Is our dominion over animals unethical?
New documentary came out, narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, etc... It's essentially to bring awareness to our society on the common practices within animal exploitation.
Link to documentary: https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko
I'd say it definitely is unethical to support these industries. Let me put it in a different way.
If I said I tortured a dog, and used the dog's skin to make shoes, most people would call me an immoral monster. But what if I paid someone else to torture a dog, so I can get shoes made of dog skin. Does it make me less immoral, just because I am not doing the dirty work myself? I am still contributing to the torture of that dog, so I am partially responsible for what happens to that dog. This is simple supply and demand. The same thing happens within the animal industry. You (the consumer) pays (demands) for an animal (the supply) to be killed, whether that is for food, clothing, etc...
The main point here is, the killing of these animals is unnecessary. We do not need to exploit animals for our survival. We do it for pleasure and convenience. But is pleasure and convenience worth the torture and death of innocent sentient beings?
Link to documentary: https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko
I'd say it definitely is unethical to support these industries. Let me put it in a different way.
If I said I tortured a dog, and used the dog's skin to make shoes, most people would call me an immoral monster. But what if I paid someone else to torture a dog, so I can get shoes made of dog skin. Does it make me less immoral, just because I am not doing the dirty work myself? I am still contributing to the torture of that dog, so I am partially responsible for what happens to that dog. This is simple supply and demand. The same thing happens within the animal industry. You (the consumer) pays (demands) for an animal (the supply) to be killed, whether that is for food, clothing, etc...
The main point here is, the killing of these animals is unnecessary. We do not need to exploit animals for our survival. We do it for pleasure and convenience. But is pleasure and convenience worth the torture and death of innocent sentient beings?
Comments (547)
Can you prove this statement? I have yet to see a reasonable explanation of how, considering the human bodies needs, it would be possible to survive without them.
Human beings are, by evolution or creation, omnivorous. That does not just mean that theycaneat most kinds of foods but that they need to eat different types of food.
You know well enough you'd be perfectly healthy being a vegan for the rest of your life, Sir, so long as your diet was varied and you got enough protein. Essential amino acids can be harvested from plants and B 12 can be synthesized (i think).
Our dominion over animals is not unethical, it is natural.
Ethics concern humans, it is created by humans for humans, and even then only about what specific humans or groups of humans agree to. It doesnt make sense to apply ethics to creatures not capable of ethics, you might as well apply ethics to a rock. Non-sequitur, apples and oranges etc
Also, the way humans treat animals has nothing on the way animals treat animals. Nature is a savage, merciless and relentless wasteland of suffering and horror. Mothers and fathers eat their young, predators target the weakest or sickest, groups of animals devour thier own, wolves and many other creatures eat prey alive, mother birds throw their young to thier deaths, animals are constantly starving to death, or dying slow and painful deaths and on and on and any kind of combination of the suffering above. By human standards, the animal world is an absolute horror show. What are you gonna do about that? If you want animals to have a seat at the table of ethics then it stands to reason that we prioritize the ethical violations against them, since they inflict so much more suffering on each other than we do, how exactly do you propose we go about holding animals accountable for that?
Only for some, such a diet doesnt work with everyones system. Also, just becuase you can survive on a certain diet doesnt mean it is the healthiest, or even that healthy at all, for a person to have
Omnivore is a consumption classification for animals that have the capability to obtain chemical energy and nutrients from materials originating from plant and animal origin. There is no definition that states the NEED to obtain your nutrients from animals.
Sources:
- https://www.facebook.com/notes/grumpy-old-vegans/humans-have-no-need-to-consume-animal-products-to-be-healthy/544935285618383/
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
Above are sources (the google doc I created) that showcase studies which provide you with evidence that humans can thrive from a plant-based diet.
What's natural about rape (forced artificial insemination), torture and unnecessary slaughter?
Quoting DingoJones
Is this how you define ethics? So ethics do not concern dogs, cats, etc? We wouldn't apply ethics to a rock because a rock is not sentient. We apply ethics to living beings that have the ability to suffer.
Quoting DingoJones
So since animals do horrible things to each other in nature, that means we should as well? Should I go around and kill children since animals do it? To derive your moral standard from animals is very scary, as you would have to condone the same treatment for humans. Unless you're speciesist?
Quoting DingoJones
Animals cannot evaluate their actions and analyze their ethics in the same way we can. We can analyze an action of owning people as slaves, understand why it is wrong, and then abolish slavery. Animals cannot do this, because their sole intention is to survive. They need to kill each other to survive. We do not. We are killing animals for pleasure and convenience. I assume you understand the massive difference here?
Our interaction with animals is not an ethical matter. Ethics are a social contract which animals cannot agree too. What animals DO abide by is nature, survival. That is something humans are capable of understanding, and Id go further and say that humans are already doing that. We are a part of the food chain after all. Its just incoherent, to me at least, to include them in ethics. Even if we ignore that and we focus only on what humans can do to measure animals according to our rules, woildnt we be obligated to do everything we can to reduce the suffering of animals inflicted by other animals? It doesnt make sense.
Have you made a first hand comparison of a cow being inseminated artificially with a cow being inseminated by a bull?
Given that the insemination technician is standing immediately behind the cow, he is seriously invested in keeping the cow happy so he doesn't get kicked. He clears the rectum of feces (the rectum is located on top of the vagina) and then inserts a small tube into the cow's vagina - his entire arm may be inside the cow in order to reach the cervix at this point. The sperm packet is expelled from the tube by a puff of air from the technician. That's it. Arm and tube are withdrawn.
A bull doesn't go through much more foreplay than the technician. After a little sniffing, he mounts the cow (who has to support his considerable weight), shoves his 36 inch long schlong in and gives it a few thrusts, and ejaculates, accomplishing bovine coitus. That's it. Back to chewing one's cud.
The bull's dick is about 36 inches long -- how would you like a yard-long dick shoved up your ass?
Cows are inseminated when they are in heat, and therefore receptive to penetration. If they weren't in heat, there would be no point in either the bull or the man trying to get the cow pregnant.
Crowding is a corporate strategy, not a typical historical agricultural practice. Before corporate farming took over, small farms housed maybe 30 to 45 dairy cows in a barn. Cows were kept inside mainly during the winter months. Chickens, turkeys, and other poultry were allowed to move about, and develop normally -- not being overfed. Birds like to be outside, scratching the dirt, eating whatever they find during the day; at night they prefer to be inside. Hogs do better if they are given a fair amount of space, can stay dry and warm in the winter. The rest of the year they can be outside (with shelter available). Beef cattle should also move freely, and should be raised on their natural diet -- grass. That produces healthier animals. better meat, and less methane.
In nature, most animals are slaughtered by predators. Predators are not humane; they begin eating prey animals as soon as they are no longer a threat (like by kicking). A prey animal might have to endure a couple of hours of being eaten before it finally bled to death -- depending on what the predators ate first.
An animal's death in a slaughterhouse is quick and final. What would you prefer? A natural death by being chewed on by several wolves, or a bullet in the head?
I can go along with your position that interactions between non-human animals are not governed by morality, and that animals are not moral agents. The trouble is that the human treatment of animals is part of the moral sphere, simply owing to their involvement in our practices. In doing things with animals we involve them in our relations with each other, and the "ethicality" of those intrahuman relations is thereby in a manner of speaking transferred on to the direct relations between humans and animals.
I think just about anything can be "included in ethics" that concerns human actions, so the human treatment of animals is or can be an ethical matter. Let's agree that animals are not moral agents. Does it follow that human actions involving them are not a matter for ethics? I don't think so. Some version of the argument from marginal cases (AMC) can be used to show this. E.g., the treatment of infants is a matter for ethics even though they might have no concept of right and wrong.
Notice that the AMC is not here being used to argue for anything so strong as animal rights, and in my opinion it doesn't even show that the exploitation of animals is wrong. What it shows is that human actions that involve beings--human, non-human, and maybe even non-living (dead bodies)--without the mental abilities we consider as normal for humans--such as the concept of self, right and wrong, and temporal self-awareness--are ethically significant, or can be.
One intuitive way to see how this is so is to observe that the cruel treatment of animals may do harm to humans. The knowledge of cruel practices, and certainly the witnessing of or taking part in those practices, may have a brutalizing effect on people. I don't want to make any argument depend on this, but it's one way to look at it.
And it seems to me quite difficult to claim that the treatment of pets is not an ethical matter, which your position implies.
Now if I'm right and it is an ethical matter, you could still argue that it is not wrong to exploit animals, perhaps by invoking the significance of species membership (which includes the so-called "marginal cases"). That is, you could argue that species membership justifies our treatment of animals, even though it doesn't justify the claim that the treatment of animals is not ethically significant at all. This would probably be something like my own position, e.g., we can eat meat without doing wrong, so long as we don't treat the animals cruelly.
Quoting jamalrob
I think the bolded portion conflates practices of humans with human moral sphere. Ergo, you cannot sneak animals in by starting with their involvement in human practices, those practices need not be in the moral sphere.
I think that means the “transfer” isnt valid.
Quoting jamalrob
The case with infants is different, the infant will grow up and gain moral comprehension, the animal will not. The ethics concerning infants do not come from their temporary lack of ethical insight, but rather our moral responsibility to them as fellow human beings.
Anyway, we seem to have a fundamental disagreement, I do not think just about anything can be “included in ethics”, but if I did I would probably agree with you here.
As for pets, I dont see a relevent distinction.
But take the generalized AMC. Some infants may not ever gain moral comprehension--it could be some kind of severe mental disability--and yet they would, obviously I think, remain morally significant.
To the second one, no, there is no excuse for making other sentient beings, from insects to orangutans, suffer unnecessarily. Other animals can not do this, because they lack ethics; but luckily we do. We need to avoid pain and stress to other creatures when it is possible to do so. For example, when I kill an African cockroach (very invasive and nasty, like anything coming to Europe from hot Africa, I´m referring to exotic species and germs), I try to kill it quick, hopefully by stepping on it. If they are still alive, as many often happens because they are incredibly tough, I finish it off so that its agony is not longer than required. I have to kill them to protect the health of my family and pets, but I understand that I have no right to impose an undue extra pain over them when doing so.
The virtue is in the middle in my opinion; to keep and protect the biological and cultural diversity and economic viability of farmlands, but giving up practices that destroy diversity and produce insane amounts of suffering. In fact, both goals are more complementary than divergent.
Regions of the world able to protect their borders from demographic invasions, can allow themselves a healthy, optimal human population, and this management of demography in its turn makes possible to direct farming to ever increasing quality and not to ever increasing quantity. Nobody wants animals that have had horrible short lives as their meal, if that can be avoided. So at least (civilized) nations with well defended borders and the resulting capacity to control demographic surge, such as China or Russia, should shift to a better relationship with our beloved farm animals and plants.
Im not sure they do, how mentally disabled are we talking about? If they cannot understand right and wrong...
You do not treat a person well because you've established that they have the mental capacities that you deem to be requirements for morality. And if you treat a person well on that presumption, you do not suddenly treat them as morally insignificant if you later find out that they lack those capacities.
But my wider point was that ethics just is about human actions concerning the things we value. We value pet dogs and most non-psychopaths would not wish to see them tortured. This is an ethical matter despite a dog's possible lack of moral comprehension. Do you disagree?
EDIT: The even wider point is that I think you are appealing to an intuition that is close to my own view, which is about species membership and the moral sphere of human society (which includes animals, though not as moral agents). I.e., I think that individual capacities are a red herring.
It is the latter, ethical standards cannot be applied to creatures/things which cannot comprehend ethics. There may be other, practical reasons to treat these creatures or things well, or wny number of ways, but ethically isnt one of them in my view.
Your counter-examples dont hold much water, i dont think how we treat dead bodies matters ethically, and someone who is so compromised mentally (psychopaths, severly mentally disabled etc) they cannot understand ethics likewise do not matter ethically. We are free to make simple practical decisions in those cases. A bullet in the head for the psycho seems fine to me. For the severly mentally disabled, I realize that the sentimental attachments of loved ones are real and important so am happy for those loved ones to decide on the treatment etc, but I wouldnt consider it an ethical matter except where practical matters interfere with the ethical concerns of actual moral agents. Similarly, I think a pet is in the realm of sentimental attachment and emotions and should be considered in a practical way or according to the preferences of the pets owner. I still do not think it makes sense to apply ethics to creatures not capable of them.
So I think what you are left with only one counter argument here, that under my view it would be ok to torture the psychopathic, the severly retarded, or pets. I would answer that absent a practical reason to torture/harm the subject, the moral agent could only have immoral reasons for doing so. This is where I would apply the sentiments you expressed above about amoral creatures entering human moral spheres.
Go ahead and run it through a shredder. It isn't going to last forever anyway, everybody knows what it looks like, there are billions of photos of the damned thing, and when you get right down to it, it's not something you would want hanging over your sofa. Banksy had the right idea: shredding art makes it more interesting.
1. Deontology
Somone concerned with the intent of the action might say that if you kill an animal with good will, for example in order to sell your product and feed your family, would not be considered immoral. You raised the animals, treated them fairly, and slaughtered them with the least amount of suffering possible - which they might not even encounter in the wilderness. On the other hand, most people who point at the suffering of the animals assume that the ones doing them do it so with bad will - which is quite the assumption for such a large group of people. However, if someone has immoral or amoral intent while treating animals should be considered bad nonetheless. Which means that overall, people should be concerned with making sure that people who treat animals do so fairly and with concern for their suffering.
Here I'd like to point out that purely emotional reasons should not qualitfy on their own. One might have good intent and still feel sorry for animals killed or inseminated - even though they kill or consume animals. On the other hand, although it is true than animals have no capability of ethics, and are purely natural beings, the decision if it's a good or bad thing to kill them should not be about them at all - we need to decide how it reflects on us. Which is how we can also consider consequentialism.
2. Consequentialism
There are also claims about the consequences of not eating meat - much of which we haven't exhaustively explored as far as I know. There are three main realms: individual, economic and enviromental.
On the level of the individual you can meet the claims of health and lessening of suffering. I'd argue that we are not completely sure about the differences of consequence between vegan and omnivorous behavior. We should avoid coming to a final conclusion purely based on anecdote or correlation - although it does add to the deontological reasons against eating meat. On the other hand, there might be people who would experience a loss of well being as a consequence, increasing their suffering. Also, meat products contain a lot of things we need in a more bio avilable way - because the purely plant eating animals have a better ability to build themselves up from plants than omnivores that are able to draw on both plants and animals, but only up to a degree.
On the economic side, the meat industry allows unskilled and trade labourers to make a living. As a consequence of ban on meat eating, they might experience a serious drop in well being. On the other hand, it could be argued that they could make a living from only farming the land and producing plants. However, this would decrease the price of plants, and there would still be some people left without of jobs due to the inability for competition. Also several industries - such as fashion, food, medical etc. would experience serious changes. This step risks the loss of a lot of economic wealth.
On the side of the enviroment, animal farming draws a lot on our natural resources - plants, water, oxigen and produces co2 and methane which contribute to the greenhouse effect. They can also facilitate the spread of bacteria that might later be dangerous to humans as well. However, on the other hand the existence of these animals creates a lot of substances that could be crutial to our enviroment. The soil we would like to cultivate to grow plants is basically an amalgamation of all the dead plants and animals that ever existed. Taking out a large amount of animals and not producing more, and instead drawing more nutrients out that are needed for plants might overdraw the land too much, and we might not be able to create replenishment of the same quality to it.
I have also seen claims that "our dominion over animals is natural". This is obviously a logical fallacy, we do not completely understand what our natural behavior is. The mere fact that we can consider what is natural is supernatural. What we have to determine is how much we are able to rise above nature, and how much we are determined by it. That is where our virtue lies, and that is why this is an interesting question.
You've got my vote. No. Not worth it.
Quoting Sir2u
Apologies, no disrespect intended, but this is a common rationalizing fantasy.
The problem is not in farming, but in what forces farming to become as extractive as possible, and to return to the Earth as less as possible. That thing is lack of population control, especially in Africa and regions of the Middle East where leaders encourage people to have as many future emigrants as possible; and the economy based on maximizing (especially short-term) profit and calling "wealth" to "exhausting wealth produced by nature."
In a world with population control and nations that defend their borders from demographic invasions, positive farming industries would be not only possible but widespread.
Farming can not be abandoned by Man, because all those animals and plants whose mere existence depend of our agrosystems do not deserve extinctions after so many millennia feeding us; and after we have killed off their wild varieties. Not only the domesticated species are to be considered, but also the many species that need agrosystems to feed. Many national parks in the world depend on agrosystems around them to keep their diversity.
We need to control our population and greed, shift to healthy farm practices that offer positive externalizations, and try to prevent the loss of diversity in agriculture, that is huge. And we need to keep on eating our animals and plants because they are part of our family; the Homo Sapiens phenomenon has never been just a bunch of individual hominids, but also the relationships with other species.
We need to eat animals because they are part of our family?? Ok then, I'm off to eat my wife.
Is that how you define ethics? A social contract? So if there is a social contract to own humans as slaves, does that mean it is ethical and permissible? AKA, morally right? If so, that is a very destructive way to view ethics.
Quoting DingoJones
Wild animals live for survival. We live for convenience and pleasure. Big difference there. And our convenience and pleasure should not come at the cost of another sentient being's welfare.
Quoting DingoJones
Why would we be responsible for every living being's actions, and when did I ever say or imply that? I specifically have stated that we should be responsible for our own actions, and how we treat other sentient beings. If you want to talk about social contract (which is how you define Ethics), then you should already understand this within many societies around the world. Many societies already have in place, animal cruelty laws. Which, if you harm/torture/kill a dog/cat unnecessarily, you can go to jail. And since that is a social contract within many societies, why not extend that contract out to other animals (not just dogs and cats). Why not extend that contract out to chickens, pigs, cows, etc... Since we do not need to eat animal products to survive, then it is unnecessary to kill them for our convenience and pleasure.
Yet, the cow is caged and unable to move to get away from a forced impregnation by the technician. At least with the bull, she is able to exercise her freedom and leave if she wants to. You really think it is the same to force impregnate a cow by hand or give her the choice to allow a bull to mount her in the wild?
Then why support what you don't approve of? Do you still buy animal products? If so, then you are directly contradicting yourself. You cannot say "I don't approve of factory farming practices", but then continue to support factory farming practices by buying their products.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Again, we are not wild predators. We are an intelligent species that is "supposed" to exercise compassion and empathy to other living beings. Also, you seem to be ignorant as to what actually goes on within factory farms. The animals there have years of pain and suffering they endure, unlike a few hours a prey may endure in the wild to a predator. Have you not watched that documentary I linked in my original post (Dominion)? You should watch it and educate yourself.
Quoting Bitter Crank
A life without confinement, extreme mental stress, living in your own waste, unable to see the light of day, being kicked and electrocuted, have your children ripped away from you at birth.... That is a short list, but that list is far more detrimental than being eaten by wolves in the last moments of your life. You could ask yourself the same honest question.
- Would you rather live as a factory farmed pig?
- Would you rather live as a wild pig?
Pigs get their genitals mutilated without any pain medication. They also get their teeth clipped in the same way. They are said to be more intelligent than dogs, which leads to extreme mental conditions from confinement (imagine being locked in a small cage all your life). Not to mention, every animal in the factory farming industry gets their life cut short by more than double their natural lifespan in the wild. For example. A factory farmed pig will be killed after 6 months. A pig in the wild can live more than 10+ years.
This runs into problems when you push consistency toward your "species membership" idea. Because this is what you are saying, in a basic form.
- It is morally good for humans to kill pigs, since pigs are not a member of the human species.
- It is morally good for aliens to kill humans, since humans are not a member of the alien species.
I'd assume you disagree with the 2nd statement, since you would probably not accept it as a moral good. In fact, you would probably say it is morally wrong for aliens to kill humans, just because humans are not of the same species as the aliens. You would probably want a proper justification, instead of speciesism. Because speciesism is the same idea as racism or sexism. You are discriminating against someone else, just because they are not like you. Which is a very dangerous and destructive belief to hold.
So if the infant is mentally disabled, to the point where they have the same consciousness and intelligence level as a cow, are we then OK to kill that infant, since they will not gain any moral comprehension?
Also, the things that can be "included in ethics" are actions that result in a victim being involve. Some harms to "victims" are necessary, such as self-defense. While other harms to victims are unnecessary, such as kicking my dog for no reason. When there's a victim involved, a moral justification needs to be addressed.
The questions are related. Our dominion over animals has caused unnecessary suffering, which is specifically for our convenience and pleasure. Therefore it is unethical. And I am confused as to how this is relevant to an Alien Invasion?
Quoting DiegoT
Does this mean you are a Vegan? Follow this line of thinking.
- Do you think actions become unnecessary when they are not required for our survival?
- Do you think unnecessary actions that cause pain and/or suffering are wrong?
- Do you think Animal cruelty is wrong?
- Do you think we need to eat animals to survive?
By answering Yes to 1, 2 and 3, while also answering No to 4, you're essentially saying that eating animals is wrong and unnecessary. And therefore, you should be Vegan?
Can you give an example of this? And I will assume you do not know what goes on within these factory farms.
Nazivegans? If I was against slavery, would you call me a nazi-anti-slavery person? That's just a very strange wording, because Veganism is about equality and compassion. To prefix that with Nazi is a bit odd.
Also, Veganism doesn't eradicate all suffering and animal slaughter, but it does cut it down a whole lot. Imagine these numbers. Most of the world's crops are eaten by the farm animals we breed into existence. So most of the animals that are being poisoned and exterminated to produce crops, are because those crops are being fed to farm animals. If we eliminate farm animal breeding, that is way less farm animals to die, as well as way less field mice and other rodents to die. Veganism in a step in the right direction on both of those issues. And you also have to remember, farm animals eat way more than we do per day, and we kill 50+ Billion per year. The amount of crops we would need would drop drastically, so there would be far less deaths overall.[/quote]
Do you buy leather? Do you buy down comforters? Are you a cannibal? I'll give you a "practical" reason for each scenario.
- I want to kill the severely retarded person to use his skin as leather for my handbag.
- I want to kill the severely retarded person to eat them, because I am a cannibal.
- I want to kill the pet because I want their fur for my sweater.
- I want to kill the psychopath because they have tastier flesh than other humans.
Are these practical enough reasons for you? If not, than stop buy animal products, because the reasoning is identical, unless you are going to resort to speciesism.
If there was a ban on human trafficking, would you also say there is a consequence of that ban, because many people making a living by trafficking women? What if we banned companies that exploited child workers? Would you say many children/families making a living from these companies, and that's a valid consequence?
Even if plants went up in price, it would only be temporary. The reason why meat is so cheap is because of the subsidies surrounding it. Once plants became the overwhelming meat replacement, companies would start to subsidize plants and they would be cheap as well. There is nothing "positive" that comes out of factory farming in which cannot be replaced by plant production. That's not just my opinion or conjecture, it is actually backed by science and peer reviewed journals.
Who said that all possible farming is harmful? Matter of fact, there are some farms who do not kill their animals, but still sell their products rarely. And I said rarely, because they do not push their animals and force them to produce milk or other products for our consumption. Check out long dream farm, for example: https://www.longdreamfarm.com/
Farming can be done correctly, but the main component of that farm is to not KILL the animal. To allow them to live their natural lives. I assume you want to live out your natural life span, correct? So why take away that right from another sentient being?
Quoting DiegoT
This is a very weird rationalization. You don't think they deserve extinctions, but you think they deserve to feed us by way of exploitation? You have a strange way of defining "deserve". Do you need animals products to survive? No. Therefore we do not need them to feed us. We need to stop breeding them into existence, allow the current ones to die off naturally, and keep a small percentage in animal sanctuaries or as pets (such as we do with dogs or cats).
Quoting DiegoT
Would you accept this same statement from a cannibal who states, "We need to keep on eating our fellow humans because they are part of our family." - You sound a bit deranged at this point.
It's pretty close to the same thing, because it is desirable to wait for the cow to be ready to breed, whether by a long arm and a tube or by a bull dick. It would be extremely unwise to attempt to artificially breed a cow who was not willing. A, they can kick hard, and B, if the cow flexes intensely while one's arm is all the way into the cow, it can break one's arm.
Many farmers use bulls and do it the old fashioned way (the bulls fuck the cows). The drawback to using a bull is that one's choice of sires is limited to the bull one has. Plus, when the cattle are out in the open range or pasture one can not know for sure when the bull bred the cow. One has to wait for the pregnancy. Some bulls are not all that efficient in terms of successful breedings.
some bulls are difficult to have around. They are big, sometimes aggressive towards humans, and they eat a lot.
I've also seen small scale farming -- the much lauded family farm. Most family farmers treat their animals decently, and they don't have the capital to build factory farms. Family farmers, of course, account for a small share of the food supply.
So, knowing all this, why don't I abstain from meat? Because at this stage in life I don't want to radically change my diet (I'm 72). I am selective about the meat I buy; I look for meat that is raised without antibiotics on vegetarian diets and without hormones. What does that prove? Crowding requires antibiotics; vegetarian diets means that animal byproducts aren't being fed to the animals. Hormones (like bovine growth hormone) are a marker for a heavy milking schedules that take a toll on cow health.
In addition I'm something of a hypocrite. At least some of the meat I eat is from large scale factory farms and bad things happen to the animals there. I disapprove, but I still like meat, milk, and eggs.
I think our dominion over animals is ethical, within certain limits. Animals should not be treated cruelly for their sake, and should not be raised unhealthfully for our sake. The Old Testament, which says we have dominion over the earth, also says that one must not prevent the ox which is laboring on the threshing floor (separating grain from the chaff) from eating some of the grain. "“You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain” (Deut. 25:4)."
I dont have the time to respond to the points made to other people another time with you, nor to tediously respond to your cherry picked portions (again, most were not even directed at you) point by point. Besides, ive heard your sermon already. Many times.
I mean no offense, but I restrict my forum activity to engagement of ideas rather than listening to preachers “educate” me about their ideology, so U wont be responding to any of that. Im sure you can understand its not personal.
I originally started this thread, and I try to respond to everyone who contributes to it, including the people who didn't directly respond to me. For the people who didn't respond to me, I pick certain things that I view as problem statements. But for people who respond directly to me, I respond to every point they write, for the most part. So to say I have cherry picked, is dishonest on your part. Because between you and I, I have addressed all your points (which you still haven't addressed). My response to all your points between our conversation is at the end of page one.
Also, what "sermon" are you referring to? Because a sermon is not a discussion. A sermon does not address the points of another person who tries to argue with that sermon. I don't preach to people, but instead, bring awareness to things people do not know about or understand. If you want to talk about an ideology, it is usually the people who leave the discussion (such as you are doing) who are unwilling to engage in ideas.
Quoting chatterbears
Carrion is the flesh of dead animals. That's what we eat. We don't eat animals like lions eat animals - or the larva of a parasitic wasp eats animals, or sharks etc, etc.
In nature, the act of eating and killing are often much the same thing.
In agriculture, they are separate - such that, very few people do the killing, while the vast majority of people only do the eating.
For you to say to me: "I will assume you do not know what goes on within these factory farms."
What you're saying is that the killing is my responsibility - but in fact, I don't know what goes on in these factory farms, and I don't want to know.
Similarly, when I boil a kettle - it's not my fault that the electricity is not renewable energy. That responsibility lies elsewhere. What should I do? Not boil a kettle, not wash my clothes, not watch TV because for reasons beyond my control or understanding - it's not renewable energy when it could be?
Similarly, should I not eat meat because the animal might not have lived and died in the best conditions possible? How could I possibly know? The responsibility is not with the end user. It's with the producer - of electricity, of meat, and of every other thing.
You'll say - well, you don't have to eat meat. Maybe that's true - but I like meat. The animal could have lived well and died humanely; more humanely than in nature. If you would demand I know the provenance of everything I eat, ultimately you place an unsustainable cognitive burden upon me - that's simply not my responsibility. Or demand that I forego that which I cannot guarantee is consistent with the highest ethical standards.
And because I can't guarantee any such about anything, the logical conclusion of your argument is sitting around in hemp kaftans, singing cum-by-yar, while waiting on a pot of lentils to cook by the heat of a beeswax candle - and that's just not a way of life that appeals to me in the least.
Ok, so the problem with your point, philosophy in general, and my posts too, is that you're attempting to apply logic to a human experience. This process is more an expression of what we wish were true than what is actually true, thus the process itself is fairly labeled rather illogical.
Generally speaking, humans kill, eat and otherwise abuse animals because we want to, and because we can. Logic has little to do with it, other than helping us design the most efficient methods of killing. As we can see in the thread above, if we apply logic at all it is typically only to rationalize what we wish to do for reasons that have nothing to do with logic. Logic is, if you will, merely a cover story. The real story is power.
As example, all of us have probably met people with very limited ability with logic. Such folks typically careen through their life from one calamity to another. If you try to assist by applying logic, it's a waste of time, not because they don't agree with your reasoning but because they aren't on the logic channel. It's as if you are talking to them in Chinese, it doesn't matter what you say, because there is no common ground which effective communication might be built upon.
That's the underlying fundamental problem the documentary and this thread in general faces. The arguments presented might be brilliant, but that's typically not going to matter.
What might matter is if a person witnesses their friend die a gruesome death from colon cancer because their friend has decades of rotting animal flesh stuck in their bowels. That is, if the power equation changes and it is seen that animals can exact their revenge, that is a logic that may be be listened to. Or, maybe not, because what I've just typed is already widely known and the information has quite limited effect.
I think it is never too late for change, but I can understand why you wouldn't care to put in the effort at this time in your life. I think the animals would appreciate it though, as they are suffering needlessly.
Quoting Bitter Crank
At least you have acknowledged your hypocrisy and internal inconsistency, as that is most than others I have talked to. The next step is to act upon that inconsistency and change to align your thoughts with your actions. Ethics requires consistency in the sense that our moral standards, actions, and values should not be contradictory. Examining our lives to uncover inconsistencies and then modifying our moral standards and behaviors so that they are consistent is an important part of moral development.
Quoting Bitter Crank
You'd have to explain how it is ethical within certain limits? Also, I have noticed you quoted the Bible. Are you religious? If so, what sect? Christian?
So you would rather stay willfully ignorant, than to understand the truth and change accordingly? You are responsible for what happens to these animals, as you are the customer who demands the product they produce while being tortured and slaughtered. If we did not demand these products, the products would not exist. They only exist because we demand them, hence we are responsible for their existence.
- I kill peter myself.
- I hire a hitman to kill peter.
Are you trying to tell me that I am not responsible for the death of peter in the 2nd situation? I think it would be dishonest to say so, and you logically know it. There is plenty of information out there which exposes the practices of these factory farms, such as the documentary I linked in my original post (Dominion). It's up to you to make that decision and take responsibility for your choices.
Quoting karl stone
To claim it is an unsustainable cognitive burden, is to completely lack any ability to take responsibility for your actions and improve as a thinking moral being. In the case of animals, it is very simple. They die unnecessarily for our pleasure and convenience. You can stop contributing to their death by not buying the products they produce for us. If you have time to watching Netflix, Sports, Browse Facebook, etc... You have time to think for an hour per day, researching what happens in the world we live in. This is how we become more aware and obtain knowledge of what goes on in our world. If you don't care to grow as a person, then that's your prerogative.
Quoting karl stone
That's quite a ridiculous statement, which you have deployed to make you sound more reasonable than you actually are. The logical conclusion of my argument is to be socially aware and informed of what goes in our world. That factory farming isn't just unethical, but also detrimental to your own health and the environment. It doesn't take days of research to understand that concept and become informed. There is plenty of scientific data out there for you to read, but you have to be willing to learn and change.
And according to you, the way of life that appeals to you is to be willfully ignorant of what goes on, so you can enjoy your dinner without having to think about where it comes from. Would you also support the same situation if it were happening to humans? I wouldn't be surprised if you would, as it sounds like you don't care to learn, taking responsibility for your actions and/or change.
It seems to me that you can justify the "exploitation" of animals on utilitarian grounds. While the way animals are treated as commodities does produce suffering, that suffering is outweighed by the benefits their exploitation produces. Factory farms, for example, produce nutrition that is available at relatively cheap prices. That means that more people will have access to affordable food in such a way as to either (1) permit their survival where they would otherwise face starvation or (2) once survival is provided for, allow them to allocate resources they would otherwise spend acquiring that nutrition to areas that increase their overall quality of life.
I realize that you assert in the OP that using animal products is unnecessary. I can't argue for or against that claim since it requires significant empirical economic research. I suspect it is ultimately not capable of clear evidentiary proof either way. In any event, you provide no good grounds or summary from the documentary link for believing it's true. My guess is that it could be true for developed countries, but may hold significantly less the less developed a community is.
That said, even assuming it is true that using animal products is unnecessary, a utilitarian justification can still be worked out on the basis of (2) above. In fact, you seem to admit that animal exploitation does produce "pleasure and convenience". Without discounting the former but focusing on the latter, this means that factory farming creates economic possibilities for pursuing other life-enhancing activities that people would not otherwise be able to pursue if they had to direct their resources (personal or societal) to compensating for the lack of factory farms.
Your initial claim was that, unqualifiedly, it Quoting chatterbears Since a utilitarian could accomodate the commercial use of animals as being acceptable within their system of ethics, the claim can not be absolutely true since, for them, commercial use of animals is not only ethical, but required given the utilitiy-loss that would result from not using them commercially.
You're not a farmer, so you know this how?
You apply logic to actions taken by humans, in which you can improve the understanding of those actions and make better decisions in the future. If you cannot apply logic/knowledge to an action, then you will probably justify any action you want to. As I told someone else, ethics requires consistency (logic) in the sense that our moral standards, actions, and values should not be contradictory. Examining our lives to uncover inconsistencies and then modifying our moral standards and behaviors so that they are consistent is an important part of moral development.
Quoting Jake
Using logic to criticize our actions, is how we take responsibility and change those actions for the better. Yes, we use our power to rule over animals and the rest of the world, but does might make right? Just because you have the power to do something, doesn't mean you should, correct?
Quoting Jake
Despite people not being friendly to logic, they also may be unaware of what actually goes on. I have talked to somebody last week at work, who told me they did not actually know that chickens were killed after they were spent in egg-laying. Some people are just actually ignorant of what goes on in these farming industries. Which is part of why I start these threads, to spread awareness, which is separate from the logic arguments.
Quoting Jake
Yes, most people are selfish and only care what happens to them, or what they are affected by. We claim to be the more intelligent species, yet we use that intelligence by abusing our power and act as the most selfish species on the planet. We are the most destructive and most self-centered species this world has ever seen.
In any event, I'm a moral relativist/subjectivist/noncognitivist who believes that no moral utterance can be true or false, objectively correct or incorrect. Morality boils down to individuals feeling however they feel about interpersonal behavior.
By "ethical within certain limits" I mean that it is ethically acceptable to eat meat from animals that have not been raised with industrially intensive, harsh conditions. Agriculture was changed extensively after World War II. The use of pesticides and herbicides was hugely increased; the methods of raising poultry, hogs, and beef were intensified. These changes have continued to intensify over time.
Why did this happen? It happened because advancing technology brought new chemicals (herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones) to market for use in agriculture. Maximizing yield on investments was the driving force.
Raising animals became mechanized and dehumanized.
People who raise(d) animals on small family farms are/were involved daily, and personally, in the care and feeding of their flocks and herds. There is a huge difference in quantity and quality. Raising 150 chickens, 50 cows, a 100 pigs is entirely different than raising 15,000 chickens, 5000 cows, and 7500 pigs on one farm. A farmer who milks 30 cows knows each one by name, by personality, and history. Milking operations that involve 10,000 cows are 7/24 operations where the cows are (literally) numbered.
Milk cows are treated relatively well, even in huge dairy operations. Beef cattle, not so much. Beef are concentrated in feed lots where they are fed a rich diet of grains and grow fast. These operations are where antibiotics come in for heavy use to control infections and speed up growth. These are the operations where antibiotic-resistant bacteria are likely to be developed. The lives of these cows is pretty much like the lives of chickens or hogs which are packed into cages inside buildings.
There are humane farm operators that sell meat which one can find in specialized stores (like food co-ops and high-end grocery stores).
It is "ethical within limits" if one restricts one's meat eating to humanely raised meat, eggs, and dairy. This is dicey, because marketing regularly misrepresents products in various ways. But grass fed beef, for instance, isn't raised in feed lots. It tends to be more expensive and its taste is distinct from feed lot beef. Free range eggs, if the chickens really are free range, will be substantially more expensive than organic, cage free eggs.
Doesn't everybody know that?
Three sisters married farmers all living nearby, who were dairy, hog, and beef farmers. I spent quite a bit of time at their small farms when I was growing up in the '50s and '60s. The main industry in the area was, still is, farming. Because SE Minnesota is hilly, farms are small, owned by descendants of mostly German and Scandinavian immigrants from the late 19th century.
Unnecessary=Not needed
Need=something essential to survival.
It is a scientific fact that we do not need to consume animals to survive. In fact, the opposite is true. It is more beneficial for our health, and the environment, if we consume plant-based products instead. Here are a few links for you to reference (but you can research this yourself as well).
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1REgp2VreWfgHhatxycdk0GN6P9HyXID6UTzuNb4f7sY/edit?usp=sharing
- https://www.facebook.com/notes/grumpy-old-vegans/humans-have-no-need-to-consume-animal-products-to-be-healthy/544935285618383/
Also, the less developed a country is, the more expensive animal products are. If you think about the cheapest foods in the world, they are not animal based. Rice, grains, beans, etc...
Quoting Mentalusion
Rape can produce a pleasure and convenience for a person who wants to have sex. But does that mean the "utility" of pleasure in the case of rape, means we should continue to condone/permit rape? No, because the victim involved within a rape does not become so insignificant to the point of utility becoming superior. Pleasure and convenience are never a good reason to based moral actions on. You could say the same thing for slave owners, as it brought them convenience to own slaves. And some slave owners would rape the slaves, which brought them pleasure. So does that mean, owning slaves has a utilitarian justification which should be considered as valid? No.
