Empathy is a great quality to cultivate.
Compare an analogous concern to the one you raise: "what if caring about people of color comes at the cost of empathy for your fellow whites?"
[1] https://goo.gl/maps/iDZ2TZV4o12DiKtL8
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/how-cit...
- mussels/mollusks (zero sentience) - insects (very low demonstrated consciousness) - fish (low demonstrated consciousness) - chickens/reptiles (disputed level) - dogs, dolphins, primates, etc (high)
You can't equivocate chicken sentience with human sentience. What you can do is suggest they have a high enough level of sentience to warrant that certain treatments be immoral. I think infliction of constant stress and suffering certainly would be immoral, however, raising chickens does not necessitate it. And moreover, the level of sentience is not so high that captivity in itself / exploitation be problematic. If that were true keeping domestic pets ought to be just as problematic.
Animals suffer in the wild, that is a constant. They require vigilance over a) predators, b) constant search for food, c) other natural threats. In captivity, these issues don't exist.
Notwithstanding the symbiotic evolution of chicken with humans, a chicken is arguably better off in a free-roam farm than in the wild. This is constantly ignored.
The vegan solution is such that these animals basically cease to exist (i.e. are killed) because they are more dependent on humans than their ancestors. That's what letting them be "sentient" beings instead of commodities would mean.
This is not physics. If you think it’s ok to breed beings that clearly look to avoid suffering and care for their offspring with the sole purpose of exploiting them, and that’s fine because life > death, there you have it. Just don’t try to push a pseudoscientific scale to vegans just to prove their fallacy.
With sentience it's speculation, and that's part of the point I'm making. I responded to an ethical claim on the basis of sentience (no citation) by bringing to question what it means to be sentient when some beings e.g. insects demonstrate it.
Notwithstanding immeasurability, our perception of this level of sentience is relied on to determine our moral standing. We see this through actions we take for granted.
"Until the 1970s, researchers tried to classify the intellectual abilities of different animals and rank them within a universal intelligence scale with humans at the top. That view crumbled as it became obvious that the abilities of different animals were tuned to the circumstances in which they live. Rats learn some things slowly and others very rapidly. Just one experience with a novel food that makes them ill will put them off that food for life, even if they only become sick many hours after eating it. It's a useful memory feat for an animal that survives by scavenging. Honey bees remember the location of a flower that is producing nectar after a single visit and with just a few trips will learn at what time of day the nectar flow is at its peak. Octopuses are not very social so we should not expect their intelligence to show itself in observational learning. [...] True, octopus have huge brains. But they look nothing like the brains of the vertebrates that are so adept at learning. [...] some critics suspect that their intelligence has been grossly exaggerated by anthropomorphising observers-"they watch my every move, therefore they must be curious". On the other hand, because cephalopod behaviour and brain structure are so foreign, others argue that their greatest cognitive feats are probably still being overlooked. " -- https://web.archive.org/web/20120407062518/http://www.fortun...
Unless humans are somehow exempt from the list, I don't see how this argument is feasible in the realistic sense. Humans are frequently treated as commodities, as any team over the size of 1 needs to delegate responsibilities to people. Hence, "doctor, lawyer, police officer, teacher, pilot" are all words that describe a delegated responsibility of a human, and therefore the commodity that they represent. "We need more firefighters!" is a phrase that literally treats humans as commodities - showing how replaceable they are. How about whenever you ask a friend, or a family member to pick something up for you from the grocery store? Are they not being treated as a commodity to suit a need in that moment?
However idealistic the notion, being a "sentient being" isn't mutually exclusive from being treated as a commodity.
I understand the empathic argument in support of veganism full well (and I empathize with it), but there is such a thing as runaway-empathy, to the point that it becomes unproductive conversation.
This is a win in an aim to reduce unnecessary suffering and pain. I'll take it as such.
Seeking some sort of absolutism though, I can't wrap my mind around that. It gives me some serious Sith vibes...
No matter how philosophical you get, it is possible to be vegan, you only have to sacrifice some pleasure. If you value your pleasure over the miserable life of the animal, that certainly is something one can criticise without being inconsistent because "humans also need to work to buy food".
If you actually want to argue for better workers' rights and redistribution from the rich to the poor, to end the missery of the working man: I think that is a good point :)
Kant calls this: using people as a means to an end.
I'll also mention however that I'm not solely vegan for ethical purposes so my conviction in veganism doesn't hinge on being perfect here. When I realized the health, environmental, and spiritual benefits of veganism, in addition to the ethical angle, it was a pretty easy decision to make.
But to your point, yes I do think we (everyone, not just vegans) are biased towards bigger creatures that we can see with the naked eye.
I don't know, I bet the tree's fore-bearers think a tended orchard with consistent water is a pretty sweet deal in exchange for a few apples.
The animal kingdom is quite clearly defined and vegans are pretty consistently defined as not consuming animals or animal products.
If you wish to take a more extreme position that considers other forms of life (and almost nobody appears to), that's no longer just veganism: it's something more extreme.
This is such hand-wavy bullshit. It's such a lazy response to OPs point...
Are humans animals? If so, should we not consume the products that humans create, in order to achieve perfect veganism? And if people are not animals, and I'm feeling a bit hungry........?
The computer or phone you used to post your comment is an animal product. Unless, yet again, we consider humans to be above animals, and therefore exempt from all the rules, and veganism is cannibalizing itself, philosophically.
Absolutist veganism (which is a beautiful idealism) exists heavily in a state of cognitive dissonance.
