In all honesty, don't think too much, just eat what you like. Life is short.

Quote: Original post by Pete Michaud

...

Thanks for presenting a good argument, you seem much smarter after this post than that first one.

I don't think it's a fair comparison to compare a greater species dominating a lesser species, with a greater human dominating a lesser human. Inter-species killing in the human race has it's own rule of nature.

Here's a better question: If we were to travel to another planet and discovered that a race of mindless crickets (that we had nothing to learn from) held the cure for all of earth's diseases, but we had to kill them to extract it, how many years do you think it would take before we decided to end human suffering at the expense of some mindless crickets? Do you think humans would view this as justified?

Perhaps it is nihilistic to say that on a greater scope, greater species killing lesser species for some type of gain is justified by the rule of nature. Nonetheless I will keep my position.

As for morals being logical, as you say they are. If humans are inherently not logical (as you said), how can anything derived from a non-logical being (such as morals) be logical? Are morals somehow outside of human derivation?

Quote: I don't think it's a fair comparison to compare a greater species dominating a lesser species, with a greater human dominating a lesser human. Inter-species killing in the human race has it's own rule of nature.

In both cases one intelligent entity enforces its mighty will against another intelligent entity. You'll need to show the there's a categorical difference between intelligences of different origins that changes how they should relate on a normative level.

I don't think there's is such a difference -- I think a race of strong aliens operate under the same normative framework that we do, even among members of our own species.

Quote: Here's a better question: If we were to travel to another planet and discovered that a race of mindless crickets (that we had nothing to learn from) held the cure for all of earth's diseases, but we had to kill them to extract it, how many years do you think it would take before we decided to end human suffering at the expense of some mindless crickets? Do you think humans would view this as justified?

If the crickets are, as you say, mindless then I say let's cultivate them for medicine. I see them as a self renewing natural resource. If they have minds, then that's a different matter.

Quote: Perhaps it is nihilistic to say that on a greater scope, greater species killing lesser species for some type of gain is justified by the rule of nature. Nonetheless I will keep my position.

Well, as we've discussed, it's not "justifiable" by nature, because it's not possible to justify behavior based on the current order of things (is-ought again). But you might argue that the greatest utility is served by the killing of some things.

Quote: As for morals being logical, as you say they are. If humans are inherently not logical (as you said), how can anything derived from a non-logical being (such as morals) be logical? Are morals somehow outside of human derivation?

You're thinking in black and white here. My position is that humans are not primarily rational beings, and further that they aren't always smart enough to think rationally even if they try to. We are capable of rational insight, especially when we try, and especially when we're trained, and especially when we submit our thinking to a community of qualified critics.

My point was that for most people, morality isn't a rational topic, it's a membership signal.

Quote: Original post by Way Walker

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Tax Meat

Diverting one-third of the world's grains to livestock and away from the humans who would happily eat them raises prices for those crops and brings hunger, malnutrition, or starvation to millions of poor people.

That sounds like one of the arguments against bio-fuels.

To the extent that bio-fuels production also diverts food stuffs away from human consumption.

The future of corn on a hot planet

Quote:
...
Which leads to the question "whether recent increases in yields could only be achieved by making plants less heat resistant, or whether future breeding cycles can increase both heat tolerance and average yields at the same time."

Monsanto, I am sure, would answer the latter part of that question with a resounding affirmative. But the alternative is chilling: We have been progressively breeding and engineering crop strains that are less and less able to cope with climate change.
...

I guess I don't make much of a distinction between what is and what ought to be. Mainly because I think the way things ought to be, and how things are, are the same thing. If unjustifiable things didn't happen, justifiable things wouldn't exist. There would just be what "is". I think it is important for humans that bad exists so that good can exist, without this contrast, neither would exist since good and bad are relative terms.

I figure that if it occurs in nature and in accordance with natural law, it is justified. (e.g. - interspecies murder, for humans, is in discord with natural law if it is for any reason other than defense, and would not be justified).

If that is a rational fallacy (which it could be) than i get -5 rational points, which would explain why I can't see the fallacy myself.

Quote: Original post by Pete Michaud
My point was that for most people, morality isn't a rational topic, it's a membership signal.

Is this what you are saying: People collect morals based on maintaining membership in a "group" (aka local society or church)? And that people don't rationally reason their morals, they just adopt them? That's a good point.

It seems to me though, that if morality wasn't a rational topic because most humans aren't rational enough to discuss it (or be able to explain it), to prove that morals are logical would require that at least one perfectly rational being would have to exist, otherwise the logic wouldn't exist. It would just be a bunch of irrational humans irrationally thinking about what they think is right or wrong which seems pretty subjective to me..

I guess a god exists for some people, which would probably have perfect rationale as one of their powers. But if one doesn't believe in a god, where does this logic for morals exist and how can I look at it?

[Edited by - Chris Reynolds on November 15, 2009 8:51:41 PM]

Quote: Original post by nobodynews

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight

So by D you would eat basically any human corpse, huh? I think you need to switch the order of D and E around. Unless you really are totally fine with eating dead human corpses. Also, E would seem to mean that you would be willing to eat a human provided you thought you could get away with it. At least the way you worded it. I'm sure with a little bit of rewording you could fix the holes in your decision path.

I think you missed the implicit rule:

@) Do I actually want to eat this thing? YES -> continue, NO -> don't eat

:)

hi everyone,
I'm joining this discussion late and haven't the time to read back the replies, so excuse me if I repeat stuff others said.

