Vegan Mind Tricks: Debating "Intrinsic" and "Inherent" Evil.
07 November 2016 [link youtube]
I'd urge you to check out an earlier videos on similarly pragmatic questions (of how we actually discuss/debate veganism, face-to-face), here:
[Title:'] Veganism: Don't Debate the Details. (Vegan Artichoke Response)
[Link:] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05V_v2Qd8G0
[Title:] "Dealing with disrespectful questions [about veganism]"
[Link:] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtfudw6t2Mc
Youtube Automatic Transcription
before there ever was a YouTube channel
called a ballet CL I had a blog that was called vegan mind tricks now some people have insinuated that there's something improper or menacing about that moniker about vegan mindtree I think it's a cute name but one of the things I did on that channel in pekin mind tricks and it's something I have done here on YouTube a couple of times not all the time but from time to time I did talk through with people the kind of strategy and tactics of the real-life face-to-face debates that they had involving veganism um no real life debates the reason why I put emphasis that is we're not talking about an academic debate very often you're talking about a confrontation with a co-worker like maybe somebody at the cafeteria at work who denigrates you or insults you or picks a fight with you about veganism maybe it's a long-standing debate or conflict you have with your own parents with your own boyfriend with your own girlfriend maybe your negotiating relationships in your life that have really changed maybe you just have a friend maybe there's no love involved either so let's say you just have an old friend and for decades you've been going to baseball games together and it used to be that baseball and beer and hot dogs were part of your friendship and then things change because you become vegan and now maybe all those things are in question the baseball and the beer but most obviously the hot dogs are out the picture so a lot of people have friction in their lives they have confrontations sometimes very intimate sometimes in the workplace etc etc um put to those questions of strategy and tactics they really change depending on the situation and it's not a matter of just standing up and in a shrill voice testifying or protesting or preaching veganism a lot of the time there's a very nuanced push and pull we're really what you're trying to accomplish is to get other people to respect you and to hopefully keep that relationship going long term in a way that's really workable and as some level of mutual respect where they respect your reasons for being a vegan even if they're never going to become vegan themselves because let's face it folks ninety-nine point nine percent of people in our lives are never going to become vegan and we got to look at that day after day no matter how good a job we do giving voice to our convictions for the reasons for why we care reasons why this is so important for us so in this video I'm kind of going back to my old Steve's gonna want to talk about two well really one little logical trap that people tend to lay for you and this one is interesting because I see it on going within the vegan movement as well as Outsiders criticizing veganism you know it says you're funny thing when philosophically people will say to you well there's nothing inherently wrong with eating meat or a vegetarian may argue there's nothing inherently wrong with eating milk or eating eggs now I'm not going to start off by saying that arguments of this kind are always completely idiotic there's a range I'm going back to ancient Greek philosophy in Europe you did actually have debates about whether or not eating a basically roadkill they did not have roadkill and integrates but the equivalent of road kill an animal that had died anyway or a human being that it died anyway there were actually we have records of philosophical debates about cannibalism to say well if a person has died of old age and animal is that of old age what are the ethical questions surrounding eating that animal I nobody hunted it nobody killed it it wasn't raised on a farm you just have this corpse lying there anyway now the progress of modern science has made that kind of debate all but obsolete there's almost no question today about anybody that for among other things cannibalism we now know is not good for your health so cannibalism is dropped off the map but I just put that in as a caveat it's possible that someone is raising those issues for reasons that are not shallow that are not insincere that are not caddy that they actually want to object to or debate aspects of vegan ethics from that perspective of thinking about roadkill of thinking about animals that have died of old age anyway obviously nobody is going to a baseball game and buying a hot dog that's made at a roadkill nobody's going to a baseball game and buying a non-vegan I don't know hamburger made entirely out of wild animals that were never lived on it never raised on a farm that frolic freely in the wild until they eventually died of disease or old age were predation by another animal didn't have a human being chopped up their corpse and turned it into hamburger much I don't care anyone even talk about that in future but you might have noticed in my recent discussion of this book Joe opolis that book you know supposedly a pro animal rights book supposedly having an intellectual approach to veganism animal rights ecology it was using this type of logical reasoning to claim there is nothing inherently wrong with eating me there's nothing inherently or intrinsically wrong with eating eggs with eating milk now when I talk with that face to face so again not an academic context maybe it's someone who knows me someone who loves me someone is my friend or girlfriend or whatever it is um I think it's really a the tactic i use is to in a not insulting way uh you know trying to keep it respectful and polite to ask them how much different would that sentence be if i took the word intrinsically out of it now not all of you know this the opposite of extrinsically is extrinsic lee you know what you're really saying without even having to use that vocabulary is what really is your claim if there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it then you must be insinuating that there's something extrinsic lee wrong with it or if we don't know that word that you're saying non intrinsically there is something else wrong with it there's something extraneous that's wrong with it so let's focus on that let's actually spell out clearly