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[dreiche2]

Well, like I said, the "what is pain" question is very difficult on many levels (philosophical, neuroscientifically, semantically) and leads into the whole consciousness debate, which will never really be fully explained (although we're getting closer, I think).

Anyway, while I don't mind the discussion going on now, I'd just point out again that for the original question (vegetarianism or not), the whole "do plants have pain" is a red herring, because

*) eating meat kills more plants than eating plants

and

*) even if there was a choice in between plants and meat alone, then I should base my decision on what I'm fairly sure off (i.e. animals feel pain).

But otherwise, I don't want to interrupt the discussion now taking place.

[Soadreqm]

But what if you kill (and eat) someone who has killed other people?  You said that killing other people would remove their reason to not kill you, so that means you would not have a reason to not kill a murderer.  You could then be provided with someone relatively healthy that you could kill and then dine upon.

Well, you can't do that because killing people is unethical. Did we not already establish this? You don't have much of a social reason not to kill a murderer, but Killing is still Wrong. If it wasn't, there would have been nothing wrong with the murderer's actions.

Anyway, while I don't mind the discussion going on now, I'd just point out again that for the original question (vegetarianism or not), the whole "do plants have pain" is a red herring, because [reasons]

Yes, I agree. It's just fun to argue about arbitary things.

[Pilsu]

Well, eating things that die on their own is unhygienic, and killing people is wrong. As for why killing people is wrong, well, that's pretty much the only point all philosophers have more or less agreed upon. It's counter-productive to the society, people are mostly not naturally inclined to do it, if you kill people, they no longer have a reason not to kill you, and it's been defined as wrong by pretty much everyone with any inkling of authority in the matter.

We kill each other by the hundreds every day. I'm more curious why it's acceptable to go to another man's home to kill him over petty shit like politics but suddenly it's a war crime if you eat him. All the while the enemy is being bombarded with anything up to phosphorous which is apparently fine and dandy. It's not like it's genocide or something, all you're doing is dropping sticky liquids that burst on flames on contact with air on orphanages. Those are critical military targets

Not really a proponent of eating people but I don't see why our flesh is so fucking sacred considering how poorly we treat each other in the first place. Not to mention I wager people would think me insane if I ate an amputated limb, even if it's my own

Well, you can't do that because killing people is unethical.

Killing innocents is. It gets more complicated when retribution is involved

[Kagus]

And of the points you described, most can be negated by situation.  Counter-productivity to the society?  If you remove something that's causing productivity(someone who is already killing other people), then you are helping productivity.  Right?

Most people are not naturally inclined to it.  Most people are not naturally inclined to do a lot of things that people do.  This isn't exactly a rather firm point...

Then we get to what you said about taking away the public's reason not to kill you if you kill someone else.  That's already been covered.

But then we have authorities on the subject (I'm assuming you mean human ethics, not killing people) saying that it's wrong.   Seeing as ethical matters are by their nature entirely subjective, I have to ask who has authority with such things.  You mind providing a few examples?  (Even if they are glaringly obvious.  I just want all the info on the table)

[Earthquake Damage]

Go away for a few days and the thread asplodes.
Warning:  Incoming wall of text.

The part about people living in poverty

This part of the discussion reminds me of Chris Rock.  "If you're one of those chosen few people on this Earth lucky enough to get your hands on a steak, bite the shit out of it!"

VEGETARIANISM IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.

QFT

Oh, and with Gandhi, Hitler, Einstein and Christian Bale on my side, I have to be right, right?

Seriously, dude.  Batman. 

I say: endure.

In enduring, grow strong.

The flesh knows that it suffers, even when the mind does not.

I love that game.  So much.

Define "feel pain". Feeling is neurological. It's limited to animals. You're anthropomorphizing plants too much.

For instance, a complicated machine made by humans right now can be made to detect when it's in trouble and react accordingly. This is the response it has; pain is not part of it. Same goes for plants.

