Re: Skyla's Response #10

In Skyla's response to Kelsey, she talks about how eating meat is unnecessary. She ends with the question: "Even after knowing the affects eating factory farmed meat have on the environment and the animals, why do some people still continue to eat meat other than the reason that it simply tastes good?"

The main reason, like I've argued before is conformity. The quote from James Rachels that Skyla posted on her blog supports this notion. He states, "People generally do not respond to ethical appeals unless they see others around them also responding. If all your friends are eating meat, you are unlikely to be moved my a mere argument."

Conformity is an unconscious common sense drive which consumes every person and various other species. The psychology behind it narrows down to our need to belong and our need to be liked. People like people who agree with them, and have a lot in common with them because it affirms who they are. Similarities cause us to assimilate ourselves in an unconscious fashion. If someone decides to be a vegetarian, their friends and family may try to convince them to do other wise. The peer-pressure to continue to eat meat from several friends has a much more significant effect on ones decision than the moral dilemma at hand. The dilemma now becomes the internal battle of wanting to agree with your personal friends and your morals. Yes, just because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it right, but it makes it seem that way. I know plenty of people who only became vegetarians when they came to college because they didn't feel the pressure of having to consume meat anymore.

Religion is another argument. If your religion justifies eating meat I feel like that is a perfectly legitimate reason even if you do know the harmful effects.

Also, people are accustomed to meat so a drastic change in diet may be difficult. Over the summer I tried the Atkins diet which is the exact opposite of a vegetarian diet. You can have the equivalent of one meal of carbs and the rest is protein. I couldn't even do it for three days because I love carbs and I felt wrong for eating so much meat. Since this diet was so hard for me I can understand if someone wasn't able to adapt to a vegetarian diet. It's not for everyone even if they are aware of what is being done to the environment and the animals.

No matter how many reasons someone comes up with for eating meat when they know the effects on the environment and how the animals are treated, to some extent they are just excuses.If you really want to be a vegatarian, you shouldn't care what people think, if your religion says it's okay, or if the transition is difficult.

I'm a selective omnivore/avatarian. This means that I do not eat cows, pigs, fish, deer, or anything other animal besides chicken (as well as turkey on thanksgiving) and I frequently refrain from eating meat. I have about five servings of chicken per month. And the only reason why I personally still eat meat is because I figure that I don't really have that much to begin with. I know the effects on the environment, I know how cruelly they are treated, but I still do it. And there are plenty of people like me. But just because I know these facts does that mean that I should change the way I eat? Does it suddenly make it more wrong to continue to eating meat the way I do? Possibly.

My question is: Do you think that if everyone knew the effects of eating meat, the rate of meat consumption would decrease?

Argument Against Davis

In Davis' article, The Least Harm Principal May Require That Humans Consume A Diet Containing Large Herbivores, Not a Vegan Diet, he discussed how 1.8 billion animals such as mice, wild turkeys, rabbits, etc., die each year for producing a vegan diet.
He makes a good/pessimistic point that no matter what you do, animals are going to die in the process of obtaining food. He uses this argument to disprove Regan's Least Harm Principal, yet, I think he's argument is a bit extreme.
When defending the debate of intended vs. unintentional death he states, "Perhaps I don't fully understand the nuances or moral significance of this difference, but it seems to me that the harm done to the animals is the same -- dead is dead."
This reminds me of what Nicole said a few weeks ago, 'We step on ants everyday just walking around and we don't even know it.' (Of course I'm paraphrasing because it was a while ago, but it was something to that general effect.) Animals and other living things are going to be killed by humans no matter what we do. Dead isn't just Dead, when it comes to moral significance. It is the action of killing on purpose -- for no purpose and even for unnecessary purpose that we need to morally consider. We cannot be morally accountable for the things we cannot control.
I really do not think that Davis understands this "nuance". A field mouse, before getting run over by a plow was not crammed in a cage like a chicken, it did not have its feet tied together like a calf, it did not have hormones injected into it's veins so that it would produce more milk or eggs. Is this not pain? Death from being accidentally run over by a mower is instantaneous therefore no pain is felt, whereas suffering from being controlled and physically manipulated over a life time is surly more painful.
In an other defense against Davis' stance is that people who are not vegans eat that food too. Non-vegetarians are not carnivores who chop on flesh all day. Bread, corn, soybeans, and the like are not singularly for vegetarians, omnivores like/need them too. So therefore the only foods that aren't eaten across vegetarians and omnivores are meat and/or animal byproducts. And as I mentioned before, the animals who are victims of animal forging experience more pain than animals who are accidentally killed by a plow because farm animals have experienced long-term suffering. So if we are trying to evoke the least harm principal, being a vegan would be the best route because omnivores cause more harm by consuming food that in its production killed animals and animals that experienced a life time of suffering/ their byproducts.

Question: Should we feel more morally accountable for the animals that die in the field than the farm animals we consume?

Re: Isa 10/6/10

Why do the similarities between the human and persons/animals seem easy to identify but when its stated that way we want to find the most ways to differentiate ourselves from the animals?


