The food we enjoy is going to be a subjective issue no matter how you slice it. — Bitter Crank

Whether you prefer apple or blueberry pie might be subjective; I'll agree to that extent. But after that, your food choices have real life consequences for the rest of the world. How much you eat, what you eat, and where you get your food from all impact others directly and indirectly. Since eating meat directly involves the life of another being (not to mention all of the other problems with the practice), you cannot say it is just a subjective choice--not until you have proven that this other life is negligible.

I'm favorably disposed toward animals, wild or domestic, but that isn't the same as determining their moral status. — Bitter Crank

Yes, it's totally irrelevant which animals you personally like or dislike. So why even go there?

I value elephants; I may be willing to grant them moral status and the protection due intelligent beings. The problem I find is working out moral status for the rest of the animal kingdom. The moral value I see in my loving, faithful, intelligent dog I can't automatically extend to voles, moles, or rats, and gnats. — Bitter Crank

This is a more fruitful approach--the answer is that the voles, moles, and rats have all shown to be highly intelligent and sentient beings. The verdict on gnats is still out, and so the default position in cases where we are uncertain should be to leave them alone when reasonably possible.

My solution is fairly simple: assess on which basis we give humans moral value and then see which animals share those traits. Seems to me Bentham was right: the ability to suffer is the deciding factor.

As to deer overpopulation etc., it seems fallacious to claim that we have to have found all the answers to problems that arise from giving animals moral status, before recognizing we ought to give them moral status. We ought to solve world hunger, have world peace, and give all human babies loving and nurturing homes, but we haven't found perfect solutions for those either.

You seem to be saying, because there are exceptions to certain rules, that makes both the rules and the exceptions arbitrary. I don't think that is sound. You may turn right at a red stoplight, unless cars are coming, pedestrians are walking, and unless there is a sign saying otherwise. That's not arbitrary. Same with moral claims.

Exceptions in morality help us navigate situations in which two or more moral claims are at odds with another.

The fact that you are actually able to debate what kind of protein you want to consume says that me and my trigger pulling ancestors did something right; your'e welcome — Sid

You might also be here typing because of your ancestors raping others, having slaves, stealing, murdering, and so on. None of these are justifiable despite leading to your current existence. They are merely sad facts about how we got to where we are now. Facts that do not require repetition.

But after that, your food choices have real life consequences for the rest of the world. — NKBJ

All of your lifestyle choices, in all areas of life, have real life consequences for the rest of the world. Do you drive a car? Do you wear polyester clothing? Do you live in a sprawled suburban area or in a dense city? Do you use a lot of energy heating and cooling your home? Do you take medications which pass from you into the waterways? Do you use electronic devices (pads, pods, laptops, etc.)? Do you eat food that was not locally grown -- like eating a blueberry in January that was picked in Chile two weeks ago?

Eating meat does have significant consequences -- as do all of our lifestyle choices and practices. Just take microfibers: they are a relatively "new" mass merchandise product; they have useful features. They are shed in laundry and pass through waste treatment systems into rivers and oceans. So also do many of the medications we take for our health. Microfibers (among other fibers), plastic particles, and pharmaceutical chemicals all have negative consequences on animals.

I'll here grant you this point: For the sake of the world, meat eaters should first eat less meat, and humanely raised meat if they can, and over time they should make the cultural adaptation to being vegetarian (a term I like better than vegan, which is much more restrictive).

Meat eaters' transition to eating plants will be helpful. It will help solve some of the extremely serious ecological crises the planet is undergoing. But having become a vegan or vegetarian, people living in industrial societies are still contributing to the ecological disaster by their very existence as consumers of industrial goods and services.

The 6th extinction isn't happening because people are eating too many pork chops. It's happening because industrial exhaust is heating the atmosphere, disrupting ecologies, killing off species, and so forth. More death and destruction is occurring because of plastic wastes--including those microfibers. Over population, even if it is 12 billion vegans, is a catastrophe.

it's totally irrelevant which animals you personally like or dislike. — NKBJ

Liking animals is most likely a stronger motivation to change diet than abstract morality about animals. You are an ideologue (which is not a slander) and you've staked all your arguments on morals. Other people will approach the problem differently. If you can't tolerate that, tough.

All of your lifestyle choices, in all areas of life, have real life consequences for the rest of the world — Bitter Crank

Your point being? You're just proving me right: almost all of your choices have moral consequences and cannot simply be justified with "personal preference". That includes what you eat.

abstract morality about animals. You are an ideologue (which is not a slander) and you've staked all your arguments on morals. Other people will approach the problem differently. If you can't tolerate that, tough. — Bitter Crank

Ummm... This is a philosophy forum, is it not? Some people are here to actually talk philosophy

Some people are here to actually talk philosophy — NKBJ

That would not be you. You're just proselytizing.