See this:

Well, like I said, the "what is pain" question is very difficult on many levels (philosophical, neuroscientifically, semantically)

My point:  G-Flex is arguing semantics here (and proceeding to make a value judgment based on arbitrary definitions).  "We define pain as X, and Y is not X."  The neurological response and/or state we define as pain exists.  Whether we call it "pain" or not doesn't affect its existence.  Similarly, whether we call a particular plant's response (or lack thereof) "pain" does not change the response.  Ultimately, what matters here is that G-Flex does not feel a sense of kinship with plants the way he does with, say, cows.  Plants are alien enough to not warrant the same ethical considerations.

Well, you can't do that because killing people is unethical. Did we not already establish this? You don't have much of a social reason not to kill a murderer, but Killing is still Wrong. If it wasn't, there would have been nothing wrong with the murderer's actions.

Moral absolutism?  Or merely an assumption about the values of your fellow forum-goers?  Killing people is not strictly unethical if you examine the full spectrum of human culture.  Even if you qualify your argument with "killing innocent people is unethical," there is still leeway in how we define "people" and "innocent."  If your target is declared/assumed "guilty" (in the same nonspecific sense that we use to describe innocents) or "inhuman," he becomes fair game.

Beyond that, consider also that you're declaring an action unethical.  Actions with no context have no value and cannot be judged.  Thrusting my arm forward is meaningless if I don't give you the necessary context.  Suppose I add that I'm holding a knife and stabbing my neighbor.  You might say that in that context, my behavior is unethical.  If I further add that my neighbor is charging me and someone else (his wife, or little Timmy who lives down the street, or whoever) with an axe, things become fuzzy.  You might declare killing unethical, period.  Others might commend me for defending another.  Still others might commend me for defending myself.

[Kagus]

Maybe he was just hungry.

[Earthquake Damage]

Suppose I'm starving and decide to eat my neighbor's dog.  Suppose I then chase it down and, upon cornering it, it attacks me.  Is it unethical for the dog to defend itself simply because I'm hungry?  Would it be unethical if the dog were my only available food source?  Would it be unethical if the dog were instead another human?

My beef, I suppose, is that Soadreqm declares "killing is wrong" with no qualifiers.  Perhaps, to him, it is, but there is no absolute consensus on the matter.  Furthermore, even if the whole of humanity unanimously agreed, that does not make it true.  Believing we can throw fireballs like Mario/Elminster/[insert character here] doesn't change the fact that we can't.

Well, I can't... 

[Paul]

People always criticize the treatment of animals, but what about the treatment of plants? We chop up the poor little grass plants just to make room for the plants that we like, then we take those poor little baby plants and bury them alive – forcing them to live their entire lives jammed together in some field somewhere. Then when they’re finally old enough to start enjoying themselves, we ride through with a big machine and slaughter them mercilessly – all for the sole purpose of stealing their babies and eating them.

And look at the trillions of insects and rodents we slaughter every day with horrible poisons, just because they were inconvenient to us. They were eating a little bit of our food or just plain being alive in the wrong place - and BAM, we give them all a horrible death.

[dreiche2]

Dude, that has been addressed... see top post on this very page for a summary.

Edit: At least when you were trying to imply vegetarianism is hypocritical. As for the plants themselves, like I and others said before, I think there are good reasons to believe that plants don't feel pain, so you might want to address these points.

[Tormy]

People always criticize the treatment of animals, but what about the treatment of plants? We chop up the poor little grass plants just to make room for the plants that we like, then we take those poor little baby plants and bury them alive – forcing them to live their entire lives jammed together in some field somewhere. Then when they’re finally old enough to start enjoying themselves, we ride through with a big machine and slaughter them mercilessly – all for the sole purpose of stealing their babies and eating them.

Seriously, I can't believe that some of you are talking about this. "We are cruel! We kill plants!"..what the?! 
Even if plants would feel anything, who would care about that? You must_eat_something you know. I can understand those vegas, who refuse to eat meat, because they are totally against killing the animals, but this kind of discussion is just fubar.

