This feels like an odd example to me. Even when using an empathy/relationship based approach, someone who can't eat a vegan diet safely is not likely to be convinced. Its an interesting discussion...
This standard way of seeing ethical argumentation, like the arguments against eating animal products, reveal such argumentation as external constraints on behavior. The ethical requirement works from the outside-in. Even if the arguments attend to the context in which a person may find herself, for example, that she may have nutritional needs that make a vegan diet potentially harmful to her health, the demand does not arise from the agent herself. This distance may be an implicit source of resistance to arguments against consuming factory farmed animals.
This feels like an odd example to me. Even when using an empathy/relationship based approach, someone who can't eat a vegan diet safely is not likely to be convinced.
Its an interesting discussion overall, though. I took an applied ethics class, and when we covered eating meat I came to the conclusion that it isn't ethical if you have alternatives. But I didn't stop eating meat. In the years since, I've discovered some reasons why my experiences trying to be a vegetarian put me off (it took too much energy and made me feel worse), but at the time it was simply because the knowledge that it was likely unethical wasn't motivating enough.
Unrelated tangent: It always boggles my mind when Peter Singer is brought up during discussions about animal welfare, considering the arguments he's made in favor of infanticide for disabled babies and toddlers. His laser focus on suffering and his ability to put himself in the shoes of a factory farmed animal but not a disabled person leads to some pretty dark conclusions about what human lives he thinks aren't worth living.
Wow that was... Okay. I was going to try to respond to your initial post with this article by a disabled lawyer and activist and discuss Peter Singer's actual opinions and where he is coming from,...
Wow that was... Okay. I was going to try to respond to your initial post with this article by a disabled lawyer and activist and discuss Peter Singer's actual opinions and where he is coming from, but based on your replies to mtset, it doesn't seem worth my energy.
It's pretty funny, though. Basically every time I come back to Tildes, I inevitably run into blatant ableism, often eugenics. I suppose I'm partly to blame, since I intentionally connect many of the topics to disability. It's a lens people often ignore when looking at... well, anything. Sometimes any discomfort I might feel is worth it to help folks consider a different perspective. This time it definitely wasn't.
The solution is social support, not killing disabled people. What the fuck? What's the point of a society if it can't support its most vulnerable members?
going deep into debt propping up a vegetable is just unconscionable from my perspective.
The solution is social support, not killing disabled people. What the fuck? What's the point of a society if it can't support its most vulnerable members?
Even if it is true that some lives are not worth living, any stipulation regarding the continuation of their lives made by anyone other than the individuals themselves is immoral and necessarily...
Even if it is true that some lives are not worth living, any stipulation regarding the continuation of their lives made by anyone other than the individuals themselves is immoral and necessarily perverse. And you just provided an example:
e.g. 300+ lb, nonverbal, violent autistic adults
As someone who's most likely on the autism spectrum, I strongly advise you intense introspection and brutal self-criticism based on that alone. Your ethics are profoundly flawed, and I refuse to believe that this is the best you can offer.
Hey, I'm genuinely sorry that you had a bad experience growing up because of your situation at home. I wish that your family had gotten the support that it needed. But you've got to understand...
Exemplary
Sometimes they cause so much danger or liability to others (e.g. 300+ lb, nonverbal, violent autistic adults) that no amount of social support can provide a humane fix for the parties involved.
Hey, I'm genuinely sorry that you had a bad experience growing up because of your situation at home. I wish that your family had gotten the support that it needed. But you've got to understand that you are literally advocating for eugenics and there are very good reasons that society in general has rejected eugenics programs even beyond the initial Nazi comparison.
And, to be honest, the comparison to Nazi policies is NOT an exaggeration in this case. The Nazi's had a phrase - Life unworthy of life- to describe their policies toward euthanizing those that they felt were not worthy to live. It was one of the primary ideas that led to the holocaust.
According to Hoche, some living people who were brain damaged, intellectually disabled, autistic (though not recognized as such at the time), and psychiatrically ill were "mentally dead", "human ballast" and "empty shells of human beings". Hoche believed that killing such people was useful. Some people were simply considered disposable. Later the killing was extended to people considered 'racially impure' or 'racially inferior' according to Nazi thinking.
Okay, let me be sure I understand - my interpretation is that you think we should nonconsensually kill disabled people society deems undesirable, for some particular set of criteria. Is that wrong?
