Philosophical Vegan Forum

So because humans decide a creature is lesser for whatever reason, were entitled to determine it's fate. So ants by themselves don't seem all that significant. But you put them in a colony, watch the magic.

Ants are perfectly self sufficient as a colony.

Bees are perfectly self sufficient and beneficial as a colony.

Termites are perfectly self sufficient as a colony.

They work together with a purpose.

We humans have access to more variety and abundance then we could ever need with plants alone. Maybe there is a case for sentience of plants but we don't have enough information on that right now.

What it comes down to is, we have enough. Why do we need to exploit insects?

We have enough sugar from beets, sugarcane, corn, every fruit imaginable, not to mention artificial sweeteners. We don't need honey.
We can make endless materials from cloth, nylon, rayon, polyester, and many more. We don't need silk from silkworms, nor spider silk from spiders.

It's not about if insects are sentient, or feel pain. It's a question of necessity. There is no real necessity for them. Therefor what it comes down to is exploiting them for no other reason than we can.

On top of that we don't know enough to make a final determination as to if they are sentient, feel pain etc. That being the case, why not error on the side of caution.

Finally it's about being decent human being and not acting entitled.

Is it too much to ask not to harm animals of any kind? Do we need PROOF or an incentive not to do harm? Are we mature enough as a species to see that other creatures lives are meaningful unto themselves?

@allison-vega

thanks for your reply, but it doesnt answer my questions.

But as a response:
(Im from germany, so the following number only ably to europe.) 80% of all fruits are co-produced by honeybees.
So eating an apple is exploiting bees almost as much as eating honey.
Why isnt it hypocritical to eat an apple and refusing honey at the same time?

Hi stupidmeateater,

Yes. It's absolutely exploitive. We use chemical or artificial means to coerce bees to our will which interferes with their natural behavior. It's not always the case however and we can't monitor who does or who doesn't. I don't know either if there is a necessity to doing that or not. Hopefully not. Maybe later down the road we can look into better ways.

But lets be reasonable. Vegans are not trying to stop all suffering. We know our ways cause suffering to some degree. We're trying to reduce the suffering we cause to minimal, and avoid creating more suffering where we don't have to.

If you keep searching for faults and weak points in the vegan message, you're going to find them, but that doesn't make our message any less valid.

Also the means to produce honey and apples is far different in degrees.

Honey = Tear wings off queen so she can't escape. Steal the life work of each bee and replace with cheap sugar substitute. Rip away their honey comb caverns or buildings they built with their hard work to use for our beauty products. Cut off their oxygen with smoke so they can't protect themselves.

Apples = Coerce bees with chemical or artificial means to get apple trees to produce more fruit. Still unacceptable but produces exceptionally higher yield of food source.

Both are bad, but which one is far worse?

Hi,

Many vegans are confused about ethics, and make the mistake of subscribing to dogma instead of reason.

I encourage you to read this thread:


https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... ?f=7&t=785

The difference between deontology and consequentialism is discussed there. Allison-vega, you should also read that thread so you are more equipped to answer questions like this .

stupidmeateater wrote:hi!
at 5:00 he says: "scentience is where we draw the line"
here someone posted this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDHfp0YD3l0#t=325 , basically saying that there is no line.

Sentience is a matter of degree. Although there is somewhat of a "line" in a sense between some sentience and no sentience (depending on the exact qualifications), this line is around worms and insects somewhere, and in itself is not very significant.

Consider the distinction between 0.00001 sentience, and 0 sentience. It's not a big deal, and it may be morally irrelevant.

Not all insects are necessarily sentient (but most probably are). As the sentience becomes higher, the issue becomes more meaningful.

stupidmeateater wrote:at 5:56 he says that animals with less scentience, should have the same "rights" as animals with higher sentience, which is the complete opposite of some posts made here (e.g. by brimstonesalate).

He was wrong. See the thread I linked above ( https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... ?f=7&t=785 )
I believe he has since changed his view on this.

stupidmeateater wrote: at: 2:36 he says that animals are not resources, but plants are.

