As a long-term vegan I was appalled to see others reject the concept of personal self-determination and freedom for all, including human animals. I was disgusted that so many vegans including members of the so-called Animal Justice Party embraced vax mandates. Clearly, they adopt willful ignorance when it comes to the mice, rats and primates tortured and murdered during experiments of the jab. They also don't seem to care about the calf foetuses who are cut from their mother's wombs in slaughterhouses, so their heart serum can be drained and used for manufacturing the jabs.
The AJP has done more to set back the cause of animal rights than any other organisation in this country, IMHO. Their behaviour throughout the scamdemic has been appalling.
Vitamin B12 is the only supplement that is required; the choice whether to take any other supplement should be based on your health status and results of blood tests.
Hey Robyn and guests, I enjoyed the interview, thanks! It made me want to learn more about the moral veganism. Here are some starter questions if anyone wants to engage in one:
At what point does the lamentable Judeo-Christian Humanist approach to animals begin, and humans as actors in a functioning ecosystem end?
If humans acting superior in feeling, communication, power, intellect etc. is distasteful, why is it not also a negative thing that humans act superior morally, or as custodians of suffering?
What are the thoughts behind distinctions such as:
- Killing is morally wrong unless you need to - where does need begin and want end?
- Killing animals is morally wrong because they suffer, have emotions, have life goals, invest energy and care into their offspring, communicate. Killing plants is morally acceptable, yet they also suffer, have emotions, have life goals, invest energy and care into their offspring, communicate. Where does the line get drawn? Why are the other Kingdoms not drawn into the debate? Do people have strong moral feelings about mushrooms? Bacteria?
Brian Cox suggests that perhaps humans are the only thing in the universe that can attribute meaning to it (https://www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2022/10/momentum-conference-brian-cox.html). What do you think about using that as an important distinction between Humans and other animals? What about using it as a reason why we are more important than other animals?
Orca's will kill a baby seal and flick it like a football, cats will toy with prey, wasps will enslave their prey and cuckoos will cuckold other birds nests. None of this is strictly necessary to their survival. Are they accountable to questions of right or wrong? What is the distinction which makes humans accountable? Is it morally wrong that we 'allow' wasps to continue their mistreatment of animals and do nothing to stop them?
From one viewpoint, wheat has enslaved humans. We allocate significant land, labour, care and devotion to cultivating it and have turned it into a successful species. From another viewpoint, we raise wheat under unnatural conditions purely for our own benefit, kill it, then eat it. If our treatment of animals can also be described by such a wide difference in perspectives, why does one create such ambivalence, and another such a definitive stance?
If killing animals has more significance for me because they are more similar to me, is that not a version of Humans as dominant over nature, that life gets ranked in importance according to my preferences?
If humans should apply libertarian and moral principles to a wider group of species, why only the wider group of species similar to us? Why then, might it be awful if I did the same within human groups and had different levels of morality for, say, my children, based on which ones were more similar to myself?
If I understand farmers correctly, there are huge tracts of arid land in Australia which are suitable for roaming grazing cattle, but not for agriculture. The implications are that this has virtually no environmental impact. Is eating this beef O.K? Would eating it still be O.K if life was harsh for the cows in this arid land, and they suffered greatly being left to their own devices? What if their suffering was increased during periods where Human's did not kill and eat some of them, because they always, as nature is wont to do, expanded to consume all available resources to the point of regular thirst and hunger?
Does the moral responsibility of humans expand or contract with our fortunes? For example, we are currently dominating the planet and expanding our population and fewer of us are starving than ever before. We can afford to fight long and hard for animal rights. What changes if we degenerate into a fierce competition for survival as a species?
"Does the moral responsibility of humans expand or contract with our fortunes? For example, we are currently dominating the planet and expanding our population and fewer of us are starving than ever before. We can afford to fight long and hard for animal rights. What changes if we degenerate into a fierce competition for survival as a species?"
We will still have the moral responsibility, but few will be in a position to exercise it because they will be consumed by the struggle for survival. People routinely break their own moral codes in extraordinary circumstances (for example soldiers during wartime) and many struggle with their consciences afterward, for the rest of their lives.
"If I understand farmers correctly, there are huge tracts of arid land in Australia which are suitable for roaming grazing cattle, but not for agriculture. The implications are that this has virtually no environmental impact. Is eating this beef O.K? Would eating it still be O.K if life was harsh for the cows in this arid land, and they suffered greatly being left to their own devices? What if their suffering was increased during periods where Human's did not kill and eat some of them, because they always, as nature is wont to do, expanded to consume all available resources to the point of regular thirst and hunger?"
You do realise that cattle are an introduced species, and that they are bred in large numbers, usually by artificial insemination, purely for the purpose of being raised for slaughter? If they were no longer bred in this way, they would not occupy these arid landscapes, which would then be reoccupied by the wild animals that previously lived there and were adapted to the harsh environment. For example, female kangaroos can actually resorb their own foetuses in drought conditions when the joey would not survive, only to resume the pregnancy later when conditions are more favourable.
