Paris: Animal rights activists seize puppy from homeless man

[Alcon]

None, and I still don't. And I have explained why. Because I am not responsible for other people's actions,

So, if you hire a debt collector you know breaks legs, you're not morally responsible at all for people having their legs broken?

and because the difference I would make (at a considerable cost) would be statistically irrelevant.

The "considerable cost" is your taste preferences -- you like to eat meat more than some other foods.

How is the number of animals I quoted "statistically irrelevant"?  I don't think you know what the term "statistically irrelevant" means (not that it has a meaning)...

Your argument doesn't hold value to me, neither on a pragmatic nor on a moral standpoint. You can reiterate it as much as you want.

Based on your "shifting the goalposts" comment, if you actually do understand my argument, your understanding is pretty damn new, since that belied a fundamental misunderstanding of what I've been explicitly arguing.

[Alcon]

Antonio, why do you bother arguing with some hippie who can't accept basic facts of life?

Humans are omnivorous. Humans have a position in the food chain. Not eating meat goes against those facts of life and we shouldn't leave a small brainless minority too weak to accept the laws of nature transform human alimentation in an unnatural way.

Are you actually arguing that anything that's evolutionarily useful is necessarily moral, and asserting that someone would have to be unintelligent to not accept that premise?  That is your argument?  Think about it for a good minute.

That's a ridiculous analogy. Consumers don't "hire" corporations. It's a fundamentally different relationship, and one where most of the decisions are taken by the corporations, for their own goals and according to their own rationale.

Why is that distinction important to your moral culpability, though?  In both cases, you knowingly obtain an unnecessary service and the knowing consequence is suffering.  Finding a distinction does not make an analogy "ridiculous" unless that distinction is a relevant, compelling difference.  Please explain why "hiring to do something" versus "purchasing a product from" is enough to completely eliminate moral culpability.

And yes, "taste preferences" are a pretty big deal. Eating is a fundamental part of the human experience and by taking away the pleasure to eat the food you like you're taking away one of the main sources of happiness in life. I don't think that's something you can so flippantly dismiss.

I don't dismiss it.  I referred to a somewhat narrower available set of foods as a cost.  That said, there are very few people who have such narrow food preferences that they'd stop enjoying eating if meat were off the table.  (How many people deeply value eating as a human experience, but dislike essentially all non-meat foods...is that number "statistically insignificant," too?)

In every paraphrase I've constructed of your position, I've indicated that you attach a greater value to your food preferences than everything I'm weighing them against, and I've based my argument on criticizing that.  You're sure indulging in a lot of certitude for someone who seems to keep failing to retain major parts of the argument.

[Alcon]

It's a basic fact of life that Women aren't good at Math. We just accept this rather than have some sentimentalists and weak people decide our policies and actions that go against the laws of nature.

That is a dumb strawman and you know it.

The underlying assumption behind your argument (that evolutionary usefulness apparently becomes "natural law" when the result is an instinctive compulsion is present throughout enough of the population, and that we don't need to consider any other moral implications) is pretty awful (because...why?).  It's also basically just a high-fallutin' variation on the "appeal to nature" fallacy.

[Alcon]

Such "moral" overthinking is what led to oppression of women during millenia and oppression of gays until a few decades.

I don't understand what part of my "overthinking" here would lead to oppression of women or gays.  Dude, my entire argument is that traditional ideas of what's "natural" or "instinctual" often lead to morally dubious outcomes that fail a test of what's good vs. harmful.

You just trotted out an argument that basically said "don't argue with people who don't understand that natural instinct should dictate what morally proper behavior is."  Next thing, immediately (and without explanation) suggest my argument might somehow bolster discrimination against gays?  The irony is thick.

Religions created plenty of bad moral codes. It's the same for vegetarianism. It's a misguided moral code, guided by an higher concern for animal life than human life, which isn't acceptable for a well-balanced human.

Bull.  Please quote a single part of my argument that asserts higher concern for animal life than human life.  

Are you really arguing animal health is more important than animal health?

No, assuming you meant to type "animal health is more important than human health."  I'm not arguing that.  I have no idea why you'd think I'm arguing that.

[Alcon]

Please quote a single part of my argument that asserts higher concern for human life than animal life. 

All of it

I think you got the phrases mixed up...

haha, thanks!

[Alcon]

Alcon, I believe my argument is clear enough, and if you still don't understand it by now, I have little hope that you ever will. But I'll be nice and summarize it for you one last time.

I believe that causing needless suffering to animals is wrong. The current suffering that animals go through could be avoided (or at least limited) if more stringent regulations were imposed on the farming industry. But if the only way I, personally, could avoid the suffering (of an infinitesimal fraction of all farm animals, mind you) only at the costs that we're talking about, then the suffering is not "needless" from my perspective. There is a legitimate reason for me, provided my near-powerless position in the face of the farming industry's practices, to not go out of my way to prevent such suffering. Legislators, on the other hand, could easily prevent such suffering, so again, my question is why you're focusing your effort on me rather than on them.

If you still don't get it, feel free to keep thinking I'm a horrible person. But there's no point in dragging this out.

The problem isn't that I'm not understanding your argument!  It's that it's a bad argument and I've explained precisely why.  Instead of responding to that, you're saying "you just don't understand" and repeating your argument.  I even already answered your "why legislators instead of me?" question...like, just a few posts ago.

You can't act all exhausted with me, and act like it's my fault the conversation isn't progressing, when you're:

1. not responding to very specific criticisms articulated with precise logic

2. repeating questions I've already answered very precisely, implying I haven't addressed them

3. constantly trying to end the conversation because "I'm not getting it" when you're the one doing #1 and #2

seriously, quote me a single argument you've made I haven't explicitly addressed, or a single criticism of my argument you've made that I haven't explicitly addressed

a single one.

You're not a horrible person, but this is ridiculous, Antonio, and your argument is terrible.

[Alcon]

You think my argument is bad, and I think yours are terrible. Whatever. I just wasted several hours of my life arguing with you, when I could simply have ignored your rants and and go on with my life. Guess it's time to go back to that. Bye.

