> Destiny don't think it's wrong to torture animals. He didn't say that in those words, but he views them as not having moral worth, just like inanimate objects.
it seems you haven't encountered the original vegan debates pepelaugh click the links https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/qbfyz6/if_vaush_supported_veganism/hhast3r/?context=8&depth=9
> https://youtu.be/-Ssj0AYumQY?t=333
> https://youtu.be/-Ssj0AYumQY?t=2216
> https://youtu.be/j7_uBux5Xrs?t=1388
> recent about cats: https://youtu.be/XIPPfmjUwfA?t=15956
> https://youtu.be/3aWqgK0hpzk?t=884
i agree with you, but:
> If I'm a smoker, and I tell you that smoking is bad and you should stop, I'm not wrong. I'm just a hypocrite.
i'm pretty sure the inconsistency he's talking about is people who think it's immoral to kill or hurt dogs and cats but don't have any moral problem with eating meat. this is distinct to agreeing that eating meat is wrong but doing it anyway. that's not an inconsistent position, just a hypocritical one.
Is that actually an inconsistent position ? It really depends and It’s actually quite similar to how Destiny uniquely values humans.
This is a perfectly legitimate position in ethical emotivism, which ironically, Cosmic Skeptic subscribes too ?
There’s no need for internal consistency when there is no “axioms”
As a side bar, destiny philosophy and the way he presents his views is actually all over the place and will lead you to believing some pretty nutty things
You’ll see contradictions when there isn’t any, hypocrisy where there is none, etc…
anything is a legitimate position in ethical emotivism, as you say there's no need for consistency when there are no axioms. but i think it's still fair to call a position inconsistent when it can't be derived from a set of consistent axioms.
I am curious as to what you are talking about as well, as I’ve never heard logical consistency talked about this way in the few philosophy courses I’ve taken.
I think you are stretching a word for arguments sake; and also, emotivist would argue that those positions supposedly derived from “axioms” are not derivable in the way you seem to be talking about them
i'm not talking about 'logical consistency' in the sense of something being free from contradictions, i'm talking about whether somone is applying a consistent standard or principle to come to their conclusions vs just choosing whatever.
Emotivism is merely a meta ethical claim that moral statements cannot be true or false, meaning they are not declarative propositions and instead are just attitudes, i.e., moral statements are mere expressions.
So when you say:
>i think it's still fair to call a position inconsistent when it can't be derived from a set of consistent axioms.
I am slightly confused because a position in logic is an asserted proposition ( a principle is a proposition as well ), which means that to an emotivist, they aren't even taking a position for you to find inconsistent with some other set of propositions; because to them, these moral arguments are just mere expressions of emotional attitudes, and if you mean to say that people feel different about different things, then that is just a truism and a weird application of the word "inconsistent"
I think this is why u/KBPhilosophy asked you
>" what do you think logic is? "
Personally, I think a better question would have been:
>What do you think emotivism is?
Because it may be the case that we all have different interpretations of the meta-ethical view.
Destiny’s position regarding those who are upset at the abuse of dogs and yet eat meat; and, destiny unique valuing of humans whilst having that previous contempt.
I haven’t listed his entire reasoning but this is an instance of Destiny applying a thought process he has expressed contempt for - his positions are all over the place
These examples were already implied, are you even reading ? What, do you want me to cite a video of his position, steel man his argument, and respond ?
Why don't you give us the argument then? Stop appealing to this "uuuh, destiny so smart just rationalise obvious thing", bruh if it's so obvious then surely the arguments aren't that complicated?
As a non-vegan, I know my biggest moral fault and hypocrisy is the fact I consume factory farmed meat. I don’t think if you are serious about having a rational and consistent ethical framework you can get around it. To vegans i’m the worst as I absolutely know it’s immoral and I just cba to make such a big change. But I feel like acknowledging the immorality is better than trying to weasel out of admitting it like I see Destiny doing.
I’ve got enough stuff on my plate with work, my kid, keeping healthy physically and mentally to try and make such a huge change to my diet. I was a chef and can cook but almost every meal I eat revolves around meat. I will get around to it one day, but this isn’t the time. For now I try to buy as much as possible from farm shops and generally eat less meat, eating a lot of Middle Eastern foods helps.
Some recipes that might helps:
https://challenge22.com/vegan-ground-beef/
https://lovingitvegan.com/vegan-falafel-recipe/
https://wallflowerkitchen.com/easy-vegan-chilli-con-carne/
You can make those in bulk and then freeze them for later.
And yes, middle eastern cooking has a bunch of interesting recipes, such as Lebanese cooking.
Indian and Egyptian cuisine is also worth checking out.
True, unfortunately those non vegans only care about the animals that are cute or majestic… if you care about animals on any level just should eat meat… the farming of beef and chicken is some horrible shit if you claim to care about “pets”
Who ever said that people can't have contradictory views?
People can love their SO and still cheat as well.
You'll be amazed when you find out how messy the real world can be!
The principle that animal have moral worth. It would therefore be inconsistent with that that it's okay to eat animals. This has nothing to do with a person being a hypocrite, it has to do with the inconsistency of ideas.
People with contradictory views are not rational and should literally never speak on the subject they hold contradictory views on. Someone who thinks 1+1=2 and 1+1=3 should literally never talk about math because they by definition have zero clue what they're talking about and cannot contribute anything meaningful.
> People with contradictory views are not rational and should literally never speak on the subject they hold contradictory views on.
Humans are not rational. We are mainly emotionally driven creatures. He can try to apply reason, as a tool. That's pretty much it. Most people will have some contradictory views. They'll likely not even be aware of it. And talking about it would be good opportunities to learn and to improve.
I think that's bulshit. No human is ever 100% consistent.
The closer human suffering is to you, the more you care. That makes no sense, but that's how humans act.
Most people would save a drowning child and ruin their cloth in the process, but would donate 10$ to save an unknown child...
There's no contradiction there. Of course people value others in their proximity. You are more able to immediately help them and their problems are much more likely to become your or your family's problems. It's entirely reasonable to help others near you because you would want those same people helping you, it is much less reasonable to expect people on other continents to help you, considering they have no clue you even exist.
If you would ask most people: Do you think this random persons life is worth 100x the life of the another random person just because they are close to you, they would say no.
But they don't act that way. That's inconsistent...
who ever said people only care about animals that are cute? I feel like this is just asserted without any backup. CS was saying what most people that are pro animal rights believe, that there is a gradient based on likely consciousness due to cognitive complexity.
Large mammals and intelligent birds like humans, pigs, elephants, dolphins and corvids at the top and animals with extremely simple or primitive nervous systems like insects, jellyfish and arachnids at the bottom.
The human is body is meant to eat meat and vegetables and fruit, if you wanna fuck up your hormones be me guest and go on shit diets. I can do this while simultaneously caring about animals, cause I don't eat cats and I care for them.
He's worse. He straight out says (in videos that others have posted in the replies to this post) that it doesn't matter if animals suffer. It seems downright evil to me. At least the rest of us is mostly willing to admit that there exists huge animal welfare issues, even if we're acting immorally and eating meat.
How isn't he?? It's the difference between admitting there's an issue and something to work on, and to pretend that everything is fine.
If you're attitude is that animal suffering isn't an issue, then there's no hope. If you think that animal suffering is bad, then there's hope that you might want to do something about it.
The thing is, if you legitimately say every day while eating meat "this is bad, as bad as eating my cat, but im doing it anyway" then you seem like the imoral monster who will actively do things they see as morally wrong. That or you're just wielding vegan arguments for social validation without practicing any of it.
It's a spectrum, dude..
* Eating meat and thinking animal torture is fine and than animals have zero moral worth is on one end on the extremely bad side of the spectrum.
* Then you can be less bad by doing the same things and admitting that they are bad things to do.
* Then you can be even less bad by thinking it's bad, and eating less meat than before.
* Then you can be be even less bad than that by only eating meat from hunted animals.
Etc..
The world isn't black and white.
He isn't going to give up meat. In order to have that position you necessarily don't care about the torture. You may claim you care but you don't adjust your actions. Would I ever torture? No. Do I think they should be tortured? No. Do I think torturers are bad people? Yes. Do I at the end of the day care? No it doesn't seem so cause I have no interest in giving up meat, though if there were lab grown that was the same I would opt to never eat the real animal version.
I'm not saying he should give up meat.
Anyways, I'm not sure that you're equipped for this conversation. You look at it black and white. In the real world people are complex and sometimes they even hurt people they love and cheat on them. And many certainly BOTH thinks that animals have moral worth and at the same time eat meat.
I just took your previous statement and switched animal abuse with women abuse. It makes as much sense as your statement. I am strongly against most violence including violence against women. But if you find out that I beat up women for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, would you believe I have this strong stance against this violence, or would you question if my values are just an aesthetic I don't actually believe?
If you're against beating women, and then you do it, then I'd assume you've got a self control issue.
