A bloodmouth carnist theory of animal rights
<p>Some weeks ago I was tremendously amused by a report of an exchange in which a self-righteous vegetarian/vegan was attempting to berate somebody else for enjoying Kentucky Fried Chicken.  I shall transcribe the exchange here:</p>
<pre>
>There is nothing sweet or savory about the rotting
>carcass of a chicken twisted and crushed with cruelty.
>There is nothing delicious about bloodmouth carnist food.
>How does it feel knowing your stomach is a graveyard

I'm sorry, but you just inadvertently wrote the <em>most METAL</em>
description of eating a chicken sandwich in the history of mankind.

MY STOMACH IS A GRAVEYARD

NO LIVING BEING CAN QUENCH MY BLOODTHIRST

I SWALLOW MY ENEMIES WHOLE

ESPECIALLY IF THEY'RE KENTUCKY FRIED
</pre>
<p>I am no fan of KFC, I find it nasty and overprocessed. However, I found the vegan rant richly deserving of further mockery, especially after I did a little research and discovered that the words &#8220;bloodmouth&#8221; and &#8220;carnist&#8221; are verbal tokens for an entire ideology.</p>
<p><span id="more-5656"></span></p>
<p>First thing I did was notify my friend Ken Burnside, who runs a T-shirt business, that I want a &#8220;bloodmouth carnist&#8221; T-shirt &#8211; a Spinal-Tap-esque parody of every stupid trash-metal tour shirt ever printed.  With flaming skulls!  And demonic bat-wings! And umlauts!  <em>Definitely</em> umlauts.</p>
<p>Once Ken managed to stop laughing we started designing.  Several iterations. a phone call, and a flurry of G+ messages later, we had the <a href="http://www.reagencydesign.com/collections/54275-all-products/products/6194566-bloodmouth-carnist-s-xl">Bloodmouth Carnist T-shirt</a>. Order yours today!</p>
<p><img src="http://d2a2wjuuf1c30f.cloudfront.net/product_photos/14199013/bloodmouthcarnistcomp_original.jpg" alt="Bloodmouth Carnist T-shirt" /></p>
<p>By the way, the skull on that shirt is me, sort of.  Ken asked me to supply a photo reference, so my wife and I went to a steakhouse and she snapped a picture of me grinning maniacally over a slab of prime rib. For SCIENCE!</p>
<p>This had consequences. An A&#038;D regular challenged me in private mail to explain why my consequentialist ethics don&#8217;t require me to be a vegetarian.  </p>
<p>I broadly agree with Sam Harris&#8217;s position in <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2628">The Moral Landscape</a> that the ground of ethics has to be the minimization of pain.  But I add to this that for pain to be of consequence to me it needs to be have an experiencer who is at least potentially part of a community of reciprocal trust with me.  Otherwise I would be necessarily paralyzed by guilt at killing bacteria every time I breathe.</p>
<p>The community of (potential) reciprocal trust includes all humans, possibly excepting a tiny minority of the criminally insane. It presumptively includes extraterrestrial sophonts, if we ever discover those. I think it is prudent and conservative (in the best sense of that term) to include borderline and near-borderline sophonts like higher primates, elephants, whales, dolphins, and squid.  In principle it includes any animal that can solve the other-minds problem &#8211; which probably includes some of the brighter birds.  I think this category can be roughly delimited using the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Animal_species_capable_of_passing">mirror test</a>.</p>
<p>For different reasons, the community of trust includes non-sophont human commensals.  My cat, Sugar, for example, who shows only dim and occasional flashes of behavior that might indicate she models other minds, but has a strong mutual-trust relationship with my wife and myself.  We know what to expect of each other; we like each other.  This is a kind of reciprocity with ethical significance even though the cat is not sophont.</p>
<p>Another way to put this is to remember the Golden Rule, &#8220;Do as you would be done by&#8221; and ask: what animals have the ability to follow it, the right kind of informational complexity required to support it?  </p>
<p>Cows, pigs, chickens, and fish are not part of my potential community of trust.  They don&#8217;t have minds capable of it &#8211; the informational complexity required doesn&#8217;t seem to be there at all (though suspicions have occasionally been raised about pigs; I&#8217;ll revisit this point).  Thus, their deaths are not intrinsically ethically significant to me, any more than harvesting a head of lettuce is.</p>
<p>Cruelty is a different matter.  I think we ought not engage in cruelty because it is damaging and coarsening; people who make a habit of being cruel to non-sophonts are more likely to become cruel and dangerous to sophonts as well.  Thus, merely killing a food animal is ethically neutral, but careless cruelty towards one is wrong and deliberate cruelty is evil.</p>
<p>(Nevertheless, I report that the above vegan rant inculcated in me a desire to stomp into a roomful of vegans and demand my food &#8220;twisted and crushed with cruelty&#8221;.  I really don&#8217;t like it when people try to jerk me around by my sensibilities as though I&#8217;m some kind of idiot who is unreachable by reasoned argument. I find it insulting and want to punch back.) </p>
<p>These criteria could interact in interesting ways, and there are edge cases that need more investigation.  I think I would have to stop eating pork if pigs could count the way that (for example) crows can &#8211; some pigs reportedly come close enough to passing the mirror test to worry me a little.  I can readily imagine that pigs bred for intelligence might come near enough to sophont to be taboo to me.  On the other hand, a friend who grew up on a hog farm assures me that pigs bred for meat are stone-stupid; according to her, it&#8217;s only wild pigs I should be even marginally concerned about.</p>
<p>Otters are another interesting case; they seem very playful and intelligent in the wild, occasionally use tools, and can form affectionate bonds with humans. I&#8217;d very much like to see them mirror-tested; in the meantime I&#8217;m quite willing to  to give them the benefit of the doubt and consider them taboo for killing and eating.</p>
<p>There you have it.  The bloodmouth carnist theory of animal rights.  Now if you&#8217;ll excuse me I&#8217;m going to go have a roast beef sandwich for lunch.</p>
