Okay, but that's just semantics, — Sapientia

Even if you think I have strong moral opinions that does not mean I believe they relate to existent moral facts.

The moral stance that I'm attributing to you is that eating meat is acceptable because of X, Y, and Z — Sapientia

What I have been saying is more like meat eating isn't a moral issue.

I have went into great detail about about why I don't accept the naturalistic fallacy. I am waiting to hear where you can find a morality that doesn't reference nature.

If I was a god and created a world then I imagine it would be odd if I didn't put any moral guidance in nature. And If nature wan't a moral guide there is nowhere else we know of that transcends nature etc.

I would say I had preferences rather than a moral stance. I don't think moral ideas can be non natural because that stance is meaningless.

I am not sure what moral stance you are attributing to me.

And if, after consideration, you don't approve or recommend it, then you're basically taking an ethical stance. — Sapientia

You can take an ethical or moral stance on anything without it revealing an underlying moral truth.

There is only so much intuition could tell us. I have things I don't like but not strong moral intuitions. Also moral intuitions or feelings lead to quite different conclusions.

I don't think we need arguments to justify our behaviour. Does any other animal provide arguments to justify their behaviour.

Anyhow I did not specify any behaviour here because I am making a more general point which could be called biological realism if you like.

But I have mentioned homosexuality before. I don't think it is possible to change someones sexuality so I think it is futile and harmful to try.

As I also said before some behaviours or traits are like this were the more ingrained they are the less they make coherent moral objects.

I am a moral nihilist because I don't see any moral rules anywhere and if a moral property is not found in nature where else could it be found?

I said we shouldn't disregard our nature. Disregard means ignore or place little weight on.

Meaning we should take into consideration what we actually are like as biological and psychological creatures. That doesn't mean we should copy the behaviour of nature.

It means we should not give a false picture of ourselves on which to base a morality etc.

In relation to what? I was just making a general point in relation to my opening post concerning how close to nature a behaviour is.

I don't think we should disregard our nature.

The first of these images of the pigs in wire cages has been used on the internet in a misleading way. This was a picture from China and the pigs were temporally in those cages awaiting transport to market.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pig-cage-photo/

Personally pictures of animals never move me in they way pictures of humans suffering do. But I think animal welfare can be improved with in the framework of meat eating.

No cow voluntarily walks into a knife merely for our pleasure. — NKBJ

Has a plant ever voluntary walked into your most merely for your pleasure? Nothing has a choice about whether it dies or not because that is inevitable.

We have to exploit nature to survive. As a depressed nihilist I know what it is like to be unhappy with the state of life an nature. It certainly is not Disneyland.

It is unfortunate but dead animals are part of the cycle of life and part of most organism nutrition.

Pictures of animals in a "vegan ethics" thread is entirely relevant. You're just a snowflake and it's not the moderators' problem that you've a guilty conscience. It'll be okay, Sappy. — Buxtebuddha

Are you happy for us to post pictures of animals being eaten alive then? Are you happy for us to post images of mass drowning or starvation in nature etc?

Links would be sufficient.

But you still argued that we ought to stop crimes--which flies in the face of your supposed moral nihilism. — NKBJ

I said that "crime" is natural and if we were to intervene in it it should be in a non moralistic way. As I have been saying in the thread "How can actions be right or wrong" I think you can have a best way to achieve an outcome (regardless of how dubious the outcome might be). So there are various methods to interfere with activity deemed criminal.

I have made it quite clear by now that I am drawing a distinction between things that happen in nature and things that are functional survival traits in the fabric of life.

There are specific contexts for trying to alter peoples behaviour and different motivations. We have personal motives for interfering in behaviour but I don't think we have any obligation. Also I don't think we can moralize about or interfere all harm. It is not inconsistent to chose which harm you feel the need to prevent.

lions are not moral agents — NKBJ

On what grounds are you calling someone a moral agent?

I think moral language is goal directed.

I think without any innate purpose for life then the moral language is useless.

If you have a specific goal or preference than you can make a personal judgement about a situation.

I am saying there is a a best or right way to do something if you have a specific goal. Like there is a correct way to bake a cake. I don't tee how there can be a right or good way to behave without the equivalent of a recipe book for human behaviour.

I don't know if I am behaving the way I ought or if there is an "ought" to follow

Where are you inserting the word "good"?

That seems to be an unwarranted value judgement.

