Name the Trait: On the Meaning of Being Human.

within the last two years a major new
style of rhetoric emerged in the vegan movement and one person deserves more credit than anyone else for the emergence of that style a young man named Isaac his YouTube channel is called ask yourself I'm gonna give this method known as the name the trait method the highest praise possible in this video and that goes as follows this approach to explaining veganism and challenging non vegans about their belief systems is going to become ubiquitous and invisible in veganism the same way that wrenches and hammers and nail guns all hang on the wall of the tool shop as different types of tools appropriate for different types of activities when a new tool is first discovered or announced or tried out there will be a brief period of enthusiasm and maybe even a period when people are overestimating how useful that new tool is like you know when computers are first invented any think computers are gonna help you wash the dishes well doesn't quite work that way but it turns out computers have all kinds of other applications in our life likewise there are different tools for different tasks but the emergence of this method of this style of rhetoric within veganism I think is a permanent addition to our toolbox and it's a tool that certain types of people engaged in certain types of advocacy are going to go to again and again now implicit in this praise this is this is high praise for me but it is limited praise as I said from my very first encounter with this method on Isaac's channel it's an approach that's only going to work for certain personality types and for solving certain types of problems so I have now seen Isaac deploying this type of rhetoric engaging with meat-eaters engaging in debates live from various angles and from with various types of people if there is one problem that the name the trait argument does not solve if there's one bridge it can't cross or I don't know one issue it can't approach it is the fundamental problem of I don't care it's the fundamental problem of talking to someone who's counter-argument to you is neither logical nor emotional is neither based on an appeal to tradition nor them explaining how much they love the taste of meat we're fundamentally what you're up against is indifference I think Isaac is more aware than anyone else that his style of rhetoric can't overcome that obstacle however it can come very close to convincing people so try veganism or convert to being vegan depending on what ideals those people are already committed to what values they hold and in many cases values they hold that they've never examined or questioned themselves I would not want to speculate on what kind of personality is that gets drawn in and fascinated by the name of the trait argument and it's fair to say I am NOT that kind of personality if anything I think I underestimated just how many people this is a useful tool for for dealing with because to me the type of issue name the trait engages with the challenge of challenges people on is extremely obvious it's not what to me the issues being raised like yeah of course it's so obvious but I'm the kind of person who doesn't need to be talked to veganism right I've in many ways I'm a very unusual person I think psychologically as well as as intellectually so what I'm gonna find interesting what I'm gonna find intriguing or what I'm gonna find challenging is very very different from the the mass of humanity it's very different from the majority of people who are even on the internet engaging these discussions and let's point out again the type of person who will come on the internet and engage in a debate of this kind is very different from your own grandmother whoever you are watching this yes it's possible I'm saying this to the one person in a million whose grandmother is literally on Isaac's Dischord server every night listening to these debates and trying to talk about vegan ethics and morality and philosophy I doubt it so there are generational gaps there are sub cultural gaps that separate people for whom this approach works and from it doesn't I have to say also I really never saw any use for a so called consistency test before but Isaac has used this are on me to actually prove to me that my own views about veganism were more consistent than I thought they were Isaac has cross-examined me several times where I said look my own philosophy has flaws and inconsistencies something I'm quite willing to kind of warmly admit or you know approaches people say look I have my own limitations I have points where I say sorry babe yeah this construction noise gonna blow us at the wheel Thanks um that's the problem with having a higher quality microphone we're gonna pick up noise pollution more accurate than ever there are points where I'm quite willing to say to people in a warm down-to-earth tone I don't have all the answers or I I make a hypocrite out of myself in this circumstance or that circumstance and it's interesting that I've been cross-examined by Isaac where he said to me no you think you're being inconsistent but you're not because you would actually apply the same standard to a human being so I had for example one of the inconsistencies my own philosophy as I described it I would always point out to people that if a bear climbs into a human home comes into a human basement and it's trying to eat the garbage or trying to eat the food out of the kitchen or something a problem that's common enough in Canada this is a situation where I believe in having to resort to violence as a vegan I would prefer if the bear can be tranquilized and removed without harm to the forest but in real world reality very often we end up hurting these bears or indeed just killing these bears because we don't have an economically affordable better method now ask yourself flipped the the name that trade argument against me in this situation you said but how does