in rights, killing a sentient being seems to me to have much greater negative utility than the positive utility of the enjoyment of eating a chicken.
Also, farming animals for slaughter will always be destructive towards habitats and native species. Even if broiler chickens were kept alive for their natural lifespan of 3-7 years instead of 8 weeks to alleviate any kind of ethical issue with farming them, there is still an opportunity and environmental cost to farming chickens. We could use that land for to cultivate native species and wildlife, or for growing more nutritious and varied crops for people to eat, yet instead we continue to raze the amazon rainforest to make more land for raising farm animals and growing feed. De-densification of farms would only make the demand for farmland even greater than it already is.
Finally, the de-densification of farms would mean a significant increase in the costs of mear production. We'd be pricing lower income groups out of eating meat, while allowing middle- and upper-class folks to carry on consuming animal products as usual. We should not place the burdens of societal progress on the lower class.
But factory farming is completely separate from the scenario of throwing away the entree on the plane.
Peter Singer isn't vegan, he's a utilitarian. Also known as someone who uses "math" to ignore the hard problems in ethics.
Why won't that dreg just die already? The Utility Monster has been known since it's introduction and is an unsolvable problem for them. Also it doesn't actually have calculations, it has opinions with weights. I can argue two radically different courses of actions just by playing with the values I assign to the opinions. Plus humans really do not operate according to it, nothing evolution has done for us would wire us to think and act accordingly.
It's the kinda idea that most people have at least once and then throw it away when they see it can't do anything for them except make them and the people around them miserable. The Good Place had it right.
It makes sense to eat food that would otherwise be thrown away.
It does not make sense to say killing an animal is justified because they were happy or it was done humanely.
Doesn't sound like he has values to me. Sounds like he has exceptions. It's a good thing people with 'true values' don't have to prove them to you, lol.
Doesn't sound like he has values to me. Sounds like he has exceptions.
I mean, regardless how you feel about them, those are values. Values in this case as made up of inclusions and exclusions, to say that his values are "exceptions" because they're different than your inclusions and exclusions is condescending and frankly wrong.
Sure man. Believe whatever you want.