Ah the utilitarian approach. You’re just one species away from saying it’s okay to kill people because most people eat meat. Afterall the math problem is exactly the same for people, except people eat even more meat so from a math point of view it’s even more logical to kill a person than a dog. I’ll walk you through this conundrum.
You can choose to say it is okay to kill people who eat meat and good luck talking about the ethics of killing people.
You can choose to say it’s not okay to kill people, but now you’re not treating life equally because now a human life is worth more than the dogs life. So what’s stopping me from saying that the the dog is worth more than the 4 animals who get killed?
And if you want me to prove the dog is worth more than the animals I’ll just ask you to prove that a human is worth more than the dog. If you can’t prove that you’re back to saying it’s okay to kill people.
You can’t solve this problem through utilitarianism and then talk about ethics because utilitarian solutions often end up being unethical.
I would rather say we should make it illegal to do things that cause an inordinate amount of suffering to animals. I would prefer not to kill the dog either, but since most people in this thread seem to believe a vegan diet with supplements is impossible for carnivore pets, what other option is there?
Personally I see some difference between a dog and a human just as I see a difference between an ant and a dog, probably based on how consciously aware they are. Obviously I would hope to have legal or social consequences for people who eat meat. However If I had someone who would pay someone else to torture 1 animal a day, and then eat it, meaning ~30,000 animals would be tortured throughout their life, and I have no way to make them stop besides killing them, what is your proposed solution? I want to hear the non utilitarian answer to this problem, in this hypothetical where killing them is the only way to stop the behavior.
The most “moral” thing to do would be for vegans to make it impossible for factory farming to exist, but veganism is still a minority and doesn’t have that kind of power. You’ve baked in that the only options are “kill people who eat meat” or “do nothing.” In a situation where all humans were strict carnivores, that’s a much harder question. Should someone be allowed to exist when their existence relies on the suffering of others? I don’t know and luckily I don’t have to know because we can stop factory farming without killing anyone, and put pets on a maybe-suboptimal-requires-monitoring “abusive” diet, rather than factory farming millions of animals for them.
e: this is basically just a more complicated version of the trolley problem, would you kill one person to save 4 others? what about kill one person to save 200 animals? I guess if you don’t value animals at all, you would never kill the person. For me, yes at some point there would be a limit, where that is it’s hard to answer.
Ah the utilitarian approach. You’re just one species away from saying it’s okay to kill people because most people eat meat. Afterall the math problem is exactly the same for people, except people eat even more meat so from a math point of view it’s even more logical to kill a person than a dog. I’ll walk you through this conundrum.
You can choose to say it is okay to kill people who eat meat and good luck talking about the ethics of killing people.
You can choose to say it’s not okay to kill people, but now you’re not treating life equally because now a human life is worth more than the dogs life. So what’s stopping me from saying that the the dog is worth more than the 4 animals who get killed?
And if you want me to prove the dog is worth more than the animals I’ll just ask you to prove that a human is worth more than the dog. If you can’t prove that you’re back to saying it’s okay to kill people.
You can’t solve this problem through utilitarianism and then talk about ethics because utilitarian solutions often end up being unethical.
I would rather say we should make it illegal to do things that cause an inordinate amount of suffering to animals. I would prefer not to kill the dog either, but since most people in this thread seem to believe a vegan diet with supplements is impossible for carnivore pets, what other option is there?
Personally I see some difference between a dog and a human just as I see a difference between an ant and a dog, probably based on how consciously aware they are. Obviously I would hope to have legal or social consequences for people who eat meat. However If I had someone who would pay someone else to torture 1 animal a day, and then eat it, meaning ~30,000 animals would be tortured throughout their life, and I have no way to make them stop besides killing them, what is your proposed solution? I want to hear the non utilitarian answer to this problem, in this hypothetical where killing them is the only way to stop the behavior.
The most “moral” thing to do would be for vegans to make it impossible for factory farming to exist, but veganism is still a minority and doesn’t have that kind of power. You’ve baked in that the only options are “kill people who eat meat” or “do nothing.” In a situation where all humans were strict carnivores, that’s a much harder question. Should someone be allowed to exist when their existence relies on the suffering of others? I don’t know and luckily I don’t have to know because we can stop factory farming without killing anyone, and put pets on a maybe-suboptimal-requires-monitoring “abusive” diet, rather than factory farming millions of animals for them.
e: this is basically just a more complicated version of the trolley problem, would you kill one person to save 4 others? what about kill one person to save 200 animals? I guess if you don’t value animals at all, you would never kill the person. For me, yes at some point there would be a limit, where that is it’s hard to answer.