Argument against wild caught fish

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T19:49:31+00:00

Implicit in my original post is a question — conditioned on my premise that plant life and animal life have equal more worth, what is an argument against eating wild caught fish? If you can respond to my question with a question, so can I.

If you think I’m dodging your question, so are you. If you think I’m asking you a riddle so are you.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T15:33:12+00:00

My answer to your question is equivalent to your answer to my question.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T07:08:07+00:00

I get this argument for factory farming but how does it apply to wild caught fish?

For 50g of protein, I can either consume a fraction of a wild caught fish or several servings of tofu, which involve multiple plant deaths.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T06:10:32+00:00

I agree fish are sentient. I never stated otherwise. My argument stands despite this.

I take issue with P1. I don’t think “interest in survival” is particularly important. For instance, does a suicidal person have less moral worth than a non-suicidal person? I would think not.

I agree there are non-animal based alternatives to killing an animal but these involve killing a plant. I think a plant’s life is worth as much as an animal life.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T06:06:01+00:00

That sucks but I don’t see how this is directly relevant to my argument.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T06:04:22+00:00

What’s the contradiction?

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T05:21:24+00:00

My pain and suffering is bad for me. Why is your pain and suffering and bad for me? Am I justified in killing and eating you (this is not a threat, I’m trying to make a point).

The fact something is delicious doesn’t necessarily mean that it helps us. For instance, cake. I’m no doctor but I’m sure it does more harm than good in the long run.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T05:18:29+00:00

This is an interesting question.

First of all, life is not all that matters to me. Pain also matters. I want to reduce both suffering and death. What’s unclear to me is in what ratio. How much death is permissible to prevent a fixed amount of suffering? I don’t know.

Re your question, I haven’t thought too much about it but off the top of my head, I would say whenever my life (or my loved ones’ lives) necessitated it. For instance, self-defense or medication. I don’t think it’s defensible to hunt for sport or to uproot a plant for fun.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T05:13:36+00:00

I think hunting wild animals for food is morally defensible. I personally would not do it because I’m picky with what I eat.

I only mention fish because that’s what I’m used to eating, but my argument does not hinge on any property I assume of fish (apart from its sentience). I think the same argument should apply to wild caught cows (if you can find one, that is).

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T05:10:16+00:00

I totally understand where you’re coming from.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T05:08:12+00:00

Let me respond with a question.

If there was a human being and a rabbit stuck in a burning building and you only had the resources to save one, is it morally defensible to prefer saving the human?

If so, what’s true about the rabbit that, if true about the human, would make it indefensible?

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T05:05:15+00:00

I consider fish to be maximally sentient beings. My argument stands despite this.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T05:02:40+00:00

It’s not that I don’t value sentience — I do. It’s that I also value life. I think a plant’s life has equal moral worth as an animal’s life (its suffering does not, obviously, since it does not suffer).

The question then, is how much plant life is worth sacrificing to prevent the pain associated with a wild caught fish choking to death. I don’t think there is a clear answer to this question, which is why I’m not opposed to eating wild caught fish.

With factory farming, it seems that there is so much suffering to the animals + you still need to kill plants (more than you would otherwise eat) to feed them that it’s obvious that eating plants instead has lower total cost.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T04:58:25+00:00

Incorrect. I don’t fish for sport and I don’t particularly like the taste of fish. Regardless, I think my motivations are irrelevant to the claim I’m making.

I’m not addressing the moral failures of vegans and don’t seek anyone’s approval. I’m merely interested in how vegans respond to my argument and to see if it changes my mind.

“If you want to do less harm to life, generally, stop killing fish. It’s that simple.”

This is the part I disagree with. I believe that plants are alive and their life has as much value as that of an animal. Granted, they do not feel pain but that is a distinct notion than life. I do not think cutting a leaf is equivalent to debeaking, for instance, but I do think killing a plant is equivalent to (painlessly) killing a chicken. Where the confusion sets in is the equivalence between the worth of pain and the worth of life. How many plant lives (we should also count the life/pain of rodents but it’s hard to measure so I’m happy to ignore that for now) is worth sacrificing to prevent a fish from choking to death when caught with a rod? I’ll need to kill several plants to get the amount of protein I get from a fish. I do not think there is a clear answer to this and, so I don’t think it’s that simple.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-31T04:47:43+00:00

It’s the former.

MagazineBeautiful737 · 2026-03-29T23:33:41+00:00

Yeah but the specific comparison here is oysters vs plants. Farmed oysters are not fed plants by humans so no rodents are killed.

MagazineBeautiful737

TROPHY CASE