Quoting Mentalusion
Are you taking the utilitarian approach? If not, how do you actually define morality. And how do you define how we should determine a bad action from a good action?
No one has had rotting animal flesh stuck in their bowels and lived very long to tell about it. The whole point of digestion is for enzymes and bacteria to break down food into its constituent chemicals and absorb them. One of the functions of gut bacteria is to prevent "rotting".
What is more likely to cause bowel cancer are smoking and chewing tobacco, eating a lot of smoked and charred meat (or charred turnips, for that matter), and feeding on excessive amounts of sugar and fat. In other words, bad habits and bad diets cause colon cancer.
Bacteria and mosquitoes do not have the same cognitive ability to reason and evaluate actions as we do. We are the more intelligent species, in which we can self-reflect and improve our actions, based on ethical consistency and logic. To say, "Action X is ok because mosquitoes also deploy action X", is a bit demeaning and devaluing the potential of our species. Some Lions kill cubs at birth, which is infanticide. Would it then be ok for me to commit infanticide because Lions do it? To say so, would be a bit outlandish. We should never base our moral actions on the basis of another species. We are our own species, in which we should take responsibility for the actions we commit.
Quoting Terrapin Station
So if I feel it is morally permissible to kill old people, would it then be considered morally correct, just based that is how I feel? If you based morality on how people feel, rather than logic and/or ethical consistency, you would have a world of chaos (worse than it already is). At least we have some laws put in place, some of which are unnecessary and harmful, but most are supposed to be for the protection of the society built within it.
How do you decide whether or not an action it morally good vs. morally bad? Or do you not have a method at all, and just abide by however you feel at the time?
In the long run (like within the next hundred years of global warming) we will all be eating a vegetarian diet if we are eating at all, because climate change will steadily render more and more current agriculture untenable. Humans and most animals do not do well in excessive heat and high humidity.
Not sure if you are aware, but factory farming is one of the leading causes of environmental damage. I'll assume you accept the science behind global warming being human caused/enhanced, correct? 51 percent or more of global greenhouse-gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture, which is more than transportation.
I mean, an oil rig or a gold mine cause more environmental damage pound for pound, there's just so many farms (and many of them cutting corners).
Quoting chatterbears
Where did you hear that?
According to my sources, that's bologna.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
I perhaps didn't emphasize enough the division of labour I alluded to in my previous post. I am not a farmer. I don't know anything about farming. Other people do know about farming. They are specialists in the practice of keeping, raising and killing animals for food. Then there's government that regulates business. So what I'm saying is, that I would rather pay my taxes, have government decide scientifically on standards of animal husbandry - and apply laws on that basis that place the burden of responsibility on the producer - where it belongs.
Quoting chatterbears
Are you saying that animals can be murdered? There's a case going through the British courts at present, in which for reasons too lengthy to relate - an employment tribunal judge is deciding whether "ethical veganism" is a philosophy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-46421221/sacked-man-claims-discrimination-against-his-ethical-veganism
I say it's not, because it lacks the cogency required of a philosophy. It's an opinion, because - above you say: Quoting chatterbears
But it's not an equality that applies both ways. I know just from the fact you are using a computer you didn't build you are happy to exploit human labour, but if it were an animal performing labour, you'd have an ethical objection - and premise that on equality and compassion, that leads to you to equate the killing of animals with the killing of people. Killing people is murder, and any part in a murder has an equivalent moral consequence. That's not so if it's not murder.
The concept you might have employed to better effect is consumer sovereignty - which you describe perfectly well here:
Quoting chatterbears
Certainly, to some degree - my demand induces supply. However, the assumption that it's wrong is not safe. Because it's the very question we are examining, it cannot be a premise. i.e. you cannot say eating meat is wrong because eating meat is wrong. It's a tautology. You cannot cogently argue that eating meat is wrong on grounds of equality, unless you would also forgo all interdependence on human labour. Do you imagine farmers want to plow, and plant and harvest crops? It's hard work - I imagine. So you would torture a farmer, but not a cow? The equality argument doesn't hold either.
In that context, if you would argue consumer sovereignty - you merely confirm that eating meat is a choice, and it's a choice the consumer - as sovereign, is perfectly entitled to make.
Quoting chatterbears
I disagree, because of the division of labour. This is inherent to the human condition. We cannot know everything - but we can be very good at a few things. We are interdependent specialists, and by these means I discharge my moral duty, if any. It's not realistic to place upon me the burden of knowing about farming because I'm not a farmer, and nor am I a farm inspector working for the government. I employ them, at some remove - in the expectation that the manner of production and slaughter is as humane as possible, or - to decide on my behalf, if such products should be available at all. There are products that are not available - despite a demand for them. So to say my demand is responsible for their production is false.
You say:
Quoting chatterbears
In that case, it behooves you to acknowledge the reality of evolution. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Animals appear designed in relation to their environment, because each surviving species is a marble cut from a mountain, where those not best suited to survive are simply discarded. Suffering and death is the fate of animals in nature - and the toll is sky high. That's the reality - and for you imagine that equality and compassion should prevail is a comforting pretense. That's your opinion and prerogative - but it has little to do with the world we live in.
I think you're confusing hedonism with utilitarianism. Hedonism is the belief that I am morally justified pursuing any activity that gives me pleasure. Utilitarianism is concerned about actions and institutions that create the greatest possible utility for the greatest number. Therefore, what you're describing in the quote above is not a utilitarian justification for rape. At best the rape case is a utilitarian wash because while the rapist gets pleasure, the rape victim does not, so there would presumably be no net gain in utility. Consequently, you're counterexample fails and I am left still thinking utilitarianism might provide a basis for believing animal consumption is ethical.
Quoting chatterbears
W/re to slavery, there are two ways to respond to this from a utilitarian perspective:
(1) [this is the "bite the bullet" response] assuming we are not necessarily talking about the politically charge experience of race-based slavery in the U.S. and Modern Europe, I would think a utilitarian could, in theory, argue that slavery was beneficial both for slaves as well as for slave owners. In other words, someone opposed to this idea would have to plausibly defend the idea that there are absolutely NO conditions that are humanly possible where it might not be the case that a society that practices slavery is not on the whole better off than if it didn't have slavery. Think of ancient cultures where slavery (usually war captives and their progeny) were closely incorporated into the soceities they were forced to be a part of, and often given positions of authority higher even than non-slave citizens. It seems to me plausible to think that there were some such societies where the slaves on average were better off than they had been in whatever communities they were taken from, such that on average the institution of slavery in that case actually did promote utility in the context of historical cultures as they existed at that time, especially with all of their myriad other dysfunctionalities and shortcomings stemming from their lack of technological advancement.
However, (2) I think the politically safer argument most utilitarians make - and this is similar to the response to the rape scenario above - is that because slavery generates as much suffering as it does utility, it is not justifiable from a utilitarian perspective.
Note, however, that the reason why that's the case is only because there is a one-to-one exchange of human suffering and pleasure in the case of rape and (according to argument 2) slavery. I do not think you can assume that that is necessarily the case in the context of factory farms or the institutions of animal exploitation generally. That is, it seems reasonable for the utilitarian to claim that the value of animal pain/pleasure - while it counts for something - does not count for as much as human pain/pleasure. This is a reasonable assumption because animals, since they are less rational (or in many cases, non-rational) are never going to be as efficient at converting their pleasure (or, in this case, lack of pain) into utility for other utility-agents in the same way humans can.
Quoting chatterbears
I was merely pointing out that animal consumption does seem to be justifiable from a utilitarian perspective. Your claim as I understood it was that it is unqualifiedly unethical. My response essentially was, "well, not necessarily if you're a utilitarian."
OF COURSE I accept the science of global warming. I am AWARE of the facts about coal, petroleum, and methane, and the various ways it ramifies through heating, cooling, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, et al.
Your OP was about the ethics of eating meat, not the ethics of living in a technological culture whose global economy is driven by consumption, profit-making, and waste--one piece of which is the slice of roast beef on the plate.
Industrial farming, even of grains, legumes, and seeds produces a lot of CO2, because it takes a lot of energy to produce fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fuel for tractors, combines, transportation, and so forth. The energy inputs in some areas exceed the energy harvested.
The bigger picture: rapidly accumulating CO2, global warming, desertification, excessive unseasonable precipitation, rising temperature and humidity levels, melting ice, rising sea levels, and so on and so forth will settle or moot the ethics debate about eating meat. There won't be much meat for anybody to eat. Many people will be lucky to find enough vegetarian food. We're headed into a global catastrophe. The time when we could have averted the worst of it is past. The resolve to radically alter our life ways is lacking. Thus, we are probably totally screwed.
If I just wrote, and you just quoted "no moral utterance can be true or false, objectively correct or incorrect," do you think that I'm going to say "It is morally permissible to kill old people" is correct (or incorrect for that matter)? It's as if you quoted me without really paying any attention to what I'd said.
I agree with this theory. But it's just a theory about what should be, not an accurate reflection of the real world. In the real world, masses of people are going to continue to abuse animals and support factory farming with their dollars until something or somebody forces them not to.
Again, I'm not challenging your posts or this thread so much as I am the effectiveness of philosophy in general, including my own posts. People like us want the world to be about logic because we were born inclined towards logic calculations, thus a logic based world would be a comfortable place for us to reside. Regrettably, there is a great deal of wishful thinking involved here, our own form of illogical thinking.
We are totally screwed if our future depends upon us being logic based creatures, agreed. However, there is another force at work which will come to our aid. Pain. That's the primary factor in human learning.
The example that always comes to mind here is the European experience of war. Europe is home to some of the greatest philosophers in history. European culture has an involvement with reason and philosophy that goes back thousands of years. None of the reason and philosophy was sufficient to persuade Europeans to stop constantly warring upon each other. What worked was WWII, bombing everything from London to Moscow in to rubble. What worked was pain.
The resolve to radically alter our way of life may radically evolve once the level of pain becomes sufficient.
I've been attempting to address in other threads, largely without success. The core problem is that knowledge and wisdom develop at different rates, with knowledge growing exponentially while wisdom grows incrementally at best. Thus, the gap between the two is widening at an ever accelerating rate.
- https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
Global Emissions by Gas - Agricultural activities are part of all forms (aside from F-gases). They are included within Methane, Carbon Dioxide and Nitrous Oxide.
- http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294
This PDF goes more in depth: http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf
- http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM
An assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations indicated the contribution of the livestock sector to global greenhouse gas emissions exceeds that of transportation.
- https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/08/opinions/go-vegan-save-the-planet-wang/index.html
Sources cited throughout this article.
So until the government put animal cruelty laws in place, you didn't know how to not be cruel to animals? You seem to be saying, you will go along with whatever the laws/government say and not think for yourself, correct? Because I don't need the government to tell me not to kick my dog, as I know that causes unnecessary harm. Same with eating animals.
Quoting karl stone
Animals can be killed. And whether or not I kill an animal myself, or I pay somebody else to do it, I am still responsible. Whether that is by 1st hand or 2nd hand, doesn't matter. This originally started with you saying you are not responsible for how the animals are treated or killed, yet you pay for them to be mistreated and killed. Same with a hitman. If I pay a hitman to kill somebody, I am responsible for that person's death. Instead of acknowledging this point, you focus on the term "murder", which isn't relevant here. What is relevant is whether or not you are responsible for doing a crime yourself, or paying someone else to do the crime for you.
Quoting karl stone
Three points here.
1. You'd have to provide evidence that the parts I bought to build my pc, were made by humans who were exploited. You would then have to provide me with an alternative that is cruelty-free (made by humans were NOT exploited). After you have done that, I would happily buy those parts instead, which makes me ethically consistent. If I refused to buy different parts, even after you have shown me evidence of human exploitation, then you could say I am committing an immoral action. And that is the position you are in. I have shown you an alternative (plant-based diet), that would eliminate the exploitation of animals (animal products you eat). But instead of accepting that alternative and changing your actions accordingly, you will continue to support animal exploitation, correct?
2. Murder is a useless term in this context, as we are talking about unjust and unnecessary killing. Whether you want to call that murder, slaughter, or just killing, it doesn't matter. People can be killed unjustly. Animals can be killed unjustly. The term "murder" is irrelevant to the actual reality of sentient beings dying unnecessarily.
3. Lastly, a one time purchase of computer parts (every 5-7 years) causes far less suffering than eating 3 meals per day (which all include animal products). This leads to billions of animals being slaughtered every year. How many humans were slaughtered for my computer parts? Not to mention, for how many people I have talked to using my computer, in which they have change their mind on many different topics, has a positive net benefit overall. I am not saying this justifies human exploitation, but there is no net positive benefit to consuming animal products, unlike buying a computer. I can criticize racists and display animal rights activism through my computer, but what can eating a hamburger do for you?
Quoting karl stone
I never said eating meat is wrong because eating meat is wrong. I specifically have said it is wrong because it causes unnecessary suffering to sentient beings. The premise for my moral foundation are the rights of a sentient being, and their ability to suffer. Veganism is an extension of human rights to animals, in which we cannot avoid without committing an internal inconsistency.
A farmer has the free-will and right to leave his job to find another. He also can hire help so he doesn't have to work long days and the farmer can rest when he wants to. You are starting to become dishonest when you equate the "torture" of farm labor to the torture of animal farming, where they mutilate the genitals of animals without pain meds, as well as make them live in their own waste.
Quoting karl stone
It's a bit troubling how far you will go to rationalize your food consumption. Eating is not something you do once in a while that may or may not be linked to exploitation of sentient beings. Eating is something you do 3 times a day, which has massive impact on the world around you. And not just in regards to the immoral aspect of it, but what about the environmental damage it causes?
If it was a known fact that Samsung uses child labor to make the Galaxy Note 9, and I went out and bought the Galaxy Note 9, am I not contributing to the child labor in which Samsung has initiated? Or should I be like you and say, "I don't work in the tech industry, nor am I a phone inspector working for the government." - This is an extremely harmful way of thinking. You don't need to be an expert in the field to be knowledgeable about the business practices of an industry. And when you find out how corrupt an industry is, you stop supporting it, especially when there are plenty of other alternatives.
Quoting karl stone
Ok, so should I apply your thought process to people too? Should we go back to owning slaves, since equality is not what nature has in store for animals? Since, it is a fact we are animals as well. We are a slightly higher intelligent animal, but still an animal. And by your logic, we should not abide by the values of empathy, compassion or equality, correct? And if you think those values should only apply to humans, but not animals, what is your justification for doing so?
This is why this approach fails. If you take a society where 60% of the people were slave owners, and 40% were slaves, this is useful and beneficial for the majority. It doesn't matter whether or not the 40% suffer. Because by your logic, could you not deploy the same argument for animals? Animal agriculture actually creates MORE suffering than it does utility, so why would it be justifiable from a utilitarian perspective? If 2 people rape 1, is that not beneficial to the majority? Expand those numbers out by a lot and flip them... 7 billion people, 50 billion animals killed per year. How is that suffering justifiable under utilitarianism?
Edit: Also forgot to mention. Not only is it bad for the animals themselves (since they suffer), but it is also bad for our health and the environment we live in. So if you want to talk about suffering and detrimental aspects of animal agriculture, utilitarianism is not compatible with opposing Veganism in the slightest. If anything, true utilitarianism should lead you to Veganism.
Yes, but we don't need to speed up our demise, and we may even possibly able to reverse it.
Although some plant-based products cause some environmental damage, it is not even near the destruction that animal products produce. Check this out:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13959.epdf?referrer_access_token=SoILYIvjAMcpgoUNBzFHZdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PGdh-SWpKH6GvtYOFzpWBvyEWbegyOl-mnrBQoNaPnCJYCT5b90ObV4XC4vAnj3P0Qpkv0oV4o7SZNp1SlUbR49KHn3yKc9LUpaT2eG0Y5FUtSdeYIH_he26Psehdnmk0MEv_lPsZpM71HHPqEGsJIR_G3PNhpmUzIK_WsI1d8Mwh9hGwKc_xNN16IZhc5WY7hhtFuZpWw0XZdMS4RM3_N&tracking_referrer=www.cnn.com
Likewise. Did you not read the rest of what I said? I followed that up by asking you how you differentiate a good action from a bad action. And I am referring to your subjective view on morality, not some objective truth or fact about what is right or wrong. How do you decide whether or not an action it morally good vs. morally bad? Or do you not have a method at all, and just abide by however you feel at the time?
It's not a theory, as it is a way of life you can actually deploy in reality. It is the way I live, and the way I think. I try my best to obtain the most accurate information about the world around me, and make informed decision based on facts, rather than my own personal agenda or feelings. While acquiring facts about the world, I also evaluate my actions in accordance to those facts and how they affect things around me. It's really not that difficult of a thing to do, but most people would rather watch Netflix.
Quoting Jake
It's not illogical, as it is wanting a better world. You could have said it was illogical for women to stand up for their rights and pass the law so they could vote, but they stuck together and were granted that right. Same with black people in civil rights. Same with homosexuals in same sex marriage. Same with plenty of other unnecessary discriminating acts around the globe. It's not a theory or wishful thinking to strive for better and change people's minds by using facts and reason.
I'm really not arguing entirely with your point, I'm just saying, changing people's minds using facts and reason depends on them being on the "facts and reason" channel, and most of us aren't most of the time.
As example, you won't change anybody's mind here in this thread. Instead, you will provide all of us with fodder for the debate and debunk experience, which we seek for emotional reasons. Thus, unless your goal is simply to entertain us, the process we're both engaged in is not really that facts and reasoned based. If your goal is to somehow advance the cause of animal rights, you are engaged in delusion mostly, not facts and reason.
I'm not suggesting you should shut up, and I readily agree I'm doing the very same thing you are. But, you ask for facts and reason, and so that's what I'm trying to provide.
I don't keep animals. I don't keep farm animals, and I don't keep animals as pets. The question of animal cruelty isn't an issue for me. The question of how to properly cook and garnish a steak however - is a question close to my heart. Even so, generally, I obey the law. If meat were illegal - I wouldn't eat it. It would be so expensive, I couldn't afford it, and be of such questionable quality - I wouldn't want it. But make no mistake - it would still be available, and produced without any regulation on animal cruelty. You might argue current regulations are insufficient, and that's an argument to take up with government. If you did, I might support you - but guilting the consumer is fundamentally the wrong approach.
Quoting chatterbears
I see that you are responding paragraph by paragraph - rather than reading the whole post before responding. I built a case, and addressed this matter again later. I understood your argument the first time. The only point I wanted to make was that there's no moral equivalence between killing people and killing animals.
Quoting chatterbears
So are you saying that not eating meat is an alternative to eating meat? I completely disagree. And so it seems, do most vegetarians. You don't eat vegetables - so much as vegetables disguised as meat. Producers mimic meat stews, sausages, cutlets - they give them a pseudo-meat flavour, and try to create the same mouth feel. Furthermore, those products are made by human labour. Have you ever stood in one place, in the cold, packing crap in a box for nine hours straight? So you would torture humans to produce fake meat, and then break your arm patting yourself on the back - because you haven't been cruel to animals. So it can't be about "equality and compassion" - for while you maintain "animals are people too" - you don't act like "people are animals too."
Quoting chatterbears
Again, not so. Murder is not killing. Putting a person to death for a crime is not murder. Assisted dying is not murder. Killing in self defense, or the defense of others, is not murder. In none of these cases would you hire a hitman. I don't know who peter is - but he was murdered, if not by you then by your hitman. You clearly meant to equate killing animals with the murder of a human being. But as we've shown above, your equality is hypocritical. The fact is animals eat eachother - so, to be consistently equal - if "humans are animals too" - you would need to condemn all animals that kill and eat other animals. Do you feed your dog meat?
Quoting chatterbears
So some animal exploitation is okay. If I only eat meat occasionally - is it less morally wrong? Does that apply to other things? If a promise not to hire a hitman to kill anyone else, can I have peter killed? It was one in seven billion people, and just the one time - and he was really asking for it, like cows do by being so darn tasty! No! If it's murder, it's always murder.
Quoting chatterbears
I'm having a discussion with someone who believes eating meat is wrong. This has absolutely nothing to do with me justifying eating meat. It requires no justification. It's legal, it's available, and I like it. That's my justification, and I find it perfectly sufficient. If I go deeper it's for the purposes of debate. My reason for engaging in this debate is because I find your approach fundamentally misconceived and potentially fatal. Placing the burden of responsibility with the consumer - gives producers a free hand to produce in the cheapest, dirtiest was possible - and market their goods to people who just don't care.
I argue that the responsibility lies with government and producers - to produce in a scientifically justified, and sustainable manner. If that meant meat were illegal - then so be it.
Quoting chatterbears
But that's not what I'm saying. I'm not excluding people from making ethical choices. I'm saying that consumer sovereignty is a flawed approach. (p.s. unless you know for a fact that Samsung does use child labour - don't make things like this up. This is slander, or libel - and I wish to disassociate myself from your remarks.) That said, it again comes back to adequate regulation - because a) I can't know everything about how anything is produced, and b) I may not care. Government on the other hand, is meant to know and is meant to care. That's their job. It's not my job - and if you leave it to me, it won't get done!
Quoting chatterbears
You do not seem to comprehend my thought processes. This is an implication from your argument. I make a distinction between human beings and animals, because human beings have a qualitatively distinct awareness of themselves in the world. In the anthropological literature, there was an event called the 'creative explosion' - that marks a sudden change in behviour, we know about because before - stone hand tools of a similar design going back about 1.5 million years, and afterward, improved tools, jewelry, cave art and burial of the dead.
To produce these things requires the psychological ability to construct forward facing strategies - to have an idea in mind, and to envisage the steps necessary to make that idea manifest. In short, the human being has a future and a past, a consciousness of itself and the world, and the ability to think creatively. It's that - that's deserving of moral consideration. But if we crashed on a mountain, and you were killed - I would have no compunction whatsoever about eating your flesh. Unless there was cow available, or even nut cutlets! I'm not keen on eating human flesh - but to survive, I would, and it wouldn't be small frozen chunks either. I'd fry you up with some onions!
I understand that, and I am not necessarily trying to change the minds of people I am directly debating. A vast majority of the time, the people I talk to directly are not on the fence. But the people who are watching and/or reading the discussion, are more likely to change or think twice about their actions. I do it for the readers/viewers, not necessarily for the direct opposition.
The point is dead if you're not willing to understand it. If you cannot get past the idea that you, as the consumer, are partly responsible for how a good/product is produced, then I don't know what else to tell you.
Quoting karl stone
And you still haven't explained why. Why is it ok to kill a dog or pig for unnecessary reasons, but not ok to kill a human for unnecessary reasons?
Quoting karl stone
Plant-based products are a cruelty-free alternative to eating meat. You don't have to eat plant-based products that mimic meat. You can eat rice, grains, pasta, beans, nuts, vegetables, fruits, tofu, fortified soy milk, rice milk, etc... You can get all your daily nutrients without eating meat. There's alternatives, so why aren't you going to use them?
Quoting karl stone
Again, provide evidence that humans are being slaves in the same ways animals are. You make up hypothetical scenarios without any data to back it up, while I actually have data to show you what goes on in these farms. Also, even if it were the case that all plant-based products were produced by human labor, you eat those as well, do you not? So you support two types of exploitation (human and animal), while I only support one type (human). But I find it interesting that you won't answer questions, but instead just keep shifting the focus away from yourself and pointing the finger at me without any proper data.
Quoting karl stone
And you still haven't explained why murdering a human is wrong, but murdering an animal is not? Also, animals eat each other out of necessity for survival. We eat animals out of pleasure and convenience, not for survival. If you were in a survival situation, such as wild animals are, I would then be happy to deploy my consistency and not condemn you for eating an animal for survival. But you are not in that situation, so why are you trying to compare two things that are not equal? Also, no. I do not feed my dog meat. We order eggs from an ethical farm (which does not kill or strain the animals), in which I cook those eggs with lentils, carrots, peas, etc...
Quoting karl stone
Based on that criteria, it must have been ok for slave owners to own slaves a few hundred years ago, right? It was legal, available, and the slave owners liked it. Must have been a valid justification, right?
Quoting karl stone
Again, not going to go over this with you again. If you don't understand simple supply and demand, I don't know what to tell you.
Person A supports company X.
Company X exploits children.
Person A continues to support company X.
Company Y does not exploit children.
Person A continues to support company X, instead of supporting company Y.
Company X continues to exploit children, since consumers such as person A continue to support them.
Quoting karl stone
Are you saying that if it was a widely known fact, that Samsung was exploiting children, you would stop buying from them? If so, why do continue to buy animal products, when it is a widely known fact that animals are being exploited? And if you are going to appeal to species, then what's your justification. Why is it ok to exploit an animal, but not exploit a human?
Quoting karl stone
It's well known how animals are treated. And if you don't know, it takes a 1 minute google search to find out. If I knew for a fact that Samsung was initiating into child labor, I would stop buying their phones. Similarly, I know for a fact that animals are being exploited, so I stopped buying animal products. This is called ethical consistency, which you don't seem to care about.
Quoting karl stone
So because a dog does not have consciousness of itself and the world, as well as not being able to think creatively, we are then justified in exploiting that dog for our pleasure and convenience, correct? I can torture and kill that dog and use its skin for my boots and/or clothing, since his consciousness isn't as high as mine, right?
For you to stay consistent, would you then be ok with us exploiting a human who has the same consciousness as a dog or cow? Such as a mentally deranged or handicapped person, who has a lower level of consciousness compared to normal human beings. Since they do not have the same awareness of themselves and of the world, as well as not being able to think creatively, are we then justified in exploiting mentally retarded people? Let's see if you're willing to bite the bullet here.
I do understand. I do not agree. What I would tell you is that there are many ways of conceptualizing the world. In your conception the consumer is responsible. In mine, consumer sovereignty is an unsustainable cognitive burden, and responsibility lies with the producer. The question is - which is more useful.
Quoting chatterbears
I see the trap here. Pigs are at least as intelligent as dogs, so I'm led to believe. I don't know if it's true - because my experience with either animal is extremely limited. I've never eaten dog meat - while I eat bacon regularly. Would I eat dog? Under the right circumstances - north pole expedition, holiday in Korea. But otherwise, no!
Quoting chatterbears
If you're attempting to establish hypocrisy in my position, it shouldn't be difficult. But then I'm not the one making claim to moral superiority. It's you that needs a consistent position. Ultimately I can simply say - I love a bacon sandwich, and I don't care. But I'm attempting to meet you on the ground laid out by your proposition - to test the idea that our dominion over animals is unethical.
Let me ask you a question. If scientists developed a pill you could take, and you'd have all the nutrition you need without having to eat at all - would you think that a good thing, and take it? I wouldn't. I love to cook, and I love to eat. I have a theory that vegetarians can't cook. They don't really like to eat. It is in their view, a chore. Where in my view, it's a pleasure - and to be utterly honest, the savagery and sacrifice adds to the experience.
Quoting chatterbears
It's a rhetorical point. I have no evidence. If the point were raised against me - I'd dismiss it on the grounds that human beings have free will. All I'm saying is that you're happy to depend on human labour, but were it an animal it would be condemned as exploitation. It's your morals that are in question, not mine. I accept that life is a web of inter-dependencies. The food chain is one of them. The plants you eat are part of that web, a web of life that involves animals eating other animals.
Quoting chatterbears
I did explain at the bottom of my previous post - the difference between animals and human beings. In a word, awareness. And above I explained that I don't accept plants are an alternative to meat. I don't eat primarily for survival. I eat to assuage hunger, and I eat for pleasure. Thankfully, survival is a very distant motive. I wonder, if offered meat - would your dog enjoy it? It doesn't have sharp teeth for cutting grass. Our teeth are those of an omnivorous creature. Dogs mostly eat meat, and historically, it's why humans and dogs became companions. If humans had only gathered, and never hunted - we'd be on the dogs menu!
Quoting chatterbears
Do you really imagine I don't understand your simplistic argument? I made it clear I understand it - when I explained the concept of consumer sovereignty. The problem is, you think you're right - and therefore, anyone who doesn't agree is stupid. Allow me to assure you from this vantage point - it's the other way around. It's you who doesn't understand - why consumer sovereignty is a fundamentally misconceived approach.
Quoting chatterbears
Again, I explained this at the bottom of my previous post.
Quoting chatterbears
You're not taking anything I say on board, are you? Nothing. I understand where you're coming from, and criticize your position, but you don't understand and criticize mine. All you're doing is banging the same drum - it's cruel, it's cruel, it's murder, it's wrong, it's cruel. That's not philosophy - is it? It's the opinion of an opinionated person.
I do care about animal cruelty, but as I explained - it's not my responsibility. The responsibility to farm and kill animals in a manner that is as humane as possible is best located with the producer - for the reasons already stated. I don't know anything about farming, and I don't want to know - just as I don't know how clothes, or electricity, or Samsung phones are made. And for you to suggest it's my responsibility to know is false. I cannot do that. I can only pay my taxes, and employ government to act on my behalf in the manner it sees fit.
Quoting chatterbears
I can't say I like the idea. And it's not necessary to torture an animal to kill it and eat it, and use its skin for clothing. As I've said, I do care about animal cruelty, but believe that responsibility lies with the producer. I don't know how many times I have to say this before you will take up the point and question it - rather than simply ignoring it, and insisting it's cruel, it's murder, it's torture blah, blah, blah.
Quoting chatterbears
Would I? Do I have to be consistent? Can I not extend sympathy to a person, who's personhood is damaged in some way? But let's examine the proposition. If it were a survival situation - say, there's limited oxygen, and besides yourself - you could only save one person. Would it be them? Are you telling me - that they would have an exactly equal chance of being saved? Or would the retarded person be the first out the airlock - if push came to shove? In extremis, given no other options, that's a bullet I'd bite - and if you're honest with yourself, so would you! But even the retard would outlive the dog!
When you purchase a manufactured object, are you concerned about the working and living conditions of the animals (people) who produced the shirt, the smart phone, the car, the strawberries, and so on?
Millions of workers are subjected to extremely harsh working conditions at poverty-guaranteeing wages. They live in developing countries where living costs are low, but they still do not make enough to rise above wretched working and living conditions. It isn't "necessary" that they labor under such conditions. It is only necessary that they receive such small remuneration for their life time of labor to maximize the profit of everyone in the supply chain who exploits the workers.
Child labor; dangerous, unsafe working conditions; ruthless exploitation; toxic chemicals; very long hours; dehumanizing treatment... Citizens of developed countries would not accept these working conditions, yet our lives are full of objects which entail horrible working conditions and ruined lives.
What have you done in your personal life to avoid using, purchasing, and benefitting from this exploitation?
In my first post in this thread, which is the post you quoted and responded to already, I wrote this:
"Morality boils down to individuals feeling however they feel about interpersonal behavior."
Everyone just abides by however they feel at the time. There's nothing else to be had. You can reason on top of that, which why I used the "boils down" metaphor, but at root, there's nothing other than individuals feeling however they feel about interpersonal behavior.
I understand what you are saying, but I am specifically asking you about your subjective moral foundation. Not about society or people in general. I am asking about how YOU (Terrapin) decide whether or not an action becomes morally good or bad. Do you have any method that you use to determine a good action from a bad action?
For example. Are you ok with your spouse cheating on you, if that is just what they feel like doing at the time?
So obviously I do what every other single person on Earth does--I "intuit" how I feel about the behavior in question. Again, I can reason on top of that, but foundationally, it's a matter of how I feel about the behavior.
Re "cheating," yes, but I'm pro polyamory, not fond of monogamy.
Yes, absolutely.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Which is why I try my best to buy from companies who do not exploit workers in that way.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I do the best I can with the best resources and research I have available. I try my best to stay away from companies that exploit workers and animals. You can research most of this stuff online, or talk to the companies directly if need be.
But again, if someone were to provide me evidence that a current product I was buying, was produced by child workers, I would stop buying from them. No questions asked. But everyone here in this thread knows how animals are tortured and killed. And even if they lived a torture free life, they are still killed unnecessarily, which is the most important part.
I am not part of this "every other single person on Earth does" that you speak of. I don't base my moral actions on intuition like you do, as that is a very dangerous way of thinking. The white man can justify slavery by intuition, or justify revoking the rights of women by intuition. You can ask the white man why women do not deserve the right to vote, and he can just respond and say, "Because I feel that men are superior to women." - Superiority is a type of "feeling" one has, and it is a very dangerous way to base your decision making on. He may call it intuition.
If a person felt like hitting you in the face, are they then justified in doing so because they felt like it? What I am trying to get at is, you should try to re-evaluate your moral foundation and base your actions on something other than intuition. Something like, considering the rights and well-being of sentient beings.
Yeah, you are. You may believe you're doing something else, you may have mistaken beliefs about what morality really is of course, but you're ultimately just intuiting and reporting feelings like everyone else.
Quoting chatterbears
And, if you think that slavery or nonequal right for women is wrong, and that's foundational for you, then you're also simply going by how you personally feel. (If it's not foundational, then whatever is foundational--maybe something like "Slavery is wrong because all people should have autonomy" or whatever your foundational view might be--is going to simply be how you personally feel. There is nothing else to be had when we're talking about this stuff.)
Quoting chatterbears
There's no objective justification. Justification is always to someone. So some people will feel that a behavior is justified, others will feel that it's not justified--and it couldn't be more obvious that this is the case if you observe the world.
If you're asking if I feel that someone else is justified in that, it would depend on the exact circumstances, but if it's just something out of the blue, then no, I wouldn't feel it's justified. But others, including the person doing the hitting, might feel differently, of course.
Quoting chatterbears
And what you need to understand is the fact that there's nothing else to be had for moral foundations. Moral stances are personal phenomena. That's where they occur. They're phenomena re how our brains work. You could search for some other source of the phenomena, but you won't find it.
Quoting chatterbears
"One should consider the rights and well-being of sentient beings" isn't anything aside from a way that some of us feel. Again,it's a way that our brains work (re the people whose brains work in that specific way, that they agree with it).
Yes, I get what you are saying in your entire reply. That at its core, morality is subjective. But I am fine with that, because internal consistency will clear up any issues real quick.
I should ask you though, do you think ethical consistency (logic) is important? As I have told others, Ethics requires consistency in the sense that our moral standards, actions, and values should not be contradictory. Examining our lives to uncover inconsistencies and then modifying our moral standards and behaviors so that they are consistent is an important part of moral development. Do you agree with this? Or do you think it is ok for people to have contradictory beliefs? And/or be hypocritical?
For example. I assume you are not Vegan. Why do you think it is ok to needlessly kill an animal for food, but not needlessly kill a human for food? And by "needlessly", I am saying it is not needed. We do not need to kill an animal to survive, be healthy and enjoy food.
Importance is subjective, too, by the way. (Not that you claimed otherwise, but just in case that's not clear.)
Re this:
Quoting chatterbears
I don't think it's okay to needlessly kill "an animal, any animal" for food. I think it's okay to needlessly kill non-human animals for food.
Re the other questions, I don't categorically have a problem with people being inconsistent in their moral stances, and I particularly don't have a problem with that re hypocrisy--the advice given by someone should be evaluated on its own merit, which won't hinge on whether the person in question is following the advice themselves. But there are situations where I might have a problem with inconsistency on certain things if it's affecting interactions with someone, and especially if we're talking about situations where control is being exercised--for example, via laws.
In general, though, I'm not fond of the "overarching principle" approaches to morality or legislation. I think those quickly turn into theory-worship, which I'm not fond of, and they can very quickly go off the rails with respect to what I feel is reasonable. I prefer a more situational, "common sense" approach, focused on not overreacting, not having a draconian framework, etc.
Plain and simple, animals would not be needlessly killed if society stopped buying animal products. If everybody stopped buying meat tomorrow, do you think farms would continue to breed animals into existence for product that isn't going to be purchased? No. It's not an opinion that I am conveying. It's a fact, that the consumer demands what product is produced. Once the consumer stops demanding that product, that product stops existing.
Quoting karl stone
And you still haven't explained WHY it is ok to kill and eat a pig, but not a dog or human? Are you going to actually answer this question?
Quoting karl stone
What a fail on many different levels. To come into a philosophy forum and claim you don't have to be consistent in your ethics, followed by justifying an action by saying "I love a bacon sandwich and I don't care." - Do you actually even care to be consistent in your ethics?
Quoting karl stone
Depends on the cost efficiency of that pill. Sometimes I don't feel like cooking, but sometimes I do. On the days I don't feel like cooking, I could pop that pill and be done with it. But at least I would have the choice. Also, people who become Vegan are more likely to cook, since animal products are prevalent throughout society. Even before I was Vegan, I didn't feel like cooking or eating all the time, and I feel the same way even after becoming Vegan.
Quoting karl stone
Most humans have the ability to work or stop working. They have the free will to choose a different trade or profession. They are not enslaved into a working environment, and unable to exercise their free-will. I condemn all forms of exploitation, and I try my best to avoid supporting it. Also, the more you refuse to take responsibility for your moral actions, the less likely it is I will be responding to you in the future. If you keep saying, "I don't need to be consistent. It's your morals that are in question, not mine." - Then there is really no point to have a discussion, since you want it to be one-sided without any criticism or responsibility on your side.
Quoting karl stone
Still doesn't explain a thing. There are human beings who have the same awareness as a cow or dog or pig. Mentally retarded people, or severely disabled people who have the same consciousness level as a pig. Does that mean it is OK to kill mentally disabled people because they have a lower awareness?
Quoting karl stone
How ironic it is to say, "that's not philosophy - is it?", coming from the person doesn't care to be consistent, and justifies their actions by saying "I don't care." - Is that your version of philosophy? Talk about an opinion...
Quoting karl stone
You say you don't like the idea of animal cruelty and unnecessary torture, but then continue to support industries that do it? Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Quoting karl stone
You can never answer any of my questions, can you. It may be pointless to continue this conversation (between us), because you don't care about actually answering questions and challenging your own moral inconsistencies. As I said before, it's laughably ironic to say to me, "That's not philosophy - is it?", but then say things like "Do I have to be consistent." - Followed by taking the question out of context by applying it to an extreme survival situation, instead of the situation I framed the question in.
