Skywritings

HUMAN RATIONALISM
Wesley L Smith’s article, Animal Rights Zealotry Hates Animal Welfare (“Human Exceptionalism” in National Review) is full of unreflective stereotypes and over-simplification. Here’s a much more circumspect account:

Most people will agree (if they are not sadists or psychopaths) that it is wrong to hurt or kill a feeling organism unnecessarily.

(To disagree would be to hold that “it is fine to hurt or kill a feeling organism unnecessarily — e.g., for pleasure or profit.”)

Animal welfare advocates are working to reduce the suffering of animals who are being hurt or killed, regardless of whether it is being done out of necessity or for pleasure or profit.

Animal rights advocates are working to prevent animals from being hurt or killed unnecessarily at all. They feel that all animals (including humans) have the right not to be hurt or killed unnecessarily (i.e., that that’s what it means to say it’s wrong to do it).

The rest is down to what is “necessary.” Most people will agree that necessity has to do with conflicts in vital (survival or health) needs, as between predator and prey, or aggressor and victim.

There are extremists who hold that no animal (whether nonhuman or human, presumably) should ever be hurt or killed, under any circumstances. This is either like saying that there should not be any disease or hunger — or conflicts of vital interest — in the world (a commendable but utopian pipe-dream); or it is based on imagining that if they were attacked by a nonhuman or human aggressor they could or would or should not fight for their lives.

That’s all there really is to it, if you think about it.

Craig, W. J., & Mangels, A. R. (2009). Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 109(7), 1266-1282.

Harnad, S. (2013). Taste and Torment: Why I Am Not a Carnivore. Québec Humaniste 8(1): 10-13

People go to circuses and rodeos for “entertainment.” Many are hostile to any “killjoys” who want to spoil it. So, depending on their character, there are several familiar ways they resolve the “conflict”:

1. IGNORANCE OR DENIAL: “The animals are not suffering”
2. DEFENSIVENESS: “Those who demonstrate for animals are over-sensitive’” or “You should demonstrate for people rather than animals”
3. HOSTILITY: “Those who demonstrate for animals are self-righteous busybodies or aggressive extremists”
4. APATHY: “I don’t care if animals are hurt”
5. PSYCHOPATHY: “Animals are there for us to do whatever we want with”

Few people, there to entertain their children, are ready to say “I now realize it’s terrible and I will take my children home.” And virtually none of them will decide on the spot to become vegans — although of course everything that can be said about animals suffering for entertainment, which is unnecessary, can be said about animals suffering for clothing, which is also unnecessary, or for meat/dairy/eggs, which is also unnecessary, except in some impoverished or subistence environments. Only (some) medical research faces the troubling question of life-saving necessity.

So my own strategy has been just to silently hold up images that show the suffering, offering pamphlets to those who willingly take them, and answering questions if asked. Those who ask are usually in category 1 (ignorance or denial) and sometimes 2 (defensiveness). They truly don’t know, or don’t want to believe the horrors. And there is some hope that some of them will change their minds once they know — not on the spot, but eventually. I never argue, and don’t even enter into discussion at all with categories 3-5, because it is useless and it only provokes them to become more hostile toward animals, their suffering, and those who try to defend them.

I don’t know of a poll, but I believe (or at least hope) that although categories 3-5 are more aggressive and they are also the ones we notice and remember, the most numerous ones are categories 1 and 2 — decent people, with hearts, but unaware of the suffering — and that they are the ones who may later reflect and eventually change.

Saw a TV program about Dancing Bears
in Turkey.
Children are delighted
to watch these big, surprisingly light-footed beasts
do a jig
as their eyes roll lovingly,
almost passionately,
toward their human partners
(“Roms,” as gypsies prefer to be called)
holding the rope
that leads to their nose.

It never enters the children’s mind
that the dancing bear
could be anything but happy,
just as they are,
in watching it.
After all,
would their parents bring them
to watch a horribly cruel display
of torture?
could the gay rhythm to which they dance
possibly be that of unrelenting, excruciating tugs
to the nose-ring, tongue-ring, jaw?
and could what the bear goes through
in their presence
conceivably be only a small glimpse
of its agony?
Yes, they wonder
why the bear’s nose
has that funny curve,
and why its jaw is askew
and permanently agape,
and why its frothy breath
is crimson,
but they assume it’s just smiling.