You just spent several posts reiterating parts of your argument I'd already accurately paraphrased and responded to, and asking me questions I've already addressed.  Now, you want us to believe that you totally got the points I've made, and totally had responses to them, you just don't want to bother.  Right, dude.

If you don't want to take the time to respond to my arguments, which I've articulated in precise logical terms, OK.  But don't pretend like it's because you've proven they're terrible and I'm being dense.  At best, you're being lazy.  At worst, and more likely considering your restatements and non-responses, you're in over your head and don't actually have a defense, and you're being incredibly disingenuous.

Either way, your right to terminate the conversation.  Good luck with grad school, what with your ability to withstand intellectual criticism.

I'll defer to you again to characterize your performance in this thread:

The art of disappointing anyone who was still ready to take you seriously.

[Alcon]

Hahahahaha omg, you took the time to dig up a post I made 6 years ago just for a punchline? That's hilarious, if a bit disturbing.

Nah, I just searched your post history for the word "disappointing" and it was the first result.  It took five seconds.  Why put more effort into that burn than you've put into being passably competent in this entire thread?

[Alcon]

Yeah, to be clear, I don't think appeal to nature is a valid argument in any circumstance, and I won't use it just because it happens to support my argument in this case.

On the other hand, it is established that the increase in protein consumption generated by the development of the first hunting tools and cooking methods was crucial to the development of the human brain that made us into homo sapiens. So if Alcon's ancestors never ate meat, chances are he wouldn't be here today to scold me.

yes, and I'm sure my ancestors dealt with annoying impediments by beating them with blunt objects, so you're really lucky I'm more morally evolved than them

[Alcon]

And yet, this moral evolution would never have happened without eating meat. I hope the irony isn't entirely lost on you.

So, I imagine you think it's "ironic" that I'm morally opposed to meat-eating, because it was necessary at one point for us to develop mental faculties: our pre-moral ancestors weren't smart enough to get protein some other way.  But our pre-moral ancestors also weren't smart enough to survive and reproduce, and develop moral reasoning, without doings lots of things we reject as immoral.  Do you think it's "ironic" that you oppose the murder/rape/whatever, even though they were the only way our pre-moral ancestors knew to survive and flourish?

Is it "ironic" we now oppose this stuff as immoral?  Yeah, sure.  Is that ironic in a way that gives any moral insight?  No.  Obviously, you'd be opposed to us doing plenty of stuff that was useful/necessary to our pre-moral ancestors.  You're making no morally relevant point, and you're not saving face by being cute about this.  It's completely shallow and superficially clever.  Seriously, just respond to the substantive arguments or concede the debate.  Don't waste both of our time by playing splashies in the intellectual kiddie pool.

You know what's really ironic?  How your ancestors braved brutal, inhospitable environments and developed advanced cognition so that one day you could lose, and then ungracefully wuss out of, an internet debate.  Talk about a waste of protein.

[Alcon]

God, you're such a pain in the ass. Not even able to take a tongue-in-cheek for what it is and instead using it as a pretext for another long-winded rant on how evil those who disagree with you are. It's really sad to witness.

Dude, don't pretend "I hope the irony isn't lost on you" was some friendly, tongue-in-cheek, self-effacing kind of deal.  You were trying to trivialize my argument without addressing it.

I never said anyone is evil.  I said your argument sucks and you've failed to address mine.  Maybe it's because you do things like read what I said as "everyone who disagrees with me is evil," when I never said anything like that.  Oftentimes, reading what's actually written helps.  (I'm being tongue-in-cheek, you see.)

I don't think eating meat is immoral, and considering you were the one who was really pushing forward an argument, you are the one who lost the debate by failing to convince me. I, for one, had no interest in convincing you to start eating meat, since I accept that people have a variety of moral beliefs and resulting lifestyles, and I don't think anyone who differs from mine is a horrible person.

I paraphrased and critiqued your arguments in detail and you declined to respond.  If that's not "losing" a debate, I don't know what is.  By your rationale, you "win" a debate by sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly.

I don't think you're a horrible person.  I don't think people are horrible for having different moral holdings than me.  I don't think most people who've opposed gay marriage, or civil rights, or gender equality have done so because they're sadists.  I think they're usually, in their own ways -- often heavy in tradition, or personal comfort, or "common sense" -- trying to be moral, in fact.  But their arguments don't hold up to logical moral scrutiny.

I think you're smart, and likely a perfectly decent guy, but yours don't either.

[Alcon]

Alcon's strange fixation on animal rights is baffling, isn't it? Migrants are drowning in the Mediterranean, literal fascists are on the verge of taking power in municipalities throughout Europe and he chooses to invest his time in discussing the morality of meat. That's all well and good, we all have our interests but I'm not going to be lectured by a man who seems to care more about animals than he cares about immigrants or racial minorities or income equality.

Do you post about, or think about, issues in exact proportion to how important you think they are?  No?  Me neither.  Do you sometimes post more about issues you find particularly interesting, or where you find the counter-arguments particularly lacking?  Me too.  For instance, I'd never look at your post history and infer you think immigration in the U.S. is a more serious issue than the crisis than the Sudan.  Why are you doing that with me?

To be clear, I do not think animal rights is an insignificant issue.  There's serious suffering of sentient beings at stake here, and it's on the mass scale.  I would rank it above a decent number of political issues that I post less about, but also below some.  If you want to know how relatively important I think it is, ask.  But, unless your meat consumption is somehow contingent on how important gay marriage is, I'm not sure why it's relevant.

Also, if you genuinely think I'm an unfeeling person who doesn't care about human suffering -- which, man, you actually think that? -- it doesn't matter.  My arguments stand completely independent of what kind of person I am.  That is literally the same crap pulled by people who wouldn't engage arguments about civil rights or gay rights because "distasteful" people were advancing them.  You know that's nonsense, dude.

[Alcon]

edit since you added stuff:

Alcon, your tone is sanctimonious, smug and obnoxious. Antonio has his own issues but I'm choosing to focus on your issues because too many forumites would rather run away from you than make this critique. It's really tiresome arguing with you because it seems that you take perverse pleasure in humiliating people, as evidenced by this thread. Tony's arguments weren't stellar but there was no need to be hostile and needle his own individual actions, which really have no basis in a discussion like this. Seek professional help! I sense a pedant who loves to demonstrate his superiority...