Smh.
Why is it okay to needlessly kill non-human animals for food, but not humans?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Then I guess there may not be a point to discuss further if we disagree about that aspect. If you don't think logic is an essential tool we should use when trying to reason and evaluate our beliefs, this conversation won't get much further.
The article which supports your claim of 51% is extremely dubious. (read: written from a blatant and bias laden agenda)
Here's how/why:
Their first claim:
"Animal respiration should be counted as a source of yearly GhG output"
Presently, as they acknowledge, the Kyoto protocols do not classify animal respiration to be a net source of Carbon Dioxide because animal respiration is considered a part of a rapidly cycling system whose GHG outputs are roughly equal to their inputs (plant matter grows, which sequesters CO2, and is then eaten and respired by animals, but the same amount of plant food grows each year (else the animals would starve)). It doesn't make mathematical sense to count animal respiration as a net carbon source when we are specifically sequestering an equivalent amount each year in feed and hay. In essence, animal respiration is trading CO2 back and forth between its gas form and being sequestered in plant flesh (and in animal flesh as well), it doesn't create or net CO2.
Their arguments against this range from naturalistic fallacy to false equivocations. I.e "livestock respiration is no more natural than exhaust from a tailpipe", and " if it is legitimate to count car exhaust as a net GHG source, then it is equally legitimate to count animal respiration as a net source of GHGs" (pg 12)
Their closest-to-sound argument to support the addition of animal respired GHGs are that increased land use and deforestation lessen the earth's ability to photosynthesize carbon away, but the impact from those factors are already included in land use and agricultural approximations.
Regarding the articles position on land use, they make further errors:
It acknowledges that GHG impact from land use and deforestation reflects year-to-year changes, but the article claims that it should be considering the entire opportunity cost of not allowing forest regeneration to absorb CO2 (and switching to low GHG alternatives in land use) as a yearly source of net GHG's. This makes the error of stepping outside the "yearly source" parameter (because previously deforested land reflects previous years) and also incorrectly portrays allowing forests to regenerate as a permanent source of continual CO2 sequestration. Once the forests are fully regenerated, the amount of carbon they can store is capped, so it wouldn't even be a yearly contribution...
Regarding methane:
This article acknowledges that the FAO (food and agri org.) modifies methane tonnage based on the the global warming potential of methane over a 100 year time frame. It has a GWP of 25 using the 100 year time frame. By comparing this warming potential to the warming potential of CO2 (1) we can modify the tonnage to get a total theoretical amount of GHG (methane and CO2) with a warming potential of 1 (because methane is a stronger GHG, pound for pound).
The article suggests, with the intent of inflating impact by focusing on the short term, that we should be evaluating the GWP of methane using the 20 year time frame instead of the 100 year time frame.
If a 20 year time frame was used, then it would have a GWP of 72. This is an unnecessary inflation because methane is only that much more powerful when we focus narrowly on short term effects (methane has a 12 year lifetime, but CO2 can last up to 200). The 20 and 100 GWP metrics use methane as a standard, and CO2 does less warming work over a 20 year period than a 100 year period, therefore they're shrinking CO2 warming potential relative to methane by comparing it at a 20 year standard, and concealing this complexity in order to arbitrarily increase tonnage, to misleading effect.
They go on to commit more errors in their other sources section (pg 14):
They seek to update the number of livestock related GHG's by citing increases in animal products worldwide, but they do not seek to update other sources of GHG's which theoretically have grown in similar proportions.
It cites, and fails to explain, a disparity in livestock counting figures, and proceeds to accept the high estimate (they said they were going to choose conservative numbers, which was clearly either a lie or beyond their ability).
The rest (the bulk) of this magazine article consists of suggestions about how to mitigate and transition away from animal products...
I'm not an expert on the climate or climate change, but I do understand its basic principles. This article raises some points worth considering, but it blows itself far out of reason and proportion wherever it finds the chance. It uses clearly doubtful and dubious accounting tricks which would not survive competent review.
It is extremely doubtful that agriculture accounts for 51% of green-house-gasses.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
If this Article is incorrect, I am fine with acknowledging better research out there. I don't have a problem with accepting new studies and peer reviewed journals. The point still remains though, that animal agriculture causes a lot of damage to the environment, as well as our health. It may not be 51%, but it still a significant amount, even if that is 25%.
So, any moral stance whatsoever is either going to be foundational for someone (at least at that time, in that situation), or it might rationally rest on another moral stance(s) the person has. If it rests on another moral stance, then the same thing goes there--it's either foundational or it rests on another moral stance. That will continue until you get to the foundational moral stance(s) in that situation. And it usually doesn't take more than a step or two to get to foundational stances.
When we get to a foundational stance, the answer for "Why is xM rather than x~M?" is always "because that's how I intuitively feel about it"--or at least that's always what it's going to "analyze out to."
It's always possible from the start to just state a foundational moral stance. "It's morally acceptable to needlessly kill non-human animals for food (but not human animals)" is a foundational stance for me, so the reason for it is that that is how I intuitively feel about it.
This would work exactly the same way for your "It's not morally acceptable to needlessly kill any animals (or sentient animals, or however you might qualify that exactly) for food." Either that's a foundational moral stance for you, in which case the reason for it is that that is how you intuitively feel about it, or it's rationally resting on some other moral stance or two or three . . . Before too long, we'd get to a foundational moral stance in the chain, and the reason you consider whatever thar stance is to be moral rather than alternatives is that that is how you intuitively feel about it. You could, of course, always just start with a foundational moral stance instead.
Nevertheless, the reason why anyone thinks it's moral, if we're on the bottom floor, is that that's how they intuitively feel about it.
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/
As I said before, I agree that the ground floor of an ethical system is subjective, which is in reference to Metaethics. But I am asking you about your ethical system that you already have put in place, within your own mind. In your subjective ethical system, Why is it okay to needlessly kill non-human animals for food, but not humans?
And please refrain from talking about people (in a general sense). I only care about your (Terrapin) subjective view on morality. Please answer the question, based on that, without going back to Metaethics.I am trying to see if your normative ethics are logically consistent. (Although you have stated that you don't find it important to be logically consistent, correct?)
Do you believe that we can avoid stating foundational moral stances, so that we could give a sentential reason, another moral stance that something is built on, no matter how many links in the chain we've gone through?
Example:
Metaethics - I believe things are morally right, based on my personal preference.
Normative Ethics - I believe it is morally right to kill old people.
Contradiction - I believe it is morally wrong to kill old people.
You can have a contradiction within your ethical system, irrespective of how that system is grounded. Whether it is grounded upon the will of god, personal preference, societal norms, etc... Doesn't matter. The fact remains, that your system could still be internally inconsistent, AKA, logically contradictory.
A different analogy.
My favorite color is red.
My favorite color is not red.
It doesn't matter what my color preference is based on (the grounding), because there is still a clear contradiction here. Whether the color preference is based on family tradition, peer pressure, etc...is irrelevant. Because in my system, there is a logical contradiction, of my favorite color being (and not being) red.
You're not understanding what I'm asking you, and it suggests you didn't understand a lot of the earlier, longer post.
You're asking for a sentence, presumably a moral stance, that "It is okay to needlessly kill non-human animals for food, but not humans" rests on, correct?
If that's correct, I'm asking you this: do you believe that any arbitrary moral stance we could state necessarily rests on some other moral stance we could state?
Instead of answering that question, you seem to be side-tracking and now asking me questions in return?
But since you won't answer my question, I'll answer yours. No, I don't think any arbitrary moral stance you could state necessarily rests on some other moral stance you could state. Why and how is that relevant to my question? And how it is relevant to logically consistent ethics?
What I asked you is relevant to your question, because I indeed did answer your question, but you didn't seem to accept it as an answer. (I'm assuming, by the way, that you read the entirety of my posts to you. If you did not, that would explain this.)
Okay, so if it's not the case that any arbitrary moral stance necessarily rests on some other moral stance I could state, why is it unacceptable to start with a moral stance that doesn't rest on another?
So before I continue to answer your questions, please answer mine. If you think you have already answered it, and I apparently missed it, please re-state here and make it clear for me.
Why is it okay to needlessly kill non-human animals for food, but not humans?
Can you honestly be saying at this stage of debate - that if people were vegetarians, animals would not be farmed? There's a difference between simple and simplistic. Constantly seeking to bias the argument by needlessly introducing terms like needlessly - demonstrates that your argument is a prejudiced opinion. Prejudice obscures the truth.
It's nominally true:
Quoting chatterbears
But is't also a fact that animals are not needlessly killed. They're killed for food, and the vast majority of people eat meat. They are not likely to stop doing so - and you have not established, morally speaking, that they should.
Quoting chatterbears
I'm not a farmer. I don't know anything about raising pigs. I don't have a dog either. I imagine there are reasons that pigs are farmed, and dogs are not. But it's not universal, is it? In China and Korea dogs are farmed and eaten. And there were cannibals in New Guinea that ate human flesh. Interestingly, I understand - eating human brains gave them the equivalent of mad cow disease.
Quoting chatterbears
It's entirely acceptable in my culture to eat bacon sandwiches. Just as it's acceptable to eat dogs in Korea, and human flesh in New Guinea. How can I be consistent when the world is so diverse? I can offer my perspective, as you have offered yours. I do not personally relish the idea of eating dog flesh or human flesh, but I reject your claim that my position is - it's okay to eat pig, but not dog or human. It's too simplistic - if you are seeking to establish that our dominion over animals is unethical.
Quoting chatterbears
As I said, I love to cook, and I love to eat. It's one of the great pleasures in life - and I would not forgo that pleasure needlessly. There are not vegetable substitutes for meat based dishes, and just because it's possible to survive on vegetable matter alone, does not infer that vegetarianism is an equal substitute, anymore than taking a pill would be.
Quoting chatterbears
The fact that the title of this thread, which you started, is posed in the form of a question - belies your real position. You ask a question and then insist on an answer - and nothing anyone has said, despite some very good arguments from myself and others, has shifted you one inch. It's that - that makes it your views that are in question, and not mine. You came here with an agenda - while pretending you were trying to decide a question, you had already decided.
Quoting chatterbears
I'm only saying "I don't care" in the context of paying taxes to government, to employ people who know all about farming - to do that caring for me. What purpose would my ignorant hand-wringing serve?
Quoting chatterbears
Then someone is not doing their job, and that's who you should spend your time harassing. I don't know anything about farming. On a well run farm, I very much doubt there's "animal cruelty and unnecessary torture" - because what would be the point? That would be like a potter smashing his pots. But then, you're speaking in relation to an imaginary ideal - garden of eden type scenario, wherein the loin lays down with lamb. The sad fact is, those animals are going to die one way or another. Stunned and cut and bled - is probably preferable to attacked and torn open and eaten alive.
Quoting chatterbears
I disagree. This has been most useful to me. I always assumed vegetarians were a bit flaky, but I had no idea. This was your question:
Quoting chatterbears
I think I answered perfectly reasonably. I can't imagine any circumstances in which I'd want to exploit a mentally deranged or handicapped person. Is that a better answer than the one I can up with?
Quoting karl stone
What you seem loathe to acknowledge - is that there is a natural pecking order; and thus, your attempts to conflate the moral worth of a human being with the moral worth of an animal are intuitively wrong. And so I have explained why it's okay to kill a pig or a dog, but not a human being - and if you had read my post before responding to it - you'd have known that. But then, you're not here to consider the question you asked. You already know the answer - so you start typing before you start reading, and you're not really thinking at all - you're merely reacting on the basis of your prejudices. If there's no point continuing this discussion - that's the reason.
Again: "'It's morally acceptable to needlessly kill non-human animals for food (but not human animals)' is a foundational stance for me, so the reason for it is that that is how I intuitively feel about it."
If you read that earlier, apparently you have some problem with us stating foundational stances--that is, stances for which there is no other moral stance that it is resting on. What is the problem with respect to that specifically? You just agreed above that it's possible to state moral stances that do not rest on other moral stances. So what is the issue?
I agree, but still feel we need some other approach to making the case. Instead of focusing on the harm to animals and the harm to the environment, how about a focus on the harm to person consuming the animals? You know, heart disease and so on.
Most people already know we are killing millions of animals, and at least many meat eaters already know that this industrial process is damaging to the environment. But they're still eating meat, evidence that they are not persuaded by the damage being done. Pointing the finger of moral blame and shame is probably going to generate as much resistance and push back as it does conversion.
We might ask whether we are using a moralistic message because we have evidence that it will be effective, or because we enjoy moralizing about other people's behavior. My guess is that a self interest argument would prove the most effective.
Do you think how you intuitively feel about something is a valid justification for an action? This is where ethically consistency comes into your normative ethics.
A: Terrapin believes it is morally acceptable to kill non-human animals needlessly, based on an intuitive feeling.
B: Jack believes it is morally acceptable to kill old people needlessly, based on an intuitive feeling.
For you to be logically consistent, you would have to state that both situations (A and B) have valid justifications for the action committed. Since, in both situations, the same justification has been deployed. So, do you think Jack is justified in his action, which is based on the same justification you have deployed yourself?
I've tried many different angles, but the health and environmental aspects are the least effective (from my experience). People eat food that they KNOW is bad for them, such as a fast food / candy / soda / etc... What makes you think they would care to switch off a meat based diet for a plant-based diet? They are also selfish, which produces a lack of interest for caring about the environment. The moral arguments seem to be most effective when people actually care to answer honestly instead of evading or avoiding the questions.
My guess is that no argument--moral, self-interest, environmental, etc--will succeed in changing the food habits of more than a few people. Why not? Because it is very difficult to change other peoples' behavior by arguments. Take women's suffrage: It took about 70 years for hundreds of thousands of women engaging in extensive and intense political activity to achieve the vote. The Temperance Movement began in the 1830s and did not success until 1920. The temperance campaign was also extensive and intensive.
The first Surgeon General's report on smoking appeared in 1964. 15% of the population or roughly 30 million still smoke after all the haranguing, health warnings, bans on smoking in public places, and so forth. The incidence of obesity is rising all over the world: Clearly something besides individual choice is at work. Cheap and plentiful fat and sugar probably have something to do with it.
What will change food habits is a change in the environment in which people make food decisions. IF the cost of a pork chop rose from approx. $2 today, to $10 for the same amount and quality of meat, far fewer people would opt to eat one or two chops for dinner. If a pound of ground beef cost $15, one would not use it for burgers; one would use it as a condiment. If eggs were $10 a dozen, one would think twice about making a cake.
I would eat more codfish, but good quality frozen cod costs $15 a pound. So Cod isn't on the menu very often.
People DO CHANGE THEIR BEHAVIOR when there is a clear personal necessity or benefit for them to change.
First, I wouldn't use the word "valid." When we're talking about moral stances, we're not talking about truth value. No moral stance is either true or false.
"Justification for an action" is fine to talk about in general--and there are definitely some actions that I'd feel a need to justify or not--but re morality, at least, I wouldn't use "valid."
Now, I think, in general, that justifications are subjective--I think this even when we're not talking about axiology. Something is justified to someone, and the fact that it's justified to someone doesn't imply that it's justified to anyone else. Justifications are simply what someone considers to be good, sufficient reasons for belief, action, etc.
If I feel that something is morally permissible, I do not normally think "A justification is needed to do this thing that I feel is morally permissible." That seems rather redundant to me. But I suppose it could make sense to say that me feeling that x is morally permissible is amounts me feeling that doing x is justified . . . but really I'm kind of saying the same thing on both sides there. (So maybe it doesn't make much sense, but I'll try to play along with it.)
That Jack feels that y is morally permissible isn't a sufficient justification for me to feel that doing y is justified. That's not inconsistent, because my stance on that isn't "Anything that anyone feels is moral is something that I feel is justified for anyone to do."
At any rate, you're treating justification in general as if it's not something personal. That's not my view.
In other words, humans are selfish assholes, lol. But I agree. Humans, I'd argue, are one of the worst species on the planet lol. All we do is ruin the lives of everything around us, including our own species. It's quite sad actually.
I never said anything about true or false. Validity is in reference to logic (or fact), which I have already talked about in regards to logically consistency. But when I say valid justification, I am referring to two things here.
1. Valid justification. A justification you would accept for yourself in which you would base an action on.
2. Valid justification based on consistency. A justification that you have used, in which somebody else would/could use to deploy in the same way.
- Terrapin owns black slaves, because he thinks black people are inferior.
- Jack owns chinese slaves, because he thinks chinese people are inferior.
In this case, the justification is "believing someone is inferior." - I would then ask you, do you believe that this justification is valid; meaning you should base your actions on it? Not whether or not it is true or has some truth value. I am talking about whether or not it is valid enough for YOU to use and deploy yourself.
A different example can be taste preference based on peer pressure. Someone could have been peer pressured into drinking beer, but ended up acquiring a taste for beer, and enjoying it. I would never say that "peer pressure" is a valid reason for obtaining preferences, as I think peer pressure does more harm than good in most cases.
If you don't want to use the word valid, I can replace it with the word 'reasonable'. Do you believe Jack is reasonably justified in his actions of owning slaves (based on the feeling of chinese people being inferior). In this context, 'reasonable' and 'valid' are synonyms. Valid justification vs reasonable justification. Same concept and meaning. Or as you wrote, "sufficient justification". Sufficient, valid, reasonable. Take your pick.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Why do Jack's actions not have a sufficient justification, but your actions do? And let me bring up the example again to be clear.
A: Terrapin believes it is morally acceptable to kill non-human animals needlessly, based on an intuitive feeling.
B: Jack believes it is morally acceptable to kill old people needlessly, based on an intuitive feeling.
Jack's justification is based on an intuitive feeling. Terrapin's justification is based on an intuitive feeling. Why is Jack's justification not sufficient, but yours is?
In logic, validity obtains when it's impossible that premises are true while a conclusion is false. That's the definition of validity.
Anyway, re your comments further on, it looks like you're using "justification" to refer to "reasons given for something" and "valid justification" to refer to "reasons given for something that you feel are good reasons." That's works well enough, but it wasn't clear to me that you were using the terms that way. I basically use "justification" only in that second sense (which should be clear given my definition of justification in the earlier post).
Quoting chatterbears
Re this, I explained this in detail in the post you're responding to. Again, trying to make sense of a "justification for action in relation to a moral stance," "I feel that x is moral" would be sufficient for me to feel that doing x is justified (or validly or reasonably justified to use your term), because that's what it means, basically, for me to feel that x is moral--that it's acceptable to do x.
That's not the same thing as "If Jack feels that y is moral then I feel that y is justified (validly justified)," because what it means for Jack to feel that y is moral is NOT that I feel that it's acceptable to do x. Rather, Jack would feel that it's acceptable to do x.
Or in other words, I certainly don't have a view that any x is justified--that it's acceptable to do--just in case some person feels that x is moral. I could say that I feel that x is justified, or x is acceptable to do in other words, just in case I feel that x is moral.
One thing that might be giving you trouble understanding this is that you're trying to parse it without the to someones (to me, to Jack), but on my view, these things--moral stances, justifications, are necessarily to someone.
Another thing that might be posing a problem here, though, is suggested by your examples. You might be using "justification" in a different way than I'm using it above. Re this, for example, "Terrapin owns black slaves, because he thinks black people are inferior," you might mean something like, "Terrapin believes that it's a fact that black people are inferior, therefore Terrapin feels that it's morally acceptable to own black slaves." Or in other words, you might be thinking of moral stances resting on something else--just where the something else isn't itself a moral stance. If that's the idea, then the big problem is that no ought derives from any is. In other words, no fact justifies (or implies) any moral stance whatsoever. So if you're trying to get at that with "justifications," you're trying to suggest a fallacy. There are no justifications of that sort for any moral stance.
The point of my post was not that humans are assholes and among the worst species, ever. Rather, it was to point out that speech isn't sufficient.
How did we get from 50% of the population smoking down to 15%? We gave people good reason to quit! Indoor public smoking was banned (people had to go outside and smoke, even if it was frigid); we banned smoking in bars and restaurants. Hefty tax increases were applied to tobacco products. A pack of cigarettes now costs $8 in my state, where it used to cost less than 4 or less. At $160 for a carton, one begins to find the logic of quitting quite compelling.
If we want to help people avoid obesity, quality foods need to be made more affordable and readily available, and low-food value fats and sugars need to be made less affordable. Curtailing high-fat, high-sugar fast food is an obvious step.
it stands to reason that if a large number of people in a population are alcoholic, then perhaps alcoholic products are too cheap, too affordable, and too available. Prohibition isn't necessary, but some control is.
Similarly with animal vs. plant diets: the best strategy to achieve higher rates of vegetarianism is to make high quality vegetarian foods readily available to population who isn't familiar with them. The "market" can do this, but the government may need to 'prime the pump'.
It seems to me your vegetarianism is self congratulatory, rather than ethical. You have no firm grasp on what ethics are, you haven't argued in those terms, and have been reduced to repeating a mantra about "the needless torture and murder of animals" - and calling the human species selfish assholes.
Clearly, you imagine your preference for animals over humans on such solid ground you have no need to grapple with the idea of ethics as a moral system, in relation to the facts of the real world; in which, despite the meteoric - if somewhat chaotic progress of civilization, billions of people still go to bed hungry.
It wasn't that long ago - the only way of life was rural, and when the crops failed people starved - just as animals do in nature. We drag ourselves out of the dirt, misery and savagery of a state of nature - and some simpering, self congratulatory, pseudo-ethical bigot, would cast all humankind as selfish assholes in comparison to himself. Well now we know!
I cast my vote for Professor Crank's post. Yes, a price increase, that's probably the only realistic solution. It's like the carbon tax, a method of accounting for the damage being done, including it in the price of the product. I predict that -34% of all politicians will be voting for an increased tax on meat in the near future. :smile:
Not the worst morally, just the worst because we have the most power, thus the most opportunity to wreck everything for other creatures in pursuit of our own interests, as we so poorly perceive them.
That's not actually what he's expressing, imho. By arguing for a plant based diet, he's also arguing on behalf of human interests.
What he's struggling with is that he sees our human interest clearly, but can't find an effective method of communicating that interest to those such as yourself who are determined to never get it no matter what.
Quoting Jake
The anti-progress misanthrope sides with the misanthropic herbivore, in agreement that:
Quoting chatterbears
So what are the others - as bad or worse? And by what criteria do make such a judgement?
Chatterbears is talking about progress, as am I in my concerns. We can't help it that you're stuck in the 19th century, and you think that's progress.
My answer for this discussion is that our dominion (or any dominion for that matter) is a product of nature. Is natural law unethical?
I think, in the same way nature regulates mating in animals, if it determined to assign a different hierarchy or mode of interaction, it would have. That said, the fact that human beings have the capacity to determine most of their actions does raise the question of whether they should persist with carnivorism. So far, it's a matter of personal choice.
A better question would be whether it is more compassionate (or humane) to alleviate suffering in animals, as much as we can, considering we now know that animals experience emotions and, consequently, not only pain but also suffering.
Just to be clear, the reasoning you use to justify a moral action, is "feeling". Correct?
Example: Terrapin kills dogs for furr clothing because he feels like it.
And to be even more clear. Do you (Terrapin) believe that "feeling" is a reasonable justification to base your moral actions on? If yes, do you also believe that someone else is reasonably justified to base their moral actions on what they feel is right?
Example: Jack kills old people for fun because he feels like it.
Lastly, to be the most clear. I am not asking whether or not you think Jack is reasonably justified to himself. I am asking you whether not YOU (Terrapin) believe Jack is reasonably justified to base his moral actions on what he "feels" like is the right thing to do.
This is where logically consistency comes into play.
Quoting Terrapin Station
This is my point, but you still haven't really addressed it. What Jack "feels" may be different from how you feel. Which is why 'feeling' is never a good reason to justify a moral action. But aside from that, if you believe that your reasoning (of how you feel) is good enough to justify a belief, it seems contradictory to then say "I may not accept Jack's reasoning of how feels when committing a moral action."
Either "feeling" is a reasonable justification for moral actions, or it is not. It doesn't matter which person is initiating the feeling. Whether that is the pope or hitler, do you think "feeling" is what they should base their moral actions on?
Quoting Terrapin Station
It seems like you do though, because you believe that a person can reasonably justify their moral actions based on feeling, correct?
Vegans, not vegetarians. Animals are factory farmed because we eat them. If we stopped eating them, they wouldn't be farmed. If you want to say they would be farmed for clothing (such as a leather), that's a separate issue. But Vegans do not buy any animal products, including leather. So that would go away as well. You talk about bias and prejudice, yet you can't understand simple supply and demand?
Quoting karl stone
And black people were bred for slavery in the US. And the vast majority of people owned slaved. And they were not likely to stop doing so. Should that be a reason to continue doing it, because it is a demand and the majority supports it?
Also, morally, it's quite simple. Veganism is a logically consistent extension of whatever moral system you already have in place for yourself. You cannot be logically consistent without being Vegan.
For example. A person could give these reasons:
"I eat meat because I like the taste."
"I eat meat because it is convenient to do so."
"I eat meat because animals are not as intelligent as I am."
If we take just those 3 justifications for the action committed, we can apply logically consistency to their position and see if they would still accept it.
"I eat new born babies because I like the taste."
"I am a cannibal because it is convenient to do so."
"I eat new born babies because they are not as intelligent as I am."
If you wouldn't accept the second set of claims, then you are not logically consistent. Since this clearly demonstrates that these reasons are not sufficient justifications to commit an action.
Quoting karl stone
And you still haven't answered.... I think at this point it is clear you are being either dishonest and/or purposely evasive. I don't know how to raise a child, but I would never condone killing one. You don't need to know anything about raising pigs or dogs, to understand why you would eat one but not the other. And instead of answering my question, of why you would support the killing of pigs but not of dogs, you constantly evade the question.
I was going to respond to the rest of your post, but I think it is pointless at this point. If you cannot answer a simple question, after I have asked it 3 times, this isn't a discussion. This is you failing to understand my position and basic questions you are being asked. Or as I am more convinced of, you're being dishonest.
Would you be saying the same thing if alcohol was solely produced on the back of tortured children? That the only way alcohol could be produced was child slave labor, would you still say "prohibition isn't necessary, we just need some control of it." - Meaning, child slave labor would still exist, but we should just lessen it, correct?
Because that is what is happening in the case of farm animals. Lessening it doens't make it better, in the fact that unnecessary suffering is still occurring. As of right now, when people buy alcohol, they are usually just harming themselves (aside from drunk drivers). When people buy animal products, they are ALWAYS harming the animal, as well as harming the environment AND themselves (health wise). That is not even comparable to alcohol or smoking.
You keep making analogies to immoral acts committed on people to those committed on animals in the context of animal consumption. I suggested in another post that while it may be true that animals are moral agents to some extent - such that they are not completely irrelevant w/re to our moral calculations - they are by no means moral agents to the same extent people are. As a result, I think you need to give some explanation about why you think there is a one-to-one equivalence between people and animals that justifies these analogies. The examples you give of extreme human exploitation are immoral. More moderate examples of human exploitation are not necessarily going to be unacceptably immoral (an inefficient labor market, for example, where people are not able to get a fair wage in exchange for their labor). Similarly, if animals are not of the same moral equivalence as people, then exploitation of them may be totally justifiable, even to the point of consuming them in some way or to some degree.
Also, I think it would be helpful to the discussion to take the environment and health risks from over-consumption of meat off the table. If you don't, then your argument is going to depend on industrial animal consumption producing these externalities. Even assuming you are correct about them and that they are significant, it is possible that we could find ways to harvest animals that did not produce significant environmental damage. People could also moderate their animal consumption so it was not detrimental to their health. If both of these things happened, then they would no longer provide a justification for abstaining from animal consumption. in other words, what is the argument for abstinence if you don't make these consequentialist assumptions?
There is a large advantage in the all or nothing approach: Since actual revolution is extraordinarily difficult to impossible (in the industrialized western countries), one can safely call for revolution without having to actually do anything except repeat stale (even if 'correct') rhetoric. Everybody knows it isn't going to happen in the near future.
So too activists like you who want a revolution in diet: They can safely take the all-or-nothing approach because "reform" or incremental change, or slow change (which still takes a lot of work to achieve) leaves one, some, or many animals still being used for meat production, which is totally morally unacceptable in your thinking. Reducing animal suffering by 3% a year just isn't worth doing.
Changing diet is essentially a public health project. What I suggested above (making vegetarian food available and convenient) is an "environmental intervention". Environmental interventions are a standard approach, that works better than all or nothing arguments.
For example, in the AIDS epidemic, messaging evolved from avoidance, to safe sex, to harm reduction to effective chemical prevention. "Harm reduction" acknowledges that some people (quite a few, actually) will have anonymous or promiscuous sex, will have unprotected sex, will use recreational drugs, and so on. So, what can be done within the framework of what people actually do? Well, we first made condoms ubiquitous. We gave them away by the millions. The product (the condom) is a message: sex can be safer. We distributed clean needles and bleach kits to drug users, then we started to exchange new needles for old needles. More recently we started advising people to take a daily low dose of Truvada, a combination of two dissimilar anti-HIV medications, which practically eliminates the risk of transmission or new infection when taken daily without interruption.
These messages and interventions evolved over a 25 year period, and have made a significant difference. While they have significantly reduced, they have not eliminated HIV transmission. Elimination of HIV transmission will require an effective vaccine, something we have not, so far, been able to develop.
I submit that most of the people who are not already vegetarians will ignore your guilt trip rhetoric. If you want to change people's behavior (and not just convince them that you are right and they are wrong) you will have to come up with a strategy that makes a vegetarian diet convenient, attractive, and even "trendy".
So shut up with the guilt tripping and come up with something that will actually WORK.
Factory farming isn't a product of nature. It is a product of humans who abuse their power in immoral ways.
Quoting BrianW
This is the same question, because an unethical dominion over animals would imply the lack of compassion. It is unethical, since we lack the compassion to alleviate the suffering these animals endure.
1. Anything that a product of nature produces, is itself a product of nature.
2. Humans are a product of nature.
3. Humans produce factory farms.
4. Therefore factory farms are a product of nature
Cows/chickens/pigs are sentient. Humans are sentient. We have the ability to suffer and experience pain, as well as pleasure. To commit an unnecessary amount of pain to another sentient being, would mean we would need a valid justification to continue that action.
I never said there is a one-to-one equivalence between humans and animals, as humans can understand things far greater and also obtain more rights (such as the right to vote, or the right to drive). The part I am saying we are equal to animals, is the fact that we both can suffer and feel pain. As a more intelligent species, why would we not use that knowledge to become more compassionate instead of more cruel? In the U.S., we have plenty of animal cruelty laws that prevent animals from being harmed, but they are more geared toward pets (such as dogs or cats). People already understand that dogs have the ability to feel, as well as the ability to experience joy. Animals are not objects who don't think, as they have a far greater sense of understanding than we treat them for. You see mother cows chase the trucks that take away their new born calf moments after birth. Dogs and pigs mourn for their lost family members or loved ones, just as we would. Just because they do not vocalize their pain into words, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Aside from the fact that they can experience pain and suffering as we do, it is also logically consistent to grant these animals the same right we would grant for ourselves. Which is the right to life, and the right to be free from pain. If you think that animals do not deserve to live a natural life, you'd have to make a case for why that it is.
Quoting Mentalusion
Could you explain why 'extreme' human exploitation is immoral, but extreme animal exploitation is not immoral?
Quoting Mentalusion
The health and environmental aspects are icing on the cake. The core problem is killing a sentient being that doesn't want to die, against their will. Enslaving a species and exploiting them, against their will. That's the main issue.
Then that by logic, everything is a product of nature. Which makes the term useless, and it shouldn't be something we point to as a way to live our lives.
Rape is a product of nature. Is it now ok to rape people?
at least we agree on this
There's no guilt trip rhetoric. Unless you want to claim that people who were against slavery 200 years ago, were guilt tripping slave owners into abolishing slavery?
You want to talk about convenient, attractive and trendy?
Was it convenient for slave owners to stop owning slaves? No.
Was it attractive to let slaves go and start doing hard work yourself? No.
Was it trendy to stop owning slaves, even though the majority was doing it? No.
Your points are weak, and I don't need some elaborate or fancy reason to convince you to be a compassionate human being. It's fairly simple. You can call it a guilt trip, but I call it a logically consistent step in the right direction.
Factory farming is human activity. Humans (including their activities) are a part of nature.
Quoting chatterbears
Do we lack the compassion or the capacity? Should we and can we domesticate all animals? If we leave others to the wild, then don't we allow them to suffer from conditions which we would otherwise protect ourselves from?
Personally, I think causing harm to animals is wrong. But, it would be more unfair to constrain others by our own restrictions. Is it wrong for the lion to kill the gazelle? If so, how would you inform it?
Of course I understand such a simplistic concept. I just don't accept the implications you draw from it - nor the assumptions you smuggle into the argument under its rubric.
Quoting chatterbears
But they're people - you concept smuggler you. Animals are not people. They're dinner!
Quoting chatterbears
Well therein may lay your problem - moralism to the exclusion of fact.
Quoting chatterbears
Again, animals are not people.
Quoting chatterbears
As you keep raising the same points, I answered the point toward the end of my post. Shame you missed it. I seem to recall establishing the natural pecking order. Animals are not human beings. They are not worthy of the same moral consideration. They are worthy of some moral consideration - regarding unnecessary suffering, but subject to the pecking order as manifest, in this instance, in the food chain.
Bearing in mind that the fate of animals in nature is suffering and death - often quite a horrible death, with another animal tearing them open and eating them alive, farming, by contrast - is relatively humane. Why pigs and not dogs? It's clearly a cultural preference, because some people eat dogs.
It's all very well you saying that it's unnecessary - because humans can live on vegetables alone, but we don't. And that's a natural fact - that given the natural pecking order and the fate of animals in nature - you cannot maintain is unethical without engaging in weepy moralism based on false equivalence.
And is nature is a good indicator of how we should live our lives? Animals rape in nature. Should we then start raping each other since it is 'natural'?
Quoting BrianW
If we have the capacity to show compassion to some animals (such as cats or dogs), then we have the capacity to extend that compassion to other animals. We don't need to domesticate all animals. We need to stop breeding animals into existence that we are going to torture, exploit and slaughter. The chickens/cows/pigs/sheep/goats/etc... that we have bred into existence, would and does not exist in the wild. The simple idea is, stop breeding these animals into existence. The current ones that already exist, we can let them die off naturally, while keeping a small percentage in animal sanctuaries.
Quoting BrianW
You think causing harm to animals is wrong, so does that mean you're vegan? It is not wrong for the lion to kill the gazelle because the lion NEEDS to kill to survive. We do not need to kill farm animals to survive.
Also, why are you looking to the lion for how you should act? Lions commit infanticide. If I killed my child, and you condemned me for it, could I just point to lions and say, "Hey, Lions kill their own children, why can't I do the same thing?"
Chatterbears: It is wrong to kill animals and people unnecessarily.
Karl: But animals are not people.
Chatterbears: Why does that matter? They both can feel and suffer.
Karl: Animals are not people, they are dinner.
Chatterbears: Ok. That doesn't answer anything. Why should we cause harm to animals unnecessarily?
Karl: Because animals are not worthy of the same moral consideration.
Chatterbears: Still haven't answered. Why aren't they worthy of the same moral consideration in regards to unnecessary suffering?
Karl: Because animals are not human beings. They are lower on the food chain.
Smh...
No. Here's the conversation:
Chatterbears: Is our dominion over animals unethical?
Karl: No, because, you know...reality!
Chatterbears: It is, it is, it is, it is!
Karl: Why?
Chatterbears: Boo hoo hoo, animals are people too!
Karl: No, they're not!
Chatterbears: Go eat a new born baby!
Karl: I'll just have the lasagne, thanks!
Do the animals know what rape is or an alternative to rape? Humans decide that rape is wrong, therefore, humans determine alternative actions.
Animals have their own moral codes. They commit acts that we would not and they're no less for it because of what and how they are.
Quoting chatterbears
If we let them die off, isn't that lack of compassion? Is the compassion for animals born out of a sense of equality or out of self-gratification. If animals are equal to us, shouldn't we treat all of them alike. Would you suggest letting humans die out for the sake of achieving a more pleasing equilibrium?
And, if it's a matter of perspective, then consider animals bred for food only know the life they've been given. In such instances most suffering occurs in fear of impending death which humans are increasingly alleviating by diminishing such awareness.
This argument is largely dependent on human acceptance of the idea of indisputable equality between humans and animals. However, if such a perspective were forced, it would defeat the case for compassion. Are humans and animals equal? For most people, they are not. Why should such people conform to your perspective?
Okay, but before I leave you to it - you should really look up the term 'ethics' and consider it as a system of moral values - in relation to the real world. Because even if, eating meat causes suffering, it's not therefore unethical. Claiming it's unethical requires you consider other things, off the top of my head - like the amount of land necessary to feed 7 billion on vegetables alone, and the consequence of using artificial fertilizers if animal dung were not available, like the livelihoods of farmers, and so on and on right down to denying people a right to make their own choices. Your sympathy for animals is but one tiny, and relatively inconsequential factor to be taken into account.
You seem to have side-tracked. The original line of statements were as follows:
You: Factory farming is natural. Why is natural law unethical?
Me: Just because something occurs in nature, doesn't make it morally acceptable. Rape occurs in nature, and is therefore natural. Does that mean it is morally acceptable to rape?
You: Animals may not know what rape is, but humans do know. Animals have their own moral codes.
If your original statement stands of, "Why is natural law unethical?", you would understand why natural law is not something you want to base your moral actions on. Animals are part of natural law. The actions of animals, are part of natural law. Yes, humans decided rape is wrong, but not because of natural law. We decided it was wrong because it goes against universal human rights, which is irrelevant to natural law.
Quoting BrianW
No. The way they are being bred into existence is via rape (forced artificial insemination). Is it more compassionate to rape or not rape?