So Turkey has finally,
officially,
banned the practice —
which has not made it disappear,
of course,
but has simply made it more profitable
to cater to a new demand,
in which the bear cub is duly purchased,
disfigured, tortured, displayed,
and then sold to animal-welfare activists,
who take it to a retirement farm
while the Rom re-invests part of his profits
in the next bear cub.
Supply and demand.
Market economics.

They say that the nose ring
the world has placed in the Rom people’s noses
is almost as painful as the bear’s.
But that’s hard to credit,
from the bear’s end of the rope…

(Version française suit ci-dessous)

The Debate “Should we stop eating animals? “Organized by the Quebec Skeptics at the Quebec Humanist Centre August 13, 2015 is easy to summarize:

Both voices for YES (Christiane Bailey, U Montreal, and Dany Plouffe, McGill U) argued that:

1. Eating animals is unnecessary for our survival or health

2. To breed, rear and slaughter animals causes suffering

3. We should not cause unnecessary suffering

So we should not eat animals.

(In addition, they added that if we stopped eating animals it would be better for the health of the planet and for human health.)

The two voices for NO (Cyrille Barrette, Laval U, and Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, U Montreal) argued that:

CB1: There are continuities and discontinuities in the Darwinian evolution of species: we should respect the differences and distances between species

CB2: Humans are the only species that is “altrusitic” and has the capacity to make choices and laws; pain is not the same as suffering; we should respect these differences

CB3: We evolved as omnivores; let’s continue to eat everything we evolved to be able to eat

J-PV1: Animals industrially bred and slaughtered suffer, but not that much

J-PV2: Whether they suffer too much to justify eating is a matter of opinion and free choice

(J-PV also challenged the degree of benefit for the planet if we stopped breeding animals to eat; he also cited the business interests of the meat industry)

There was no vote taken. Readers can draw their own conclusions from my summary. I think I have not omitted anything important, nor distorted or biased anything.

This Is What Humane Slaughter Looks Like. Is It Good Enough?

DÉBAT : DOIT-ON CESSER DE MANGER DES ANIMAUX ?

Le Débat « Doit-on cesser de manger des animaux ? » organisé par Les Sceptiques du Québec au Centre Humaniste du Québec le 13 août 2015 est facile à résumer:

Les deux voix pour le OUI (Christiane Bailey, UdeM, et Dany Plouffe, U McGill) ont soutenu que:
1. Manger les animaux (non-humains) n’est pas nécessaire ni à la vie, nie à la survie humaine

2. Élever et abattre les animaux cause la souffrance.

3. On ne doit pas causer la souffrance sans nécessité

Donc on ne doit pas manger les animaux.

(En supplément, ils ont ajouté que si les humains ne mangeaient plus les animaux ça serait meilleur pour la santé de la planète ainsi que pour la santé humaine.)

Les deux voix pour le NON (Cyrille Barrette, U Laval, er Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, UdeM) ont soutenu que:

CB1: Il y a des continuités ainsi que des discontinuités dans l’évolution darwinienne des espèces: on doit respecter les différences ainsi que les distances entre les espèces

CB2: Les humains sont la seule espèce « altruiste » avec la capacité de faire les choix et les lois; la douleur n’est pas la même chose que la souffrance; on doit respecter ces différences

CB3: L’évolution nous a adapté à être omnivores: Continuons à manger tout ce que nous sommes adaptés à manger

J-PV1: Les animaux d’élevage souffrent, mais pas autant que ça

J-PV2: S’ils souffrent trop pour justifier les manger c’est une question d’opinion et de libre choix

(J-PV a aussi contesté le degré des bénéfices qu’il y aurait pour la planète s’il n’y avait plus d’élevage des animaux de consommation; il a cité aussi les intérêts commerciaux de l’industrie de la viande)

On n’a pas pris le vote. Les lecteurs peuvent tirer leur propres conclusions à partir de mon résumé. Je crois que je n’ai rien omis d’important, ni rien distordu ou biaisé.

