Hail Seitan!
There Are Seven Fundamental Tenets:
I - One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
II - The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
III - One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
IV - The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one’s own.
V - Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.
VI - People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one’s best to rectify it and resolve any
harm that might have been caused.
VII - Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
Since in the modern age we can obtain all of the nutrition we need from a well-planned plant-based diet, by buying & consuming animal products, we participate in unnecessary cruelty to sentient beings
I can make an argument that being non-vegan in the modern age is violating all seven of these tenets
Tenet I : It’s neither reasonable, nor compassionate or empathetic, to needlessly exploit & take the life of a creature when we have moral agency & alternatives, unlike other animals.
Tenet II : It’s true that it’s legal to exploit & unalive animals today, but it was also legal to own slaves in the past. Just because we’re legally allowed to do something doesn’t mean we should.
Tenet III : One’s body being inviolable and subject to their own will alone should extend to all sentient beings. If it doesn’t, Name The Trait in a way that doesn’t lead to contradiction or absurdity
That is - Name The Trait different between humans and other animals that makes it okay to do things to other animals that we wouldn’t be okay with being done to humans.
I.e. justify the speciesist discrimination and double standard and differential treatment.
Tenet IV : We should be free to tell people they’re hypocrites for loving dogs & eating cows, or even for participating in the exploitative pet industry instead of adopting/rescuing companion animals.
Even if this is offensive to people. It’s freedom of speech and necessary for the activism and the struggle for justice that should prevail above laws and institutions (Tenet II).
To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of other sentient beings, is to forgo your own right to be respected like you would be if you first gave respect to other individuals (animals).
Tenet V : Insisting we need to eat meat or animal products to be healthy despite that disagreeing with scientific consensus, is distorting scientific facts to fit your beliefs,
& not conforming beliefs to your best scientific understanding of the world.
It’s denying reality,
burying your head in the sand to avoid confronting the truth,
& living in ignorance & delusion & the willfull, unnecessary destruction & oppression of others, self, & planet.
Tenet VI : Assuming that we are already perfect & couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong or unjust, despite every historical society participating in normalized injustice, is not recognizing humans
are fallible.
And, when confronted with your mistake, in the form of what your kind have raised you to traditionally participate in regarding unnecessary systemic exploitation & violence to sentient beings,
if your response is to deflect, close your ears, & refuse to take personal responsibility or change any behavior, is to not do one’s best to rectify it & resolve any harm that might have been caused.
then that is to not right the wrong and fundamentally unjust relationship between humans and other animals and resolve it into one of harmonious and respectful coexistence.
Rather than one of needless exploitation, domination, violence, cruelty, and oppression.
Finally, Tenet VII : To claim that because these tenets do not specifically mention an obligation to not exploit & harm non-human animals unnecessarily & to be vegan, that means it isn’t entailed by
the values underlying them, is to not let every tenet serve as guiding principles designed to inspire nobility in action & thought & not allow the spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice to prevail
over the written or spoken word.
Ah, I see - you’re an anti-vegan/anti-animal rights ideologue who has already devoted time attempting to defend the exploitation of animals and attack the arguments in favor of animal liberation. And I’ve encountered this silly objection to NTT before.
The problem with this objection to NTT - which is clearly a desperate cope and attempt to avoid engaging with its implications by refusing to actually answer the question/justify the speciesist differential treatment - is that it misses the point it’s trying to convey and strawmans it. It assumes that what Name The Trait is establishing is that there is no difference at all between the human animal and the non-human animal. But that would be absurd & demonstrably false. We know they’re different. The foundations of anti-discrimination are respecting others even if they’re different from us. They’re different from us in all the ways that don’t matter but the same as us in all the ways that do matter, in terms of what makes an entity warrant moral consideration from us (moral agents, which not all humans are) AKA being a moral patient, i.e. sentient & having a subjective experience of the world & interests to be respected or violated. What NTT is arguing and demonstrating is that the differences between the individuals don’t constitute morally relevant or morally substantive enough differences that would justify the actions proposed by carnists to non-human animals but not to humans, and it shows that other people agree with us even if they don’t realize it, or their views logically entail our position–or at least being unable to coherently defend & justify their own position & actions (leaving ours, the vegan/animal rights stance, as the only one they can consistently explain & justify)–because when pressed to justify the differential treatment consistently, they can’t; they’re led into contradiction or absurd conclusions that they usually don’t genuinely hold.