Quoting BrianW
They are not equal in every way possible. They shouldn't be allowed to drive cars or vote. But they do deserve basic rights, such as the right to live, or the right to freedom. Some "special" animals are granted these rights, in which people are not allowed to own them as pets or kill them. Instead of only granting those rights to specific animals (such as owls), we should grant them to all animals.
Quoting BrianW
Just because a sentient being doesn't know any better, doesn't mean we should continue breeding those sentient beings into existence.
Quoting BrianW
Again, I never said they are equal in all aspects of life. They should be treated equally in the sense of not causing them unnecessary suffering. That is all...
Hey, you figured it out! :smile:
You may define the term "unnecessary" differently than I do, but in this context, I define it as such:
Unnecessary = Not need for our survival. We can pursue alternative methods.
Necessary = Needed for our survival. No alternative method was available.
Example of unnecessary: Fox fur coats, vs, fake fur coats. One causes unnecessary suffering (to the fox), while the other is made in a lab (or some other way that doesn't cause suffering to a sentient being).
Example of necessary: Self-defense. If I am out in the wilderness and an animal (or person) attacks me, I may need to hurt that animal (or human) to help my own survival.
It's pointless if you don't agree!
:lol:
lol yeah. It took me a while... Karl doesn't understand the concept of answering a question. Maybe you can try to ask him in another thread. This is what you may encounter.
Why are animals not worth of moral consideration if we cause them unnecessary suffering?
"Because they aren't on top of the food chain."
Why is the food chain an indicator of how to treat sentient beings?
"Because.... dinner."
If you want to talk about food chains, how about you ask Karl to fight a tiger or bear with what he was naturally born with (hands and feet and teeth). That food chain will get resolved real fast, lol...
People change their behavior when there is a concrete advantage to making a particular change. Most people quit smoking because of cost, negative consequences of smoking, and better health from not smoking. Peer pressure has some effect, but peers have influence because there is a significant relationship.
I repeat: If you want to change behavior, come up with a plan that has a chance of producing concrete results. Otherwise, you are merely another voice howling in the wilderness heard by no ears that care.
No one will demand that you personally execute the plan you come up with, so be creative.
My original query is, I'm investigating, not assuming that it already is. I'm trying to understand it from as comprehensive a perspective as I can.
What about the wild animals? How do we deal with them?
Do animals have the right to free-will?
I'm going to stop replying to you now (then bitch about you behind your back!) Real mature. The mature thing to do would be to respond to the post above, and explain how not eating meat would be ethical in its effects on other people, animals and the wider environment. There are whole ecosystems and landscapes dependent on grazing animals, not to mention a significant part of the economy. If your only premise is the 'unnecessary suffering of animals' killed for food - then it's not unethical. Indeed, you haven't even established it's unnecessary!
I've reviewed my arguments and I think I will stick to my personal opinion rather than attempt to include perspectives I don't fully understand.
Personally, I agree that it's cruel to kill animals for food. As to whether it's ethical or not, I don't know. I think it depends on one's basis for ethics and whether it applies to animals as well. However, as far as I know, there is no such world-wide ethical acceptance.
Now, please allow me to bow out of this discussion, thanks.
No. You're not understanding what I'm saying. Let's do this one step at a time: first, just to be clear, a justification for a moral action can't be something that's just factual; it would have to itself be a value judgment the person is making.
Do you understand/agree with that part?
I thought Mr. Crank had the best plan, manipulating behavior through the price. As example, taxes on animal products with the proceeds being used to subsidize alternatives. I'll admit I really have no plan for implementing that politically, but maybe somebody else can offer some suggestions.
By the way, there are increasingly plant based products engineered to taste quite a bit like meat. I'm addicted to vegie sausage myself.
The logical thing to do would be to not invest time in trying to explain such things to those who show no evidence of being capable of ever getting it. Such a procedure is a waste of everybody's time, and accomplishes little more than generating pointless conflict.
A better approach would be to try to identify those who have already decided to move towards a plant based diet, but are new to the subject and need some assistance with their transition. For example, a website with a title something like "How To Become A Vegetarian".
I wasn't out in the wilderness, as I was merely giving an example. Cities/towns/villages are necessary for survival, but not in the types of excess as we have it today. 10,000 sq ft. homes for 2 people, should not exist. Golf courses (which take up unnecessary amounts of land) shouldn't exist. Funeral homes and cemeteries, shouldn't exist. There are a lot of things that humans have created, in which they are completely unnecessary, and most of the time, useless.
They will assign you a mentor to you help you along the way if you have any questions. You will also get guides/recipes on veganism. Is this what you are looking for?
Also, I don't need to come up with a plan in order to change people's minds. I am here to spread awareness and allow people to realize their ethical inconsistency. This comes before the plan is put into place. Nobody will follow a plan if they believe what they are currently doing is right or correct. People on this thread have not even stated in the slightest that they will stop eating animal products, let alone ask me what the best plan is to do so.
There are plenty of resources out there, in regards to following a plan for veganism. I am here to put you in the correct mindset, so you are able to pursue that plan on your own without feeling obligated or guilt-tripped in some way. Slave owners who release their slaves shouldn't need to feel guilt in order to do the morally right thing. You evaluate your beliefs and actions, see if they line up, and if they don't, you correct them and change your perspective. If you care to be a moral agent, then it requires a constant evaluation of your beliefs and actions. If you don't care to be a moral agent, continue living on the way you have, while conforming to societal norms and common law.
My mistake. I thought you were assuming that natural law is ethical.
Wild animals (+ALL animals) should be left alone, as much as possible. Yes, they should have the right to freedom and the ability to express their free-will. If you don't think they deserve the right to life and freedom, you'd need to present a case for that. Why don't animals deserve the right to life and freedom?
Saying that something is cruel, means you are deploying ethics. So if you say something is cruel, you are saying it is unethical. Ethics and Morals are synonyms, which essentially mean the same thing.
This thread was for people to explore this topic and ask questions for which they may not fully understand. I'd encourage you to stay in this thread and chat a bit more before you leave.
If we forget about other people for now, may I ask you this. What is your basis for ethical/moral decisions? Meaning, how do you differentiate a good action from a bad action?
I have no idea what you just wrote. How about we start over. I said this:
"the reasoning you use to justify a moral action, is "feeling". Correct?"
Let me try to rephrase.
Do you believe how you "feel" is a sensible reason to base your moral actions on? If so, do you believe how someone else "feels" is a sensible reason for them to base their moral actions on? If not, you have a logical contradiction in place. Where you accept "feeling" as a sensible reason for your actions, but do not accept "feeling" as a sensible reason for someone else's actions.
Do you understand this?
My ethics/morality is derived partly from previous precedence and partly from my own analysis. The idea that killing animals for food is unethical has no long-standing precedence in most of the world. In fact, it's quite the opposite. And, where there's precedence, it is expressed primarily through religious/spiritual dictates instead of some kind of empiricism (like we now have knowing that animals express emotions and they can suffer).
On the flip-side, there are long-standing traditions based on ideas such as humans are decidedly superior to animals, or that animals exist to serve humans, etc. In terms of empiricism, the superiority of humans over animals is obvious. Also, concerning suffering from fear of death, a lot of progress has been made to alleviate that. As to suffering due to inhumane conditions, it has not yet been established whether animals have the capacity to realise an unexperienced alternate lifestyle over which they could yearn for. Once animals are fed regularly, are sheltered well enough and have the company, especially, of their kind, it is difficult to prove substantially that they are in any further need, the lack of which, results in suffering.
Therefore, I think it would be unfair to suppose an ethical/moral superiority over those who act different from me when it is not based on any absolute system of qualification.
For example, personally, I think all animals should be under partial or complete domestication. This means that, even wild animals should be regulated through family planning methods until their numbers are greatly reduced and manageable. Also, we should tag all animals (if possible) so that we know where and how they are at all times for the sake of regulating their activities, like in times of natural crises or to protect them from human activities that may harm them.
However, all that is my opinion. It can be compassionate, intelligent, or any other positive adjective but cannot be superior to others' opinions, unless relatively. And, I can't argue that relative ethics/morality must hold for others because that would be plain wrong.
On the bright side, through persistence and insistence, it is possible to turn around the current status quo and possibly have a future where humans are more caring of animals. Current trends already show an increase in plant-based diets, which I fully support.
I don't know if I think it's "sensible," but it doesn't matter. It's a fact that (foundational) moral stances are how an individual feels about interpersonal behavior, and that's all they can be.
It does matter to me, because I want to understand how you determine right from wrong. What mechanism do you use to differentiate a wrong action from a bad action?
I'll try one different way of looking at this.
If you were raising a child, how would you teach that child to make assessments regarding good and bad behavior?
Examples:
- A religious person may point to the bible and say, "Follow these 10 commandments and they will teach you what is good and bad."
- A person who derives his morals from the law, may tell their children, "Whatever the law says, is how you should decide what is right from wrong."
- You (Terrapin) would seem to tell your child, "Whatever you feel is right, just go with that."
Correct me if I am wrong. But I still am not fully clear on your position, and I think this question of "how would you teach your children right from wrong" could help create some clarity.
**As a side note: A person can "feel" something is wrong, but go against it because they put more importance on the law. So to say that people base their moral stances on how they feel, isn't always the case. People will conform to societal pressure or the law, versus abide by their own personal feelings.
Hehe. I originally said, "If we forget about other people for now, may I ask you this. What is your basis for ethical/moral decisions? Meaning, how do you differentiate a good action from a bad action?".
The main sentence being, "If we forget about other people for now." - You then explained how the rest of the world perceives morality, instead of explaining your own position. I understand that you derive your moral stances on previous precedence and your own analysis, but I wanted specifics.
As I told Terrapin, how would you teach your children to assess a good action from a bad action? Or my original question, how do you differentiate a good action from a bad action? What specific thought process do you use to make that determination.
Quoting BrianW
We could raise a human in isolation, in which that human knows no differently. We could force that human to live in its own waste, while confined to a 4x4 cell block. We could forcefully artificially inseminate that human (rape) without their consent. Would you then justify these actions by saying, once this human is fed regularly, sheltered well enough and has company of its own kind, it is difficult to prove substantially that they are in any further need? If your response is going to be, "A human understands suffering to a greater degree than a pig, so it would be immoral to treat a human the same way." - I could get around that by making the human we raise in isolation, a mentally retarded human. And the mentally retarded human would be of the same consciousness of a pig, and had same communication skills. Is it ok now?
Quoting BrianW
Factory farming industries harm animals. Is factory farming something you would want to protect animals from, since that qualifies as a human activity that harms animals.
Quoting BrianW
You don't think one moral stance can be superior to another? Let me ask you this:
- Jack thinks rape is morally good.
- Peter thinks rape is morally bad.
Are you saying that Jack and Peter both have moral opinions of equal value, in regards to rape?
Quoting BrianW
Agreed.
Also, there's the question of whether someone would be ok to suffer a particular influence. If not, then it would be immoral to cause others to suffer through such. Though, this depends on equality. For example, stealing. There's previous precedence that makes stealing a unanimous no no. Also, personally, I'm against it due to the negative effects it has. And, since I would not like to be stolen from, I think it would be wrong to steal from others.
Quoting chatterbears
Only with respect to relative opinions. Rape is unanimously frowned upon, therefore, it's determined as unethical/immoral by everyone.
In what way?
(I mean, is it clearly defined harmful activity or is it relative harm. Most of what I've seen is, to a large part, relative harm from the point of view of the difference between a human and an animal. This is because animals may not have the same rights, knowledge and awareness as humans. However, if one considered animals to be equal to humans, then, I agree that farming industries do harm animals.)
Quoting chatterbears
So it's not just me, what I'm saying here is what everyone does. Because of ontological facts, all that anyone can be doing, per their foundations, at least, is determining right and wrong via personal "feeling"--their intuitive, emotional response to (the idea of) interpersonal behavior that they consider to be more significant than etiquette.
Once you have some foundational stance (which can be one of many), you can reason from there--so, for example, if it's a foundational stance for you that "one shouldn't nonconsensually initiate violence" it would likely follow for you that "one shouldn't murder," but the foundational stance can't be anything other than a way that you feel.
The selfish view says that we don't eat humans because they're poisonous. We eat such crap.... :vomit:
— karl stone
Quoting Jake
I have no objection to people who want to be vegetarian making their own decisions. Nor to you creating a website. It's vegetarians who have an objection to my decisions - and they apparently feel compelled to communicate that objection at every juncture. I have never met a vegetarian - I only later discovered was a vegetarian. And when you discuss it in depth, as we have here - I've often found that it's not so much a love of animals, but a dislike of people - coupled with post-material values.
Not eating meat gives them a cheaply purchased sense of moral superiority they cannot help but flaunt; and the reason you don't like me digging down - is that, it puts that moralism at risk. You want me shut and be preached to. Well that's not going to happen. Chatterbears asked a question - he can't even answer himself. He thinks suffering and death are conclusive of unethical behavior - but they're not. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Farming is less cruel than nature - while providing sustenance and industry, that in turn lends value to the land and the environment. All this is part of any question of ethics, and a failure to examine those things - reduces vegetarianism to a misanthropic, weepy moral pretense of the privileged few.
Lol, mic drop. Well said.
It's not dislike of people to wish that we be kinder and gentler people who aren't inflicting suffering and trashing our environment for no good reason.
Quoting karl stone
We don't like you digging down because you're just repeating misunderstandings that some of us escaped 50 years ago. All that's at risk in rehashing such misunderstanding is our time, which I must admit we ourselves are guilty of wasting in such conversations.
Firstly, why would it be necessary to torture the dog? And secondly, if it was the same thing happening in each scenario, then there would be torture in the second scenario as there was in the first, but, for some reason, you left that out of the second scenario. So no, on the face of it, it's not the same thing. (Did you just forget to mention it the second time around or did you leave it out intentionally?).
Quoting chatterbears
It's a narrower category than innocent sentient beings, as you well know, since we're talking about a category that includes farmyard animals, but doesn't include humans. (Otherwise the answer would be yes and no).
But to answer your question, judging by our actions, we, for the most part, think that it is. (Again, as you probably already know). In a sense, it doesn't really matter what you or I think about the morality of it. There'll be mixed views, and it'll fill pages of discussion with a back-and-forth exchange of views consisting of those in favour and those against, because it's just one of those hot topics, like abortion, but it won't be as productive as focusing on what is, in my opinion, a better question: what, realistically, can be done about that? What actions, with the greatest chance of success, do you propose in order to rectify this situation?
Technically, every place on earth has wild life within it. But since humans have built over natural habitats of other species, the wildlife has become minimal, such as squirrels and birds.
But I can give a better/different example. A person who lives in a forest area, where their backyard is the actual forest. If they walk outside their house, they may encounter a bear or jaguar of some sort. They are both in their own habitat. You may say, "the human built a house over the bears habitat, so it's the humans fault." - You have to look at it from an evolutionary perspective. Even when we were living in the trees, hundreds of thousands of years ago, humans and bears were still sharing the same area of land. But instead of using living in trees near a bear, we are now living in houses near a bear. So when that person walks out of their house in the forest, and they encounter a bear, both (the human and the bear) are going to be in self-defense mode. Obviously, I would want the human to take the least damaging action as possible, in which the bear is not severely harmed. I think some people use horns or pepper spray to deter animals such as bears, rather than just shooting it.
But back to my original point. This is the type of 'necessary harm' a human would be deploying to another sentient being. It would be necessary to cause the bear harm, just as it would be necessary for the bear to cause the human harm. Both are acting out of survival, not pleasure or convenience.
Quoting ?????????????
My argumentation allows for people to recognize the harm their actions are causing other life. It is impossible to eliminate all suffering throughout the globe, but we should reduce the amount of suffering as much as we can.
Also, I am not against all types of agriculture. As plant agriculture is much less damaging than animal agriculture. You can keep trying to reduce my position all the way back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but I am not advocating for that. I am advocating for a moral consideration of other animals that we torture and slaughter needlessly.
Quoting ?????????????
My moral axiom is not survival, and it definitely is not about what is natural. If you want my fundamental base axioms, they are rights and well-being. My metaethical stance is to maximize the rights and well-being of sentient creatures. I've never said, what is naturally is what is right. Nor have I stated, what is unnecessary is what is wrong. I also have not stated, what is not needed to survive, is morally wrong. An example. Music is not necessary for my survival, but I wouldn't call somebody immoral for listening to it. The "unnecessary" part comes into play, when those "unnecessary" actions cause harm to sentient beings. Listening to music doesn't cause harm. Eating animal products causes harm. Although both of those actions (listening to music and eating animal products) are not necessary for our survival, only one of those actions is known to cause torture and death to sentient life. Which comes back to my moral axiom, which is to maximize the rights and well-being of sentient life.
Aside from that, what I believe is completely irrelevant. Because most people I argue with, already have a moral system in place. They already have some axioms in place, along with normative principles (such as utilitarianism). 99% of these systems include the push for human rights. Veganism is a logical extension of human rights, and you cannot believe in human rights without extending that animals, unless create a contradiction within your moral system. And for the very small percentage who do not have a contradiction within their moral system, their systems will lead to absurdities. Such as, it is better to exist in torture than to not exist at all.
Quoting ?????????????
As I explained above, survival is not my axiom. The terms survival and unnecessary only come into play when they are causing harm to other life on this planet. As I said, I can initiate actions (such as playing music) that are unnecessary for my survival, but I wouldn't say those actions are immoral. They become immoral when they cause harm.
I still don't understand what mechanism you use to determine a good action from a bad action?
Quoting BrianW
At one point, Slavery was NOT frowned up on, and it was determined as morally acceptable by everyone. Is the societal norm how you determine what is immoral? 100 years ago, homosexuality was unanimously frowned upon, and it was determined as unethical/immoral by everyone. But nowadays, people are changing their view, and many people were wrong in their ethical assessment.
Watch the Documentary (Dominion) I linked in my original post of this thread, and you will see how harmful it actually is.
And from what you are saying, is it ok to torture/kill something, just because it doesn't have the same rights / knowledge / awareness as a human? How about a dog/cat? How about the severely mentally disabled human who has the same awareness and knowledge as a cow?
These questions ought to be put into an appropriate context. If there was a mass demand for turning cats, dogs, and severely mentally disabled humans into produce for consumption, as there is for the animal produce already on the market, then [i]who knows[/I] what we'd find acceptable enough to put up with? But that's another reality, a hypothetical reality. It's a counterfactual. So it's difficult to judge.
If chickens were a man's best friend and dog burgers tasted good...
If pigs could fly...
Who knows? But, minimally, I predict that if things were different, then we'd probably view things differently.
There's personal views and general views.
How I determine ethics/morality is a combination of:
1. Precedence.
2. Personal analysis.
3. Reciprocity.
This doesn't mean I follow any precedence, just that I take it into consideration.
Generally, slavery was ethical/moral in those communities which it was accepted. Homosexuality was unethical/immoral in those communities which outlawed it. Now, they are unethical/immoral and ethical/moral respectively. Nothing prevents conditions of ethics/morality from changing. We determine the laws of our society, they work for us not vice versa.
In general, humans (no matter their capacities) have been designated as superior to animals. Therefore, they are treated differently.
Humans treat animals according to their designated rules of conduct. For example, humans predominantly believe animals are supposed to serve them. This includes providing food for them. In view of that, humans consume animals for food and they see it as ok.
If, humans thought animals deserved better, then they would offer better treatment.
Those humans who you claim mistreat animals may not share the same views as you. To them, what they do is just the normal order of things. Those who disagree, e.g. you, act different.
All I'm saying is, before you label people as ethical/moral or unethical/immoral, you might want to take a moment and understand them first. If not, you might find you're the immoral one for degrading humans to the level of animals and for denying them a source of nutrition which is rightfully theirs.
Instead of wanting humans to stop mistreating animals, you should want them to learn what mistreatment is and why it is. This means the information should be given in such a way that it is acceptable. In that way, they act out of knowledge not coercion.
Currently, it is too early for humans to cease mistreating animals completely. But, considerable efforts have been exerted to diminish the cruelty that has been realised as such. So, it stands to reason that there will come a time, in the future, when all such mistreatment will be a thing of the past. As it stands, presently, there isn't enough justification for it. So the best we can have is some people being vegans while the rest persist with the carnivorism.
Quoting karl stone
I've only just met you, and already you've told me you're a meat-eater. Funny, that.
I might mention that my sister has an adopted daughter who has cerebral palsy and is in exactly this condition. There's not much meat on her, but she might be good for a few light snacks. If you're worried that eating her brain might give you cerebral palsy, I'm sure you could still get a bit of white meat off the rest of her. Probably very nice with a green salad and a glass of white wine.
Doesn't have to do with "mental normalcy" but species membership.
It would be wrong because of the emotional attachments other humans (the only creatures human morality applies too) have to this severly mentally subnormal human. Like killing and eating someones pet.
Other than that, nothing. It seems pretty distastful to me but not immoral.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Are you saying that it's morally wrong to eat any member of the species homo sapiens, but morally okay to eat a member of any other species?
Quoting DingoJones
Interesting response. You and I clearly live on different planets when it comes to morality.
Yes.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I see. Now supposing Neanderthals were still around, would it be okay to eat them? How about homo habilis, or australopithecines? I infer from what you say that you'd be okay eating a gorilla, chimpanzee or orang-utan, but in terms of our direct ancestors, where exactly would you draw the line?
Gorilla, chimp, etc. sure, if we're simply talking about food. I wouldn't kill species that are endangered, but not because I have a problem with eating them for food.
Re early precursor hominids, I'd have to meet them. It would simply be an intuitive matter.
Not really. The suffering of the humans if I ate their kid or sibling is real, and a moral consideration. Likewise with the pet. You just think that in addition, its wrong to eat a pet cuz its wrong to eat animals. I dont add that, because it doesnt make sense. Thats the only real difference.
You were trying to make an emotional appeal by using humans in example rather than an actual argument, and now you are trying to pretend Im some kinda crazy person with otherworldly moral sensibilities so you once again do not have to make an actual argument.
why stop your slippery slope at animals? Why are we morally justified eating/exploiting plants? Maybe we shouldn't be eating anything and just letting ourselves starve to death.
In other words, if there are no relevant distinctions anywhere among these species, then there will be no grounds for basing any morality, positive or negative. Consequently, it wouldn't make a difference one way or the other whether we consume animals across the board or not. Whether anyone wanted to eat other homo sapiens, then, would just be a matter of personal preference; there would be no moral implications to their decision given the lack of any real difference among species.
Quoting DingoJones
Actually I was just trying to find out how you see things.
Quoting DingoJones
So you think it 'makes sense' to say that the suffering of humans is a moral consideration, but it doesn't 'make sense' to say that it's wrong to eat animals. Now to me, 'making sense' is a matter either of language or of logic, but I don't think you're using the phrase to mean that. I suspect that by 'makes sense' you actually mean 'conforms to my moral views'. In which case, all you are doing is offering me a moral intuition; so you're not advancing an argument either.
What I was seeking, from both you and Terrapin, was some rational justification for your belief that it's okay to eat animals but not humans. I'm not getting one, so I assume neither of you has one to offer.
So I will offer you both an argument. Nothing new, just the same old stuff you have probably heard from vegetarians before. What makes an action immoral, in the end, is that it adversely affects the interests of a being that is capable of having interests, which means any sentient being. So there is no line between humans and other sentient beings, e.g. other animals, that could justify drawing a line between them and saying that action against the interests of one is wrong and actions against the interests of the other is not.
If you disagree but don't say why, I can only assume that you think that for some unstated and perhaps unstateable reason, the interests of the species you happen to belong to count, but the interests of oither species you donlt belong to don't. This seems to me fundamentally irrational.
There is no rational justification possible of foundational moral stances.
1. The equation of being capable of forming "interests" with sentience is totally unjustified and probably unjustifiable. Having an interest requires not only sentience but self-awareness. Almost no animals beside humans exhibit conduct consistent with attributing to them self-awareness.
2. Not all animals are sentient even. Insects for one are not. Do you think it is morally acceptable to eat crickets?
Quoting Herg
Is not a fact.
If it's a foundational moral stance for you, no rational justification of it is possible.
Someone could just as easily say, "What makes an action moral, in the end, is that it adversely affects the interests of a being that is capable of having interests."
That wouldn't be a fact, either.
Objectively, it would be on an even playing field with your stance.
It is because generally speaking animals are not ethical creatures, they are not moral agents. You are basing morality off of suffering, rather than moral agency. I do not.
Sorry, I lost track of who I have been interacting with on this topic and thought you and I had been over that already. Have you read the rest of my posts concerning this topic?
What is your foundational stance? I understand you are describing how people operate within the moral sphere, but I want to know where you derive your moral foundation from.
That's the point I am making. It is not necessary to torture or kill a dog, just as it is not necessary to torture or kill a pig. Also, I did said both scenarios have torture within them. Did you not read?
Scenario 1: I torture and kill the dog. (animal slaughter house workers)
Scenario 2: I pay somebody else to torture and kill the dog. (consumers who pay the animal slaughter house workers to do their dirty work)
Quoting S
I didn't ask about what 'we' as a society think about it. I am ask you directly. It seems many people on this thread do not want to answer for themselves, but instead answer on behalf of the society/world they live in. I want to know if pleasure and convenience is worth the torture and death of innocent sentient beings? (From your personal perspective)
Hypothetical scenarios are brought to the table to display an inconsistency or contradiction within one's moral view. And again, you still did not answer my question, so I will ask again.
If there was a demand for turning cats, dogs and severe mentally disabled humans into produce, would you find that morally right? This isn't too far off from what the Nazi's did to Jews, or what slavery did to black people. The point is, unjust discrimination against a group of people or animals.
You still have not expressed what your own views are, and I am not sure why. You are just explaining what societies have thought throughout our history, and how they operate. I am still waiting for you to tell me how you determine a bad action from a good action. Not how society determines that. I want to know how YOU (personally) determine that.
Also, cannibals can kill a human against their will, and claim that is a source of nutrition that is rightfully theirs. Would you grant cannibals the same right as you are granting meat eaters?
The vast majority of humans already know what mistreatment is. We have put up laws against animal cruelty, especially regarding dogs or cats. There's a massive sense of cognitive dissonance here, where you can understand why a dog needs love and affection, but not why a pig would need the same thing.
Slavery was a "current" thing a few hundred years ago. And imagine a person like me, being opposed to slavery. And telling you that we should not mistreat people, just because of their skin color. And you would respond and tell me, "when all such mistreatment will be a thing of the past. As it stands, presently, there isn't enough justification for it. So the best we can have is some people being against slavery while the rest persist with the slave ownership."
Survival, because both sentient beings have a will to live.
But from what you are saying, you don't care about a human's will to live? Or do you not care about an animal's will to live? If you care about one, but not the other, what distinction are you making to create that difference in separation?
That is the point I'm trying to make. The laws we enact are dependent upon our interaction but not on some fundamental equality for all animals. We decide according to what suits us and that makes it just as selfish and inconsiderate as can be. I am yet to see comprehensive impartial efforts for animal justice.
And do you think this is how it should be? That we should base laws on our interaction instead of equality? This is what slave owners thought a few hundred years ago. They based their laws on interactions with black people, and not on some fundamental equality for all humans.
You, again, keep answering for society. Answer for yourself. Do you believe that laws should be based on equality, fairness and justness? If so, should we extend animal cruelty laws to other animals (such as pigs), and not just dogs or cats?
I've already given you my personal views. As to society, is there individual/personal equality? The laws of equality are for the collective whole. What does it matter if I'm the most compassionate/cruel being within a society of people contrary to myself? It's not just about being right as an individual, it's about helping others develop the capacity to be right.
Your opinions are decent but society isn't waiting for an individual to make decisions for them. Animals will have equality when enough of the individuals in the society are capable of perceiving them as equals. So, the question becomes, "how do we develop that capacity in others?"
As investigations into the nature of animals advance, we realise more and more how much they are like humans in terms of social needs and capacities. In this way, we learn that we can give them more consideration in terms of compassion, comfort, discipline/training, etc. This is why domestic animals which are primarily kept for companionship get the first taste of decent treatment. Because of their proximity to humans, their nature is more readily evident than that of others. Unfortunately, as a human collective, we're still slow to progress and not even one sincere man's appeal for expedition will change that.
Quoting Mentalusion
The relevant distinction is the ability to feel pleasure or pain. If plants can feel pleasure or pain, then, other things being equal, we should not eat them.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Appealing to intuition is copping out. Much as if you claimed that God had told you something was right or wrong.
Quoting Mentalusion
Not true. I take my dog to the vet to be inoculated because it's in his best interests. Having interests is nothing to do with having self-awareness.
Quoting Terrapin Station
The foundation for morality is that, other things being equal, pleasure is by its nature good, and pain is by its nature bad. This is why almost everyone seeks pleasure and tried to avoid pain; if subjectivism were true, attachment of the labels 'good' and 'bad' to pleasant experiences and painful experiences would be random, and people and animals wouldn't care whether they experience pleasure or pain; but this isn't the case.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Of course they could say this, but that wouldn't mean that they weren't making a mistake in saying it. I could say either, "The sun is larger than the moon" or "The moon is larger than the sun", but the fact that I can say either of these doesn't mean that neither of them is factually correct.
Quoting DingoJones
You don't get to choose what to base morality on. That's the subjectivist error again - see my answer to Terrapin above.
No cop out, that's what morality is.
Quoting Herg
If you're going to argue against a view, you need to understand the view and not just present a straw man version of it, because when you only present a straw man version, the people you're arguing against are only going to think that you're inattentive (and unconcerned about it), or dishonest, or an idiot, and that's not going to persuade anyone.
Subjectivism doesn't posit or imply anything about randomness.
"pleasure by its nature is good" is at best a stipulative tautology about how one is going to use using the word "pleasure," and it doesn't tell us anything about morality.
No stance is going to be everyone's foundational moral stance, by the way.
Although you seem to be advocating for Veganism, and I am on your side on that point, I also will recognize that morality is completely subjective at its core. The baseline axiom of any moral system is subjective.
For example. Let's have a mini-back n' forth here. You seem to be basing your moral actions on whether or not a being can suffer, is this correct? If so, you have put value into actions that avoid causing suffering. I would then ask you, why do you value actions that avoid causing suffering? You would then probably say, "because suffering is bad." - In which I would ask, why is suffering bad? You would then have to finally acknowledge, suffering is bad because it is bad. Or you may say, suffering is bad, because it causes pain. But then I would go one level deeper, and ask why causing pain is bad. You would then have to give your subjective axiom.
Facepalm. Yes, I am familiar with your views in that regard. What I meant is, why would it be necessary to torture the dog for the purpose of attaining its skin to make shoes, as you seem to have suggested? That part seems superfluous to me. Couldn't it just be killed?
Quoting chatterbears
Not in the relevant part of your opening post, you didn't. See for yourself:
Quoting chatterbears
You should have made that clearer from the outset. Why not go back and edit your opening post? It would only take a minute.
Quoting chatterbears
Did you? I read your opening post. I haven't read every single comment of yours over the seven pages of discussion, and I shouldn't really have to. It's your oversight.
Quoting chatterbears
Okay, so you've clarified. Now you just need to explain why torture would be necessary as a means to the end. My suspicion is that it isn't necessary in that respect, and in fact you know that it isn't necessary in that respect, but as it's a thing that happens in some places, you use torture as part of your argument in order to bolster it, even though it's actually quite misleading to do that. The truth is, if I want dog skin shoes, I could just shoot Bingo in the head and turn him into a lovely pair of loafers, without needing to subject him to waterboarding or lock him in a room with Justin Bieber playing on repeat. No torture required.
Quoting chatterbears
Then we're at cross purposes. I know exactly what you asked, and I told you my opinion that what you or I think doesn't really matter compared to the bigger picture, which I believe is better addressed with the kind of questions that I put to you.
You actually have not given me your personal views, at all. You have vaguely described them, followed by explaining what societies think and social norms. You have yet to provide me with something of your own personal perspective, regarding how you differentiate a good action from a bad action. Unless you are trying to tell me, you just follow along with whatever society is accepting of at the time? So if you were living 200 years ago, I presume you would be accepting of slavery and might even own slaves yourself? You wouldn't be part of the civil rights movement, or the women's march for their right to vote?
It does matter if you are more compassionate than the society you live in, because every person counts. The type of thinking that stops progress of a society, is the one you seem to be adopting. "Why should I enact change when society is overwhelmingly against my views?" - The more and more people who stop purchasing animal products, the less and less these products will be created and sold. Same goes for slavery and women's rights. The more people who stand up for the victims, the more likely it will be to succeed as a movement. Black people were the victims of slavery. Women were the victims of discrimination and had the inability to vote. Animals are the victims of torture and slaughter. What you believe and how you act, do matter. If you stop contributing to the animal agriculture industry, that's one less animal that has to die.
Quoting BrianW
Apparently you seem to be doing the opposite. You let society make decisions for you as the individual. You conform to the social norm. You aren't Vegan because society is overwhelmingly omnivorous. Right?
Quoting BrianW
You keep saying how selfish we are, but do you apply those beliefs into your own actions? Are planning on become Vegan, since it seems to me that you think it would be selfish not to, correct?
Torture isn't necessary, but that is what we do within the factory farming business. These animals are tortured before they are killed. But even in a slightly better scenario, where an animal is not torture, but is still killed against its own will, that is still the main issue. Torture is just icing on the cake of injustice.
Do you think it is morally good to kill an innocent being that does not want to die?
Quoting S
And you still haven't answered. I'll try asking one last time, Is pleasure and convenience is worth the death of innocent sentient beings?
We are in a philosophy forum, where answering questions seems to be the least valued concept within it. Very odd...
I'm more interested in what can actually be done to solve what you clearly see as a problem, whereas you seem to be more interested in bickering over whether it's right or wrong: an activity which seems increasingly pointless the more that I think about it.
I am not trying to give you a lecture. I am trying to understand what you personally believe. I don't care what society currently believes, because I already know about that. I am in this forum to talk to people directly, not people who speak for society as a whole. I want to know your personal views. Because if your views are inconsistent and do not line up with your actions, that's the first step. How could I lecture you, when I don't even know what your actual views are. And even if I did, I would continue to ask questions. A lecture does not involve this much questioning and back n' forth. I am here to have a discussion, not inject a sermon.
I believe the following, from my previous posts, suffice as personal views:
Quoting BrianW
Quoting BrianW
Quoting BrianW
Quoting BrianW
Quoting BrianW
Quoting chatterbears
I am vegan in a predominantly 'omni-canivorous' society. How is that conforming? In somethings I conform, in others I don't.
I seek harmony with my environment. Part of that is understanding what it is, how it is, why it is, etc. I know I can't change anything by trying to use rationale that is not familiar. The way to make people take better care of animals is by showing them how animals are a significant (in terms of equality) part of their community. For example, how would you convince christians that it is wrong to kill animals for food when their religious teachings contrast that?
What I'm saying is there is a way and a time in which the results we aim for unfold. If one is going to accomplish something one better recognise what they're working with. It is wasteful to expect more from a situation than what can be achieved.
I'm curious as to whether anything [I]can[/I] be done, practically speaking, and without the use of force. Call me cynical, but it just seems to me that there will always be people like me, and that your cause, whether noble or otherwise, might in reality be a forlorn hope. And it's for that reason that I don't think that it really matters whether or not I answer your question in the way that you want me to. I'm only one person. Good luck changing the world.
Anyway, I do think that it's kind of wrong, as I have revealed to you in a past discussion. Yet, lo and behold! My behaviour has remained, and continues to remain, unchanged, and it may well remain unchanged until the day that I die.
As for your point about inconsistency, even if you can tie me down on an inconsistency, people can continue their lives with that knowledge and yet remain fairly content. I may be one of those people for all you know. It's a matter of what your values and priorities are, what you can or can't live with. Sometimes it's not even really an option. What if I were gay, but being gay conflicted with my morals? If I couldn't bring myself to abandon my morals, then it could come down to a choice of being consistent and unhappy or inconsistent and happy. Which would you choose? In some respects, my life choices reflect a life motivated by pleasure seeking and contentment over and above the life of some sort of noble sage. And yet, in spite of all of this, I can still sleep at night. I'm not racked with guilt. I'm not burdened with regrets. I like animals, but then I also like the taste of meat. ¯\_(?)_/¯
Strictly speaking, I'm not vegan. I practice a form of dietary 'ahimsa', that is, I feed in such a way that my habits do not cause harm to others. I eat plant-based food, milk and eggs. (The eggs are a rare delicacy since I'm mildly allergic to them.)
Unfortunately, I feed my cats meat in combination with plant-based diet. This is because I think it would be wrong of me to subject the cats to my way of nutrition when theirs is a little different.
But you do? You have decided suffering is the basis for morality, how is that different? You discovered it written into the code of the universe by god or what?
I am not a subjectivist, but only a fool thinks morality is anything other than a human creation for humans. There is just no foundation for it to be otherwise. Its amazing to me when someone has the audacity to essentially say “my made up moral basis is legit, but your made up moral basis is not.”
Morality is something we decide to create. Once we decide to create it, then we can refer to reason to create an objective standard for it. Im really couldnt care less where you think your moral basis comes from, as long as it and the resulting moral
System make sense.
In a thread discussing the eating of meat - it's not entirely surprising you know I eat meat. But I didn't start this thread. And I didn't start a thread with a question; and then answer every post telling people what the answer is. The title might have read 'our dominion over animal is unethical' - a statement of position, that would at least have been honest.
It's in that context one has to wonder why: "I have never met a vegetarian - I only later discovered was a vegetarian." I imagine I'm about averagely sympathetic, so I cannot believe that there are people in the world - so incredibly sympathetic, it's for that reason alone they are compelled to moralize to everyone they encounter. Like the question at the top of this thread, I don't believe it's honest.
Now add to that, the fact that nature is red in tooth and claw. In nature, animals eat eachother alive. How can vegetarians possibly accept that fact - when moralizing in the way they do? They don't - they live in some fantasy world, where the lion lays down the lamb - so to speak. Again, it's dishonest.
