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Crazy real

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I did some lambing on a school trip a while back, was really fun, got to castrate a lamb using the described rubber band technique, was harder than it sounds to get both balls in the band, he didn't sound very happy when I did. First thing I did when I came back was have some lamb chops.

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The way I see it is that animals don’t have minds and so don’t have moral value and can’t suffer in the same sense we can. I think of them as robots with souls. I’m sure you’ll disagree with my ideas, but does it at least seem conceptually coherent and somewhat sensible?

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I read most of the article and this quote was the one most applicable to me: “Now, maybe there’s some magic of the human brain, such that in animal brains, the brain regions that cause qualia instead cause causally identical stuff but no consciousness. But there’s no good evidence for that, and plenty against. You should not posit special features of certain physical systems, for no reason.”

I’m still a novice when it comes to philosophy, but honestly, the only reason I have against animal minds is theological in nature. I think humans were the only physical creatures on Earth given true minds since we’re Imago Dei--animals are never given that status so I don’t think they have minds. Also, I think concluding they don’t have minds is one of the best solutions to the problem of animal suffering. So that’s the “magic” I’d appeal to.

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I think this is suspicious for the same reason it's suspicious when young earth creationists say God planted fake dinosaur bones: it makes God out to be some sort of very weird deceiver. And then it's hard to see why the bible so often condemns animal mistreatment.

Proverbs 12:10 says “Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.” Psalm 145:9 declares “The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” Deuteronomy 22:6-7 says “If you come across a bird's nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long.” And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Suppose you think there's a 65% chance animals aren't conscious. Well, because so many of them suffer, there's a risk that eating meat is super wrong and that factory farming is extremely horrible. So out of the risk, you shouldn't eat them.

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Thanks for the thoughtful reply; there's a lot for me to think about with this topic.

In regards to God being a deceiver, it seems like you'd have to posit that God, when creating certain animals, specifically wanted to trick us into thinking they have minds just like you and me, but I don't see why that's the conclusion one must accept over other possible alternatives.

In regards to the passages on treatment of animals, I think 1 Corinthians 9:9-10 is illuminating in regards to this: "For it is written in the Law of Moses, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.' Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop." Because of this, I'd wager these animal treatment passages in general are meant as a sort of didactic principle for our sake. It also seems more consonant with the Jesus killing and eating fish, the Temple animal sacrifices, and that God [seems] to endorse the killing of all animals in Acts 10:13.

Funnily enough, I'm sure these all sound like excellent reasons for a committed ethical vegan to reject Christianity. The only other option I can think of is that the moral value of humans vastly outweighs the moral value of animals such that the value gained from killing animals for our sake is often sufficient to justify their death in most normal situations, though you could probably argue factory farming goes a bridge too far.

The moral risk percentage argument is an interesting one that I'll have to think about more—especially since I use similar reasoning in regards to abortion—but something seems fundamentally off about it. For example, even if I thought that chance was <1%, it still seems like I wouldn't be warranted to eat animals, but why can't I apply that reasoning to other seemingly innocuous or absurd examples? Like what if every time I use hand sanitizer I'm conducting mass genocide? There seems to be a non-zero chance of that being the case, but I still think I should use hand sanitizer. Makes me wonder about the legitimacy of using probabilistic reasoning for ethical questions.

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Thanks, I’ll take a look at this

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Souls meaning “breath of life,” or something akin to that btw, not “mind” or “spirit”

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So, this article https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-net-harm/ convinced me that drinking milk is probably not that bad and might even be net positive. What do you all think. I guess I was engaging in motivated reasoning, because I really like milk and i should probably be fully vegan again right?

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I agree dairy isn't anywhere near as bad as the others at the margins. I just disagree with the claim that cows don't have negative lives--as I show here, they endure some really extreme suffering.

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