I do, and with all my questions and comments, I have no emotional attachment to the examples I present - i'm aiming for a pure thought exercise. I especially love that trait of Kangaroos. I often think about that trait in terms of the inevitable expansion of life to stretch resources. I think it would be a bit of knowledge I would use if I were a farmer trying to advocate for culling Kangaroos!
I also think of those farmers who interfere minimally with their cattle, which range freely, save for a yearly muster, on land that is not considered arable, and genuinely wonder where other people morally sit with such practices.
So perhaps a better example would have been kangaroos whose population is in equilibrium while being hunted for 1000 years by local aborigines, then the aborigines turn vegan and the kangaroos initially multiply, then disrupt the natural cycle of grasses, then experience mass starvation and die off. Would you recommend the vegan aborigines change their behaviour?
I don't find particular value in these hypotheticals as they're simply intellectual navel-gazing which distracts from the real moral questions that face us in the here and now. We don't have any agency over those hypothetical vegan aborigines and their hypothetical kangaroos; we do have agency over what we choose to eat at our next meal.
"If humans should apply libertarian and moral principles to a wider group of species, why only the wider group of species similar to us? Why then, might it be awful if I did the same within human groups and had different levels of morality for, say, my children, based on which ones were more similar to myself?"
Again, the distinction is based not on similarity to us but on the capacity to suffer. As each of your children would presumably have equal capacity for suffering, it would be reprehensible for you to be kinder to one, and crueller to another.
"If killing animals has more significance for me because they are more similar to me, is that not a version of Humans as dominant over nature, that life gets ranked in importance according to my preferences?"
The distinction is based on the capacity for suffering, and the moral responsibility to prevent avoidable suffering.
"From one viewpoint, wheat has enslaved humans. We allocate significant land, labour, care and devotion to cultivating it and have turned it into a successful species. From another viewpoint, we raise wheat under unnatural conditions purely for our own benefit, kill it, then eat it. If our treatment of animals can also be described by such a wide difference in perspectives, why does one create such ambivalence, and another such a definitive stance?"
See above. There is a vast qualitative difference between plants and animals. Blurring the lines between these kingdoms is intellectually dishonest.
"Orca's will kill a baby seal and flick it like a football, cats will toy with prey, wasps will enslave their prey and cuckoos will cuckold other birds nests. None of this is strictly necessary to their survival. Are they accountable to questions of right or wrong? What is the distinction which makes humans accountable? Is it morally wrong that we 'allow' wasps to continue their mistreatment of animals and do nothing to stop them?"
I am responsible for myself. I am responsible for raising my children to be responsible adults. I am responsible for avoiding inflicting suffering, and for preventing suffering when I can. I am not responsible for the behaviour of other people, let alone other species.
And I am responsible because I have the capacity to exercise that responsibility; that is why we don't imprison children or people who are clearly out of touch with reality even if they cause harm.
This is an interesting one. Some potential conflicts arise:
I am responsible for preventing suffering, hence I should stop the wasps from enslaving the cockroach. I am not responsible for the behaviour of other people or species, hence I should not stop the wasp.
I am responsible for my own behaviour, hence I should not eat animals if I think it is wrong. I am not responsible for the behaviour of other people, species (or evolutionary traits?), hence I should not stop omnivorous species from eating meat, the farmer from collecting eggs or my own body from gaining nutrition via meat, even if I think it is wrong.
I am responsible for my own behaviour, and I really want that person who is creating suffering in animals to stop profiting from it, so i'm making it my responsibility to change that person's behaviour as well. One of the best ways I can do this is to change the behaviour of 100 other people to eat vegan and put laws in place on farming practices. I am not responsible for just my own behaviour.
This is a very simplistic approach to the problems both of suffering and responsibility. As a human, I have the ability to choose an entirely plant-based diet which meets all my nutritional needs (with the exception of vitamin B12, which can be made without causing any suffering) and allows me to thrive. The same is not true for the wolf, or the wasp.
I have no right to MAKE other people change because that would be an infringement of their free will, but I can provide them with information that may prompt them to change their own behaviour if they realise that they have no nutritional need to consume animal products, and this act of sharing information and providing support for behaviour change, reduces net suffering.
"Brian Cox suggests that perhaps humans are the only thing in the universe that can attribute meaning to it (https://www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2022/10/momentum-conference-brian-cox.html). What do you think about using that as an important distinction between Humans and other animals? What about using it as a reason why we are more important than other animals?"
Cox may well be correct, and I strongly suspect that he is, but how would we know, since we can't communicate with any other species in order to find out? In any case, why would this particular distinction imply greater importance? Personally, I think it implies greater responsibility, which is an entirely different matter.
"What are the thoughts behind distinctions such as:
- Killing animals is morally wrong because they suffer, have emotions, have life goals, invest energy and care into their offspring, communicate. Killing plants is morally acceptable, yet they also suffer, have emotions, have life goals, invest energy and care into their offspring, communicate. Where does the line get drawn? Why are the other Kingdoms not drawn into the debate? Do people have strong moral feelings about mushrooms? Bacteria?"