We want to differentiate ourselves from other animals because we want our differences to stand out (by we I mean society). By proving and pointing out our differences it makes us seem stronger and therefore gives us more power. This power justifies our negative actions toward them like killing, eating, and experimenting.
Homo sapien means man the wise. Being wise connotes having the ability to judge properly, having the knowledge of circumstances, having educational knowledge, etc. These properties are unique to humans. Other animals also cannot think abstractly, they cannot speak to us in an articulate manner, and they do not have an imagination.
It's a part of the human mind to want to stand out and prove that we're different even from each other. The human DNA is 99.9% the same. It is that .10% that makes us different from each other. Humans like to blend in, in terms of conformity, but we also like to stand out as well. If everyone was just like you, you would want to do something different just so that you would feel like your own person instead of a piece of one uniformed unit. It's in our nature to want to stand out of the crowd.
So in conclusion, we want to find the most ways to differentiate ourselves from other animals because it justifies our negative actions towards them and because wanting to be different and standout is a natural drive of humans.

My question is: Homo sapien means, "man the wise," but are we truly wise?

Meat Eating Across Cultures

Meat is consumed globally. China consumes the most meat per year. The U.S., Brazil, and China make up half of the global meat consumed annually, each person consuming an astounding 206.6 pounds of meat per year. http://www.animalethics.org.uk/i-ch7-6-meat-consumption.html (for more meat eating facts). The amount of meat consumption has shown a significant increase over the past fifty years and is continuing to grow.

This leads me to the question of why do we consume the animals we do? What is it that drives us to eat meat? Familial aspects, Sociocultural aspects, the availability, economic status, evolution? I can’t help but think that culture is the number one factor. Our culture consumes mostly cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, fish and other seafood. These are the primary foods that are not considered weird or bad to eat. Secondary animals would be deer and lambs. For the most part this is true across the nation. Americans think it’s wrong or disgusting to eat animals like dogs, cats, dolphins, bears, frogs, etc., because our culture has conditioned us to think it’s wrong and disgusting to do so. Our economic status also has a factor in the food we eat. People in poverty are obviously not going to eat lobster every night, they are going to get whatever they can get, which is usually perishables. I’m pretty sure food banks don’t give away frozen or fresh meat. Availability is another factor because we are more likely to eat the foods that are within easy reach to us. This possibly shaped our cultural aspects because what we had available is what we grew to deal with. Obviously we don’t naturally have elephants so we don’t hunt them like Africa does. Familial aspects are more confined than cultural aspects, when you grew-up you ate what your mother put on the table. If you grew-up being a vegetarian, you’re more likely to grow up to be a vegetarian. I remember when I was in eighth grade, I had a vegan friend who convinced me to try out being a vegetarian, and I was a vegetarian for a year. My dad and other family members used to tease me until I finally just gave in. Your family has a large impact on what you eat. There is also the aesthetic properties of eating meat. Like I said in class we probably eat animals that are attractive looking because being unattractive is associated with being dirty, and nobody wants to eat something dirty. Which, like Johnson said, is probably an evolutionary construct.

There are many aspects that lead us to eat meat, but I feel as though the cultural aspect is the strongest. Today in class I was shocked to hear that some cultures actually consume gorillas and even more shocked to hear that they are endangered because of it. Come to find out there are several endangered species that cultures still eat. Asia cuts off the fins of live Ganges sharks for soups. Columbian officials actually kill sea lions because they are predators of the endangered Chinook salmon, and killing sea lions means more salmon for them. South Asia – Gaurs/seladangs; China – Chinese Giant Salamander; Japan— Fin whales and Bluefin tuna; North America and Canada – Caribou; Indonesia – green sea turtles. The list goes on.

My questions are: Do these animals really taste so good, that a society will seriously consume them to extinction? How do we rectify the double kill for animal consumption (killing animals so that we can eat their prey)? Are we really that selfish that we care more about indulging our taste buds than the existence of an entire species?

Responce to Jenna: Love

At the end of Jenna's post she asked "Do you think it is possible our pets can or do love us in the same way we love them? Can animals love at all?"


Unfortunately I don't think that our animals could ever love us as much as we love them. Love is a complex concept and a secondary emotion. I believe that animals can acquire primary emotions but they are not able to, or are less able to experience secondary emotions. Primary emotions are: fear, guilt, happiness, and anger. Secondary emotions are: love, jealousy, resentment, etc.
The frontal lobe is the center for emotions, memory, and ideas. Since humans have a more developed frontal lobe it makes sense that we can feel more complex emotions.
Most people (especially pet owners) don't want to hear this sad truth because they don't want to believe that their animals don't love them as much as they are loved. But, believing this would be anthropomorphism.
There are different kinds of love, like friendship love and romantic love. To a slight extent I do believe that your pets can feel friendship love, yet they cannot feel romantic love with another of it's kind. There are certain species that are known to be able to love, like penguins. Yet it shows in animals that do not stay with the same mate, that their is no romantic love within that species. So yes, some animals can love and others cannot.
The caudate and the ventral tegmental are the parts of the brain that have been scientifically proven to be the parts that stimulate the feeling of love. Do animals have such brain structures? If so does that mean that they have the capacity to love?

