Link us multiple studies [not just one] that all point to the same conclusion. Scientific consensus doesn't come from one study, but from multiple sources that all agree with each other. — chatterbears

No, that's not how it works. This is a philosophy forum, not an agricultural one. You have yet to establish philosophically that an ethical position must be supported by the current consensus of scientists who happen to have investigated the subject. I can see an argument to say that supporting an ethical position based on empirical facts with whichno one agrees could be arguably irrational, but that's not the same as consensus.

I need only a single report from an expert who I can reasonably trust to be well-informed and no less biased than any other scientist. If such a report exists, then any ethical position which I find appealing for whatever reason may be reasonably supported by it. Your version of empiricism was rejected by the scientific community a long time ago and with very good reason. We no longer put all the evidence in a bucket and follow whatever it shows us. We arrive at falsifiable theories and continue with them until such time as they are falsified. My theory is that farming/hunting meat in the way I've described causes less harm overall, by my measure of harm, than farming the equivalent quantity of vegetables. Many well-informed, intelligent scientists disagree with that conclusion, but at least one agrees with it, so the theory has not been falsified. Consensus doesn't enter into it, we're not trying to establish what the case if probabilistically likely to be, we're supporting a particular ethical position, the two do not necessarily follow the same process.

The studies I'm using to defend this position I've already citied, Reijnders and Soret (2003), Rosi et al. (2017), and Davis (2003), all of which have been linked earlier in this thread, all of which conclude that some meat-eating diets cause less environmental harm than the equivalent vegan diets. But please don't waste your time looking them up to find points within them you could refute. It's irrelevant that you could refute points within those studies. So long as there exist intelligent experts who disagree with each other, there exists the necessity that one of them is wrong, if it is a necessary possibility that an intelligent expert is wrong then you have no way of knowing that it isn't you, no matter how intelligent or expert you think you are. That is the philosophical point that's relevant here.

I could point to a random person who grows vegetables in their backyard, and say they cause less harm than your killed wild animal. — chatterbears

Maybe you could. what does that prove? Only that the 'right' ethical choice varies depending on the circumstances and the facilities one has available to them. Very much not the claim you originally made.

neither the person who grows vegetables nor the person who kills wild animals, is who this thread is geared toward. — chatterbears

That's simply not true. If that were the case, the post would be entitled "Is it wrong to factory farm animals?" and I think you would have had considerably more agreement. I don't think anyone here has disagreed with your notion that animal farming is significantly in need of improving. If you want to aim the post at a particular type of meat-eater, then I suggest you don't open it with the statement to the effect that all meat eating is unethical.

Thanks, glad it made sense to someone at least.

If you don't like the game, don't play. — StreetlightX

But this is the game, do you not recognise it?

This thread is for people who actually care to discuss and explain their positions, not ignore all opposing positions without proper rebuttal. — chatterbears

Right, so where's your rebuttal to the very simple proposition I've stated three times now?

Eating wild, entirely grass-fed, or kitchen-scrap fed meat (which is the only meat I eat), is ethical because there exists intelligent, well-informed studies which conclude that such low impact forms of meat-eating probably cause less harm than farming the equivalent quantity of vegetables for some measures of 'harm'. Therefore a person could entirely reasonably conclude that such forms of meat-eating are ethically sound.

Do you claim that no such intelligent, well-informed studies exist? Because we have direct evidence within this thread that they do, it would be incumbent upon you to show us how their authors are not qualified intelligent people.

Do you perhaps claim that it is not reasonable for a person to derive ethical commitments from intelligent, well-informed studies? In which case it is incumbent upon you to present your alternative ethics and prove that it is 'right'.

Or do you agree that certain specific types of meat-eating cause less harm that the equivalent vegetable farming for some measures of harm? In which case, for the sake of the environment you're clearly so passionate about, I would humbly ask that you direct your energies towards fighting the factory-farming system so clearly at fault here and stop pestering meat-eaters who have already agreed with you on that front.

I really don't understand what your project is here. It just comes across as someone labelling all the parts of a car down to the last bolt but refusing to actually drive it anywhere.

If you're interested in problems within a post-structuralist framework there are a large number of really interesting ones to tackle (so I'm told), but what you seem to be doing here (and others too, I'm not singling you out specifically), is expecting answers from within a broadly post-structuralist framework to apply to the structures which themselves contain that framework. There's a reason why academic philosophers work, and publish, almost exclusively on problems set by their chosen field (ethics being a typical exception). The analysis simply doesn't make sense outside of that field until it is 'translated' into whatever language the reader/critic speaks.

All that's happening in this whole thread, and dozens of others like it on this forum, is that ideas are presented within one framework which are, by and large, fairly routine (not uninteresting, just sequential) and they will be met by others from within that framework by an overabundance of cross-referencing proofs, or by others outside of that framework trying to do the 'translation'. That's what @schopenhauer1 is trying to do here (and @csalisbury, to an extent), but instead of helping with that translation, you're just responding like the clichéd English tourist refusing to speak the native language. You're saying the same thing louder and slower in the hope they get it, in your language.