Look at my other debates on the forum, including early in this thread, before Ingeman and Antonio ignored the substantive content of my argument in favor of things like "you're just arguing this because you're defensive."  I can be aggressive in debates, but I rarely try to beat on people unless they're being condescending or non-responsive.  Remember that debate we had in that Charles Murray thread?  Was I even slightly mean to you?  No, man.  Even when you got mean-spirited toward me -- because I knew you were frustrated, not being condescendingly dismissive out of the gate.

I like an aggressive debate.  I have fun, in the same way that guys with upper body strength (not me) probably like boxing.  But I would never arbitrarily decide to start beating someone up.  If they take the posture first, I'm game, and yes, sometimes I hit back harder than the first punch.  I also don't like passive-aggressive forms of "let's agree to disagree" and tend to attack them.  But if someone genuinely indicates they're getting upset, I back down the personal sparring.  (I will admit it's really hard to say "this is too much" to someone who's antagonizing you, so sometimes I'm sure I go overboard when I'm having fun.)

And while I appreciate your concern, you can ask pretty much anyone who's met me in person.  I am not a remotely mean-spirited or antagonistic guy

[Alcon]

I cop to the fact that my post is pure garbage and has no value whatsoever. It's just a visceral reaction.

Fair.  I really appreciate how willing you are to talk about your emotional processes when working through ideas, by the way.  A lot of people hide that to avoid admitting any uncertainty, when we all work this way sometimes.

I've thought about animal rights since our discussion and I can't bring myself to care about animal rights. This is a source of frustration for me. I recognize that animals are deserving of some concern and deserve a framework for evaluating their welfare but I cannot convince myself that they deserve rights. This might be because of the relationship between sentiments and morality. I'd argue that most people have some sense that people are intrinsically valuable, that this transcends culture and that this is the root of attempts to forge universal moralities. Do people have the capacity to care for animals in the same way that they care about their fellow man? I'd wager that this is hard to believe.

Tony's claim has a basis of truth to it: human evolution was founded upon eating meat. The taste of animal fat lights up the brain, which is why, in times of relative material scarcity, meat has been reserved for important rituals/events. This is part of the human experience. No amount of reason can negate this.  This isn't an appeal to tradition or convention so much as it's an appeal to the human condition. I find it hard to believe that we can ever transcend some aspects of our biology, a key feature of which is meat-eating. I suppose that we could place restraints on this desire so that we can promote about animal welfare but it remains an aspect of being human.

I'm with you: it's a impulse that's deeply in our instinct.    But there are a lot of other tribalistic impulses that are deeply within our instinct that we've overriden intellectually.

A friend of mine was actually just reading me an article about research relating to abstract thought and racism.  In particular, 100 years ago, when people rarely thought abstractly because it was pointless, you couldn't prompt someone to empathize with a black person by saying "how would you feel if you woke up tomorrow with black skin?"  They'd just dismiss it by saying no such thing happens.  The theoretical exercise was pointless to them because being black and being white are just totally different things, so it made no sense for them to think about how it would feel to become black -- it wasn't sympathy, it was just nonsense, and therefore morally irrelevant.  The ability to sympathize with others of another race (or religion or whatever) has been, in great part, a byproduct of turning sympathy into an abstract exercise: you recognize what purpose sympathy serves (lessening suffering as an abstract principle), and work from there, instead of responding to your intuitive emotional sympathy, which may be driven by shared experiences/traits, and can lead to outcomes like racism.

I'm not saying sympathizing with an animal is the same thing as sympathizing with a person of another race.  I am, however, saying that it's a somewhat unnatural behavior that requires abstract reasoning that only became common pretty recently.  But that ability to remove ourselves from instinct, in-group identification, etc., is a good thing.  Some tendencies of humanity and byproducts of human evolution are bad.  Xenophobia, tribalism, and racism were probably adaptive at some point, and are still to some extent natural, but they're bad.

It's good that we're using our abstract reasoning to limit those human tendencies, because they cause suffering.  We rightfully dismiss those impulses as unevolved and harmful.  We expect those who don't feel that sympathy intuitively to adjust intellectually.  The new generation, who grows up where that sympathy is normal, largely feels it intuitively and doesn't need to intellectualize.  And it's good...there's less suffering.  I see no reason why we can't, or shouldn't, apply the same to animals just because our preference for meat is also instinctual.

[Alcon]

I paraphrased and critiqued your arguments in detail and you declined to respond.  If that's not "losing" a debate, I don't know what is.  By your rationale, you "win" a debate by sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly.

Your "critiques" are irrelevant, because they are based on fundamental moral principles different from mine. That's what you don't understand. In discussions on morality, there are no objective facts that everyone can agree on, and which can form the basis for a resolution of the disagreement. If I'm arguing with a social Darwinist, I can bring him data and prove to him that inequalities have increased dramatically in the western world over the past decades, but I will never convince him that that's a bad thing. All I could say is "I think your moral principles are f**ked up" and leave it there. You seem to think that your arguments were factual when (aside from some number-crunching that didn't affect the substance of my argument) they weren't.

You're right that people often come at moral issues from different fundamental analyses.  But you said you indicated that you're open to an argument about minimizing unnecessary harm.  You terminated the conversation when I asked when unnecessary harm results from unnecessary situations you knowingly allow to occur.  So I'm not sure why you think we're at an impasse.

So you do think you can request a good or service that will knowingly have an immoral outcome, and your hand is clean?  You balked at my bookie example, saying that's different because you hire a bookie instead of purchasing a product from him.  I asked why that distinction matters.  If there a fundamental moral belief that makes you feel entitled to buy as many products as you want, even if they directly and obviously cause harm to others to produce, that explains things...but considering I've seen you bemoan someone's support of sweatshops, color me confused by your moral claims here.

[Alcon]

Ok, first off, I said "needless", not " unnecessary ". I'm not a native speaker, so I might be wrong, but I think there is a slight nuance between the two (with need being a broader concept than nececessity).