Could you please provide evidence that plants, fungi or bacteria experience emotions? The absence of a central nervous system would seem to rule out this possibility. Also, any evolutionary biologist will tell you that the principle purpose of emotions is to motivate action, for example fear activates a fight/flight response. What would be the point of a plant having emotions if it is unable, for example, to move itself in order to escape a predator?
For the non-central nervous system life, I am equating emotions to desire/wants - as in they want to live and be comfortable and reproduce, and would be 'sad' to be killed an eaten. I generously call this, and genetic drives/responses to stimuli, 'primitive emotions' - recognising this as a long way away from complex emotions such as guilt.
Hence the 'choices' a plant can take are things like changing the composition of toxins in leaves, the width of stomata in anticipation of water, the facing of their leaves or the timing of their reproductive cycles.
Evolutionary biologists can, and do, claim that even humans do not really have emotions, that 100% of our emotions and choices will eventually be explained as simply response to stimuli. That's in the 'Behave' book by Robert Sapolsky I think you'll like.
Even further down the rabbity-hole is the theory that consciousness itself is the fundamental phenomena which gives rise to matter, or even space time. This is a serious discussion right now. I mention it since, if it has any basis, this would be a point in favour of not taking the central nervous system or brain as a driving factor of consciousness, or just perhaps, emotions. Stephen Wolfram with his Cellular Automota might be a good start on this if interested, but it is beyond me.
As I recall, Descartes justified his unbelievably cruel vivisection experiments on dogs by claiming that their howls of pain were merely 'response to stimuli'. Are you really going to go down that road? Are the feelings that you have when you gaze at your wife 'response to stimuli'? Do you think that when you see your unborn child for the first time, the emotions that you will feel will merely be 'response to stimuli'? Come now. I don't think you really believe this. There's a point where you have to detach yourself from the compulsive reductionism of (some) scientists and just check in with your lived experience and quite frankly, your common sense. BTW Sapolsky is a neuroscientist, not an evolutionary biologist, and if he's straying into commentary on evolutionary biology then he's waaaaaay out of his lane.
As I have written before, the philosophy underlying veganism is that we, as conscious beings, have a moral obligation to minimise the amount of suffering that we cause. Compare the capacity for suffering of a pumpkin with that of a puppy, or a calf, or a sheep, and all of this obfuscation drops way.
I don't have strong beliefs on this topic. Or rather, they have never been permanently swayed toward one argument only. I had the time and inclination for a chat on morality which I understood was an offer made on the podcast. All morality discussions are hypotheticals and obfuscation. If the questions or the way I pose them causes angst, or you do not have the time or inclination to go into them, ignore them. They are not intended to support a particular view, only to explore ideas. I just (sometimes) really enjoy discussions like this, but only if they are about concepts.
Sapolsky does go waaaaaay out of his lane in the book, and no I do not share his views, or the views of the evolutionary biologists he references, I just consider them.
I do the same for Descartes. Even if he tortured dogs, I find simplicity in his "I think therefore I am" thought experiment, so I would still love my wife and baby, and think Robyn is fantastic, even if I was just a computer program 'responding to stimuli' and thinking those things were emotions.
And yes, of course I am going down that road when "protection from suffering", or the 'greater good' has historically been used to cause so much of it.
I used to love utilitarian ethics until I really got a deeper understanding of how it can be abused in the last 3 years.
There are many strands of moral philosophy, but I suppose I sway towards what you might call 'practical ethics', or how to live as good a life as you can in a world full of unfairness - including the completely unearned privilege that you and I both have, as people born into caring families in prosperous countries. The endless drain-circling arguments about hypothetical situations remind me of Catholic theologians conducting scholarly debates on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, while the Church was a festering swamp of corruption.
Even if you hewed to the utilitarian school of ethics, the policies of the last 3 years utterly fail the test as they have done far more harm to far more people than would have occurred if public health authorities had done absolutely nothing. However, the reason I reject utilitarianism is because it overrides personal freedom to choose, which to me is an absolute right unless the rights of others are transgressed upon in the exercise of that right (and no, I don't accept Dershowitz's argument that my freedom ends when it comes to my ability to infect someone, because I'm not responsible for the poor state of other people's health that might render them abnormally susceptible to illness; it's up to them to decide whether to risk going out in public if they're that crook). Also, there is the practical issue of objectively assessing the greater good. Who is to be delegated to carry out this calculation? Certainly not the public health authorities who have utterly failed the public in the past 3 years (and, I would argue, long before this).
"What are the thoughts behind distinctions such as:
- Killing is morally wrong unless you need to - where does need begin and want end?"
I suppose if you were to adopt a pacifist philosophy, you might argue that if something/someone was harming you, then your commitment to non-violence would mean that you should let them do so rather than sully yourself by responding to violence with force. Frankly, I think this is ridiculous on its face. Aside from anything else, we owe it to our loved ones and our dependents to fight for our lives if attacked.
