Actually, it’s incredibly easy to find professional philosophers who agree with this as it’s the entire foundation of modern animal rights philosophy.
While Immanuel Kant famously excluded animals from his moral framework in the 1700s, modern deontological philosophers have spent the last forty years correcting that.
Tom Regan: One of the most famous ethicists of the 20th century. His landmark book, The Case for Animal Rights (1983), is the definitive deontological argument for animals. He argues that animals are ‘subjects-of-a-life’ with inherent value, and intentionally killing them uses them merely as a means to an end, which is a direct rights violation.
Christine Korsgaard: She is currently one of the world’s leading Kantian philosophers, based at Harvard. She wrote an entire book (Fellow Creatures) arguing strictly from a Kantian, deontological framework that animals are ‘ends in themselves’ and that slaughtering them is absolutely a deliberate moral wrong.
Gary Francione: A leading philosopher and legal scholar whose entire ‘abolitionist’ approach to animal rights is built on deontological principles, arguing that animals have a fundamental negative right not to be used as human property.
So, no, I’m not hard-pressed at all. Deontology actively recognises the inherent rights of conscious beings. But even if you ignore modern philosophy and cling to 18th-century Kant, you still can’t escape the Doctrine of Double Effect. Under any version of deontology, there is a structural moral difference between an unintended accident and premeditated killing.
If you truly believe that knowing an action will incidentally result in some deaths makes it morally identical to premeditated killing, you just criminalised the entire modern world.
By your logic, there is no difference between a doctor knowing a certain percentage of patients will have a fatal allergic reaction to a life-saving vaccine, and a doctor intentionally injecting a patient with poison. You are saying those two things are morally the same.
By your logic, there is no difference between a doctor knowing a certain percentage of patients will have a fatal allergic reaction to a life-saving vaccine, and a doctor intentionally injecting a patient with poison. You are saying those two things are morally the same.
if they have informed consent, then yes it is the same. and if they fail to get informed consent, then yes it is the same.
That is not a moral philosophy; that is the total destruction of morality.
If your logic holds, that knowledge of a potential outcome makes the outcome morally equivalent to intentional harm, then everything is a crime.
If you drive a car to work, you know with statistical certainty that your presence on the road contributes to the probability of a fatal accident. By your definition, you are ‘intentionally’ killing someone every time you get behind the wheel, regardless of whether you are a safe driver or a reckless one.
If a parent gives birth to a child, they know with 100% certainty that the child will eventually die. By your logic, having a child is a premeditated act of murder.
Whether or not a doctor obtains consent is entirely irrelevant to whether it is ethical to kill a sentient being for sensory pleasure. You are creating a false analogy because you can no longer defend your position on the original topic.
If you drive a car to work, you know with statistical certainty that your presence on the road contributes to the probability of a fatal accident. By your definition, you are ‘intentionally’ killing someone every time you get behind the wheel, regardless of whether you are a safe driver or a reckless one.
this is a terrible analogy. we know that clearing a certain number of acres during harvest kills a certain number of animals. regardless of the ratio or number, it is non-zero. most people drive without ever being involved in a fatal crash.
The car analogy was about the distinction between intentional killing and unintended risk. You are now trying to make this about the statistical frequency of death to avoid the moral reality of your choices.
But if you want to use ‘crop deaths’ as your yardstick, you are concerned about animals killed during harvest, however, livestock consume vastly more grain and soy than humans do. Every time you eat a burger, you are demanding the harvest of more crops than if you had simply eaten the plants yourself. If you are worried about the ‘non-zero’ number of animal deaths during harvest, then by eating meat, you are directly increasing that number.
If a parent gives birth to a child, they know with 100% certainty that the child will eventually die. By your logic, having a child is a premeditated act of murder.
i think you are the one arguing that second and third order effects impose moral responsibility. i have been arguing against that.
I have never argued that all second or third-order effects impose moral responsibility. I have argued that directly funding a service that has the killing of a sentient being as its primary purpose creates moral responsibility.
A parent giving birth knows their child will die, but the death is not the purpose of the act, nor is it the service they are paying for. A person buying meat is paying a corporation specifically to ensure an animal is killed. You are paying for the service of slaughter.