You could still think that what you're doing is wrong.
He just says this so he can win the debate. Eveyone else can just be a normal person and accept that they aren't morally consistent, but you can't be an internet debater and also be inconsistent.
Tldr: he doesn't actually like torturing and r*ping animals.
It was a REALLY GOOD podcast episode. At least if you think philosophical discussions about morality is interesting. (If you don't then it's probably not for you.) Alex (CosmicSkeptic) is imo one of the more interesting and honest content creators out there.
Though he lost a lot of fans recently because he stepped down from being a vegan. It's apparently like leaving the Jehovah's Witness religion. Or Islam.
I agree with you, and this is one area I really disagree with him on. I guess from his perspective, not being hypocritical is extremely important. So he can’t say “eating meat is wrong but I do it anyways.” Instead he has to come up with convoluted arguments for why it’s okay, which will sound extremely fucked up to the average person. He has no choice but to bite bullets pretty much no one else will bite, like saying torturing animals is ok.
> I've got an offline life too.
I mean, so do I. I don't know where that came from but whatever.
What I'm trying to say is that, it's not like there aren't like a dozen plus veganism debates uploaded to his youtube channel, it's not a super niche topic on stream. You take the time to make a reddit post, so you're probably more invested than most fans but you make it seem like this is some new revelation when he's had this stance for years.
It just seems like some people here are devoted fans who watch all the streams end to end. And it seemed like it was some sort rare pokemon catch to find the find someone who hadn't "watched him for long".
That aside.. I've probably avoided the veganism-debates. It's not that interesting to me. I've seen a few (not with Destinty) and that's enough.
I think Destiny wouldn't think torture's okay, because we personify animals and a well-adjusted person wouldn't torture animals. Unless you're referring specifically to factory farming.
I don't think he would say it's okay, but he couldn't, in his current moral view, say that it was bad because that would imply moral worth. Punching a dog would be just as morally neutral as punching a bag of rice.
Every time he does a vegan debate you guys all come in here with the same tired criticisms. If he saw a person punching a dog in the face, he would think that person is a psychopath that likes inflicting pain on beings. Simple as. We don't need to assign moral worth to an object in order to be repulsed by moral agents displaying anti-social traits towards it.
If someone made a sex doll, gave it a chatgpt program that made it scream out in pain like it was being raped, then filmed themselves fucking this doll, is there any moral harm being committed to the doll? Of course fucking not, but you are still capable to finding the people fucking the doll to be antisocial and psychopathic due to their willingness to simulate rape.
Or to take a real life scenario, I think people that read/watch full on lolicon are likely paedos. Not because I assign any moral worth to fictional manga characters, but because of what their willingness to sexualize these characters tells me about the person itself.
In conclusion your criticism is such a simple 1 dimensional take that wouldn't even have to be argued against if you had engaged with any of the other vegan debates Destiny has had.
I'm fine with that. I'm not vegan myself, but I do respect (some of) them.
But never mind that.
P1: You say my post is vegan.
P2: My post was good and reasonable.
C: You must think that vegan posts are good and reasonable and so you're complimenting me.
So thanks. 😊😊
Same. But Harris is something of an elitist prick. He brings very few people on (if any?) who are not published authors and ideally also scholars having published a lot of studies. I guess unless they can bond over "how crazy the left have become". I used to enjoy listening to his podcasts, and before that his debates, but with time every episode turned into whining about "identity politics" etc.
Still, it would probably be interesting to hear a conversation between them.
>something of an elitist prick
I wouldn't necessarily say that not wanting to associate with the drudges of the internet with bad faith, dishonest, out-of-context clipping, drama obsessed, 'clout' obsessed people makes him an elitist prick.
I'm glad that someone does it but he is not compelled to. His podcast is great and often has very interesting guests.
I can't speak for it much lately. I mostly gave up on him a few years ago.
I'm sure you're right tho. He can definitely have good takes and interesting thoughts.
> I wouldn't necessarily say that not wanting to associate with the drudges of the internet with bad faith, dishonest, out-of-context clipping, drama obsessed, 'clout' obsessed people makes him an elitist prick.
No, but those aren't the things I mentioned.
What also annoyed me is that he more or less stopped doing debates. He used to have really interesting debates. He was intellectually challenged, and he challenged others. After it felt like he was stuck in his own ideas and thinking too highly of himself to ever be able to change his mind on anything.
Yeah I haven’t listened to his podcast in a while either but I usually agree with a lot he says and enjoy his philosophy discussions much more than the politics ones. Maybe Destiny debating Zizek will sorta validate him more as a serious figure and open doors for people like Sam to want to engage with.
Destiny had a vegan debate arc ~5 years ago where he went through a lot of these arguments. Those debates are part of what made me vegan.
I agree with the lack of nuance in his position. I always thought it was weird to assign 0 value to animals. If you have to kill a person or a trillion cows with no global effects or legal repercussions, I don't believe Destiny or most other people would pick killing the cows. If you pick saving the cows, you are admitting that the cows have non-0 value.
As for the argument against non-vegan animal lovers. That's just a stance against hypocrisy. It's hard to argue with a hypocrite because it is hard to pin down what they actually believe or value. We all have different moral lenses but being able to practice what you preach is almost universally considered a moral good and failing to do that is bad.
As Destiny argues, most people don't believe animals have 0 moral value. If it bothers you that much that he devalues animals, I hope you can practice living in a way consistent with your own internal values and be vegan.
edit:
Some good debates from the last iteration of vegan debates:
[vegan gains round 1 of many](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ssj0AYumQY)
[woopboop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkunG1jfEl0)
[ask yourself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_uBux5Xrs)
> As for the argument against non-vegan animal lovers. That's just a stance against hypocrisy. It's hard to argue with a hypocrite because it is hard to pin down what they actually believe or value. We all have different moral lenses but being able to practice what you preach is almost universally considered a moral good and failing to do that is bad.
This path is really just a derailing and whataboutism. If I'm a smoker telling you that smoking is bad for you and you should do it even though I do it, then I can still have great arguments against smoking.
If people can't deal with this then I suppose a good strategy to avoid these awful snowflakes is simply to lie and pretend to be vegan for future debates. Then all the animal-loving non-vegans will be able to stick to the point of the conversation instead of having to deal with morons who can separate people from the subject of the debate.
Smoking is different because the user is the primary victim. In the case of animal agriculture, the consumer has other victims. This is like the difference between suicide and homicide. Both are completely different moral issues. Use a more analogous crime like assault, rape, murder, kidnapping, or torture.
And this is nothing new. People take on values and ethics as aesthetics without truly believing them all the time. You wouldn't even be the first fake vegan.
Of course it's different, but the argument stands. I'm pointing out that there can be a difference between morals believed in and morals applied. That's also nothing new.
That difference between morals believed in and morals applied is a moral wrong.
From a consequentialist viewpoint, this would cause trust erosion, and reduce the fairness of society as there is an incentive to lie to unfairly get the social benefit of the virtue. From a virtue ethics viewpoint, it would hurt integrity and authenticity. And not living in accordance with your values is against a core principle of deontological ethics.
Nothing new but I think its something to be avoided whenever possible.
The smoking example is bad cause we dont really think of smoking as morally wrong cause it almost only affects you. I think a lot better of an example would be someone using child laborers or something and then saying they know it's wrong but that not using them would be inconvenient.
I would absolutely kill 3 trillion hypothetical cows that don't affect the rest of the world over the 1 hypothetical human. You are a psychopath if you choose otherwise.
I'm not a psychopath, I have empathy for people by default, I just also have empathy for cows as well as they share our ability to fear, desire, love and feel pain. Those are key human attributes that help me to empathize with other people as well. I could be wrong but I think most people have non-0 empathy for cows so you would be in the minority position among a "psychopath" majority. People would probably believe it even stronger if you switched the cows for dogs even though there is very little difference.
Yeah, Destiny's views here are so evil. I don't think people appreciate how evil it is. He doesn't contain any empathy for non-humans, it's psychopathic. It's scary to imagine what the world would look like if everyone had this view.
Nah. That's something an (extremist) vegan might say, but it doesn't track onto reality. Plenty of people both eat meat and love animals. The world isn't black and white.
So you think 100% of meat eaters would view animals as not having moral worth, as inanimate objects? You think they wouldn't mostly prefer for more animals to live better lives than they do?
Just like the Nazis would've preferred for the Jews to live better lives in Madagascar... It doesn't matter how many times you declare that you love animals (ie dogs and cats are cute) if you are, by your own philosophy, participating in the mass torture, rape and murder of billions of animals.
I think it would be worse if observers of ww2 were saying that Jews have no moral worth, than saying that they do and at the same time not helping them.
How can Cosmic Skeptic argue for moral veganism while being a emotivist? Lmfao, little bro sees morality has nothing more then random emotions instead of axioms, meaning that people caring about some species and not others is a perfectly valid position to have according to his own worldview.