"If humans acting superior in feeling, communication, power, intellect etc. is distasteful, why is it not also a negative thing that humans act superior morally, or as custodians of suffering?"
I think you've missed the point here. Humans consider ourselves superior to other animals because we consider that certain of our attributes in which we are apparently superior to non-human animals, such as communication skills and intellect, are inherent markers of complete superiority. Talk about motivated reasoning! As for humans "acting superior morally", do you mean by that, that it is repugnant to take moral considerations into account when you have the capacity for moral reasoning? What would be the point of having that capacity if one did not exercise it?
Removing superiority, of course moral capacity should be used if possible.
One way I was thinking was that there is a certain morality to the law of the jungle. Eat or be eaten.
The other was simply that complete superiority over all other life is considered wrong by, for example, gaianists. Hence, it seems like we get ourselves in trouble by assuming intellectual, communicative or control of resources = superiority. The trouble goes like this: We are superior, so we can eat animals and use them for our own benefit, I'm off to factory farm some hens.
Could not a feeling of moral superiority lead to the same problems?
In practical terms, it might look like this:
We are morally superior to other life, in fact, we are needed for the management of ecosystems, so better that any other life should suffer or die than a human life, therefore I'm gonna go factory farm some hens.
There is no 'morality' in the law of the jungle; it's just a struggle for survival in which there is no room (and, it could be argued, capacity) for moral reasoning.
I haven't argued that we're 'morally superior' to other animals, simply that it is self-evident that we have the capacity for moral reasoning which, to me at least, implies the obligation to exercise it.
"At what point does the lamentable Judeo-Christian Humanist approach to animals begin, and humans as actors in a functioning ecosystem end?"
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I'm sure you don't think that the way that humans currently farm animals equates to a "functioning ecosystem", given the amount of environmental damage that is being done. Or are you saying that humans have to hunt/farm animals in order for the ecosystem to function? Some clarity on this point would be helpful.
The way humans currently farm animals is not a functioning ecosystem. When, if we assume we are improving it, would it become one?
Just as an interesting thought, when I learn that native populations of Australia likely clubbed to death most of the large animals here when they arrived, then perhaps entrenched the cycle of bushfires which makes our flora such pyromaniacs, I see it as a tragedy, a 'normal' cycle of extinction, and a fascinating part of Australian ecosystems depending on how I look at it.
I think there's an assumption underlying your question, which is that there is some point of stability or equilibrium which constitutes the 'ideal' state of an ecosystem, and this is clearly not the case. Ecosystems are constantly in a state of flux due to, for example, changes in weather conditions and ratios of predators to prey. I think it's self-evident that if we at least stopped generating enormous lakes of faeces and urine that pollute groundwater, and stopped running hoofed animals on land with barely any topsoil, that would be a good start.
I follow a vegan diet. I do it solely for the welfare of the animals, because the animals in the livestock industry have a particularly hard fate, and because I believe that animals are not that different from humans. I believe they are a soul in a body, just like a human being is, and they long for love and happiness, just like humans do. I do take supplements, such as vitamin b12, algae oil, vitamin D3 and K2, spirulina and chlorella. Eric Dubay of the flat earth movement, who is also a vegan, made a video of what he eats. He does not mention supplements. Here is the video (What I Eat in a Day as a 15-Year High-Carb Vegan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvlmByUkob8.
What is your opinion regarding whether or not you need supplements when following a vegan diet?
I'm right with you on the differences between humans and non-human animals being differences in degree, not in kind. Non-humans animals experience emotions, care for their offspring, mourn their deceased loved ones, and express preferences for how they want to live.
Vitamin B12 is the only supplement that is required for vegans (because we no longer consume the soil bacteria that make it); the choice whether to take any other supplement should be based on your health status and results of blood tests.
I don't take a vitamin D supplement because I live in the subtropics and spend a lot of time outdoors. I also don't take vitamin K2 because I eat foods rich in vitamin K1, and gut bacteria convert K1 to K2. I don't take algae oil because my omega 3:6 ratio is good. I don't recommend spirulina because it contains B12 analogues that decrease uptake of 'real' B12. Chlorella is quite nutritious, but I don't take it because the real superfoods can be grown in your own backyard - green leafy vegetables!
30 years ago I started as a vegetarian, taking Spirulina for the first time. Before I was a vegetarian I was easily iron deficient, but after that, with Spirulina added to my diet, I was no longer iron deficient.
Thanks anyway for the tip regarding vit b12 analogues, I will keep it in mind.
As a long-term vegan I was appalled to see others reject the concept of personal self-determination and freedom for all, including human animals. I was disgusted that so many vegans including members of the so-called Animal Justice Party embraced vax mandates. Clearly, they adopt willful ignorance when it comes to the mice, rats and primates tortured and murdered during experiments of the jab. They also don't seem to care about the calf foetuses who are cut from their mother's wombs in slaughterhouses, so their heart serum can be drained and used for manufacturing the jabs.