And this leads to the question of ethics. Ethics is not a simple matter. i.e. farming involves suffering. Suffering is wrong. Therefore farming is unethical. That's false. Ethics is a system of moral values that play out in relation to the real world. So, if the title were 'our dominion over animals is unethical' - that position would have to account for all the relevant and related factors; not least, human sustenance and industry.
There's no attempt to address those factors here - and this is a philosophy forum. It's not a chat forum. My interest here is ethics. The subject matter, is to my mind - a workable example. Only there's no work - there's just some bleeding heart pretense as a claim to moral superiority. It's dishonest, and that is unethical!
So it's not a moral thing, I'm just hate having to do any work to prepare my food to eat. (I don't cook either, by the way. The most I'd do if I were on my own is throw something into the microwave.)
It seems to me the attribution of interests in this case is an anthropomorphic displacement to your dog of YOUR understanding of interest and what the dog's interest might be. The dog itself is not "interested" in doing anything. It behaves purely on instinct. If there were no humans around to conceptualize interest, animals would have none in a state of nature, and I do not think it makes sense to term purely instinct based behavior "interested."
Further, it seems to me that at some level the only interests being served are your own since you have made the decision to keep a domesticated animal. You don't take the dog to the vet to further its interests (since it doesn't have any). Ultimately, you take it to the vet to further your own interest in wanting to continue to derive whatever pleasure the company of an animal companion brings you. I mean, the dog would never take itself to vet so I don't see how it is possible to say that that is in its interest if it's not a behavior it would ever engage aside from being forced to engage in it by a human. Generally, then, any interest it may have is derivative of and maybe even entirely constituted by YOUR interests.
The fact that we sometimes impose decisions on other humans on the grounds that it is "in their best interest" can't be used as an analogy for animals because when we do that for people, the implication is that the person for whom the decision is being made, for whatever reason, can not decide adequately for themselves what is in their best interest. This comes up most often in the case of the elderly or children who, respectively, have either lost or not fully developed the ability to reason about what their interests really are. In those cases, we decide for them in a way we think they would have decided were they not incapacitated in their decision making. When we decide for them in this way, though, there is some analogous subjective experience we can base our decision on because we believe that any reasonable person would want to promote their own interest. There are no analogous sets of experience we could look to in order to determine what animals interest really are since (1) they do not have the ability to deliberate about their decisions in the first place and (2) we have no way of reasonably believing what their experiences are like such that we could form a conception of what they take their interests to be.
However, the fact that animals are not capable of having interests doesn't necessarily implies that animals are not entitled to some moral agency. It is simply to say that you cannot assume that whatever moral claims may hold between humans will hold among humans and animals since the fact that they may have some claim to moral agency does not end the question. In particular, you can't assume that the moral prohibitions (if there really are any) against eating other humans necessarily apply to humans eating animals.
This is different from what you had said here
Quoting Herg
I supplied the emphasis here to draw attention to the gist of your original claim, the one I was responding to.
My argument responding to the original claim, which is not addressed in your subsequent post, was that
(1) Not all animals are sentient.
(2) If there are some non-sentient animals, a fortiori, they do not feel pain.
Consequently,
(3) if the claim that it is morally wrong to eat animals is completely grounded on the fact that they feel pain/pleasure, there is no moral reason for people to abstain from eating at least non-sentient animals.
In addition, even assuming your position is really that the morality of eating animals depends on pain/pleasure and assuming further that sentience necessarily entails the capacity for having pain/pleasure (a claim I don't think is true, but whatever), that still does not end the inquiry since, as I pointed out in another post on this thread in response to @chatterbears, a utilitarian ethicist can accept that animals feel pain/pleasure but still conclude that eating them is ethically allowed provided that any pain their slaughter causes is outweighed by the utility derived from products created as a result of that slaughter. That is, there is at least one ethical system where arguments that it is morally acceptable to eat meat can easily be formulated.
Maybe you reject utilitarianism. Fine. But then you will have to argue for (1) why that whole system is flawed and (2) why any proposed alternative system is justifiable before you starting arguing about the morality of eating animal meat. Otherwise your arguments will simply be aimed at cross purposes with a significant number of relevant moral agents, i.e. utilitarians. (I should point out that not all utilitarians agree that animal exploitation is justified from a utilitarian perspective. Peter Singer, for example, advocates utilitarian reasons for vegetarianism. I don't think that changes the fact that animal consumption can in theory be justified on utilitarian grounds.) The OP here was directed at the claim that there are no moral or ethical justifications for eating meat. I believe I have provided at least one such justification in the form of utilitarianism, making the absolute claim posited in the OP false. None of the posts have given me any reason to think otherwise at this point.
A secondary issue for the pain/pleasure position is that (1) it would be obsolete provided we implemented pain free methods of animal husbandry, which seems entirely possible and (2) since it only would prevent a person from causing an animal pain in order to exploit the resulting meat for consumption, it does not absolutely prohibit humans from eating meat provided they were not the ones who caused the pain. That is, there would be no moral prohibition against eating fresh road kill, for example, or scavenging the meat freshly felled by other animals. In other words, even if pain/pleasure is what made animals relevant moral agents, that would not form the basis for an absolute moral prohibition against eating meat. Consequently, there is no universal justification for strict vegetarianism.
I already answered this. I told you, depending on what your moral system dictates, you can ignore it if you want to. If you don't care about an animals will to live, then don't. Hitler didn't care about the Jew's will to live, but I wouldn't say he had a logically consistent moral system.
You also failed to answer my questions to you in my last reply to you. Do you care about a human's will to live? Or do you not care about an animal's will to live? If you care about one, but not the other, what distinction are you making to create that difference in separation?
To me personally, this isn't the interesting question because I already agree with your sentiments (though I did kill a roach today). To me the more interesting question is not moral but tactical, what is the most effective way to share this understanding?
Plants could be considered sentient. Life eats life. Can't live off of air and saliva.
Quite simple. Religious people are the easiest targets for ethical inconsistency. The bible condones slavery, yet they don't think slavery is morally acceptable. They will then tell you, "slavery was condoned back then, not for today's era." - I can follow up and say, how do you know eating animals was condoned back then, but also for today's era, yet slavery is not?
Religious people pick and choose which verses they should abide by, in which the core concept of "follow the bible" becomes completely contradictory.They will follow the 10-commandments, which are in the old testament. Yet when you point out another law in the old testament, such as killing homosexuals, they will say, "I don't follow that law because that was the old testament." - But when you point out their inconsistent ethics, they are stuck, and try their best to rationalize their illogical stance.
The arguments work for humans because it's clear that we're equal. That is not the same for animals, hence the current inconsistencies.
This is the core problem. This is how slavery existed for hundreds of years, because people were content with their inconsistency. It is how women didn't have the right to vote up until recently, because people were content with their inconsistencies. People feel ok discriminating against others, acknowledging their inconsistency on the basis for doing so, and continue to discriminate.
Also, if being gay conflicted with your morals, you'd have to evaluate your moral system and allow it to align with your beliefs, in which you would then be consistent AND happy. Anybody who is gay that is conflicted, has been brought up religious. Where the bible believers have ingrained the value of "being gay is wrong" into you. You would then have to evaluate why being gay is wrong according to religious teachings. Is it based on authority? (follow whatever the bible says?) In that case, you'd have to also condone slavery, genocide, misogyny, etc... But once you figure out that the way you feel about your sexual preference is not immoral, but instead, the teachings you were given from a biblical perspective are the actual problem, you can live a life without the need to worry. Especially when looking at the science, since homosexuality occurs in nature in many other species of animal.
Also, you seem like a person who lacks empathy and focuses on selfish desires. Which is not surprising, because a vast majority of people are like that. As you said, you like animals, but you also like the taste of animal flesh. Despite this being in conflict with your values, you will continue to do it anyways because you value convenience and pleasure over the life of another being. A slave owner could justify his actions by saying something very similar. "I like humans, but then I also like the convenience of owning slaves.
People can claim that we are equal, but majority of people don't even believe that about their own species. Why do you think so many people are against immigration in the US? They don't care about other people's struggles or what they have to go through. Or the fact that people's countries are so awful, that they need to flee from it and come to the US. Go back 100 years, women didn't have the right to vote. Go back even further, black people were owned as property. You really think it is "clear" that we are equal? We tell ourselves that, but it is far from the truth.
But even if it were the case, that humans only treat other humans well, but not other animals, why is that? They would have to provide a justification for why one sentient being is deserving of life, and another sentient being is not.
Utility.
Some animals are bred for food, some for companionship, some for work, etc.
And by the same "utility" standards, could I not justify slavery by saying "Some humans are bred into slavery (black people), some for companionship (white people), etc..."
If there's a utility in animal agriculture (which causes harm to the environment, our health and the animals themselves), then there should be a utility in owning humans as property (this only causes harm to the humans [slaves] themselves).
"Utility" isn't a justification for why one sentient being is valued over another. That fails on multiple levels.
Would you accept "laziness" as a justification to harm another human or animal?
- I am lazy, therefore I own a human slave to do the hard work for me.
- I am lazy, therefore I will eat in a way that takes the least amount of effort, despite what harm it causes.
If your response is, "I wouldn't condone laziness if it harms a human, but I would condone it if it harms an animal." - What distinction, between animals and humans, are you making, in which the same action would justify doing it to animals, but not humans?
What is the most effective way to share an understanding of how not to rape? Or how not to steal? Or how not to kill a child? It's quite simple. Recognize that another sentient life should be valued. But if you want to discriminate against that life, you can take whatever action you want, right?
The ironic part about the entire premise of veganism is, many people who reject it are the same ones who have been discriminated against themselves. Black people, who endured horrible things like slavery and constant discrimination even to this present day. They can recognize oppression within their own group, but cannot recognize it within another group, such as animals. In the same way a white man was brought up to believe that black men are inferior to him, humans (in general) were brought up to believe that animals are inferior to them.
You were asked to sign-in due to an age limitation, as YouTube wants to make sure you're old enough to watch that graphic material.
Do plants have a nervous system? Pain receptors? Nerve endings? A brain to process pain? As far as we know, they do not have any characteristic that would conclude an ability to feel and/or process pain. But even if you want to take the ridiculous stance of, "Plants have feelings too." - It takes 14 lbs of plants to create 1 lb of meat. By going Vegan, you are also contributing to less plant "deaths", since humans would not need to consume as many plants as animals would. Majority of the plants in the world are fed to farm animals. We could save those plants by ending animal agriculture.
Will to live = Does not want to die.
Deer in the wild, flee from danger. A zebra runs away from a lion so it does not get eaten. It has a will to live. If I put a hot iron up to my dogs head, she will yelp in pain and try her best to get away from that iron. Every animal on this earth, has the will to live. AKA, they want to survive and avoid pain. Animals want to avoid suffering and pain, just as humans do.
Quoting ?????????????
It seems to be a common theme that two-way discussions in a philosophy forum aren't valued. You only want to explore my moral stance, but not answer or acknowledge any questions or points in your direction?
Now that you know what "will to live" means, do you care about an animal's or human's will to live? If you care about one, but not the other, what distinction are you making to create that difference in separation?
Would you say that there could be a difference between accepting someone else proposing something (y, say) as a justification (for x, say) and yourself feeling that that x is justifed by y? (I'm asking because I want to understand just what you're asking me--I can't really answer until I understand the idea you're getting at.)
At any rate, by the way, as I've expressed many times, NO non-moral stance can justify any moral stance.
In general, you keep bringing up "justification(s)," but I don't talk about justifications when it comes to morality, and I don't think it really makes a whole lot of sense to talk about them, except as another way of saying that someone has whatever moral stances they do. I see justifications as good reasons to believe that something is the case, but when we're talking about morality, we're not talking about anything that's the case. We're talking about ways that people feel.
All humans are, presently, believed to have free-will as part of the equality package. This means that, unlike animals, humans get to determine their circumstances.
While we have a tendency to govern animals by their utility, we are building momentum where we govern humans by choice.
What I'm asking you, all activists, to do is to investigate whether a bias for moralistic finger pointing is interfering with clear thinking. Moralistic finger pointing can be quite emotionally satisfying to the finger pointer, and it's reasonable to take such a distracting agenda in to account. Moralistic finger pointing tends to build rejection in those who are the target of the finger pointing.
What I've suggested above is that the most rational and effective course may be to identify those who have already decided to become vegetarians, and help them make the transition as easy as possible. When I first became a vegetarian many years ago I thought that meant buying frozen peas from the grocery store. True story! :smile: I needed help obviously, and was lucky to be in an environment where I got that help. Everybody does't have such help available, and may easily return to what they already know if they don't get it.
This is a philosophy forum, we're supposed to question everything, eh?
We also share genes with bacteria, but I wouldn't say that matters in the realm of moral actions. I asked if plants have a brain to process pain. To process pain, you need nerve endings and pain receptors, which plants do not have. Unless you want to provide me with some scientific data saying otherwise?
But as I already said before. By going Vegan, you are saving more plants as well.
Quoting Anthony
All rape porn watchers should have to rape their own human, if they continue to watch rape porn afterward, they're alright with me. Very sound logic here...
Quoting Anthony
Yes, so would you agree that people who buy animal products are contributing to the cruelty? Meaning, they are largely responsible for what happens to these animals.
You keep getting hung up on synthetics, when I have already explained to you before what I meant by "justification". For you, I will refrain from using any complex words, and instead just break the idea down. So let me rephrase the question multiple times.
- Would you accept "laziness" as a good reason to harm another human or animal?
- Do you believe that "laziness" is a good way to go about making moral decisions?
- Each of us engage into moral decision making. Do you think a person should make moral decisions on the basis of "laziness"?
For you, laziness is a good basis for moral decisions. Because you have stated, you commit actions due to laziness, regardless of if those actions cause harm to another living being. You wouldn't eat meat, including fish, if you had to kill and prepare it for yourself. But since you don't have to kill it or prepare it for yourself, you are okay eating it, which contributes to the killing (harm) of these living creatures.
That's irrelevant to the point. Years ago, black people were believed to NOT have free-will as part of the equality package. This meant that, LIKE animals, black people did NOT get to determine their circumstances.
Just because times have changed, doesn't change the problem. Instead of black people in slavery, it is now animals. Well, animals were slaves back then too, but I am referring to how you are constructing this point.
If you lived 200 years ago, you'd be saying this:
- All white people are, presently, believed to have free-will as part of the equality package. This means that, unlike black people, white people get to determine their circumstances.
Present day:
- All humans are, presently, believed to have free-will as part of the equality package. This means that, unlike animals, humans get to determine their circumstances.
All you did is replace black people with animals, yet the argument still fails. This still displays excessive discrimination against another set of living beings, whether black humans or animals, doesn't matter. The unjust treatment of people or living things, shouldn't exist and we should not support it.
Quoting BrianW
There is less utility in animal agriculture than there was in black slavery. Utilitarianism leads to Veganism, not away from it. Veganism benefits the world more than non-Veganism. Health, environment, and the animals themselves.
Regards
John
There will be a story on NPR tomorrow about meat products grown in a lab. It's real meat, but no animals involved. I'm guessing you know more about this that most of us, so I'd be interested in your understandings and opinion.
My very basic understanding, hopefully somewhat correct, is that they do in the lab just what an animal does, start with plant material, and turn it in to meat.
What do you know about this?
Yes, but slavery is on another level. You might think otherwise, but you haven't convinced me otherwise, and I doubt you will be able to.
Quoting chatterbears
Yes. But for me, neither slavery nor female suffrage poses the challenge that the consumption of animal products does. I'm not torn between wanting to keep slaves or prevent women to vote and feeling that it's kind of wrong.
Quoting chatterbears
Yes. And...? I'm not one of those people, or at least I try not to be, unless you're including animals, in which case, yes, I treat other animals differently to humans, because they [I]are[/I] different. I acknowledge that inconsistency is a problem, but, depending on the context and how it is judged, how big of a problem it's considered to be will vary. You think that it's a bigger problem than I do with regards to this topic.
Quoting chatterbears
No, that's an option in the hypothetical scenario. I told you that the person can't bring themselves to abandon their morals, and yet their morals are incompatible with living a lifestyle in which they'd be happy. Not living this lifestyle makes the person miserable, or at best feeling like they're stuck in a situation where they're left unfulfilled.
Your response is rather like me telling you that you have to evaluate your moral system and allow it to align with the consumption of animal products. Everyone has their red lines, and in the thought experiment, this is one of them.
Quoting chatterbears
No, not necessarily.
Quoting chatterbears
Maybe that's true, but you don't have enough of a basis to make that judgement if you're making it based on this one issue. If I lack empathy and focus on selfish desires, based solely on my views on this one topic, then that's no more true of me than of the average person. The average person is a meat eater, and is likely similarly conflicted, at least when they think about it.
Quoting chatterbears
Oh, you accept that. Okay.
Quoting chatterbears
It's not all about values. An urge isn't a value. A desire isn't a value. A craving isn't a value. An impulse isn't a value. A conditioned behaviour or a habit isn't a value. A persons ability to change their behaviour isn't a value.
And besides, nothing is set in stone. I think I could change. Especially since I can see things from your point of view and am not wholly unsympathetic towards that way of looking at things. But yeah, I haven't changed enough to stop consuming animal products since the last time we had this discussion a while back. If it was as easy as clicking your fingers, then I would probably become a vegan. But it ain't that easy. What might seem to be the most ethical thing to do isn't necessarily the best thing for a person to do. My happiness is important, and selflessness has its downsides.
Quoting chatterbears
The above shows that ethics/morality is determined by popular consensus within a particular sphere of interaction. This means that, in some places, cultures, governments, etc, it was ethical/moral to practice slavery while in others it was not. Remember, even in those african communities, there was a lot of discrimination and denial of certain rights and freedoms. Just because they were enslaved by others doesn't mean they were ideal humans in themselves.
If by being ethical/moral you are asking if certain actions are ideal (perfect), then no human activity or choices are ethical/moral. There are no ideal humans.
Yet, even then when humans were relatively more ignorant compared to now, they still had edicts of ethics/morality. So, right now, is dominion over animals unethical? No. That's the way it is. I know it is not something others would approve but they don't get to decide ethics/morality for everyone else.
At best, the dominion over animals is unethical/immoral for those who believe animals deserve equal treatment to humans. This is because they have created their own sphere of interaction in which such dominion is unethical/immoral. However, other humans have other spheres of interaction in which such dominion is not. For them, even as they refine their treatment of animals according to certain values, they maintain their dominion.
So, do you think your rules of ethics/morals applies to everyone indiscriminately? Absolutely not.
You (or any other individual) don't get to determine ethics/morality for others. Every person determines their own ethics/morality or, at least, the sphere of interaction they belong to for the collective ethics/morality of a given group of humans (country, culture, religion, field of study, trend, etc).
https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2017/jul/24/lab-grown-food-indiebio-artificial-intelligence-walmart-vegetarian
Some quotes from the article:
I actually didn't say anything about that. In the post about laziness, in fact, I explicitly said, "Not for any ethical reasons."
For me, re metaethics, the only basis there is for morality, at least foundationally, is how someone feels about interpersonal behavior. It's not a good or bad basis. It's just factually the basis.
As I've said again and again, no non-moral stance, fact, etc. can imply any moral stance.
"Laziness" isn't a moral stance. Hence "laziness" can imply no moral stance.
No, because they are caring for the child who has special needs. This is the opposite of unethical. If our dominion over animals was anything remotely close to the parents dominion over their DS child, this discussion wouldn't exist. The fact is, we use our dominion over animals to exploit them, torture them, rape them, and slaughter them. Do any of those heinous acts exist within the parents of the DS child?
Not much, as it is still in the research & development stage. Right now, there are plant based "burgers" out there, such as Beyond Meat or The Impossible Burger. I eat The Impossible Burger regularly, and it tastes quite good.
Slavery with humans is on another level than slavery with animals, why? Both humans and animals (cows/chickens/pigs) can experience pain. Both can suffer and have the will to live. Why are you okay with one being suffering but not another? Superiority? Speciesist?
Quoting S
Yet the people who did condone slavery a few hundred years ago, are using the same logic you are in regards to animal consumption. Animals (black people) are inferior. Animals (black people) aren't as intelligent. You'd reject this logic for humans, but accept this for animals. Why?
Quoting S
Are you actually going to explain why animals should be treated differently to humans, in regards to not violating their will to live and torturing them? All you have said is, "they are different." - Well, that explains nothing. I could go up to a slave owner and ask, Why are you treating black people this way, but not white people? And he could use your response, "They are different."
Quoting S
Yes, I know indoctrination is a real thing, which usually stems from religious teachings. It will take a lot of discussion and evaluating your ethics, but they won't be stuck.
Quoting S
If you want to tell me why eating animal products is morally correct, I'd be happy to change my mind and re-align my ethics. So far, all you have said it, "Animals are different, therefore it is ok to enslave, torture, rape and kill them."
Quoting S
Yes, I'd say majority of people lack empathy. We can't even treat each other with compassion, let alone another species (chickens/pigs/cows/etc...)
As you said, you like animals, but you also like the taste of animal flesh. Despite this being in conflict with your values, you will continue to do it anyways because you value convenience and pleasure over the life of another being. — chatterbears
Quoting S
You: I like animals, but I like the taste of their flesh.
Greg: I like humans, but I like the feeling of when I rape them.
I could then tell Greg, you say you like animals, but you also like the feeling of raping them. Despite this being in conflict with your values (liking humans), you will continue to do it anyways because you like the feeling. Therefore, you value "pleasure" over the rights and pain of a human being.
Every action you take, whether that is an urge, desire, craving or impulse, has a value to it within your mind. I desire dessert, but I am not going to eat dessert made from cow or human flesh, because I value the lives of cows and humans more than my desire to eat dessert. You, on the other hand, do not value an animal's life over your desire/impulse/pleasure...
Quoting S
Now you value your happiness over the suffering of an animal? As you said, it is important, meaning you value it. A lot of things make me happy, but let me put it to you this way.
Situation 1: It would make me happy to buy a new belt.
Option A: Buy a belt made of cow skin (leather)
Option B: Buy a belt made from plants
Situation 2: It would make me happy to eat in a convenient manner.
Option A: Buy food made from animal flesh.
Option B: Buy food made from plants.
If I have two options, why would I choose the option that causes the most harm. If one is essentially cruelty free, while the other option is directly linked to a torture and death, why would I not choose the cruelty free option?
People say veganism is too hard. But let me give you another example.
Situation 1: Animals are being enslaved, tortured, raped, forced to live in their own waste, and killed.
Situation 2: Humans are being enslaved, tortured, raped, forced to live in their own waste, and killed.
Right now we are in situation 1, in which you are saying becoming vegan is not easy, therefore it is morally justified in continuing to support the factory farming industries.
If we were in situation 2, would you still say the same thing? If I talked to you and say, there's a cruelty-free option, that doesn't contribute to the torture, rape and death of humans, would you not switch over to that option immediately? Or would you say, "If it was as easy as clicking your fingers, I would do it."
This comes back to the core point you still haven't answered. Why do you put a higher value on human rights than animal rights? And I am not referring to the right to vote or the right to drive. I am talking about the right to freedom and the right to life. The most basic rights we give humans because we know that they have the ability to suffer, and don't want to cause them unnecessary pain.
You seem to be very confused here. Let's back track a bit...
You first said it is clear that humans are equal, and it is not the same for animals, hence the current inconsistencies. You then said the current justification for animal slaughter is utility, followed by saying "some animals are bred for food, some for companionship, some for work, etc..."
I then replied and told you, the same could be said about slaves. Some humans are bred into slavery (black people), some for companionship (white people), etc...
You then replied with, "morals/ethics are determined by popular consensus." - As I have said endless amounts of times on this thread, I don't care about what you think society believes about morality. I want to know what YOUR personal beliefs are, in regards to ethics/morals. I never said humans are perfect or ideal, but humans should have a consistent moral system. So here are a few questions.
1. Do you think eating animals is morally justified? Meaning: Do you think it is okay to eat animals?
2. If so, what reason do you use to justify that action?
I don't want an answer for society and how the world operates. I want to know what you personally believe.
Quoting BrianW
So, it is your personal view that our dominion over animals is unethical? If so, why? It seems you are just following whatever the currently societal norm is, is this correct? Do you not think for yourself, and just blindly follow whatever society condones at the time? If you were in the time of slavery 200 years ago, would you have said it is not unethical to have dominion over black people, since that is what society dictates?
Quoting BrianW
Again, you are answering for other humans. I want to know about your personal subjective beliefs. I don't care what other humans are doing. I am in this forum to talk to people directly, not to talk about other people.
Quoting BrianW
I never claimed that my rules of ethics apply to everyone. I agree, that every person determines their own ethical system, but it needs to be logically consistent. A person's ethical stance cannot be as follows:
- Humans should not be owned as property.
- I own black people as slaves.
There is a logical contradiction here, in which the person claims that humans should be treated with equality, yet he owns slaves. Irrespective of what my view on slavery is, this person is contradicting themselves within their own ethical framework.
So, this is the idea. Veganism is a logical extension of whatever ethical system you already have put in place. If your ethics are logically consistent, they will ultimately lead to Veganism. There are rare cases of people who will have logically consistent ethics, but instead of leading to Veganism, they lead to the dismantling of human rights in some form. So you only have two options: Veganism or Human Rights Degradation.
Let's actually talk about your morality. Why is it not unethical to exploit animals for food, clothing, entertainment, etc...?
How would you answer that question for yourself?
Quoting SapereAude
The flyswatter is not a predator. It is a weapon/tool used by a predator (human). The human could let the fly live by allowing it to go outside. There may be a practical use in killing a fly or insect (such as a mosquito), because of some disease it may spread. At that point, it is about survival and not getting transferred some deadly disease or bacteria. But all of this is far removed from what we do to farm animals. Cows/chickens/pigs/turkeys, server no threat to us. They are gentle creatures who have done no wrong, yet we exploit, rape, torture and slaughter them by the billions every year.
Quoting SapereAude
That's the point of this thread, aside from your plants comment. Plants don't have a nervous system, nor do they have pain receptors or a brain to process pain. Farm animals, can process pain, similar to us humans. Therefore, why would it be okay to kill an animal for food, but not a human?
Is metaethics the only thing you understand about ethics? And I am not asking in a rude way, because I actually want to know. Do you understand there are different branches of ethics, such as normative ethics and applied ethics?
I've already agreed with you, that metaethics talk about the foundational beliefs for an ethical system, which is subjective. I am have been trying to talk to you for many posts now, about your normative ethics. I even asked you, how would you teach your kids right from wrong? (You still didn't answer that either).
Should I just stop asking you about your normative/applied ethics, so I don't waste my time anymore?
True.
But it can be as follows:
- Some humans should not be owned as property.
- Other humans could be owned as property.
- I own black people as slaves.
Which is how it was before we got a bit enlightened.
I think 'personal' ethics/morality is a misnomer, or better yet, an oxymoron. The very idea of ethics/morality is ingrained in the value of relationships or interactions with others. Even ideas such as mistreating oneself is based on the concept of a collective humanity which has certain values and standards and, to which, every human individual is expected to adhere to.
So, for me, the idea of a personal ethics/morality which is distinctly separate from that of all others does not compute. However, due to segregation of various collectives within the human whole, it becomes possible to have different standards of ethics/morality for the separated groups. Nonetheless, the ethics/morality applies to a collective.
Also, your initial question was about the ethics of 'our' dominion over animals. And, I've already given my personal opinions about that.
The problem here is that products like that don't taste that good to meat eaters. I like them, you like them, but we're already vegetarians.
No. But the metaethical facts I've been mentioning can't be just ignored when we're talking about ethics from any other angle.
Quoting chatterbears
I explained earlier that I don't do ethics by any sort of overarching principle, because I think that's a bad idea that always leads to ridiculous stances (like antinatalism, for example).
Quoting chatterbears
I didn't see you ask that. I don't believe that one can teach someone right and wrong. Right and wrong have to be a way that someone feels about behavior, and you can't teach someone (how) to feel. That doesn't mean that people aren't influenced, but just how they'll be influenced is unpredictable.
What I do is stress deliberative introspection, and stress that of course one's moral authenticity has to be balanced against the risks of bucking various societal norms. (For example, if one feels that it's morally permissible to commit murder, then one would need to balance acting in accord with that with the possible/probably social repercussions.)
- Some humans should not be raped.
- Other humans could be raped.
- I rape black people.
Do you accept that as well?
Also, it seems you will not answer the rest of the questions I had for you. Maybe you can answer these.
How would you define ethics?
How would you define personal ethics?
How do you differentiate between right and wrong?
Doesn't matter. If I created an artificial vagina that men could buy to deter them from raping women, would you accept their reasoning if they told you, "But this artificial vagina doesn't feel like the real thing. Therefore, I will go back to raping women."
An immoral action is immoral, irrespective of their rationalization to continue the behavior. Taste, convenience, laziness, etc.... They are all really bad excuses to continue an immoral action. I bet slave owners used the same excuses before they finally decided to act like human beings with compassion and empathy.
Also, small correct. I am Vegan, not vegetarian. Big difference there, in regards to what you are actually supporting. Vegetarians still support the dairy industry, which is arguably the most cruel of them all.
I've never ignored those facts. Matter of fact, I actually acknowledged the fact that ethics are derived from a subjective perspective, at the metaethical level.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I could say you have a ridiculous stance by refuses to take any stance at all in regards to having a normative perspective.
Quoting Terrapin Station
So if your son/daughter/friend/relative/etc.... committed murder, and told you about it, you would just say, "Ok no problem. Just make sure you don't get caught because you may encounter social repercussions." - Or what if we changed it from murder to rape? If your son/daughter/friend/relative/etc... raped somebody else, and told you about it, you wouldn't tell them it was 'wrong' to do?
Lastly. What if your son/daughter/friend/relative/etc... got raped themselves, and told you about it. Would you tell them, "Well, there's no such thing as right or wrong. And if the person who raped you thought it was right to do so, they have their reasons for that."
Sure. Different people think that different things are ridiculous (obviously).
Quoting chatterbears
I would tell them my view. Telling someone a moral view doesn't give them that moral view. One can only have a moral view when one feels some way or other about behavior. Telling someone something doesn't make them feel the way that you feel.
Quoting chatterbears
"There's no such thing as right or wrong" isn't actually my view, though. My view is that right and wrong are ways that people feel about interpersonal behavior. There definitely are such things. There definitely are ways that people feel about interpersonal behavior, so I wouldn't deny that there are.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Again, how would you respond to your daughter/friend/family member who has just been raped. Would you be supportive? Or would you say "if he felt right in his action to rape you, that's just his interpersonal behaviors."
What I am trying to get at here, is you must have some sort of mechanism you use to differentiate a good action from a bad action. You may (or may not) believe rape is a bad action, because of Reason A. I want to know what that Reason A actually is. Is that Reason A something such as, "causing harm to others"?
Ethics is not perfection.
If it were so, then those who are ethical would be perfect, no matter the period in time or circumstance. No humans are perfect. Ethics is aimed at harmonious relations/interactions. But, because circumstances change, then what resolves into harmony in one circumstance may not translate into another. For example, there was a time when a portion of humanity was okay with enslavement and inequality of others (this includes all forms of mistreatment, rape included) and it reflected in their associations, but, at present, that is not the case. And yet, in both of those periods, that humanity had ethical/moral guidelines. Your ethics/morality seems to ignore the learning curve. We can learn to be better but, knowledge does not just magically appear nor does it instantly manifest as action. It takes time and effort, and human history is evidence of that.
Humans (collectively) are doing what they think is best for themselves. At some point in the future, perhaps near or distant (relative to different communities), the ethics/morality you're referring to will become ingrained in all of humanity. At the moment, it is not. At the moment, it is not the ethics/morality of all humans.
I think what you asking is, if we, as a collective humanity, could revise our ethical/moral guidelines in a way that is more compassionate or less harmful to animals? I think it is possible. However, presently, not everybody shares the same concerns. And, no one has the right to impose their ethics/morality upon others.
Quoting chatterbears
The guidelines which define the practice of harmonious relations/interactions.
Quoting chatterbears
The ethical guidelines which a person follows.
Quoting chatterbears
Right is that which causes harmony and wrong is that which causes disharmony.
Ethics/morality is relative.
How do you mean “relative”?
I mean ethical/moral guidelines keep transforming just as we transform as a society.
Ah, I see. I would have called that subjective, relative sounds like they change depending on there position to one another....
How are my ethics ignoring a learning curve? We are a selfish species who was worse in the past, but we are still bad in the present day.
Quoting BrianW.
You are, again, talking about other people. From this point on, can you please refrain from talking about human ethics as a society, or what other people think. I want to know what YOU (BrianW) think. So as a follow up question to this point, are you Vegan?
Quoting BrianW
Follow up question. Harmony among the majority? Or harmony among everybody?
Example: Slavery caused harmony among the majority (white people). Does this mean slavery is right? If today in 2018, there was a culture out there that still practiced slavery, would you say it is "right" for that culture to do so, as long as it brings them harmony?
Sorry about that, I meant subjective.
Harmony/disharmony between the interacting parties.
Here's a link to my personal opinions:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/236145
No apology needed, I was just interested in hearing how that might work! Lol
Nonetheless, I still am not clear what you mean by harmony. So when you say, "between the interacting parties", you are referring to the slave and the slave owner, correct? Not, the slave owner and other slave owners.
Yes. Unfortunately, ethical/moral guidelines depend on the level of intelligence of the participants involved. What I mean is that, for slavery to come to an end, both parties (the slave owners and the slaves) had to realise what was wrong with their interactions. This is because, back then, just as now, there are those who readily accept the circumstances they're in without the proper forethought. This often results in people being okay with inequality, such that, there's appearance of harmony while the disharmony is masked in ignorance.
In the case of ignorance, ethics/morality should not be the foremost query, rather how the relevant information should be acquired. I think such is the case with the relation between humans and animals, or more specifically, the determination of the equality of animals.
"That's just the way he feels about interpersonal behavior." That's certainly true, but my feeling about it wouldn't be based on the rapist's feeling about it. My feeling about it is my own disposition, a factor of how my brain works, etc.
Quoting chatterbears
Yeah, how I feel about the behavior in question. That's the mechanism that everyone uses, whether they realize/admit it or not.
Quoting chatterbears
Once again, if it's "because of reason A," reason A would have to itself be a moral stance, because moral stances are not derivable from anything that's not a moral stance. I wouldn't say that "rape is bad" is based on another, more foundational, moral stance for me.
Re "I feel it is wrong to cause harm to others," once again, I don't use any sort of overarching principle approach to ethics, and I certainly don't endorse any general proscriptions of "harm," because that's too broad/vague in my view.
Yes. I'd say it's relative to individuals (as well as cultures re statistical cultural norms).
Not everyone uses that mechanism for “the behaviour in question”. One could adhere to a principal that they dont particularly feel like adhering to at this time but do so out of a dedication to their principals in general. Yes, you will argue that the “feelings” are still the basis for the dedication to the principal in the first place, but that isnt the same thing as their feelings on each behaviour/morals.
I assume you apply the same logic to mentally disabled people, who have the same intelligence level as animals. (depending on how far they are on the spectrum).
So what if a person is groomed to believe something, or indoctrinated. Women who claim they have choices in societies like the middle east, but more enlightened women know this is not the case. Do you apply the same logic to those people?
Yeah, I mean re how they feel about foundational ethical stances, and then they can reason on top of that, etc.--I'm just not going to spell all of that out every time I mention it.
I already think that the idea of human intelligence quantification is dubious, forget about intelligence quantification for other animals.
Why would you support a rape victim?
Quoting Terrapin Station
And what is your own disposition about rape?
Quoting Terrapin Station
You are again, going all the way down to the metaethical perspective. Yes, at the core of their belief, it is how they "feel" about it. But when they are putting normative and applied ethics into play, it is not a matter of how they "feel". Someone could base their actions on utilitarianism or consequentialism. This is separate from how they feel.
Level 2: I base my actions on consequentialism.
Level 1: I believe consequentialism is good.
You keep going down to the base level (level 1) when discussing these issues. I want to know what your Level 2 reasoning is. And if you say you don't have one, then maybe you need to read a bit more about ethics and the 3 tiers of an ethical system (metaethics, normative ethics, applied ethics)
Quoting Terrapin Station
You don't need an overarching principle to explain your normative ethical standpoint. It doesn't have to be a broad term such as consequentialism. But clearly you still have an idea in your head that governs your ability to discern right from wrong. And I want to know what that is, without you describing metaethics.
Maybe this question will clear up the rest of the discussion between you and I. Are you claiming that you do not hold any stance within normative or applied ethics? If so, then it seems clear that your ethical system is vastly incomplete.
This is the point I have been trying to address with Terrapin for a while now. He seems to be only addressing ethics from a meta perspective, without even acknowledging the normative or applied ethical realm, which is also very important and does in fact matter.
This is silly. But I understand your focus better now. You're not really interested in animals, but in ethics. Which your thread title does disclose, so the confusion was mine.
If you were interested in animals you'd get that fake meat products which aren't appealing to meat eaters are not advancing the cause of animal rights.
I didnt suggest you should, just that you shouldnt make an erroneous claim about the mechanism “everyone uses, whether they realize/admit it or not”. The fact that reason can be at play rather than someone's feelings in a specific moral case/behaviour is a direct contradiction to the case by case claims you make any time you are “discussing” morality on this forum (in my observation anyway, im still relatively new).
It isnt very important to him, nor does it in fact matter to him. His moral views preclude your inclusion of them, and your attempts to hold him (or anyone else with such views) to those standards are doomed to fail. Im not sure why you fail to understand this considering you have admitted a subjective basis for morality already. His subjective basis is different than yours, and his measures are therefore different as well.
Because I'm morally against rape. That's a foundational stance for me. Not a stance built on another moral stance.
Quoting chatterbears
What you're looking for re "an idea in your head that governs your ability to discern right from wrong" is some sort of overarching principle, a la "it is wrong to hurt others" or "it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering." That's not the way I approach ethics. I don't think those sorts of approaches are a good idea.