James McWilliams used to seem ok, but he is apparently a historian-turned-philosopher first and a feeling human being only second. The disembodied abstractions of utilitarianism always missed the point, whichever way they cut: The point is simple and obvious — but you need to have and use a heart to perceive it. Don’t hurt except if vitally necessary. You don’t need axiomatics to solemnly enumerate the actual, transitional and hypothetically imaginable cases of vital necessity. But nothing new follows from them. And certainly not carnivory or the meat industry.

Pain and pleasure are incommensurable (except for a blinkered utilitarian). No amount of pleasure justifies inflicting pain on others. (How much pain I choose to inflict on myself in exchange for my own pleasure is another matter, but irrelevant: this is about inflicting pain on OTHERS in exchange for MY pleasure — or for the pleasure of N of US, in utilitarian metrics.) The only faintly utilitarian moral truth is that we should try to minimize pain; but, again, pleasure is not part of the equation. And “don’t hurt except if vitally necessary” already covers that.

The Road-Kill Retort. I am astounded that anyone considers road-kills relevant to any serious discussion of veganism: Even if it is true that more animals are killed by roadway accidents than by hunting, the only decent response, it seems to me, and the one in keeping with the gravity of the topic of both animal suffering and roadway accidents, is not to treat roadway deaths as some sort of abstract and immutable given in some utilitarian debate but as a compelling reason to work on ways to reduce highway accidents (just as collateral animal deaths in vegetable farming should not be taken as an abstract, immutable given, but a compelling reason to work on ways to make vegetable farming more humane). Accidental road-kills are certainly not a scaleable, sustainable way to feed the world. And what is important is practical ethics, not hypothetical ethics.

Whenever a student raises the issue of road-kills as it were some sort of argument against veganism I immediately assure them that we are not talking about obsessive-compulsive disorder here: Anyone, vegan or not, is cordially invited to eat all the road kill they encounter and relish: it is of absolutely no consequence or relevance to anything whatsoever other than the need to improve highway safety for all. (But it is usually carnivores, not vegans, who prefer to keep the discussion focussed on abstractions rather than on the flesh and blood and terror and agony that are the real issue. But when a vegan is also an abstract ethical theorist….)

Immense disappointment — for me, but I left Unity (the successor of Earthlings after a decade) after 20 minutes when I couldn’t take anymore. Horror upon horror, accompanied by exalted banalities solemnly voiced in sound clips by assorted celebrities.

Earthlings had been – and still is – immensely powerful and effective in awakening the world to the otherwise unimaginable agony inflicted on (other) animals by humans, the agony that ag-gag laws strive to hide from us. I hadn’t been able to bear watching Earthlings either, but I recognize that its graphic evidence is essential for sensitizing that vast majority of humankind who are ignorant of and insulated from the fact that such horrors are being committed, being committed everywhere, and being committed in our name, so as to feed those who crave meat and to clothe those who crave leather and fur. Earthlings was not a movie for vegans. It was a movie for creating vegans.

In the twenty minutes that I could bear of Unity, the horrors were mostly inflicted by humans on humans, in the context of war, but there were also Earthlings moments in Unity, where the human aggression was on animalls – and we could already sense that there would be more later in the film.

I left before they came. There will probably still be extracts from Unity that activists can use to inspire people to become vegan. But skip the human/human aggression. There is no horror we have inflicted on animals that we have not inflicted on humans too. The “rules” of war allow it all. But in peacetime, it is illegal to do that to people.

For animals, it’s always wartime, and they are always the helpless victims. They are all in the state of terror and despair of that indelibly soul-tormenting first scene of the calf facing and frantically, hopelessly, struggling to escape that all too narrow passageway to merciless slaughter.

The film brings us no new solution for ending human/human war, just the banal cliches we already know.

And for animals, apart from the new supply of episodes to add to the heart-convulsing Earthlings excerpts of ten years ago, this new film adds only a miscegenation of wickedness and words that form no unity: a congeries of horrors and homilies.

For me what was missing in this call for ecumenical unity among molecules, organisms, earth, planets, galaxies, and universe was the one property that distinguishes the trivial from the tragic — the property that unifies humans with the (other) animals and distinguishes both from molecules, earth, planets, galaxies – and even trees: That property is sentience, the susceptibility to suffering.