The AJP has done more to set back the cause of animal rights than any other organisation in this country, IMHO. Their behaviour throughout the scamdemic has been appalling.
I am a vegan too, because I care about the animals. How is your opinion on needing supplements or not?
I take a vegan supplement and I don't give it a second thought. I lost my job (in epidemiology/public health research) because I refused the vax.
Good on you for standing strong. May I ask who was your former employer?
Vitamin B12 is the only supplement that is required; the choice whether to take any other supplement should be based on your health status and results of blood tests.
Hey Robyn and guests, I enjoyed the interview, thanks! It made me want to learn more about the moral veganism. Here are some starter questions if anyone wants to engage in one:
At what point does the lamentable Judeo-Christian Humanist approach to animals begin, and humans as actors in a functioning ecosystem end?
If humans acting superior in feeling, communication, power, intellect etc. is distasteful, why is it not also a negative thing that humans act superior morally, or as custodians of suffering?
What are the thoughts behind distinctions such as:
- Killing is morally wrong unless you need to - where does need begin and want end?
- Killing animals is morally wrong because they suffer, have emotions, have life goals, invest energy and care into their offspring, communicate. Killing plants is morally acceptable, yet they also suffer, have emotions, have life goals, invest energy and care into their offspring, communicate. Where does the line get drawn? Why are the other Kingdoms not drawn into the debate? Do people have strong moral feelings about mushrooms? Bacteria?
Brian Cox suggests that perhaps humans are the only thing in the universe that can attribute meaning to it (https://www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2022/10/momentum-conference-brian-cox.html). What do you think about using that as an important distinction between Humans and other animals? What about using it as a reason why we are more important than other animals?
Orca's will kill a baby seal and flick it like a football, cats will toy with prey, wasps will enslave their prey and cuckoos will cuckold other birds nests. None of this is strictly necessary to their survival. Are they accountable to questions of right or wrong? What is the distinction which makes humans accountable? Is it morally wrong that we 'allow' wasps to continue their mistreatment of animals and do nothing to stop them?
From one viewpoint, wheat has enslaved humans. We allocate significant land, labour, care and devotion to cultivating it and have turned it into a successful species. From another viewpoint, we raise wheat under unnatural conditions purely for our own benefit, kill it, then eat it. If our treatment of animals can also be described by such a wide difference in perspectives, why does one create such ambivalence, and another such a definitive stance?
If killing animals has more significance for me because they are more similar to me, is that not a version of Humans as dominant over nature, that life gets ranked in importance according to my preferences?
If humans should apply libertarian and moral principles to a wider group of species, why only the wider group of species similar to us? Why then, might it be awful if I did the same within human groups and had different levels of morality for, say, my children, based on which ones were more similar to myself?
If I understand farmers correctly, there are huge tracts of arid land in Australia which are suitable for roaming grazing cattle, but not for agriculture. The implications are that this has virtually no environmental impact. Is eating this beef O.K? Would eating it still be O.K if life was harsh for the cows in this arid land, and they suffered greatly being left to their own devices? What if their suffering was increased during periods where Human's did not kill and eat some of them, because they always, as nature is wont to do, expanded to consume all available resources to the point of regular thirst and hunger?
Does the moral responsibility of humans expand or contract with our fortunes? For example, we are currently dominating the planet and expanding our population and fewer of us are starving than ever before. We can afford to fight long and hard for animal rights. What changes if we degenerate into a fierce competition for survival as a species?
"Does the moral responsibility of humans expand or contract with our fortunes? For example, we are currently dominating the planet and expanding our population and fewer of us are starving than ever before. We can afford to fight long and hard for animal rights. What changes if we degenerate into a fierce competition for survival as a species?"
We will still have the moral responsibility, but few will be in a position to exercise it because they will be consumed by the struggle for survival. People routinely break their own moral codes in extraordinary circumstances (for example soldiers during wartime) and many struggle with their consciences afterward, for the rest of their lives.
"If I understand farmers correctly, there are huge tracts of arid land in Australia which are suitable for roaming grazing cattle, but not for agriculture. The implications are that this has virtually no environmental impact. Is eating this beef O.K? Would eating it still be O.K if life was harsh for the cows in this arid land, and they suffered greatly being left to their own devices? What if their suffering was increased during periods where Human's did not kill and eat some of them, because they always, as nature is wont to do, expanded to consume all available resources to the point of regular thirst and hunger?"
You do realise that cattle are an introduced species, and that they are bred in large numbers, usually by artificial insemination, purely for the purpose of being raised for slaughter? If they were no longer bred in this way, they would not occupy these arid landscapes, which would then be reoccupied by the wild animals that previously lived there and were adapted to the harsh environment. For example, female kangaroos can actually resorb their own foetuses in drought conditions when the joey would not survive, only to resume the pregnancy later when conditions are more favourable.