He was wrong about that, too. Even humans are resources (ask any business: Human Resources). The question is whether we are causing them harm or not.

stupidmeateater wrote:1) What gives you the morale justification to draw a line, where do you draw it, and why are you excluding plants (are you certain that there is no plant, which has at least the same "amount" of scentience than an insect, and even if a plant has less sentience than a worm, why does 5:56 not apply to all living beings / why are plants resources)?

Some very small insects and other arthropods may have no sentience. In this case, it is fine to kill them. This likely applies to things like mites and aphids and fleas. This does not likely apply to ladybugs, spiders, bees, and other larger or intelligent insects and other arthropods. However, the difference in degree of sentience is much more important than the "line". The difference between very very little value and no value is small. We need to be more concerned with highly sentient animals such as cows, chickens, pigs, and humans (all of which animal agriculture harms).

stupidmeateater wrote:2) is there any justification to kill (or exploit) a scentient being?

Sure. If you are saving the lives of many other sentient beings, for example.

If you are stranded on an island and the only thing for you to eat is fish -- or even a fellow human on that island -- it would be considered justified to save your life.
It's also justified to kill disease carrying insects, or pests, to protect humans from disease and famine.

It is not justified to engage in animal agriculture in the first world, since this process is not helpful to humans, but destructive to our health, the environment, and the animals. There is no benefit for the developed world.

stupidmeateater wrote:3) if a find a dead cow, can i eat it;

Yes. This is called "freeganism". As long as nobody killed the cow for you to eat. If you buy meat, it is supporting the killing of cows through economics. If you find meat in the garbage can, you can also eat it and it usually won't harm anybody (except yourself).

Freeganism is considered by most to be morally equal to veganism. Vegans don't eat roadkill or meat from the trash, but not necessarily for moral reasons (more because this is gross and/or unhealthy).

stupidmeateater wrote:if a cow is pregnant, can i drink its milk, or is that exploiting the cow?

If there is no calf to drink the milk -- and you didn't kill the calf to do it -- this may be fine as long as the cow is treated well. However, this tends to be a problem in terms of indirect harm. The dairy industry itself is responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions which are harmful to others, and in practice dairy cows are killed when milk production drops (and their calves taken away and killed).
It's not an optimal situation, so it's very rare that you would find freegan milk. Milk is also unhealthy, so there's no point in drinking it (high calorie beverage, lots of saturated fat and cholesterol).

stupidmeateater wrote:p.s. my father was a beekeeper, so I worked a lot with bees (and i therefore i hate honey). Im really shocked about his comments on bees in this video. Every single claim is just plain wrong. He has absolutely no idea what hes talking about. His comments on varroa shellshocked me. He doesnt know anything about varroa. His arguments sounded to me like the anti vaccinations arguments. horrific!

It would be great if you would post a thread about bees. I would love to learn from your experience!