Now if I were to steelman you and presume you knew that we know the beings are different and possess differences, and that what you really meant is that they have different moral value in your opinion, or really that they have such substantially different moral value that it warrants harmful actions done to one group of beings that you wouldn’t hold to be permissible to the other group, then obviously that’s a moral claim of yours about the individuals’ rights & our duties to them and shouldn’t be equivocated with the fact that the individuals simply have differences between them.
It also isn’t denying that people believe–or think they believe, at least on the surface of their views & thoughts on the matter, even if further scrutiny of those beliefs would reveal underlying inconsistencies & maybe even their true/genuine beliefs/values don’t align with that superficial belief–at least on some level, that humans and other animals are not equal in moral value, and even that it’s okay to exploit & kill other animals for unnecessary purposes but not humans. Of course people openly state their belief in that, and they would need to believe that in order for their actions as carnists to align with their beliefs. But, while acknowledging your beliefs, we can still challenge you to justify why you believe in that discriminatory attitude in a consistent manner by asking for specific reasoning that focuses on the differences between the individuals, since we can equalize every other aspect of the situations & most humans wouldn’t use any of the circumstantial justifications to do those actions to humans in the same circumstance, so the real reason is revealed to be speciesism, as we’re able to isolate that the only difference that they use to justify the differential treatment consistently is species - but species is a surface level category, and beyond it leading to absurd conclusions to use species membership itself as the justification, it’s question begging/circular reasoning to simply repeat the species difference, as the question’s premise was already about going beyond simply species category and was asking about the trait differences often contained in the individuals that the argument’s reasoning is further reducible to that would shine light on the values & reasoning behind it. So it’s not a well-reasoned position or justification if you can’t explain why or what specifically about that species difference justifies the differential treatment.
It’s not saying there’s no difference. It’s saying you can’t name what specific differences between them you’re using to justify your differential attitude and standards of respect/fair treatment, and the harmful actions permitted exclusively to some and not others based on species membership. If you can’t defend and justify it clearly, and take the reasoning to its logical conclusion and explore the exact logic it’s predicated on, then it shouldn’t be done - that is when an action results in victims and is causing serious harm to others, aka individuals who can experience that harm or the effect of that harm inflicted upon them, i.e. sentient beings. Extraordinary harm requires extraordinary justification.
It’s not even necessarily equating humans and non-human animals as having equal moral value, though it can be tweaked to challenge someone to justify not valuing them equally - usually it’s focused specifically on challenging carnists to justify the actions done to non-human animals that are believed to be unjustified when done to humans, in a context where it’s not necessary to choose between which group (humans or non-human animals) to prioritize, and it’s simply a choice of either causing unnecessary harm to non-human animals (and plants, environment, humanity etc for that matter) or avoiding doing so as much as we can. You can believe that humans matter more than other animals and still believe that other animals matter enough that it’s not okay to exploit & victimize them for unnecessary purposes.
People who use NTT already know this. They’re different species of animals, belonging to different biological/taxonomic groupings, and those species differences entail trait differences. We never tried to argue they were literally the same. They’re different, and so are men and women. So are different races. If they weren’t different they would be the same sex (or gender) and the same race, so they’re different by virtue of their differences & their membership to different categories as determined by those differences (traits). But that doesn’t mean they don’t all deserve moral consideration - and I would ideally hope to be able to ask for equality and equal (rather, equitable, which is more balanced equality) respect & treatment of those individuals regardless of their differences, but will settle for other animals simply having their status raised to where it’s not acceptable to violate their interests for trivial purposes as humans are doing to them today - even if you would prioritize a human over a non-human animal in a situation where you can only save one from drowning or fire for example (regardless of whether I agree with that). What matters to me is sentience/consciousness/subjective experience, but I’m willing to extend consideration even beyond those we know can experience it (animals) to be safe.
What NTT drills down into is the reality that there’s no actual difference people can name consistently between humans and other animals that they would use in all cases to argue that needless harm to one group or individual is ok and to the other it isn’t. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but until you can name one, you shouldn’t be doing something you can’t justify, and should err on the side of caution by being vegan. Veganism can easily and consistently be justified. Carnism can’t. It’s a far less morally defensible position, in terms of the objective reality that it’s much harder for most people to defend it.