I do, and with all my questions and comments, I have no emotional attachment to the examples I present - i'm aiming for a pure thought exercise. I especially love that trait of Kangaroos. I often think about that trait in terms of the inevitable expansion of life to stretch resources. I think it would be a bit of knowledge I would use if I were a farmer trying to advocate for culling Kangaroos!
I also think of those farmers who interfere minimally with their cattle, which range freely, save for a yearly muster, on land that is not considered arable, and genuinely wonder where other people morally sit with such practices.
So perhaps a better example would have been kangaroos whose population is in equilibrium while being hunted for 1000 years by local aborigines, then the aborigines turn vegan and the kangaroos initially multiply, then disrupt the natural cycle of grasses, then experience mass starvation and die off. Would you recommend the vegan aborigines change their behaviour?
I don't find particular value in these hypotheticals as they're simply intellectual navel-gazing which distracts from the real moral questions that face us in the here and now. We don't have any agency over those hypothetical vegan aborigines and their hypothetical kangaroos; we do have agency over what we choose to eat at our next meal.
"If humans should apply libertarian and moral principles to a wider group of species, why only the wider group of species similar to us? Why then, might it be awful if I did the same within human groups and had different levels of morality for, say, my children, based on which ones were more similar to myself?"
Again, the distinction is based not on similarity to us but on the capacity to suffer. As each of your children would presumably have equal capacity for suffering, it would be reprehensible for you to be kinder to one, and crueller to another.
"If killing animals has more significance for me because they are more similar to me, is that not a version of Humans as dominant over nature, that life gets ranked in importance according to my preferences?"
The distinction is based on the capacity for suffering, and the moral responsibility to prevent avoidable suffering.
"From one viewpoint, wheat has enslaved humans. We allocate significant land, labour, care and devotion to cultivating it and have turned it into a successful species. From another viewpoint, we raise wheat under unnatural conditions purely for our own benefit, kill it, then eat it. If our treatment of animals can also be described by such a wide difference in perspectives, why does one create such ambivalence, and another such a definitive stance?"
See above. There is a vast qualitative difference between plants and animals. Blurring the lines between these kingdoms is intellectually dishonest.
"Orca's will kill a baby seal and flick it like a football, cats will toy with prey, wasps will enslave their prey and cuckoos will cuckold other birds nests. None of this is strictly necessary to their survival. Are they accountable to questions of right or wrong? What is the distinction which makes humans accountable? Is it morally wrong that we 'allow' wasps to continue their mistreatment of animals and do nothing to stop them?"
I am responsible for myself. I am responsible for raising my children to be responsible adults. I am responsible for avoiding inflicting suffering, and for preventing suffering when I can. I am not responsible for the behaviour of other people, let alone other species.
And I am responsible because I have the capacity to exercise that responsibility; that is why we don't imprison children or people who are clearly out of touch with reality even if they cause harm.
This is an interesting one. Some potential conflicts arise:
I am responsible for preventing suffering, hence I should stop the wasps from enslaving the cockroach. I am not responsible for the behaviour of other people or species, hence I should not stop the wasp.
I am responsible for my own behaviour, hence I should not eat animals if I think it is wrong. I am not responsible for the behaviour of other people, species (or evolutionary traits?), hence I should not stop omnivorous species from eating meat, the farmer from collecting eggs or my own body from gaining nutrition via meat, even if I think it is wrong.
I am responsible for my own behaviour, and I really want that person who is creating suffering in animals to stop profiting from it, so i'm making it my responsibility to change that person's behaviour as well. One of the best ways I can do this is to change the behaviour of 100 other people to eat vegan and put laws in place on farming practices. I am not responsible for just my own behaviour.
This is a very simplistic approach to the problems both of suffering and responsibility. As a human, I have the ability to choose an entirely plant-based diet which meets all my nutritional needs (with the exception of vitamin B12, which can be made without causing any suffering) and allows me to thrive. The same is not true for the wolf, or the wasp.
I have no right to MAKE other people change because that would be an infringement of their free will, but I can provide them with information that may prompt them to change their own behaviour if they realise that they have no nutritional need to consume animal products, and this act of sharing information and providing support for behaviour change, reduces net suffering.
"Brian Cox suggests that perhaps humans are the only thing in the universe that can attribute meaning to it (https://www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2022/10/momentum-conference-brian-cox.html). What do you think about using that as an important distinction between Humans and other animals? What about using it as a reason why we are more important than other animals?"
Cox may well be correct, and I strongly suspect that he is, but how would we know, since we can't communicate with any other species in order to find out? In any case, why would this particular distinction imply greater importance? Personally, I think it implies greater responsibility, which is an entirely different matter.
"What are the thoughts behind distinctions such as:
- Killing animals is morally wrong because they suffer, have emotions, have life goals, invest energy and care into their offspring, communicate. Killing plants is morally acceptable, yet they also suffer, have emotions, have life goals, invest energy and care into their offspring, communicate. Where does the line get drawn? Why are the other Kingdoms not drawn into the debate? Do people have strong moral feelings about mushrooms? Bacteria?"
