this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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I have so many arguments against this I don’t even know were to start, so I’ll keep it simple: you need to abandon anthropocentrism.
Humans are animals and not particularly special or even intelligent ones. (Intelligence being defined as the ability to solve problems and learn from them) Our “intelligence” is actually just cumulative generationally passed knowledge. It is not clear that humans are indeed more rational than a tiger or that tigers or non human animals in general lack rationality, except only in the way in which a human would define rationality which cannot be a universal claim.
I'm not op and I'm an omnivore and i have to tell you, your reply is ... not a good response to what op said. It's full of strawmen arguments and nonsense. You seem to be arguing that humans can't choose to be vegetarians? And you veer way off into nowhere arguing about what you think intelligence is? I dunno, for someone who said they have a ton of arguments, you sure picked a bunch of bad ones
I believe they are saying you can't place a universal standard of behaviour or ethics onto the multitude of human animals that live on the earth
Even if that's what they're saying, that isn't a meaningful argument against what op said.
It is possible for a human to live a long and healthy life without eating meat.
It is not possible for a tiger to live a long and healthy life without eating meat. (without human intervention)
Humans can choose to be vegetarians of course, that doesn’t mean that killing animals is immoral or wrong, necessarily. That notion can only exist if you think humans have a superior place in the world to that of animals. Anthropocentrism is central to this idea that humans are the only animals who cannot kill other animals to feed themselves without it being immoral.
Ie a chimp could choose to eat fruits if he wanted but they also often eat monkeys even if fruit is available. How is that different, from a human choosing to eat a cow even if he could eat grain? The difference is only that you think the human “knows better” than the chimp.
Your argument is: If animals do a thing then it can't be immoral for us to do it. I'm sure at this point in the discussion you realize that that's not a valid argument
That is not my argument at all. I never made such a universal claim.
My claim is that all animals have a right to feed themselves and as a part of that right there is a right to kill other animals. Therefore it is not more immoral for a human to kill an animal than it is for a tiger. I say that only in this context, because our biology evolved to also use meat. We can survive without it sure, but it is suboptimal. It is also true that we should be eating way less meat than we do. Therefore the immoral thing is not killing or eating animals but rather the industry around it.
Look at human history we ate each other and other human species. We are not special we are not chosen by God. We are just animals that think we are special. Even being vegan has an effect on the earth destroying habitat ruining bio diversity chemicals getting into the environment.
No one said any of the stuff you seem to be arguing against. This is called a strawman fallacy if you're unfamiliar with it.
In relating to other animals, there is no reason our standard should be any different than animals to one another. In relating to other people, it is reasonable to have a different standard.
Would you consider bestiality immoral then? The animal equivalent of bestiality (interspecies sex) occurs regularly between different species after all.
I am not able to provide an objective moral reason if other animals may be treated differently from humans. If consent cannot be taken into account, raping animals is not immoral.
The sole argument could be that bestiality harms or at the very least exposes an animal to a significant risk of harm. But then again, killing an animal certainly harms it much worse but this would be morally acceptable in such a system, so the harm an animal faces isn't really part of the equation.
this doesn't refute what I said.
What I tried to say is:
If treating other animals like they behave towards other animals is acceptable, the only reason beastiality would be illegal is because of "ew".
I'd say that's one reason why our standards should be higher than the standards of animals. Suffering is bad even when non-humans are affected.
laws are bad, and don't have anything to do with morality
Substitute illegal with "prohibited according to the social contract of your anarchist commune" then. Or with whatever form of society and its rule system you would like to live in where the rules are a moral guide.
that's not how morality (or rules) works at all. morals are formed from an ethical system. deontologists have the categorical imperative, utilitarianism and hedonism have the maximization of pleasure, divine command theorists have the command of the deity, virtue ethicists have moderation between competing extremes. if any of them prohibit sex with animals, it's probably only divine command theory and maybe the categorical imperative. I guess the big "eww" factor could put off the virtue ethicists, too (bestiality isn't very aesthetic).
rules and laws are meant to keep social order. where they prohibit thing like killing or some other ethically bad thing, it is only a coincidence.