Having a child is a biological reality; it is not a market transaction. A grocery store purchase is a direct, bilateral contract. You give money; they give you a product that required a killing. You are the direct, primary financier of that specific act.
You haven’t been arguing against second-order effects; you have been dodging the fact that your purchase is a first-order effect. You are the reason the animal was slaughtered. If you weren’t there to pay for it, the slaughterhouse would have no reason to exist.
This debate has become a circular exercise where you redefine terms whenever you are backed into a corner.
Moving the goalposts again, you claimed I would be “hard-pressed to find a professional philosopher who agrees”, I gave you three prominent ones.
Your claim that their positions are “novel and lack entrenchment” is factually incorrect. Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights is literally a foundational textbook taught in nearly every university applied ethics course in the world. Christine Korsgaard is one of the leading scholars at Harvard.
And your point that they are “directly disputed by their peers” can be said for the whole of philosophy? Kant is disputed. Utilitarianism is disputed. If being “disputed by peers” means an ethical framework is invalid, then literally no ethical framework exists.
You have just spent this entire conversation trying to discredit the philosophers, the economists, and the logic rather than actually defending your own choices. This debate has reached its end because you aren’t arguing to find the truth; you are arguing to protect your habits.
You have just spent this entire conversation trying to discredit the philosophers, the economists, and the logic rather than actually defending your own choices.
i have nothing to defend. i’ve spent the whole time pointing out the speciousness of your arguments.
Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights is literally a foundational textbook taught in nearly every university applied ethics course in the world. Christine Korsgaard is one of the leading scholars at Harvard.
and both their works fly in the face of historical deontological thought. it’s a tradition that eclipses their works by 200 years. they sorely lack entrenchment within deontological thought, and, as I said, are directly refuted by their peers.
You are relying on a massive Appeal to Tradition fallacy.
Immanuel Kant lived 200 years ago. He also lived in an era where mainstream philosophical thought routinely excluded women and non-white races from full moral consideration. Does the fact that human rights and feminism “fly in the face of historical 18th-century thought” mean they lack entrenchment? No. It means humanity evolved, our scientific understanding of biology and consciousness evolved, and our ethical frameworks were updated to fix historical blind spots.
Deontology is a logical framework, not a 200-year-old religious dogma where we are forced to worship Kant’s 18th-century biological ignorance. Korsgaard and Regan didn’t invent a ‘novel’ system; they took the core deontological rule (do not use a conscious subject merely as a means to an end) and applied it accurately using modern science.
But more importantly, you are hiding behind a history of philosophy lesson to avoid answering the actual argument.
Whether you find an argument ‘compelling’ is subjective. Whether an argument is logically consistent is objective, and your position hasn’t been.
You’ve spent this entire conversation moving the goalposts, dodging every direct analogy (the vaccines, the construction accidents, the hitman), and denying the basic math of supply chains, all to defend the idea that intentional slaughter is morally identical to accidental death.
When you can no longer refute the logic, dismissing the explanation is a common way to exit the conversation, but it doesn’t resolve the contradictions you’ve failed to address.
Does the fact that human rights and feminism “fly in the face of historical 18th-century thought” mean they lack entrenchment? No.
today, they are well-entrenched. and it’s possible animal rights will eventually gain the same entrenchment. but, at the moment, they are not entrenched, and i predict that they will be excised from deontological thought in the next century.
You are now moving from logical argument to prophecy. Predicting what will happen in the next century is not a rebuttal to the arguments being made today.
Whether or not animal rights will be ‘excised’ from deontology in 100 years is irrelevant to the question of whether it is morally right to slaughter sentient beings for sensory pleasure right now.
You’re using this prediction as a shield to avoid the present-day reality of your actions. It’s a convenient coincidence that your ‘prediction’ perfectly aligns with your personal desire to keep eating meat.
Whether or not animal rights will be ‘excised’ from deontology in 100 years is irrelevant to the question of whether it is morally right to slaughter sentient beings for sensory pleasure right now.
You’re going to be hard pressed to find a professional philosopher who agrees with this claim.