Could you please provide evidence that plants, fungi or bacteria experience emotions? The absence of a central nervous system would seem to rule out this possibility. Also, any evolutionary biologist will tell you that the principle purpose of emotions is to motivate action, for example fear activates a fight/flight response. What would be the point of a plant having emotions if it is unable, for example, to move itself in order to escape a predator?
For the non-central nervous system life, I am equating emotions to desire/wants - as in they want to live and be comfortable and reproduce, and would be 'sad' to be killed an eaten. I generously call this, and genetic drives/responses to stimuli, 'primitive emotions' - recognising this as a long way away from complex emotions such as guilt.
For plants, I'm referring to all the studies claiming that plants communicate and have behaviours which seem to indicate personal preferences, as well as empathy for their neighbours. Eg. (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/may/02/plants-talk-to-each-other-through-their-roots)
Hence the 'choices' a plant can take are things like changing the composition of toxins in leaves, the width of stomata in anticipation of water, the facing of their leaves or the timing of their reproductive cycles.
Evolutionary biologists can, and do, claim that even humans do not really have emotions, that 100% of our emotions and choices will eventually be explained as simply response to stimuli. That's in the 'Behave' book by Robert Sapolsky I think you'll like.
Even further down the rabbity-hole is the theory that consciousness itself is the fundamental phenomena which gives rise to matter, or even space time. This is a serious discussion right now. I mention it since, if it has any basis, this would be a point in favour of not taking the central nervous system or brain as a driving factor of consciousness, or just perhaps, emotions. Stephen Wolfram with his Cellular Automota might be a good start on this if interested, but it is beyond me.
As I recall, Descartes justified his unbelievably cruel vivisection experiments on dogs by claiming that their howls of pain were merely 'response to stimuli'. Are you really going to go down that road? Are the feelings that you have when you gaze at your wife 'response to stimuli'? Do you think that when you see your unborn child for the first time, the emotions that you will feel will merely be 'response to stimuli'? Come now. I don't think you really believe this. There's a point where you have to detach yourself from the compulsive reductionism of (some) scientists and just check in with your lived experience and quite frankly, your common sense. BTW Sapolsky is a neuroscientist, not an evolutionary biologist, and if he's straying into commentary on evolutionary biology then he's waaaaaay out of his lane.
As I have written before, the philosophy underlying veganism is that we, as conscious beings, have a moral obligation to minimise the amount of suffering that we cause. Compare the capacity for suffering of a pumpkin with that of a puppy, or a calf, or a sheep, and all of this obfuscation drops way.
I don't have strong beliefs on this topic. Or rather, they have never been permanently swayed toward one argument only. I had the time and inclination for a chat on morality which I understood was an offer made on the podcast. All morality discussions are hypotheticals and obfuscation. If the questions or the way I pose them causes angst, or you do not have the time or inclination to go into them, ignore them. They are not intended to support a particular view, only to explore ideas. I just (sometimes) really enjoy discussions like this, but only if they are about concepts.
Sapolsky does go waaaaaay out of his lane in the book, and no I do not share his views, or the views of the evolutionary biologists he references, I just consider them.
I do the same for Descartes. Even if he tortured dogs, I find simplicity in his "I think therefore I am" thought experiment, so I would still love my wife and baby, and think Robyn is fantastic, even if I was just a computer program 'responding to stimuli' and thinking those things were emotions.
And yes, of course I am going down that road when "protection from suffering", or the 'greater good' has historically been used to cause so much of it.
I used to love utilitarian ethics until I really got a deeper understanding of how it can be abused in the last 3 years.
There are many strands of moral philosophy, but I suppose I sway towards what you might call 'practical ethics', or how to live as good a life as you can in a world full of unfairness - including the completely unearned privilege that you and I both have, as people born into caring families in prosperous countries. The endless drain-circling arguments about hypothetical situations remind me of Catholic theologians conducting scholarly debates on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, while the Church was a festering swamp of corruption.
Even if you hewed to the utilitarian school of ethics, the policies of the last 3 years utterly fail the test as they have done far more harm to far more people than would have occurred if public health authorities had done absolutely nothing. However, the reason I reject utilitarianism is because it overrides personal freedom to choose, which to me is an absolute right unless the rights of others are transgressed upon in the exercise of that right (and no, I don't accept Dershowitz's argument that my freedom ends when it comes to my ability to infect someone, because I'm not responsible for the poor state of other people's health that might render them abnormally susceptible to illness; it's up to them to decide whether to risk going out in public if they're that crook). Also, there is the practical issue of objectively assessing the greater good. Who is to be delegated to carry out this calculation? Certainly not the public health authorities who have utterly failed the public in the past 3 years (and, I would argue, long before this).
"What are the thoughts behind distinctions such as:
- Killing is morally wrong unless you need to - where does need begin and want end?"