Nobody invoked intelligence or rationality. You have misread and now you are just confusing things.
To keep it simple: A tiger's life depends on killing other animals. A human being can live to a record-setting age and never kill another animal. The tiger has no choice but to be violent to vulnerable individuals, but when a human does it, the lack of necessity makes it cruelty and abuse. When a human does have such a necessity, the math works out differently, but in the context of the comic strip, the subject had no necessity to kill those vulnerable individuals.
All life is supported by displacing or ending others. Even if you don't view plants as ethically problematic, the agricultural practices to feed civilisation, by definition, must upset the natural ecological balance and harm animals.
The reason a vegan doesn't feel upset about eating produce is the degree of removal from the animal harm. They don't see the deforestation or destruction of wetlands or the damage done by pesticides or in fertilizer production. It's no different than an omnivore not feeling guilt when a butcher kills an animal (even if they wouldn't do it themselves).
This harm has always happened since we developed coordinated agrarian societies. The most ethical stance is that humans should return to their natural ecological niche, hunter-gatherers with minimal reliance on agriculture.
However, veganism isn't possible in such a society. The ability to supplement the human diet with plant based alternatives at scale requires disruptive agriculture. Thus strict veganism* in this lens is inherently self defeating.
*The vegan concept of harm reduction isn't impacted here, there are still lots of reasons to go plant based
I'd like to see a single human alive today who because of their actions has not killed another animal? I guarantee every single human alive today has been responsible for killing an animal. Sure it might not have been for food but your actions have resulted in the death of an animal.
It doesn’t need to be invoked, the higher moral agency placed on humans hinges on the notion of superior human rationality. You could choose to be a vegetarian and choose not to kill animals, but that doesn’t mean that it is a more ethical or moral choice because human biology evolved to require meat other wise it requires planning and supplementation that is not necessarily possible outside of industrial societies. I do agree that choosing not to eat animals due to the industrial nature of meat production is a more ethical choice, but not that killing animals is necessarily wrong.
I may not be explaining it well but basically: the idea that humans killing animals is wrong can only exist if you think humans are superior to animals. I reject that notion and that’s where my argument comes from.
That's a really bad argument, sorry. Of course we place a higher moral agency on humans than on animals - otherwise you'd have yo argue that other atrocities like rape and murder shouldn't be morally judged either.
A tiger cannot make moral decisions. You can. So you will be judged if you don't.
Not to hold yourself to a higher standard morally than a literal predator would be downright psychopathic.
You are placing a higher moral agency on humans because you make some special distinction between humans and other animals.
Humans are just other animals and they have diverse conceptions of morality and ethics. Rape and murder are not equivalent to killing for sustanance.
Comparing our moral behaviour to a 'literal predator' is a value judgement where you denigrate animal behaviour and elevate human behaviour as somehow superior.
Well, obviously. Because I believe I can be held to a higher standard than a tiger. They kill and eat disabled babies. Is that something you would deem acceptable for humans to do?
You are judging a tiger from a human centric perspective and making a claim that we know better than it.
Even that article point out that unlike lions tigers are not a social species. Therefore our sense of morality is not applicable to the tiger. A disabled or strange Tiger cub can't mature into an adult tiger.
For humans it is different. But there are examples, such as Spartans, killing disabled babies which was not immoral to them.
My point is you can't make a universal claim to the morality of humans killing other animals to sustain themselves since it is evidently how we evolved and our nature.
We can intellecutalize and make moral and ethical decisions to not eat animals for the many valid reasons in this thread which I also subscribe to but that doesn't mean the moral claim that killing animals is wrong can be applied to all human animals at all times.
For example to switch to vegan diets relies heavily on industrialized society. Arguably our contemporary society which facilities the adoption of vegan diets is more immoral than the behaviour of previous human civilizations since the latter is limited in scope and in inpact while the former destroys entire ecosystems, biodiversity and causes mass extinction.
I know that I know better. Don't know if you do - but claiming you don't says something pretty damning about your moral capacity.