I can really only see three reasons why anyone would want to post ideas on a general philosophy forum. Either they carry such inductive weight that they are virtually impossible to deny and so are useful out of the box (... is that a flying pig?), or they're promising but unfinished and could benefit from critique within the framework of the problem they address (in which case, if you don't clearly specify that you're going to get nowhere), or they're ready for others to 'try on' to see how they work, like taking the car for a test drive.

With obviously varying degrees of skill, that's all people here are trying to do, test-drive the ideas presented, within their framework, the fact that their feedback isn't then going to be in terms of the problem the post set out to solve is not a flaw, its inevitable. If an idea is going to be of any use to anyone (surely the only reason for posting it) then it's going to solve a problem they have, which is going to take quite a bit of collaborative translation.

I've just been reminded of this one which I found amusing along similar lines.

What is the right answer to this question?
Is it...

A) b
B) c
C) d
D) a

For me, the philosophical significance is in both the malleability of the conscious experience, and in the unreliability of our intuitive model of the world.

The first I think has implications for the philosophy of mind, mainly in that (to bastardise Nagel) there isn't even a 'thing that it's like' to be us. I think pretty much any philosophical framework, from Descartes to Husserl, which has as it's centre the idea of the truth of introspection, must question its methodology in the light of the fact that out conciousness simply does not serve us any coherent or consistent story which might yield any deeper truths on analysis. It's not the sound of the cricket ball being hit that we might doubt, but that it 'means' anything to hear it.

The second part I think simply lends weight to phenomenalism, but perhaps more importantly reminds us that we have no reason to assume that theories which work are also ones which make intuitive sense. I think there's still a tendency, even among professional philosophers to err towards ideas which make intuitive sense, when the reality of our modelling tools means that other theories may work better for us, if we can just get over the weird feeling accepting them gives us at first.

This is a comforting opinion to hold I guess, but as it stands there's nothing here but assertion and some cute imaginative scenario posing. — StreetlightX

Well, I am a layman when it comes to maths and have never yet failed to identify it, and I've been in a room full of philosophy professors who couldn't even agree whether a work was 'philosophy' or not, so it's not entirely imaginative scenario posing. But I'm guessing from the hand-waiving that we've reached our usual limit to the extent you care to peruse these kinds of arguments and so further exposition would perhaps be pointless.

The point is that the reason why philosophy is a wider field is to do with significant, categorical (non-scalar) differences in its approach to concept determination. Specifically, it's criteria for both the selection of commitments it is interesting to follow and its criteria for testing the degree to which they have been followed. The difference being that maths has reasonably strict criteria for both, where philosophy has virtually none.

Give any work of maths to an educated layman. What are the chances they'll correctly identify it as maths? Give a potential work of philosophy to a group of philosophy professors and even they won't agree on whether it is one or not.

I haven't said maths doesn't have a variety of commitments, some of which are "less well-travelled", in fact I said the opposite. The point I'm making is that it is not sufficient to support your argument simply by stating that maths has a variety of commitments whose properties then constrain further investigation, and so does philosophy, so they're basically the same.

What differentiates them, I would argue, are the types of constraints that are placed on those commitments, the breadth of the field. It is easy to describe what isn't maths by reference to the activity alone. I think it's considerably harder to describe what isn't philosophy, without reference to other subjects. Even harder to describe what never will be philosophy and hope to have any certainty that you'll be correct.

To 'learn Hume' or to 'learn Plato' is not to learn simply what they said, but also why they said it, as well as the ways in which the distinctions they draw commit them - 'constrain them' - to saying certain things and not others. This is why there are - or rather can be - 'schools' of philosophy - as you said, 'Wittgensteinians', 'Platonists', etc; this would not be possible if not for that fact that philosophy sets it's boundaries - its distinctions, its categorizations - out in incredibly precise ways. — StreetlightX

You're mistaking the boundaries set within schools by the restriction of their premises with the boundaries set within entire disciplines on the "schools" that can be contained therein. It's not that, once a commitment is made, philosophy is still less contained than maths, it's that commitments of almost any sort can be made (and followed) and still constitute 'philosophy'. This is not the case with maths, where commitments of the sort you describe are still made and followed, but the range of possible commitments is severely constrained by the nature of the broader investigation (the whole of maths, sensu lato)

No one's "re-interpreting" the question more than any other. We're all interpreting it one way on our first pass, maybe seeing another interpretation on second reading. What makes your first interpretation more right than anyone else's first, second or third attempt?

As I said, your argument "my argument is sound... because it is", is not a style of logical analysis I'm familiar with.

No one, not one person gave a valid reason for dropping a datum. — Jeremiah

I'll ask again, what would define a valid reason? Everyone here has given you what they believe to be a reason. I can guarantee you that this forum is made up at least from some of your epistemic peers (other people of your intellect) . If they're wrong about their reasons being valid then it follows that it must be possible for someone of your intellect to be wrong about this issue. So how do you know it isn't you?