The burden of proof/justification is on those who want to discriminate between groups of individuals, to explain & justify why they’re doing it. Not on us to explain why respecting one entails respecting the other. It automatically does until you can justify why you would exclude certain groups from moral consideration. Otherwise, the exact same reasoning can be used to say “I don’t have to justify my racism/sexism” etc. or “They’re just different, therefore it’s okay”, or “The fact I can’t explain why it’s okay to treat them differently in ways unnecessarily harmful to some of them, doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason/justification/difference that I’m using/basing the differential treatment on which I just can’t name”. If you can’t name it, don’t do it. Because it’s unreasoned cruelty, and you better have a good argument for it, which is going to be very difficult and much easier and better to concede that it’s wrong or unjustified and you shouldn’t do it. As simple as that.
I’m not anitvegan
be vegan.
I just oppose spurious arguments
this is exactly what a line drawing fallacy looks like. congratulations.
If we do accept the action as permissible even if you can’t explain how it’s justified, then we could use that same rationale to accept any other forms of unreasoned discrimination. “This race is different from this one, and I can’t tell you why it’s okay to kill one race for profit/pleasure and not the other, but it is”. If opposing that kind of argument or action is a fallacy, so be it. That would mean opposing/rejecting any kind of discriminatory actions in this manner was somehow fallacious (and the discrimination itself somehow wasn’t fallacious). But that isn’t the case.
treating people like animals is exactly why the Holocaust was wrong.
get help
No, the reason why the Holocaust was wrong was because it treated individuals (sentient beings) like they didn’t matter, discriminated them based on arbitary traits/criteria, segregated, imprisoned, oppressed, enslaved, tortured and systematically exterminated them, and attempted to erase their very existence, culture and identity. The reason why the Holocaust was wrong is obviously not “because humans are superior to other animals and the humans were treated the way other animals should be”. That’s an incredibly speciesist and unfortunate reading of the tragedy which doesn’t learn any lessons from it.
The reason why treating humans the way that non-human animals were being and have historically been and still are treated by humans, was and is wrong, is simply because the way that non-human animals have been treated by humans is wrong and is clearly bad and cruel and harmful and inconsiderate toward them. If those oppressed and victimized humans were treated the way that non-human animals are, then you’ve just admitted that non-human animals are typically oppressed and victimized in the same way as those humans. It’s just that it’s such a culturally ingrained, accepted, traditional, long-running and perpetual practice that most humans are removed from the process of and disconnected from and/or sesensitized to the violence and cruelty it involves, that we tend to accept the way non-human animals are treated by humans as an inherent nature of their existence, rather than a choice we are making to inflict on them every day that we could change if we wanted to, and right the relationship between humans and other animals into one of respect and coexistence rather than one-sided domination and exploitation.
And it really should be stressed that Hitler did base the treatment of humans on how non-human animals were already being treated in the assembly line slaughterhouses in the United States - it’s very well documented if you research about it. And tons of Holocaust survivors - many of whom are now vegan or vegetarian - have spoken about the connection between the events and how eerily similar they are. The Nazis even used the same infrastructure that was being used to kill non-human animals at the time. They used cattle cars to transport them, the concentration camps were eerily similar to CAFOs, and he used gas chambers to kill them. Yes, they used Zyklon B instead of CO2 for the gas chambers, while the majority of farmed pigs are killed with CO2 (though sometimes the Nazis did use CO2 as well), but CO2 gassing by all accounts causes even more extreme and prolonged suffering than Zyklon B. So if we did the same actions that we enact on a mass scale to non-human animals today but to humans instead, it would instantly be considered as bad as many historical tragedies.
When we have a group of beings treated as badly by humans as non-human animals are, it’s always going to inevitably be used as inspiration, training and condition for treating humans badly too.
Saying “get help” over and over is an ad hominem attack and an attempt to gaslight me by strawmanning and denying and opposing everything I say, even when it’s factually proven. (Though this is also partly a moral view, in this case).
this is not something I said, or anyone else in this thread, but you put it in quotes.
please stop lying
No, that would be claiming that you don’t have a justification just because you can’t name one. All that NTT is establishing is that you haven’t been able to (so far) name a consistent justification, that’s it. And separately from NTT, we can make a value judgment on that and determine that if you can’t name or articulate your justification for extreme and unnecessary harm to and discrimination between sentient beings, even if you could still have one you just haven’t been able to explain coherently, then short of being able to present that in a convincing manner, it isn’t permissible to engage in that action and you should default to the alternative (veganism/animal rights) which can be clearly justified, explained and articulated consistently and easily.