Were animals able to more clearly preach against their brains being electrocuted, throats being slit, and so on and so forth, perhaps more people would listen. — Buxtebuddha

What way would you like animals to die?

How would it not be? The question would be about evaluating one's own life against another sentient being's. Is deciding who lives and who dies not a moral dilemma? — BlueBanana

I have mentioned that I am a moral nihilist. I don't think reality is moral and how you feel about something is personal preference.

I thought we were discussing whether eating meat was a moral issue for obligate carnivores?

I am saying that the contextual shift is not sufficient enough to transform the behaviour into a moral issue. Animals will die whether or not we eat them. We didn't invent death or eating or predation.

I am puzzled about morality anyway because it seems in conflict with nature There is no clear moral guidance from nature or human nature about what we should aspire to if anything.

I am saying that the contextual shift is not sufficient enough to transform the behaviour into a moral issue. — Andrew4Handel

It's also not enough to make it a non-moral issue.

Animals will die whether or not we eat them. We didn't invent death or eating or predation. — Andrew4Handel

Can we apply the same to murdering people?

Exceptions in morality help us navigate situations in which two or more moral claims are at odds with another. — NKBJ

I think the problem is definition. Killing is wrong is a weak statement because it clearly never adhered to completely if even partially. So I think the moral rules need become obscure and have a very precise specific meaning and be more about personal preference. I don't like killing and death but it is an inherent part of nature.

I don't think we can improve nature because suffering appears in all domains. I think that if there was an innate rule that we should not kill it would come from a deity or some much force and transcend nature.
It would be a command for us to reject nature and I think some esoteric/religious views see the whole of nature as in a fallen state.

What way would you like animals to die? — Andrew4Handel

? I don't want animals to die unless they must.

I am puzzled about morality anyway because it seems in conflict with nature There is no clear moral guidance from nature or human nature about what we should aspire to if anything. — Andrew4Handel

How old are you?

It's also not enough to make it a non-moral issue. — BlueBanana

The puzzle I am getting at is that nature has provided a means to get food which requires death and predation, it includes plants who also eat dead organisms.

So if we were obligate carnivores we would have to except that we have to kill animals just like carnivores do (and even most herbivores have been seen eating animals) See this deer eat a bird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQOQdBLHrLk

Murdering someone is a legal term for unlawful killing so it is not a helpful term. But I think killing someone would only be natural if it was to ensure your own survival. Killing for fun might be a carnivore strategy to gain hunting skills but just torturing something for fun is not something that seems to be a natural strategy.

I don't think you can go from people killing animals to eat them for nutrition to a comparison with torture for fun because one is innately natural. I don't know if morality is supposed to be what is natural or transcending nature and bettering it. But the closer something is to a natural survival mechanism the less it seems coherent to call it immoral.

Anyway first of all I think we have to ensure that we have resolved the debates as whether humans can be natural herbivores. I think taking essential supplements would be like depriving ourselves of something in our nature to be moral exemplars (for what purpose I don't know).

I feel that sentiments about harm in nature lead t a rejection of life because it is full of harm, my brother has been paralysed by M.S. which he has had for 20+ and I have suffered a lot since childhood now from anxiety and depression. I think antinatalism is the only way to eradicate human harm. But if we tolerate some harm to promote life then I think food is the wrong kind of harm to target.

You could advocate reducing the population so humans eat less food and more humane slaughter methods and animal husbandry or more promotion of veggie meal/alternatives. I think any progress in reducing harm will come from other areas of life if at all and I do think mindless procreating is one of the most irresponsible things.

I don't want animals to die unless they must. — Buxtebuddha

Every animal must die.

In the wild animals either starve to death are eaten (alive) or die of disease. How do you cope with death in a nature?

For example here is some pictures of hundreds+ of wildebeest that drowned and this happened before this occasion with 10,000 drowning previously.

https://africageographic.com/blog/hundreds-wildebeest-found-dead-tanzania/

Don't click on this link if you are squeamish but it is footage of a Deer being eaten alive by Komodo dragons and there are lots more videos like this on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmwC9HzcWbQ

That would not be you. You're just proselytizing. — Bitter Crank

This is so clearly the statement of a person who has no logical leg to stand on, but wishes to cling to his own ideology (and hamburger). :smirk:

Every animal must die.

In the wild animals either starve to death are eaten (alive) or die of disease. How do you cope with death in a nature? — Andrew4Handel

All humans must die too--does that give us the right to kill them?