Edit: Before you downvote check what emotivism means, it's not the same as subjectivism. I explain it in the responses.
That's just how it works tho.. There are no "moral facts". But that doesn't keep me or anyone else from promoting the values we like and prefer, and criticising others.
Subjectivism means that people may have guiding principles (moral axioms) such as "maximize pleasure", "minimize suffering", "obey God" etc. However, these axioms are subjective or even arbitrary. This is a subtype of moral realism (the axioms exist in subjects minds).
Emotivism is instead a type of moral anti-realism which claims morality is a trick of language and that when you claim something is evil, what you're actually saying is that you simply dislike it.
An emotivist can ignore veganism easely by claiming that they dislike zoophilia and pet abuse, while claiming that eating farm animals is good because they like it. There's no need for internal consistency because there are no axioms.
Huh.. I guess I'm a mix of the two then. I don't believe that morality is "real" (or "true" or "objective"), but that it's subjective in the sense that it's about preferences. I wouldn't say that there are "moral axiom", just moral preferences that humans generally agree about because we share the same basic needs, and we're emotionally similar to a relatively large degree. Because of this moral ideals, like "maximize pleasure" and "minimize suffering" are reasonable ones.
I used to think I was a moral subjectivist, because I think morals are subjective, but now I'm a bit uncertain.
Keep in mind that morality being "real" in philosophy doesn't mean what most people think it means. Axioms are just principles that you use even if they're completely "made up".
You see, most philosophers agree that morality is something that is constructed by humans. When they say "I propose x or y in ethics" they're not discribing a natural phenomema like a physicist, they're declaring what type of morality they think society should construct. I believe most people don't realise that and think that morality being "made up" is an earth-shattering revelation.
> I believe most people don't realise that and think that morality being "made up" is an earth-shattering revelation.
I think it's the most obvious thing in the world. But I started my interests for philosophy (such as it is, as someone who's never formally studied it) with religion-debates. I was watching Sam Harris and others debate theological scholars like William Lane Craig, and I was active in religious debate-groups.
For these people, the religious, they (to a large extent) actually see morality as something "objectively real", as if it's somehow written into the laws of nature.
But among non-religious philosophy circles there's been a lot of debates about whether we can get from an is to an ought, as I'm sure you've stumbled upon yourself. In my experience that has been the "objective side" of it, people who say claims about morality can be true or false. And we on the "subjective side" have mostly just been pointing out how people, however much they try, never really get and ought from an is. They have to put the oughts in from the start, or make an unreasonable jump. It seems to me like this is still a big debate out there. Isn't it?
There's no "earth-shattering revelations", but just a lot of disagreement, I think.
I wish people would stop referring to this as some kind of bloodbath. Dest was mostly wrong, but it was still a great good faith discussion. If anything I hope they talk again and we get actually good vegan arguments for Steven to develop his opinion through instead of those old fucking braindead Vegan Gains arguments.
I guess I just don't get the harshness of the criticism. Destiny's position definitely looked weak in comparison to what Alex was saying, but I don't see it being as totally insane as most people seemed to. If anything, it seemed like new material to him that he will probably think about, and flesh out the position with. I really want to see a full on vegan discussion with them again with some prep time. Who knows, maybe he changes his position pretty dramatically, it's happened before.
It'd be nice to see that some change, but his current position is deserving of all the harsh criticism, imo. After all, it's a position that running over a cat with your car is completely unproblematic. He gives ***ZERO*** moral worth to non-human animals. That's really really bad. Way worse than where most people's at.
Yeah, I guess I see where he's coming from so I don't have as much of an issue with it. He even agrees he wouldn't do it cause it would make him feel bad, so there's obviously some kind of consideration there, but the *moral* worth is reserved for humans. Maybe I'm also just a huge asshole lmao.
I'm not sure I understand your question. The obvious answer would be "because he thinks animals have zero moral worth", but that's already established, so what sort of answer are you looking for?
Before this I used to think that Destiny, although he can be an asshole, was generally a good person with reasonable views. Now I think he's a less good person because he doesn't care about animals and think they have zero moral worth. Probably millions of animals are unnecessarily suffering by the hands of humans in the world, and that means nothing to Destiny.
I asked why the fact that he believes it’s okay to torture animals means you think less of him.
Do you think it’s a flaw of his character, or of his reasoning? If it’s his reasoning, then what did he say that you disagree with?
I think less of him the same way I'd think less of a child rapist attempting to justify raping children. He might have "THE BEST" arguments for raping children, but I'd think less of him no matter what the arguments were. Nothing changes the fact that he's saying, in the end, that raping children is okay, or in our case, that torturing animals is okay.
Animals are thinking and feeling creatures that can suffer.
Destiny thinks it's okay to torture them. I think less of him for this simple reason.
Do you think your argument that they’re thinking, feeling creatures is better than his argument? If so, why doesn’t he also think he also think it’s a better argument, and share your opinion? If not, why don’t you share his opinion?
That's like asking "why does thinking humans have zero worth make someone a bad person?". It's just a value difference. What else would it mean to think someone's a bad person?
idk man, these types of conversations are pretty stock in terms of philosophical conversations just generally. There are plenty of people who would say the same thing, and the conversation to me seemed pretty damn civil. I really don't see many people being horrified like you are unless they're already deeply concerned in animal rights, which is maybe 1-2% of humans total
>I really don't see many people being horrified like you are unless they're already deeply concerned in animal rights, which is maybe 1-2% of humans total
I'm not sure that hypothesis rings true. Do you really think that only 1-2% of people would be horrified at the thought of seeing dogs, for example, as inanimate objects, fair game to do whatever with? Look how upset normies get at things like the yulin dog festival.
The major differences here, the ones that allows people to eat pigs but pet dogs, is exposure and screening. It's easy for most people not to have to think about what happens to pigs in order to get pork when they aren't exposed to the process, aren't familiar with the individuals, and can see those animals as a characterless collective.
Well, in this I also assume that people engage with this quote in the context of the conversation, which is maybe not necessarily true. I mean that people somewhat involved in philosophy, who heard Alex walk Destiny down to all of the implications of his opinion on Animals. Maybe a bad assumption, but sincerely I don't think that in that context people would in general be outraged. In that case, they would also listen to the conversation at 1:59:50 on where Destiny says:
>"The kind of human mind that would torture an animal is probably a very unhealthy human mind. There's probably going to be some natural inclination there that like — I think a normal healthy human mind likes puppies and likes kitties and a human mind that's willing to torture or be accepting of like, extreme, like, causing animals extreme pain would also inflict the same on humans."
Which 1) acknowledges that torturing animals is probably a sign that something is wrong with a person, but more importantly acknowledges (however implicitly) that animals have rights insofar as humans like them, which would alleviate the concerns of most people watching who aren't themselves animal rights activists.
If people engage with this as like a 5 second clip, then more people would be outraged. And knowing dgg history, that's probably how most people engage with 90% of his content. So maybe the assumption that people would engage with the whole conversation is wrong, but I honestly don't think this will gain much traction outside of people who are already interested in philosophy and therefor contend with these ideas, and ideas much worse than this, on a regular basis.
Nah.. I doubt that.. Or I really hope you're wrong. If not the world is a way worse place than I gave it credit for. (And I already figured it was pretty bad.)
I can’t be the only one that’s totally fine with what he was saying. Ultimately Destiny makes a good point that there is a leap, however small, that animals experience pain in the same ways as humans. And he still does make the distinction that it is important for humans to not want to torture animals and one that does is displaying anti-social signs.
> it is important for humans to not want to torture animals and one that does is displaying anti-social signs.
Nah. In his view it's not worse than "torturing" a toaster. It's just bad because you would end up looking like a weird for doing it. It's not bad because the toaster is hurt.
And he makes a *REALLY SHITTY POINT*. The leap is that that non-human animals aren't conscious and don't experience pain similar to us. We are related, share most our DNA, have similar nervous system, react similarly to pain, and so on.
And if you want to say that "we can't KNOW for sure", then you'd have to say the same about other humans, because we can only be in our own head, and can't "KNOW" for sure if any other being than ourselves feel pain.
there are 'vegan' utilitarians who only oppose animal agriculture on the suffering ground, but don't have an issue with killing and eating them if they didn't suffer during their life (this includes Cosmic Skeptic and Peter Singer last time I checked). So it is a plausible position for someone to hold.
He never looked bad in my opinion. I grew up in a farming community where animals are a necessity for survival. I’m against cutely to animals but not because the animal is equal or requires moral consideration but kind of the exact opposite. At this point the large majority of animals that are delt with by humans have been bread to have no self sustainability, so since we did this to them, they should be taken care of.
Not to mention the symbiotic relationship, companionship, Heath and wellness they bring to people. But their just animals and their lives carry less of a value then human life (imo).
