I don't think lacking life has ever been an argument vegetarians use. Once consciousness emerges, there is an innate desire to remain alive and to be free from suffering. Even if we could give animals a wonderful life in our current capitalist system, and then kill them without their awareness, we'd still need to justify (from a philosophical standpoint) why it would be immoral to do the same with a human animal.

> I don't think lacking life has ever been an argument vegetarians use.

That would make sense, since GP said:

> If lacking life is what's cruel, then vegetarianism doesn't really solve that problem.

So if vegetarians used the argument that lacking life is cruel, then vegetarianism would be cruel, right? It makes perfect sense (given GP's point) that they don't use that argument.

You're the third replyer that writes as if they disagree about this while making the same point. I'm wondering if I'm reading this wrong, or if GP edited their comment just before I loaded the page.

The GP implied that vegetarians use the logic "ending life is cruel" as a basis for their stance.

I suppose that argument could be used to justify killing some hermit unbeknownst to them. Most people, however, are connected socially, and killing them would make others suffer.

Lacking life isn't a remotely useful metric for cruelty, or every minute decision anyone has ever made is responsible for an infinite number of states of the universe not happening.

They're not saying that this is a logical metric, they're saying that if that is your metric, then vegetarianism won't help you.

But they were the first one to mention anything resembling that metric. There's no reason to bring it up unless you think someone uses that metric, or alternatively as a straw man to argue against.

> If the animal is free from suffering, including lacking awareness of what's happening during the killing

How do you measure this? How do you know for certain that what you're eating had no idea it was about to die when it did?

How do you know animals don't experience existential suffering, similar to how humans experience it? Why do you believe that humans are in control of their livestock's emotional state, even when they provide the best environment for them?

You can't know. You can know what acute suffering looks like and try to avoid it.

You can observe animal behavior and say, "They appear not to be suffering from existential dread beyond what they would in the wild", you may be able to measure cortisol levels in the meat. But you'll never know for sure.

> If lacking life is what's cruel

Nobody's arguing this, are they?

If you do believe this, then I hope you're breeding rats, rabbits, and insects as fast as possible!

I think you two agree. They said that if that is your definition of cruelty, then vegetarianism can't help you. Not that the lack of life is cruel. You're being cynical with someone who didn't even say one side was right and the other is wrong.

But nobody has EVER argued that, have they?

I'm saying it's a pointless statement and trying to demonstrate its ridiculousness.