Video Response to Our Letter To Dillahunty

[brimstoneSalad]

Thanks for the transcript, that will make this much easier to respond to if it looks like he's open to discussion.

[NonZeroSum]

Thanks for the transcript, that will make this much easier to respond to if it looks like he's open to discussion.

No problemo, kindly grammer checked, segmented and donated by indy so I didn't have to clean up the auto transcript, as I saw they put the script in the video. It'd be nice if they joined up to discuss but might be they just make another response video to our responses, or we have to take it to their medium with a video to encourage them, could be good publicity for us anyways.

_________

More Links:

https://activistjourneys.wordpress.com/deontology/

Videos

Gary L. Francione:

Vegetarian Summerfest
•Veganism: The Moral Imperative – Gary Francione, JD
TVA - Atheist Channel
•DEBATE: Vegan vs Vegan (Gary Francione vs Bruce Friedrich)
The Radical Revolution
•Gary L. Francione - How to Get People to Think about Veganism
Vegan ForTheWin
•The Moral Notion That We All Accept - Gary Francione

Unnatural Vegan
•Gary Francione doesn't understand veganism or activism (dumpster diving & what it means to be vegan)
•Dogmatic Justice vs. Morality, Animal Experimentation, etc. (Intersectionality followup 1 of 3)

à-bas-le-ciel
•Gary Francione is Wrong (Vegan / Vegans / Veganism)
•A Vegan Critique of “Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach”, by Gary Francione.

ModVegan
•Veganism's Puritan Problem Part 1
•Dumpster Diving! Veganism's Puritan Problem, Part 2

Esoteric Noetic
•Deontology VS Utilitarianism

Essays

•How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time (Ian King)
•The Right and the Good (W.D. Ross.)
•Intuition and Morals (Daniel A. Kaufman)
•Course Notes on Kant (Daniel Kaufman)
•Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals (Immanuel Kant)
•Kant and the Constitutional Model (Christine Korsgaard)
•The Nature and Importance of Rights (Tom Regan)
•A Defense of Abortion (Judith Jarvis Thomson)
•On Goodness and Normativity (Judith Jarvis Thomson)

Discussion

•Re: Prof. Gary L. Francione's Facebook Comment on New Atheists
•The Issue with Gary Francione and Deontological Veganism?
•We’re all fake vegans. Except Francione. According to Francione.
•What if Deontology was more effective?
•Animal Use Focus (besides a few exceptions) vs Animal Suffering Focus

[NonZeroSum]

Open letter to Matt
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=579
http://theveganatheist.com/an-open-letter-to-matt-dillahunty/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZLbZ9INv3M

Point 2: The most creatively absurd non sequitur; a shark can eat you?

and what I am willing to do though is afford the same rights to eat me to the animals that I eat; when a shark decides to attack me because it’s hungry and wants some food im not going to say it’s immoral or unethical of the shark it’s the natural way that sharks are. I realize that to most ethical vegans think that is a lame cop out, but im fine with it actually.

First off, you talk about rights, and this has to be gotten out of the way. Rights are a social convention, not a moral one. The notion of “moral rights” comes from deontology, not consequentialism, and it’s the dogmatic opposition to rational ethics that deals only in absolutes and which ignores the highly context sensitive nature of ethics. As an atheist and methodological naturalist, you should take more seriously the arguments of consequentialists like Peter Singer, and less deontologists like Gary Francione, who is a woo (all deontologists are woos, because absolute deontological authority is inherently an appeal to woo; look back to Kant on that one).

We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as a resource, as a thing that we [c]an use and kill for our purposes.

The deontological view is absolute. No justification, no matter what. One mouse in a research lab to save billions of human lives is unacceptable to a deontological vegan.
If you’re judging veganism by what the deontological fringe say, you are indulging in a straw-man argument. That’s not what most people actually believe. And it’s certainly not what’s rational.