It's exactly the same as everyone else here. The question asks for the selection of an "answer" at random, there are three possible "answers" (25%, 50% and 60%) one of which, it is implied by the format, is correct. The fact that I've been provided with two different ways of indicating to the questioner that I've chosen 25% from the three available options, is odd, but irrelevant to this interpretation.

Yes, that's what I thought, but it sounded very much as if @Jeremiah was still looking for some other sort of refutation that I couldn't think of. I thought I'd ask. It seems from the reply above that his first assertion is supported by the evidence that... he asserted it. Not a type of logical proof I'm familiar with.

Some here seem to think that philosophy per se is wheels in the void; I want to defend its friction - while avoiding at the same time a certain positivism, ugly and moribund. — StreetlightX

Really? Because it sounds remarkably like you want to defend your favourite kind of philosophy against charges of obfuscatory meaninglessness but reserve your right to dismiss any philosophical positions you don't like on exactly the same grounds.

no one has actually proven me wrong — Jeremiah

Wrong in what? So far you have made the following two assertions - The question should be interpreted as having a sample space of four variables with a single random choice event and a single random choice event in a sample space of four variables produces the vacillating probabilities you claim (25%, 50%).

You've invited people to prove you wrong by showing you a chance other than 25% from a sample space of four variables with a single random choice event. As no-one has done so, that means no-one has proven your second assertion wrong.

So what would constitute a proof that your first assertion is wrong, what kind of proof would we need to present, and what standards would be assessing that proof by to see if it held?

If so, is it the connections made that are fictive, or what is connected, or both? For example, if you're nervous about your intentions, maybe your brain rummages around among your actual beliefs and preferences and so forth, finds some stuff that will pass for an explanation and serves that up as why you want to do what you want to do. — Srap Tasmaner

That seems to be precisely what happens according to some neuroscientists. Have you ever read anything by Ramachandran? He talks a lot about this. What seems to hound these discussions is the idea that the deeper level signals in the brain which lead to our concious thought should make any sense at all. A significant number of neuroscientists seem convinced they don't. Your memory seems to be able to serve you up any number of images and connections, your sensory signals deliver a whole jumble more, none of then correspond to each other or make any kind of sense. It's the job of our concious to make them seem coherent, but the important thing here is that coherence is the the only aim, correspondence to reality or consistency doesn't even enter the picture.

So, to answer your question about the preference without the action, could it be simply that your memory served you up an image of the keys sitting next to the fruit bowl? Why did that image pop into your head?... "Well," rationalizes the concious, "it must be because your keys actually are next to the fruit bowl, why else would you have such an image? The only other explanation is that you can't trust your memory, and we can't go around basing our next thought on that principle, can we?"

"I believe Paris is the capital of France" becomes, "when people ask me what the capital of France is, I want to say Paris, when I try to remember stuff about Paris, all these images of France enter my head, lots of related information about it's location on the Seine etc., the only reason why that could be happening is if Paris is the capital of France".

It explains how people can be brain-washed or hypnotised to have false beliefs.

I think our conciousness is just a story-telling machine, it's job is to come up with reasonable sounding explanations for all the varied and mostly contradictory information we get served up from the different parts of our brain so that we can act more quickly on a 'best guess' of what's really out there.

I tried, rather whimsically, earlier in this thread to convince people that a thermostat had beliefs. No-one was having any of it, but it's worse than that. I think if a thermostat could be said to have beliefs, it would be more rational than us. It at least, only has to decide how to act based on a single source of data (the room temperature) and so it will consistently make the same choice given the same data. We might make a different choice, given the same data set because it depends what story our conciousness comes up with to explain all the conflicting data in the set.

What's interesting to me about the discussions here (the reason I enjoy reading them for the most part) is the fact there is an attempt to discuss topics without prescribing the framework in any way whatsoever. I'm fairly certain this never works, but the ways in which it fails are what fascinate me. Doing research, one never encounters this, but here, it's the most common approach, even if a philosophical school is specified.

This probably requires a bounded terrain; if everything can be relevantly said of an idea it says nothing. — fdrake

This is part of what I'm getting at, phrased this way it begs the question. Surely we should first ask if everything can be relevantly said of an idea and so render it mute. There's nothing wrong with subsequently framing it so as to constrain what can be meaningfully said of it, but we need to know why we're doing that. Not in academic research (there the bounding is done for you), but on a forum like this it's essential, and I certainly feel like there is little acknowledgement of that (maybe little understanding, but I wouldn't like to judge).

To my mind they've got to do a few things to be doing inquiry in general:

They have to set up the problemscape somehow.
They have to provide analytical tools and demonstrations that allow navigating the problemscape; these might be arguments, phenomenologies, references, interpretations of scientific studies etc. — fdrake

I don't win myself any friends by my habit of picking at propositions until they fall apart, but having missed that ship long ago, I'll have a go at this one. First, I'd ask what an un-set-up problemscape looks like. In order that some job of work needs to be done to set one up, I think it's reasonable that you should be able describe an unfinished one. Second, you say "allow" the problemscape to be navigated. I'll skip over "navigated" for now lest you literally start tearing your hair out, but "allow" intrigues me. Again, by the same method, what would an approach which did not "allow" navigation look like, how would we know we were engaged in such a method?