thanks for your replies!
@allison-vega
im honestly not searching for weak spots in veganism, i was just unable to wrap my head around what veganatheist said and was looking for answers. Im not here to argue (or defend factory farming),
What you wrote about beekeeping just shows, that you havent seen a bee in your life.
Noone tears off the wings of bees - i have never heard that... where do you get such desinformation? Again, this is horrific! bee queens cant fly because they are too big after mating (which btw is a very fascinating process, you should look it up), like termites or ants. you dont have to tear their wings off... their wings are useless.
the beauty products: I guess youre refering to gele royal. I dont know any beekeeper, who harvests it and i really dont know how its done, because it must be absolutely difficult to get it. gele royal is the substance bee queens are feed, as long as they are larvas. you would have to extract it from their cells. I really dont know how to do that, and you wouldnt get much (cells are small, and there are not many queencells). to produce it in an amount which would fill a jar, you would need thousands of beehives. my dad said, that its a marketing trick by the cosmetical industry. I really never heard of anyone being able to harvest gele royal in a significant way (and even if its possible... 99% of beekeepers dont do it for sure).
smoke isnt used to take their breath away (again.. have you ever seen a bee in real life???). bees react to smell. for example mowing a lawn makes them agressive (the smell of mowed grass makes them "think" that a bear is coming and they get in "defend the hive" mode). smoke makes them think that there is a fire nearby. so they stop defending the hive and start eating honey, to prepare themself for the possibility to escape by "moving" the hive. a keekeeper just blows in a tiny steam of smoke... there are no suffering bees... thats bullshit (honestly please go and check it out for yourself... the bees dont give a sh..., they just change their pattern of behavior / its like darkening the room, so the bird thinks its night, you dont harm the bird by doing that, at least in my opinion).
they get their "honey comb caverns" back, after the beekeeper took the honey.
the sugar replacement: guess what... in most parts of europe bees couldnt survive without that... fascinating isnt it? in the atumn we had to take away all the honey, not because we wanted it, (its not worth it, its too little...) but because our bees cant survive winter on a honey diet. bees have to go to the toilet and therefore leave the hive. to do so they need a temperature of at least 7°C (as far as i can remember). Im from the black forest and during the winter there arent that many days with more than 7°C (well... at least in the past there havent been...). If the bees eat honey they have to take a potty break much more often than with sugar. hives with honey die during the winter in most of northern europe!! thats why there arent many wild bee hives in the woods.
Now you may argue that because of that there shouldnt be any bees in northern europe and we shouldnt force the bees to live in an environment they are not made for. Which brings me back to the question i asked you before...
Without beekeepers (and them exploiting the bees) there are no apples (no= way less than with bees; not enough apples to feed the world).... and i really dont see the moral difference between eating an apple and honey (and again... I dont like honey, I dont eat honey. I prefere an apple over honey any day, but your arguement is invalid).

@brimstonesalad

thanks for your answers. Still not convinced, but Im going to read your link .

You asked me to share sources on bees.
I dont have any in english and to look up every false claim veganatheist made and provide a link to disprove it will take some time. To disprove all the false claims of the website he linked in his video, would take even longer. But honestly ... show this video / webpage to anyone who has seen a bee in real life and he will be either shocked, or crying of laughter.
What i really want to adress right now are his false claims on varroa, because they are just horrible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor
wikipedia is all you need... european bees cant survive anymore without beekeepers!
and i would like to explain it a little better than wiki... if you dont mind.
historically varroa is a parasite of indian bees. which werent able to cross the himalaya... but because of global trade etc. varroa spread to the whole world. indian bees would survive in the wild (as he claims in his video), even if infected with varroa, because their development from egg to bee takes 2-3 days less than european bees. this 2 days more make the parasite kill the "unborn" bee, instead of just weakening them. european bees cant protect themself from varroa.
You might suggest that we use the resistant indian bees instead. This isnt possible because they dont have temperature sensores. The bees would leave the hive, when its too cold (see above) and die.
If we dont fight varroa, we are in real trouble and his video implies that varroa isnt a problem at all.
You may argue, that mankind doesnt need bees... which is basically correct... but you cant feed 7 billion people without bees, so you have to choice of suffering humans or "exploiting" bees (which i dont think is correct... but anyways lets go with it).
Argueing that we dont need bees is to me as valid as argueing that we dont have to care about climate change or vaccination. I really have never ever heard this claim before and I am shocked! Sure we dont have to care about climate change at all... but it will destroy us, who cares... the same goes for bees... sure we dont need bees, all we need is to starve to death.

I really dont understand why it is morally correct to kill "pest" animals like mites or aphids and it is morally incorrect to "exploit" bees. the bees are better of than the killed aphids.. i think. And why do you suggest that aphids have less sentience than bees? Do you have any source for this claim? And i really would love to see the study that shows, that a wild beehive is "happier" than a exploited beehive or a study that shows that exploited bees are suffering.
I do get the point that you want to cause as little suffering as possible, but i find it incredible difficult to decide what is morally acceptable and what is not. Are animal experiments justified to prevent humans from suffering? etc. (but you might have answered this question in your link i havent read yet...)
I read in another post, that its ok to keep a cat, as long as it is fed vegan... isnt that exploiting the cat? Why is it ok to have pets, but not ok to have bees?