If you want to discuss this at more length, we can, but suffice it to say that a lot of vegans are also confused on that point (partially due to the popularity of non-rational advocates like Francione), and that only goes to show that veganism doesn’t always mean atheism or critical thinking in itself. When you hear somebody talking seriously about rights, and it’s not either a political discussion or mere turn of phrase, they are probably not representing the rational consequentialist view.

That said, are you seriously representing the idea that it’s moral for you to eat other species because you wouldn’t judge other species for eating you? Because that’s a pretty strong declaration of moral subjectivism, and you might not realize it.

Here’s the more general form of what you said:
It’s moral for subject A to do X to subject B if subject A wouldn’t judge subject B for doing X to subject A.
That’s like a rapist saying it’s OK to rape other people because he wouldn’t judge somebody for raping him. A thing does not become moral for you to do based on your claimed lack of judgment against others for doing it to you, whether that’s another individual, another group, another species, etc. (the line drawn here is truly arbitrary).

Are you really ‘fine with’ people using that kind of bad reasoning to guide their ethical principles?

It is at best a weak defense against a certain kind of hypocrisy, but it is not a moral justification. And it’s a weak defense against hypocrisy in your case, because:

1. It’s not the same situation. A shark has neither a sense of rational moral judgment, nor a choice in the matter. Context is everything in ethics. It would be the same kind of situation if you said you wouldn’t judge another person for killing and eating you — a person with a sense of conscience, and the choice and ability to not kill and eat you without suffering any great loss of well being. If you want to assume some irrational speciesism (arbitrarily requiring the eaten and eater to be across a species barrier for no good reason), then you’d have to make it an extraterrestrial being of some kind.
And yet, don’t you find deities’ demands for human sacrifice morally questionable? That’s pretty alien. Shouldn’t it be OK for a god to demand human sacrifices, as long as that god wouldn’t overtly judge a meta-god for demanding god sacrifices?

2. Even if you framed it correctly and consistently, it’s not true. You do not consider other people reasonable or ethical when they behave by those standards. Shouldn’t you be on board with Muslims’ rights to kill apostates, because they themselves wouldn’t mind being killed for leaving Islam? Or if they wouldn’t judge people of other religions killing their own apostates?

In order to avoid hypocrisy on that point, you can’t just not judge the shark. You can’t judge ANYBODY who does to others any specific action they claim they wouldn’t mind done to themselves. Because fundamentalists consider their actions to be just, and wish to be held to the same standards themselves, that kind of twisted standard makes judging the evil actions of fundamentalists impossible.

Moral subjectivism will get you nowhere fast, and being able to judge people as immoral only when they behave hypocritically is a great way to make your moral system pretty much useless against fundamentalism.

[NonZeroSum]

Funny timing...

Matt Dillahunty deploys terrible carnist logic.
https://youtu.be/WBCHGpP32vo

[Jebus]

I wonder if he knew that a similar video had already been made in response to these old comments. Anyway, the more ridicule the better.

[indy]

First off, I apologize for the tardy response. I have an aversion to forums and haven't followed any for years, but the kind requests of Activist Journeys and RedAppleGP drew me in. Thank you again, Activist Journeys and RedAppleGP, for the feedback and requests to get involved. Also, after looking at some other forum posts, I have to say hats off to Activist Journeys for teaching ethics courses (if I'm right that you and NonZeroSum are the same person). That's badass. Second, I don't have much to add in commenting on my video. As far as objections go, I see a few more ad hominems on this forum (this time directed at me instead of Francione and Kant), but I still stand fully behind my video.

[brimstoneSalad]

Hi Indy, thanks for joining in.

As far as objections go, I see a few more ad hominems on this forum (this time directed at me instead of Francione and Kant), but I still stand fully behind my video.

Have you read the infamous deontology thread?
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?t=785

Because T.VA's forum users are routinely unclear in their script, I'm not sure what they meant by "rights are a social convention and not a moral one."

Rights as we know them derive from social contracts. Basically the rules of the game as humans have established them; implicit or explicit duties and entitlements negotiated between people.
Rights are strict because the rule of law does not serve society well when they are waived arbitrarily. Strict application of rights promotes trust between citizens and society/government at large, where corruption and violation of rights degrades that trust. That trust is essential to social order.