Re normative ethics, Encyclopedia Britannica, says, for example, "The central question of normative ethics is determining how basic moral standards are arrived at and justified."
The way that basic moral standards are arrived at is what I keep explaining, and as I noted earlier, I consider justification a category error, basically (at least justification in anything like the conventional epistemological sense of that term).
Re the deontological/teleological (consequentialist)/virtue distinction, I probably usually lean towards teleological stances, but I wouldn't say that I necessarily do--again, dedication to any principle is a misguided approach in my opinion.
And of course re applied ethics, I have many stances, such as "Rape is wrong."
It's not at all erroneous, though. That's the foundational approach everyone uses. I'm just not spelling out the full details via a couple paragraphs or so everytime I mention it, because that would be ridiculously laborious.
I understand that feelings are at the root of morality and ethics, I think we agree there. That doesnt mean feelings inform all instances of morality though, that is what I think is erroneous. The implication of what you said is that someone couldnt be relying on logic and reason to take moral stances on a specific instance, which doesnt directly follow from the “feelings” foundation.
Could you give an example?
Yes. In terms of their expectations, perspectives, actions and reactions.
Quoting chatterbears
Yes. For example, to some people, sex between unmarried consenting adults, in their own privacy, is unethical/immoral while for others it's okay.
There seems to be too much relativity and subjectivity in ethics and morality. I think with time the rules of conduct will converge the more society interacts globally and comprehensively
Im not sure I understand, you want an example of a moral instance? Why would you need a specific example? It applies to all moral instances...well potentially, obviously someone like you yourself uses feelings in each instance. Not everyone has to in order to be consistent with your/our premiss of feelings being the foundation of morality. Reason and logic alone can inform those instances.
An example of relying on logic and reason to take a moral stance not directly following from the “feelings” foundation. An example of a moral stance that uses reason and logic alone.
When they reference a moral code rather than their feelings. Yes, the code has its basis in feelings essentially but thats not necessarily whats directly being referenced in the specific instance.
Maybe we're misunderstanding each other then. You're not saying that any stance doesn't ultimately rest on moral intuitions/feelings, and I'm not saying that every stance is necessarily foundational and not logically derived from a foundational stance instead.
Well when you said “how I feel about the behavior in question.” I took that to be your feeling in the moment, rather than your feeling when you decide the foundations of your ethics.
Right. I fully recognize that someone might have something like "It is wrong to initiate nonconsensual violence" as a foundational moral stance, and then they might say, "Murder is the initiation of nonconsensual violence Therefore it is wrong to murder" on top of that, where they're reaching "It is wrong to murder" as a logical/rational extension or implication of their foundational stance.
By stressing that it's a matter of how one feels about interpersonal behavior (that people consider more significant than etiquette, to spell out another aspect that I don't usually bother spelling out), I'm stressing that any moral stance is going to come down to some feeling-based foundational stance (such as "It is wrong to initiate nonconsensual violence" in this case).
Since I'm not personally fond of principle-oriented approaches, a lot of "applied" stances for me are effectively foundational, by which I simply mean that there are no other moral stances that the "applied" stance in question rests on (as with the example above re a moral stance against murder).
Ok, I understand the way YOU view those instances but that isnt what you said, you said “everyone” whether they “realize/admit it or not”. I think you can say that about morality being based on some kind of subjectivity/feelings, but it is erroneous to apply that to everyone in all moral instances. As we just discussed, some people are not actually doing that.
It is a substantive distinction there, and people will have trouble with your stances if you do not make it even if they can’t articulate why.
Anyway, I don’t suppose your all that interested and I DID just sorta butt in on a discussion you were having so unless you think Ive made annerror in my assessment Ill go back to observing.
Again, I think that people are always doing this with respect to foundational moral stances, and I think there have to be foundational moral stances. (Though it's important to keep in mind that what's foundational for an individual is dynamic, and can vary per situation.) Do you not agree with that?
Ya, I agree.
Why would you conclude that I am not interested in animals? By that logic, you should say I am not interested in humans as well, correct? I am interested in how we treat our species, as well as other species on this planet. Ethics involves how you interact with the world and the things around you.
I already know that fake meat products aren't appealing meat eaters, and my point in my last reply to you, was that it should not matter if we supply them with a "just as tasty" alternative. Which is why I gave an analogy.
Caring about animals doesn't mean I need to supply meat eaters with a replacement product that will mimic animal flesh. We first need people to get it out of their head, that animal flesh is what you are supposed to eat. It is NOT what you are supposed to eat, which is why our bodies do better on plant-based diets. If people actually understand that animals are living beings who also feel pain just as we do, along with the fact that we are actually more healthy when we do not consume them, you don't need a replacement product to establish an ethical point.
Yes, you're very interested in ethics, I grant that without reservation.
But, for instance, you're not very interested in factory meat, a technical solution which would end the harm to animals if it can be implemented at scale. Perhaps you're not interested in such solutions because they would also end the ethical debate?
Yes, you prefer to scold them, and position yourself as superior. My only complaint with this is that it doesn't really work that well, and tends to generate as much resistance as it does support.
You don't have to, agreed. But not being interested in a solution that would actually work illustrates that it's moralistic finger pointing that interests you, not animals.
Having a subjective basis for morality is separate from how your normative ethics work. I can agree that at the metaethcal level, moral values are completely subjective. But going a level above that (normative and applied ethics), it doesn't become subjective. One can base their ethics on whatever the law dictates.
Metaethics: I feel it is right to base your morals on the law. (subjective)
Normative ethics: What is morally right is what is legal. What is morally wrong is what is illegal. (descriptive)
Applied ethics: It is wrong to steal, because it is illegal.
Quoting Terrapin Station
If you read above this, there's your example. As Dingo already mentioned, not everybody abides by their feelings in regards to what they describe as "wrong". One person may base an immoral action on whether or not it is an illegal action. Legality is separate from what the person feels, because their feelings do not make the law. Somebody separate from them, makes the law and dictates how the law works. At the metaethical level, yes, they are subjectively assessing the law as a good basis for what is right and wrong. But their normative and applied ethical stances, DO NOT hinge upon what they feel.
One day, the law could say. Gay Marriage is illegal. That person would now think gay marriage is immoral because it is illegal. The next day, Gay Marriage could become legal. That next day, the same person would now think gay marriage is moral, because it is now legal.
And as I have been trying to tell you for countless amounts of posts now, normative/applied ethics are separate from metaethics. But all you seem to understand and respond with is, "Everybody goes with their intuition and/or feelings when making moral decisions."
I'm sorry to say, but you're just completely wrong here. You either, do not fully understand the three tiers of ethics (meta/normative/applied), or you are being dishonest.
Would you say the same thing if I scolded a child molester or rapist? I am superior to a rapist, and if had to create a post in a philosophy forum about how it is wrong to force yourself upon a woman and rape them, I would be saying the same things I am now in regards to animals.
Quoting Jake
I don't need to give a solution to child molesters, do I? Should we create child life like robots that imitate real children, and then allow child molesters to molest those robots instead, since no harm would be done to real children? This is the same thing you want me to provide meat eaters. A thing that imitates the current thing they get pleasure out of, right?
Again. If I tried talking to child molesters about how children should not be violated and are too young to consent, as well as can be easily taken advantage of. Would you just tell me, "You don't actually care about children, you need to give child molesters a solution!"
That's just ridiculous.
Feel free to pursue your agenda, they're your posts to do with as you wish.
There's a severe ethical fallacy there; equivocation.
Human consumption (and killing) of animals exists on ranges of necessary to sport and humane to sadistic; moral to immoral. The molestation of children is never necessary or humane or moral.
You should be more specific about the practices you decry when making these kinds of comparisons. If killing and eating an animal is broadly akin to molestation, you should therefore support the eradication (or total incarceration) of lions and other predators who can only exist in the numbers that they do by inflicting pain and suffering on herbivores. If humans are wrong to thrive at the expense of other species, surely other apex predators are wrong as well, and even though they don't know better, we can still prevent them from doing more harm by taking action against them.
You might object and say that since lions can only exist by eating meat, they're given leave to [s]molest[/s] slaughter innocent creatures, but this doesn't reveal the extent to which lions should be permitted to exploit other animals (there's a theoretical limit right? How do we determine it?). Furthermore, it ignores the fact that many humans do need to eat meat to survive (nearly 100% of humans living traditional lifestyles require meat as a part of a balanced diet, developing countries rely on it to make growth and development affordable, and first world nations, while theoretically capable of diverting to animal free diets, aren't yet prepared to spend the extra money to do so).
I suspect that whatever justification you employ to allow lions to continue hunting gazelles can also be used to justify the consumption of animals by humans, at least to some extent.
When it comes to industrial scale mass-farming, we're in total agreement, but I still cling to the idea that the life of an old-school farm animal is downright worth living (I realize you're an anti-natalist when it comes to the lives of farm animals). You must believe the lives of wild animals are worth living (hence your objection to our taking of them) but in reality the lives of wild animals are often filled with much greater hardship and suffering than the lives of some farm animals. What's your argument against traditional farming suited for developing countries?
The distinction you're trying to make here makes no sense to me. "Just in case x is illegal, then x is immoral" is the view we're proposing. You're saying that "at the metaethical level," that stance is a matter of them feeling a particular way about illegal actions. But then you're saying that . . . I don't know, simply by calling it "normative" or "applied," it's something else? That makes no sense.
Quoting chatterbears
Right, because the person in question feels that something being illegal is sufficient for it to be immoral. So how is that not a way they feel just in case we're somehow construing it as normative or applied?
Have you seriously considered that you do not know what you are talking about? You are clearly philosophically ignorant, and unlike Terrapin I simply do not have the patience to educate someone who thinks they know what they are talking about but do not.
You can claim I am interested in positioning myself as superior, but that's your wrongful assumption.
A way to counter my wrongful assumption would be to prove that wagging our fingers in people's faces and accusing them of moral crimes is the most effective way to convert them to vegetarianism. My complaint is only that I don't see that as a very effective tactic.
Can you tell me exactly which word(s) I am equivocating here?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
If you want to make a broad view of "the molestation of children is never necessary", I can pull a hypothetical out to disprove your statement. Imagine a scenario where a person has a gun to 3 of your family members, and tells you that he will kill all 3 of your family members unless you molest a child, would you not say it is then a "necessary" action to do so in order to save the lives of 3 people? You may come back and say, "This is a rare situation that will most likely never happen." - Well, let's put you on the flip side. Grains, rice, pasta, beans, corn, lentils, fruits, vegetables, avocado, mushrooms, bread, soy milk, almond milk, etc... These are all options available to you, and some of the poorest countries in the world have an abundance of some of these foods (in many countries, meat is more expensive than grains). Similar to the stance you claimed for the molestation of children, killing animals is never necessary or humane or moral. The times you will be stranded alone in a dessert or forest, is a rare situation that will most likely never happen (just as the gun to your head scenario). But if you ever did encounter that situation, to kill an animal for your survival (or the survival of others), would be necessary.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I've already debunked this point with you before. We never hold an infant or a mentally disabled person accountable for their actions in the same respect we would hold you and I accountable. Similarly, we wouldn't hold a wild animal accountable who does not have the ability to self-reflect and evaluate their actions. Plus, wild animals eat other animals out of necessity, because they are forced to for their own survival. We kill animals for pleasure, not survival.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Lions also commit infanticide. If I commit infanticide tomorrow, and you called me out for it, could I respond to you in the same way you have responded to me. "But lions do it, so why can't I?"
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Baseless assertions here. To claim that the lives of wild animals are worse than factory farmed animals, is absurd.
And as I have pointed out with my child molester analogy, do you think it is better to point out what is wrong about the actions committed by the child molester? Or should we give the child molester a replacement (robot life like child)?
I am pointing out what is wrong with our actions in regards to animal slaughter. You think it is more "tactical" to offer a replacement, rather than talk about the ethics behind it.
This is mostly to Terrapin, since Dingo thinks he is cool by announcing he doesn't have the patience to "educate" someone on ethics in a philosophy forum.
Terrapin - Do you believe everything we know about anything (health, math, logic, ethics, etc...) is all subjective?
MetaHealth: I feel it is right to base your health on scientific knowledge. (subjective)
Normative Health: What is healthy is what is scientifically beneficial to the body.
Applied Health: It is bad to smoke because it is not beneficial to the body.
My point is. At the base level, of ALL knowledge and ALL systems, you are going to have an axiom. Which is essentially an unjustified assumption at the base of your system. We all have axioms for ethics, health, logic, etc....You cannot prove logic is true. At the base of logic, you have foundational assumptions, such as the law of non-contradiction. You can't "prove" this law is true in some objective way. You have to accept it as an axiom.
Back to the original point. From what Terrapin is suggesting, everything we know about anything, is completely subjective, and nobody works off an objective criteria. Even within science. Because if you keep asking "why" and get down to the root level of any foundation, the answer will always be "because I feel this is right". But once we get past the 'meta' of any topic, whether that is ethics or logic, we have to establish what the objective(normative) goal is.
Molestation and the consumption of animals. You're not equivocating the definition of words, you're equivocating the moral implications of two unrelated actions. (establishing/portraying one as abhorrent by associating/liking it to another which is universally agreed to be abhorrent, when they are not in fact similar.
Quoting chatterbears
But we still need to correct the actions of children, and if a lion is like an innocent child who doesn't know better, does that give it the right to ravage innocent ruminants? We could put a stop to the endless suffering of these animals by exterminating lions, and why not? Just because lions exist, they should be permitted to terrorize and consume their prey for all time?
The existence of a prey animal who is about to be killed depends on the extermination of the predator who is about to kill it, so what's the harm in killing the lion to save the lamb? Are their lives unequal? If lions became more and more successful, driving other animals to extinction, should we intervene then? In other words, are lions aloud to exploit other animals in order to expand and thrive as a species? If so, I see no reason why humans cannot be permitted to do so, to some degree
Quoting chatterbears
This is another false moral equivalence. Infanticide is not the same as hunting wild animals (what lions and some humans do) and what I consider to be the ethical raising of farm animals (again, NOT factory farming).
My point with the lions is that their existence (and ability to thrive) is totally dependent on the suffering of other innocent creatures. It is a mere happenstance of their nature, and if you want to say that permitting them to continue ravaging ruminants is O.K because of a mere happenstance of nature, then I can say that it's also O.K for humans to farm animals to the degree that our existence and ability to thrive is dependent on animal exploitation.
In other words, if the cessation of the exploitation of animals would cause damage to out short or long term ability to thrive, and we should do so anyway, then there is some parallel that would justify exterminating lions because it would be wrong of us to let them carry on murdering innocent creatures.
Quoting chatterbears
Well, let's make the closest comparisons we can:
Cows are descended from forest roaming beasts who once lived nomadic lives in small herds (or so I've been told). They likely had relatively high infant morality given the difficulties of birth, and throughout their lives they would have to be alert and fearful of violent predators. Due to being constantly exposed to the elements year round, they were very hardy, but they still suffered, and injury/old age were death sentences. When it comes to death, they suddenly keeled over if they were lucky, else they slowly starved due to incapacitation, or were eaten alive by predators.
Cows get protection from wild predators, making them much less fearful and reducing stress. They are given food and shelter, which can make them fat and happy, and medical care which can allow them to recover from a host of ailments that would otherwise cause prolonged suffering. The actual conditions that farm animals endure varies greatly, and there are lines that we should not cross. On some farms, animals enjoy a very high quality of life, and their death is quick and painless compared with the deaths of their wild counterparts.
First, keep in mind that I use the subjective/objective distinction simply to refer to whether something is mental or extramental, by which I simply mean whether something is a subset of brain phenomena (the mental subset, of course) or whether it occurs in the world outside of that subset of brain phenomena.
Given that, it should be obvious (because otherwise I wouldn't make the distinction that way) that I don't believe that everything is subjective. It depends on whether the thing in question is a mental phenomenon.
We can know about objective things. We can know about automobiles, for example. Automobiles, that is, the actual things we drive around town, aren't mental phenomena.
Knowledge itself, though, is a mental phenomenon. So in the sense that we're referring to knowledge qua knowledge, it is subjective. Propositional knowledge, for example, is justified true belief. Beliefs are mental phenomena. Beliefs are not found in the world outside of mental phenomena. But we can (subjectively) know about objective things.
Re "Normative Health: What is healthy is what is scientifically beneficial to the body." The "beneficial" assessment is subjective. "X is a benefit" only makes sense in a context of someone desiring either x itself or some state that x entails.
And so with, "Applied Health: It is bad to smoke because it is not beneficial to the body," we have two subjective assessments that are about desires/preferences--"bad" and "beneficial."
I'm not saying that what smoking does to one's body is subjective--that's not a mental phenomenon (leaving aside the mental effects of nicotine, etc.). I'm saying that preferring the state of the body sans smoking to the state of the body accompanied by smoking is subjective.
Outside of us thinking about it, outside of us feeling however we feel, desiring whatever we desire, preferring whatever we prefer, there are only possible states for things to be in. There are no preferred states, no better states, etc. outside of us making evaluations based on our dispositions, which are (at least potentially) individually variable. The world outside of us, outside of our minds, couldn't care less whether we smoke or not smoke, whether we're in one physical state versus another, whether we live or die. It's individual humans who desire one state versus another. Different humans (at least potentially) desire different things. We can't get "x is the preferred state" objectively wrong, because there are no objective facts about preferred states to get wrong (except for the objective fact that there are no objectively preferred states).
So re this:
Quoting chatterbears
The important thing to remember, which is basically a summary of the above, is that knowledge qua knowledge has the ontological property of being subjective (because knowledge is a type of belief), but what the knowledge is about or of can be objective. However, knowledge can't be about something objective when we're talking about something for which there are no objective facts, because it doesn't occur outside of our minds, and moral judgments, moral principles, etc. are some of those things (for which there are no objective facts).
For moral questions, you seem to say that all moral perspectives/stances/etc... are based on "feeling". Would you say the same thing about health, logic, English language, math, etc...?
In the same way that desiring a healthy body is subjective (based on feeling), making moral assessments about one's interaction with the world is also subjective (based on feeling). Maybe we should temporarily toss the word "subjective" out, as it seems to be causing minor confusion.
What I want to know is, do you think most of these things are "based on feeling" at their foundation? As we explained in metaethics, it is based on feeling at it's core. Same goes for health, logic, language, math, etc.... correct?
English: There's a rule in English that states, "I before E except after C". There's no way you can "prove" this is true/correct/right, other than saying you "feel" it is right to follow this rule.
Ethics: There could be a rule in an ethical system that states, "Maximize the well being of sentient creatures." There's no way you can "prove" this is true/correct/right, other than saying you "feel" it is right to follow this rule.
Logic: In classical logic, there is a rule called the law of non contradiction. There's no way you can "prove" this is true/correct/right, other than saying you "feel" it is right to follow this rule.
Math: A prime number is a whole number greater than 1 whose only factors are 1 and itself. There's no way you can "prove" this is true/correct/right, other than saying you "feel" it is right to follow this rule.
I think you get my point. You can use this type of thinking for pretty much everything we can know or understand. That, at the base of each area, it becomes about what you "feel" is the right thing to do. But as I have pointed out before, despite the core foundation being subjective (based on feeling), you can still make objective assessments based on the subjective criteria you agree upon. And in this instance, I am defining subjective as (based on personal opinion or preference), and I am defining objective as (not based on personal opinion or preference). Here's how that would work.
(subjective foundation) Based on personal feeling: I believe it is best to base morality on the law.
(objective assessment) Not based on personal feeling: Action X was immoral because it did not abide by the law.
Once you lay down the foundation, you can then make objective assessments based on that criteria. Meaning, it doesn't matter how someone feels that day, or if they prefer something else that morning compared to the day before, because if they base their actions on what the law says, we can assess their actions from an objective standpoint, and state that they are committing an immoral action based on the criteria of "not abiding by the law".
You can use this same line of reasoning with health, English, logic, math, etc... Would you agree?
I think I established that in a previous post, but just wanted to be clear.
Insofar as you're making value judgments about those things. That's what I'm talking about--value judgments. Ethics and aesthetics are the two major fields of philosophy focused on value judgments per se.
Outside of making value judgments we're doing other sorts of things.
Re your examples, I'd need to clarify how you're using "right." Presumably you're not using "right" in a moral sense, are you? If you're using it in a normative sense--"One should do this because . . . (whatever the reason(s) would be)" then that's ultimately going to come down to preferences, which are "feelings" in the sense we're talking about.
Quoting chatterbears
With respect to saying that "such and such is 'right'" in either a moral or normative sense, sure. Why anyone would say that something like the principle of noncontradiction is right in a normative sense, I don't know. That's a rather weird thing to say. The crux of the principle of noncontradiction, for example, is usually conceivability/coherence. To the vast majority of people, the notion of "obtaining contradictions" seems incoherent/it's inconceivable. That's not anything about feelings/preferenes. It's about conceivability, which is different.
Other things, like spelling conventions, are just that--conventions, and we follow them for the sake of understandability.
It's important to understand the distinction between making value judgments and doing other sorts of things. "Right" seems to be a sort of value judgment in your examples, although I wouldn't guess that the sense of "right" being employed is the same in each example, and unless we're saying something pretty weird, we're not talking about a moral sense of "right."
Quoting chatterbears
Re that, I definitely agree with it. But we don't agree on whether it's morally permissible to eat animals, especially because for me, that functions as a moral foundation. We can't go a "level down" to see if we agree on what "it's morally permissible/impermissible to eat animals" is based on in my case, because it's not based on some other moral stance (and remember that only moral stances imply other moral stances. Something that's not a moral stance can't imply a moral stance).
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting Terrapin Station
Whether you want to say understandability, conceivability, or livability, doesn't matter. These are still things you need to value before you can say they are useful or important to follow. That's the point. In the case of language, you point to understandability, but I could ask you, why should one value understandability? This would then come down to personal feeling. In the case of logic, you point to conceivability, but I could ask you, why should one value conceivability? This would then come down to personal feeling. Same with morality. You have asked me, why should one value the well being of sentient creatures? This would then come down to personal feeling.
Quoting Terrapin Station
"Right" is the 'ought'. What one 'ought' to value as correct/right/etc... Essentially what you just said, which is "one should do this because." - In the case of noncontradiction, you are essentially saying, "One should do this because it is conceivable." - You haven't escaped the problem of feelings or preference. As I asked in the response above this one, why should one value conceivability? Also, your definition of conceivable may differ from mine, and I may not include the law of noncontradiction in what I view as conceivable. Therefore, you cannot tell me I am wrong/incorrect if I do not adopt the law of noncontradiction in the same way you do. Correct?
Quoting Terrapin Station
You're making an error here. You need to address the axiom put in place, which is the law of noncontradiction. Can you prove that following the law of noncontradiction is nothing other than personal preference? You say, "it's not personal preference, it's conceivability." - Could I not just use the same line of reasoning about morality? I can say, it's not about personal preference, it's about maximizing well-being. You would then say, "Why should one value maximizing well-being?". In which my reply would be, "Why should one value conceivability?"
Quoting Terrapin Station
I don't see how that would function as a moral foundation... You can down a level, and here's how.
Level 3: It is immoral to eat animals.
Level 2: It is morally right to maximize the well-being and rights of sentient beings.
Level 1: I feel that one should value the well-being and rights of sentient beings.
Okay, so normatives. Normatives are preferences, yes. The problem is this:
Where is anyone "essentially" saying that? Can you give an example maybe?
I want to just address this first, because I see this as a highly controversial claim. (Also, I'm not personally a fan of normatives, by the way.)
Few problems here.
1. Explain why molestation is abhorrent but the contriubtion to animal rape, torture and slaughter is not.
2. Just because something is universally agreed upon, does not make it true/correct. At one point, slavery was universally agreed upon, but did that mean it was the right thing to do?
3. The two actions are related. Both actions (molestation & animal torture/slaughter) are causing pain and suffering to a sentient being. If you want to say that an animal's pain is worth nothing compared to a human's pain, you need to explain why. Many of the world's pet owners (who have dogs) would already disagree with you, btw.
We never hold an infant or a mentally disabled person accountable for their actions in the same respect we would hold you and I accountable. Similarly, we wouldn't hold a wild animal accountable who does not have the ability to self-reflect and evaluate their actions. Plus, wild animals eat other animals out of necessity, because they are forced to for their own survival. We kill animals for pleasure, not survival. — chatterbears
Quoting VagabondSpectre
More problems.
1. We correct the actions of children because they grow up and learn more about self-reflection and how their actions affect other people. Lions never have this type of learning development. Lions are essentially 2-year olds that never grow up.
2. The fact that you focus on lions so much, shows me that you are not grasping these concepts about why something is immoral, and what types of animals have moral agency. Lions have little to no moral agency, similar to an infant. Therefore, we do not hold them accountable for the harms they cause other creatures. If a 1-year old hits another 1-year old in the face, are you going to exterminate that 1-year old?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Again, you are comparing the morality of lions to humans. And if lions can do it, humans should be permitted to do so, to some degree, correct?
Back to my original statement, which you completely dodged. If a lion commits infanticide, should humans be permitted to commit infanticide as well, to some degree?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I never said infanticide is the same as hunting wild animals. But you don't get to cherry pick what lions do in order to justify your moral actions. If you want to claim, "Lions can kill other animals, therefore humans should be permitted to do so as well", you cannot stop at that one action. If you want to justify your actions on the basis of lion behavior, you need to be willing to accept other lion behavior.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Your last few paragraphs were the result of buying into propaganda and the lack of research on your part. If you want to actually know what happens in animal agriculture, watch the youtube video I linked in the original post of this thread. Or just google "Dominion 2018" and watch it.
Then correct me if I am wrong, but it seemed like this is what you were implying. This is what the line of reasoning seemed to be.
I stated: Many systems have axioms, including logic. Such as the law of noncontradiction. You have to accept these axioms as self-evidently true, before you can move forward. The only way to accept something as self-evidently true, is what you personally prefer.
You said: Accepting the law of noncontradiction as true isn't about personal preference, it is about conceivability.
I then asked: Why should one value conceivability?
First, it's not a matter of valuing conceivability or coherence. You couldn't choose to engage with something that's inconceivable or incoherent to you--by definition you can't conceive of it and/or it makes no sense to you!
Regarding axioms, with respect to fields like logic and mathematics, they're typically seen as simply stipulated--rather in the manner of setting up the rules of a game. "Here's how we're going to play this game." And there are different ways to play different games. There are different species of logics, for example, with some of them incompatible with each other. (For example, paraconsistent logics allow at least some true contradictions.) Or re mathematics, re geometry, for example, we can play the game with Euclidean axioms or with Riemannian axioms,
You do NOT have to accept the axioms as true--at least not in any "extra-systemic" way--in order to play the games in question. You're just operating with them as givens. It's just like you do not need to accept that it's true--outside of the context of the game, at least--that there is or was a Colonel Mustard to play Clue.
Finally, something seeming self-evidently true to someone isn't at all about their preferences. They might very well prefer that things were otherwise. They might prefer to believe something else. Or maybe they have no preference about it.
Similarly, you can do the same with ethics. To put it in your terms, you do NOT have to accept the axioms as true, but you are operating with them as givens.
Law of noncontradiction = A given
Maximizing the rights and well-being of sentient creatures = A given
Quoting Terrapin Station
Ok, so accepting axioms as a "given" is not about their preferences? Could I not say the same about ethics?
"I have no preference about accepting the self-evidently true axiom of maximizing the well-being and rights of sentient creatures. I just accept this as a given." [Therefore, my ethics are not based on personal preference.]
Again, I wouldn't even say that that is a moral stance. But sure, we can just state it as "It is morally obligatory (or whatever one would want to say like that) to maximize the rights and well-being of sentient creatures."
For one, I'd say that that can't be true. No moral stance can be. I'm a noncognitivist. Moral (and aesthetic) utterances are not the sorts of things that can be true or false. True/false is a category error for moral and aesthetic utterances.
But let's try to ignore that and imagine either that they are the sorts of things that can be true or false, or alternately, just say that "Joe could adopt 'it is morally obligatory to maximize the rights and well-being of sentient creatures' as a foundational moral stance, even though Joe doesn't actually feel that way."
One problem I have with that is that insofar as someone isn't engaging in stances that they feel are right/wrong judgments about interpersonal behavior, I wouldn't say that they're actually engaging in ethics period. It's imperative in my view, for it to be ethics/morality, for the person in question to personally endorse the stances they're espousing. That's because the whole nut of ethics is making certain types of value judgments. Well, if you're not making value judgments, then you're not engaging in it. It's just like aesthetics, which is all about making another sort of value judgment. If you're just repeating someone else's "Frank Zappa is a better composer than Mozart," you're not actually doing aesthetics.
But let's imagine that we don't require that.
Well, what's to stop Joe from instead adopting "It is morally obligatory to NOT maximize the rights and well-being of sentient creatures" as his moral "axiom"?
If you're simply making the point that people can adopt arbitrary moral axioms that they don't agree with, then okay, but why would you be making that point?
Rape and torture not withstanding, "slaughter" serves useful purposes. Explain to me why the lion killing the gazelle is not abhorrent?
Quoting chatterbears
There's no point sidetracking into a discussion about molestation...
Quoting chatterbears
The two actions cause pain, but beyond that there are no other similarities. Sometimes being honest with people causes them pain, is honesty akin to rape?
Quoting chatterbears
Please answer the question: why should I not kill the lions?Quoting chatterbears
Are you going to let that child continue to hit the other in the face, or will you intervene?
Your inability to answer my questions is much more revealing than my use of lion analogies.
Quoting chatterbears
We're not talking about justifications for infanticide, or molestation, or rape, or torture. The argument isn't "well since lions can do it...", it's actually "what's different about lions that makes you forbid me from killing them to save the gazelles?". I'm not saying anything lions do, we should do, I'm saying that you're a hypocrite for not caring about the deaths of wild animals by not assenting to the extermination of lions. The stupidity of lions (their amorality) isn't an excuse to let them continue to torture and slaughter their helpless prey
Ultimately, by showing that your reasoning does indeed justify the slaughter of all lions, It becomes obvious that your position is incompatible with a world view that actually embraces nature (instead of mostly romanticizing it).
Quoting chatterbears
I'm attacking the consistency of your own moral view by showing it doesn't coherently forbid the eradication of lions in the name of protecting other life. You haven't once told me it would be wrong to exterminate the lions, you just offered inconclusive observations like "but lions are dumb".
Quoting chatterbears
If you're going to accuse me of buying in to propaganda (ad hominem) at least don't shill your own propaganda in the same paragraph.
That video is entirely about factory farming, a practice which I've already condemned. By constantly leaning back on bombastic equivocations (molestation, rape, etc), and refusing to address my actual position (re: traditional farming, not factory farming) you prevent this discussion from actually getting anywhere.
If you could answer my question about the lions, that would be very satisfying. Why should I not kill the lions to save the prey animals? (I know you will say the lion is stupid and therefore not to blame, but being stupid should not give someone or something a free pass to slaughter innocent life, should it? If it does, then the ignorance of the human race also justifies its meat consumption)...
Let me explain where I'm coming from: evolution has pitted life against life; to some degree it's a zero sum game, where the benefits of some species are the burdens of others. It's not just carnivores/omnivores causing problems either; too many ruminants can cause soil erosion, destroying habitat for many other critters; new arrivals to ecosystems generally lead to prolonged disequilibria, and even within a species there can be high stakes competition. For humans to exist in any large numbers, we MUST occupy and alter territory and ecosystems that would otherwise serve other species, and in doing so we damage them. Regardless of which individuals or species thrive, they will have likely done so at the expense (or opportunity cost) of others. Lions are a good example because they exclusively eat meat and therefore can only exist and thrive by directly and violently exploiting other forms of life. But if we wanted to, we could sterilize all the wild lions and keep a single group of them alive, in captivity, indefinitely, and feed them only lab grown proteins. In that sense lions as a species don't need to eat meat to continue existing; lions don't need to continue existing whatsoever, why should we let them? (note: this question is a paralell with "why should we let humans continue to thrive by exploiting animals?)
Summon your intuition and give me a serious answer about what you think the relationship lions have to the rest of the animal kingdom should be. Where lions have lost territory, should they be reintroduced to hunt the animals now living there free of lion related terror? Should we seek to maintain the existing lion population? Are we morally obligated to laissez faire? (to let the chips fall where they may?).
Deep down I think you realize that if you cling to the idea it is inherently/necessarily/sufficiently wrong to exploit another animal to any degree, then you would agree that the extermination of all lions is at worst morally neutral, because it preserves the lives of prey species. To avoid this, you will have to accept that some degree of exploitation of other species is acceptable (or necessary), and that is exactly what mitigates the moral guilt of humans for exploiting other animals. To exist and have thrived in the first place, we had to exploit on some level, and while it's true our increasing powers demand greater moral responsibility (we should exploit other animals less and less as we gain alternative options), there is, as yet, no widespread absolute responsibility that we refrain from exploiting animals in any way; we're not yet capable of doing so from economic and technological perspectives.
Not going to address anything beyond this until you address this point. Are you saying that anything which serves a useful purpose is morally permissible. Slavery has a useful purpose to the slave owner. Therefore, by your logic, slavery is morally permissible, correct?
Allow me to rephrase: the slaughter of animals has enabled and continues to enable humans to thrive, and contributes to the security of human existence. Slaughter can be "useful" because it serves human needs (need humans thrive?), and those needs are generally of very high importance. As I have suggested many times, there is a spectrum of utility and need that can be applied to the present day consumption of animals. For instance, factory farming is neither economical nor beneficial to humans, but traditional farming is in fact economical, and does in many ways contribute to human food security and dietary health. Given the myriad of national, economic, and individual circumstances, it's true that a portion of the population are capable making an economically secure switch to an animal free diet, but it's also true for a great many others that the switch would come at great cost and entail varying degrees of risk (in some cases it would be impossible)
By my logic, slavery is not ethical. I pointed out one of the differences between slaughter/consumption of animals and rape/torture. With the lion analogy, we're comparing similar acts done for similar reasons (the killing and consumption of animals as a means of sustenance and means to thrive), and while it's absolutely necessary for lions to eat meat to survive, individual humans and human groups exist on a spectrum of varying need regarding the exploitation of animals.
Do you think it's moral for growing or developing countries to consume meat if they don't have adequate access to the land and funds to go vegan?
You: "You do NOT have to accept the axioms as true--at least not in any "extra-systemic" way--in order to play the games in question. You're just operating with them as givens."
Me: "Similarly, you can do the same with ethics. To put it in your terms, you do NOT have to accept the axioms as true, but you are operating with them as givens."
You: "Finally, something seeming self-evidently true to someone isn't at all about their preferences. They might very well prefer that things were otherwise. They might prefer to believe something else. Or maybe they have no preference about it."
Me: "Ok, so accepting axioms as a "given" is not about their preferences? Could I not say the same about metaethics? I have no preference about accepting the self-evidently true axiom of maximizing the well-being and rights of sentient creatures. I just accept this as a given. [Therefore, my ethics are not based on personal preference.]"
I want you to address these points first. I can number them if need be.
1. You said axioms are a given. Does this mean metaethical moral axioms can also be a given?
2. You said someone who finds something self-evidently true (an axiom) isn't about their preferences. Could you not say the same thing about metaethics?
You seem to be contradicting yourself. Before this, you said that all ethical views/stances, are based on preference. But then you said that accepting an axiom is not a preference. Well, there are axioms within metaethics, so you need to explain why some axioms are not based on preference, while others are based on preference.
And just to be clear. It is my view that ALL axioms are based on preference, whether that is math, logic, philosophy, etc... You seem to hold the view that some axioms are based on preference (such as metaethics), while others are not.
Why are you putting "higher importance" on the needs of humans, but not on the needs of non-human animals (such as pigs, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, etc...)? Surely there is some property in which you are making a distinction between humans and non-human animals. What is that distinction, in which allows humans to live free from torture and/or slaughter, but not non-human animals?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
This goes against scientific peer reviewed studies on many levels. You can do the research yourself, but I will link a few articles below.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5638464/
- https://www.eatrightpro.org/practice/position-and-practice-papers/position-papers/vegetarian-diets
- https://www.bda.uk.com/news/view?id=179
Quoting VagabondSpectre
No you didn't, unless I missed it. Was it, the slaughter of animals allows humans to thrive? Why should we thrive off the suffering/torture/slaughter of another species? Because we have the power to do so?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
No we are most definitely not. A lion cannot survive if it does not eat meat. We can survive if we do not eat meat. But that is irrelevant to the point of, why is it ok to holocaust one species but not another? Would you be ok with humans creating a holocaust for dogs? Or how about if humans only created a holocaust for severely mentally disabled humans, in which we exploited their bodies for meat and other products?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
If they have adequate land for animal agriculture, they should have adequate land for plant agriculture. It would be the same as me asking you, "Do you think it is moral for growing or developing countries to consume human flesh if they don't have adequate access to the land and funds to go vegan?"
Right, that is the focus of your efforts here, pointing out what somebody else is doing wrong, ie, moralizing. Ok, so continue, your posts are yours to write.
If the focus of your efforts was serving animals, you'd see that offering a non-animal alternative to meat that meat eaters would find acceptable is going to be more effective than waving our finger of morally superior judgment in their faces.
It all depends on what the goal is.
If the goal is establishing our moral superiority, you're doing a good job.
If the goal is serving animals, not so much.
This is the 2nd or 3rd time you have ignored my analogy completely. And I will type it again.
As I have pointed out with my child molester analogy, do you think it is better to point out what is wrong about the actions committed by the child molester? Or should we give the child molester a replacement (robot life like child)?
Which choice will be more effective in protecting the child?
I'm no expert, but my understanding is that child molesters are typically immune to moral judgment, prison, social rejection etc.
But, if you could demonstrate that casting moral judgment upon the molester would be more effective in protecting the child than offering a replacement target, then I'd be for that.