Oh yes I can. What you (and plebcouncilman as well) are doing here is a fallacy that was overcome in the 18th century. Something can very well be morally wrong despite being natural. Examples: Murder. Rape. Eating children. All very natural, horrible things which, fortunately, humanity largely rejects.
No one is making such an absolutist claim. But generally speaking killing is not a good thing and should be avoided if possible. Unnecessarily killing animals, e.g. if you're reasonably able to thrive on a vegan diet, can therefore very well be claimed to be unethical. And that has nothing to do with anthropocentrism and everything with our willingness to think about morality at all. What you wrote about industrialized society doesn't change that, since we currently live in a industrialized society and must therefore judge the morality of our actions based on this given reality. Not to mention that with our current understanding of agriculture and science we could reduce our ecological impact without the need to kill animals at all. But all that misses the point.
You wrote that I'm "placing a higher moral agency on humans because [I] make some special distinction between humans and other animals". At best that's a bad argument, at worst it's intellectually disingenuous, because you either do the same or you're a child-eating psychopath. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and claim that you simply haven't really thought about it much.
I don't think what I said was intellectually disingenuous. I think I act according to my nature and the tiger acts according to it's nature and there is no hierarchy of animals.
I guess my statement regarding moral agency is flawed since I guess our conceptions of morality can only apply to our own species and maybe even our own society.
I definitely don't think I know better than the tiger tho. The tiger is not a child it is a being different from human and not lesser.
The tiger is not immoral to take life and neither are humans in certain circumstances in my opinion.
I certainly don't want to kill animals and do my best to limit suffering.
No it is not an appeal to nature, it might seem that way but it isn’t. I do not believe “it is natural, therefore it is right”. The main adaptations of humans are language and opposable thumbs, ergo tool making and use. We are able to improve on nature (and by virtue of this being a natural adaptation, it is also to be considered imo a natural process). The only claim I make is that we have no proof that animals lack rationality, only that they seem irrational to us due to different adaptations. Evidence points that they are rational. Therefore humans are not different than animals in any way, so if animals in their right to live have a right to kill in order to live, then humans also share in that right. I have agreed many times that in the context of industrial meat production the ethical choice is not to eat meat. But that is not the same as saying that killing animals is immoral, the immoral thing is torturing animals.
I think this illustrates my point:
A lot of people might see a cat playing with a mouse before killing it and they think that the cat does it because it doesn’t know better, but I consider the question, what if the cat is simply cruel? We cannot know. In the same way, why do some humans do cruel things with no apparent reason? Is it because they are not rational?
That doesn't follow at all.
Rationality isn't a binary, so animals being rational could still mean humans are different simply by order of magnitude.
Humans are different from other animals in the same way animals are vastly different to each other. Obviously we are animals, but comparing our morality to other animals makes as much sense as comparing our science to theirs. Is science not valid and worthwhile because other animals build no universities of their own?
You are willfully ignoring the mental capacity that gives us the ability to critically think about morality and implications in the first place. As long as you can think about the necessity to kill, other people can and will judge you for the decision to do so. We don't judge tigers morally for eating their young, we very much would do so for a fellow human though. There's a clear difference in expectations here.
What does that have to do with anything? You are not a cat. I expect roughly the same mental capacity from you than from myself. I know that I'm capable of critical thought, so I will assume the same about you. I can consider ethical considerations, so you can probably, too. And if you are able and can consider those I can judge your decision making accordingly. Causing avoidable harm is unethical, so eating meat for someone who could stay healthy with a vegan diet is unethical.
But yeah I guess you have a point in the sense that I don't actually know if youre really able to think about those things. Someone with a very severe mental disability might lack the cognitive capacity to think about those things and couldn't be judged for their behaviour. Although I must say if that's you I'm impressed by your ability to hold a coherent conversation on a complicated electronic device.
It must be hard to live in a moden society if you can't hold yourself to a higher standard than a tiger.
Well you certainly made a case for your own level of intelligence. At least word salad is vegan.
I have a mostly vegan diet but can't updoot this enough.
You're not vegan if you have a mostly vegan diet, sorry
Cool thanks for letting me know