Those words are synonyms, as far as I know.

Second, there is no absolute definition of what constitutes a "need". Maybe you assumed I meant a vital need, but I never actually said that. That's much too strict a condition, and if followed, it would considerably hinder human development. To me, "needless" simply means that animal suffering should be avoided whenever it doesn't serve a legitimate purpose to human beings.

How is that any different from what I paraphrased?

To me a legitimate purpose does not include increased profit (at leat not beyond a certain level necessary for workers in the industry to live a comfortable life). It does, however, include having access to a category of food that has proven crucial to human development and is a fundamental source of daily happiness for billions of people. Again, the fact that meat tastes good is not a trivial argument to me.

Why would it be relevant if it has "proven crucial to human development"?  It is no longer crucial.  In fact, you complained when I previously argued against this being relevant, because you said I was taking a tongue-in-cheek comment too seriously.  (Obviously, I was right; it wasn't tongue-in-cheek.)

You ignored this entirely: So you do think you can request a good or service that will knowingly have an immoral outcome, and your hand is clean?  You balked at my bookie example, saying that's different because you hire a bookie instead of purchasing a product from him.  I asked why that distinction matters.  If there a fundamental moral belief that makes you feel entitled to buy as many products as you want, even if they directly and obviously cause harm to others to produce, that explains things...but considering I've seen you bemoan someone's support of sweatshops, color me confused by your moral claims here.

So, that leaves one cogent argument for me to address: you think the value of taste of a meat diet is so much greater than the taste of a vegetarian diet that it justifies whatever suffering is prompted by you eating a non-vegetarian diet, e.g., with T being taste, and S being suffering, Utility(Tmeat - Tveg)>Disutility(Smeat-Sveg).  How much mass animal suffering would be sufficient for you to tolerate consuming vegetarian food, which you apparently hate and removes the joy you take from eating?  When does Utility(Tmeat - Tveg)<Disutility(Smeat-Sveg)?  Can it ever?

If your misunderstanding stemmed from a semantic mistake I made, I am ready to admit it and apologize for it (though that doesn't excuse your smug and self-righteous posturing). If you still have something to add after that, it probably means you can't comprehend different moral perspectives.

Do you really think, having read this topic, that I have any difficulty comprehending and balancing different moral principles?  I know you're trying your hand at being smug and self-righteous, but I have had no problem paraphrasing and critiquing your moral posits.  You're essentially saying "if that answer doesn't satisfy you, than you must just not 'get' it," which is as horsecrap now as the last time you tried it.

[Alcon]

The fact that you constantly have to paraphrase my argument is a sign that either I'm not explaining myself clearly enough, or your comprehension skills are poor. I assumed the former and thus tried to clarify my argument. That does not seem to have worked. Draw your own conclusions.

You must be kidding.  It's standard practice to paraphrase the argument you're replying to, so that your opponent can point out any misunderstandings, and so that you can orient readers toward what point you're addressing.  Your reply "didn't work" in the sense that you paraphrased an argument I've already addressed, without responding to my counterargument.  That was your problem.

Whether or not meat is crucial to modern human development (something neither you nor I really knows enough to make a judment on) does not change the substance of my argument.

OK, good, we're on the same page.  The role of meat-eating in human cognitive development is irrelevant to the current moral choice.

Yes if the cost of not doing so is unreasonably high and the morality of said action is, as I have already stated it it, conditional on the existence of a valid reason.

...

First of all, as someone who values human suffering infinitely more than animal suffering, I find your comparison deeply offensive. I'd rather see a single sweatshop worker gain better working conditions than end all animal abuse worldwide.

...

But the false equivalence that you draw, it still fails at proving your case. I don't jump at people whom I see wearing Nike shoes, you know. In fact, chances are I probably own products that were made in sweatshops, because, again, I don't have the time to figure out where everything I buy comes from. Sweatshops, just like intensive farms, should be eliminated through through the legislative process.

Slow down on your DEEP OFFENSE, Mr. Sensitive.  It's not an equivalence; it's an analogy.  An analogy is a type of comparison that compares two unalike things to find their relevant similarity!  Turning analogies into equivalences is another thing you might want to avoid in grad school!

 The point was to ask whether you think buying from sweatshops has any moral implications.  Your answer here appears to be consistent: if you're getting some benefit out of it, and avoiding sweatshops would cause any inconvenience to you, you're all about buying from sweatshops!  You hope public policy people will get rid of them, although you don't seem to be willing to put any effort into that either, so you'll go along benefiting from them at every possible convenience and hoping the problem will fix itself, not that you particularly care.

In the other analogy, you're not not necessarily instructing the bookie to hurt someone, either.  You just know that the bookie will almost inevitably hurt the person who owes you money, but you choose the bookie because you like the convenience factor of it (you get your money faster).  It sounds like, again, that's a-ok with you.  Why would it not be?  If you decide the convenience of getting your money fast is anything like the convenience of not having to research your clothes, or the convenience of eating tasty meat, you'd have no reason not to use a bookie.

The analogies are apt, and you gave a fairly cogent response to them, which is that your position (assuming it contained a typo) is effectively near-unconditional:

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As long as your hands don't have blood on them, you're willing to let other people do something for your convenience/preferences, even if it causes wide-scale suffering -- to either animals or even, apparently, humans too.

You are absolved of all responsibility because that's the system's responsibility, not yours.  You could reduce the demand for products based on wide-scale suffering, but it would either take too much research time or be inconvenient.  Besides, why should you, since you're not responsible at all, since you never pull the trigger.

It's good, though, that you get VERY OFFENDED by the insinuation that you might not be sympathetic to the suffering of others.  You're totally sympathetic!  Your sympathy just plays second fiddle to your personal preferences, conveniences, love of steak...pretty much anything you justify based on a "valid reason," which basically includes every personal preference you have.  Meanwhile, you think it's society's responsibility to deal with this problem, and will accordingly continue your brave social activism: never demanding society change, never changing your personal behavior, and generally appearing to be totally fine with doing absolutely nothing to lessen suffering or change society at all.  Hurrah!