I suppose methodologically, I'm advocating a kind of 'sub specie aeternitas' stance towards philosophy; look at it both anthropologically and materially, how do its concepts tend to develop. Maybe I should call it 'philosophical naturalism' just to be incredibly perverse. — fdrake

I like this. It's what I'd like to think I'm doing here too (if that's not too presumptious) it's just that I'm considerably less charitable than you in my interpretation. I think there's a lot less influence from internal drivers (the structural constraints) and a lot more social psychology in describing how concepts tend to develop.

As an aside, something that I find interesting here is that Kripkenstein functions a lot like a philosopher in philosophical discourse despite being an interpretation of one by another. — fdrake

It's funny you should mention Kripkenstein, I've often used him (presumably a him?) as an example of the difference between the framing of a philosophical proposition by the author prior to publication, and the framing by the reader afterwards, a bit like literary deconstruction (as opposed to philosophical deconstruction with its historical baggage). I like the fact that Kripke interrogates what Wittgenstein means to him, not what Wittgenstein means sensu lato.

I'm very much in favour of more critical analysis of this sort, but things, if anything, seem to be swinging the opposite way in favour of a more historical exegesis. Except in places like this.

Basically what I'm saying is that the lack of an all encompassing good definition of philosophy is itself contextualised within the problems of philosophy; and while I'm certain that an absence of the definition can act as a motivation or problematic itself (like what you're doing), most philosophy doesn't seem to proceed like that and so can't take this definition as part of its 'native' nature. — fdrake

I agree with this, for most philosophy though in a practical sense, the definition it really works with is simply "those propositions contained within the canon already labelled philosophy, or those stated by people qualified by their knowledge of such propositions". By which I mean that realistically most philosophers simply let someone else define philosophy for them and only become agitated where there's some suggestions that their current project isn't it.

Oh, also; I discovered a food allergy last night, got one hour's sleep and I'm running out of pile cream. I'm probably not in the best place for understanding detailed prose at the minute. — fdrake

I'm sorry to hear that. I will await any response (or not), as and when you feel so inclined.

it really doesn't matter; that is, it has no meaning for philosophy, to have a sufficient and necessary condition for what it is. — fdrake

But in your previous comment you asserted that defining philosophy was itself an act of philosophy. If so, how could the absence of an agreed definition possibly have no implications for philosophy? It's opened an entire line of investigation for a start, as you yourself have suggested. Not to mention the fact that it allows Derrida and Russell to be considered as part of the same subject. Can you otherwise define what connects 'Glas' to 'Principia Matematica'?

The prejudice in your first presumption (that by arbitrary, I must mean arbitrary and pointless) is clouding your interpretation of what I'm saying. Unless my exposition is considerably more suggestive than it reads back to me, I don't see anywhere in which I state, or imply, that philosophy 'must' do anything at all, merely that it hasn't, and that this absence has implications.

In fact, I'm struggling to see how anyone could read my post as saying anything except the exact opposite. That philosophy most certainly must not try to define itself so strictly because to do so just leaves behind a whole raft of thinking which then has to label itself. Philosophy is, by necessity, everything that isn't something else.

I think you gave the conditions under which this is a non-problem in your post, ironically. All inquiry functions like that, thinking critically, rationally and creatively are all part of inquiry in general - they don't suddenly disappear or lose their general character when the inquiry is philosophical in nature. — fdrake

I'm not sure I can agree with this. All inquiry certainly dissolves previous questions when a new path is chosen (very much the way maths is described here), but what separates philosophy, and singles it out for this kind of attack, is that it vacillates constantly between the two ideals seemingly in response to the attack itself. Heideggar didn't think he was just offering a work of art to world, to be hung on the wall of those that found it appealing but justly rejected by any for whom it wasn't to their taste. He thought (and wrote extensively in his notes) that he was actually discovering something real.

The thing about maths (in common with other disciplines) is that it is circumscribed entirely by the 'choices' that have been made. If I were to answer a complex equation on the presumption that irrational numbers did not exist, I would simply no longer be doing maths. If said that the answer to 2+2 is 5, because 5 looks nice (having rotational symmetry with 2), it would not be the case that I was wrong, everything in my statement is logical and true, it would be that I was no longer doing maths.

Physics has the same definitional constraint, I might describe the nature of light in terms of God's message to mankind after the great flood. Again, I would not be wrong, just no longer doing Physics.

Philosophy has no such exclusory definition. There's nothing that definatly isn't philosophy, other than it being one of the other disciplines (physics, maths), it's more like the arts in that respect (the perennial 'what is art?' question sounds suspiciously similar).

