An Animal’s Place (2002) • Hacker News Board

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#21

Post by haste410 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

Asooka wrote: post #17

sweetheart wrote: post #10

Pollan has a tendency to talk himself into pretty weird conclusions, namely that because we can treat an animal well and give it a good life, killing it and consuming it before it naturally dies is somehow good. There is this made up notion that the animal is almost a sacrifice for us: in exchange for a peaceful safe life, it gives us its blood and flesh. But remember, never willingly. It never wants to die. It can n…

I don't see how you can string together such a consistent argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past cu…

> killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree.

I don't know how you can make this argument. Does an apple tree feel pain, fear, or loss when it or another apple is plucked?

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#22

Post by m12k » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #19

m12k wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, no. Humans do have morality, and can and should apply it to one another - and can expect and even demand the same in return from others. We can't do that with nature, and nature does not need or want that in return from us. Humans are both animals, that need to fit into an ecosystem, and social creatures, that need to fit into a society. Both domains require rules for how we interact with and fit into them, but t…

So are you saying humans are super-natural?

What on earth makes you think that? No, I don't think humans are super-natural. But in addition to being creatures sprung from nature, we are also something else (indeed, the very definition of something being anything other than natural, i.e. cultural or artificial, is that humans have had a hand in its creation).

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#23

Post by cercatrova » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #18

Asooka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how you can string together such a consistent argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past cu…

> At the end of the day, every living thing on this planet - every tree, every plant, every mushroom, every fish, every insect and every mammal dies and is eaten. Except humans. Humans cremate their corpses. While we might get into a debate about whether some forms of life somewhere on Earth technically consume your scattered ashes, it's quite the distance from hitting you on the head until you die and then chewing o…

Cremation is relatively recent in human history (oldest record dating to 17,000 years ago), the vast majority of which we buried our dead who then decomposed/were eaten.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#24

Post by troyvit » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

m12k wrote: post #16

yboris wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rubbish . By this logic, we can just say that we shouldn't upset the "balance" of the slave owners -- they were able to to "maintain the balance needed to maintain the ecosystem that it is a part of".

Um, no. Humans do have morality, and can and should apply it to one another - and can expect and even demand the same in return from others. We can't do that with nature, and nature does not need or want that in return from us. Humans are both animals, that need to fit into an ecosystem, and social creatures, that need to fit into a society. Both domains require rules for how we interact with and fit into them, but t…

I think the only flaw there is that our morality came from nature and therefore is one of the things we use to fit into our ecosystem. There's nothing to say we shouldn't apply it to other members of the system. If nature didn't "want" that we wouldn't be capable of doing it.

Given how far up the food chain we are it could be argued that our morality exists precisely for this purpose.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#25

Post by meristohm » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #18

Asooka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how you can string together such a consistent argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past cu…

> At the end of the day, every living thing on this planet - every tree, every plant, every mushroom, every fish, every insect and every mammal dies and is eaten. Except humans. Humans cremate their corpses. While we might get into a debate about whether some forms of life somewhere on Earth technically consume your scattered ashes, it's quite the distance from hitting you on the head until you die and then chewing o…

I prefer for my body to be eaten by other living things, big or small, and ideally in a way that doesn’t pollute the land and water too much (I accept the heavy metals and other toxins I have built up over the years will leech one way or another). I have no problem separating the dead body from the previously-living being, and I hope more people can adopt this view. This doesn’t mean I will stop handling dead bodies respectfully, at least as far as I see it. When I kill a fly or an ant I own the act, matter-of-fact without performative solemnity, and put the body in the compost to fuel further life. When I ask the vet to kill my dog I will be sad as this family member dies in my hands, and eventually the dominant emotion will be love and joy at all the good times we had together.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#26

Post by jhbadger » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

haste410 wrote: post #21

Asooka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how you can string together such a consistent argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past cu…

> killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. I don't know how you can make this argument. Does an apple tree feel pain, fear, or loss when it or another apple is plucked?

Not as much as an animal, but we are learning that plants are far more sophisticated than we've traditionally given them credit for, and do have ways to detect damage (which we call "pain" in animals) and can even alert other plants to danger (which could be called "fear")

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#27

Post by andersonbd1 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

Try "The difference of man and the difference it makes", by Mortimer J. Adler

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#28

Post by tenebrisalietum » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

yboris wrote: post #14

m12k wrote: post #4

Nature doesn't deal in morality, right or wrong. Nature deals in balance. A fox that kills all the rabbits one year will die of hunger the next. The question isn't whether the fox has a moral right to kill rabbits or not, the question is whether the fox maintains the balance needed to maintain the ecosystem that it is part of. Act too unsustainably and break the balance by too much, and you disrupt the ecosystem, and…

Rubbish . By this logic, we can just say that we shouldn't upset the "balance" of the slave owners -- they were able to to "maintain the balance needed to maintain the ecosystem that it is a part of".