But, hey, you did once made that post where you called sweatshops "disgusting"!  I'm sure that was a brave, liberal strike against mistreatment and suffering, before you went back to clearly not actually giving half a damn about changing that or anything else that might inconvenience you.

Let me know if I've missed anything in my paraphrase.  Otherwise, you're right: we're done!

[Alcon]

Since you were so kind as to teach me the difference between equivalence and analogy (not that it made your argument any stronger, since the difference between the two cases was relevant to my point: human suffering is not morally equivalent to animal suffering and what might be acceptable in the former case might not be in the latter), I'll return the favor and try to explain you the difference between paraphrasing and strawmanning.

Except the point of the analogy was the extent to which your distance from the direct action meant you weren't morally culpable!  Unless the distance somehow varies depending on whether the resulting suffering is animal or human (why would it?), that's irrelevant to the analogy.  In any case, it's not a "false equivalency."

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is a strawman. A strawman is a dishonest paraphrasing of your opponent's argument, which deliberately distorts it so as to make it less solid or more extreme. We are always tempted to do it - sometimes inadvertently - because it allows us to set the terms of the argument, which makes it very easy to "win" it. This is why paraphrasing your opponent's argument - provided that it's already written in simple, intelligible English - is a bad idea if you're concerned about the honesty of your argument.

Why is this a strawman? Because you take a very specific statement:

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...and turn it into a much broader, and thus more easily criticizable one:

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...making me say something that I never so much as hinted was my argument. Not every purpose that has a "utility" for human beings is legitimate. Some clearly aren't, such as entertainment (I oppose cockfighting and corridas). Others, such as clothing, are more ambiguous (articles that serve merely an aesthetic purpose, such as fur, are not worth it, but some clothes serves a valid practical purpose that can't be easily supplemented). I have already explained why I believe meat consumption is a valid justification, and you had no basis to construe such specific statement into a much broader one that amounts to "anything goes".

The rest of your rambling is irrelevant since it all rests on this strawman.

I am an extremely, obnoxiously precise debater, and although I err sometimes, this is not such a case.  You've given no coherent definition for any standard of "legitimacy."  My post above was based on deductions made from what you've given to me.  Here's every reference you've made to your "legitimacy" standard:

* Here, after condescendingly claiming you'd made your argument "clear enough" that I can't understand it if I didn't already, you made your first reference to this apparently-pivotal standard: "I believe that causing needless suffering to animals is wrong."  In other words, you said the suffering had to be needed.

* Later, in this post, you claimed that by "needed," you didn't mean "necessary," and might have used the wrong word.  That's fine; you're a non-native speaker.  You refined your standard of "legitimacy" to be instances in which something "serve(s) a legitimate purpose for human beings."  Unfortunately, that's uselessly self-referential since you've just said something is legitimate if it serves a legitimate purpose for people.  Clear as mud, bro.

* So, what is a legitimate purpose?  You haven't defined this, but you've unequivocally indicated that one thing is a "legitimate purpose" for meat.   You stated that it's legitimate to "[have] access to a category of food that has proven crucial to human development and is a fundamental source of daily happiness for billions of people."  Since you've apparently conceded that meat's role in human development isn't morally relevant, i'm forced to infer that this is about meat being "a fundamental source of daily happiness for billions of people" and "tastes good."  In other words, meat is "legitimate" because many people (including you) prefer it to other types of food.

* You have indicated that two other things are not legitimate purposes: making profit beyond that necessary for industry workers to live comfortable lives, which has absolutely nothing to do with the suffering question, and just now, entertainment like cockfighting.

I said that your definition "apparently" entailed "anything with utility to Antonio.  Do you not know what the word "apparently" means?  It means "as far as one can tell" -- which was the case when I posted that.

Perhaps "legitimate purpose" does not entail everything that gives you utility.  You've mentioned two things that might give utility that are not "legitimate purposes" -- making excess profit, beyond that necessary to live comfortably, and just now, cockfighting.  I'm not sure why, in any case, since you've consistently failed to define "legitimate purpose."  But if you enjoy cockfighting, I guess "legitimate purpose" no longer "apparently" entails anything with utility to Antonio.  Either way, though, my statement was NOT a strawman.

Plus, even if not all things that have utility to Antonio are "legitimate purposes," it does not negate the rest of my post as you claimed, because my entire post was indicting you for exactly what you explicitly claim to believe.  All of it is specific to your positions on meat and sweatshops.  Is it not true that you think your food preferences and shopping ease are "legitimate purposes" that make it reasonable for you to make choices that result in suffering?  Is it not true that you deny culpability for causing that suffering, because you didn't do it directly, even you knew it was a near-inevitable consequence of your actions?  Is it not true that you demand society shifts, instead of you, and then you apparently do absolutely nothing to encourage that societal shift?

So, executive summary:

1. You didn't know what the word "needed" means; you were using it to mean "has a legitimate purpose," and then got annoyed when you assumed it meant "necessary" (an exact synonym).

2. You haven't explained what a "legitimate purpose" is (besides that it's something that's legitimate!), but apparently eating inhumanely-treated meat and buying from a sweatshop are those, but cockfighting and making high profits aren't.

3. You're totally sympathetic about all the poor animals and sweatshop workers who are suffering, but your taste preferences and convenience trump those concerns.

4. You believe yourself absolved of individual guilt because it's the government's responsibility to regulate these issues to prevent suffering, and you refuse to change your individual acts in the meantime.  Again, totally sympathetic, though!

5. You refuse to put even passing effort into trying to make any change at the governmental or social level.  Totally moral, compassionate, and sympathetic!  You know, as long as it's essentially zero-cost to you.

I'm precise in debates for a reason -- because it's needed necessary to show shoddy arguments like yours for what they are.  Unless you can point out an actual strawman/error I've made here, I guess we're done, Antonio!

[Alcon]

Protip: It really doesn't take much time to make arguments when you're not bullsh**tting your way through them.  You probably spent more time on this thread than I did.

I'd respect you for terminating the argument a lot more if you hadn't done so while accusing me of "misconstruing your views" after I painstakingly explained how I didn't, with citations and direct quotes.  Whatever, though.  Good luck with your all-nighter.