[Torak]

"Stop eating material things! Eat solidified air or gases!"


"Air can feel pain too!"

[G-Flex]

People always criticize the treatment of animals, but what about the treatment of plants? We chop up the poor little grass plants just to make room for the plants that we like, then we take those poor little baby plants and bury them alive – forcing them to live their entire lives jammed together in some field somewhere. Then when they’re finally old enough to start enjoying themselves, we ride through with a big machine and slaughter them mercilessly – all for the sole purpose of stealing their babies and eating them.

Are you trolling us?
No, seriously, are you trolling us?

If you think concepts like enjoyment and and suffering apply to plants any  more than they do to rocks or air or water, you might want to go on wikipedia or some sort of philosophy/logic textbook and look up "anthropomorphism". You're attributing human characteristics to something which is not evidenced in any way to have them, all in the name of making vegetarians look bad... or something. I can't even tell anymore, and I can't even believe people are saying this with a straight face, assuming you are.

[Qmarx]

Are animals evidenced as having human characteristics?

Assuming consciousness is needed to perceive pain, is there any evidence that agriculturally raised animals can feel pain.

Or, to ask it another way:
Do you think chickens have consciousnesses?

Given that the evidence for this is about as compelling to many people as that for plants... the metaphor seems apt.

[Paul]

Hahaha, I guess you can say I was 'trolling' you. I was being sarcastic, but as we all know sarcasm doesn't translate on the internet.

I thought at the time I was writing it that people would know it HAD to be sarcasm, because people THAT crazy just don't exist... And then I looked around and realized I'm horribly wrong... They're everywhere! Aaaah!

On another note, I never said "plants feel pain" or that "we're cruel for eating plants," you just assumed that after reading the ridiculous paragraph about "slaughtering plants and eating their babies."

As far as my real opinion on the matter, I'm an omnivore. If I go fishing and catch fish, I eat them. I don't make them feel unnecessary pain during the process - I always kill them quickly by penetrating the brain with my filet knife, they die pretty much instantly - but I don't feel that there is anything wrong with killing and eating them. I'm fine with eating animals - it's just natural for animals to eat other animals, it's the way the ecosystem works. If we didn't have predators eating prey, the prey animal populations would balloon out of proportion and eat up the food supply until they starve.

But on that note, I also don't kill anything without a good reason (food being one such good reason, of course!) - I'm one of those nuts who will take an insect outside instead of squashing it (like the mud daubers always flying into my house, but not including invasive things like house roaches). I also don't believe that things should be made to suffer any more than necessary. I've seen people that skin fish while still alive, or even cook and eat them while alive - and I feel that is wrong. But just killing them for food and eating them is fine by me.

And while we're on the subject of agricultural animals, slaughtering cattle can actually be done in a very humane way. Such as the circular fence leading to the machine that kills them. They can see each other walking into it, and they don't need to be pushed into it - they follow along calmly. Granted they're probably ignorant of the fact that the place they are walking is going to push a metal spike into their brain, but walking to it willingly is much more humane than dragging them to it (and actually much more cost effective, for that matter).

As far as animals like cats and dogs, I honestly don't see why people make the distinction between 'pet' animals and 'food' animals. They're all animals. As far as I'm concerned, instead of giving stray pets the equivalent of a lethal injection and burning the bodies (or whatever the hell they do with all the corpses) - they should round them up and send them to a slaughterhouse and use the revenue to pay for the animal control services. There are plenty of people around the world who could use the extra food, too. Since so many people find it objectionable the price of it would likely be low - and I for one wouldn't mind trying a bit of cat or dog meat, as long as it tasted good and the price was right. It could be a good source of protein for the lower class and a solution to the stray pet problem all in one.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm going to go and take Rover down the street and bbq him, that's an entirely different thing - ol' Rover there is someone's pet. If a guy had a pet cow I would feel the exact same way about it, it's just not right to kill someone elses pet. But in the case of unowned animals, and especially animals raised for the purpose of food, it's perfectly ethical to me.