Towards other humans, we violate this property in times of war (and crime). But towards other animals we violate it at all times.

Maybe a miracle awaited those who stayed until the end. If so, maybe someone can tell me about it…

[Afterword: Friends later told me that the punchline turned out to be “Homo spiritus.” But (apart from the pedantic fact that it should have been “Homo spirans,” since the notion of “spirit” is inspired by divine incoming breath, and Homo is not the only breathing organism) even the more relevant taxonomic tag — Homo sensibilis — would have been a misnomer, because all other organisms with nervous systems are sentient, not just us. And our potential for sensitivity to their sensitivity is useless if we don’t use it.)]

Immense déception — pour moi, mais je me suis sauvé après 20 minutes lorsque je n’en pouvais plus. Horreurs suivies d’horreurs, accompagnées de banalités exaltées et insipides prononcées solennellement par des vedettes en clip sonore.

Earthlings avait été — et est toujours — d’une immense importance et utilité pour réveiller le monde à l’agonie indicible infligée aux animaux par les humains. Je n’ai pas été capable de regarder Earthlings non plus, mais je reconnais que ces témoignages sont indispensables pour sensibiliser cette vaste majorité d’humains qui est ignorante du fait que les telles horreurs se font, se font partout, et se font pour alimenter ceux qui mangent la viande et pour vêtir ceux qui portent le cuire et la fourrure. Earthlings n’était pas un film pour les véganes. C’était un film pour créer les véganes.

Earthlings had been — and still is — immensely important and useful for awakening people to the unspeakable agony inflicted on (other) animals by humans,

Dans les vingt minutes que j’ai pu supporter de Unity, les horreurs étaient majoritairement infligées par les humains aux humains, dans le contexte belliqueux, mais il y avait aussi des moments Earthlings ou c’était les animaux qu’agressaient les humains — et on devinait déjà qu’il y en aurait davantage plus tard dans le film.

J’ai quitté avant. Il y aura sans doute encore des extraits de Unity que les activistes pourront utiliser pour inspirer les gens à devenir véganes. Mais sauter les aggressions humaines/humaines. Il n’y a aucune horreur qu’on inflige aux animaux qu’on n’inflige pas aux humains. Les « règles » martiales permettent tous. Mais en temps de paix, c’est interdit de faire ça aux humains.

Pour les animaux, c’est toujours la guerre, et ils sont toujours les victimes impuissantes.

Le film ne donne aucune nouvelle soution pour mettre fin aux guerres humaine/humaines, juste les clichés banals qu’on connais déja.

Et pour les animaux, à part des suppléments aux extraits déchirrants genre Earthlings, il n’y a qu’un métissage d’exemples et de mots qui ne font aucune unité.

Pour moi ce qui manquait dans cet appel à l’unité œcuménique des molécules, des organismes, de la terre, des planètes, des galaxies, de l’univers c’était la seule chose qui distingue les cas banals des cas importants, voir tragiques. C’est la propiéte qui unifie les humains avec les (autres) animaux, et qui les distingue des molécules, de la terre, des planétes et des galaxies — et même des arbres: Cette propriété est la sensibilité, la susceptibilité à la souffrance.

Envers les autres humains, nous trahissons cette propriété en temps de guerre (et de crime). Mais envers les autres animaux nous la trahissons en tout temps.

Peut-être qu’un miracle attendait ceux qui sont restés jusqu’à la fin. Si oui, quelqu’un pourra peut-être me le raconter…

Although it sounds like an impassioned plea for mice, Australian ecologist Mike Archer’s 2011 “blood on your hands” argument against veganism is really just an uncritical defence of the status quo, rightly pointing out some relevant problems but completely ignoring others.

1. First and most important of all: The animals killed for cultivating land do matter, enormously. The remedy for that is humane herbiculture, which is definitely possible, and practiced, but rarely, because of the preference for factory agriculture, which is cheaper.