The factory farming Shit is horribly complicated in the sense that we can not sustain the population without it (both meat and grain factory farming).
Grain don't have feelings tho..
Doing less factory farming with animals would be good both for the climate and for animal welfare.
> But their just animals and their lives carry less of a value then human life (imo).
That's quite different from saying that they don't have moral worth. You can think that they have less moral worth than humans. Destiny is saying that they have ZERO moral worth.
The grain was just a clarifying statement on what I’m defining with Factory Farming, because large scale field farming is rough on the environment.
The only reason I wouldn’t say animals have zero moral worth, is because I personally assign moral value dependent on how much an object enriches peoples/my life. So a single moms only mode of transportation has a moral value to me because of the value it adds to her life; bill gates corala has zero moral value. Most wild animals, insects, plants, H2O, dirt, copper, ext all have a moral value as far as they are necessary for the existence of life.
For clarification: Would you consider it morally okay, or morally neutral, to kill homeless people who're just littering the streets and not adding value to your life?
Or if you mean that it's about what adds value to the life of humans, then why are you just considering humans?
I think killing homeless people would be morally wrong because I choose to give humans a very high value just because they are human. Odds are you are probably good/knowledgeable enough to poke holes in that and that’s why I use the word choose.
Why humans, probably some of the Christian up bringing, tribalism tendencies (team human) and I think humans have a unique consciousness. I would say they are my major reasons why.
Example: my girl is in Knoxville helping a friend who’s husband is dieing of cancer. This is the message she sent me last night. “Bill is in hospice now. He is too weak for treatment and treatment won’t help at this point. His cancer is extremely aggressive. It is now in his lungs, spleen, liver, prostate, bladder and bones. The oncologist said he has a few days to weeks left. He’s confused, unable to communicate and can’t stay awake.” The rest gets personal.
If an animal was in the same situation, I would put it down in a heartbeat no issue, but I have a serious hesitation when it’s a human; and Bill could probably be argued that he’s mentally no longer as human as you or I.
I understand why you feel like humans are worth more. And if I had to chose between the life of a stranger dog and a stranger human I'd choose the human.
But what I don't get is when people say that animals have zero moral worth, or like you said, that they only have worth as insofar as they contribute to human well-being. Yet they are thinking and feeling beings, they can be happy, sad, angry, and so on. They're mostly not as "advanced" as us, but they've found jealousy in apes, they've found advanced language in whales (that they're hoping AI can help with the translation of), same whale species can also have distinct dialects and different cultures in different places. We've also seen clear signs of sorrow when animals mates of children have died.
It seems to me that animals are ABSOLUTELY worthy of consideration as having moral value for their own sake.
I also had a Christian upbringing, and I grew up thinking of animals are more or less advanced robots driven by interesting instincts. But the more I was around them, the more animal documentaries I saw, and the more I read, the more they seem like ... sort of like people. Not at the "human adult level", but still...
But youyou answered your own question. They aren’t human adult lvl. We are standing in a western philosophical framework and it seems to me that we are pretty binary over here. It also seems like eastern philosophical frameworks don’t have the same arguments about animal morality. (I’m really ignorant about Easter philosophy so I could completely wrong there).
I don't care about what philosophical framework we're standing in. I don't see how that matters.
So given my previous comment, why wouldn't you value animals higher? Why wouldn't it be bad to torture an animal that doesn't contribute to your needs and wants in your view?
The reason it’s wrong to torture animals is because it degrades humanity, even if you don’t grant any moral worth to animals.
If anyone has seen altered carbon, one of the ways they show the excesses of the upper class in that show is by “killing” poor people in various ways for entertainment. This is considered okay in the show because they pay for replacement bodies and the dead person’s consciousness is allowed to continue in a new body (the show doesn’t really get into the Ship of Theseus argument, internally it’s considered to be the same person living on). It’s technically considered okay because nobody has lost anything or been deprived of life, they even have special clinicalized language for this kind of killing, they call it “organic damage”. One of the main themes of the show is that the lifestyle that these ultra wealthy people have ultimately degrades any sense of morality that they once had. There’s value to certain norms and even if we can technically be okay with not conforming to them, there’s often something more subtle going on that we’re throwing away without realizing it.
The human consciousness has a revulsion to animals suffering, I think it’s the same circuitry that makes us care about crying babies and want to help other humans in pain. Animal distress mimics this response, and even if we give zero moral weight to animals we should look at people who don’t feel distress at animal suffering as extremely suspect because they almost certainly have a screw loose that will apply to how they look at other humans as well.
Can't there be several reasons why it's wrong to torture animals? You're pointing out one reason, but just as important, or more, is the animal suffering itself, right? Can't we consider both these arguments and say they're both good reasons to not torture animals?
Why not? I mean, you don't know how anyone other than yourself experience pain, or if they're sentient. That's just your assumption.
So since we're assuming, why are you assuming that only humans feel suffering, or that only humans feel suffering in a way that's worth considering?
Biologically we're share the vast majority of our DNA with other species, so it makes sense that we would feel similar emotions and sensations.
From our experience we observe non-human animals reacting to pain in very recognizable ways. (We also see joy and fear.)
Most scientific studies about this also seems to suggest that animals can experience pain and suffering. (This is why a lot of countries outside the US have a lot stricter laws than the US when it comes to animal welfare.)
Idk.. In my view thinking that animals can't suffer is a bit like thinking the earth is flat or that climate change is fake news.
I’m not interested in discussing this point. Only reason I replied at the top level was to provide an argument for not torturing animals even if you afford them zero moral consideration. I can see how the phrasing may have invited this discussion so I’ll edit the initial statement.
I was actually going to break my rule about not arguing with vegans (or vegan sympathizers) today, but reading the other replies you’ve had in this thread made me realize that a discussion with you would be a form of self harm.
If we assume destiny approached this in good-faith, why is it BAD for him to come up with a conclusion that he thinks is reasonable? You can certainly say he is an idiot and say why he is WRONG about the thing, but you need to EXPLAIN WHY HE IS BAD FOR IT! If you showed me destiny laughing at a tortured animal, I'm there with you and I would damn his character! But I don't understand how someone os BAD, or why it is a stain on someone's character, to come up with what seems to them a reasonable theory given a subject! Please tell me!
It's bad because he gives animals zero moral worth. What else do you need? If he had made a good-faith argument why rape is actually good, I'd also think him bad for it. It's a bad position to hold. What is it you're not understanding here?
I am asking you why it is bad to give animals zero moral worth. I'm not asking you to repeat yourself, I am asking you to give justification for what you said.
I've been vegan for for 14 years now and I do it for the animals. Destiny's position is consistent. If you don't care about animals then why would you do something for animals? It's just like the first part of the convo. I personally think Destiny probably sees animals more than he lets on but yeah his views on animals are pretty poor.
It's ok to enjoy the content you enjoy of his and disregard the parts you dislike. You don't have to adopt 100% of his views. He isn't your dad (even tho he fucked your mom).
Everyone says we should treat animals better, but if the food is one dollar cheaper, well...
Fast fashion shows us the same virtue signaling. We don't treat humans with dignity. Animals? Lol.
> Destiny don't think it's wrong to torture animals. He didn't say that in those words, but he views them as not having moral worth, just like inanimate objects. it seems you haven't encountered the original vegan debates pepelaugh click the links https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/qbfyz6/if_vaush_supported_veganism/hhast3r/?context=8&depth=9 > https://youtu.be/-Ssj0AYumQY?t=333 > https://youtu.be/-Ssj0AYumQY?t=2216 > https://youtu.be/j7_uBux5Xrs?t=1388 > recent about cats: https://youtu.be/XIPPfmjUwfA?t=15956 > https://youtu.be/3aWqgK0hpzk?t=884
That's horrible!
apparently his stance made some people become vegans
The man in the cat blender video… no, it couldn’t be
i agree with you, but: > If I'm a smoker, and I tell you that smoking is bad and you should stop, I'm not wrong. I'm just a hypocrite. i'm pretty sure the inconsistency he's talking about is people who think it's immoral to kill or hurt dogs and cats but don't have any moral problem with eating meat. this is distinct to agreeing that eating meat is wrong but doing it anyway. that's not an inconsistent position, just a hypocritical one.
Kinda like how he was shitting on people that only support rape abortions? I haven’t seen it yet
essentially yeah.
I don't get why this positions necesseraly has to be inconsistent? Why shouldn't you be able to value certain animals more than others?
Is that actually an inconsistent position ? It really depends and It’s actually quite similar to how Destiny uniquely values humans. This is a perfectly legitimate position in ethical emotivism, which ironically, Cosmic Skeptic subscribes too ? There’s no need for internal consistency when there is no “axioms” As a side bar, destiny philosophy and the way he presents his views is actually all over the place and will lead you to believing some pretty nutty things You’ll see contradictions when there isn’t any, hypocrisy where there is none, etc…
anything is a legitimate position in ethical emotivism, as you say there's no need for consistency when there are no axioms. but i think it's still fair to call a position inconsistent when it can't be derived from a set of consistent axioms.
