On 3/2/2012 9:58 AM, Rupert wrote:
> On 2 Mrz., 17:43, George > wrote:
>> On 3/2/2012 4:03 AM, Rupert wrote:
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>>> On 1 Mrz., 23:37, dh@. wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:37:37 -0800 (PST), >
>>>> wrote:
>>
>>>>> On Feb 27, 6:22 pm, dh@. wrote:
>>>>>> On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:39:12 -0500, >
>>>>>> wrote:
>>
>>>>>>> My favorite food used to be chicken. recently, while I was preparing
>>>>>>> chicken for my family, I had an epiphany.
>>
>>>>>>> I was handling the chicken parts with great caution. I had vinyl gloves
>>>>>>> on, and I was working hard to keep the process sanitary. I am aware of
>>>>>>> how unclean chicken meat generally is.
>>
>>>>>>> It suddenly struck me: "If I believe this has to be handled like toxic
>>>>>>> waste, why am I feeding it to my family!?"
>>
>>>>>> It's not that way with "meat". It's that way with *some* meat. Notice that
>>>>>> it's that way with meat from omnivores, which we are. So it makes sense that
>>>>>> there is a danger of exchanging microbes that can thrive in the bodies of
>>>>>> omnivores if you eat the bodies of omnivores without doing something to kill
>>>>>> those particular microbes. Notice that it's a danger in pork and chicken which
>>>>>> are both omnivores, and not in beef and fish because their systems are too
>>>>>> different. But the good part is that if you kill the microbes which is simple
>>>>>> enough, then the meat is good for you and your family.
>>
>>>>>>> It hit me like a bolt of lightning: I believe that meat is unwholesome,
>>>>>>> so why am I still eating it, and serving it to others!?
>>
>>>>>> Just make sure you kill the microbes which also results in better tasting
>>>>>> meat. No one likes rare chicken, and though rare pork tastes awesome it can make
>>>>>> a person horribly sick. So cook it.
>>
>>>>>>> I have always hated the cruelty that "food animals" were subjected to.
>>>>>>> I had to not think about it, to be able to eat meat at all. Well, I am
>>>>>>> thinking about it now, and it makes the thought of meat even more repugnant.
>>
>>>>>> Broiler chickens and their parents are not kept in little cages and the vast
>>>>>> majority of them get to enjoy lives of positive value, imo. The same is true of
>>>>>> cage free laying hens in general so if you buy cage free eggs you are supporting
>>>>>> a system which deliberately tries to provide lives of positive value for laying
>>>>>> hens. There's reason to feel good about doing that, not reason to feel bad about
>>>>>> it. There's reason to feel bad about buying battery cage eggs though especially
>>>>>> if you could get cage free simply by spending more money. Not only does buying
>>>>>> cage free eggs and whatever other animal friendly products deliberately
>>>>>> contribute to lives of positive value for livestock animals, but it also puts
>>>>>> you in the position of deliberately contributing to a more considerate type of
>>>>>> society and thinking in general. Notice that it's a level of consideration and
>>>>>> participation that eliminationists do NOT want other people to intentionally
>>>>>> rise to because it works AGAINST their selfish and lowly elimination objective.
>>
>>>>>>> OK! The solution seems simple: vegetarianism.
>>
>>>>>> · Vegans contribute to the deaths of animals by their use of
>>>>>> wood and paper products, electricity, roads and all types of
>>>>>> buildings, their own diet, etc... just as everyone else does.
>>
>>>>> Which gives her absolutely no reason why she shouldn't go vegetarian.
>>
>>>> Other things which you snipped suggest why it would be ethically equivalent
>>>> or superior if she becomes a conscientious consumer of both plant AND animal
>>>> products.
>>
>>> But, as we saw elsewhere, your case for this claim is not actually
>>> grounded in any evidence.
>>
>> Correct, it isn't grounded in evidence. It is grounded in logical
>> consideration of plausible and likely true propositions.
>>
>
> If they are plausible and likely to be true, they must be grounded in
> some evidence.

No, that's false. The plausibility has to do with the conceptual
knowledge, not with any empirical investigation. Plenty of things that
are plausible based on reasonably well conceived ideas turn out to be
wrong upon empirical investigation, which usually leads to the discovery
of some error in the initial conception. However, even if you give a
little more thought to the concepts involved here, you aren't going to
hit upon something that would reasonably lead you to conclude that the
initial assumption of plausibility was unwarranted.


>>> Most animal products require more collateral deaths than plant-based
>>> products, because grain needs to be grown and fed to the animals and
>>> it is a less efficient means of producing protein than directly
>>> feeding the grain to humans. Grass-fed beef may possibly be an
>>> exception, but you have demonstrated yourself unable to substantiate
>>> the assertion, which you nevertheless keep making, that one serving of
>>> soy products is likely to involve hundreds of times as many deaths as
>>> one serving of grass-fed beef.
>>
>> We aren't talking about "most animal products". 100% grass-fed beef
>> exists, and plausibly, it causes no additional animal deaths at all.
>> You might wish to speculate idly about a beef steer putting its foot
>> into a rodent burrow and crushing some rodents to death, but in fact
>> cattle try to avoid stepping in holes.
>>
>> It is entirely *implausible* to think that mechanized vegetable
>> agriculture does *not* kill significant numbers of field animals -
>> certainly far more than grazing animals.
>>
>
> I'm not aware of any compelling reason to think it causes more deaths
> per calorically equivalent serving.

Of *course* you are aware of that.


>>> I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility that there might be some
>>> dietary choices she might make which are not vegetarian and yet are
>>> nevertheless just as good as a vegetarian diet, but you haven't given
>>> her practical guidance about any specific such choice.
>>
>> Not his job.
>>
>
> No. It's not his job. But my point that he has given her no especially
> good reason to rethink her decision to go vegetarian stands.

I already did. First, her health concerns are unwarranted, and in fact
are almost certainly just a smokescreen anyway. The whole way her post
was written reeked with insincerity. She was striving for a particular
literary "feel", rather than simply to state her concerns. It reeked of
dishonesty and insincerity from the first paragraph.

Second, her typically naive "vegan" concerns about animal cruelty were
obviously those of a neophyte, one who has not given one bit of thought
to the harm caused by what she does consume.


>> What I have done is show that the easy, casual and fatuously
>> ego-gratifying assumption that refraining from consuming animal bits
>> *necessarily* shows one is pursuing the least-harm consumption pattern
>> is false.
>
> Oh, good for you.

Yes.


> Obviously it is conceivable that there might be some other consumption
> patterns that wouldn't involve substantial sacrifice which cause no
> more harm. Showing that this might be the case is really not any
> extraordinary achievement.

It's enough to gut the entire "vegan" proposition.