2. The picture drawn by Archer is of Australia, where it is claimed that 98% of beef (and all kangaroo meat) still comes from natural range-feeding animals. This is not at all true elsewhere in the world, where a lot of arable land is used to produce livestock-feed instead of food for humans. Australia, where wildlife habitat encroachment has not yet gone nearly as far as in Europe and America, is not representative of the rest of the world.

3. The free grazing argument, such as it is, applies only to cattle (and kangaroos), not to pigs and chickens, which require agriculture to grow their feed.

4. The calculation in terms of protein percentage is greatly skewed by the fact that we eat far more protein than necessary for survival and health.

Conclusion.

A. Leave the free-grazing animals for last. Phase out all the other meat-eating that is not even implicated by the herbicultural collateral-damage argument.

B. Reform herbiculture to make it as humane as possible.

C. From the fact that animals graze freely it does not follow that we need to kill and eat them, let alone purpose breed them.

D. Worry more about wildlife habitat encroachment.

E. Not only do humans not need to eat nearly as much protein as they do, but they need not reproduce as profligately as they do, increasing exponentially the mouths to fill, the land to encroach, and the innocent victims to kill and eat, needlessly.

(George Monbiot has done a few flip-flops on this topic too…)

See also:

Bruers, S. (2015). The Core Argument for Veganism. Philosophia, 43(2), 271-290.

Matheny, G. (2003). Least harm: A defense of vegetarianism from Steven Davis’s omnivorous proposal. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 16(5), 505-511.

Every day it becomes harder and harder to believe the depths of heartlessness to which the Fidik-minded populace of Hungary has sunk.

Shameless, shameful. The historic stigma this will leave on the government and its supporters — mitigated only by that wonderful minority of Hungarians who have hearts and are helping the helpless victims of their countrymen’s odious apathy and antipathy — will be indelible.

The righteous Hungarians will one day prevail, but meanwhile Orbanistan is a pariah among nations, an odious blight on humanity itself. Shame, shame and more shame.

Read, reader, and weep.

All the horrors that humans inflict on animals humans inflict on humans too. But doing it to humans is illegal, doing it to animals is not. Why?

Toutes les cruautés qu’infligent les humains aux animaux, les humains les infligent aux humains aussi — à la différence que de faire ça aux humains est illégal, tandis qu’aux animaux, pas. Pourquoi?

In “What if Current Foundations of Mathematics are Inconsistent?” Voevodsky (2010) suggests that there are three options in light of Goedel’s theorems:

Either:
1. If we “know” arithmetic is consistent, it should be provable, so Goedel’s second incompleteness theorem is false.

Or:
2. Admit there can be provably unprovable arithmetic “knowledge”

Or:
3. Admit that “knowing” arithmetic is consistent is an illusion, and arithmetic is inconsistent.

But why make any mention of psychological states like “knowing” at all?

Surely, regardless of our intuitions, the only truths (besides the Cogito) that we can “know” to be true, i.e., certain (rather than just probably true on all available evidence) are the truths that we have proved to be necessarily true, on pain of contradiction

Why not the following?—

4. Admit that arithmetic’s consistency is provably unprovable, but that then it may either be (unprovably) true (rather than unprovably “known”) that arithetic is consistent — or it may be false that arithmetic is consistent.

5. If arithmetic’s consistency is true (but unprovable, hence unknowable), then all proven theorems are true (except that their consistency cannot be proven).

6. If arithmetic’s consistency is false, then either an instance of inconsistency will be found (hence inconsistency will be “proven”) or it will not be found, in which case it will never be known whether arithmetic is consistent or inconsistent, hence whether the negations of theorems we have proved are also provable.

“Reliability” does not seem to be a valid substitute for provability-on-pain-of-contradiction. It would make mathematics into something more like inductive empirical science: provisionally true on the available evidence until/unless contradictory evidence is encountered. That is just the conjunction of 5 and 6. It also has some of the flavor of intuitionistic reasoning (insofar as the excluded middle is concerned).

As usual, this uncertainty only besets infinities, not finite constructions.

Or does the notion of “deductive rigor” all reside in the provability of consistency in nonfinite mathematics?

(The problem of possible mistakes in proofs (and the partial solution of computer-aided proofs) concerns another kind of reliability, and again seems to be a solution only for finite mathematics.)