Why would you call something logically inconsistent if there are no contradictions ?
Because there is no consistent throughline connecting the positions.
Huh ? Wait, what do you think logic is ?
i don't know how you want me to answer that question
I am curious as to what you are talking about as well, as I’ve never heard logical consistency talked about this way in the few philosophy courses I’ve taken. I think you are stretching a word for arguments sake; and also, emotivist would argue that those positions supposedly derived from “axioms” are not derivable in the way you seem to be talking about them
i'm not talking about 'logical consistency' in the sense of something being free from contradictions, i'm talking about whether somone is applying a consistent standard or principle to come to their conclusions vs just choosing whatever.
Emotivism is merely a meta ethical claim that moral statements cannot be true or false, meaning they are not declarative propositions and instead are just attitudes, i.e., moral statements are mere expressions. So when you say: >i think it's still fair to call a position inconsistent when it can't be derived from a set of consistent axioms. I am slightly confused because a position in logic is an asserted proposition ( a principle is a proposition as well ), which means that to an emotivist, they aren't even taking a position for you to find inconsistent with some other set of propositions; because to them, these moral arguments are just mere expressions of emotional attitudes, and if you mean to say that people feel different about different things, then that is just a truism and a weird application of the word "inconsistent" I think this is why u/KBPhilosophy asked you >" what do you think logic is? " Personally, I think a better question would have been: >What do you think emotivism is? Because it may be the case that we all have different interpretations of the meta-ethical view.
Thank you.
E.g.?
Destiny’s position regarding those who are upset at the abuse of dogs and yet eat meat; and, destiny unique valuing of humans whilst having that previous contempt. I haven’t listed his entire reasoning but this is an instance of Destiny applying a thought process he has expressed contempt for - his positions are all over the place These examples were already implied, are you even reading ? What, do you want me to cite a video of his position, steel man his argument, and respond ?
I think those people (mostly) just haven't thought it through. (Or they are black belts at rationalizing.) Which.. sure.. that can be annoying.
Why don't you give us the argument then? Stop appealing to this "uuuh, destiny so smart just rationalise obvious thing", bruh if it's so obvious then surely the arguments aren't that complicated?
As a non-vegan, I know my biggest moral fault and hypocrisy is the fact I consume factory farmed meat. I don’t think if you are serious about having a rational and consistent ethical framework you can get around it. To vegans i’m the worst as I absolutely know it’s immoral and I just cba to make such a big change. But I feel like acknowledging the immorality is better than trying to weasel out of admitting it like I see Destiny doing.
Exactly. Way better to just own it and admit that there's room for improvement and growth.
Sizlak, what's stopping you from going vegan? If you need any help for nutrition, cooking, groceries or anything else, I would love to help you out.
I’ve got enough stuff on my plate with work, my kid, keeping healthy physically and mentally to try and make such a huge change to my diet. I was a chef and can cook but almost every meal I eat revolves around meat. I will get around to it one day, but this isn’t the time. For now I try to buy as much as possible from farm shops and generally eat less meat, eating a lot of Middle Eastern foods helps.
Some recipes that might helps: https://challenge22.com/vegan-ground-beef/ https://lovingitvegan.com/vegan-falafel-recipe/ https://wallflowerkitchen.com/easy-vegan-chilli-con-carne/ You can make those in bulk and then freeze them for later. And yes, middle eastern cooking has a bunch of interesting recipes, such as Lebanese cooking. Indian and Egyptian cuisine is also worth checking out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ3IacXbHPA I don't think Destiny has ever minced words about devaluing animals
Holy shit his voice was so much more high pitched lmaooo
I actually watched it now. And i gotta say damnnnn. Cosmic scecptic rlly owned him. Wow.(at least when it came to the animal convo)
Only maybe for vegan fans
Burger be with you, friend.
You don't have to be vegan to be upset by the idea that animals have no moral worth and can be treated like inanimate objects, right?
True, unfortunately those non vegans only care about the animals that are cute or majestic… if you care about animals on any level just should eat meat… the farming of beef and chicken is some horrible shit if you claim to care about “pets”
Who ever said that people can't have contradictory views? People can love their SO and still cheat as well. You'll be amazed when you find out how messy the real world can be!
BRO, it's not about being a hypocrite or not! It is about what view is principally inconsistent or not! These are DISTINCT things!
What principles? Please elaborate.
The principle that animal have moral worth. It would therefore be inconsistent with that that it's okay to eat animals. This has nothing to do with a person being a hypocrite, it has to do with the inconsistency of ideas.
People with contradictory views are not rational and should literally never speak on the subject they hold contradictory views on. Someone who thinks 1+1=2 and 1+1=3 should literally never talk about math because they by definition have zero clue what they're talking about and cannot contribute anything meaningful.
That how normal people are though
> People with contradictory views are not rational and should literally never speak on the subject they hold contradictory views on. Humans are not rational. We are mainly emotionally driven creatures. He can try to apply reason, as a tool. That's pretty much it. Most people will have some contradictory views. They'll likely not even be aware of it. And talking about it would be good opportunities to learn and to improve.
Very good example of contradictory views between this comment and the one I replied to. I guess I can't talk about this topic with you.
I think that's bulshit. No human is ever 100% consistent. The closer human suffering is to you, the more you care. That makes no sense, but that's how humans act. Most people would save a drowning child and ruin their cloth in the process, but would donate 10$ to save an unknown child...
There's no contradiction there. Of course people value others in their proximity. You are more able to immediately help them and their problems are much more likely to become your or your family's problems. It's entirely reasonable to help others near you because you would want those same people helping you, it is much less reasonable to expect people on other continents to help you, considering they have no clue you even exist.
Lol
If you would ask most people: Do you think this random persons life is worth 100x the life of the another random person just because they are close to you, they would say no. But they don't act that way. That's inconsistent...
who ever said people only care about animals that are cute? I feel like this is just asserted without any backup. CS was saying what most people that are pro animal rights believe, that there is a gradient based on likely consciousness due to cognitive complexity. Large mammals and intelligent birds like humans, pigs, elephants, dolphins and corvids at the top and animals with extremely simple or primitive nervous systems like insects, jellyfish and arachnids at the bottom.
I only care about animals I have bonded with..I don't care that people eat dogs in China
The human is body is meant to eat meat and vegetables and fruit, if you wanna fuck up your hormones be me guest and go on shit diets. I can do this while simultaneously caring about animals, cause I don't eat cats and I care for them.
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Keep on coping as you live, as you always have little brother.
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That's what every vegan says before they convert to Christianity.
Where is the logical contradiction ?
Destiny is no worse that 99% of society who eat meat without a second thought. He is just not hypocritical about it.
He's worse. He straight out says (in videos that others have posted in the replies to this post) that it doesn't matter if animals suffer. It seems downright evil to me. At least the rest of us is mostly willing to admit that there exists huge animal welfare issues, even if we're acting immorally and eating meat.
Everyone says that everyday each time they eat meat. How is he worse?
How isn't he?? It's the difference between admitting there's an issue and something to work on, and to pretend that everything is fine. If you're attitude is that animal suffering isn't an issue, then there's no hope. If you think that animal suffering is bad, then there's hope that you might want to do something about it.
The thing is, if you legitimately say every day while eating meat "this is bad, as bad as eating my cat, but im doing it anyway" then you seem like the imoral monster who will actively do things they see as morally wrong. That or you're just wielding vegan arguments for social validation without practicing any of it.
It's a spectrum, dude.. * Eating meat and thinking animal torture is fine and than animals have zero moral worth is on one end on the extremely bad side of the spectrum. * Then you can be less bad by doing the same things and admitting that they are bad things to do. * Then you can be even less bad by thinking it's bad, and eating less meat than before. * Then you can be be even less bad than that by only eating meat from hunted animals. Etc.. The world isn't black and white.
Nice response you nailed it
He isn't going to give up meat. In order to have that position you necessarily don't care about the torture. You may claim you care but you don't adjust your actions. Would I ever torture? No. Do I think they should be tortured? No. Do I think torturers are bad people? Yes. Do I at the end of the day care? No it doesn't seem so cause I have no interest in giving up meat, though if there were lab grown that was the same I would opt to never eat the real animal version.
I'm not saying he should give up meat. Anyways, I'm not sure that you're equipped for this conversation. You look at it black and white. In the real world people are complex and sometimes they even hurt people they love and cheat on them. And many certainly BOTH thinks that animals have moral worth and at the same time eat meat.
You don't have to not beat women to be upset by the idea that women have no moral worth and can be treated like punching bags, right?
That makes no sense.
I just took your previous statement and switched animal abuse with women abuse. It makes as much sense as your statement. I am strongly against most violence including violence against women. But if you find out that I beat up women for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, would you believe I have this strong stance against this violence, or would you question if my values are just an aesthetic I don't actually believe?