None of this is inherently moral.

Notice that what they say about "moral rights" can easily be said about any ethical concept. "Oh, this idea of 'universal moral principles' is merely a social convention."

Not non-arbitrary moral principles derived from logical deduction.

Language of course is a construct, so the sounds we link to the idea of "morality" may be arbitrary, but the concept itself is objective and founded in reason.
Kant made a noble effort with the categorical imperative, but he failed due to the lack of contradiction (according to his system) generated by many potential social systems causing chaos among each other (e.g. those without property clash with those that have it, so stealing becomes subjective). Or, rather, his system contradicts itself. Likewise it results in some bizarre moralization of essentially non-moral issues (Being fashionable is immoral). His attempt was too "high level" when it comes to actions, and ignoring the consequences meant those differences couldn't be ironed out with appeal to practical functionality.

"Oh, this idea of 'intrinsic value' is merely a social convention."

If they are arbitrary, sure. Thus arbitrarity must be eliminated.

Much like most of the outlandish claims in T.VA's video, it's nothing substantive and more needs to be said. For starters, an argument would be nice.

A complete accounting and debunking of deontology probably would have taken an extra hour, and would have been an unnecessary tangent to address Dillahunty. I think you were looking for something in the video that wouldn't have been practical.

I'll start with just that. Any objections so far?

[indy]

As in your script, you're begging the question against moral rights. I understand the contractualist account of "rights," but you can't just assert it without arguing for it. It's like arguing for subjectivism by saying morality is by definition subjective. You're taking for granted the very thing up for debate. After that, you're missing the point of my, apparently, naive arguments by addressing each of my examples. My examples weren't about the nature of each of those moral claims, and the point I'm making can't be refuted by addressing their nature either. It's about how easily one could beg the question against those claims and how this, too, would fail to refute those claims. There's a problem with the structure of your argument (or lack thereof)--not necessarily the position itself.

[NonZeroSum]

Thank you again, Activist Journeys and RedAppleGP, for the feedback and requests to get involved.

Yo! That's me, much appreciated also

Some questions from my end for everyone:

"All deontologists are woos. . .most politics is based on faith," does this diminish the usefulness of the definition of woo as praxis based on falsehood? We want religious demographics for veganism who openly couch their ethics in faith but it's important to go to arms with any of those who's actions are detrimental to consequentialist aims?

I favour virtue activism and can see constitutional deontiligists as being allies in many circumstances that can produce more good than bad. Absolutist deontologists and utilitarians which bite the bullet on things like carnivore extinction and being against freegan/pest control should be asked to not be so vocal about those topics for pragmatic advocacy reasons.

So lastly this conversation could have good crossover to AskYourself debate, was it right to call namethetrait absolutist deontological in its formulation and not simply an ideological overreach? And could we do better to pivot towards talking about marks of good advocacy and reasoning as I think you were doing well Brim.

[brimstoneSalad]

I understand the contractualist account of "rights," but you can't just assert it without arguing for it.

Dillahunty wasn't arguing against it, so it wasn't meant to be a full argument. It was a brief mention to show that there a vegans who understand those problems (as I presume Dillahunty does).

There's a problem with the structure of your argument (or lack thereof)--not necessarily the position itself.

I took it that you disagreed with the position. Do you not?

My argument was posted with respect to Kant:

Kant made a noble effort with the categorical imperative, but he failed due to the lack of contradiction (according to his system) generated by many potential social systems causing chaos among each other (e.g. those without property clash with those that have it, so stealing becomes subjective). Or, rather, his system contradicts itself. Likewise it results in some bizarre moralization of essentially non-moral issues (Being fashionable is immoral). His attempt was too "high level" when it comes to actions, and ignoring the consequences meant those differences couldn't be ironed out with appeal to practical functionality.

You can use reason to come to objective moral principles.
Deontology is a failed attempt at doing so.

Do you agree with those two points?