Okay, let me be sure I understand - my interpretation is that you think we should nonconsensually kill disabled people society deems undesirable, for some particular set of criteria. Is that wrong?
So we appoint someone (not the disabled person) to "consent" to murdering them on their behalf? Do you not see how that's not the same as actual consensual euthanasia?
So we appoint someone (not the disabled person) to "consent" to murdering them on their behalf? Do you not see how that's not the same as actual consensual euthanasia?
Indeed. As a disabled person, I don't like it much when abled dickheads propose eugenics. What, exactly, did I do that wasn't in good faith? Compare you to the Nazis? Purging "degenerates" they...
Indeed. As a disabled person, I don't like it much when abled dickheads propose eugenics. What, exactly, did I do that wasn't in good faith? Compare you to the Nazis? Purging "degenerates" they considered irrevocably dangerous to society is literally the foundation of Nazism!
Given the examples, this seems more like "the impotence of philosophical ethical arguments for bringing about cultural change." However, Peter Singer seems like an odd choice, given his influence...
Given the examples, this seems more like "the impotence of philosophical ethical arguments for bringing about cultural change."
However, Peter Singer seems like an odd choice, given his influence on the effective altruism movement? It hasn't gone mainstream by any means, but it seems like a pretty successful movement that anyone paying serious attention to charity as a whole has probably heard of?
It's also true that most people haven't given up meat from factory farming. However, this is also a pretty successful movement. It's mainstream enough that fancier restaurants will put ethical claims where their meat comes from on their menu, and California voters approved Prop 12 in 2018.
Trying a charitable interpretation, I might observe that the author does not mean to affirm that philosophers like Peter Singer had no impact whatsoever in the improvement of animal welfare, but...
Trying a charitable interpretation, I might observe that the author does not mean to affirm that philosophers like Peter Singer had no impact whatsoever in the improvement of animal welfare, but rather that their impact isn't proportional to the soundness of the arguments.
In other words, even more people should have been persuaded to change their behavior in face of those arguments and informations.
Furthermore, according to the author...
Both Regan and Singer are explicit in claiming that their arguments stand on reason alone, not requiring appeals to emotion
The thesis proposed in the following paragraphs seeks to undo this interdiction to emotion as a way to make ethical arguments more effective and compelling, an alternative which the author names "entangled empathy".
This threatens to turn into a discussion of whether Singer's arguments are overrated or underrated. Apparently this author thinks they're sound arguments, and therefore underrated? I don't have an...
This threatens to turn into a discussion of whether Singer's arguments are overrated or underrated. Apparently this author thinks they're sound arguments, and therefore underrated? I don't have an informed opinion on this (I haven't read much Singer) but it seems like this isn't in the realm of objective or even agreed-upon facts?
And more generally, this gets into whether philosophical arguments can really become generally accepted as true. It seems like some arguments become famous and are widely taught, but that's different from being generally accepted?
The ideas of ancient philosophers are still taught. Philosophy isn't known for having clear signs of progress, as a field. Or at least, the areas where there is progress aren't considered philosophy anymore.
I feel like this is an extremely important point to make, and the author does a horrible job making it. Not quite the same subject, but close, is Al Gore's 15-year-old book The Assault on Reason,...
I feel like this is an extremely important point to make, and the author does a horrible job making it.
Not quite the same subject, but close, is Al Gore's 15-year-old book The Assault on Reason, written back when Bush Jr was the worst thing the US had to worry about, and it seems even more relevant today.
This feels like an odd example to me. Even when using an empathy/relationship based approach, someone who can't eat a vegan diet safely is not likely to be convinced.
Its an interesting discussion overall, though. I took an applied ethics class, and when we covered eating meat I came to the conclusion that it isn't ethical if you have alternatives. But I didn't stop eating meat. In the years since, I've discovered some reasons why my experiences trying to be a vegetarian put me off (it took too much energy and made me feel worse), but at the time it was simply because the knowledge that it was likely unethical wasn't motivating enough.
Unrelated tangent: It always boggles my mind when Peter Singer is brought up during discussions about animal welfare, considering the arguments he's made in favor of infanticide for disabled babies and toddlers. His laser focus on suffering and his ability to put himself in the shoes of a factory farmed animal but not a disabled person leads to some pretty dark conclusions about what human lives he thinks aren't worth living.