Actually, it’s incredibly easy to find professional philosophers who agree with this as it’s the entire foundation of modern animal rights philosophy. While Immanuel Kant famously excluded animals from his moral framework in the 1700s, modern deontological philosophers have spent the last forty years correcting that.
Tom Regan: One of the most famous ethicists of the 20th century. His landmark book, The Case for Animal Rights (1983), is the definitive deontological argument for animals. He argues that animals are ‘subjects-of-a-life’ with inherent value, and intentionally killing them uses them merely as a means to an end, which is a direct rights violation.
Christine Korsgaard: She is currently one of the world’s leading Kantian philosophers, based at Harvard. She wrote an entire book (Fellow Creatures) arguing strictly from a Kantian, deontological framework that animals are ‘ends in themselves’ and that slaughtering them is absolutely a deliberate moral wrong.
Gary Francione: A leading philosopher and legal scholar whose entire ‘abolitionist’ approach to animal rights is built on deontological principles, arguing that animals have a fundamental negative right not to be used as human property.
So, no, I’m not hard-pressed at all. Deontology actively recognises the inherent rights of conscious beings. But even if you ignore modern philosophy and cling to 18th-century Kant, you still can’t escape the Doctrine of Double Effect. Under any version of deontology, there is a structural moral difference between an unintended accident and premeditated killing.
if you know your actions will result in killing, even if it is incidental instead of the intention, the morality is the same. it’s not an accident.
If you truly believe that knowing an action will incidentally result in some deaths makes it morally identical to premeditated killing, you just criminalised the entire modern world.
By your logic, there is no difference between a doctor knowing a certain percentage of patients will have a fatal allergic reaction to a life-saving vaccine, and a doctor intentionally injecting a patient with poison. You are saying those two things are morally the same.
if they have informed consent, then yes it is the same. and if they fail to get informed consent, then yes it is the same.
That is not a moral philosophy; that is the total destruction of morality.
If your logic holds, that knowledge of a potential outcome makes the outcome morally equivalent to intentional harm, then everything is a crime.
If you drive a car to work, you know with statistical certainty that your presence on the road contributes to the probability of a fatal accident. By your definition, you are ‘intentionally’ killing someone every time you get behind the wheel, regardless of whether you are a safe driver or a reckless one.
If a parent gives birth to a child, they know with 100% certainty that the child will eventually die. By your logic, having a child is a premeditated act of murder.
if a doctor gets informed consent, what do you think they’re doing that’s criminal?
Whether or not a doctor obtains consent is entirely irrelevant to whether it is ethical to kill a sentient being for sensory pleasure. You are creating a false analogy because you can no longer defend your position on the original topic.
you’re the one who raised this particular analogy
this is a terrible analogy. we know that clearing a certain number of acres during harvest kills a certain number of animals. regardless of the ratio or number, it is non-zero. most people drive without ever being involved in a fatal crash.
The car analogy was about the distinction between intentional killing and unintended risk. You are now trying to make this about the statistical frequency of death to avoid the moral reality of your choices.
But if you want to use ‘crop deaths’ as your yardstick, you are concerned about animals killed during harvest, however, livestock consume vastly more grain and soy than humans do. Every time you eat a burger, you are demanding the harvest of more crops than if you had simply eaten the plants yourself. If you are worried about the ‘non-zero’ number of animal deaths during harvest, then by eating meat, you are directly increasing that number.
i can easily concede that your argument from analogy was a bad one.
only when i’m trying to point out to people that argue against animal deaths for food
humans eat about 2/3 of global crop calories, so this just isn’t true
no, i’m not.
no i’m not.
i think you are the one arguing that second and third order effects impose moral responsibility. i have been arguing against that.
I have never argued that all second or third-order effects impose moral responsibility. I have argued that directly funding a service that has the killing of a sentient being as its primary purpose creates moral responsibility.
A parent giving birth knows their child will die, but the death is not the purpose of the act, nor is it the service they are paying for. A person buying meat is paying a corporation specifically to ensure an animal is killed. You are paying for the service of slaughter.
