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this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Now we need Neil Degrasse Tyson to buy these platforms and switch all the videos to physics and math videos
No offence, but please not him
He's the best and I'm tired of hiding that. The silent majority has been silent too long
As long as he sticks to subjects he clearly understands. Everytime I've read or watched one of his take on veganism/anti-specism I was left dumbfounded and ashamed for him.
this is a problem for a LOT of public intellectuals/academics.
What did he say
There was a chapter in his book "Starry Messenger" dedicated to this subject. I unfortunately cannot reproduce the entire chapter here. However, here is a video essay on it that you can watch if you're interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbXw13Npvlg (25min)
One of his dumbest argument imho was trying to claim that vegans were specist towards plants, even though no scientific existence of sentience in plants exist which is the moral criteria used in most anti-specist philosophy. I will add that even if plants were all found to be sentient, we'd still kill less sentient beings by eating them directly rather than feeding them to non-human animals and then killing them.
Here is another video of him talking about this very chapter for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9HrMdNEKPA (6min). I think this shows a complete misunderstanding of what veganism and anti-specism is about. To me it seems like he does not even consider the sentience of the animals and considers them as machines. He also seems to straw man the position to "vegans want to protect life".
That is actually pretty hilariously stupid.
He 100% just doesn't like vegetarians and worked backwards, coming up with some half-baked nonsense to back himself up.
Not exactly following the scientific method there.
I guess we all have our blind spots :)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=wbXw13Npvlg
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=z9HrMdNEKPA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
they are. they've identified a whole group of species and decided to treat them differently.
Again that's a misunderstanding of the position. The discriminatory criteria is sentience. If a plant was found to be sentient, this plant would be included in the moral circle. You can make the same argument for things we consider animals but lack all of what we currently consider needed for sentience. An example would be a sea sponge. I personally do not include a sea sponge in my moral circle and I do not think they have any sentience even though they are considered animals. I would also consider someone that says sea sponge should be included in our moral circle just because they are part of the animal kingdom to be quite dogmatic.
And even if we want to debate on whether a sea sponge is sentient, there is absolutely no debate on most animals we currently kill for food or exploit for entertainment. They are clearly sentient.
that's as arbitrary as any other criteria. and you're still treating all members of a class differently because of their membership in that class. it's discrimination. discrimination based on species is speciesism. it's just a speciesism you agree with.
Ok let me unpack your two points:
The difference with the sentience criteria is that a non-sentient being by definition cannot be hurt by actions taken against their being as there is quite literally no subject, no one, to experience anything. Would you say that someones that likes smashing rocks is discriminating against rocks? Of course not because it makes no sense to speak about discrimination for a non sentient being/object. The only time where you can make an argument that doing something to a non sentient being is an issue is when it affects a sentient being.
Again as I've literally stated in my earlier comment the discrimination is not based on species but on sentience. If you want a more concrete example, let's imagine a philosophical zombie or in other terms a non-sentient human. I would not include such a being in my moral circle by itself as it would lack sentience.
we discriminate between cars and motorcycles.
consequentialism is fraught with epistemic problems. how can you know what might effect a sentient being at some point in the future?
i wouldn't say they're are discriminating against rocks. i'd say they are using discrimination and allowing themselves to smash objects they class as "rocks"
But you would agree that the rocks themselves cannot have an issue with it? That's the gist of the sentientist position. Sentient beings have an interest in living, not being exploited and thus the sentientist position goes further and say that for the same reasons we say that humans have a right to live (i.e.: not being killed) or being exploited, we should extend the same rights to sentient beings because there is no morally relevant difference between us and other sentient beings that would justify killing them when you would not kill a human being in the same position.
Note that this does not mean all sentient beings should have exactly the same rights. Obviously giving the right to vote to a cow does not make sense, the same way we don't give the right to abortion to cis men because they cannot make use of this right.
yea. it doesn't change whether you're practicing discrimination.
Yes I agree in principle that it's a discrimination. They way I used discrimination was implying that someone on the "bad" side of the discrimination could be discriminated against. My bad I should have clearly defined the way I used this term. Sorry English is not my first language as well.
In any case a discrimination that does not hurt the discriminated or another sentient being is of no consequence for me.
so you can see, in this case, NDT was right that vegans also practice speciesism, even if his other arguments are kinda stupid.
i don't. rights are a fiction.
Ok it feels like you're just starting to spam answers without even taking the time to argument on why you think something. I try to take the time to justify my position and you just answer with small sentences that don't do anything for an interesting discussion.
Let's stop there, have a nice day.
have a nice day.
yes there is.
What's your morally relevant argument for killing for example cows for taste pleasure and not humans then? What's this special trait humans have that other sentient being do not possess that allows us to do that to them?
they aren't human.
you don't seem to understand that you have decided, for instance, oak trees do not have sentience, and you treat all oak trees as though they are the same due to their membership in the class "oak tree" instead of treating them as individuals. it's speciesism. and, in fact, you do this to sentient animals too, classing them all together and setting a standard to treat them based on their class membership. it's speciesism. it's just speciesism you agree with.