This is how slavery existed for hundreds of years, because people were content with their inconsistency. — chatterbears
It is how women didn't have the right to vote up until recently, because people were content with their inconsistencies. — chatterbears
People feel ok discriminating against others, acknowledging their inconsistency on the basis for doing so, and continue to discriminate. — chatterbears
Also, if being gay conflicted with your morals, you'd have to evaluate your moral system and allow it to align with your beliefs, in which you would then be consistent AND happy. — chatterbears
Anybody who is gay that is conflicted, has been brought up religious. — chatterbears
Also, you seem like a person who lacks empathy and focuses on selfish desires. — chatterbears
Which is not surprising, because a vast majority of people are like that. — chatterbears
As you said, you like animals, but you also like the taste of animal flesh. Despite this being in conflict with your values, you will continue to do it anyways because you value convenience and pleasure over the life of another being. — chatterbears
That's irrelevant to the point. Years ago, black people were believed to NOT have free-will as part of the equality package. This meant that, LIKE animals, black people did NOT get to determine their circumstances. — chatterbears
There is less utility in animal agriculture than there was in black slavery. Utilitarianism leads to Veganism, not away from it. Veganism benefits the world more than non-Veganism. Health, environment, and the animals themselves. — chatterbears
Memphis Meats, which generated headlines last year with the creation of the world’s first lab-grown meatball. The company has subsequently succeeded in making “clean” chicken and duck (without needing to raise and kill the animals for their meat).
Its CEO Uma Valeti says the process involves taking tiny meat cells from an animal (via a painless biopsy or sample). These are then fed nutrients, which enables the cells to grow, and they eventually turn into edible meat. “We’re developing a method that would allow the cells to self-renew indefinitely, meaning after the initial cells are obtained, we wouldn’t need to return to the animal for subsequent samples,” Valeti says. “Our goal is to entirely remove the animal from the meat production process.”
Memphis Meats has to spend around $2,400 (£1,800) to make 450 grams of beef. However, the price is falling and the company aims to hit the market in 2021.
For you, laziness is a good basis for moral decisions — chatterbears
Suppose a husband and wife have a child with Down's Syndrome whom they have always loved dearly are cared for in an exemplary manner.Is the dominion - in terms of the strict discipline and physical restraint, etc; - that these parents must often exercise over their DS child's behaviours on a day-to-day basis ( or even hour -to hour) unethical? — johnGould
There will be a story on NPR tomorrow about meat products grown in a lab. It's real meat, but no animals involved. I'm guessing you know more about this that most of us, so I'd be interested in your understandings and opinion.
My very basic understanding, hopefully somewhat correct, is that they do in the lab just what an animal does, start with plant material, and turn it in to meat.
What do you know about this? — Jake
Yes, but slavery is on another level. You might think otherwise, but you haven't convinced me otherwise, and I doubt you will be able to. — S
Yes. But for me, neither slavery nor female suffrage poses the challenge that the consumption of animal products does. I'm not torn between wanting to keep slaves or prevent women to vote and feeling that it's kind of wrong. — S
Yes. And...? I'm not one of those people, or at least I try not to be, unless you're including animals, in which case, yes, I treat other animals differently to humans, because they are different. I acknowledge that inconsistency is a problem, but, depending on the context and how it is judged, how big of a problem it's considered to be will vary. You think that it's a bigger problem than I do with regards to this topic. — S
No, that's an option in the hypothetical scenario. I told you that the person can't bring themselves to abandon their morals, and yet their morals are incompatible with living a lifestyle in which they'd be happy. Not living this lifestyle makes the person miserable, or at best feeling like they're stuck in a situation where they're left unfulfilled. — S
Your response is rather like me telling you that you have to evaluate your moral system and allow it to align with the consumption of animal products. Everyone has their red lines, and in the thought experiment, this is one of them. — S
Maybe that's true, but you don't have enough of a basis to make that judgement if you're making it based on this one issue. If I lack empathy and focus on selfish desires, based solely on my views on this one topic, then that's no more true of me than of the average person. The average person is a meat eater, and is likely similarly conflicted, at least when they think about it. — S
It's not all about values. An urge isn't a value. A desire isn't a value. A craving isn't a value. An impulse isn't a value. A conditioned behaviour or a habit isn't a value. A persons ability to change their behaviour isn't a value. — S
And besides, nothing is set in stone. I think I could change. Especially since I can see things from your point of view and am not wholly unsympathetic towards that way of looking at things. But yeah, I haven't changed enough to stop consuming animal products since the last time we had this discussion a while back. If it was as easy as clicking your fingers, then I would probably become a vegan. But it ain't that easy. What might seem to be the most ethical thing to do isn't necessarily the best thing for a person to do. My happiness is important, and selflessness has its downsides. — S
The above shows that ethics/morality is determined by popular consensus within a particular sphere of interaction. This means that, in some places, cultures, governments, etc, it was ethical/moral to practice slavery while in others it was not. Remember, even in those african communities, there was a lot of discrimination and denial of certain rights and freedoms. Just because they were enslaved by others doesn't mean they were ideal humans in themselves.