None of this is a problem in itself, I don't think. Art seems to get by quite satisfactorily without anyone having yet answered its foundational riddle. It becomes a problem for me when the ambiguity about definition is used to shut down lines of enquiry others are finding useful. Too often I hear "Logical Positivism has been disproven", "Kant showed that...", "[X, y or z] is not even proper philosophy", "you can't comment on X until you've read y". None of this has any justification without a definition.

To your first post - You've provided me with a lot of Philosophers who thought they'd made previous philosophical questions redundant. I'm unsurprised that you'd think me so entirely inane that I'd be unaware the some philosophers thought they cracked something. What I was asking about was how the 'questions' dissolved other questions, not the answers. What you've provided is a list of philosophers who thought that the 'answers' to their initial questions dissolved other questions. This phenomenon then seems simply to be a feature of inquiry, not philosophy. If I decide that god doesn't exist, the question 'What colour is god's beard' obviously becomes redundant. This is no different to Physics where the discovery of photons made all questions about the nature of ether redundant. So I'm not seeing the meaning behind what you wrote yet.

Your second post is much more interesting, you say "arbitrary and pointless" when I only said "arbitrary", why the additional term? Why is arbitrary automatically assumed to also mean pointless?

The fact that meta philosophy is also doing philosophy is exactly what I'm talking about. The way in which so many posts are written explaining "the way philosophy is", when that "way" is invariably something ambiguous like 'framing' or 'asking the right question' or some such.

Philosophy seems pinned between two attacks, those who demand it reveal what 'truths' it has discovered or else be consigned to the rubbish heap, and those who claim the whole thing is nothing more than a series of works of art, you either like or you don't.

What intrigues me is the convoluted arguments used to get out from this pincer manoeuvre. Of which I should add, this thread is the latest example. It amounts to "OK, I admit philosophy does make arbitrary choices, but look so does maths so its not that bad after all"

Philosophy also has this strange thing where asking questions makes other questions disappear. — fdrake

In amongst the usual obfuscatory dross of yet another post desperately trying to explain the arbitrariness of philosophy in a way that makes it sound even slightly less arbitrary, I read this gem.

Questions make other questions disappear. How so? By disappear, you mean no longer require answering, or no longer interesting? Could you provide an example of a question that has 'disappeared' together with the question which dispatched it with such lethal finality?

I really don't know what to say, you seem very passionate about the subject but more interested in finding fault with completely unrelated aspects of my posts than you are in actually discussing the issue. Anytime you'd like to address the proposition I've raised I'd be happy to respond.

Yet again, rather than addressing the actual philosophical proposition, you've focused on the one entirely unrelated part of my post you think you can score a point on. So we'll try the same tactic as before. My use of the term 'proselytising' was entirely rhetorical and if you're offended by its literal interpretation then I'm happy to retract it.

So now can you actually address the philosophical proposition, or do you want to pick me up on my grammar this time? Maybe I misused the word 'rhetorical'? Anything to avoid having to respond to the actual issue.

• Eating wild, entirely grass-fed, or kitchen-scrap fed meat (which is the only meat I eat), is ethical because there exists intelligent, well-informed studies which conclude that such low impact forms of meat-eating probably cause less harm than farming the equivalent quantity of vegetables for some measures of 'harm'. Therefore a person could entirely reasonably conclude that such forms of meat-eating are ethically sound.

You: uber and nkbj disagree.
Me: no, we don't. *shows evidence*
You: I didn't say you disagreed!
Me: yes, you did *shows evidence*
You: uber and nkbj disagree.

Like I said, not worth my time. — NKBJ

Well it appears to be very much 'worth your time' as you keep responding. It's almost as if this one tiny thread is the only point you feel you can win on. I find it odd that in a debate about the ethics of eating meat, I present an argument that under some circumstances, eating meat might cause less harm than the equivalent vegetables, you say that you could counter my position but that you're to tired, and then proceed to post twice more, not refuting any of the actual points of the argument, but trying to prove a completely unrelated issue about whether I said two people disagree or not.

As far as I'm concerned, I said that two people presented between them a range of evidence which reaches different conclusions based on how harm is measured, but let's end this pointless distraction. Maybe I missed something somewhere and I did indeed say that you and Uber disagreed, Let's say that somewhere buried in my posts is the sentence "NKBJ and Uber vehemently disagree on [whatever it is you're claiming I said]". Fine, I'm happy with that, I think you probably do disagree. So what relevance has that got to the argument I presented?

• Eating wild, entirely grass-fed, or kitchen-scrap fed meat (which is the only meat I eat), is ethical because there exists intelligent, well-informed studies which conclude that such low impact forms of meat-eating probably cause less harm than farming the equivalent quantity of vegetables for some measures of 'harm'. Therefore a person could entirely reasonably conclude that such forms of meat-eating are ethically sound.

The studies I'm referring to are Davis's study, and the first study Uber quoted (both of which conclude that there exist some forms of meat-eating which cause less harm than the equivalent vegan diet).