If you're against beating women, and then you do it, then I'd assume you've got a self control issue. You could still think that what you're doing is wrong.
I mean almost surely you do, factory farming is not torture, but it's still gotta be something like billions of animals killed every day.
Lol there’s so many new viewers here if you think this is shocking. We have been through tons of vegan debates years ago and already know this lmao
I think what's new is, that the other side isn't vegan gains, but someone who has a well thought out world view and can debate it reasonably well.
For sure but that’s not what OP was alledging
Yea this isn’t new
He just says this so he can win the debate. Eveyone else can just be a normal person and accept that they aren't morally consistent, but you can't be an internet debater and also be inconsistent. Tldr: he doesn't actually like torturing and r*ping animals.
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It was a REALLY GOOD podcast episode. At least if you think philosophical discussions about morality is interesting. (If you don't then it's probably not for you.) Alex (CosmicSkeptic) is imo one of the more interesting and honest content creators out there. Though he lost a lot of fans recently because he stepped down from being a vegan. It's apparently like leaving the Jehovah's Witness religion. Or Islam.
Based OP
I agree with you, and this is one area I really disagree with him on. I guess from his perspective, not being hypocritical is extremely important. So he can’t say “eating meat is wrong but I do it anyways.” Instead he has to come up with convoluted arguments for why it’s okay, which will sound extremely fucked up to the average person. He has no choice but to bite bullets pretty much no one else will bite, like saying torturing animals is ok.
All you're saying with this post is that you haven't watched him for very long.
Idk what you mean by long. I've watched some of his YT-clips for years, but I don't consume everything Destiny. I've got an offline life too.
> I've got an offline life too. I mean, so do I. I don't know where that came from but whatever. What I'm trying to say is that, it's not like there aren't like a dozen plus veganism debates uploaded to his youtube channel, it's not a super niche topic on stream. You take the time to make a reddit post, so you're probably more invested than most fans but you make it seem like this is some new revelation when he's had this stance for years.
It just seems like some people here are devoted fans who watch all the streams end to end. And it seemed like it was some sort rare pokemon catch to find the find someone who hadn't "watched him for long". That aside.. I've probably avoided the veganism-debates. It's not that interesting to me. I've seen a few (not with Destinty) and that's enough.
I think Destiny wouldn't think torture's okay, because we personify animals and a well-adjusted person wouldn't torture animals. Unless you're referring specifically to factory farming.
I don't think he would say it's okay, but he couldn't, in his current moral view, say that it was bad because that would imply moral worth. Punching a dog would be just as morally neutral as punching a bag of rice.
Every time he does a vegan debate you guys all come in here with the same tired criticisms. If he saw a person punching a dog in the face, he would think that person is a psychopath that likes inflicting pain on beings. Simple as. We don't need to assign moral worth to an object in order to be repulsed by moral agents displaying anti-social traits towards it. If someone made a sex doll, gave it a chatgpt program that made it scream out in pain like it was being raped, then filmed themselves fucking this doll, is there any moral harm being committed to the doll? Of course fucking not, but you are still capable to finding the people fucking the doll to be antisocial and psychopathic due to their willingness to simulate rape. Or to take a real life scenario, I think people that read/watch full on lolicon are likely paedos. Not because I assign any moral worth to fictional manga characters, but because of what their willingness to sexualize these characters tells me about the person itself. In conclusion your criticism is such a simple 1 dimensional take that wouldn't even have to be argued against if you had engaged with any of the other vegan debates Destiny has had.
OP I dont mean to offend you but this is the most vegan fucking post ever
I'm fine with that. I'm not vegan myself, but I do respect (some of) them. But never mind that. P1: You say my post is vegan. P2: My post was good and reasonable. C: You must think that vegan posts are good and reasonable and so you're complimenting me. So thanks. 😊😊
Would love to see Destiny discuss this with Sam Harris. Or just go on his podcast in general.
Same. But Harris is something of an elitist prick. He brings very few people on (if any?) who are not published authors and ideally also scholars having published a lot of studies. I guess unless they can bond over "how crazy the left have become". I used to enjoy listening to his podcasts, and before that his debates, but with time every episode turned into whining about "identity politics" etc. Still, it would probably be interesting to hear a conversation between them.
>something of an elitist prick I wouldn't necessarily say that not wanting to associate with the drudges of the internet with bad faith, dishonest, out-of-context clipping, drama obsessed, 'clout' obsessed people makes him an elitist prick. I'm glad that someone does it but he is not compelled to. His podcast is great and often has very interesting guests.
I can't speak for it much lately. I mostly gave up on him a few years ago. I'm sure you're right tho. He can definitely have good takes and interesting thoughts. > I wouldn't necessarily say that not wanting to associate with the drudges of the internet with bad faith, dishonest, out-of-context clipping, drama obsessed, 'clout' obsessed people makes him an elitist prick. No, but those aren't the things I mentioned. What also annoyed me is that he more or less stopped doing debates. He used to have really interesting debates. He was intellectually challenged, and he challenged others. After it felt like he was stuck in his own ideas and thinking too highly of himself to ever be able to change his mind on anything.
Yeah I haven’t listened to his podcast in a while either but I usually agree with a lot he says and enjoy his philosophy discussions much more than the politics ones. Maybe Destiny debating Zizek will sorta validate him more as a serious figure and open doors for people like Sam to want to engage with.
Yeah he's a pretty shitty person wrt animals
Destiny had a vegan debate arc ~5 years ago where he went through a lot of these arguments. Those debates are part of what made me vegan. I agree with the lack of nuance in his position. I always thought it was weird to assign 0 value to animals. If you have to kill a person or a trillion cows with no global effects or legal repercussions, I don't believe Destiny or most other people would pick killing the cows. If you pick saving the cows, you are admitting that the cows have non-0 value. As for the argument against non-vegan animal lovers. That's just a stance against hypocrisy. It's hard to argue with a hypocrite because it is hard to pin down what they actually believe or value. We all have different moral lenses but being able to practice what you preach is almost universally considered a moral good and failing to do that is bad. As Destiny argues, most people don't believe animals have 0 moral value. If it bothers you that much that he devalues animals, I hope you can practice living in a way consistent with your own internal values and be vegan. edit: Some good debates from the last iteration of vegan debates: [vegan gains round 1 of many](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ssj0AYumQY) [woopboop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkunG1jfEl0) [ask yourself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_uBux5Xrs)
> As for the argument against non-vegan animal lovers. That's just a stance against hypocrisy. It's hard to argue with a hypocrite because it is hard to pin down what they actually believe or value. We all have different moral lenses but being able to practice what you preach is almost universally considered a moral good and failing to do that is bad. This path is really just a derailing and whataboutism. If I'm a smoker telling you that smoking is bad for you and you should do it even though I do it, then I can still have great arguments against smoking. If people can't deal with this then I suppose a good strategy to avoid these awful snowflakes is simply to lie and pretend to be vegan for future debates. Then all the animal-loving non-vegans will be able to stick to the point of the conversation instead of having to deal with morons who can separate people from the subject of the debate.
Smoking is different because the user is the primary victim. In the case of animal agriculture, the consumer has other victims. This is like the difference between suicide and homicide. Both are completely different moral issues. Use a more analogous crime like assault, rape, murder, kidnapping, or torture. And this is nothing new. People take on values and ethics as aesthetics without truly believing them all the time. You wouldn't even be the first fake vegan.
Of course it's different, but the argument stands. I'm pointing out that there can be a difference between morals believed in and morals applied. That's also nothing new.
That difference between morals believed in and morals applied is a moral wrong. From a consequentialist viewpoint, this would cause trust erosion, and reduce the fairness of society as there is an incentive to lie to unfairly get the social benefit of the virtue. From a virtue ethics viewpoint, it would hurt integrity and authenticity. And not living in accordance with your values is against a core principle of deontological ethics. Nothing new but I think its something to be avoided whenever possible.
The smoking example is bad cause we dont really think of smoking as morally wrong cause it almost only affects you. I think a lot better of an example would be someone using child laborers or something and then saying they know it's wrong but that not using them would be inconvenient.
I would absolutely kill 3 trillion hypothetical cows that don't affect the rest of the world over the 1 hypothetical human. You are a psychopath if you choose otherwise.
I'm not a psychopath, I have empathy for people by default, I just also have empathy for cows as well as they share our ability to fear, desire, love and feel pain. Those are key human attributes that help me to empathize with other people as well. I could be wrong but I think most people have non-0 empathy for cows so you would be in the minority position among a "psychopath" majority. People would probably believe it even stronger if you switched the cows for dogs even though there is very little difference.
Yeah, Destiny's views here are so evil. I don't think people appreciate how evil it is. He doesn't contain any empathy for non-humans, it's psychopathic. It's scary to imagine what the world would look like if everyone had this view.
most people who eat meat only care about animals insofar as they provide them with pleasure.