Thou someone somewhere sometime if they saw the house might say it is built "wrong" thou I'd prefer "poorly", if we survive I should think the house was rather well built. — Seastar

You can do anything the right way dependent on what your goal. If you are a serial killer and want to kill as many people as possible then it would be best for you to by a gun and learn strategies for evading the police

If you have a specific goal there is probably a maximum way of achieving your goal. I don't think nature cares what goals you try to achieve.

I would say that some kind of deity or law giver is the only entity of capable of resolving moral disputes.

For example is abortion wrong? Is meat eating wrong? There are persistent disagreements.

I don't think we can manufacture a good reality.

I think wrongness can only exist when there is a correct way to behave or correct answer.
But there appears to be no purpose or innate laws for humans which we can diverge from. Evolution theory has further undermined the notion of a purpose or teleology other than mindless reproduction.

I think that if you apply a moral schema to life it would judge life to be immoral or amoral.

I think the hope is, that there is a purpose for humans and some kind of universal karma, so no bad deed will go unpunished and no good deed will go unrewarded.

I don't think Harm equals Wrong or Bad. And that kind idea was what was being attacked by G.E.Moore with his "Naturalistic Fallacy" (Although he focused on Good and Pleasure).

You would have to have another premise to get from one to the other. But if you did define harm as bad it would outweigh the good and make a lot of neutral things or natural things immoral..... It seems we are to believe only humans harming animals is a moral evil.

More on moral non-naturalism in this rather wordy article. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/

This means that you can identify those things that would count as crimes: which implies you do understand the difference between things one ought to do — NKBJ

I was only using the term crime because you brought it up. I have said I am a moral nihilist... so I am only referring to things that have been socially labeled crimes and saying that if they were to be dealt with I would not deal with them in a condemnatory and punitive way. You are trying to commit people to behaving in the same way in a diverse set of circumstances however.

I don't have one default way of categorising and dealing with what may be harm. The "natural" issue was an issue of to what degree our behaviour accords with natural survival, functional behaviour. Eating animals and dead organisms is an essential part of the life cycle so that is a big mitigating circumstance.
........

The issue about pets and humans needing medical treatment is to point out that death is not a consent issue or straightforward. My brother who has been intensive care more than once and had pneumonia several times & nearly was allowed to die by a doctor because they thought that to keep him alive might not be the best option because of his profound disabilities.
So my Dad had to advocate on my brothers behalf and my brother hadn't expressed his wishes. Then the next time he was becoming unconscious through pneumonia I had to make sure I asked my brother did he want to be kept a live at all costs and convey that to the medical staff.

But even after getting a clear advocacy or consent for keeping some one alive the medical procedures are a life or death matter and to which extent you persist in treating someone. So there have been long court cases about whether someone should be kept alive (babies/people in vegetative state etc)

This is in response to you saying "It is not for us to decide for the animal when it should die".

I think life is ambiguous and there is no clear cut moral framework to apply consistently.

I am challenging the view of nature you appear to have.

Humans are not just relaxing in the sun by a pool lazily feasting away on meat. The context of meat eating is brute survival in a far from perfect morally ambiguous world.

I am trying to fix the debate in the context of the real world. My initial point is that meat eating is innate in life not an aberration. And there is no default Utopia for us to return to or achieve.

The question of how we should treat animals is different to whether or not we should eat them and veganism is a diet excluding meat. So I would have no problem with a philosophy of keeping animals in as painless as possible situations.

I don't think life lawfully gives us any obligations and we are just as much a victim of nature as the rest of life.

Cows do more than just that. They actually have a richer social life than most realize, for one thing. Regardless, cows are constituted such that they enjoy wandering around freely eating grass and drinking water, just as we enjoy eating and drinking and moving around freely. — petrichor

I don't think that the default existence for life is pleasure. It certainly is not for me.

If we forget other creatures and just focus on humans there is a lot of problems in the nature of human life.

Humans have suffered from the same fate as animals through their history such as mass starvation, diseases, premature death and natural disasters. From a natural perspective as opposed to any human intervention we have had famines that have killed millions and tsunami's and earth quakes that have probably killed millions through out history. So there is no sentimental default state for being alive.

When it comes to purpose humans have been clever at inventing meanings including religions

....but many people have suffered from a horrible sense of futility and purposelessness including myself which effects every day life. In on one sense other life forms maybe lucky never to be exposed to existential dilemmas or to have the same heightened awareness of their future death.

There is a lack of justice in humans affairs and a persistent irrationality and hypocrisy we are not a good model for a moral exemplar.