what that is so if and when people do say that to me they said is there's nothing intrinsically wrong with eating me there's nothing inherently wrong with meeting me I asked them okay so how much different would you out how much difference is there between what you've just said and if i delete that fancy word and we just say there's nothing wrong with eating meat or there's nothing wrong with drinking milk you know and what I'm doing is inviting them to really spell out what their position is now they may come back and say they think there's nothing wrong with it as long as the animal lived a happy life they may say there's nothing wrong with it as long as it's free range they may then come back with explaining whatever their position is and you know that puts you I think in the position to instead of addressing a completely ridiculous claim to simply state what you're feelings are in the matter why it is that this matters to you so much to talk about your own values to talk about who you are talk about why you've chosen a moral path in life that doesn't include that kind of compromise I can imagine situations in which I would compromise you're on a desert island etc um I'm not living on a desert island right now right uh I do see a kind of weird parallel to this these claims that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with there's something heroine when people try to so I mean so what's interesting about that I don't want to use too much philosophical jargon here in using language like intrinsically and inherently they're they're engaging in what's called essentialism so what this entails is a worldview in which some acts are intrinsically evil are inherently wrong and others are not so probably anyone you meet in real life doesn't actually believe this but some people would believe that it is intrinsically wrong to kill a human being because a human being has an intrinsic soul this is very medieval way of seeing the world you'll I don't know if they're ever encountered some to believe this there as an animal to kill an animal is only extrinsically wrong because the animal does not have a soul so what they say reality if you actually ask someone what they mean if you move past this veneer a philosophical language I think you're almost never going to encounter that being there their reason or their rationale probably they're going to fall back on animal welfare as position a happy meet position of saying as long as the animal lives a good life then eating its corpse is a-ok this this kind of approach I think it's also interesting that people take a sort of strange essentializing position when they approach these problems by telling you that blank is a construct so this is short for blank is a social construct you if you thi hang around university educated people you probably heard this a lot in last 10 years so they say things like gender is a social construct social i don't know differently wealth and poverty is a social construct any concept that they want to keeps going on they will just fill in the blank and is a social contract or just is a construct for short now again this actually falls back on the same essentialist manner of thinking their claim implicitly is some things some ideas are constructs or social constructs and others are not others have essential or intrinsic value now I've had to address this in the last 10 years I guess 10 years this has been popular from a variety of different perspectives but I mean you know fundamentally my response to this is so what I'm going to come back to I think is also so what is actually for a lot of arguments so what is is a really good way to to respond because the initial argument is so weak that you don't need anything a lot fancier than that um if the difference between Cambodia and Vietnam is a social construct so what it's true there's nothing essential there's nothing intrinsic you can walk through the swamp you can walk along the stretch of land where the invisible line is that separates Vietnam from Cambodia there's nothing intrinsic there's nothing inherent in that land that makes one side Vietnam and once I can but guess what millions of people are willing to lay down their lives to fight to the death over the location that line over the difference between Vietnam and Cambodia and if you look back at the last 1000 years they have a very long history of contesting where one country stops and the other country starts you know of the competition between empires and also for Cambodia mostly this has been a struggle to survive to not be overwhelmed by Vietnam for the last several centuries they've been largely on the losing side of those battles um so what are you actually saying what is the what is the power what is what is the effect of your claim if you tell me there's no inherent or intrinsic difference between Cambodia and Vietnam really so what now again actually vegans use this type of reasoning sometimes when we try to argue there is no inherent or intrinsic difference between a cow and a pig or between a pig and a dog we also do engage in this line of argument and it's not always completely meaningless but a you know if your claim is there's nothing intrinsically wrong with eating meat so what and watch where i go with this because i don't use this in an aggressive or insulting way okay if there is nothing intrinsically wrong with eating chicken eggs is only something extrinsic lee wrong because chicken eggs have no soul maybe that's really what they believe or maybe it's more of this animal welfare spizz ition there's nothing intrinsically wrong if the chicken led a happy life is going ok if your claim is there's nothing intrinsically wrong with chicken acts it's only extrinsic what about doing the best you can do is compromising with the industrial manufacturer of chicken eggs or even the organic free-range manufacture connects is that the best I can do I'm not really interested in the question of whether or not an egg has a soul I'm not really interested in the question between the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic evil how what is the difference between eating and human beings eggs and eating a chicken's eggs or murder a human being and murdering a cow I am actually interested in doing the best I can so if I believe I can do the best I can not by just eating less meat but by eating zero that's one example of doing the best they can if i think i can do less harm I can be a better person I can help make the world a better place not just by eating organic free-range eggs but by eating absolutely no eggs why wouldn't I do the best that i can write and so now the other size in the position of having to argue why is it whether it's on the basis of this kind of fancy philosophical language or otherwise why are they putting forward an argument that is basically an argument against doing the best you can that's my advice