If by being ethical/moral you are asking if certain actions are ideal (perfect), then no human activity or choices are ethical/moral. There are no ideal humans. — BrianW
Yet, even then when humans were relatively more ignorant compared to now, they still had edicts of ethics/morality. So, right now, is dominion over animals unethical? No. That's the way it is. I know it is not something others would approve but they don't get to decide ethics/morality for everyone else. — BrianW
At best, the dominion over animals is unethical/immoral for those who believe animals deserve equal treatment to humans. This is because they have created their own sphere of interaction in which such dominion is unethical/immoral. However, other humans have other spheres of interaction in which such dominion is not. For them, even as they refine their treatment of animals according to certain values, they maintain their dominion. — BrianW
So, do you think your rules of ethics/morals applies to everyone indiscriminately? Absolutely not.
You (or any other individual) don't get to determine ethics/morality for others. Every person determines their own ethics/morality or, at least, the sphere of interaction they belong to for the collective ethics/morality of a given group of humans (country, culture, religion, field of study, trend, etc). — BrianW
So the chief question here is whether man is essentially (ontologically/physically/other) superior to animals and only by acting according to his superiority could he be considered to not be committing injustice. — SapereAude
Here is another question: Is killing a fly a killing? Has an injustice been committed where the flyswatter slays its prey? — SapereAude
What do you guys think of justice/injustice as operating beyond the human realm into the world of animals (and maybe plants?) — SapereAude
actually didn't say anything about that. In the post about laziness, in fact, I explicitly said, "Not for any ethical reasons."
For me, re metaethics, the only basis there is for morality, at least foundationally, is how someone feels about interpersonal behavior. It's not a good or bad basis. It's just factually the basis.
As I've said again and again, no non-moral stance, fact, etc. can imply any moral stance.
"Laziness" isn't a moral stance. Hence "laziness" can imply no moral stance — Terrapin Station
A person's ethical stance cannot be as follows:
- Humans should not be owned as property.
- I own black people as slaves. — chatterbears
Again, you are answering for other humans. I want to know about your personal subjective beliefs. I don't care what other humans are doing. I am in this forum to talk to people directly, not to talk about other people. — chatterbears
Right now, there are plant based "burgers" out there, such as Beyond Meat or The Impossible Burger. I eat The Impossible Burger regularly, and it tastes quite good. — chatterbears
Is metaethics the only thing you understand about ethics? — chatterbears
I am have been trying to talk to you for many posts now, about your normative ethics. — chatterbears
how would you teach your kids right from wrong? — chatterbears
The problem here is that products like that don't taste that good to meat eaters. I like them, you like them, but we're already vegetarians. — Jake
No. But the metaethical facts I've been mentioning can't be just ignored when we're talking about ethics from any other angle. — Terrapin Station
I explained earlier that I don't do ethics by any sort of overarching principle, because I think that's a bad idea that always leads to ridiculous stances (like antinatalism, for example). — Terrapin Station
I didn't see you ask that. I don't believe that one can teach someone right and wrong. Right and wrong have to be a way that someone feels about behavior, and you can't teach someone (how) to feel. That doesn't mean that people aren't influenced, but just how they'll be influenced is unpredictable.
What I do is stress deliberative introspection, and stress that of course one's moral authenticity has to be balanced against the risks of bucking various societal norms. (For example, if one feels that it's morally permissible to commit murder, then one would need to balance acting in accord with that with the possible/probably social repercussions.) — Terrapin Station
I could say you have a ridiculous stance by refuses to take any stance at all in regards to having a normative perspective. — chatterbears
So if your son/daughter/friend/relative/etc.... committed murder, and told you about it, you would just say, "Ok no problem. Just make sure you don't get caught because you may encounter social repercussions." - Or what if we changed it from murder to rape? If your son/daughter/friend/relative/etc... raped somebody else, and told you about it, you wouldn't tell them it was 'wrong' to do? — chatterbears
Would you tell them, "Well, there's no such thing as right or wrong. — chatterbears
I would tell them my view. Telling someone a moral view doesn't give them that moral view. One can only have a moral view when one feels some way or other about behavior. Telling someone something doesn't make them feel the way that you feel. — Terrapin Station
"There's no such thing as right or wrong" isn't actually my view, though. My view is that right and wrong are ways that people feel about interpersonal behavior. There definitely are such things. There definitely are ways that people feel about interpersonal behavior, so I wouldn't deny that there are. — Terrapin Station
How would you define ethics? — chatterbears
How would you define personal ethics? — chatterbears
How do you differentiate between right and wrong? — chatterbears
Your ethics/morality seems to ignore the learning curve. We can learn to be better but, knowledge does not just magically appear nor does it instantly manifest as action. It takes time and effort, and human history is evidence of that. — BrianW
.Humans (collectively) are doing what they think is best for themselves. At some point in the future, perhaps near or distant (relative to different communities), the ethics/morality you're referring to will become ingrained in all of humanity. At the moment, it is not. At the moment, it is not the ethics/morality of all humans. — BrianW
Right is that which causes harmony and wrong is that which causes disharmony. — BrianW
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