This is a philosophy forum and we are discussing ethics. It is not an ecology forum for discussing agriculture. If you disagree with the two studies which concluded that some low-impact forms of meat eating are less harmful than veganism, that's fine, I'm sure you have very good reasons to disagree, as I've said a dozen times, the matter seems far from settled. But that has absolutely nothing to with the philosophical argument. The philosophical argument does not require a consensus on the amount of harm (that would be a scientific argument). The philosophical argument is about what it is ethical to do in the absence of such consensus.

If you're not actually interested in ethics, but rather concerned only to proselytize about your preferred interpretation of the evidence, then I suggest you stop posting in a philosophy forum, we have a rule here about proselytizing for a reason.

That shows that your calculations and one of the many studies Uber quoted do not agree. It says nothing whatsoever about which of the many varied conclusions Uber agreed with (possibly all of them), so no, it's not a claim that you an Uber don't agree, it's a claim of exactly what I said it was - there are many studies which reach a variety of conclusions depending on the method.

if by "way things are" he simply means "way things are independently of what anyone thinks", it seems to boil down to good old fashioned realism. — MetaphysicsNow

I see the potential confusion, but what he's trying to get at is the final "way things are" so if the reality we experience is actually a construction of our consciousness, or a consequence of God's consciousness, then that's the "way things are". The important thing for the epistemic argument is that things cannot be both 'just a figment of God's imagination' and 'a determinate consequence of the physical forces at the big bang', therefore someone must be wrong despite having all the evidence and the intellect to examine it, so we haven't really got any justification for the idea that an intellectual examination of the evidence will yield "the way things are". It evidently has not done so.

Brilliant, "I could counter all your claims but I'm not going to", we used to argue like that at school.

Show me where I claimed that you and Uber don't agree on the severity of harm. That whole section of my argument is based entirely on the fact that there are different ways of measuring harm. One of those ways works out at hunting being 15 times more harmful than arable, another works it out at only twice as harmful, a third (Davis's) works it out as being less harmful. I strongly suspect a forth (eliminating all factory farming and supplentary feeding) would work out even less harmful, but since no one's done the calculations that will have to remain speculation.

You argument seems unable to move on from "most ways of farming meat come out worse than farming vegetables according to most experts- therefore all ways of farming meat are worse than farming vegetables. I don't know if you have much experience with basic logic but the conclusion does not follow from the premise.

In brief your argument seems to be that if realism is true (in the sense that the truth of a proposition consists in its having a certain kind of connection to a reality which is independent of our knowing it), then no matter how much agreement is arrived at concerning any given proposition, that proposition could be false. — MetaphysicsNow

I'm not actually sure how much a belief in Realism is required for the basic idea to pertain. Going back to Van Inwagen (where this concept originates), he talks about a "way things are", which you could substitute at P2 for Realism. However one frames one's philosophical propositions, one is essentially either saying nothing (or something vacuous), saying something admittedly subjective (something poetic or placatory) or making some claim about "the way things are". Even if the claim is Idealism, its still claiming that that's the way things are and they are not any other way.

As such, any non-vacuous philosophical proposition would be in the same position.

what reasons are there for believing that kind of realism to be true? — MetaphysicsNow

That's a whole other question deserving of a thread of its own (of which I'm sure it already had several) and in which I'm sure there will be absolutely no means by which one philosophical position can be demonstrated to be more 'true' than any other.

By sophistry you mean actually interrogating the ideas?

It's always a question of how successful a philosophy is at measuring up to it's own motivations — StreetlightX

No, because the 'measuring, is done by an actual person, so again becomes an entirely subjective activity leading to total relativism.

Any half-decent philosophy can demonstrate it's own relevance. — StreetlightX

Again, demonstrate to whom? You seem to be trying to have your cake and eat it by introducing measures of philosophical propositions which are not directly referenced to objective reality (an excellent idea), but then not really wanting to let go of objectivity entirely by admitting that the judgement of philosophical propositions is now solely in the hands of individuals.

some people are incapable or unwilling to accept a falsity in spite of the evidence to the contrary. Because some people are stupid, it does not make everybody stupid, and the stupidity of the analyst does not have any bearing upon the truth or untruth of the axiom. — Marcus de Brun

Again, we are in complete agreement. I'm a Realist, so I believe that there is a 'truth of the matter' external to our own feelings. If you want to be so antagonistic as to use 'stupid' to describe people whose understanding of the world does not align with the 'truth of the matter', then we'll go along with that terminology for now (although I find it unnecessarily pejorative). The problem still remains how do we tell, in the face of conflicting understandings of the same empirical sense-data, which of us is 'stupid'?

You appear to be asserting that truth or falsity is 'only' arrived at by consensus rather than logic or reason. — Marcus de Brun

No, I'm asserting that truth or falsity cannot be arrived at at all. It is possible to arrive at something which might usefully be called 'truth', for the purposes of everyday communication, but that something would be that which none of our epistemic peers could find fault with. It's not about democracy, it's about logic, but I've already set out the logical argument and you've either failed to understand it, or ignored it so I'm not sure what more I can do other than repeat it in case you missed it.