called a ballet CL I had a blog that was called vegan mind tricks now some people have insinuated that there's something improper or menacing about that moniker about vegan mindtree I think it's a cute name but one of the things I did on that channel in pekin mind tricks and it's something I have done here on YouTube a couple of times not all the time but from time to time I did talk through with people the kind of strategy and tactics of the real-life face-to-face debates that they had involving veganism um no real life debates the reason why I put emphasis that is we're not talking about an academic debate very often you're talking about a confrontation with a co-worker like maybe somebody at the cafeteria at work who denigrates you or insults you or picks a fight with you about veganism maybe it's a long-standing debate or conflict you have with your own parents with your own boyfriend with your own girlfriend maybe your negotiating relationships in your life that have really changed maybe you just have a friend maybe there's no love involved either so let's say you just have an old friend and for decades you've been going to baseball games together and it used to be that baseball and beer and hot dogs were part of your friendship and then things change because you become vegan and now maybe all those things are in question the baseball and the beer but most obviously the hot dogs are out the picture so a lot of people have friction in their lives they have confrontations sometimes very intimate sometimes in the workplace etc etc um put to those questions of strategy and tactics they really change depending on the situation and it's not a matter of just standing up and in a shrill voice testifying or protesting or preaching veganism a lot of the time there's a very nuanced push and pull we're really what you're trying to accomplish is to get other people to respect you and to hopefully keep that relationship going long term in a way that's really workable and as some level of mutual respect where they respect your reasons for being a vegan even if they're never going to become vegan themselves because let's face it folks ninety-nine point nine percent of people in our lives are never going to become vegan and we got to look at that day after day no matter how good a job we do giving voice to our convictions for the reasons for why we care reasons why this is so important for us so in this video I'm kind of going back to my old Steve's gonna want to talk about two well really one little logical trap that people tend to lay for you and this one is interesting because I see it on going within the vegan movement as well as Outsiders criticizing veganism you know it says you're funny thing when philosophically people will say to you well there's nothing inherently wrong with eating meat or a vegetarian may argue there's nothing inherently wrong with eating milk or eating eggs now I'm not going to start off by saying that arguments of this kind are always completely idiotic there's a range I'm going back to ancient Greek philosophy in Europe you did actually have debates about whether or not eating a basically roadkill they did not have roadkill and integrates but the equivalent of road kill an animal that had died anyway or a human being that it died anyway there were actually we have records of philosophical debates about cannibalism to say well if a person has died of old age and animal is that of old age what are the ethical questions surrounding eating that animal I nobody hunted it nobody killed it it wasn't raised on a farm you just have this corpse lying there anyway now the progress of modern science has made that kind of debate all but obsolete there's almost no question today about anybody that for among other things cannibalism we now know is not good for your health so cannibalism is dropped off the map but I just put that in as a caveat it's possible that someone is raising those issues for reasons that are not shallow that are not insincere that are not caddy that they actually want to object to or debate aspects of vegan ethics from that perspective of thinking about roadkill of thinking about animals that have died of old age anyway obviously nobody is going to a baseball game and buying a hot dog that's made at a roadkill nobody's going to a baseball game and buying a non-vegan I don't know hamburger made entirely out of wild animals that were never lived on it never raised on a farm that frolic freely in the wild until they eventually died of disease or old age were predation by another animal didn't have a human being chopped up their corpse and turned it into hamburger much I don't care anyone even talk about that in future but you might have noticed in my recent discussion of this book Joe opolis that book you know supposedly a pro animal rights book supposedly having an intellectual approach to veganism animal rights ecology it was using this type of logical reasoning to claim there is nothing inherently wrong with eating me there's nothing inherently or intrinsically wrong with eating eggs with eating milk now when I talk with that face to face so again not an academic context maybe it's someone who knows me someone who loves me someone is my friend or girlfriend or whatever it is um I think it's really a the tactic i use is to in a not insulting way uh you know trying to keep it respectful and polite to ask them how much different would that sentence be if i took the word intrinsically out of it now not all of you know this the opposite of extrinsically is extrinsic lee you know what you're really saying without even having to use that vocabulary is what really is your claim if there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it then you must be insinuating that there's something extrinsic lee wrong with it or if we don't know that word that you're saying non intrinsically there is something else wrong with it there's something extraneous that's wrong with it so let's focus on that let's actually spell out clearly what that is so if and when people do say that to me they said is there's nothing intrinsically wrong with eating me there's nothing inherently wrong with meeting me I asked them okay so how much different would you out how much difference is there between what you've just said and if i delete