[Alcon]

The point is that the debate would have gone much faster if you'd clearly articulated just a few things: what a "legitimate purpose' is; why it is defined that way; how it's distinct from illegitimate purposes; how you weigh legitimate purposes against the resultant suffering; and how/when being separated from the resultant suffering insulates you from moral responsibility.  That's all you needed to do.  That would have been a fully-formed argument that at least attempted to respond to my critiques.  You did exactly zero of those things by the time you terminated the conversation.  The most you did is list two legitimate purposes and two illegitimate purposes, and then effectively refuse to explain the underlying logic.  The result was time wasted on both sides.

Not having my respect isn't the problem with what you did in the strawman exchange.  It's the fact you were wrong on substance.  Again, it doesn't matter how good or respectable you are, or how good or respectable I am.  The substance of the argument is what matters, and forget respect -- substance is where you failed.

(1-2 hours is about right, btw.  better than watching TV.)

[Alcon]

god, dude, more disingenuous horsehockey.  I am almost never this mean in debates, but you are engaging in some incredible BSing here.

You don't get to tell me how I could have made the debate shorter, when your entire arguing strategy has been to pick apart separate bits of my argument and pontificate over them at great lengths, while completely losing focus of the core. That might be a legitimate method for deconstructing complex problems, but in this circumstance it only served to obfuscate and waste my time. If the questions you just posted were all you were interested in, you should have posted them outright instead of coming up with one wall of text after another.

I obfuscated and wasted your time?  How disingenuous can you get?  Let's break this down once and for all:

1. You said that humans have a moral obligation to avoid "unnecessary pain" on animals.  You vaguely alluded to there being different rights re: suffering between the social contract and the "unnecessary pain" standard.  

2. I asked what the difference was, and how you avoided "unnecessary pain."  (Is it my fault you used "unnecessary" to mean something besides "not necessary"?) This was effectively me asking you to define a legitimate purpose.

3. You repeated that causing "unnecessary pain" was wrong, no matter "who/what the subject of such an action is."  You then denied personal obligation to inconvenience yourself to avoid "unnecessary pain," because that falls on society.

4. I criticized you for the idea that you have no responsibility for inconveniencing yourself to avoid things that inevitably cause suffering.  You then reiterated and confirmed you denied a personal obligation, which you topped off by calling my criticism "invalid" because you've "never hurt an animal in your life."  Throughout this, you continued to state your opposition to "unnecessary" pain and suffering, and I quoted you in kind.  You later reiterated again that you are not responsible for people's actions, even if you knowingly make a request that will prompt them to take suffering-causing actions.

5. I made the analogy of hiring a debt collector with the knowledge that he will probably break your debtor's legs.  This was me asking you how being separated from the suffering-causer insulates you morally when you knowingly prompted the suffering.  

6. When you simply reiterated as invalid, because the decision to inflict suffering wasn't yours, I explicitly asked you AGAIN why the separation was morally innoculating based on this different relationship.

7. You didn't respond, instead claiming your argument was "clear enough."  Hilariously, at the same time you do this, you concede that you have been using "necessary" to mean something besides "necessary" this entire time.  Holy crap.

8. I pointed out that you've terminated the conversation before explaining how the moral insulation works, which was your entire response when I pointed out your choices prompt unnecessary suffering.  More cross-talk happens, with you not answering that questioning, or explaining what you actually meant by "necessary," despite that I've asked both at this point.  Note that I had no reason to ask what you meant by "necessary" until now, because...you know...I thought you meant what the word "necessary" actually means.

9. I directly asked about both the insulation and the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate purposes.  

Where the hell is the obfuscation in that?  I've asked every question you just complained I didn't ask.  The only reason I didn't ask you to define "necessary" upfront is because I assumed you were using it to mean "necessary."  How stupid of me!

You still haven't logically explained your rejection of the booking analogy or how moral insulation works.  You concede that you're fine with prompting suffering if it makes you comfortable, but not merely for luxury, which is gross, but at least coherent and internally consistent.  I stand by criticizing that position harshly, somewhat like I'd criticize somebody who opposed same-sex marriage or racial integration out of personal comfort despite the external suffering it causes.  I don't think they're terrible people either, but it's a sucky position.

Unless you want to explain your baffling position on moral insulation, we're done.  You, like I've said, give about 1% of a crap about suffering, and there's nothing internally inconsistent about it.  But don't get twisted.  You have been clearly responsible for how long and baffling this debate is.  It's truly stunning that you can blatantly dodge questions, misuse the word "necessary" for like ten consecutive posts, and then blame me for "obfuscation," as well as complaining I didn't ask questions I directly asked you several times.

Your argument is gross, you blamed me for your own poor articulation, and you confused the conversation by messing up the definition of one of the most common words in the English language.  But, if all you're going for is presenting a semi-complete argument (ignoring the moral insulation non-answer), then, sure, you're done.

I'll withhold comment on your internet honor, but I think the conclusion there is self-evident.

[Alcon]

So, essentially, this endless bickering that wasted hours of my time (but provided for your entertainment, apparently) boils down to me using the wrong word. Something for which, by the way, I preemptively apologized a dozen posts ago. If you replace "unnecessary" with "which does not procure sufficient utility for human beings", do you finally understand my point and accept that we just see things differently?

Already said that I do.

As for your analogy and "moral insulation" as you call it, I have actually explained it several times. My position as a customer toward a corporation that sells meat to, say, millions of people every day is extremely asymmetrical in terms of agency. The corporation (actually the corporations, since the original producer isn't the same as the seller and there might be several intermediate steps) decides everything about how meat is produced, from A to Z. My array of choice, instead, is limited to buying or not buying their product. The cost of not buying their product means either swearing off meat or spending an unreasonable amount of time figuring out which meat I could buy. This is not the same as the cost a farming corporation would face if it afforded better living conditions to its animals. Corporations could still do that, make a substantial profit, and provide their workers with decent wages - in fact, some do. Thus, from a customer's perspective, provided these very limited options, indirectly causing (a proportionally slight amount of) additional animal suffering is justified by the utility it provides (the ability of eating meat). It is not justified for corporations, as maximizing profits isn't a legitimate justification in my view.

