Shifting Slightly

In response to Brian Fitzpatrick's post 'The Moral Efficacy of Lies' (2/9/2013):

I think that lying to promote the cause of animal rights, regardless of whether it is moral, is ineffective.  It is true that utilising sentiment rather than reason can have a great effect, especially on large numbers of people who are not, in their everyday lives, critical thinkers.  However, there is a good chance that a while after hearing an emotional speech, people will start to reconsider whatever new resolutions they made upon hearing that speech, and are likely to research some of the facts cited.  If they find that some of those facts are not true, they may drop the whole idea in disgust, assuming that the only reason a speaker would lie is because they could not accomplish their objective without doing so.

Advocates of animal rights do not need to lie to achieve an emotional effect.  Simply showing some of the widely-available videos of the inner workings of the meat industry can be perfectly effective.  Speaking sincerely about some of the extremely bad treatment of animals that goes on in America and many other places can have a very serious emotional effect.

I am not, myself, a fan of sentiment-based arguments - I prefer to ground my arguments in reason, since sentiment is not universally shared (and, indeed, if I based my behaviour towards animals on sentiment I would be eating hamburg with every meal since I personally despise cows).  However, sentiment may be widely shared, so I do not object to the use of care ethics or other sentiment-based arguments to reach large numbers of people, provided that the arguers also have reason to back their arguments up.