What I keep suggesting to you, and what you keep ignoring, is that my sense is that you are interested in moral judgment primarily because it allows you to position yourself as being superior to somebody else. That's ok, no problem, I'm just suggesting that this self serving agenda might be made clear, and not be confused with an animal serving agenda.
If you can make a successful case that lecturing meat eaters is more effective at protecting animals than offering meat eaters a non-animal alternative, then ok, please proceed with that.
I actually told you multiple times, this is not what I am doing. You are incorrectly assuming I am trying to position myself as superior to somebody else.
If this forum existed 200 years ago, I would be saying the same thing about slave owners. I would tell people that they should not own slaves, because humans should be free from slavery, torture and death. I am telling people the same thing here in regards to animals. You keep perceiving my words as my attempt to act superior, which is absurdly false.
There's no replacement for slave owners, as there is no replacement for child molesters. I don't and should not need to offer a replacement to slave owners in order to convince them that their current actions are immoral. My focus would still be for the slaves to be free, just as my focus is for the animals to be free from torture and slaughter.
Okay, so one baby-step at a time:
First, ethical utterances are NOT true or false.
Do we both understand that? If so, then we can move on from there, and I'll just remind you if I need to that ethical utterances are not true or false if that comes up again.
Why is this even relevant? You have stated that axioms are both based on preference and NOT based on preference. This seems to be a contradiction, in which you would need to clear up. Can you clear this up?
Are you stating that a moral axiom is not a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true? You seem to think that self-evidently true is different from true/false, correct?
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom
An axiom is a concept in logic. It is a statement which is accepted without question, and which has no proof. The axiom is be used as the premise or starting point for further reasoning or arguments, usually in logic or in mathematics.
Moral axioms follow the same logic. They are self-evidently true, as you cannot "prove" them to be true or false. They are used as the premise or starting point for further reasoning or arguments, similar to logic or math.
Do we agree on this?
It doesn't matter for the moment why it's relevant. Do you agree that moral utterances are not true or false? Let's do really, really simple things one step at a time. I don't want to try anything more complicated if we can't do that.
In some objective sense outside of a mind? I would agree. But the same is true for logic and math as well. Do you agree?
There is some sense in which you would say that moral utterances can be true or false?
If we are going to have a back n' forth, you should at least respond to my questions as well.
So to ask my question again, here it is. In the same way that moral utterances are not true or false, would you agree that the same could be said for logic and math? Meaning, logic utterances are not true or false.
I can, but I want to keep things simple first, and you haven't finished answering my question, because it's not clear if you agree that moral utterances can't be true or false unconditionally, in any sense.
My own needs are, to me, more important than your needs, even though were both human. Insofar as your human form allows you to reciprocate my behavior toward you (and insofar as that allows us to cooperate), I elevate my consideration of other humans above my consideration of lesser creatures for practical reasons.
The fact is, if you're willing to kill and eat another animal, even if it is the only way to survive, then you've valued your own needs above the needs of the other.
Quoting chatterbears
Intelligence. Basically, farm animals are too stupid and ill-equipped to be the masters of their own lives. In fact, unless humans rear and slaughter them on a continuing basis then they cannot live at all, let alone free of suffering; we need their meat to pay for their existence and they're incapable of surviving on their own, therefore it's impossible for them to live without slaughter. The fact that we cannot make moral agreements with animals (they're stupid) often pits us against them, where it's either our suffering or theirs.
Quoting chatterbears
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5638464/
- https://www.eatrightpro.org/practice/position-and-practice-papers/position-papers/vegetarian-diets
- https://www.bda.uk.com/news/view?id=179[/quote]
Why do you keep inflicting random digital refuse upon me without lifting a single finger to actually cite the material? (your method of link pasting is not an adequate form of citation, and none of these links adequately or directly address the claim I made)
These links lead to articles, position statements, and studies that lean heavily on a less than complete picture of the economic factors and hurtles involved in producing a global/national nutritionally adequate diet. They rely on the assumption that a no-animal-product system would be nutritionally, environmentally, and economically feasible/beneficial in the long run, but they have not demonstrated these to be facts:
Showing that we eat too much meat is not the same as showing that a vegan diet gives better health results than a diet with some animal products (nobody bothers to carry out that specific study because they're all funded by diametrically opposed lobby groups). Secondly, none of these studies even attempt to show that producing these ideal vegan diets en masse is economically viable (there are seasonal considerations to make, limitations on available land, issues of storage and transportation (let alone inventing a brand new magical crop fertilizer) and more). Animal agriculture has the edge in some of these respects: we can dry store their feed-grain in giant silos and it will not rot (and it grows in more places), and we can selectively slaughter animals to meet changes in demand; we can move livestock around without the need for refrigeration. Too many animals being raised simply because we love to eat meat is clearly not economical or of nutritional value, but nobody is denying that. What's being denied is that the complete elimination of all animal products from human life (given the myriad of complex interdependence throughout all industry) would actually save us money. Very obviously it would cost us money and would create various agricultural and logistic problems for us to solve, ultimately threatening global food security.
The environmental assumptions made in favor of animal-free agriculture as opposed to limited use are at times laughably naive. For instance, given that (IIRC) about half the world's food is fertilized, and that there is no emission free fertilizer, it stands to reason that some manure producing livestock is in-fact economical. The actually peer reviewed study you cited blames livestock for 64% of all ammonia emissions but conveniently fails to acknowledge that the ammonia emitting manure in question is often used as fertilizer for the vegan diets they're advocates for. If we did eliminate all livestock, we would have to mine (using fossil fuels) oil and other materials to use as synthetic fertilizer, which may actually pollute the planet even more than livestock.
None of the articles you "cited" are scientific. One of them might have been peer reviewed, but a list of potentially misleading statistics in a publication for family physicians isn't exactly "scientific". It reads like an editorial...
Quoting chatterbears
Yes, the slaughter of animals contributes the the ability of humans to thrive. That's a difference between rape/torture and the slaughter and consumption of animals.
It's not that we should exploit other forms of life for our own gain, it's that in order to gain, we must.
Quoting chatterbears
Who do you mean by "we"? I know you don't mean all humans because as I've already established without contest, all humans living traditional lifestyles do need to consume meat, and second and third world countries rely on meat and animal products for their food security, so are you only talking about first world countries?
Why are you comparing raising farm animals to the holocaust? If we're being technical, the one advocating an animal holocaust is you. You could have taken the position that factory farming should not be permitted, and we would have agreed, but instead you had to take the position that to raise and then slaughter a farm animal, regardless of how well that animal was treated when it was alive, should not be permitted. By doing so, you've essentially made the statement that the life of any and every farm animal is not worth living, and you propose a final solution in the form of genocide.
It's funny you should mention dogs. You say "holocaust for dogs" but what you meant to say was "is it O.K for us to exploit dogs?", and the answer is yes, because we already do, and have done for thousands of years. But it's not entirely a one-sided relationship; we've used dogs for hunting and protection and companionship for so long that they have evolved into man's best friend. While they protect us from other beasts, we also protect them from injury, disease, starvation, and more. Would I be O.K with farming dogs for meat? It depends on the farm, but I would deem it foolish given how skinny they are.
Would I be O.K with farming severely mentally disable humans for meat? At the outset, I just want to say that this would never be efficient from a thermodynamic perspective (instead of feeding the human-livestock, just feed the human directly) but in some kind of fun-house reality where farming severely mentally disabled people is extremely profitable, I might not actually object.
If you recall, my position is that the justifiability of human meat consumption in general (and in individual cases) exists on a spectrum determined by the severity of need. If it was required for our survival that we farm severely mentally disabled human livestock, how could you or I then object? As our ability to satisfy our spectrum of needs without exploitation grows, so to do out moral obligations to refrain from exploitation, in those respects.
No matter how many false moral equivalences you draw between animal farming and {insert random atrocity here}, you'll not out-run the thermodynamic bill that must be paid if we are to continue existing.
Quoting chatterbears
Ahh, see, that's something that someone who knows absolutely nothing about agriculture would say, and also perhaps someone who has not been reading my posts (not just in this thread).
Feed corn is not fit for direct human consumption; we cannot digest it. Feed corn grows on land that is too rough and infertile for vegetable and fruit crops, which are vegan staples. We could take all that feed corn and process it all into high fructose corn syrup, but that has almost no nutritional value so nobody would need to eat it. Furthermore, in developing countries, goats and other herd animals are typically grazed on pastures or areas with rough forage, which is the form of traditional cattle farming that is actually economical.
P.S Are you saying that human cannibalism is worse than non-human animal consumption?
Very lucid post, thanks.
Also, civilization began with cultivation of wheat, rice, barley, etc. (all plants) and not with livestock (animal) farming.
Are we evolving into vegans?
Eating animals in unethical because, as @Nils Loc said it's not necessary to eat meat. How do herbivores survive if meat is essential?
I guess we just don't care.
What I am trying to achieve: Bring awareness to the animal torture and slaughter industry, while explaining why we should not discriminate against them and treat them unfairly.
What people perceive me to do: Act morally superior.
You, along with many others, have incorrectly assessed my goal as one who is interested to showcase his moral superiority. If you want to just keep repeating this over and over, that's your mistake.
People could have said the same thing to martin luther king when he was fighting for equal rights of black people. "Martin just thinks he is better than everybody else, sitting on his high horse."
Sorry, you are not Martin Luther King. You aren't some glorious historic figure that's going to change the world. You're just a well meaning guy who hasn't yet figured out how to help animals in an effective manner.
This is a philosophy forum.
This is what we do here.
We tear things apart...
... in the hopes of shedding some light.
It's not personal.
My friends have never told me this. People I don't know, have told me this. Such as people on this forum, or people I talk to on my live stream. You also fail to understand that majority of the people I talk to have never said this about me. It is usually the people on the defensive who feel I have "attacked" their character in some way, rather than understanding the arguments and logic I have put forward on the table.
Quoting Jake
Yet me and Martin Luther King both have the same thing in common, which is standing up for the rights of the wrongfully discriminated. But more importantly, I want you to quote me in any discussion I have had with someone on this thread, in which I have conducted in a way that would portray me as someone who cares more about displaying moral superiority, rather than discussing my position and/or having a debate.
As a side note. I can count at least 10 people I have helped change. Half of which, started with drinking soy milk (my recommendation) instead of cow's milk. And talking to them over time, in a polite manner, has helped them realize the harms of the industry and they have lessened their animal consumption by a large margin. Some have completely went vegan because of our talks, while others have only became vegetarian and/or lessened their meat consumption. You can tell me my "methods" are ineffective, yet you are blind to how effective they actually are. All you want to do is claim things without providing evidence for it.
As I said already, I want you to quote me where I cared more about showing my moral superiority, rather than discussing the ethics.
Depends on how you define "true", but I will answer in two different ways.
True, meaning an objective fact about reality, then no.
True, meaning a correct statement in reference to an axiom, then yes.
As I said, math and logic both hold the same position in the realm of what can be true or false. Math can't be true or false, unless an axiom is put in place. Same with logic. Same with ethics.
Does this answer your question? And if so, please answer mine.
Quoting chatterbears
I've been a vegetarian since the early 1970s. Nobody is saying any of that to me.
Anyway, you're not interested in what might be the most effective method of persuasion. That's ok, you're entitled to that choice. This seems a good point for me to butt out, and leave you to learn on your own by beating your head against doing this the hard way. Maybe we can talk again someday when it finally dawns on you that what you want to do is not what works.
Quote me where I actually have acted in a way that displays a sole purpose of moral superiority. I didn't tell you to quote me saying that people have told me this. I want you to quote me ACTUALLY doing it. Can you do that, or are you just going to claim things without evidence?
And the reason you haven't gotten criticized for being vegetarian, is because you don't talk about the morality and ethics behind your decision making. I do. That's the difference.
That answers it well enough. On my view, there's no sense in which moral utterances can be true or false, correct or incorrect. So we disagree about that.
Logic and mathematics are different in that at their core, they're based on (though not exactly identical to) objective relations. Most of logic and mathematics is an extrapolation of how we think about those objective relations, but objective relations are the initial basis. That's not the case with morality/ethics.
Can you explain this further, because I don't understand what you are referring to.
How is logic based on objective relations? What objective relations are you referring to?
For example, the objective fact that something can't be itself and not itself at the same time.
Or the fact that if A obtains and B obtains, then it's not the case that neither A nor B obtain.
Why do you call those facts rather than logic?
You are referring to the law of noncontradiction and the law of identity. Both of these laws are AXIOMS that one must accept before moving forward.
Those are not "objective facts", but are instead, statements that rely upon the axioms they derive from. It seems you may not fully understand how axioms work, but I'll send a link that may be able to help you a bit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction
Scroll down to "Alleged impossibility of its proof or denial". Which starts with:
"As is true of all axioms of logic, the law of non-contradiction is alleged to be neither verifiable nor falsifiable, on the grounds that any proof or disproof must use the law itself prior to reaching the conclusion. In other words, in order to verify or falsify the laws of logic one must resort to logic as a weapon, an act which would essentially be self-defeating"
As I stated before, there are no "objective facts" or "truth" in logic or ethics. You seem to be a bit confused here.
So, we disagree on this.
I'm not sure how to make sense out of someone thinking that's it's not an objective relation that something can't be itself and not itself at the same time, for example.
And posting as if you're going to teach me about something like axioms is patronizing/insulting.
We don't agree on some very core notions--whether moral claims can be true/false in any sense whatsoever, and whether logic/mathematics has any grounding in objective relations. The problem isn't that I'm not familiar with 101-level material.
Did you read anything else I wrote to you? This isn't about a disagreement. You are incorrect in labeling something as an objective fact, when it is not. I'd suggest you read a bit more on axioms and how they relate to principles within logic, math and ethics.
You're being ridiculously patronizing. (see that part I added to the above post)
I'm talking about relations that obtain in the extramental world.
You are perceiving me to be as such, but I have no ill will toward you. I also am not intending to talk down upon you in some patronizing way. It's sometimes hard to perceive someone's tone via text, but I can confirm that it is not my intention. I am genuinely stating that I believe you are incorrect, and I think it is due to you not knowing enough about this subject. You seem to be incorrectly conflating statements that relate to axioms, as objective facts. This is an error, and I've tried to explain it multiple times. Hence why I suggested you to look up more information for yourself.
You're telling me to look up elementary info on axioms as if I must not be familiar with it, simply because I don't have the same view(s) as you.
Quoting chatterbears
Obviously if we have different views about what we believe to be factual matters, you're going to think that I'm incorrect and I'm going to think that you're incorrect.
The first move you make from that isn't to assume that I must not be familiar with rudimentary material.
And we might wonder, what does all your protesting have to do with serving animals? You have a thing you want to do, that's all about you, and I'm getting in the way, so you're upset.
Quoting chatterbears
Right, and I don't do the moralizing dance because it's not effective. People don't enjoy being lectured, just like you're not enjoying it right now. Lecturing alienates people and turns them away, just like you're now alienated from me.
Here's how to debunk all this. Start a new thread which is specifically and sincerely about finding the most effective methods of building vegetarianism in particular, and serving animals in general.
Not what you want to do for you, but what actually works.
I might add that serving animals need not have anything at all to do with what other people are doing or not doing. My wife puts both of us to shame in the serving animals department, and she never lectures anybody, because she's too busy doing it to talk about it.
Because it is not? The law of noncontradiction is an axiom one needs to accept before proceeding into the terrain of logic. Once you accept that axiom, then you can affirm that something can't be itself and not itself at the same time. That isn't an objective fact, it is a statement about an axiom that was put in place.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting Terrapin Station
Could it not be the case that you may know about this 'rudimentary' material, but don't fully understand it? Or maybe you thought you understood it but have some misconception of it that needs to be cleared up?
Still waiting for you to shut up about yourself and shift your focus to serving animals.
I know, that doesnt answer the question.
The relations you are talking about are logical, the axioms of logic. Why call them facts? Im not asking on behalf of a counter-argument, or Chatterbears. Im just asking because I don’t see the utility.
I understand you are framing arguments so that Chatterbears can understand, I just don’t know why you are framing it with “facts” that are logical axioms. It seems like it would be easier and clearer to just refer to logic. Im assuming that using the term “facts” gets more work done for you in the argument somewhere or somehow, but I do not see how. I understand that they arent mutually exclusive per say, but I do not understand why you are using “facts” and then referring specifically to (to use your vernacular, not sure I would call rules of logic a “fact”) a specific kind of “fact”, logical Axioms. Why not just reference logic?
You made the claim that I am more focused with displaying my moral superiority, rather than focusing on the animals. I asked you to back up this claim by providing me with evidence of me doing exactly what you are accusing me of doing. You have yet to provide this evidence, and continue to repeat the same thing like a robot. I think discourse between us is finished, as I no longer see a point in responding to you. Next time if you're going to make a claim about someone's character or their intentions, it's probably best to actually back up that claim with something other than your inaccurate opinion.
Axioms are not derived from preference in one area, while being 'objective facts' in another area. Axioms are statements that are taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. Do you agree with this? Because Terrapin seems to think axioms can be based on preference (in ethics), as well as objective facts (in logic). When in fact, they are just statements that are self-evidently true and act as a foundation for that specific area of discourse.
He isnt contradicting himself, you just cannot recognise it as consistent becuase it is not framed to be consistent with YOUR views and/or axioms. This is the source of the problem you are having communicating in this thread, it is also the reason why people focus on your moralising and self righteousness. How many people will you have to engage with and have them telll you the same thing before you will seriously consider the possibility that you are entirely wrong here? Have you made an earnest effort to actually register everyones points? From your posts, its clear you arent really listening, you already firmly believe you are right and your questions posed are just poorly disguised rhetorical questions designed to establish your own moral authority. They are not designed to understand any other perspective and are not really meant for discussion. Another symptom of this problem is your tendency to try and establish consensus against your opponents, as you just tried to do with me against Terrapin. I don’t know for sure if this stems from a habit of virtue signalling instead of forming real arguments, but I recognise the smell and Im not the only one.
You need to recognise your limitations, because you arent winning any of the arguments you are having and thats why.
Not all civilizations began with farming. Many of the early cultures had animals domesticated before settling down to planting. But plant crops also gave the early civilizations extra food for the breeding of animals.
Quoting TheMadFool
Anything is possible, but I serious doubt that after hundreds of thousands evolving into homo sapiens that we will see the results in a matter of 10 or 20 thousand years that civilizations have been growing their own food.
Quoting TheMadFool
No has been able to prove that you can survive properly as a vegan. If humans were by nature supposed to take supplements to their natural vegan diet where do you think they would get them? Sure nowadays you can pop into a store and pick some up, but there were none available as humans developed. They got their complete set of minerals, vitamins, and fats from what ever they could find and eat.
Quoting TheMadFool
If you want to show how much you care, start campaigning for better methods of breeding and butchering the animal we eat. Stop telling people they are immoral because they kill animal, most of them don't, they just enjoy eating them.
Of course I don't consider things that are necessary to be within the moral domain. Only when we have choices do we consider the moral dimension.
I guess we can say that as of now it's necessary for us to eat meat; therefore, without a choice eating meat shouldn't be a moral issue.
What about the future, for example if we can develop synthetic meat? This provides a more ethical option and at that point in time we should stop killing animals for meat.
Another thing is the proportion of meat that should be in our diets. According to dietary recommendations meat should be, say, x% of our daily diet. Are we following these dietary recommendations or is our consumption in excess. If it is the latter then eating meat in excess would be immoral because we would be exceeding our daily meat recommendations. Right?
You entirely missed the point. I wasn't referring to my views or my axioms. I was referring to axioms themselves and how they actually operate. And the rest of your response didn't address anything I asked.
Quoting DingoJones
And what am I exactly "entirely wrong" in?
Quoting DingoJones
Can you post an example of me doing this?
Quoting DingoJones
I don't care to establish consensus against anybody, but rather a different perspective from the opposition. You seem to be on the side of Terrapin, but you seem to agree with me on smaller points, such as how axioms actually work. Which is why I posed the question to you, if you agreed with what he was saying, or if you agree with what I was saying. And if you agreed with what I was saying, maybe you could convey it in a way he understands, since I seem to be not getting my point across to him. This has nothing to do with "let's gang up on somebody", but more of creating clarity within a conversation. You, along with others, keep imposing this ill will within my perspective, when it is actually nonexistent. As I said above, can you give an example of me "clearly not listening", in which I am just out to establish my own moral authority. I'll wait for an example, as 'Jake' couldn't provide one, but I hope you can.
I always address people's points, as I have with Terrapins. Even if we come to disagreements or misunderstandings, I still address everything people say. It is rare that I do not quote everything someone says, but it is very common for people to quote a small portion of what I say and don't respond to the rest of my statements.
Quoting DingoJones
And what exactly are my limitations? And once you lay those out for me, please give me examples of me engaging into these limitations by quoting me in context within this thread.
1. Show me an example of me doing what you claim I am doing.
2. Give me an alternative way of what would be better.
I can see people criticizing me for my methods, without offering actual evidence to show me what they are referring to. And without offering a solution to the problem I am engaging into. So are you criticizing just to criticize? Or do you have actual constructive criticism?
(Btw, this is all irrelevant to my original point to you. Which is, how do you define axioms, and do you think axioms within logic and math are identical to axioms within ethics. Meaning,they are statements that are taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. Also, do you think an axiom can be based on preference in ethics, but not in logic or math?)
Stop there already. This is why we need to keep things simple to start. It's as if you didn't read, or at least didn't understand, what I wrote. I didn't say that the principle of noncontradiction, qua the principle of noncontradiction, is objective.
Here's what I wrote again, with some added emphases in a few spots:
"Logic and mathematics are different in that at their core, they're based on (though not exactly identical to) objective relations. Most of logic and mathematics is an extrapolation of how we think about those objective relations, but objective relations are the initial basis. That's not the case with morality/ethics."
And then as an example I gave the objective fact that something can't be itself and not itself at the same time. That is not the same thing as the principle of noncontradiction. For one, relations are particulars, they're not principles. They're also not real or objective abstracts. But it serves as the experiential basis, the basis for how we normally think about relations in general, that winds up in logic as the principle of noncontradiction.
I didn't want to get into a huge tangent about this, which is what we're doing. That's why I avoided it initially.
All you'd have to know is that I don't believe just the same structural-functional things are going on when it comes to logic and mathematics as when it comes to ethics. The reason is that logic and mathematics are more complicated in that regard in the way that they're based on, but not identical to, objective relations. Ethics isn't based on objective relations.
You can disagree with my view there, of course, but disagreeing doesn't imply that I'm not familiar with the same standard material, standard views that you're familiar with. Being familiar with and understanding something does NOT imply agreeing with it.
My comment above should give you more insight into this.
Indeed.
Why can’t you apply the same rule of non-contradiction to ethics to form similar basis? I understand this would not resemble conventional ethics, but it would be operating by an objective standard based on the same rule of non-contradiction you said is objective. (Not the Logic principal, but in the sense of something being and not being at the same time that you mentioned)
This entire thread is an exercise in your positioning yourself as being morally superior on the subject of animals. Pick any of your posts, there's your evidence.
Please note how you continually respond to this challenge over and over again, and have even started an entire new thread on the subject. That's because your focus is on Chatterbears, not on serving animals.
Your focus on Chatterbears is not a moral crime. You're entirely within your rights to sell yourself anyway you wish. I have no complaint with that at all. Your focus on Chatterbears is a lack of clarity, because you seem to sincerely feel that you are focused on serving animals. This is a philosophy forum, our job here is to attempt to remedy lack of clarity as best we can.
Here's how to debunk all of the above. Abandon this thread. Start a new thread which sincerely attempts to investigate what the most effective and efficient ways of serving animals might be. Don't just blindly assume that is moral sermonizing just because that is what Chatterbears likes to do.
If you should discover that you lose interest in the topic if it doesn't involve moral sermonizing, then you will have enhanced your clarity.
If you discover that moral sermonizing is actually not a necessary part of your desire to serve animals, that will enhance your clarity too.
Before we do that, show us that you are actually interested in alternative ways of serving animals. You can do that by starting such an investigation yourself, on our own, without us. Start a new thread. Write some posts which show that you are conducting your own investigation, doing your own homework, trying to find these alternatives no matter what anyone else may do or say.
There are a million alternatives to moralizing. You don't see them yet apparently because you want to moralize.
I just don’t have the patience for this kind of thing. You have been told clearly by like, 5 people. You have been retold by those same people in even greater clarity. All the data as to why you are wrong on multiple fronts has been provided, you just don’t get it. You want quotes that are examples self righteous, so you can argue with them. Self reflect. Look at your own posts, why should I do all the work for you? Ill try to point you in the right direction, but Im done here (again). Terrapin is your guy for the bludgeoning patience required to make you understand.
Ok, so parting attempt to get you to self reflect: look at the way you reacted to peoples reactions to your comparison of yourself to Martin Luthar King jr. Do not think about why you were correct in the comparison, think about why people reacted the way they did (I laughed out loud). Resist your urge to attribute those reactions to the limitations of others and try to attribute them to limitations you yourself might have.
What you are referring to is either the law of noncontradiction or the law of identity. Either way, those two things are both axioms which do not have some object facts tied to them.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I could say the same for ethics. That ethics are based on objective relations, since it is an objective fact that sentient beings experience well-being. And it is an objective fact that sentient beings experience pain and pleasure. And it is an objective fact that 99% of sentient beings want to experience pleasure and avoid pain. And based on these 'objective facts', we can put an axiom in place that relates to these facts. And that axiom would be to maximize the rights and well-being of sentient beings.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Sure. I guess we will have to disagree on how core fundamental axioms are reached and adhered to.
So my assumption was correct, in the fact that you will not provide an actual example. But instead, you'd rather just throw a blanket statement over your claim to try and validate it.
Quoting Jake
And your focus is on making claims without providing evidence for them. I'll make the claim that you are sexist, and when you ask me to provide evidence for it, I'll just tell you to review this entire thread.
Quoting Jake
Here's how to back up your claims: Provide evidence.
Quoting Jake
I will ask Dingo the same question separately, but do you think Earthling Ed is also only interested in moral sermonizing, rather than helping the animals? Majority of his videos are talking to people about how eating animals is wrong and we shouldn't be doing it. His latest "debate" video was him setting up a booth and labeling a sign, "You can't love animals and eat them." - You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/PrKAycD7LRo
If you think I am "bad", in the sense of moral patronizing, then you must think people like Ed are moral monsters who are so into themselves that they need to video tape themselves and upload it to youtube so more people can see how great they are.
You seem to have the patience to criticize, but not to offer a solution and/or provide examples of the thing you claim is wrong. As I told Jake, I'll just claim you are sexist. And if other people agree with me and have told you that you're sexist, then you must be sexist, right? They don't need to provide examples of you actually being sexist, they can just point to your "overall character".
Quoting DingoJones
"People", meaning one other person? Not to mention, I never said I was the exact equivalent to Martin Luther King Jr. I was making a comparison between what we are standing up for, which is injustice.
Racism: prejudice against another because of a physical attribute (skin type).
Sexism: prejudice against another because of a physical attribute (sex type).
Speciesism: prejudice against another because of a physical attribute (species type)
As far as your criticism, I'll dismiss yours and jake's for now, since neither of you actually care to improve the quality of this thread, but rather blindly criticize because you don't like the way someone discusses things. Followed by, not showing an example to help and not offering a solution to fix the 'alleged' problem. When called out to show evidence for your claims, you resort to deflective behavior. "I don't have the time." - "I'm not going to do the work for you, do it yourself."
I'll stop responding to you and Jake from this point on.
I could, we all could, probably provide many examples of a more effective persuasion strategy for helping animals, and you could figure it out on your own, but all you want to talk about is yourself.
If you were standing up for injustice, you'd be interested in the most effective ways to do that. As best I can tell, we're on page 14 and you've expressed little to no interest in such an investigation. You want to have an ethical conversation, with you being the moral authority. Everything else is discarded.
Chatterbears nailed.
Do you seriously not get that you've been moral posturing throughout this entire thread? Please look at the title you chose for the thread. It's not about animals. It's about us. Your judgment of us.
Nah, Jake nailed. Surely I should find something more interesting and useful to do. Sadly, my ego is a sucker for shooting fish in a barrel operations. Pathetic, but there you have it.
So to be clear, would you be fine killing mentally disabled people for food, since they cannot reciprocate your behavior (insofar as that allows you both to cooperate) in a practical way? If your answer is no, then the ability to reciprocate the behavior is not the reason you value humans as higher.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yes, but we are not in a survival situation as of this point, so that doesn't apply to this discussion. I wanted to know why you are putting "higher importance" on the needs of humans, but not on the needs of non-human animals (such as pigs, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, etc...)?
Surely there is some property in which you are making a distinction between humans and non-human animals. What is that distinction, in which allows humans to live free from torture and/or slaughter, but not non-human animals? — chatterbears
Quoting VagabondSpectre
So you have given me two justifications as of right now. 1st reciprocation of behavior. 2nd, intelligence level. As stated above with the reciprocation scenario, I will do the same with intelligence. Are you ok slaughtering humans who are of lower intelligence (such as severely mentally disabled people)?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
To respond to everything you wrote about the articles I sent you, I will stop sending you those for now and do further research to find you something more adequate for you. For now, we can stick to the moral arguments.
No you didn't, unless I missed it. Was it, the slaughter of animals allows humans to thrive? Why should we thrive off the suffering/torture/slaughter of another species? Because we have the power to do so? — chatterbears
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Right now, we are currently in a over-population crisis. For us to thrive, we would need to stop growing as rapidly as we have been. Killing humans off, to lessen the population, would contribute to the ability of humans to thrive. Would you therefore claim that, if something contributes to the ability of humans to thrive, therefore it is good for humans to put into action? Humans are the cause of so much pollution and massive contribution to climate change. Killing us off (to lessen the population) would actually be better for us in the long run, as well as help restore the health of the earth and our living conditions.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Do you have any research on this? The cheapest ingredients in the world are plant-based. Rice, beans, pasta, fruits, vegetables, etc... To say you have established this fact without contest, is incorrect. I know many countries do rely on animal products to survive, but would you say most countries? I don't think so.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Holocaust survivors have compared factory farming to the jewish holocaust. See here: https://youtu.be/f7dZv43A0g0
Although the treatment of an animal is important, it is even more important to allow them to live when they do not want to die. You'd agree the same goes for humans. You would object to someone killing their 17 year old son or daughter, even if they told you, "But my child was treated amazingly, right before I killed them."
Lastly, the current life of farm animals is not worth living, since they suffer more than they experience pleasure, by a large margin. It wouldn't be considered a genocide to stop raping (force impregnating) cows. Once the mother cows stop being raped, they will stop producing babies. That isn't a genocide, that is a compassion release of a species that we currently have dominion over. We could keep some number of each species (cows, chickens, pigs, etc...) in animal sanctuaries.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
As you already stated, we have domesticated dogs as pets because it is a mutual friendship. They protect us and we protect them. We don't rape them or make them live in their own feces. We don't cage them up and don't allow them to see sunlight. We don't kill them 1-2 years into their life because we have no use for them anymore. We don't mutilate them without anesthetic. We don't neglect their medical needs and slit their throats prematurely.
I keep to my original question. Would you be ok with a holocaust for dogs? And since they are skinnier, maybe we would need a larger holocaust than our current one we have for other animals. Would you be fine with that?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
So you care more about profit than the lives of sentient beings, just to be clear? Especially if it was your child or someone related to you. You'd be okay with giving the mentally-disabled agriculture industry your family member, so they could exploit, torture and kill them for profit?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
In the same way that animal factory farming isn't required for our survival right now, severely mentally disabled human factory farming wouldn't be required for our survival. I am asking you to swap factory farmed animals with mentally disabled humans. We would treat them exactly the same. We would rape them (force impregnate) with other sperm to ensure another mentally disabled human is born. We would even milk them, and pump more hormones into them to increase milk production. We drink the milk of another species, yet people are grossed out by human breast milk? (lol?)
Quoting VagabondSpectre
You can call them false moral equivalences, but they aren't. You think it is an atrocity when a human is involved, but not an animal, or so it seems. The thermodynamic bill will be there regardless of our action, but should we not choose the best action for ourselves and others around us?
If they have adequate land for animal agriculture, they should have adequate land for plant agriculture. It would be the same as me asking you, "Do you think it is moral for growing or developing countries to consume human flesh if they don't have adequate access to the land and funds to go vegan?" — chatterbears
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I have been reading your posts, and whether or not I know enough about agriculture is irrelevant. I understand that some crops cannot grow on some types of land, but we could definitely settle this type of thing with time. What I was asking you is something different, which was, Do you think it is moral for growing or developing countries to consume human flesh if they don't have adequate access to the land and funds to go vegan?" - You didn't address or answer this question.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I am not saying one is worse than the other, as they are both immoral. The only time they 'may' become morally acceptable is within a survival situation. But even then, I may still find it immoral to take the life of a human (or non-human animal), to fulfill your own selfish needs. As stated, it may be more understandable and justifiable, but I would still find it immoral on some level.
What would it have to do with ethics at all?
I'm not referring to laws/principles. I just explained that to you.
If our survival and continued existence was dependent on slaughtering the mentally handicapped then it would not be immoral to slaughter them. And I don't exactly need to give you some kind of objective rule that explains why I extend more moral consideration to (even handicapped) humans more than I do to animals; handicapped humans have willing guardians who can actually make moral agreements and it's not as if there is some kind of gain to be had from devaluing or slaughtering them.
Quoting chatterbears
You should know my position by now dude: unless we're getting something important out of a harmful action (like sustenance or the ability to thrive), then causing harm is immoral. When it comes to extending the same moral consideration to others that I extend to myself, I do that with intelligent humans and not dumb animals for practical reasons.
Quoting chatterbears
Actually we're quickly approaching an underpopulation crisis. Countries like China, Japan, and even Europe and N.A are heading toward birth rates that are less than the required replacement rate
Quoting chatterbears
Killing off humans would be the opposite of humans thriving. It's possible that one group of humans could attack and kill another in an attempt to thrive exclusively, but it's also possible that group of humans could retaliate (making cooperation wholly more attractive).
When two human groups are fundamentally at odds though, war and slaughter happens, just as you say.
Quoting chatterbears
It's a matter degrees (of need and of harm). If something is absolutely required for human survival (let alone to thrive, which is slightly different yet still fundamentally important), then that something cannot be forbade by a moral system which actually permits humans to survive or thrive; anything less and the moral system will break down when survival demands give way to conflict.
Let me give an example: let's say I agree with you that some humans should be slaughtered to make way for other humans, but that I think you should be the first human slaughtered. What's your response?
You see, if your own moral system does not serve you, how can you expect to continue wielding it (especially without some tricky afterlife or other superstitious concept)?
I'll rephrase a concise answer to your above question: The more something is necessary for human survival and ability to thrive, the more justifiable it is against the harm that said something might entail.
This resembles how we execute moral judgments in practice: we tolerate "harm" if we deem it necessary toward the preservation of some greater good (often health and safety). Put simply, our circumstances can mitigate our guilt or even condone harm (when we lack alternative options) just as much as they can condemn us. Human meat consumption isn't a single monolithic act; it is a legion of different acts being carried out for sometimes drastically different reasons (sometimes justifiable, sometimes not).
Quoting chatterbears
We had a very long series of exchanges in an older threat where I delved fairly deeply into the complex industry of agriculture (with ample sources), and I've been mentioning existing limitations that should give you common sense reasons to reconsider:
Cheap ingredients tend to be less nutritious ingredients; they're less difficult to farm because they absorb less nutrients from soil and require less heat/water/sunlight to manufacture their products. The cheapest ingredient of all, being field corn, is one of the main culprits of America's obesity, and is something humans could avoid eating entirely. Beans are a great plant, but we can only eat so much volume (beans also leave nutritional gaps which meat consumption does not, and those nutritional gaps need to be recuperated somewhere), and beans don't grow as easily as field corn. Going up the list, these plants get more expensive and require better soil quality and more fertilizer for sustainably significant yields. Fruits and vegetables simply will not grow properly in low quality soil where field corn or other very robust field crops grow. Furthermore, without cow shit, we will lose our only renewable source of fertilizer.
For anything but a first world country, (one which has an FDA like body capable of regulating a scientifically sound meat free diet, along with the necessary supplements that every person will need to consume) it would simply be unfeasible or too expensive to make a national switch. Any farm which grazes livestock on rough forage being shut down would wind up costing money or food security.
It's possible that a North American country could make the switch; farms would need to be incorporated into state ownership so that they can all be told exactly what to grow (to avoid national nutrition deficits resulting from no long term planning) and we would need massively expanded healthcare/welfare states, but we could do it. Though, at what cost? If we need to defund other important services like schools or roads, at what point might the cost become too great?
The reason I would say most countries depend on animal products for their security is because there are too many ways in which animal products are intricately linked into the rest of human life (not just food, but manure for plant based food, and dozens of other useful byproducts that have hundreds of applications). At some point, perhaps in the near future, we will have the technology and know-how to embrace alternatives as whole nations, but as yet there is still some risk. Since the challenges for even a first world nation to divert completely from animal farming are staggering, I can only see it as totally unfeasible for most of the rest of the world.
Quoting chatterbears
And what if Holocaust survivors jumped off a bridge?
Quoting chatterbears
I've already answered this, but here it is again: if it is necessary for our survival or security (security comes in degrees), then yes, it is justifiable.
Quoting chatterbears
When did I say that? Again: if something is necessary for survival, then it is not unjustifiable.
Quoting chatterbears
Why the hell are you talking about factory farming? For a vegan you sure love constantly mutilating that dead horse of yours.
Quoting chatterbears
Comparing ethical animal rearing and human slaughter (thermodynamically necessary to have paid for the animal's life in the first place) to rape, molestation, cannibalism, Hitler, murder, and any other random atrocity you think of is terribly unpersuasive. At least choose an analogy that has some surface similarities with traditional animal farming if you're going to continue doing so.
Quoting chatterbears
This is a great question, and answering it is the entire game of morality. What's actually best? How many of us can we morally consider? What happens when our happiness, suffering, or survival are mutually exclusive with that of another?