that differ from how you would treat a human being in the same circumstance if there's a human being who is crazed or brain damaged or so high on drugs that their behavior is really similar to a bear they're in a state of rage insensate rage or what have you thrashing around in a house eating the garbage or whatever it is they're broken in the window and you can't extricate them not violently don't you think that even though it's tragic even though you'd prefer to see them shot with a tranquilizer gun and removed without harming them don't you likewise think the use of violence is applicable to a human being in the circumstance the same way that it would be applied to a bear that for me was a totally original thought that I I had never questioned my own philosophy in that way and I had to stop and realize okay this idea of applying a consistency test to how do we solve problems in the human ethical sphere and then applying that mutatis mutandis to the animal of ethical sphere this is obviously something that can be pretty powerful and revelatory for a variety of human personality times I have seen directly meat eaters who are deeply committed to the idea of their own philosophical sophistication whose ego is attached to the notion of being logical and consistent I have seen them drawn into questioning their own morality in questioning veganism and then actually adopting veganism by this argument now to me that is very alien I came into this I discussed this in an immediately prior video I came into veganism already wanting to make a positive difference in the world so I'm in the I'm in the I'm at the diametric opposite end of the spectrum from someone who starts off in the position that they don't care or that they're just trying to enjoy their life they just want to maximize their experience of pleasure and they don't care about the consequences I'm at the obvious extreme where my perspective is I'm looking to save the planet and it's not clear to me if I can do that through ecological activism through something like activism that's that's linked to trying to regrow the forest or a limit deforestation or something like that or what kind of method I should use and then I encounter and start to fasten on to vegan activism as one way to to make progress one way to advocate for whatever save the planet address serious you know ethical and ecological and political issues in our in our time however the bulk of people are at all times only applying the limited part of their brain that deals with ethics to human ethical problems so I think it's clear that for many types of people getting them to apply that same part of their brain the same moral habits and values that they've cultivated to people and then to apply them to animals and a question if there's an asymmetry between the two of what value is it now again this is this is totally alien to me okay I should say all right we'll do this one step at a time here one of the most common scenarios that Isaac deals with that is dealt with on ask yourself YouTube channel and is his live debates his discourse server and so on is that he will challenge people why do they treat a pig differently from a human being given that a pig is about as intelligent as a three-year-old child three oral team a child is about the same intelligences an adult pig this kind of thing and very often the response will be not always very often people will say that they justify killing animals for meat because animals are less intelligent human beings and then the question inevitably becomes would you or would you not accept making mentally disabled people into hamburgers so if there are if there is a population of people on the earth and there is who are so mentally that they're at the level of a pig or below the level of pig if they're if they're at the dotted line where ever you draw the dotted line at the intelligence of a cow or a pig would you kill those people and mash them up to make hamburgers ammonia and I have seen how people react to this challenge now again me it proves to me again I you know I've always been aware to some extent I'm an eccentric but it doesn't each of the people engaged in this conversation they're eccentric Saul so there's obviously a certain personality type or a certain category people within our culture and maybe it's disproportionately the type of people who play video games the type of people who spend long hours in the Internet maybe it's disproportionately people who grow up I think frankly on a kind of ego trip that they're philosophically sophisticated because of things they've read on the internet that were better than the education of philosophy they received in formal school or you know better than there were their own teachers their own would be role models lacked the kind of philosophical sophistication that there are people whose sense of self esteem is really predicated on feeling that they're right and being guided through this kind of Q&A session for them I've seen the kind of transformative and highly motivating effect that it can have so what is the future for the name that trait argument I'm sorry I prefer to say that trait it's name of the trait this stealth this style of rhetoric I do think that like any new tool and it is a new tool sorry she's got to come back to that it once it's novelty has worn off it does to some extent fade in the background it's just another tool that's up on the shelf and probably when you're talking to your grandmother it's not going to be a tool you're gonna go to and use and when you're talking to another type of person maybe it's a tool you're gonna try it's a way to broach the topic you're gonna deal with and it's a way in which you and a vegan may be better prepared for some of the anti vegan arguments you deal with face to face to what extent is this a new tool because again I'm giving Isaak more credit than he claims to himself here I think it is dramatically and fundamentally a new tool