Animal Ethics Puns

Everyone thinks shooting a giraffe in the head and killing them instantly to feed to lions is wrong; they are all fine with the actions of the meat industry. They all think dog and human cheese is too disturbing to discuss. They agreed this whilst one person was eating a big Mac. One of them thinks people who eat dogs deserve to die. However I have been giving them facts about the animal farming industries that they often call "horrible", all I have to do now is get them to realise them buying meat is linked to meat production. I aim to turn everyone vegan by the end of the year

Everyone else eats meat. There's a slide on a PowerPoint about "personal choice" influencing ethics that says "vegans and vegetarians are considerate of animals whereas others disregard animal welfare entirely". Kill me

We also have a "my vegan friend needs supplements and regular checkups at the doctor" and "humans are meant to eat meat because of their digestive system, herbivores like cows have a very different gut" person. We got onto the topic of chicks today and everyone loves them, so I'm waiting for the right moment to inform everyone exactly what happens to chicks in the meat and egg industry.

Saw this question in a Big Joel YouTube video the other day. (https://youtu.be/DGwiyyZhNpM) The uploader says that beastiality is bad because the person draws pleasure out of the pain of the animal, while for the meat eater it's just a byproduct of their desire to eat.

I think this answer is very dissatisfying because I disagree with the premise that people practicing beastiality do it for sadistic reasons, I sadly actually know that most feel genuine connections to the animal or do it because they lack other sex opportunities.

I also think the main reason beastiality is almost universally illegal and very much looked down upon is because of religious reasons and because it's considered disgusting, rather than ethical reasons.

I think the biggest ethical problem is obviously that animals can't give consent. But they can't consent to being killed for meat either. And the latter is more cruel. So how is one bad but the other not?

Has Sam expressed his views on non-human ethics such as veganism or vegetarianism?

So, I've had to repeat and explain my moral stance a few times, and all too often it gets dismissed.

I just typed it up for another thread in another sub and thought I would post it here for more discussion. I've had many vegans agree my position and reasoning is consistent even if they disagree, and those that have disagreed with me (who don't just make useless emotional arguments) tend to disagree about certain assumption I might make, but are unable to prove or disprove them either way due to a lack of studies/understanding. I'd like to see how well it holds up under more intense scrutiny.

My main points are that:

-'Sentience' is not the same as 'sapience'. I understand sentience to be simply the quality of having senses and being able to interpret them. Thus, animals such as gnats and roundworms are to be considered sentient. As where sapience indicates an actual consciousness, a self-awareness that sentience alone does not indicate.

-Some kind of introspective self-awareness and/or meta-cognition is required to have a sense of identity, a sense of ones self in relation to experiences and environment. I believe, animals without those traits, rely far more on instinct than thoughts (or whatever the closest animal equivalent is).

-Further to my above point, I believe without a sense of identity or introspective self-awareness, pain is not experienced in a similar way to how humans, or say gods experience it. I think for many animals that lack those traits, pain is essentially just a signal. I think (perhaps weak) evidence in support of that point is the occurrence of PTSD like symptoms in different animals. Humans and dogs, who both possess levels of self-awareness, suffer PTSD like symptoms as a result of trauma (with dogs, it can be being reclusive, afraid, overly aggressive, and like people they need guidance and help to deal with their trauma and become healthy again). At the other end of the scale, say again with roundworms, it's the opposite. If a roundworm gets burned for example, it's just going to retreat and go on with it's life, no worse for wear. It's no worse for wear because it doesn't have the cognitive capacity to be worse for wear psychologically. And while many vegans will make an argument that is some form of "we don't know what it's like to be a roundworm", I believe we have a sufficiently advanced understanding of animal brains (certainly we do for the roundworm, which has a complete connectome and [who

Does anyone have any recommendations of (relatively) recent work in ethics that argues that keeping domesticated animals for meat and/or animal products is morally permissible?

Every time a question regarding eating meat comes up here, it feels like the entire discipline of Philosophy read Peter Singer and said "well, I guess that's that" and just decided to cede the question of the morality of eating meat/using animal products forever. Which feels bizarre to me, since I don't find the usual arguments very convincing at all (at least, outside of something like ethical vegetarianism - I'm sympathetic to the idea of avoiding consuming animal products due to specific injustices perpetuated by factory farming and similar practices as opposed to because consuming animal products at all is immoral). It seems to me that, unless you're a specific kind of utilitarian/consequentialist, that those arguments don't hold a lot of weight, yet at least around here it seems that the userbase trends from a vague "yeah I guess eating meat is technically bad and everyone agrees even if we do so anyway" to being virulently anti-meat in all forms.

Surely somebody is out there writing dissenting arguments? I'd be especially interested in takes from a virtue ethics or ethics-of-care perspective, if any exist.

http://imgur.com/a/bJYJRvU

Pretty much title.

Every person I know would be very sad if they found out the last African elephant had passed away. But if they stepped on an ant, they would be minimally bothered at most.

According to the anti-speciesist logic of veganism, the two must be considered an equal loss.

What can I say?

Hey guys, I want to hear some opinions about the implications of animals in morality.

Recently I've made the decision to go vegan as a result of much self-reflection about how I think we should treat animals as the creatures who control the food chain. As a child, I was always told by my mom many times after my pets died that they would go to heaven. That was my personal belief throughout my childhood, admittedly purely out of the comfort that it gave me.

However, as I got older and began to question my beliefs, I came to realize that many Christian fundamentalists adopt a belief that animals and really nature as a whole were created for the glory of man, and therefore we have a god-given right to exploit them as we please. By extension, animals would not go to heaven, as they have no real importance. Obviously, this is disgustingly immoral and I completely disagree with it.

Still, It's a hard question. We know that animals are conscious, and like us, they can feel physical pain and perceive emotion. I just can't accept that that is true for no reason. In my opinion, the vast and incomprehensibly complex kingdom that animals are just can't have been created for only us.

This begs the question then, are animals like humans in their relationships with god? Do they have souls? Of course, they don't go to church and lack the mental complexity to even begin comprehending a concept like god, but god may manifest himself in them in some ways, like love and empathy, emotions that we know animals are capable of showing.

Whether or not this is true, what goes without question is that our actions as humans cause animals great physical and emotional suffering, and that is morally unacceptable, god or not.

Obviously, I've only scratched the surface of a topic with so many layers, and that doesn't even get into things like plants and bacteria, but I'd be interested in hearing what you all have to say. God bless.

I suppose that it would be characteristic of Sam to find it unethical to donate to animal causes when there are people suffering in terrible circumstances. How do you justify taking care of animals/pets when there are human children who need to be taken care of, and every 5$ you spend on your dog could mean life or death for a starving child in an impoverished region. By implication you are saying that the wellbeing of an animal is greater than that of a human being. When worded like this it symbolizes psychopathy. This is analogous to a king who gives his food to his dogs instead of hungry peasants.

I had always felt this way, but I started to think about it even more when the ASPCA started showing up at my gym to garner donations. I know Sam Harris has touched similar topics but I don't recall him ever venturing onto this particular one.

I applied while ago to a zoo for sales associate position, as i was looking up the zoo i applied for, recently i was nearly in tears and regretted it. The animals are kept in spaces that are bit too small for them and the animals look so sad :/ I got a call from the position i applied as a retail sales associate earlier she sounded nice but ignored/declined. I dont want to work for a place that has animals being in that capacity to be gawked at for entertainment . Although i sorta need to get a job i will wait until i see what is right for me. Not to mention zoos are so overcrowded, i know i would be too overwhelmed and anxious on the top of it all