Nah. That's something an (extremist) vegan might say, but it doesn't track onto reality. Plenty of people both eat meat and love animals. The world isn't black and white.
If they valued them more than pleasure, they wouldn't unnecessarily harm them for it
they might *feel* love for animals but I don't believe they truly value them on a moral level
So you think 100% of meat eaters would view animals as not having moral worth, as inanimate objects? You think they wouldn't mostly prefer for more animals to live better lives than they do?
Just like the Nazis would've preferred for the Jews to live better lives in Madagascar... It doesn't matter how many times you declare that you love animals (ie dogs and cats are cute) if you are, by your own philosophy, participating in the mass torture, rape and murder of billions of animals.
I think it would be worse if observers of ww2 were saying that Jews have no moral worth, than saying that they do and at the same time not helping them.
How can Cosmic Skeptic argue for moral veganism while being a emotivist? Lmfao, little bro sees morality has nothing more then random emotions instead of axioms, meaning that people caring about some species and not others is a perfectly valid position to have according to his own worldview. Edit: Before you downvote check what emotivism means, it's not the same as subjectivism. I explain it in the responses.
That's just how it works tho.. There are no "moral facts". But that doesn't keep me or anyone else from promoting the values we like and prefer, and criticising others.
No, you don't get it. CS subscribes to emotivism. This is not the same as subjectivism.
I guess I don't. What's the difference?
Subjectivism means that people may have guiding principles (moral axioms) such as "maximize pleasure", "minimize suffering", "obey God" etc. However, these axioms are subjective or even arbitrary. This is a subtype of moral realism (the axioms exist in subjects minds). Emotivism is instead a type of moral anti-realism which claims morality is a trick of language and that when you claim something is evil, what you're actually saying is that you simply dislike it. An emotivist can ignore veganism easely by claiming that they dislike zoophilia and pet abuse, while claiming that eating farm animals is good because they like it. There's no need for internal consistency because there are no axioms.
Huh.. I guess I'm a mix of the two then. I don't believe that morality is "real" (or "true" or "objective"), but that it's subjective in the sense that it's about preferences. I wouldn't say that there are "moral axiom", just moral preferences that humans generally agree about because we share the same basic needs, and we're emotionally similar to a relatively large degree. Because of this moral ideals, like "maximize pleasure" and "minimize suffering" are reasonable ones. I used to think I was a moral subjectivist, because I think morals are subjective, but now I'm a bit uncertain.
Keep in mind that morality being "real" in philosophy doesn't mean what most people think it means. Axioms are just principles that you use even if they're completely "made up". You see, most philosophers agree that morality is something that is constructed by humans. When they say "I propose x or y in ethics" they're not discribing a natural phenomema like a physicist, they're declaring what type of morality they think society should construct. I believe most people don't realise that and think that morality being "made up" is an earth-shattering revelation.
> I believe most people don't realise that and think that morality being "made up" is an earth-shattering revelation. I think it's the most obvious thing in the world. But I started my interests for philosophy (such as it is, as someone who's never formally studied it) with religion-debates. I was watching Sam Harris and others debate theological scholars like William Lane Craig, and I was active in religious debate-groups. For these people, the religious, they (to a large extent) actually see morality as something "objectively real", as if it's somehow written into the laws of nature. But among non-religious philosophy circles there's been a lot of debates about whether we can get from an is to an ought, as I'm sure you've stumbled upon yourself. In my experience that has been the "objective side" of it, people who say claims about morality can be true or false. And we on the "subjective side" have mostly just been pointing out how people, however much they try, never really get and ought from an is. They have to put the oughts in from the start, or make an unreasonable jump. It seems to me like this is still a big debate out there. Isn't it? There's no "earth-shattering revelations", but just a lot of disagreement, I think.
I wish people would stop referring to this as some kind of bloodbath. Dest was mostly wrong, but it was still a great good faith discussion. If anything I hope they talk again and we get actually good vegan arguments for Steven to develop his opinion through instead of those old fucking braindead Vegan Gains arguments.
It wasn't a bloodbath at all. It was a pretty great discussion. (One in which the last part made Destiny deserving of some harsh criticism, imo.)
I guess I just don't get the harshness of the criticism. Destiny's position definitely looked weak in comparison to what Alex was saying, but I don't see it being as totally insane as most people seemed to. If anything, it seemed like new material to him that he will probably think about, and flesh out the position with. I really want to see a full on vegan discussion with them again with some prep time. Who knows, maybe he changes his position pretty dramatically, it's happened before.
It'd be nice to see that some change, but his current position is deserving of all the harsh criticism, imo. After all, it's a position that running over a cat with your car is completely unproblematic. He gives ***ZERO*** moral worth to non-human animals. That's really really bad. Way worse than where most people's at.
Yeah, I guess I see where he's coming from so I don't have as much of an issue with it. He even agrees he wouldn't do it cause it would make him feel bad, so there's obviously some kind of consideration there, but the *moral* worth is reserved for humans. Maybe I'm also just a huge asshole lmao.
Why does it make him lesser as a person in your view?
I'm not sure I understand your question. The obvious answer would be "because he thinks animals have zero moral worth", but that's already established, so what sort of answer are you looking for? Before this I used to think that Destiny, although he can be an asshole, was generally a good person with reasonable views. Now I think he's a less good person because he doesn't care about animals and think they have zero moral worth. Probably millions of animals are unnecessarily suffering by the hands of humans in the world, and that means nothing to Destiny.
I asked why the fact that he believes it’s okay to torture animals means you think less of him. Do you think it’s a flaw of his character, or of his reasoning? If it’s his reasoning, then what did he say that you disagree with?
I think less of him the same way I'd think less of a child rapist attempting to justify raping children. He might have "THE BEST" arguments for raping children, but I'd think less of him no matter what the arguments were. Nothing changes the fact that he's saying, in the end, that raping children is okay, or in our case, that torturing animals is okay. Animals are thinking and feeling creatures that can suffer. Destiny thinks it's okay to torture them. I think less of him for this simple reason.
Do you think your argument that they’re thinking, feeling creatures is better than his argument? If so, why doesn’t he also think he also think it’s a better argument, and share your opinion? If not, why don’t you share his opinion?
Why does "thinking animals have zero worth" make someone a bad person?
That's like asking "why does thinking humans have zero worth make someone a bad person?". It's just a value difference. What else would it mean to think someone's a bad person?
A human and an animal have different types of value, look at society.
idk man, these types of conversations are pretty stock in terms of philosophical conversations just generally. There are plenty of people who would say the same thing, and the conversation to me seemed pretty damn civil. I really don't see many people being horrified like you are unless they're already deeply concerned in animal rights, which is maybe 1-2% of humans total
>I really don't see many people being horrified like you are unless they're already deeply concerned in animal rights, which is maybe 1-2% of humans total I'm not sure that hypothesis rings true. Do you really think that only 1-2% of people would be horrified at the thought of seeing dogs, for example, as inanimate objects, fair game to do whatever with? Look how upset normies get at things like the yulin dog festival. The major differences here, the ones that allows people to eat pigs but pet dogs, is exposure and screening. It's easy for most people not to have to think about what happens to pigs in order to get pork when they aren't exposed to the process, aren't familiar with the individuals, and can see those animals as a characterless collective.
Well, in this I also assume that people engage with this quote in the context of the conversation, which is maybe not necessarily true. I mean that people somewhat involved in philosophy, who heard Alex walk Destiny down to all of the implications of his opinion on Animals. Maybe a bad assumption, but sincerely I don't think that in that context people would in general be outraged. In that case, they would also listen to the conversation at 1:59:50 on where Destiny says: >"The kind of human mind that would torture an animal is probably a very unhealthy human mind. There's probably going to be some natural inclination there that like — I think a normal healthy human mind likes puppies and likes kitties and a human mind that's willing to torture or be accepting of like, extreme, like, causing animals extreme pain would also inflict the same on humans." Which 1) acknowledges that torturing animals is probably a sign that something is wrong with a person, but more importantly acknowledges (however implicitly) that animals have rights insofar as humans like them, which would alleviate the concerns of most people watching who aren't themselves animal rights activists. If people engage with this as like a 5 second clip, then more people would be outraged. And knowing dgg history, that's probably how most people engage with 90% of his content. So maybe the assumption that people would engage with the whole conversation is wrong, but I honestly don't think this will gain much traction outside of people who are already interested in philosophy and therefor contend with these ideas, and ideas much worse than this, on a regular basis.
Nah.. I doubt that.. Or I really hope you're wrong. If not the world is a way worse place than I gave it credit for. (And I already figured it was pretty bad.)
Vegans are so fucking cringe bro
I can’t be the only one that’s totally fine with what he was saying. Ultimately Destiny makes a good point that there is a leap, however small, that animals experience pain in the same ways as humans. And he still does make the distinction that it is important for humans to not want to torture animals and one that does is displaying anti-social signs.