You also misunderstand the purpose of the exercise by assuming that it’s asking where the “line” is between entities that matter and entities that don’t or something like that, or between ones it’s ok to harm or not etc. It has nothing to do with where the delineation point is, nor any kind of linear spectrum. It’s asking you to provide what reasoning or criteria you’re using or would use to justify doing what you’re doing to the very tangible individuals in question (non-human animals) and not to the other ones (humans). There’s nothing vague about it.
if it has nothing to do with the delineation point then simply starting livestock aren’t people is sufficient
No, because that’s question begging/circular reasoning (and also your phrasing is subjective - of course there are arguments for the personhood of non-human animals [and some, like cetaceans and great apes, even have it legally in some countries], but let’s assume you mean that non-human animals are not humans - a biological fact that the premise of the question already acknowledges and establishes). It’s just repeating the premises of the question and not going further beyond them, so it doesn’t provide any new information or justification.
That said, even though it’s already a weak justification if you can only question beg and can’t name any underlying trait difference or reasoning/criteria that justifies the differential treatment of the species, there are still reductios to trying to use “human vs non-human” as a trait that most humans would find to be quite absurd and objectionable. But again, we don’t have to even entertain you by accepting this arbitrary speciesist argument, since it makes no attempt to justify or explain itself.
It doesn’t have to, in order to establish that you lack the ability to name a clear justification, be about the delineation point where you would suddenly find a being acceptable to exploit and kill and put into CO2 gas chambers (like most farmed pigs in the world) in a series of possible worlds progressing from a human into a non-human animal in which each subsequent human-like being was less and less human and less and less removed from a non-human animal. This is actually a completely separate thought experiment from Name the Trait. I think it has value, because it does demonstrate that if you can’t identify a delineation point, then it doesn’t mean there necessarily isn’t one, but it does mean you don’t have a coherent enough justification that you can actually provide and articulate and explain for why you are arbitrarily sentencing some sentient beings to die and not others, so therefore you shouldn’t.
It is what it is. You’ve misconstrued and interpreted it as being about some spectrum of beings incrementally altered to progress from a human animal into a non human animal, I don’t know why - well I do know why, it’s because you’ve gotten this argument from other people who also completely misunderstood Name The Trait or strawmanned it in order to attempt to “debunk” it without actually engaging with it (I won’t name them because I don’t want to promote them, but people whose content is based around anti-vegan/anti-animal rights rhetoric).
It’s about Naming The Trait that is different between non-human animals and humans that makes it okay to do to them what you don’t think is okay to do to humans. That’s it. You don’t have to invent some alternative interpretation of the question, you can just admit you can’t answer it. Which again, doesn’t mean there’s no consistent justification, but it means you haven’t provided one, and that’s a shaky basis for committing such harmful and cruel actions to sentient beings. And because that same reasoning can be used to arbitrarily justify any other form of discrimination that you can’t explain.
stop lying
that’s a lie. you made this up entirely
It’s more like Hitchens’ razor of “that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”. It’s not claiming “absence of evidence is evidence of absence”. But it is stating that there’s no reason to believe in something until evidence is provided. Likewise, the fact you can’t name a justification doesn’t mean you don’t have one, but there’s no reason to accept an action as being morally permissible until a justification is provided. And by default, like unsubstantiated claims can be dismissed, unjustified (or with no justification attempted/specified) and harmful actions can be opposed by default.
there is an obvious justification: animals aren’t people
No, because that’s question begging/circular reasoning (and also your phrasing is subjective - of course there are arguments for the personhood of non-human animals [and some, like cetaceans and great apes, even have it legally in some countries], and of course humans are animals so therefore at least some animals are people, but let’s assume you mean that non-human animals are not humans - a biological fact that the premise of the question already acknowledges and establishes). It’s just repeating the premises of the question and not going further beyond them, so it doesn’t provide any new information or justification.
That said, even though it’s already a weak justification if you can only question beg and can’t name any underlying trait difference or reasoning/criteria that justifies the differential treatment of the species, there are still reductios to trying to use “human vs non-human” as a trait that most humans would find to be quite absurd and objectionable. But again, we don’t have to even entertain you by accepting this arbitrary speciesist argument, since it makes no attempt to justify or explain itself.
It’s about Naming The Trait that is different between non-human animals and humans that makes it okay to do to them what you don’t think is okay to do to humans. That’s it. You don’t have to invent some alternative interpretation of the question, you can just admit you can’t answer it. Which again, doesn’t mean there’s no consistent justification, but it means you haven’t provided one, and that’s a shaky basis for committing such harmful and cruel actions to sentient beings. And because that same reasoning can be used to arbitrarily justify any other form of discrimination/oppression/harm that you can’t explain.