Wow that was... Okay. I was going to try to respond to your initial post with this article by a disabled lawyer and activist and discuss Peter Singer's actual opinions and where he is coming from, but based on your replies to mtset, it doesn't seem worth my energy.
It's pretty funny, though. Basically every time I come back to Tildes, I inevitably run into blatant ableism, often eugenics. I suppose I'm partly to blame, since I intentionally connect many of the topics to disability. It's a lens people often ignore when looking at... well, anything. Sometimes any discomfort I might feel is worth it to help folks consider a different perspective. This time it definitely wasn't.
The solution is social support, not killing disabled people. What the fuck? What's the point of a society if it can't support its most vulnerable members?
Even if it is true that some lives are not worth living, any stipulation regarding the continuation of their lives made by anyone other than the individuals themselves is immoral and necessarily perverse. And you just provided an example:
As someone who's most likely on the autism spectrum, I strongly advise you intense introspection and brutal self-criticism based on that alone. Your ethics are profoundly flawed, and I refuse to believe that this is the best you can offer.
What's your proposed solution for the cases you're referring to here?
That is a literal Nazi position. You are advocating for ableist eugenics.
Hey, I'm genuinely sorry that you had a bad experience growing up because of your situation at home. I wish that your family had gotten the support that it needed. But you've got to understand that you are literally advocating for eugenics and there are very good reasons that society in general has rejected eugenics programs even beyond the initial Nazi comparison.
And, to be honest, the comparison to Nazi policies is NOT an exaggeration in this case. The Nazi's had a phrase - Life unworthy of life- to describe their policies toward euthanizing those that they felt were not worthy to live. It was one of the primary ideas that led to the holocaust.
Okay, let me be sure I understand - my interpretation is that you think we should nonconsensually kill disabled people society deems undesirable, for some particular set of criteria. Is that wrong?
So we appoint someone (not the disabled person) to "consent" to murdering them on their behalf? Do you not see how that's not the same as actual consensual euthanasia?
Indeed. As a disabled person, I don't like it much when abled dickheads propose eugenics. What, exactly, did I do that wasn't in good faith? Compare you to the Nazis? Purging "degenerates" they considered irrevocably dangerous to society is literally the foundation of Nazism!
Given the examples, this seems more like "the impotence of philosophical ethical arguments for bringing about cultural change."
However, Peter Singer seems like an odd choice, given his influence on the effective altruism movement? It hasn't gone mainstream by any means, but it seems like a pretty successful movement that anyone paying serious attention to charity as a whole has probably heard of?
It's also true that most people haven't given up meat from factory farming. However, this is also a pretty successful movement. It's mainstream enough that fancier restaurants will put ethical claims where their meat comes from on their menu, and California voters approved Prop 12 in 2018.
Trying a charitable interpretation, I might observe that the author does not mean to affirm that philosophers like Peter Singer had no impact whatsoever in the improvement of animal welfare, but rather that their impact isn't proportional to the soundness of the arguments.
In other words, even more people should have been persuaded to change their behavior in face of those arguments and informations.
Furthermore, according to the author...
The thesis proposed in the following paragraphs seeks to undo this interdiction to emotion as a way to make ethical arguments more effective and compelling, an alternative which the author names "entangled empathy".
This threatens to turn into a discussion of whether Singer's arguments are overrated or underrated. Apparently this author thinks they're sound arguments, and therefore underrated? I don't have an informed opinion on this (I haven't read much Singer) but it seems like this isn't in the realm of objective or even agreed-upon facts?
And more generally, this gets into whether philosophical arguments can really become generally accepted as true. It seems like some arguments become famous and are widely taught, but that's different from being generally accepted?
The ideas of ancient philosophers are still taught. Philosophy isn't known for having clear signs of progress, as a field. Or at least, the areas where there is progress aren't considered philosophy anymore.
I know very little about Peter Singer, I only wanted to present the author's argument in a more charitable light ;)
I feel like this is an extremely important point to make, and the author does a horrible job making it.
Not quite the same subject, but close, is Al Gore's 15-year-old book The Assault on Reason, written back when Bush Jr was the worst thing the US had to worry about, and it seems even more relevant today.
Archived.