37 lines
6.3 KiB
Plaintext
37 lines
6.3 KiB
Plaintext
A bloodmouth carnist theory of animal rights
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<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>
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<pre>
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>There is nothing sweet or savory about the rotting
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>carcass of a chicken twisted and crushed with cruelty.
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>There is nothing delicious about bloodmouth carnist food.
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>How does it feel knowing your stomach is a graveyard
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I'm sorry, but you just inadvertently wrote the <em>most METAL</em>
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description of eating a chicken sandwich in the history of mankind.
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MY STOMACH IS A GRAVEYARD
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NO LIVING BEING CAN QUENCH MY BLOODTHIRST
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I SWALLOW MY ENEMIES WHOLE
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ESPECIALLY IF THEY'RE KENTUCKY FRIED
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</pre>
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<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 “bloodmouth” and “carnist” are verbal tokens for an entire ideology.</p>
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<p><span id="more-5656"></span></p>
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<p>First thing I did was notify my friend Ken Burnside, who runs a T-shirt business, that I want a “bloodmouth carnist” T-shirt – 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>
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<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>
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<p><img src="http://d2a2wjuuf1c30f.cloudfront.net/product_photos/14199013/bloodmouthcarnistcomp_original.jpg" alt="Bloodmouth Carnist T-shirt" /></p>
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<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>
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<p>This had consequences. An A&D regular challenged me in private mail to explain why my consequentialist ethics don’t require me to be a vegetarian. </p>
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<p>I broadly agree with Sam Harris’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>
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<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 – 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>
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<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>
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<p>Another way to put this is to remember the Golden Rule, “Do as you would be done by” and ask: what animals have the ability to follow it, the right kind of informational complexity required to support it? </p>
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<p>Cows, pigs, chickens, and fish are not part of my potential community of trust. They don’t have minds capable of it – the informational complexity required doesn’t seem to be there at all (though suspicions have occasionally been raised about pigs; I’ll revisit this point). Thus, their deaths are not intrinsically ethically significant to me, any more than harvesting a head of lettuce is.</p>
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<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>
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<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 “twisted and crushed with cruelty”. I really don’t like it when people try to jerk me around by my sensibilities as though I’m some kind of idiot who is unreachable by reasoned argument. I find it insulting and want to punch back.) </p>
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<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 – 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’s only wild pigs I should be even marginally concerned about.</p>
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<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’d very much like to see them mirror-tested; in the meantime I’m quite willing to to give them the benefit of the doubt and consider them taboo for killing and eating.</p>
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<p>There you have it. The bloodmouth carnist theory of animal rights. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go have a roast beef sandwich for lunch.</p>
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