Yeah, we anthropomorphize anything with a face. It’s a natural human pack instinct. Obviously chickens don’t have the same emotions as humans so we can’t understand them perfectly, but we can tell when they’re afraid or aggressive or nice.
And when we kill them it feels bad. There’s a reason people who work in slaughterhouses have higher rates of depression, insomnia, anxiety substance abuse, and even suicide.
Proving it would require a much deeper understanding of the brain, I think. I’d be very surprised if they had all the same emotions, since they have such different instincts and behaviors and social structures.
It’s also irrelevant to my point.
Whatever emotions they feel, it’s enough for us to empathize with them. That means it hurts us to hurt them. You can feel it yourself if you’ve ever killed or hurt an animal.
There’s empirical evidence that slaughterhouse workers experience deep psychological harm and that’s all I need. It clearly hurts us to hurt animals.
I’m not saying chickens deserve to live because they have emotions, just to be clear. I’m saying that their emotions are enough to trigger our empathy, and that means every time you kill an animal you’re causing yourself psychological distress.
you kind of making a leap of logic though. there may be other explanations for why slaughterhouse workers experience psychological distress. it could be socioeconomic. it may be some other conditioning. your explanation amounts to post hoc ergo propter hoc
We can eliminate other explanations by looking at workers in similar socioeconomic circumstances that perform similar work.
Based on pay, they make about as much as other packing, manufacturing, and warehouse workers. It’s indoor bluecollar work. Yet they experience far more psychological distress than other workers.
Here’s another data point: when a new slaughterhouse opens in a community, rates of violence and crime rates go up. The same doesn’t happen when a new manufacturing plant, packaging plant, or warehouse opens.
you aren’t controlling for every possible alternative. for instance, a less media saturated culture with fewer depictions of anthropomorphism might not have this issue. you’re simply choosing to believe it’s an inherent problem with the process.
this sounds like anthropomorphism
Yeah, we anthropomorphize anything with a face. It’s a natural human pack instinct. Obviously chickens don’t have the same emotions as humans so we can’t understand them perfectly, but we can tell when they’re afraid or aggressive or nice.
And when we kill them it feels bad. There’s a reason people who work in slaughterhouses have higher rates of depression, insomnia, anxiety substance abuse, and even suicide.
I don’t know how we could prove this one way or another.
Proving it would require a much deeper understanding of the brain, I think. I’d be very surprised if they had all the same emotions, since they have such different instincts and behaviors and social structures.
It’s also irrelevant to my point.
Whatever emotions they feel, it’s enough for us to empathize with them. That means it hurts us to hurt them. You can feel it yourself if you’ve ever killed or hurt an animal.
surely you can see that what you are constructing is purely an appeal to emotion, and there is not empirical means to test anything you’re saying.
There’s empirical evidence that slaughterhouse workers experience deep psychological harm and that’s all I need. It clearly hurts us to hurt animals.
I’m not saying chickens deserve to live because they have emotions, just to be clear. I’m saying that their emotions are enough to trigger our empathy, and that means every time you kill an animal you’re causing yourself psychological distress.
you kind of making a leap of logic though. there may be other explanations for why slaughterhouse workers experience psychological distress. it could be socioeconomic. it may be some other conditioning. your explanation amounts to post hoc ergo propter hoc
We can eliminate other explanations by looking at workers in similar socioeconomic circumstances that perform similar work.
Based on pay, they make about as much as other packing, manufacturing, and warehouse workers. It’s indoor bluecollar work. Yet they experience far more psychological distress than other workers.
Here’s another data point: when a new slaughterhouse opens in a community, rates of violence and crime rates go up. The same doesn’t happen when a new manufacturing plant, packaging plant, or warehouse opens.
It seems trivially obvious. 🤷♀️
you aren’t controlling for every possible alternative. for instance, a less media saturated culture with fewer depictions of anthropomorphism might not have this issue. you’re simply choosing to believe it’s an inherent problem with the process.