P1 - One of my epistemic peers has an understanding of the world which disagrees with mine. I present my argument and my evidence to them and they maintain their contrary position.
P2 - If two people have understandings of the world which are mutually exclusive, then one of them must be wrong (my belief in Realism).
C1 - (From P1 and P2) it must be possible for a person of my level of intellect, when faced with all the evidence and arguments involved in the case, to be wrong.
C2 - (from C1) It is therefore always possible that I (a person as intelligent as my epistemic peers, and in position of all the evidence and arguments involved in the case) might very well be the one who's wrong.
C3 - It is therefore impossible from an analysis of the evidence and arguments involved in the case alone, for any person of equal intellect to me (including me) to ascertain the 'truth of the matter'. The only situation in which the 'truth of the matter' might be usefully said to have been approached is if none of my epistemic peers finds fault with the theory, in which case the objection at P1 disappears.

Alternatively, I could rephrase my concern this way. If I define 'good' philosophy as "any propositions written in a book filed under 'philosophy' in a library, or written by a person with a PhD in philosophy as part of their academic work" (which, to be honest, is most of the world's working definition), how does your definition here alter that? Which propositions under my default definition get removed, or added under yours. If your definition neither adds nor removes propositions, ie it describes exactly the same set of propositions as mine, then I'm not sure what it's purpose is. It would be like me adding to the definition of 'elephant' the fact that they're not square. It may be true, but unless it adds to the set 'elephants' things we previously thought should be excluded, or excludes things that were previously contained within it, then it had not really been of any use to us has it?

A critique of a philosophy [should be based on] whether or not it conceals or veils things that are unacceptable to veil." - where the lineaments of 'acceptability' can only be drawn from the object analysis itself. — StreetlightX

Unless the" object analysis itself"(whatever that means) is a person, then how can 'acceptability' be drawn from it? In normal usage, 'acceptable' refers the conclusion of a person - "your explanation is unacceptable", "the alternative you suggest is an acceptable solution".

If you are proposing some new use of the term 'acceptable' then a definition would help.

As usual, your otherwise interesting posts are let down by a failure to provide any concrete examples, you seem to want to maintain notions as vague and ill-defined as possible. This only leads to their being used to justify the maintenance of any subjectively preferred philosophical position. Or, more often, used to dismiss as nonsense philosophical positions one dislikes. How easy it would be for anyone using your vague terminology to dismiss as 'bad' as philosophy anything they wanted on the grounds that it had not sufficiently 'found the problem' or 'revealed' anything interesting.

I'm still not seeing how you avoid wholesale relativism. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but unless you've had an epiphany here you certainly seem to want to maintain the right to label some philosophy objectively 'bad' and I don't see how this line of argument enables you to do that.

That's why it would really help if you provided an example. How might you go through this process step-by-step to dismiss as 'bad' some philosophy you disapprove of? Similarly, if I were to argue that Nietzche veils something which it is unacceptable to veil (say, the biological nature of the human mind), how would you counter that?

I want a world where HUMANS can minimize net harm that THEY cause — chatterbears

That's fine, but it's a long way from your original claim which was that no-one could eat meat and remain ethically consistent. Now we're talking just about what you want, your personal entirely subjective desire. That's not what I want. I want a world where creatures are allowed to express their natural desires to the maximum extent. Harm and the causing of harm are only issues for me insofar as the avoidance of such constitutes a natural desire. I have very little interest in who caused the harm. You and I have different ethical frameworks.

If you wouldn't justify raising a human needless for food, why would you justify it for an animal? — chatterbears

As I've said now dozens of times, I would justify it on the principle of least harm. If that animal were raised on kitchen scraps (as our pigs are), or raised on upland pastures unsuitable for arable (such as the lamb I buy), or raised in woodland already being used to grow local timber (such as the deer I shoot), or are raised within arable crops and are actually causing a reduction in crop density and so forcing farmers to use more land (such as the rabbit I shoot) - then raising and killing that animal for food causes less harm than farming the equivalent quantity of protein in vegetables.

And to be consistent, should it follow that we can eat humans that contain a lower ability in thought, such as a mentally disabled person? — chatterbears

No, that's the point. You are being inconsistent by saying that you would not incarcerate the wolves for killing unnecessarily, but you would incarcerate a human even though that human might well have the intellectual capacity of a wolf. You claimed that you would have this difference in position because Humans "have a higher ability in thought, and can understand a deeper level of right and wrong." If that difference can be used to justify taking the freedom from an intellectually disabled human, then why can it not be used to justify taking the freedom from an intellectually capable (and therefore equally intelligent) wolf? You are being inconsistent. You have argued that there exists no trait which justifies the different treatment of humans and other animals when it comes to suffering, and yet you are claiming that when it comes to incarceration for the crime of killing without obvious necessity (incarceration being undoubtedly harmful), you would treat the wolf differently to the intellectually disabled human. Why?