Human suffering is very nuanced including the existential stresses I just mentioned. I was forced to go to church up to 5 times a week as a child and found that very stressful and boring. I was bullied in school and by local young people so I have not ended up with a positive perspective on humans.
Reflecting on all my experiences there has been a lot of distress and harm caused by existing and in this social framework. Another anecdote is that my older brother has had progressive M.S. for 20 years and has been paralysed by it, he has had pressure sores, pneumonia at least 6 times and so on.

This is another "gift" or reality of life. Personal moral conduct does not at all ensure positive outcomes. For the phenemonologists here I could give vivid descriptions of the 20 years of my brothers illness and my own problems if you like the tactic of invoking emotions.

To me questions just seem to be created by the process of thinking.

For me, the pain issue seems secondary to the idea that other sentient beings belong to themselves and not to me. They simply aren't mine to do with as I please. It would be wrong for me to use them as a means to my ends like that without some serious justification even if I cause them no pain or even if I cause them pleasure. — petrichor

The nature of reality for life on earth is not like this. No one is free really because no one asks to be born and we are it seems forced into existence.

The kind of freedom doesn't seem to exist where we can really metaphysically control our destiny. Animals appear to act more on instinct than rational goals or desire. I don't know what purpose there is for animals that we can thwart.
Can you imagine being a cow wandering around eating grass drinking water and not much else? Even the most sophisticated animals has far less options for cognitive pursuits and diverse behaviours than us.

I think the kind of morality your espousing is a for another reality not this one.

As I said before, I have no interest in validity. It is only you that is talking about validity. — andrewk

How can you convince someone to not eat meat if you are not concerned with presenting them a valid argument?
There may have been very compelling arguments for ending the slave trade and not just appeals to emotion.

I am not sure what grounds you have for trying to change someones behaviour if they are not valid or rational?
Anyone can try and changes anyone's behaviour in any direction as has historically been the case. But successfully getting someone to believe X or act like X is not a mark of goodness or progress.

If you don't intend to eradicate pain then it is somewhat arbitrary what pain your try and eliminate.

I don't think goodness is a property but rather a subjective judgement.

I don't think harm in nature gives us any obligations .We can attempt to minimise harm in nature if that is something we feel like doing but as I have said I think it is an improbable/impractical etc task.

Pain seems to be less of a problem if it is not pointless because we are willing to tolerate some discomfort to achieve goals. But I don't think there is any clear meaning in any of it especially since there is no clear purpose in nature.

Certainly. And interestingly, this pain brings a message of ought-not. It dissuades — petrichor

This is a very simplistic view of pain. My point was that it is not a bad thing in the sense that it aids survival. The idea of no one experiencing pain sounds positive until you hear about people who don't experience pain and suffer severe injuries. So do you want to eradicate pain or preserve pain for its survival value?

As a victim of long term bullying in childhood I doubt your pain provides an ought-not theory. If you are hitting someone and you yourself are not in pain it is not going to deter you from doing that.

So being deterred by your own pain is very different from causing pain in others. Also pain and distress in nature doesn't deter carnivores.

I was only referencing the pain that deters some injury but there is a lot of chronic pain that has long outlived any uselessness. I don't think you can turn all pain into a moral issue but if you do it is likely to lead to antinatalist and extinctionist views.

A doctor killing a patient against his or her will is called murder — NKBJ

You missed the bit where I mentioned that pet owners have there ill pets put to sleep.

I have had long experience now of being with a seriously ill person who has been in intensive care at least thrice and has had many stays in hospital also I have other family members who have worked in hospitals.

It is not a straightforward case of asking a patient whether they want to be kept alive. There is a wide variety of medical procedures and caring strategies that effects someones longevity in hospital. In my experience most hospital death are not the cliched pulling of a plug. Some times death is caused by eating problems and medication side effects and the medical staff have to make decisions about a suitable medicine regime of diet plan....In short I don't know what role consent generally plays in death.

You've been watching too much Shark Week. Nature has brutal moments, and some animals kill to live, but most of a wild animal's life is not "red in tooth and claw." Perhaps you should spend some time observing animals in their natural day to day? They very much enjoy being free, alive, and unbothered by humans. — NKBJ

I have never heard of Shark week. I have lived in the countryside though. I lived on a small holding that had some sheep. I would say the sheep were expressionless showing no specific joie de vivre. One of them was unfortunately killed by a badger.

Have you seen this quote by Dawkins on nature?