Why is the relative disutility to you changing your behavior vs. the corporation morally relevant?  You basically seem to be saying "it would be less disutility for the corporation to change than me; therefore it should be their responsibility to change."  But why?  Is your moral responsibility to avoid suffering somehow a function of the ease of other people to fulfill that same moral responsibility?  If you hold your disutility from doing something that stops suffering static, but lessen the disutility to another actor (the corporation), does the disutility you're obligated to accept to avoid the suffering lessen?  Why would it?  How is iniquity relative to a third party relevant to your moral responsibility to avoid "unnecessary suffering"?

Besides, my bookie analogy is still in play.  You'd have a strong personal preference for getting your money quickly.  Why can you not argue that it's the bookie's responsibility to avoid suffering, and that your personal preference justifies hiring the bookie since the bookie could, theoretically, not do his job in a way that causes suffering.  Do you seriously think you're morally insulated from the inevitable consequence of your choice?  If not, is the reason only because it would be harder for the bookie to fulfill your personal preference if he doesn't break legs, and so the responsibility to change doesn't fall on the bookie?  It that wasn't the case, and the bookie could easily do his job without breaking legs, you'd be just fine hiring him because the responsibility for moral conduct falls on him?  

That's perverse logic to me.  And if you reject it, then clearly you must hold you have some level of moral obligation to try to avoid suffering, regardless of how easy it is for the corporation.  Currently you're demonstrating absolutely none, which is part of what I think is gross.

All I said here was already in my previous post, though probably in a less developed form (because I did not assume such development was needed). Obviously, since I have a life, I'm not going to spend an hour like you did to come up with a fancy-looking numbered list, complete with links, of where in my posts you can find those arguments. As I said, you're having fun while I'm just wasting my time and energy.

no, you've been wasting both of our time and energy.

And dude, please, you accused me of not asking you the questions I listed an "obfuscating."  I detailed exactly when I asked you those questions, and how I responded to your argument, which was not remotely obfuscatory.  Don't pretend like the only reason you can't support your accusation is a lack of time.

[Alcon]

Noting that you seem to have totally abandoned the accusation that I didn't ask you those questions, which is about the third baseless accusation you've totally abandoned.

Your sheer verbosity is what's obfuscating. In many cases you could have stated your questions/arguments clearly and concisely and instead chose to go on into a long-winded rant which included some relevant bits mixed with some irrelevant ones, some (maybe not deliberate) misconstructions, and a good deal of pointless affected outrage. You clearly like hearing yourself talk (or in these case, seeing yourself type, I guess), but, if brevity and clarity was your concern, you probably could have made the same points with about 67% less characters.

I don't think I wrote anything that a twelfth-grader couldn't understand.  You did fine.  Your problem wasn't big words; it's that you weren't responsive to ideas...and I guess that you consistently misused a word that a first-grader would understand.

Because, in my argument, the morality of animal suffering is based on the utility that it procures, ie the disutility that avoiding it causes. Since this disutility is higher for the customer than it is for the corporation, it makes perfect sense that the corporation's actions might be immoral while the customer's aren't.

No, that is not what I said. I said that the disutility for the customer is big enough to warrant the suffering, while the disutility for the corporation isn't. If the disutility for the customer were smaller, the action would be immoral even if the corporation's disutility were still smaller than the customer's. I already illustrated this with the example of fur.

In #3 here, you indicated that you believe the responsibility to correct social injustices generally falls on "public action," not "individual activism."  You invoked this to explain why you don't "go out of your way" to find meat that didn't result in suffering (understatement of the year).  When I challenged this, you responded by noting that it's much easier for corporations to change (or be regulated) than individuals accept disutility.  How is this a coherent response to my criticism unless you were somehow arguing that your individual responsibility to avoid suffering is modulated by not only the extent of the resulting suffering, but also the relative gap between the disutility to the disutility to the customer vs. company in mitigating suffering?  

You now seem to be claiming you merely meant that the disutility to the customer being higher than to the corporation is consistent with asserting a moral obligation for the customer but not the corporation.  That would make the context of your original statement make absolutely no sense.  If that was all you meant, why would the gap in disutility have been a relevant response to me asserting you had moral responsibility to avoid suffering?  Indicating that x has more difficulty than y being responsible for a, does not prove or imply that x has no responsibility for a, unless you assert that y has no responsibility for a, which you didn't.

See, when I use complicated sentence structures to be precise, this is why.  Not that I think complicated sentence structure is the problem there -- I think you're just not making much sense.

This point should also debunk your bookie metaphor, if you connect the dots.

I'm pretty good at connecting the dots, and no, I don't see how it does.

[Alcon]

OK, now you're just being disingenuous. I just said that the problem was, not the complexity of your arguments, but rather the fact that they were buried in the middle of long-winded rants which served no purpose beyond reaffirming how horrible you think I am. Everything was comprehensible, it was just hard to tell your core argument apart from the useless fluff. Obviously I could have done a better job at it, given unlimited time and will, but we've already covered this issue. If you wanted simple answers, you should have gone straight to the point.

Fair point (although I don't think you mean "disingenuous"...?).  I was wrongly interpreting "verbosity" to mean overly complicated language, not too much of it, which is not what that word means.  I don't understand how making it clear that I thought something was immoral "obfuscated" my argument, though?

To reiterate, a lot of the "useless fluff" was because you had used the word "necessary" to mean "giving me a high amount of subjective utility."  And I did directly ask you that question, once it became clear that you were using "necessary" to mean something else.  I even linked you to the posts where I did so.  It's hard to ask you the right questions about your argument when you're botching the explanation of your argument.  I spent a lot of time responding to a misconstruction of your argument, because you misconstructed it.

Actually, upon reexamination, I didn't misuse any word. It might have been better to avoid the word "necessary", but that's only because it's an inherently ambiguous concept, and its colloquial use (ie, something of vital importance) is different from its true meaning (ie something that's required in order to achieve a specific goal) which is what I had in mind. Maybe I should have specified the range of legitimate goals from the start, but since, as I eventually explained, this range eventually boils down to a judgment call of where to draw the line, I didn't think it was really worth discussing.

