Ethics and Hypocritical Behaviors

Question

One of my friends will-known to me criticizes zoos for keeping animals in cages or drugging them, especially at places where one can play with drugged tigers. But at the same time, he eats chicken and eggs. Wouldn't an ethicist label this hypocritical? Is there any special term in philosophy for these kinds of behaviors? or what arguments could one give to such a person who seems to be engaged in hypocrisy?

Also: I asked him if he wants to go to a stand-up comedy show. He said, "I don't like to go, because it feels weird going for a stand-up comedy to fulfill happiness with something external". Is that also a form of hypocrisy?

Answer 1

In logic, one of the most important types of fallacies you can be familiar with is the fallacy of false equivalency. From the article:

A false equivalence or false equivalency is an informal fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency.1 Colloquially, a false equivalence is often called "comparing apples and oranges."

Any ethicist will start with a simple question: is it the same thing to imprison and drug animals as it is to eat them? I think a strong case can be made for they are not the same thing. Let's explore.

Human life is valuable, and consuming an animal or animal byproduct like an egg serves an important purpose of preserving life. Eggs are an excellent source of protein, the very best according to some nutritionists. Is the disrupting the potential of a bringing about a future chicken morally abominable in such a way that a starving child's life might not be preserved? If a chicken is raised humanely, and fed table scraps to reduce biowaste from human life, and the result is taking eggs to nurture a child, to claim the harm done to the chicken is the same as caging and drugging exotic animals doesn't seem to be of the same type of behavior or consequence. It seems to be a category error and false equivalence.

But, the famous Peter Singer might disagree. And Peter Singer would then produce his own argument, and then, using some of the methodologies of contemporary philosophy, he and I might have a friendly debate following the rules of argumentation theory. And then we might persuade each other or others.

Life experience would suggest to me, however, that a vegan is going to believe the arguments vegans believe, and vegetarians their arguments, and so on.

Answer 2

The question strikes at the hearts of all philosophers. I could once feel 'em but now no longer. What you've touched upon is known in philosophy as inconsistency. It's claimed many victims, both newbies and seasoned veterans, but somehow it seems, given the current epistemological climate, it's inevitable. Perhaps it's a Gödel incompleteness theorems kinda situation we're in. We can either achieve completeness OR consistency but not both, much like Werner Heisenberg's dilemma - either position or velocity but not/never both. We can't/shouldn't blame ourselves though and in fact should congratulate ourselves that our ideals are beyond our current capabilities. Descartes was fascinated/wonderstruck by the fact that we could, if nothing else, imagine God. It's like evil being able to recognize good, that which is not itself, that which it has never encountered, that which it knows nothing of. Hence, per some reports, Descartes' conviction that God exists - for the idea of perfection, God, couldn't be the work of flawed mortals like us.

Answer 3

Hehe. i think that you select not the best place of SE to ask such questions. Why? Because these people, lage part of them, can't answer is 2+2=4 or not? These people thought so much, and they become so doubt at the all things of the world, and now they can't answer the simple question without any fundamental theory(or several theories), they become dislike to get mistakes, they are craving the Truth but they get philosophy of the "right way", the dread knowledges. They know how to do right at several ways, but it is steal not the method 'wheat from the chaff' selection, they are selecting good wheat frome all wheat, that they think a good one. They have algorithms to find a good wheat only, not all wheat. So, did they find any wheat?

But i ll give a method to you. Not an algorithm. This method called 'the parable'.

Do you know any parables? I think yes, christian's one. Some of them called myths or else, but they are the parables. What is the parable? Parable it is a narrative story about trusting to the close someone. Why Adam had bitten an 'apple'? Because EVE asked this to him. He knows that God said not to eat, but he trusted to close someone - to EVE. Have he choice another fruit to feed - ofc, he had, and he could also cancel to EVE's ask. But he trusted his wife(second one, haha, good one). That is why he bit an apple. And he got a mistake but get a new experience, lots of new experience and adventure times, haha. Only for the one trustful moment.

The first main question of the philosophy, any philosophy - 'who am i'? The second and weaving to this is 'who art thee'? Tiger Tiger - who art thee? So strange the metaphor of the alive 'tigers are under drugs', what is better the liveliness horror or the deadness horror...

So, all that you need - trust to thy known. He ate the modern dinosauros and their eggs? Eat with him. And tell to him your regret about eating animal food. But after you had meat feast together. Because all your thoughts about the eating meat, are looks as 'Hypocritical behavior' for what they are. Thou bist thinking about the mistake that thou didst not yet - that is a role playing, not thy bist, someone's else did and thou didst it, it is not thy mistake yet, but whose?

When he say something like 'tigers under drugs at the zoo' - you may ask: lets go and check? you don't know for sure, thou wast not in this zoo. It is not ever criticise to say about something where thou didst not ever bist, or you didn't not ever got mistakes. All of these are the smart skill of hypocritical fallacies. Critical become only if the metanoja had happened. A fear to make mistakes it is not the metanoja. Dread knowledges, dread tigers, dread drugdeallers - these are just the fear only. Fear to get a mistake. Look straight without fear, be dare to art. Trust close someone, ask him where you should to go then if not a zoo or standup, how does he fun(or got an experience) then?

Thy must not to play roles, but trustest the music and letst mistakes to be - art the metanoja.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or aí,

Dé fraím thý fiə fúl sim'traí?

But they are not the tigers or drugdealers.

Open the close people with love, trust them.

Letst them to be, art thy parable.

Do not fear to say 'i do', be dare to get mistakes.