Im honestly not here to find weak spots in the vegan theory, or disprove you. Im just curious.

edit: i found a website on the production of gelee royale (misspelled it sry). Its in german, but i could provide the link if you want. it basically says that its not harvested in europe, but only in china. you need to kill the queen and set up the hive to produce as many queens as posssible. this hive wont produce any honey... one hive will produce 500 g (less than a pound) of gelee per year and 1 kg (2.2 pounds) cost around 140€ (156$). I do think this is peverse. And i really want to point out that this isnt something a "normal" beekeeper is doing. Saying all beekeepers are bad because of that, is like saying everyone who owns a cat is a bad person, because you know someone who beats his cat.
and I doubt that gelee royale is of any use. I bet they add it in homeopathic doses to their products so they can claim its an ingredience....

brimstoneSalad wrote: Some very small insects and other arthropods may have no sentience. In this case, it is fine to kill them. This likely applies to things like mites and aphids and fleas. This does not likely apply to ladybugs, spiders, bees, and other larger or intelligent insects and other arthropods. However, the difference in degree of sentience is much more important than the "line". The difference between very very little value and no value is small. We need to be more concerned with highly sentient animals such as cows, chickens, pigs, and humans (all of which animal agriculture harms).

I really have to point this out:
I just dont understand the distinctions youre making. Youre saying that its ok to kill mites, but its not ok to kill spiders.. but mites are spiders. Why has a ladybug more sentience and more rights than a aphid or a worm? I really dont see any logic in your arguement. To me it sounds like: "ladybugs are pretty... therefore they shall life in peace. Ugly insects can be killed... because .. because... they have no sentience."
"Killing a ladybug larva is ok, but killing a ladybug isnt."

stupidmeateater wrote:Youre saying that its ok to kill mites, but its not ok to kill spiders.. but mites are spiders.

Do you have a source for this?
Mites are not spiders, but spiders and mites are both arthropods.

stupidmeateater wrote:Why has a ladybug more sentience and more rights than a aphid or a worm?

Ladybugs are more sentient than aphids or worms because ladybugs have a greater capacity to subjectively experience and learn.

stupidmeateater wrote:To me it sounds like: "ladybugs are pretty... therefore they shall life in peace. Ugly insects can be killed... because .. because... they have no sentience."

Then you've misunderstood what brimstoneSalad said completely.
Sentience is not a measure of beauty, it is a measure of the ability to subjectively perceive and learn. Killing aphids is not justified by their ugliness, it is justified by the threat they pose coupled with the fact that they are barely sentient. If ladybugs were barely sentient and harmful, killing ladybugs would likely be amoral instead of slightly immoral.

stupidmeateater wrote:"Killing a ladybug larva is ok, but killing a ladybug isnt."

This may be true. Ladybug larva are likely less sentient or even not sentient when compared to developed ladybugs. Hence, killing ladybug larva is less immoral or possibly amoral when compared to killing mature ladybugs.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:

stupidmeateater wrote:Youre saying that its ok to kill mites, but its not ok to kill spiders.. but mites are spiders.

Do you have a source for this?
Mites are not spiders, but spiders and mites are both arthropods.

again... wiki... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mite

mites are arachnida.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:

stupidmeateater wrote:

stupidmeateater wrote:Why has a ladybug more sentience and more rights than a aphid or a worm?

Ladybugs are more sentient than aphids or worms because ladybugs have a greater capacity to subjectively experience and learn.

How do you know that ladybugs have a greater capacity etc. . Ive heard that over and over again now, but I didnt get any prove?

stupidmeateater wrote:mites are arachnida.

Arachnida is a class that both spiders and mites are a part of. Mites are part of the subclass Acari, spiders are not. This means they are not the same thing, merely part of the same class.

stupidmeateater wrote:How do you know that ladybugs have a greater capacity etc. . Ive heard that over and over again now, but I didnt get any prove?

In general, we can determine if a creature is more sentient than another based on the complexity of their behavior and ability to learn. For example, a pig is demonstrably more sentient than a frog because pigs can and will solve puzzles, while frogs do not.

In regards to why an aphid is less sentient than a lady bug, I don't know. Insect sentience is rather confusing and this issue would probably be better addressed by brimstoneSalad. I apologize for the inconvenience.