because when this line of reasoning was employed by Peter Singer Peter Singer who's in many ways an anti vegan intellectual who was mistaken for vegan Peter singers argument went in the exact opposite direction his argument was that any sense of moral obligation towards another person should be based entirely on their level of cognition and he put the dotted line the line between human and subhuman much much higher than the level of cognition that a pig has or that a person might have Peter Singer is the ultimate example of someone who openly and flagrantly says that children born with mental disabilities have no rights and can and should be exterminated and in his own intentionally careless wording he goes out of his way to say that such a child a child and it's again it's he's how does the child need to be for this to be true as long as the parents would have another child with better prospects quote unquote better prospect then the first child can be eliminated so this obviously quite intentionally leaves a door open to infanticide for children with pretty minor forms of mental impairment or mental retardation he's not at all putting up the line at Lowe and Peter singer takes this further to say Peter singers mission was and still is and always has been that he has no objection to people killing animals and no objection to people eating meat he simply wants these animals to be treated decently or with decency and his standards for decency of course from my perspective are completely surreal you know they live their whole life on a farm castrated in a in a cage and then one day someone comes and slits their throat I mean how decent can this possibly be so you know I think it's not enough to just say that Isaac came along and put the finishing touches on something Peter Singer did imperfectly previously I think that Isaac has really transcended and transformed a deeply flawed and immoral argument the Peter Singer presented I I don't know what his thought process was when he when he came up with this and I see no resemblance between what Isaac is now doing an ancient authors like Porfiry I had I had a good translation of poor fury you're in my apartment quite some time I'm just being honest you I do think that this is actually really an innovative and new style of rhetoric style of Socratic dialogue or style of cross-examination and I'm sorry I've heard Isaac say this in his own terms earlier I said it does not approach the problem of I don't care it's not gonna approach the problem of a fundamental lack of motivation if you're talking to someone who you know has no motivation to do good rather than evil or to care about negative outcomes rather than having no outcomes or positive someone who wants to take no responsibility for the consequences of their actions however it's really interesting for me to see that very often the next steps that follow after this conversation come back to my core philosophy on this channel which is of asking the person what kind of person do you want to be what what kind of character do you think you are or what kind of character do you do you want to have for me that's for the first question in the discourse movie nism not the final one but it's interesting that it comes at the end of the discourse in Isaac's rhetorical style because the process of questioning why would you treat animals differently from human beings what is the trait that justifies our treating animals differently from human beings in many ways indirectly it does get at the question of to you what does it mean to be human what is your sense of yourself as a person what is your sense of yourself in terms of the unique human responsibility you have that a course makes you different from a lion that makes you different from a shark that makes you different from a monkey in the jungle or an ant burrowing under the earth there's obviously some sense in which you're aware of yourself having agency and having responsibilities perhaps moral and ethical responsibilities or however you want to to style it there's something you feel that marks you out as a person and as an individual and perhaps human species as a whole for most of it and then question is not merely descriptively what is that difference but prescriptively what do you want that difference to be what do you think humanity is capable of because it's not just this and what do you think you're capable of not just what's the minimum standard at which human beings should not be thrown in prison but what do you think the maximum standard is that you aspire to so I have seen this played out and I can say name the trait it's not one tool that fixes all problems it's not gonna fix a leaky faucet and at the same time you know seal up the bottom of a leaky boat different tool set for different kinds of problems but I do think that what Isaac has done and it's it's very indicative of how important YouTube and the Internet are in the 21st century in contrast to new ideas coming into the movement through court cases like the founding of of peda in contrast to things coming to movement through you know low end terrorist groups like the al f or what you or ideas coming to the movement through formal academic publications and books we're now into an era where I think major new ideas new directions that the movement takes on and new styles of rhetoric new ways of engaging issue they are emerging on the Internet first and foremost and in in this this kind of discourse so I have no idea what Isaac is gonna do next with his career I suspect he'll get bored of YouTube and go back to university and pursue other careers but I do think this is a permanent addition to to vegan discourse and it's an incredibly positive development compared to what I've seen even just in the last six years say meat last 10-15 years veganism has gone through various fads and most of them have come and gone without leaving any permanent addition to our toolkit so Isaac used to you