Can the gazelle extend moral consideration toward the lion, or vice versa? Ought they? Can we extend moral consideration to every other form of life by choosing to ourselves decline or even cease existing such as the anti-natalists argue?? Should we?
Quoting chatterbears
It might not be immediately relevant, but if you don't know much about agriculture you should consider that you might be wrong about the immediate feasibility of animal free agriculture. It's vastly complex; not just sticking seeds in the ground.
Quoting chatterbears
That's an irrelevant question, but I'll answer it: no. Eating humans is not a thermodynamically sustainable solution, and if human livestock can be sustained, then the main population could just be directly sustained instead, for a profit.
If you want to ask "if cannibalism is necessary for survival, is it O.K to do it?" then the answer is yes.
Quoting chatterbears
Is stealing a chocolate bar as bad as murdering ten innocent people? Both are immoral, yet one feels more grave than the other...
Survival isn't cut and dried. Security (required for long term survival) comes in shades of grey, and what's the point of endless survival if we aren't permitted to thrive? Thrival also happens to come in degrees, along with the costs thereof.
...because it would be operating under the same “facts” (cannot be itself and not itself) that you yourself have called objective. Your turn.
Why couldnt an ethic based on that “fact” be considered objective in the same sense?
Please explain to us why morality should be our all important concern when it comes to enhancing the welfare of animals.
As example, my wife has raised and released at least 1,000+ orphaned animals without ever once making any kind of moral statement regarding what anybody else should or shouldn't do.
As example, factory non-animal sourced meat simulation products would give meat eaters exactly the taste they seek without harming animals, and if the price is right, morality need not have anything at all to do with it.
Please explain to readers why you show no interest at all in these kind of animal service activities, and all you want to talk about are moral equations, moral equations, moral equations, moral equations, moral equations, endlessly ad nauseam. We already know the answer to this, and are wondering if you're capable of ever figuring it out.
Please explain why we should believe that lecturing people about their morality is the most effective way to change human behaviors which have been routine for hundreds of thousands of years.
Please explain why you simply don't get that doing the fantasy superiority morality dance will convert a few people, while alienating ten times that many. Fun for the holier than thou moralizer, bad news for animals.
Morality has a very limited effect on any of this. Everyone involved, people and animals, are going to do whatever they perceive to be in their own self interest, and the name of the game is to align those interests so that they conflict to the least degree possible.
The particular objective relation that a thing is itself, and can't be not itself at the same time, has nothing to do with ethics, though. Ethics is about the acceptability of interpersonal behavior. If there were objective relations that somehow amounted to whether any interpersonal behavior was acceptable or unacceptable (permissible, impermissible, obligatory, etc.) then sure, it could be similar, but there are no objective relations of that sort to base ethics on.
So I'm asking you to explain how the idea you're proposing makes any sense to you, because it seems like you're asking why ethics couldn't be based on something that has nothing particularly to do with ethics. I'm not trying to be antagonistic in asking you. I'm trying to get you to better or in far more detail explain to me what you're thinking, just how you're thinking it might work, because it seems like a nonsensical question to me--like if you were asking why oil painting technique couldn't be based on combustion, say.
You are working backwards from your conclusions about ethics to dismiss the relevance of something thats foundational to almost any conclusions that can be drawn about almost anything. Starting with the simple, basic “fact” or rule or axiom (whatever you want to call it) that it doesnt make sense for something to be itself and not itself is the basis for a great many things. Im asking you to tell me why ethics must be excluded from the great many things that the “fact”, rule or axiom is applied to.
Its like you are using a rope to climb onto a rooftop. Ok, fair enough, but the versatility of a rope is such that you can also use it to swing from one rooftop to another, or tie someone up, or as a tightrope to get accross a pit...to which your response is “that doesnt make sense, ropes are for climbing onto rooftops” and im saying “yes they are but why couldnt they also be used to hang a tire swing from a tree branch?”
From that perspective, every fact has to do with everything, no?
No, we are talking about a specific kind of “fact”.
What specific kind and what would the limitation be?
Already explained. Do you intend to actually answer any questions or just answer them with questions?
I don't know anyone that eats only meat. But personally I eat meat because I enjoy it. If that is immoral then I am screwed and will not go to heaven for my sins.
Quoting TheMadFool
There you go, you are getting the idea now.
Quoting TheMadFool
The stopped using horses when cars became cheaper, the stopped burning coal and wood then other methods became cheaper, they stopped making clothes at home when the shops sold them cheaper so I guess that the same principle would apply.
Quoting TheMadFool
It is not about the amount of meat we eat but the contents of the meat that we need and the body's ability to absorb them. Anything in excess is usually immoral, but who is going to figure out what each person needs. I had a girl friend a long time ago that would eat a whole giant pizza almost every day as a snack, usually late at night. She never put on any extra weight because she burned so much energy at work and in sports. Her twin brother would look at a slice once a week and get fatter.
Now those fat slobs that sit around and do nothing but eat would probably still get fat on a vegetarian diet and still be immoral.
Yes, we aren't there yet, agreed. That's why I was interested in meat grown in a lab, it will literally be actual meat, but no animals involved in the production. So far it appears that is technically possible, but still too expensive to be a practical alternative. If they can get the price way down to where it's cheaper than meat from animals, that's the end of this moral holy war, imho.
The truth of your first statement hinges on your definition of "proper" survival. And your following question appeals to a highly controversial notion about how we were "supposed" to be "by nature".
Our brains are as much a part of our physiology as our stomachs. And our brains, much more significantly than our stomachs, were a factor in how we got to where we are today, with all of the opportunities that technological development has brought about, and our capacity to make intelligent lifestyle choices which no other known organism can make. Your notion of "proper" survival seems to be based on a mixture of value judgements about what kind of lifestyles are good and bad, and judgements based on very selective information about human physiology which lead you down the wrong path. Were humans, "by nature", supposed to be driving around in Peugeots? Is it immoral for us to be driving around in Peugeots? If humans were supposed to be driving around in Peugeots, then why do we have legs? That this kind of reasoning is fallacious should be clear.
I don't believe in teleology, but I do believe in evolution, and, quite remarkably, the basis for us getting to the stage that we're now at was present within our ancestors as a result of evolution.
This can be discerned through a study of human development from our early days to present times. If you want to know more, I recommend the book [I]Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind[/I] by Yuval Noah Harari.
The bottom line: we don't need to eat meat or consume any animal products. As a conditional necessity, say, for a goal about living an idealistic healthy lifestyle, then sure, but that's a [i]choice[/I].
Quoting TheMadFool
Wrong. That something is against dietary recommendations does not mean that it is immoral.
Quoting Sir2u
These kind of prejudiced views are what's immoral, not eating in excess.
Why?
If it's necessary and, hence, recommended for me to eat 300 gm of meat everyday then I have to to stay survive. That means eating more than 300 gm of meat in a day would be a choice I have. Since opting to eat more than is necessary for survival would entail the killing of more animals it would be immoral for me to do that as the killings were not necessary.
I find this reasoning sound. We don't say lions are immoral for they kill only to survive. However, the sport of hunting is immoral because it isn't necessary for survival.
Your argument relies on the assumption that your premise positing a necessity is true. However, it isn't a simple necessity for us to eat 300gm of meat everyday. Nor is it necessary for us to do so in order to live a healthy enough lifestyle. It would only be "necessary" for someone, if, for example, they're a health freak with a fixation on achieving the ideal healthy lifestyle, and they're stuck on the notion that achieving that requires eating 300gm of meat everyday. But even then, that's not strictly necessary. Maybe instead, what's necessary for them is counseling.
And we are very, very different from lions. Unlike lions, we don't need to hunt for survival. Those days are long gone.
Where are you getting these ideas from?
Obviously I didn't catch what was supposed to answer that question then. Whatever you took to answer it must not have seemed like an answer to it to me. Are you attempting to communicate with me so that I understand an idea I didn't previously or are you trying to just be disputatious and antagonistic?
Well, let me ask you:
Imagine four people A, B, C and D
1. A had no choice (it was necessary) in killing C
2. B had a choice not to kill D but did so anyway
What is your moral evaluation of persons A and B?
What do you expect to achieve from this? The first scenario isn't representative of the context of this discussion, where eating meat isn't a simple necessity or necessary to survive, so my evaluation of the first scenario is irrelevant. And my evaluation of the second scenario is that it could be wrong, but not necessarily so, and that there's not enough information to make any further judgement.
Please instead try to justify your premise, if you accept it to be true.
But that doesn't follow. We are indeed animals, and we are indeed at the top of the food chain, but we are also unique among animals, so it's irrational to simply lump us in with the rest without proper consideration of the differences. That's a hasty generalisation.
What are you talking about? I don't understand these questions or why you're asking me them. Are you mistaking me for someone who has asserted that it's immoral to eat any kind of living thing?
I was just pointing out an error in your reasoning.
Are you trolling? I haven't denied that. What's your point, please?
Well, since you initially asked me about insects, if you really want to know, I generally don't give a flying fuck. I've had a bit of a fly problem at home of late, and I have zero qualms about swatting them.
I definitely draw the line at killing humans for consumption, I'm repulsed by the thought of killing dogs and cats for consumption, and I'm not exactly over the moon about the fact that cows and chickens are killed for consumption either, but I'm a meat eater nevertheless.
You asked me by what standard it is a matter of morality, but I can barely comprehend how it could not be. I can comprehend someone sticking their head in the sand, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a matter of morality. Maybe for you it isn't, but I care about cows and chickens in a way that I don't about insects, based on both the set of qualities of cows and chickens - which are different to those of insects and of people - and my feelings about them, so for me, it's a matter of morality.
Let's say you ask me a question that makes sense in relation to my position.
Yes, of course I do. That's essential in my assessment.
That's funny. An objective standard isn't necessary. Even if one were discovered, it wouldn't suddenly cause everyone to abandon their moral judgements. For argument's sake, if it were discovered that rape is moral, would you change your judgement accordingly? Would you go around raping people?
The purpose of this discussion is to share opinions, put forward arguments, scrutinise what others have said, and so on. In the context of ethics, above all other branches of philosophy, emotions matter, and they can be appealed to, unless you're a robot.
If you don't give a fuck, good for you. I know why I'm here, but as for you, you tell me.
No, that's a complete [i]non sequitur[/I]. It doesn't follow from my reasoning, and it suggests to me that, with regards to my ethical stance, you are equipped with the kind of arguments directed against it that one would expect from a novice.
I find the moral objection to eating too much beef for environmental reasons much more persuasive than these arguments about health. But to call it a necessary moral truth is laughable.
What's the problem? You didn't provide one to begin with, so I don't need to provide one in response. The burden remains with you. You can't just declare it a necessary moral truth by fiat. That's not how this works. And it doesn't follow from what you said beforehand. You can't find a moral property in a field of cattle. It's just a field of cattle, and you're projecting the rest.
Everyone bases their morality on their feelings, whether they realize this or not. Because there's nothing else to base it on. Either you feel that such and such is acceptable behavior or you do not.
Re "justified," I wouldn't say that's a relevant issue, as I was trying to explain to chatterbears earlier. Justification is pertinent to whether we have good reasons to believe that p over not-p, which is pertinent to claims that are true or false, not issues where we're talking about you feeling one way versus another.
Re the point of the thread, chatterbears seems to believe that in some sense it's true that people should have moral views that amount to it being wrong to kill animals for food. If he believes that, I think he's mistaken. Moral stances are not true or false in any sense.
But aside from that, he may just want to try to persuade some others to feel that it's wrong to kill animals for food. Obviously our moral feelings are about ways we interact (that's what morality is--views about interpersonal behavior), and we want things to be as our preferences have it. So we do what we can to make the world more in line with our preferences, including trying to persuade others to feel similar to us.
Well, go on then. Put together your argument including any missing premises and I'll tell you where you're going wrong.
My standard isn't that it's acceptable for anyone who doesn't share my feelings about dogs to do whatever they want to them. You're starting from faulty assumptions that you seem to be plucking out of thin air.
The effect that raising a lot of cattle under particular conditions has on the environment would be factual.
Whether that's bad or good or neutral or whatever is a matter of someone's preferences.
Part of what it means to have preferences is that you'd rather that things were a particular way. You prefer that to alternatives. So you do what you can to make things that way. Otherwise we'd not be talking about very strong preferences, if we're talking about preferences at all.
Nothing has intrinsic value period. That's an ontological fact. Valuing is something that individuals do.
I didn't give my opinion above. I simply said that whether something is good or bad or neutral is a matter of how any given individual feels about it.
I'm not denying any facts or objective state of affairs. There are no moral properties there though. That's in your head. The beliefs pertaining to facts or objective state of affairs correspond. Your judgement about morality doesn't.
So to have a philosophical discussion about this, you'd need to plausibly support how there can be intrinsic value. Support just what it's a property of, just how it would obtain, etc.
Why, because they're [i]mine[/I], of course! :lol:
Why would I take someone else's feelings over mine, unless I found them more persuasive? What's funny is that you're no different than me in this regard. You go by your own thoughts and feelings unless persuaded otherwise, and so do I.
I don't believe through faith that there is no objective purpose. I believe through the complete absence of evidence that there is no objective purpose. The only evidence for purposes suggests that they're something that individuals do (in other words, a way that individuals can think about things).
How does it follow that if the universe was created for the purpose of beings with reason or rationality, then there are necessary truths?
It seems not impossible logically that if the universe was created for the purpose of beings with reason or rationality, then there are contingent truths.
What's the argument for the former rather than the latter?
Sure. And I'm questioning how you believe that necessary (moral or any) truth follows from the notion that the universe was created for the purpose of beings with reason or rationality, because that seems like a non sequitur to me.
(1) Laws of nature do not have anything to do with purpose. They have to do simply with what is the case.
(2) I don't believe that we do discover laws of nature. I'm not a realist on natural law (in any sense). I'm not a realist on an abstracts. I'm a nominalist. And the evidence suggests that laws of nature are a way that we think about what we experience rather.
That sounds like idealism. I thought you were against idealism.
You didn't even properly address my very first reply to you. You instead switched focus to my position with a string of questions.
Allow me to refresh your memory. You said that in light of your understanding that humans are considered animals by biologists, and that we are animals at the top of the food chain, it is therefore not immoral to eat animals, however much.
I replied that that doesn't follow, and that it is based on a hasty generalisation. Humans are unique among animals, in that, for example, they are capable of moral agency, and are capable of thinking things through in ways that no other known animal is capable of, and in that we can take advantage of the technological advancements all around us in ways that no other animal can.
Remind me, how did you address that criticism? Oh, that's right...
And then there was my point about an objective moral standard. I asked you a direct question. What was your answer? Oh, that's right...
And no, lol, to simply assert out of the blue that both of us are basing our world views on faith is far from adequate.
Some things are mental-only--like ethics/morality and value in general, some things aren't mental-only, they're objective/real/external to us.
I'm not a realist on any abstracts. Not being a realist on any abstracts is a brand of nominalism (which is part of how I'm a nominalist). I'm a realist on particulars instead.
So yeah, you could say that it's idealism about physical laws, but it's not any kind of overarching idealism. Presumably everyone thinks that some things are mental-only, unless they're simply denying that we have minds, thoughts, etc. at all...... In which case they're literally telling us that they're mindless. ;-)
I addressed it by agreeing to moral reasoning. Remember me granting you that eating too much beef is wrong? I thought we agreed on that. I was asking questions as a dialectical tool to get you to give your basis for morality, which you said were based on the primacy of your personal feelings. I then gave reasonings for denying that. Some of my reasons were addressed to TerrapinStation. I assumed you read those, too. Your basis that the universe has no purpose is based on faith as is my basis of intrinsic human value is based on reasoned faith.
A traditional distinction is between real and ideal, which at least roughly correlates to objective/subjective, or external/internal (internal a la mentality). That's not the only way to use the terms "real" and "ideal," obviously, but it's one traditional way to use the terms, and pretty much whenever you see a philosopher say that they're an antirealist on such and such, they're simply denying that such and such has any external or objective existence.
Re nominalism, it's worth reading a bit about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/.
You rule that out because you don't like it, and you believe it all fits together perfectly, clearly indicating a God, because of wishful thinking.
And yet, you were the one only moments ago grasping at straws to undermine the role that emotions play in our ethical stances.
You've got it backwards. You should have a clear head on metaphysical matters, and listen to your heart on ethical matters.
How does that relate to my criticism of your reasoning? You seem to have missed the point. I wasn't disputing your [i]conclusion[/I] by suggesting that it's [i]false[/I] that it's not immoral to eat animals, however much. I was criticising your [i]reasoning[/I] on the basis that it's [i]fallacious[/I]. And that's what you haven't addressed. Do you accept my criticism or not?
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Reasoned faith is an oxymoron. :lol:
No, like Terrapin, I don't believe that the universe has a purpose because there is insufficient evidence to support that theory.
I'm willing to bet that it's a load of baloney. :snicker:
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
And I believe that the existence of horses indicates the existence of magical flying unicorns.
Im not trying to be antagonistic, answering questions with more questions seems evasive. Especially when you do that instead of addressing the points I raised. Its not like im posting lengthy, obfuscating responses.
Now Im not sure how to respond, since trying to communicate towards understandung is what I am indeed attempting but you have found it offensive.
Because I get a perverted kick out of it. If you don't like that, then you can report me to the political correctness enforcement squad. :wink:
Through human intelligence, which we gained through evolution, and was not something that was God given. I base my views on information from scientific literature, not on creation myths in theological literature.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
I don't know. Can you be any more vague?
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
[B]Yes[/b].
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Again, reasoned faith is an oxymoron. There's reason, and then there's faith. As soon as you make a leap of faith, you leave reason behind. I suppose you can reason up to a point, but overall, I don't think that it's appropriate to call your position reasonable if it involves a leap of faith, which is unreasonable by nature.
This one has yet to learn not to take everything I say so seriously. I'm like this with everyone. Nothing against theists in particular. I don't hesitate to rip into atheists with bad arguments. It's like a sport. Like hunting wild game. Yeah, that seems like a fitting analogy here of all places.
Very well. Carry on wit yo bad self. ;)
No, it can be, but it doesn't have to be, and in fact it isn't in my case.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g. faith unfaithful kept him falsely true). It's an oxymoron.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
If it simply means that there are good reasons for a belief, then it isn't faith. You should just call that reasoned belief.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
I wasn't talking about the definition. I was talking about the term, as is perfectly normal and to be expected. Look at the dictionary definition and accompanying example.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
No, I think you'll find that that's not what I said, and I certainty didn't use a loaded phrase like "just happened". That's an old theist trick. I've seen it a hundred times or more. People have written books on the how's and why's of the evolution of rational minds.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Okay, I accept that your belief is faith based. That means that it's not rationally defensible, so I don't expect you to attempt such a defence here on this forum.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Like I need your permission. :cool:
Well, actually, I notice that in my last reply I allowed myself to fall into the trap of letting you word my position for me, instead of wording it myself. I don't need to conclude that the universe has no purpose. I just need to point to the lack of sufficient evidence in favour of a universe with a purpose.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
There might be accidental elements to that evolution. My position is: what does current scientific literature have to say? I've referred once already to a book I bought on the subject of the history of humankind. That book contains some detailed and reasoned theories about this topic, and it also cites currently available evidence in support or against such theories. Go read a book, and no, not your Bible. :wink:
Anyway, a dietary recommendation, last I checked, advises minimum and maximum nutritional requirements to stay healthy. We must eat the minimum requirement if we're to live a healthy long life. I see no problem in eating as much meat as suggested by nutritionists BUT to eat more would be an option, something freely considered and, therefore, since not being necessary, we're morally responsible for the extra killings that must occur to satisfy our, then excessive, appetites.
That's all I'm saying. Why would anyone disagree with that?
Yes, I'm aware of that, and no, I'm not pulling your chain. But I am questioning the relevance of that to my criticism.
Quoting TheMadFool
Simple. You weren't merely talking about minimum nutritional requirements, you were specifically talking about 300gm of meat per day. I think that switching to the broader category of nutrition would be an example of backtracking or moving the goalposts. I am saying that I don't believe that it's necessary to eat 300gm of meat a day to be healthy enough to get by. That doesn't sound credible at all.
I still have no idea where you got this 300gm of meat a day from.
We're not just animals. We're thinking animals. If a tiger were ever able to feel the pain of the animals it kills and ever possessed of a human-level rational brain, it would definitely conclude killing is bad or immoral.
So, we're animals, yes, we can feel pain like all animals. But we can also think and this ability, unique in the animal kingdom, informs us that inflicting pain on living things is immoral. Together, our feelings and our rationality, we understand the difference between good and evil.
I'm not at all saying they're not "intertwined." But either you believe that everything is ONLY mind or you believe that there is no mind, or you believe that some stuff is mind and some stuff isn't.
Again, thinking that some stuff is mind and some isn't mind isn't really saying anything more than "Some stuff is a tree and some stuff isn't a tree." I don't think anyone would be saying that trees and other things aren't intertwined in that case. They're just not saying either that everything is only a tree or that there are no trees.
Good for you. So, on what reasonable basis do you reject these scientific theories relating specifically to what we've been talking about? Or do you reject them because of your faith, which isn't reasonable by definition?
Maybe try being more verbose about what you have in mind.
You mentioned using the particular relation (rather than general relation, which I'm specifying because remember that I think there are only particulars) of a thing being x (or having property F) and not being not x (or not lacking property F) at the same time as something to do with ethics, but I pointed out that that doesn't have anything to do with ethics (or rather it doesn't have anything more to do with ethics than it does the price of tea in China, or garbage collection schedules, or whatever). So I'm not sure what you're talking about. You could say that ethics has to be in accord with that particular relation as a fact, but everything has to be in accord with every fact in that same sense, so again, it's difficult to say what it particularly has to do with ethics.
Hence why I asked you to explain what it has to do with ethics.
This is exactly what I was getting at in my reply to that same comment which you've quoted from. Noah never properly addressed this point.
I prefer to put my faith in God. It makes me feel good, and my conception of God as the conscious creator of the universe relates to our conscious creations of thought, dividing the universe into the existent and nonexistent. I believe that the universe requires a conscious observer to make sense, and God fits the bill.
Even if it does involve some degree of faith, it doesn't involve faith in any truly comparable way. Look at where science has gotten us, and look at where theology has gotten us. Look at the tangible results. Look at your computer, your TV, your mobile phone. Look at what Darwin, Einstein, Edison and Bell have achieved. [i]Res ipsa loquitur[/I].
Yes, evidently so. Sorry, but that has been well established and is not up for debate. You've suggested that you have above average knowledge and are well informed in matters scientific. Well, you don't even need science for this one, it's common knowledge.
Providing examples of other species coming close to some extent and in some respects does nothing whatsoever to refute my claims about our uniqueness.
You’re talking to me like I don’t believe in science. Of course I do. I’m not ignorant. I don’t think that God created computers, at least not directly. I believe He endowed us with the same reason that governs the universe, enabling us to build computers with scientific reasoning.
Well, I agree we are unique. Dolphins are also unique.
Yes, they are. And, tying this back to your original argument, they aren't sufficiently like us for a sensible comparison to be made between the one and the other simply on the basis of being animals and being at the top of the food chain. So, you're still wrong, and you should concede. In fact, you should have conceded long ago when I originally raised this objection to your argument.
I don't care enough about what you believe unless it has a strong enough basis in evidence or reason. And that remains to be seen. Otherwise you may as well be telling me about your belief in magical flying unicorns or that your wife loves you.
Show me a dolphin who has made a conscious ethical judgement to refrain from eating fish, and you may just have a point. Otherwise you're just trying to nail jelly to your wife.
Alright, alright. I concede that your wife loves you. (But she loves me more). :joke:
I don't think that it's over-extending morality. It's well worthy of consideration, even if different conclusions are reached. At the very least, the arguments here are better than any argument for God that I've come across, and have more of a bearing on our actual lives.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
That's not what she tells me when we're in bed together.
You have sex with your mother? Incest is a sin.
That's alright. God doesn't exist.
I think you are making it more complicated than it needs to be, and as I said you are working backwards from conclusions youve already come to. Maybe you aren’t interested, if so let me know, but Im talking about a starting “fact”, axiom or rule (if you are interested in proceeding, we might want to decide on a term) that you have stated is objective. This objective basis, as you alluded, applies to a great many things (garbage collections, price of chinese tea etc). All Im asking is why, amongst this great many things, ethics isnt one of them. Why can’t ethics have the same, simple basis of non-contradiction? Saying “it has nothing to do with ethics” doesnt answer that question, it evades it. Im already asking you to explain that, so I dont think your answer actually has any substance at all.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Thats good advice, thanks. My fear is that then I will be accused of being condescending.
First, I don't think that there's an axiom or rule that's objective, just a particular relation.
I also don't think that logic is objective. The particular relation in question isn't itself logic. It's not sufficient to be logic. Logic has some basis in objective relations, but logic isn't identical to those objective relations. Logic is a way of abstract thinking about relations (and primarily it's thinking about our abstractions). You don't get to logic until you get to that thinking.
Ethics isn't anything about relations per se. So it doesn't make any sense to say that ethics is in any way based on objective relations. Logic is about relations. That's the whole subject matter of it. Logic is about relations--more specifically, implicational, inferential, etc. relations--on a generalized, idealized, abstract level. But that's not the subject matter of ethics.
I think that proper would mean to most people a healthy life, not just healthy enough, and it should be obvious from the context in which I used it.
Quoting S
Quoting Sir2u
Quoting S
Firstly I do not like people changing what I say to suit their way of thinking. Especial when they are people who love to point out others mistakes while making their own. Second, it does not appeal to anything at all the way I wrote it. It is just a simple question that I wanted an answer to. Based on the few vegans and vegetarians that I personally know I have learned that they do take regular store bought supplements, because there are no "none animal" sources available for those vitamins and minerals. Does Taking pills to be health instead of eating a bit of meat sound normal to you?
Quoting S
As I stated earlier, it is not about the meat but about the contents of the meat.
Quoting S
This kind of prejudiced views are what's immoral. Why would you want to call someone a freak because they want to live their life properly. And what great authority do you process to decide just what is necessary and what is not? Could we see your qualifications on nutritional counseling please?
Quoting S
So you think that it is OK for people to sit around doing nothing but overeating and getting fat?
Nothing at all wrong with the comparison, it is quite good. But we did not evolve to eat cooked meat, the cooking part came much later. A discovery, whether it is cooking meat or riding around in a Peugeot are not part of human evolution. They are just things that make life easier. That being so, they have no effect on human nature at this time. The results of the laziness that these things cause might make a difference to how humans evolve over the next hundred thousand years but I am not going to wait around to see.
So you think that dolphins automatically eat every fish they see? Try watching Discovery Channel instead of reading those mediocre books you keep recommending.
It should be obvious that that doesn't really clarify anything and still leaves [i]a lot[/I] of ambiguity. Healthy according to who? Or according to what criteria? Criteria set by who? Is this an ideal? Whose ideal?
Quoting Sir2u
Noted. I like good grammar.
Quoting Sir2u
I thought you'd think that that was a mistake. What you highlighted isn't a mistake. Although it is common to use only one "that" in such sentences. I'm just a bit of a stickler for formality. You'll see the double "that" again up above a few times and in at least one other of my sentences further down.
Anyway, I'm glad that you haven't allowed yourself to become distracted by trivial side issues about grammar.
Quoting Sir2u
Yes, if you're not a meat eater and care enough about your health. If you're attempting to spin this as absurd, I'm not buying it. One can make virtually any aspect of modern life sound absurd if you put it in a certain context: cars, mobile phones, planes, social media, plastic surgery, dietary supplements, hair dye, etc., etc. Isn't it all so peculiar and unnatural?!
Quoting Sir2u
Do you, or do you not, claim that it's necessary to eat a certain amount or a certain type or a certain whatever of meat each day or even at all in order to be healthy? If so, then the finer details don't matter in terms of my objection, which is that it's not really necessary regardless.
Quoting Sir2u
Yes, I concede that you've got me there. My language wasn't representative of an impartial judgement on that one.
You should also concede for your own fault. But I bet you won't.
Quoting Sir2u
I use my judgement, and I use logic, and I take into consideration certain facts as I see them.
Quoting Sir2u
First of all, what claim of mine do you call into question? Then we can take it from there. If I think that anything I've claimed requires an authoritative source, I can look into it and get back to you.
Quoting Sir2u
I think that it's not necessarily wrong, and I think that it's wrong to simply assume that it's wrong.
Quoting Sir2u
No, I don't, and that's a silly question which misses the point. If you think that that follows from what I said, then you're simply mistaken.
You think that [I]Sapiens[/I] is mediocre? Have you actually read it? Or are you judging a book by its cover?
Quoting Sir2u
See, this is where you're showing your ignorance. Please read the book and educate yourself. I purposefully chose the example of a Peugeot, because that's given as an example in the book. We didn't discover Peugeots, obviously. We created them. And that has to do with how we evolved to a stage where we can create fiction. That makes us unique, even among other species under the genus [I]Homo[/I]. It's actually an extremely important part of our evolution.
Ive been struggling to come up with a response, I don’t see how most of that is relevent and I think you are still being evasive, and overcomplicating things and still working backwards from how you view ethics. That is the conclusion I said you were working backwards from, which if that wasnt clear why wouldnt you ask for clarification rather than just ignore what I said? In my view, this is the sort of thing you’ve mostly been doing in your responses. This is why I questioned your interest here, Im not keen to waste my time if what Im saying seems so trivial or lacking in substance that your only response is to ignore most of what I say and just go on an unnecessary explanatory tangent.
Im not trying to be antagonistic, i am perplexed and hoping being candid will at least move us out of a limbo where we talk past each other.
The same could be asked when when you say that it is not necessary to eat meat to live a healthy enough life.
Quoting S
Just answered that.
Quoting S
Bullshit. It makes no sense as you wrote. The fact that you can use that twice in a sentence does not mean that it will always be right. If it had read "that they" it would be clear what you mean, but it would mean almost the same as I wrote.
Quoting S
No I do not claim any such thing. If you would read what I have said it will be clear that I have stated that we need certain vitamins and minerals to maintain our bodies health.
Quoting S
If you are talking about me saying that it is immoral to sit around eating all day and becoming obese then I will not admit that I am at fault. It is my judgement based, just like yours, on my facts, as I see them, logic and my feelings.
Quoting S
That makes a lot of sense. Try using your logic and the facts as you see them and make a judgement.
Quoting S
No, I did not read it. I listened to it because I do not do a lot of actual reading nowadays because of my eyes. But I have read(listened to as well) much better books explaining the history of humanity.
Quoting S
See, this is where you show your arrogance. Just because it is the only one you have read you think it is sacred. There are other ways to look at things you know.
Quoting S
Pathetic, any machine is a combination of discoveries. They discovered the wheel, the lever, the gear, electricity, internal combustion all of which made the Peugeot possible. Human beings have evolved little since becoming Sapiens and fiction was created long before that.
So exactly how do you think that these creations are going to change the nature of humans. Will it make us less susceptible to disease, that does not seem to be working very well. Will it make us need less food or water, I can't imagine how. Will it help us to survive as a race, could we actually evolve into a carbon monoxide breathing being.
Going back to what I said, there is plenty of info sources available about the need for vegans to take supplements because they cannot live normally without them. Here is one from a vegan and one from a government institution.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/the-vegan-diet/
https://www.theveganrd.com/2010/11/recommended-supplements-for-vegans/
Please show me any reliable site that says they do not need to be taking supplements.
I suppose we just don't understand what each other is saying then. Not sure how to work around that, because you seem annoyed by all of my attempts to clarification/supplying more detail.
The only thing I could suggest is basically starting over, starting with something very short and simple to see if we can find some common ground to move on from.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I then responded and said, what you described is extremely similar (if not identical) to the law of non-contradiction or the law of identity.
Then you said...
Quoting Terrapin Station
This seems to be just a semantics issue. This is what you're doing.
Terrapin: I have no hair.
Chatterbears: So you're saying you're bald?
Terrapin: No, that's not what I'm saying. I am saying I have no hair.
Chatterbears: Ok, but aren't those the same thing?
Terrapin: I'm not referring to baldness, I just explained that to you.
I see that you and Dingo are having issues communicating as well. Maybe it would be better to start off with definitions.
I don't know how to ask this without it seeming patronizing, unfortunately, but do you understand the distinction between particulars and universals or abstracts? Understanding that distinction is important for understanding what I'm saying.
I agree. Its a vexing limitation of the medium. I will go over the posts again and perhaps get back to you later if I find a better way to frame it.
You could say this.
having no hair = abstract
a bare scalp = particular
What you seem to be doing is creating your own subset of definitions and where words belong. You don't think you're defining the law of identity, when indeed you are. Because if you did conclude that your description is identical to the description of an axiom, you would understand why those axioms are related to ethical axioms.
Would you say that the law of identity is a particular, found on just one occasion, in one spatio-temporal location, etc.?
Can we go back to definitions for a second, to make this as clear as possible.
law of noncontradiction = something cannot both be and not be.
what you stated = something can't be itself and not itself at the same time
These two statements are conceptually identical. I told you that you're referring to an axiom (the law of noncontradiction). You tell me you're not referring to laws. You tell me you're referring to something else.
I don't know what you are referring to. But can you agree that the definition for the law of noncontradiction is conceptually identical to what you have described? In the same way that "not having hair" is the same as "a bare scalp". Both refer to baldness and are conceptually identical. Both the law of noncontradiction and your statement are referring to axioms, and are conceptually identical.
If you don't know what I'm referring to then you don't really understand the distinction between particulars and universals or abstracts.
A particular is a single thing, in a specific spatio-temporal location, and it's only that thing.
The idea of a universal is that it's something that can be instantiated in more than one thing.
So for example, many individuals can be a cat, but a particular cat would be "that one, sitting on the living room windowsill of 33 Main Street, Des Moines, Iowa, named 'Fluffy,' who likes grapefruit juice."
Universal: An axiom
Particular: the law of noncontradiction
This is irrelevant to what I asked though and you didn't answer my question.
Did you agree with my definition of the law of noncontradiction? And do you agree that it is identical to what you stated?
law of noncontradiction = something cannot both be and not be.
what you stated = something can't be itself and not itself at the same time.
If you agree that what you stated is conceptually identical to the law of noncontradiction, in the same way that "not having hair" is conceptually identical to "a bare scalp", then you are tripped up on semantics. My initially problem was how you tried to label "something can't be itself and not itself" as an objective fact. When it is not an objective fact, but instead, an axiom.
No what? Could you please try a little harder to clarify what you mean?
If the law of noncontradiction is a particular, then there's just one instance of it at a specific spatio-temporal location.
(Or in other words, no, you're not understanding what particulars are. You're thinking that I'm saying something akin to (super)set versus a member of the set. That's not what particulars are.)
I read through all the relevent posts, Im sorry to say it seems like pretty clear dodging questions from the onset. It looks like an attempt to control the framing of the discussion to suit you rather than a real attempt at understanding, and to be honest I think you are being deliberately obtuse. I accept this might be the result of miscommunication but Im comfortable to let what i have said stand.
You helped me understand I need to expand my points more and lower my unfair expectations of others to puzzle out what I mean, so thanks for that at least.
Do you agree that what you described is identical to the law of contradiction?
law of noncontradiction = something cannot both be and not be.
what you stated = something can't be itself and not itself at the same time.
If you agree that these are identical, then can you concede that your statement is an axiom, not an objective truth.
I am in the process of answering your question (the answer is "No," which I've already explained), but you'll not be able to understand the answer if you don't understand the universals/particulars distinction a la nominalism, and you don't understand that distinction if you're suggesting that a law or principle, objectively, could be a particular. Hence why I'm focusing on this distinction. What I'm saying can't be understood without understanding the universals/particulars or abstracts/particulars distinction.
Okay.
We can't do anything with that re forwarding a conversation, obviously, so . . .
You said it is not a particular, while I say it is. Do we just end the convo there?
Karen Davis is the voice of clarity once again.
If the law of noncontradiction is a particular that means there's just one instance of it, at a specific spatio-temporal location. Do you agree with that?
No, I don't agree. But seeing as we are going to go around in circles and disagree on how things are defined or used, let's just end the convo here. Small re-cap:
I stated that logic, math and ethics all have axioms in which one would accept to move forward with further reasoning. You state that logic and math point to objective facts, while ethics does not. You then stated that "something can't be itself and not itself at the same time." is an objective fact, while I tried to correct you and state that this is an axiom called 'the law of noncontradiction'. You claimed it wasn't the same as the law of noncontradiction, while I claim the two are identical, but just worded trivially different. We then go off on a tangent about how this relates to metaphysics (universals/particulars), in which the discussion becomes even less productive than it was initially.
Side Rebuttal: I could claim that my system of logic has an axiom that states "something CAN be itself and not itself at the same time." - In which I could then claim this is an objective fact, and be in the same position as you are, but on the opposing side.
In conclusion, you can claim anything to be an objective fact, but that does not make it so.
If you don't agree with that then you don't think that the principle/law of noncontradiction is a particular.
I don't want to move on to other stuff (and I especially don't want you to fall back on what's essentially a script for you) until you understand the distinction between particulars and universals or abstracts, because you're not going to understand what I'm saying until you understand that distinction. For example, "You state that logic and math point to objective facts"--I expressly did NOT say that. I said something far more nuanced than that, but you're not going to be able to understand what I said if you don't have a handle on what particulars versus abstracts or universals amounts to.
YES we are omnivores...but we mainly lean towards vegetarian due to our digestive track, teeth and lack of claws. I personally do eat meat time to time, but what bothers me more is the manner these animals are treated and than “humanely” *cough* killed. So if that’s the case...why can we also eat meat? It’s to do with a time Neanderthals and Homo sapiens co-existed. A time of little to no vegetation lead Homo sapiens to kill animals for food. But the Neanderthals couldn’t catch up. They starved. (Apparently)
https://youtu.be/ZUsiY8FxoWs