Animal Conscious

I began discussing my argument in class today about animal's ability to think and be conscious.

In Bermond's stance on animal experience he states:

We cannot imagine emotional experiences accompanying cognition's: for instance feeling of fear is unthinkable with out thoughts like, 'how can I escape?', 'what should I do', Should I defend myself or should I run,' etc. All of these are part of our emotional experience.

The last sentence of this selected passage sticks out the most "...are a part of OUR emotional experience." Just because it's a part of our emotional experience, doesn't mean it necessarily has to be a part of theirs. We are unable to think of fear without words because that is what have had all our lives. How could we feel emotion without the words we readily have at our disposal? And if this is so, than must it follow that deaf-mutes also cannot have emotional experiences?

I for one have experienced fear without words. It's called shocked. Haven't you ever been scared speechless? When you are scared you do not think before hand, "I am going to scream." When someone startles you, do you tell your sympathetic somatic response to activate? These seem to be ways of feeling fear without words. Instead of thinking, "I think someone is behind me, I should walk faster", an animal just walks faster. It's only after you scream, that you say that you were scared. It's only after your heart starts to slow back down that you say you were startled. My point is that we can imagine what it's like to experience fear in words, but also what it is like without them.

Some may say that animals consciousness is like driving on a faimiliar road or like having "blindsightedness." Yet in responce to the blindsighted argument, like Lynch stated, we are able to do these things on autopilot because we are intelligent creatures. Less intelligent creatures have to think fully about difficult tasks because they are harder for them to achieve.

Words are a powerful things and in some aspects our words help us suffer less than animals. Mind over matter is one argument to prove this statement. We are able to tell ourselves that we are not in pain and convince ourselves to the point that we do not feel pain anymore. Like when we are at the dentist we can think about something completly different and virtually block the pain receptors. Another argument is that words help us have less fear because our rationale tells us that everything is going to be okay. When put in a fearful situation we have the capability to control our breathing, and reasure ourselves. This of course is not an ability that non-human animals posses. Words are our coping mechanism. We are able to stop and think about the possibilities and what may happen instead of jumping to conclusions or resorting to ancestral instincts. Lastly, words can have therapeutic effects. Like when someone makes you feel better by talking to you. I'm sure that we have all been in situations when we felt upset or angry and a friend talked us through.

In class, I spoke about being able to think without words. That split second before you say your response, you have the vital emotions that create those words that make up your rebuttal. This leads me to my question: Is there considered no thought in the thought process? Is a thought only a thought if it is spoken or translated into a language?

Patriotism and Selfishness

Yesterday we brought up the topic of Peter Singer's expanding circle. This, along with Bryan's comment reminded me of the debate between patriotism and cosmopolitanism that we had in Constructing Reality last semester. Patriotism is love for your own country whereas cosmopolitanism is love for all countries and mankind. We are more likely to donate to a national organization than to a global one because we feel like we should help our own people before we help others. This also applies to animals. We are more likely to help our own species before we help another.

In someways I don't want to believe in the expanding circle because there are some overlays, and I feel like it's not always true. But when it comes down to it, whether our intentions are pure or not, we are all selfish. You and your family comes first, then your friends, and so on. This isn't necessarily a bad thing or something that we can help because no creature can be truly selfless, but is it right? It relates to the idea of altruism: can we really do things without getting something out of it? We have animals and love animals, but we receive love back from them (well the majority of our dogs, cats, horses, etc., at least). Yet, no matter how much "love" you have for them are you going to put them first? Are you going to put their well being over your families?

Think of all the reasons why trees are important: We need them for oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange, some produce beautiful flowers in the spring, they give us shade in the summer, fall foliage, the way snow looks on the bare winter branches, etc. All of these reasons are based around humans. Since trees are important to humans for these reasons, we make sure that there is the right ratio of needed trees to mini malls. (Or do we?)

If you asked random people on the street why do they think animals are important, I guarantee at least half of the most common answers will deal with human interests.

Is it so wrong that we put other humans, sometimes even strangers in front of our own dogs? If you were to say that you would put your dog in front of another human, people wouldn't value your opinion. For example: life boat ethics. Should we bring the dog with us because there will be more happiness (utilitarian point of view), or should we bring the annoying guy that no one likes because according to our society it is "the right thing to do."

Speciesism is an engraved unconscious moral. Maybe this is due to conformity or maybe it's inherent in our nature like Todd points out/questions in one of his posts. But regardless of why we think this way, if you ask someone to justify, they'll look at you like it's a no-brainer. But is it really? We think this is our world, that this world revolves around us because we have the most intelligence and the most power. We believe that to question whether to bring the dog or the annoying human is an unethical thought all together. Infact, if that did occur, those people would probably get sued.

Speciesism is selfish in some light but like patriotism, we are always going to pick our own first. Society may be wrong, but conformity and what's easier always wins whether it's right or not. So I ask: can we change societal views? Is it so bad that we want to help our species more than any other, or is this selfishness?