“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

Heavens, the ending of slavery was based on moral arguments. Who cares that such arguments were not authoritative, and that it did not have near universal agreement? What matters is that they ended slavery. — andrewk

The ending of the official slave trade is not proof that a moral argument is valid. After slavery we had two world wars, several genocides and the Klu Klux Klan so that is hardly moral progress is it?

I don't think campaigning against slavery requires any knowledge of moral philosophy.

To me moral progress if it exists would be moral refinement. Humans behaving less than terrible is actually quite demoralising. So finally Western woman have equality, some gays have equal rights after thousands of years and much philosophy. But these things should have been the default. We shouldn't be proud of having taken thousands of years to give some of the world equal rights.

What I think the moral literature has failed to do is justify morality. To what degree you think reality has improved is subjective. My life has been sub par most of the time.

I'll repeat myself once more: so, since rape, murder, incest, etc. occur in nature, or are "innate" as you claim, are we to excuse those who commit these crimes? The naturalness, innateness, or whichever term you want to call something in an attempt to dodge your moral culpability, of an act or impulse does not change whether it is right or wrong. It has no impact on the rightness or wrongness of the act. — NKBJ

You are only repeating yourself because you are failing to understand my point. Not everything that happens in nature is innate. There are degrees to which behaviour are fundamental for survival or not.

I don't believe in prison or punishment and I think crime is natural and moralising about it is pointless. I would tackle the causes of crime rather than focus on vilifying people.

You are refusing to see any subtlety anywhere if you can't see degrees of import and nuance in behaviour and nature. I have stated apparently not clearly enough that I am a moral nihilist and do not think nature can be "wrong".

What I focused on in the first post is the seeming paradox or absurdity that if we were carnivores veganism would be defunct. That this moral stance is only available of you think human can be herbivores. If rape was the only way to impregnate someone then we would probably find it more acceptable. How could something that is essential be a crime?

I wasn't intending to debate all aspects of veganism here but rather that specific issue of morality versus natural traits.

Perhaps pain, in itself, is sort of a real ought-not — petrichor

Pain is essential for survival. People with congenital pain deficit die younger and cause themselves lots of injury. Pain is often in indication of injury.

Pain is created by nature it is not something humans invented. Pain is another "natural" thing that exists whether we moralise about it or not. As I said earlier rejecting these type of things ends with us rejecting nature.

I am an antinatalist so I will not be causing more pain after I am dead because there is no human life without pain. But it is not a clear moral guide and a lot of it is a result of illness and embodiment.

, I tend to think that this child's suffering matters regardless of whether it bothers me or not. It would matter even if nobody existed but the torturer and the child. — petrichor

How would you know that the child's suffering mattered if it didn't bother you at all?

And before we can decide whether or not natural things are good, we need to know what goodness is! Do you know what it is? — petrichor

I am not committed to a a notion of goodness I am just dismissing the naturalistic fallacy and arguing that nature is a guide to some things. Obviously a Doctor ought to learn how the heart works before performing heart surgery because that heart has a function and his job would be rendered futile if it didn't reference a model of how a heart best functions.

I think a notion of goodness such as what causes least harm will have to reference nature because harm is natural/biological. I think if we want to minimise harm we have to do it with reference to what nature/reality/biology provides us. It may be that nature can't give us the kind of goodness we idealise.

Lots of people including my self suffer distress from reality not living up to our expectations and fantasies.

It is not for us to decide for the animal when it should die. Counter example: someone you know has cancer and will die a painful death. Are you allowed to put him/her out of his/her misery when s/he doesn't wish to die yet? — NKBJ

That is what routinely happens to pets because ill animals cannot talk. Also Doctors often cause the death of a patient by decisions about their medical care in life or death circumstances.

Imagine if we didn't intervene in any human lives most humans would die quickly. If their parents didn't care for them they would die shortly after birth.

Leaving animals to natures mercy is not clearly the most ethical thing. If you wanted to be really ethical you could intervene in natural famines and try and make all animal deaths quick and painless (although that would be improbable) But not interfering with nature is certainly not ensuring an animal will thrive and have maximum well being. (For example where an animal is being eaten alive it seems the persons watching should shoot the animal to give it a quicker death.

Ironically most of these eaten alive videos are filmed in nature reserves/safaris where we are trying to preserve nature.

If only evolutionary natural things were good, — NKBJ

I am not talking about things that are good via nature but things that are innate via nature. For example most animals can kill but I don't think most animals have an innate drive to kill unless they are carnivores or in exceptional circumstances.

There are degrees to which a behaviour is innate and because of this it limits the amount of condemnation and morality you can apply to this behaviour.

