Overcoming Bias

Question: If you believe that Michael Vick should be going to prison, then do you also think that every carnivore or hunter should also be locked up?

Question: If not, then what is the distinction (other than the presence, in one of the cases, of an arbitrary law)?

Question: Why do we have laws prohibiting "animal cruelty"? Do we believe that animals possess some inalienable rights? If so, what are they?

Question: If animals possess rights, then how can eating meat/killing animals be legal? If they do not, then why is Vick going to prison and losing millions of dollars?

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias and Scott Lemieux are discussing the same. First Lemieux:

There are, I think, some colorable substantive distinctions; in particular, Vick's actions (not just the dogfighting but the additional torture-killing of the dogs) represents a sadism for its own sake that factory farming doesn't, and hence it's reasonable for the law to treat them differently. But is this distinction enough to justify significant federal jail time for Vick in a country where factory farming is not only legal but subsidized? Seems like a hard case to make. Can eaters of mass-produced meat (or, even more so, people who see nothing wrong with mass-produced meat) justify intense outrage at Vick? It's hard to rationally justify, I think. A little humility is on order for those of us with bad faith eating practices.

Then Yglesias:

Which is just to say that Michael Vick has violated some laws against animal cruelty. To observe that other kinds of cruel treatment of animals related to the industrial food process should be subjected to more stringent regulation isn't a reason for Vick to be let off the hook. That in the absence of such regulation, a lot of people who think there should be stricter ones find it difficult to live up to our own ethical ideas arguably just strengthens the case for regulation. I'm not, in general, a big believer in the idea that not living in accordance with hypothetical regulatory frameworks while still believing such frameworks should be constructed (supporting a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme while still having a large carbon footprint, for example) constitutes hypocrisy in a meaningful way.

But the argument isn't really about hypocrisy, per se. After all, the vast majority of the country doesn't care at all that animals are harmed in the making of their meat. They don't think it's wrong. And, if asked whether their children should be punitively punished for pulling the wings off of flies or blowing up frogs with M-60s, they'd probably say that they don't care much about that either. Most people don't care that many dogs are executed in humane shelters because there are no homes for them. So the question is... why are there laws against dog fighting but not dog killing? Why is cock fighting prohibited but shooting a B.B. gun at sparrows is allowed? There are a few obvious answers:

1. Dog fighting is especially gruesome, and therefore "cruel".

2. Gambling is involved.

#1 only has any validity if you take for granted that animals inherently hold negative rights, or that humans have positive rights towards them, which preclude us from encouraging or allowing violence against animals. Obviously, most people do not believe this. #2 is partially compelling, but Vick isn't really in trouble for gambling. And obviously, most people would not consign their friends and neighbors to prison for participating in an illicit poker game.

So I think that Lemieux is mostly correct, but I wouldn't phrase it in terms of hypocrisy; I'd instead phrase as an example of bias. Many of has have or have had dogs, and all of us have spent some significant time around them. Many of us have attachments to them which are best described as "personal". So many of us cognitively ascribe some sort of negative rights to dogs without intending to (some people, of course, obviously do intend to), because of personal experiences with dogs that we don't have with, say, cows. This is why many people are revolted by certain culinary practices of other cultures (e.g. Chinese eating cats, etc.). But that doesn't make it rational.