Meat Morality and Human/Animal/Alien Rights

This is a thread exploring morality. I am not a vegetarian, not even a particular advocate of animal rights. I have no ideological axe to grind on this issue. But I do think that the way we treat animals is rationally unjustifiable.How can we rationally justify treating conscious, pain feeling creatures in the way that we do? We treat them in ways that we would not dream of treating human beings no matter how lacking in conscious awareness or the ability to feel pain those humans might be (e.g. humans in an irreversible vegetative state, new born babies etc. etc.)Put it this way - If a highly intelligent, highly advanced far intellectually superior alien race came to Earth and started treating humans in much the same way that we treat animals (intense meat farming, milk extraction, slave labour, conducting experiments, testing cosmetics etc. etc.) on what rational and consistent basis could we tell them that what they are doing is morally wrong whilst simultaneously justifying our own treatment of intellectually inferior creatures?It seems to me the best we can hope for is that any such hypothetical aliens be more enlightened than us and that they treat our rationally unjustifiable special pleading as a result of our feeble intellects. What do you think?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

What do you mean? Atom bombs, Dresden, landmines that spring up in the air so as to blow your face, rather than foot, off. Humans get treatment few animals are ever exposed to. And are given that treatment for reasons far more despicable than the inhumane treatment animals are subjected to due to the requirment for mechanised/mass/cheap food provision.

Wotcha Iano Fair point. But I would make a couple of points. A) Do we inflict such atrocities largely by dehumanising those humans who suffer from such things? B) If you had to choose to actively do these things to a room full of humans or a room full of cows which would you consider more morally acceptable? How many would disagree with you? C) Whilst we may have an abominible record of human Vs human atrocities do most of us consider equal atrocities towards animals (including speciocide) as even remotely comparable or in many cases even worthy of comment?In short I don't dispute our ability to dehumanise each other. But I ask whether many would justify bio experiments on humans, the farming of humans for meat and milk or any other such activities that we regularly impose on animals? And if not on what rational basis do we distinguish animals from humans that would stand up to my intellectually superior alien morality question.

I just watched a movie the other day on HBO called Temple Grandin. It was about an autistic woman (Temple Grandin, hence the title) who was extremely in tune with cattle. She is responsible for revolutionizing the way in which they are led to slaughter, so it is done in a more humane way and so that they calmly march to their death. It really is a great flick. I highly recommend it.

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"On a personal note I think he's the greatest wrestler ever. He's better than Lou Thesz, Gorgeous George -- you name it."-The Hulkster on Nature Boy Ric Flair

Sounds lovely.How would we feel about an advanced alien that led us passively to our deaths by being autistically in tune with us as an intellectually inferior species?

lol.Well, cattle are going to be eaten. That's what they are here for, what they are bred for, yes? The whole purpose of her research was for them to be as comfortable as possible, partially to minimize loss before the slaughter due to cow-hysteria. The other part was because she cared.I don't think you can justifiably compare us to cattle, unless it turns out we ARE alien seed and we are their "experiment"

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"On a personal note I think he's the greatest wrestler ever. He's better than Lou Thesz, Gorgeous George -- you name it."-The Hulkster on Nature Boy Ric Flair

Hi, Straggler. Here is a similar idea in a Calvin and Hobbes strip.{AbE: Oops! I linked directly to an image, instead of a web page. I've fixed it, but you have to scroll down a bit: it's the fourth strip on the page}Edited by Bluejay, : Fix link problem.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hey, Bluejay.Your link is "forbidden". Any help?

Can you tell me how you would go about arguing that these intellectually superior aliens should not treat us as we treat cattle?My own position on this is that as a human I a perfectly happy to special plead humanity as a reason to distinguish us from cattle or indeed any other animal. But I don't think you could make a rational moral argument to aliens on that basis.

The problem here is that you seem to be conflating intellectual superiority and sentience. Those are two different things. Cattle are not sentient, and I am confident that we would be able to detect sentience in cattle if they had it. I am also confident that an alien species would be able to detect sentience in us if we ever made contact despite any differences in intellectual or technological capacity.

If sentience rather than humanity is your criteria then I assume you think performing experiments on brain damaged humans incapable of sentience is OK? Are they more sentient than the chimps on whuich we do experiment?As much as we convince ourselves that it is sentience or whatever that we are basing our criteria upon I think at the end of the day we just think humans are more worthy of moral consideration. Like I said I don't have a problem with this. I just don't think a purely rational criteria based case can be made for it.

Of course they are. You have just demonstrated that you lack such an ability.

This might be a lame response but here goes:Intellectually I totally agree that some of the ways we keep and kill animals for food is awful.However, I just don't care that much about animals I don't know very well. They just don't seem to register on my empathy radar.As for aliens, well maybe they will be advanced enough to see that we need time to advance.

Hey Taq. Really? I dunno...Humans: "Mabel the cow over there, according to science, has absolutely no capacity for something even as mundane as subjective reasoning. Let's eat her."Phuffozertians from planet X: "Taq the human over there, according to science, has absolutely no capacity for something even as mundane as psychokinetic levitation. Let's eat him."Depends on your frame of reference, I'd say.Have a good one.

I would assume you are talking about experiments that we currently perform with mice but not humans because of ethical guidelines. Let's not forget that humans are already experimented on.And my answer is yes, ethically it is ok. If we travel far enough down the slippery slope we already are doing this. Many of the human primary cell lines used in research are derived from aborted fetuses. However, this would require consent from the guardian of the subject. Also, you would need to show that such research couldn't also be done effectively in other mammal models. This same requirement is used for primate research. I agree. We are, at the end of the day, emotional creatures. We can't avoid it or completely repress it. We will always be biased towards our own species. We are even biased towards our own communities to the detriment of other human beings.