Just like the legal notion of mitigating circumstances. I am not saying humans cannot manage meat eating but carnivorous and omnivorous behaviour is more innate in nature than some other behaviours.

You may find it normalizing, and that's great if it helps you emotionally--but it still doesn't make it right or wrong. Ethically, the "naturalness" of homosexuality (or anything else) simply doesn't matter. — NKBJ

If something happens in nature I don't see how it can be wrong. This is a problem for morality in general.

I am certainly not saying what happens in nature is good. Goodness is a problematic characteristic which seems the most subjective of the values.

I am not sure exactly what was meant by "ought equals can" but it seems to me to say moral obligations cannot be impossible to achieve such as things we can't physically or mentally do. This means that expecting a gay person to change his or her sexuality is problematic if it is fixed by nature. So in this sense nature makes moral condemnations of homosexuality defunct.

However this invokes the naturalistic fallacy because the idea that morality cannot makes us do things that are naturally impossible is setting morality in a purely natural setting.

Deterministic positions suggest that certain things if not everything are either very hard or impossible to control. some natural/genetic traits would be harder to manage and total determinism would deny and self control.

Ii think if it was easy to refrain from eaten meat and if a vegan diet was equally delicious and enticing to a vegan one it would be easy for people to change.

Speaking as a homosexual myself I think that finding homosexuality in nature is a positive thing for people who have faced prejudice and persecution and vilification.

It is the equivalent to the support any minority gets to discover they are not alone or alien or not an aberration but just a part of nature, your own normal.

Do you see yet how all this talk of whether or not something is natural is basically irrelevant to the question of its goodness? — petrichor

I think that it is arbitrary what you define as natural. I don't think the phrase natural picks out a concrete concept but then I didn't coin the naturalistic fallacy.

I am not claiming eating meat is good because it is natural because at this point we are just discussing where goodness comes from. The only point I want to make here is that there is not another realm for goodness (or pleasure to come from)

I don't see the point of having a morality that doesn't reference the real world. I think harm might be a more objective property than the good but I don't think reality can be wrong because there appears to be no right way to act in nature and that is to say no teleology.

I believe unnatural often means man made and/or deviating from natures supposed purpose. The point then is that some things originated solely from humans and we can be held accountable for them.

It is obviously a tricky and lengthy topic but I think a lot of these labels can reflect personal or social ideologies and biases.

My reasoning is that if something is a necessary part of nature there is no reason to alienate ourself from it. On the other hand if we try and radically alter our environment and minds and bodies then that to me is a rejection of nature. I don't think veganism is a rejection of nature but its morals are. I believe vegans have a distorted and sometimes anthropomorphic view of nature(biology etc) partly because I think nature is innately harmful and cannot be improved.

I can see no reason why we should alter our bodies and use supplements to make ourselves as if Herbivores. To me that is an unnecessary sacrifice. (To an imaginary moral standard/realm)

But as I have said from near the beginning I am a moral nihilist and I find no moral claims convincing.

If I was looking for someone to ultimately blame for harm it would be whatever force created life.

I think that until someone can demonstrate a strong connection between naturalness and goodness, we can safely dispense with the idea that the naturalness criterion can be used to justify eating meat or abstaining from eating meat. — petrichor

It is not the case that everything that is natural is good but that things that are good are natural processes.
For example if you enjoy being alive then there are a vast amount of natural process like bio-mechanisms in each cell that are keeping you a live. So it seems crazy to value being alive yet place no value on these countless natural things keeping you alive.

I don't think you can value anything without placing value on the nature that allows it to happen, even our minds and reason are argued to be a product of nature so we are reasoning within the limitations of a natural framework.

I think once you consider improving nature you enter a black hole as there are so many things you might want to improve and conflicting desires. There is no objective way to improve reality for everyone.

It would be nice if carnivores didn't exist but that would mean Lions etc would cease to exist. Lots of things would cease to exist or be greatly altered if we tried improving everything.
Personally I'm not having children I don't endorse life and have had lots of horrible experiences so I have no reason to have a positive outlook or seek to continue and progress this game of life.I think we need to confront our own morality and hope something better is on the side. It would be a real slap in the face for me if this was the only life I got to lead.

Finally I think the reason there are factory farms is because people are having lots of offspring and the general endorsement of procreation is the source of most "moral" evil.

How do we decide what is natural? — petrichor

I consider natural just to refer to anything that happens in nature as opposed to a supernatural realm that we either have no access to or doesn't exist