There are many reasons to stop eating meat, or at least reduce meat eating to a low level.
These include greenhouse gases, human health (heart disease etc), inefficient calorie consumption (order of magnitude less calories in meat than in the plants needed to generate the meat, will be a larger problem as population grows), and more...
But the greatest reason for me (and the source of the thread I think) is the ethical problem.

The benefits of eating meat are few, but lets admit it - eating meat is mostly for self joy.

I earnestly hope very much you guys are revolted and heart broken when you hear about a sadist torturing an animal.

But think about it for moment, from the ethical perspective its almost an exact same "dilemma" of meat eating. In short it can be summed up as "causing suffering of others for your own joy". A sadist kicks a dog for his joy. You indirectly cause *much* greater suffering for a slightly better tasting sandwich. The "big" difference is that when you eat meat the suffering is done for you and not directly by you, and that meat eating is very well accepted in our society (in fact in my society vegetarianism is frowned upon). But these two differences have little or no impact on the ethical dilemma, at least as I see it.

Most of the excuses for ethically justifying meat eating can be directly translated to a sadist, a rapist, or a slave owner.
From skimming through the replies I can spot excuses such as "ethics is subjective" or "superior animals have no need for mercy" or "thats how it is in nature" and I think it doesn't take much imagination to translate these statements to sadism/rape/slaving.

I've also read excuses of lower intelligence, and I think this has no impact on the ethical dilemma either - what matters is if the animal can fear and suffer. I think if you ever raised a cat or a dog you know very well they can feel stress and fear, pain and sadness, just as much as humans or even more. I haven't raised a cow or chicken but from what little I've seen I think its as clear as can be that they have the same feelings also. As I put it, the dilemma is "causing suffering for your own joy", and even a very dumb animal can feel very great suffering.

Also I read excuse of "plants are alive also" or "plants can suffer also". Honestly I think this is rubbish. I've never witnessed or heard a hint of plants pain. Maybe the strongest reason for it being rubbish is that plants, being totally passive, have no evolutionary need for sad/fear/pain feelings. But even if you do somehow believe in plants pain then thats even more reason to stop eating meat. As I said its meat is incredibly inefficient calorie wise - it takes many times more plants to create the meat than the number of plants you'd eat if you given up meat.

I thought for many years that eating meat is wrong but meat is too tasty to give up. I finally stopped eating meat just less than a year ago and what keeps me strong is that I remind to myself that eating an hamburger is ethically equivalent (in my opinion) to kicking a dog for sadist. I think sadists should force themselves to refrain from harming others and I "sentence" myself to the same. Luckily it gets easier with time.

If you read carefully my message you'd notice I am not directly against eating meat proper. I am against the excessive suffering that is done to farm animals. In that I am very different from most vegetarians I've talked to: I see no ethical problem (at least not a big one) with eating an animal that lived and died without suffering.


[Edited by - Iftah on November 17, 2009 3:54:11 PM]

Cows can suffer, big time. When I was a child, my mother's parents ran a small farm with four or five milk cows and a bull to keep the cows pregnant and producing milk. I was about 8 years old when a cow went through a difficult first pregnancy, dropping her internal organs along with the calf. My grandfather called the veterinarian who put the cow back together as best he could but the damage was too great. The poor cow took several hours to expire and bellowed something horribly the entire time. My mom stayed with that cow throughout the entire ordeal trying to calm her. Looking back on it now, my grandfather really should have put down that cow, but I guess he couldn't afford to lose the cow and wanted to give it a chance to recover.

Quote: Original post by Iftah
If you read carefully my message you'd notice I am not directly against eating meat proper. I am against the excessive suffering that is done to farm animals. In that I am very different from most vegetarians I've talked to: I see no ethical problem (at least not a big one) with eating an animal that lived and died without suffering.

So it's also OK for a serial killer to murder people as long as they do it without making people suffer, according to your logic.

Quote: Original post by Machaira
If God didn't want me to eat meat, I wouldn't have canines. [grin]

I agree, we have the tools, uses them :)

I was born and raised on a farm/ranch until I was 18. We usually raised cattle, with herds from 20-300 (depending on time of year and weather/rain for that year), but we also raised some pigs, a sheep flock for a few years (over 300 ewes), and the few random chickens/turkeys for eggs/meat. I have personally helped slaughter pigs, chickens, and turkeys for our family and friends. I never once felt bad for what I did, and never felt bad because I 'knew' them before we killed them. Maybe it's because I was born and raised in that environment, but it just never bothered me.

I don't see why it is an ethical issue though. Cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, etc, have always been used as a means to supply food to humans (in many/most cultures). If people are going to go as far as to say that its unethical to kill animals for meat, then is it unethical for them to have a dog or cat as a pet as well? They weren't always domesticated, and we only domesticated them for means of companionship, work, and protection.

I think it was mentioned by someone before that the way animals suffer and die in nature is often times way worse than how we kill them. Ever watched a cat play with a mouse before it eats it? Sometimes they kill them right away, but sometimes they'll torment the mouse for quite a while before killing it. Do you say 'poor mouse' and try to save it? Most people don't, it's the food chain, same as us killing and eating animals for meat.

Also, I'm still not convinced of the 'red meat is bad for your heart' argument. Eating a lot of red meat that is high in fat can be bad for your heart, but eating anything high in fat can be bad for your heart.