that fancy word and we just say there's nothing wrong with eating meat or there's nothing wrong with drinking milk you know and what I'm doing is inviting them to really spell out what their position is now they may come back and say they think there's nothing wrong with it as long as the animal lived a happy life they may say there's nothing wrong with it as long as it's free range they may then come back with explaining whatever their position is and you know that puts you I think in the position to instead of addressing a completely ridiculous claim to simply state what you're feelings are in the matter why it is that this matters to you so much to talk about your own values to talk about who you are talk about why you've chosen a moral path in life that doesn't include that kind of compromise I can imagine situations in which I would compromise you're on a desert island etc um I'm not living on a desert island right now right uh I do see a kind of weird parallel to this these claims that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with there's something heroine when people try to so I mean so what's interesting about that I don't want to use too much philosophical jargon here in using language like intrinsically and inherently they're they're engaging in what's called essentialism so what this entails is a worldview in which some acts are intrinsically evil are inherently wrong and others are not so probably anyone you meet in real life doesn't actually believe this but some people would believe that it is intrinsically wrong to kill a human being because a human being has an intrinsic soul this is very medieval way of seeing the world you'll I don't know if they're ever encountered some to believe this there as an animal to kill an animal is only extrinsically wrong because the animal does not have a soul so what they say reality if you actually ask someone what they mean if you move past this veneer a philosophical language I think you're almost never going to encounter that being there their reason or their rationale probably they're going to fall back on animal welfare as position a happy meet position of saying as long as the animal lives a good life then eating its corpse is a-ok this this kind of approach I think it's also interesting that people take a sort of strange essentializing position when they approach these problems by telling you that blank is a construct so this is short for blank is a social construct you if you thi hang around university educated people you probably heard this a lot in last 10 years so they say things like gender is a social construct social i don't know differently wealth and poverty is a social construct any concept that they want to keeps going on they will just fill in the blank and is a social contract or just is a construct for short now again this actually falls back on the same essentialist manner of thinking their claim implicitly is some things some ideas are constructs or social constructs and others are not others have essential or intrinsic value now I've had to address this in the last 10 years I guess 10 years this has been popular from a variety of different perspectives but I mean you know fundamentally my response to this is so what I'm going to come back to I think is also so what is actually for a lot of arguments so what is is a really good way to to respond because the initial argument is so weak that you don't need anything a lot fancier than that um if the difference between Cambodia and Vietnam is a social construct so what it's true there's nothing essential there's nothing intrinsic you can walk through the swamp you can walk along the stretch of land where the invisible line is that separates Vietnam from Cambodia there's nothing intrinsic there's nothing inherent in that land that makes one side Vietnam and once I can but guess what millions of people are willing to lay down their lives to fight to the death over the location that line over the difference between Vietnam and Cambodia and if you look back at the last 1000 years they have a very long history of contesting where one country stops and the other country starts you know of the competition between empires and also for Cambodia mostly this has been a struggle to survive to not be overwhelmed by Vietnam for the last several centuries they've been largely on the losing side of those battles um so what are you actually saying what is the what is the power what is what is the effect of your claim if you tell me there's no inherent or intrinsic difference between Cambodia and Vietnam really so what now again actually vegans use this type of reasoning sometimes when we try to argue there is no inherent or intrinsic difference between a cow and a pig or between a pig and a dog we also do engage in this line of argument and it's not always completely meaningless but a you know if your claim is there's nothing intrinsically wrong with eating meat so what and watch where i go with this because i don't use this in an aggressive or insulting way okay if there is nothing intrinsically wrong with eating chicken eggs is only something extrinsic lee wrong because chicken eggs have no soul maybe that's really what they believe or maybe it's more of this animal welfare spizz ition there's nothing intrinsically wrong if the chicken led a happy life is going ok if your claim is there's nothing intrinsically wrong with chicken acts it's only extrinsic what about doing the best you can do is compromising with the industrial manufacturer of chicken eggs or even the organic free-range manufacture connects is that the best I can do I'm not really interested in the question of whether or not an egg has a soul I'm not really interested in the question between the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic evil how what is the difference between eating and human beings eggs and eating a chicken's eggs or murder a human being and murdering a cow I am actually interested in doing the best I can so if I believe I can do the best I can not by just eating less meat but by eating zero that's one example of doing the best they can if i think i can do less harm I can be a better person I can help make the world a better place not just by eating organic free-range eggs but by eating absolutely no eggs why wouldn't I do the best that i can write and so now the other size in the position of having to argue why is it whether it's on the basis of this kind of fancy philosophical language or otherwise why are they putting forward an argument that is basically an argument against doing the best you can that's my advice