Attention: Downvoting me? You should respond instead or at least additionally. I don't care if my points go to 0. Don't turn this place into a Reddit hivemind.

This appears to be your logic: It's OK if we destroy our planet with global warming and create conditions where a good percentage of humanity could be harmed because portions of humanity have previously created harm and exploited others throughout history.

This seems like "two wrongs make a right". The end result won't be a right.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#29

Post by jbotz » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

sweetheart wrote: post #10

Pollan has a tendency to talk himself into pretty weird conclusions, namely that because we can treat an animal well and give it a good life, killing it and consuming it before it naturally dies is somehow good. There is this made up notion that the animal is almost a sacrifice for us: in exchange for a peaceful safe life, it gives us its blood and flesh. But remember, never willingly. It never wants to die. It can n…

It's not so simple as all that.

We raise chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese completely free range. Our homestead doesn't really even have fence on all sides and most of it is virgin forest. All these sepecies can survive on their own in the forest here, although not in the same population density that they have on our homestead. We feed them, we take care of them when they are sick, and we provide some protection from predators... we also have dogs, and the dogs presence alone helps quite a bit with that. We also take some of their eggs, and sometimes we kill some of them. The birds know all of this, yet they stay, because life is better here than in the forest. Actually, some of the ducks (Moscovy ducks, they are fully native here) do leave, but they do so mostly when there are too many males and they end up fighting a lot.

The bottom line to me is this... we keep the birds for eggs and fertilizer (and because we like them), we really eat very little meat, but we have to manage the population. When we let it get too big they suffer more, there's more disease, more fighting, etc. In fact, sometimes when the population has gotten rather dense, there has been murder and infanticide among them! They can't solve the population problem non-violently on their own, but they do like the benefits of food and safety, so we have to solve the population problem for them. I'm not rationalizing, I love these animals and don't like killing them, and I have gone long stretches of time without eating any meat and don't mind that. But I kill them, because when the time comes it's the right thing to do, and after I kill some I eat them because that's also the right thing to do, not because I want to eat meat.

So you might say: well then don't keep animals! Maybe, but keeping them is the most ecological way to maintain the soil fertility around our homestead (poor tropical soils) and the food we can produce because of this reduces our overall ecological footprint. I think it's a win-win for us, the animals, and the planet.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#30

Post by LeifCarrotson » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

Asooka wrote: post #17

sweetheart wrote: post #10

Pollan has a tendency to talk himself into pretty weird conclusions, namely that because we can treat an animal well and give it a good life, killing it and consuming it before it naturally dies is somehow good. There is this made up notion that the animal is almost a sacrifice for us: in exchange for a peaceful safe life, it gives us its blood and flesh. But remember, never willingly. It never wants to die. It can n…

I don't see how you can string together such a consistent argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past cu…

As you state, plucking an apple for food is morally fine - few would disagree, and anyone who does is likely to get quite hungry quite quickly. Meanwhile, killing people for food is obviously wrong, yes? Morally abhorrent, in fact!

But there's a spectrum between those two extremes. To set a boundary, you need to determine the reasons why one is acceptable and the other is not. Maybe you intuitively draw the line right next to the apple, eating plant life only - no fish, crustaceans, shellfish - or maybe you draw the line adjacent to humans, contentedly eating tool-using, communicative, emotional, social, familial, intelligent gorillas without feeling guilt.

But what makes it abhorrent to eat a person, and acceptable to eat a plant? As Bentham wrote, Singer quoted, and the article cites, I would agree that it has something to do with the animal's capacity to suffer. One might add positive capacities for joy, or broader ecosystem health needs, or other questions of relative utility for the victim and the farmer, but the point remains: A pig is a remarkably human-like animal. Not as intelligent or as emotional as a human, perhaps, but it's far closer to a human than that shrink-wrapped package of hot dogs in the grocery aisle might lead you to believe.

What qualities does a human have that a pig or dog does not? What metrics can you use to measure those qualities, and how do you set a threshold for where it becomes moral or immoral? Identify those, and you'll have a much more solid argument for why killing a pig is moral.