Having a child is a biological reality; it is not a market transaction. A grocery store purchase is a direct, bilateral contract. You give money; they give you a product that required a killing. You are the direct, primary financier of that specific act.
You haven’t been arguing against second-order effects; you have been dodging the fact that your purchase is a first-order effect. You are the reason the animal was slaughtered. If you weren’t there to pay for it, the slaughterhouse would have no reason to exist.
This debate has become a circular exercise where you redefine terms whenever you are backed into a corner.
fortunately i don’t do that. most people don’t.
no, they’re paying for a product that has already been produced.
impossible. the person who did the killing was already paid, and paid by someone who isn’t me.
you found literally 3 people, and their positions are novel, lacking entrenchment. In fact, they’re directly disputed by their peers.
Moving the goalposts again, you claimed I would be “hard-pressed to find a professional philosopher who agrees”, I gave you three prominent ones.
Your claim that their positions are “novel and lack entrenchment” is factually incorrect. Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights is literally a foundational textbook taught in nearly every university applied ethics course in the world. Christine Korsgaard is one of the leading scholars at Harvard.
And your point that they are “directly disputed by their peers” can be said for the whole of philosophy? Kant is disputed. Utilitarianism is disputed. If being “disputed by peers” means an ethical framework is invalid, then literally no ethical framework exists.
but, within the whole collection of professional philosophers, they are exceptional.
You have just spent this entire conversation trying to discredit the philosophers, the economists, and the logic rather than actually defending your own choices. This debate has reached its end because you aren’t arguing to find the truth; you are arguing to protect your habits.
i have nothing to defend. i’ve spent the whole time pointing out the speciousness of your arguments.
i never wanted a debate at all, but i did get 7 more replies after you sent this one.
and both their works fly in the face of historical deontological thought. it’s a tradition that eclipses their works by 200 years. they sorely lack entrenchment within deontological thought, and, as I said, are directly refuted by their peers.
You are relying on a massive Appeal to Tradition fallacy.
Immanuel Kant lived 200 years ago. He also lived in an era where mainstream philosophical thought routinely excluded women and non-white races from full moral consideration. Does the fact that human rights and feminism “fly in the face of historical 18th-century thought” mean they lack entrenchment? No. It means humanity evolved, our scientific understanding of biology and consciousness evolved, and our ethical frameworks were updated to fix historical blind spots.
Deontology is a logical framework, not a 200-year-old religious dogma where we are forced to worship Kant’s 18th-century biological ignorance. Korsgaard and Regan didn’t invent a ‘novel’ system; they took the core deontological rule (do not use a conscious subject merely as a means to an end) and applied it accurately using modern science.
But more importantly, you are hiding behind a history of philosophy lesson to avoid answering the actual argument.
this isn’t the first time i’ve encountered korsgaard, and i don’t find your retelling any more compelling than the first time.
Whether you find an argument ‘compelling’ is subjective. Whether an argument is logically consistent is objective, and your position hasn’t been.
You’ve spent this entire conversation moving the goalposts, dodging every direct analogy (the vaccines, the construction accidents, the hitman), and denying the basic math of supply chains, all to defend the idea that intentional slaughter is morally identical to accidental death.
When you can no longer refute the logic, dismissing the explanation is a common way to exit the conversation, but it doesn’t resolve the contradictions you’ve failed to address.
that didn’t happen
debunking isn’t dodging.
this is an oversimplification. a strawman.
i haven’t actually made an argument. i’m objecting to your argument.
today, they are well-entrenched. and it’s possible animal rights will eventually gain the same entrenchment. but, at the moment, they are not entrenched, and i predict that they will be excised from deontological thought in the next century.
You are now moving from logical argument to prophecy. Predicting what will happen in the next century is not a rebuttal to the arguments being made today.
Whether or not animal rights will be ‘excised’ from deontology in 100 years is irrelevant to the question of whether it is morally right to slaughter sentient beings for sensory pleasure right now.
You’re using this prediction as a shield to avoid the present-day reality of your actions. It’s a convenient coincidence that your ‘prediction’ perfectly aligns with your personal desire to keep eating meat.
you’re right.
sure. do you want to argue that it’s not?
you’re jumping to conclusions