You insisted on the numbers when you assumed they worked in your favor. — NKBJ

For literally the last time I am not claiming any figures work in anyone's favour, I am claiming that there exists a sufficient diversity of figures that the issue is not settled. all that it required for me to make this claim is the existence of a single well-informed intelligent scientist with expertise in the field who has concluded that eating meat (under certain circumstances) causes less harm than the equivalent quantity of vegetables (under certain circumstances). Such a study obviously exists, the "2003 article in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Steven Davis advanced the argument that fewer animals would be harmed if we consumed a diet containing large herbivores (namely cattle) fed on pasture than if we consumed a vegan diet". You may well disagree with his conclusions, other scientists may well disagree with his conclusions, but unless he disagrees with his own conclusions then there remains one intelligent, well-informed expert who has concluded that meat eating (in certain circumstances) does not cause more harm than vegetable eating.

even within our own calculations. I have calculated them to be roughly equivalent (less harmful for wild meat), You calculated it to 15 times more harmful. @Uber, kindly linked to a large number of studies, the first one of which calculates it to be only 1.5-2 times more harmful (for average diets, and agrees that "exceptions may occur"). The matter is very clearly not settled. It is therefore entirely reasonable to take one of the currently held conclusions and use it to support one's ethical choices.

I didn't argue against Davis' study. I used it to prove you wrong. — NKBJ

How exactly? the Davis study concludes -

1. Vegan diets are not bloodless diets. Millions of animals of the field die
every year to provide products used in vegan diets.
2. Several alternative food production models exist that may kill fewer
animals than the vegan model.
3. More research is needed to obtain accurate estimations of the number
of field animals killed in different crop production systems.
4. Humans may be morally obligated to consume a diet from plant based
plus pasture-forage-ruminant systems.

How does that prove me wrong when all I'm arguing is that there exists a well-informed expert study which concludes that meat eating causes less harm than vegetable protein?

That model is not sustainable for feeding the entire world's population. — NKBJ

Who said anything about sustainable for the worlds population. The title of this thread is "Animal Ethics - Is it wrong to eat animals?" The OP asks clearly "Does anyone here eat animals, while also adhering to the moral trifecta (Empathy, compassion and ethical consistency)? If so, I'd like to know how?. No one mentioned anything about the diet that would be best for the average urban dwelling occupant of westernised industrial countries to adopt in order to cause least environmental damage overall. If you want to have that debate then open your own thread on that topic, I will most likely argue entirely in agreement that veganism is a large part of the solution to that problem, but that's not what this thread is about.

But I did look up sheep farming in the UK: — NKBJ

Well you obviously didn't look very hard (confirmation bias, as I mentioned before - we all have it), since on the very second paragraph it states clearly that "Every farm is different, and there are a huge variety of systems and schedules in use across the UK. For this example, we will look at a traditional lowland farm producing lambs to put delicious meat on the table", and later "often feeding more nuts or pellets (a concentrated high-nutrient feed) and less forage (hay and straw)...If there is not enough grass, supplement feeding will be offered to ensure the ewes keep supplying enough milk.... Some farmers also offer extra feed to the lambs so, when they stop feeding on only milk from their mum (at about six weeks of age), they will grow fast on feed and grass."[my highlights]. I'd be hard pushed to find a more classic example of confirmation bias. You've read an article wanting to find that sheep farming using supplemental feeding, so your brain has missed out all the 'if's, 'some's and 'often's and just left you with an unequivocal conclusion that all sheep farming using supplemental feeding. You haven't even felt the need to find out how much before coming back to me no less vitriolic than you were before, nor apparently looked into the fact that the hay meadows which provide the supplementary feed are so valuable to wildlife that they are an internationally protected habitat.

I will summarise my position again so that we can avoid wasting further time.

The OP states that eating animals is unethical because of the unnecessary harm it causes animals. This is incorrect because there exist several scenarios under which eating meat causes less harm than growing the equivalent quantity of vegetables. Those scenarios are not available to some sections of the population, and so for the those people, vegan diets might be the least harmful, for others fully carnivorous diets might be the least harmful. It depends of the ecosystem one is part of.

have no opinion on the ethical nature of your life. — Uber

Then I suggest you start another thread and stop confusing this one. This thread is entitled "Animal ethics - is it wrong to eat animals?", not "Global environmental concerns - which diet overall produces least environmental impacts for average people?". It's pretty easy to win an argument if the one you're having isn't even the same one your opponent is.

I have never, in any of my posts suggested that veganism is a bad idea (quite literally the opposite in fact), I've specifically stated that growing meat using land that could be used for arable crops is stupid, and eating such meat is unethical on the grounds of the harm it is proven to cause (proven in the sense that no well-informed expert disagrees).

All I have argued is that there is a way to include meat in a diet which cause as little (or less) harm as the equivalent vegetables and therefore eating meat is not 'wrong' as the OP suggests.