I don't think that, if you asked 100 people what the word "necessary" means in context of a moral argument, any of them would define it to mean "something I really enjoy but could live and function adequately without."  I also am not sure what you think the word "vital" means, but it means the same thing as "necessary"...

In "#3" (do you have an archive of those? nothing would surprise me at this point) my point was more about efficacy than about morality. That was before you made it clear that your argument was exclusively grounded on moral considerations. I believed, and I still do, that fundamental social change comes from public, rather than private, action. Therefore, when you feel something is wrong with the way society works and seek to fix it, you should take issue with the legislator, not with random people. This is what I meant when I said that responsibility falls on the former and not the latter. I was talking about practical, not moral responsibility. Of course you can still hold people accountable morally when their actions contribute to a social injustice (and acceptable alternatives to those actions are available).

OK...and, like I said, that makes it a non-sequitur response to the concern I raised in #3.  If you didn't mean to tie together the relative ease of avoiding suffering (you vs. the corporation) to your level of moral obligation to avoid suffering, why did you invoke it in #3?  It was totally reasonable for me to infer that you were arguing that this relationship had some impact on moral obligation, considering that you invoked this as a response to a criticism about you not "going out of your way" to avoid inhumane meat.

Again, this misunderstanding could have been cleared up a lot earlier if your posts didn't include so much caricaturing and rhetorical outrage.

I have no idea how being told you care very little about suffering (which you do; that's no caricature) "obfuscates" the rest of my argument.  Blaming me for distracting you with rhetoric is some serious actor-observer bias nonsense, considering you did things like use the wrong adjective ("necessary") for a fundamental part of your argument, and respond to a criticism of an apparently-central part of your argument with something that you later disclosed was a non-sequitur (the easiness of corporations vs. individuals to lessen suffering).  But, right, I'm sure the problem here was my obvious, non-confusing editorial commentary.

I really can't help you if, after all this, you still can't figure out why your metaphor doesn't apply.

Dude, I'm not good at plenty of things, but I'm good at syllogistic thinking and analogies.  It's not hard to explain how an analogy fails.  Your "response" to this analogy was to note that it's possible for the disutility to avoid suffering to be greater for the customer than the business, which in turn makes it possible that it would be morally unacceptable for the business to behave in a way that renders suffering, but morally acceptable for the consumer to engage the business in a way that causes the business to render suffering.  How the hell does that defeat my bookie analogy, which goes to your argument that strong subjective individual preference can justify engaging a business in a way that causes the business to render suffering?  Just replace "meat" with "wanting to get your money quickly."  You have not defeated this analogy.

[Alcon]

See, you can make semantic mistakes too! And you don't even have the excuse of not being a native speaker.

That semantic mistake wasn't a crucial part of my argument that I repeated several times, and then blamed someone else for not preempting with a question that required understanding the semantic mistake happened.

Anyway, I just explained that your rants were obfuscating because they made it more difficult to isolate your core argument from all the other pointless things you were padding your posts with, and replying to the former precisely.

You couldn't isolate the core of the argument from the commentary?  lol ok

Based on the level of logical precision you've demonstrated in this debate, I don't think I exactly disrupted your laser-focused mind with my distracting, distracting adjectives and commentary.

Again, common vs correct (but, as I admitted, not fully specified) definition. You can't be so hung up on using precise language and then blame me for not using a term in its common (but incorrect) understanding.

Fair enough, my mistake. In Latin languages, "vital" is the adjective associated with life, and "a matter of vital importance" essentially means a life-or-death issue. Apparently this is not the case in English.

Uh, no.  No one uses either "vital" or "necessary" to mean "something I like a lot but could function without."  Even if they did, no one would ever expect that's what you meant in a debate about moral logic.

like I don't think when people talk about "necessary conditions" in logical debates, they mean "conditions I find tasty and preferable to veggie burgers", I think they probably mean they're necessary and sh**t

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That simply means I misunderstood your argument and went on to argue on a practical standpoint instead of on a moral one. Whether that misunderstanding is to blame on you or me, I do not know and am not interested in finding out. Now that this misunderstanding is cleared up, this issue is irrelevant.

I wish that other people were still reading this to see how amazingly ridiculous you're being.  Go look back at the post you responded to -- the question was one sentence long, and it was whether you have a "moral obligation."  You're now claiming that you thought I was asking about practicality, and you "don't know" whether that misunderstanding was my fault or yours?  Lol.

Your analogy fails if you disregard the above argument on relative disutility of customer versus corporation (which, as I have clarified several times by now, is irrelevant to a discussion entirely focused on morality), and go back to my actual moral framework of an actor's individual moral position, considering that I apply a much, much higher standard to justifying human suffering than I do animal suffering, and that "getting your money back" certainly doesn't pass that standard. You could deduce all this from what I have said in my previous posts.

No, there's absolutely no syllogistic reason the analogy would fail if you "disregard the above argument on relative disutility of customer versus corporation" because the analogy instead addressed your claim that being insulated from the immoral action means you're not culpable (or less culpable), which you absolutely made.  Instead, I think you're arguing that something about either the personal preference (getting your money quicker) or the consequence (human suffering) makes it disanalogous.  

If the former, how do you determine whether a personal preference is valid separate from the consequence?  What makes your personal preference for meat independently valid, but not a personal preference for getting money fast?

If the latter, I assume you've going to make up some alternative definition of what you 'really' meant by the phrase "I am not responsible for others' actions."  You used that in response to me questioning why you put zero effort into avoiding inhumane meat in the absence of producer regulations.  But, hell, if you can make "necessary" mean "something I strongly prefer," I'm sure you can invent a colloquial meaning for this too.

In addition, even if we disregard the categorical imperative against unnecessary (as in, not justified by a legitimate purpose) suffering entirely, a human being would still be protected against lawless violence by the rights awarded to him as a member of the social contract. Animals, as I said in my very first post on this issue, do not have rights.

responded to this above, but oh my god stop using the word "necessary" that way

stop trying to make "necessary" happen

it's not going to happen