And, for the record, I am not being sarcastic here.

-edit- I was actually planning on a followup post saying how killing plants was worse than animals and that I was a carnivore because I found eating meat to be the moral high ground, but I decided against it...

[dreiche2]

Are animals evidenced as having human characteristics?

Assuming consciousness is needed to perceive pain, is there any evidence that agriculturally raised animals can feel pain.

Or, to ask it another way:
Do you think chickens have consciousnesses?

Given that the evidence for this is about as compelling to many people as that for plants... the metaphor seems apt.

Well, are you playing devil's advocate? Do *you* think animals feel as little or as much pain as plants? Also, what is the evidence or lack thereof you're talking about?

Like I said, the problem with consciousness is that you cannot prove anything (well in principle you cannot prove *anything* anyway - like that anything exists apart from you - , but consciousness has something tricky about it on top of that). For example, I cannot be sure that any human around me has a consciousness. Of course, pragmatically speaking, I can be pretty sure.

Now, on that pragmatic level, saying that I'm 100% sure that other humans feel pain (here implying consciously), then I would say you can be sure 99 % or more that other mammals feel pain. Why? Because they are evolutionary, anatomically and behaviourally very close to us (like I said before btw), and pain perception is likely one of the oldest and most basic perceptions there is.

If that helps and gives some credibility to my arguments (of course I could be making this up), I'm doing a neuroscience related PhD, and thus know a little bit about this stuff. And mammalian brains are all very similar. All the basic brain structures are the same, and the differences are mostly quantitative.

It's difficult (ultimately impossible) to say which kind of brain structures create consciousness and which not, but given that those of other mammals are essentially the same as those of humans, and that mammals are so similar in behaviour, I would say that if you want to argue that they do not have consciousness, the burden of "proof" lies on your side.

With chickens/birds it already gets more complicated. If I remember correctly, they do not have a neocortex, which I suppose is mostly indicated to be at least correlated to consciousness. That of course does not mean they do not have it, and there are some structures which are thought to fulfil similar roles as the mammalian neocortex. Taking into account the complex and intelligent behaviour of birds, I think there it is plausible that they have consciousness.

But even in case of doubt, you might as well play it safe and eat plants instead of birds, too....

As far as my real opinion on the matter, I'm an omnivore. If I go fishing and catch fish, I eat them. I don't make them feel unnecessary pain during the process - I always kill them quickly by penetrating the brain with my filet knife, they die pretty much instantly - but I don't feel that there is anything wrong with killing and eating them. I'm fine with eating animals - it's just natural for animals to eat other animals, it's the way the ecosystem works. If we didn't have predators eating prey, the prey animal populations would balloon out of proportion and eat up the food supply until they starve.

I'd just like to point out that being natural does not imply being ethical . After all, murder and rape are surely natural, too.

Also, we're not talking about the natural balance of the ecosystem here. We're talking about literally billions of farm animals that simply would not exist if we stopped eating meat.

As for the rest of your post, I think I agree with your direction. You say

* you don't think killing for food is inherently wrong.
* you think animals shouldn't suffer unnecessarily.
* there are humane ways to kill animals.

Now, simply based on these points some people would conclude it would be justified to become vegetarians, saying that the amount of suffering involved with farming is simply and plainly unnecessary, seeing as there is an alternative to eating meat (plants), and eating meat is merely a luxury  (btw, even if you think eating meat is necessary for health reasons, it surely would be in much lower quantities than it happens today).

And even if you don't oppose killing animals and there exist humane ways to rise and kill them, the question is what methods are *actually* used, and you should base your decision on that. To give an analogue, I think it is justified to boycott "blood" diamonds, and that is not changed by the fact that the mining of diamonds is not in principle unethical, nor that there exist ethically mined diamonds (i.e. if you only boycott the blood diamonds).

Btw, I'm not trying to convince you here to become a vegetarian, but rather that the reasoning behind becoming one can be sound.