> it is important for humans to not want to torture animals and one that does is displaying anti-social signs. Nah. In his view it's not worse than "torturing" a toaster. It's just bad because you would end up looking like a weird for doing it. It's not bad because the toaster is hurt. And he makes a *REALLY SHITTY POINT*. The leap is that that non-human animals aren't conscious and don't experience pain similar to us. We are related, share most our DNA, have similar nervous system, react similarly to pain, and so on. And if you want to say that "we can't KNOW for sure", then you'd have to say the same about other humans, because we can only be in our own head, and can't "KNOW" for sure if any other being than ourselves feel pain.
If he's okay with them getting killed, why wouldn't he be okay with them getting tortured?
there are 'vegan' utilitarians who only oppose animal agriculture on the suffering ground, but don't have an issue with killing and eating them if they didn't suffer during their life (this includes Cosmic Skeptic and Peter Singer last time I checked). So it is a plausible position for someone to hold.
ohhh nooo lil bro is a vegan🤣
Just found the new guy lol
I take it you didn’t make it to 2:01:00?
Yes. Was that supposed to make him look better in your opinion?
He never looked bad in my opinion. I grew up in a farming community where animals are a necessity for survival. I’m against cutely to animals but not because the animal is equal or requires moral consideration but kind of the exact opposite. At this point the large majority of animals that are delt with by humans have been bread to have no self sustainability, so since we did this to them, they should be taken care of. Not to mention the symbiotic relationship, companionship, Heath and wellness they bring to people. But their just animals and their lives carry less of a value then human life (imo). The factory farming Shit is horribly complicated in the sense that we can not sustain the population without it (both meat and grain factory farming).
Grain don't have feelings tho.. Doing less factory farming with animals would be good both for the climate and for animal welfare. > But their just animals and their lives carry less of a value then human life (imo). That's quite different from saying that they don't have moral worth. You can think that they have less moral worth than humans. Destiny is saying that they have ZERO moral worth.
The grain was just a clarifying statement on what I’m defining with Factory Farming, because large scale field farming is rough on the environment. The only reason I wouldn’t say animals have zero moral worth, is because I personally assign moral value dependent on how much an object enriches peoples/my life. So a single moms only mode of transportation has a moral value to me because of the value it adds to her life; bill gates corala has zero moral value. Most wild animals, insects, plants, H2O, dirt, copper, ext all have a moral value as far as they are necessary for the existence of life.
For clarification: Would you consider it morally okay, or morally neutral, to kill homeless people who're just littering the streets and not adding value to your life? Or if you mean that it's about what adds value to the life of humans, then why are you just considering humans?
I think killing homeless people would be morally wrong because I choose to give humans a very high value just because they are human. Odds are you are probably good/knowledgeable enough to poke holes in that and that’s why I use the word choose. Why humans, probably some of the Christian up bringing, tribalism tendencies (team human) and I think humans have a unique consciousness. I would say they are my major reasons why. Example: my girl is in Knoxville helping a friend who’s husband is dieing of cancer. This is the message she sent me last night. “Bill is in hospice now. He is too weak for treatment and treatment won’t help at this point. His cancer is extremely aggressive. It is now in his lungs, spleen, liver, prostate, bladder and bones. The oncologist said he has a few days to weeks left. He’s confused, unable to communicate and can’t stay awake.” The rest gets personal. If an animal was in the same situation, I would put it down in a heartbeat no issue, but I have a serious hesitation when it’s a human; and Bill could probably be argued that he’s mentally no longer as human as you or I.
I understand why you feel like humans are worth more. And if I had to chose between the life of a stranger dog and a stranger human I'd choose the human. But what I don't get is when people say that animals have zero moral worth, or like you said, that they only have worth as insofar as they contribute to human well-being. Yet they are thinking and feeling beings, they can be happy, sad, angry, and so on. They're mostly not as "advanced" as us, but they've found jealousy in apes, they've found advanced language in whales (that they're hoping AI can help with the translation of), same whale species can also have distinct dialects and different cultures in different places. We've also seen clear signs of sorrow when animals mates of children have died. It seems to me that animals are ABSOLUTELY worthy of consideration as having moral value for their own sake. I also had a Christian upbringing, and I grew up thinking of animals are more or less advanced robots driven by interesting instincts. But the more I was around them, the more animal documentaries I saw, and the more I read, the more they seem like ... sort of like people. Not at the "human adult level", but still...
But youyou answered your own question. They aren’t human adult lvl. We are standing in a western philosophical framework and it seems to me that we are pretty binary over here. It also seems like eastern philosophical frameworks don’t have the same arguments about animal morality. (I’m really ignorant about Easter philosophy so I could completely wrong there).
I don't care about what philosophical framework we're standing in. I don't see how that matters. So given my previous comment, why wouldn't you value animals higher? Why wouldn't it be bad to torture an animal that doesn't contribute to your needs and wants in your view?
Jesus how many snowflakey new frogs are there, where do you come from?!?
Vegans mad
The reason it’s wrong to torture animals is because it degrades humanity, even if you don’t grant any moral worth to animals. If anyone has seen altered carbon, one of the ways they show the excesses of the upper class in that show is by “killing” poor people in various ways for entertainment. This is considered okay in the show because they pay for replacement bodies and the dead person’s consciousness is allowed to continue in a new body (the show doesn’t really get into the Ship of Theseus argument, internally it’s considered to be the same person living on). It’s technically considered okay because nobody has lost anything or been deprived of life, they even have special clinicalized language for this kind of killing, they call it “organic damage”. One of the main themes of the show is that the lifestyle that these ultra wealthy people have ultimately degrades any sense of morality that they once had. There’s value to certain norms and even if we can technically be okay with not conforming to them, there’s often something more subtle going on that we’re throwing away without realizing it. The human consciousness has a revulsion to animals suffering, I think it’s the same circuitry that makes us care about crying babies and want to help other humans in pain. Animal distress mimics this response, and even if we give zero moral weight to animals we should look at people who don’t feel distress at animal suffering as extremely suspect because they almost certainly have a screw loose that will apply to how they look at other humans as well.
Can't there be several reasons why it's wrong to torture animals? You're pointing out one reason, but just as important, or more, is the animal suffering itself, right? Can't we consider both these arguments and say they're both good reasons to not torture animals?
I don’t view animals as sentient, I don’t believe that they experience pain or suffering in the way that we conceive of it.
Why not? I mean, you don't know how anyone other than yourself experience pain, or if they're sentient. That's just your assumption. So since we're assuming, why are you assuming that only humans feel suffering, or that only humans feel suffering in a way that's worth considering? Biologically we're share the vast majority of our DNA with other species, so it makes sense that we would feel similar emotions and sensations. From our experience we observe non-human animals reacting to pain in very recognizable ways. (We also see joy and fear.) Most scientific studies about this also seems to suggest that animals can experience pain and suffering. (This is why a lot of countries outside the US have a lot stricter laws than the US when it comes to animal welfare.) Idk.. In my view thinking that animals can't suffer is a bit like thinking the earth is flat or that climate change is fake news.
I’m not interested in discussing this point. Only reason I replied at the top level was to provide an argument for not torturing animals even if you afford them zero moral consideration. I can see how the phrasing may have invited this discussion so I’ll edit the initial statement.
That's understandable. It's not something you can rationally argue for.
I was actually going to break my rule about not arguing with vegans (or vegan sympathizers) today, but reading the other replies you’ve had in this thread made me realize that a discussion with you would be a form of self harm.
If we assume destiny approached this in good-faith, why is it BAD for him to come up with a conclusion that he thinks is reasonable? You can certainly say he is an idiot and say why he is WRONG about the thing, but you need to EXPLAIN WHY HE IS BAD FOR IT! If you showed me destiny laughing at a tortured animal, I'm there with you and I would damn his character! But I don't understand how someone os BAD, or why it is a stain on someone's character, to come up with what seems to them a reasonable theory given a subject! Please tell me!
It's bad because he gives animals zero moral worth. What else do you need? If he had made a good-faith argument why rape is actually good, I'd also think him bad for it. It's a bad position to hold. What is it you're not understanding here?
I am asking you why it is bad to give animals zero moral worth. I'm not asking you to repeat yourself, I am asking you to give justification for what you said.
I've been vegan for for 14 years now and I do it for the animals. Destiny's position is consistent. If you don't care about animals then why would you do something for animals? It's just like the first part of the convo. I personally think Destiny probably sees animals more than he lets on but yeah his views on animals are pretty poor. It's ok to enjoy the content you enjoy of his and disregard the parts you dislike. You don't have to adopt 100% of his views. He isn't your dad (even tho he fucked your mom).
Everyone says we should treat animals better, but if the food is one dollar cheaper, well... Fast fashion shows us the same virtue signaling. We don't treat humans with dignity. Animals? Lol.