I suppose if you were to adopt a pacifist philosophy, you might argue that if something/someone was harming you, then your commitment to non-violence would mean that you should let them do so rather than sully yourself by responding to violence with force. Frankly, I think this is ridiculous on its face. Aside from anything else, we owe it to our loved ones and our dependents to fight for our lives if attacked.
"If humans acting superior in feeling, communication, power, intellect etc. is distasteful, why is it not also a negative thing that humans act superior morally, or as custodians of suffering?"
I think you've missed the point here. Humans consider ourselves superior to other animals because we consider that certain of our attributes in which we are apparently superior to non-human animals, such as communication skills and intellect, are inherent markers of complete superiority. Talk about motivated reasoning! As for humans "acting superior morally", do you mean by that, that it is repugnant to take moral considerations into account when you have the capacity for moral reasoning? What would be the point of having that capacity if one did not exercise it?
Removing superiority, of course moral capacity should be used if possible.
One way I was thinking was that there is a certain morality to the law of the jungle. Eat or be eaten.
The other was simply that complete superiority over all other life is considered wrong by, for example, gaianists. Hence, it seems like we get ourselves in trouble by assuming intellectual, communicative or control of resources = superiority. The trouble goes like this: We are superior, so we can eat animals and use them for our own benefit, I'm off to factory farm some hens.
Could not a feeling of moral superiority lead to the same problems?
In practical terms, it might look like this:
We are morally superior to other life, in fact, we are needed for the management of ecosystems, so better that any other life should suffer or die than a human life, therefore I'm gonna go factory farm some hens.
There is no 'morality' in the law of the jungle; it's just a struggle for survival in which there is no room (and, it could be argued, capacity) for moral reasoning.
I haven't argued that we're 'morally superior' to other animals, simply that it is self-evident that we have the capacity for moral reasoning which, to me at least, implies the obligation to exercise it.
"At what point does the lamentable Judeo-Christian Humanist approach to animals begin, and humans as actors in a functioning ecosystem end?"
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I'm sure you don't think that the way that humans currently farm animals equates to a "functioning ecosystem", given the amount of environmental damage that is being done. Or are you saying that humans have to hunt/farm animals in order for the ecosystem to function? Some clarity on this point would be helpful.
How about a rephrase as:
The way humans currently farm animals is not a functioning ecosystem. When, if we assume we are improving it, would it become one?
Just as an interesting thought, when I learn that native populations of Australia likely clubbed to death most of the large animals here when they arrived, then perhaps entrenched the cycle of bushfires which makes our flora such pyromaniacs, I see it as a tragedy, a 'normal' cycle of extinction, and a fascinating part of Australian ecosystems depending on how I look at it.
I think there's an assumption underlying your question, which is that there is some point of stability or equilibrium which constitutes the 'ideal' state of an ecosystem, and this is clearly not the case. Ecosystems are constantly in a state of flux due to, for example, changes in weather conditions and ratios of predators to prey. I think it's self-evident that if we at least stopped generating enormous lakes of faeces and urine that pollute groundwater, and stopped running hoofed animals on land with barely any topsoil, that would be a good start.
Lots of thought-provoking questions here. I'll take them one by one.
I follow a vegan diet. I do it solely for the welfare of the animals, because the animals in the livestock industry have a particularly hard fate, and because I believe that animals are not that different from humans. I believe they are a soul in a body, just like a human being is, and they long for love and happiness, just like humans do. I do take supplements, such as vitamin b12, algae oil, vitamin D3 and K2, spirulina and chlorella. Eric Dubay of the flat earth movement, who is also a vegan, made a video of what he eats. He does not mention supplements. Here is the video (What I Eat in a Day as a 15-Year High-Carb Vegan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvlmByUkob8.
What is your opinion regarding whether or not you need supplements when following a vegan diet?
I'm right with you on the differences between humans and non-human animals being differences in degree, not in kind. Non-humans animals experience emotions, care for their offspring, mourn their deceased loved ones, and express preferences for how they want to live.
Vitamin B12 is the only supplement that is required for vegans (because we no longer consume the soil bacteria that make it); the choice whether to take any other supplement should be based on your health status and results of blood tests.
I don't take a vitamin D supplement because I live in the subtropics and spend a lot of time outdoors. I also don't take vitamin K2 because I eat foods rich in vitamin K1, and gut bacteria convert K1 to K2. I don't take algae oil because my omega 3:6 ratio is good. I don't recommend spirulina because it contains B12 analogues that decrease uptake of 'real' B12. Chlorella is quite nutritious, but I don't take it because the real superfoods can be grown in your own backyard - green leafy vegetables!
Thank you for your detailed reply.
30 years ago I started as a vegetarian, taking Spirulina for the first time. Before I was a vegetarian I was easily iron deficient, but after that, with Spirulina added to my diet, I was no longer iron deficient.
Thanks anyway for the tip regarding vit b12 analogues, I will keep it in mind.
You could try skipping the spirulina and see if your iron status stays good; chances are you don't need it.