Don't click on this link if you are squeamish but it is footage of a Deer being eaten alive by Komodo dragons and there are lots more videos like this on Youtube. — Andrew4Handel

What's the point of these examples? Are you implying we ought to take lizards as our moral role models? Alligators eat their own young--is that something we ought to emulate as well?

I don't think you can go from people killing animals to eat them for nutrition to a comparison with torture for fun because one is innately natural. — Andrew4Handel

Two things:
1. That is called the naturalistic fallacy.
2. We only recently in history started eating larger animals--we did spend most of our existence eating grubs, termites, and ants to supplement our mainly plant-based diets. The more natural thing for us to do would be to eat insects--have fun with that.

Every animal must die. — Andrew4Handel

All living things do die, eventually, so in that sense, yes, every animal must die.

In the wild animals either starve to death are eaten (alive) or die of disease. How do you cope with death in a nature? — Andrew4Handel

The lion that hunts the gazelle does so out of survival. In order to live, life must consume itself. Most ethics understand this fundamental truth.

This is so clearly the statement of a person who has no logical leg to stand on, but wishes to cling to his own ideology (and hamburger). :smirk: — NKBJ

:fire: :ok: :eyes:

What's the point of these examples? Are you implying we ought to take lizards as our moral role models? Alligators eat their own young--is that something we ought to emulate as well? — NKBJ

Well, depending on how much tin foil rests atop your head, perhaps we should take lizards as our moral role models, :snicker:

That is called the naturalistic fallacy. — NKBJ

I am saying that there is no comparison between torturing an animal for fun and killing it to eat. I am not saying whether one is good or bad.

I don't think nature is either good nor bad but if I had to choose I would say nature was bad.

I have been stressing how carnivorous behaviour is essential in nature not whether it is good and saying it is pointless to moralise about these things.

I don't agree with the concept of a naturalistic fallacy because... where else but nature can we get moral guidance from? I think all asserting a naturalistic fallacy does, is lead to moral nihilism. It could only be sustained by a supernaturalistic morality.

The idea that harming animals is wrong is also derived from nature and passing value judgement on natural occurrences.

The lion that hunts the gazelle does so out of survival. In order to live, life must consume itself. Most ethics understand this fundamental truth. — Buxtebuddha

I am not sure what this means. I have been pointing out that life involves eating life.

I am questioning why a human killing an animal for food is therefore wrong and why animals dying brutally and arbitrarily in nature is not also an evil.

I think the idea that killing life for food in one context is lovely nature in all its glory and then killing life for human food is savagery is an unconvincing sentiment.

There is no lovely beneficent nature to contrast human conduct with.

2. We only recently in history started eating larger animals--we did spend most of our existence eating grubs, termites, and ants to supplement our mainly plant-based diets. The more natural thing for us to do would be to eat insects--have fun with that. — NKBJ

These kind of points need to be subject to expert scrutiny. Where did the term hunter gatherer derive from and why do ancient cave murals depict hunting?

Also have you ever seen any supermarket fruit and veg growing in the wild? Most of it is artificial creations. I saw a strawberry in the wild once and it was about 1/4 the size of a shop bought one.

Overall though I am not defending meat eating or slaughterhouses but questioning whether food and related areas are suitable moral issues.

What's the point of these examples? Are you implying we ought to take lizards as our moral role models? Alligators eat their own young--is that something we ought to emulate as well? — NKBJ

I was exploring the ways in which animals die because someone used emotive examples of how animals are killed in abattoirs and I am pointing out there is no nice natural alternative.

An animal can (hypothetically/occasionally is) live longer in captivity and be treated nicely and then killed swiftly but I think most vegans object to just the taking of an animals life but considering there is no nice way to die in nature its seems incoherent.

Only fairly recently animal rights activists have started to raise the issue of natural suffering it still is an area with much less interest and concern than veganism and human on animal cruelty.

But if someone says they are not concerned with starvation in nature and animals being eaten alive then I can't take their ethical objections seriously.

questioning whether food and related areas are suitable moral issues. — Andrew4Handel

Why would they not be?
What makes something a suitable moral issue?

But if someone says they are not concerned with starvation in nature and animals being eaten alive then I can't take their ethical objections seriously. — Andrew4Handel

I don't know anybody that says that. Let's not confuse acceptance that one cannot do anything to prevent X with indifference to X.

What makes something a suitable moral issue? — andrewk

I am a moral nihilist so I don't know the answer to that question.

I think it is a good topic though and one I may have raised before.

It could be self interest that makes something a moral issue or allegiances or sentiment, empathy. I don't know. In my childhood moral issues were decide by God and nowhere else.

I am not sure how secular society defends it's moral claims if it does. There is a massive moral philosophy literature going nowhere.

There is a massive moral philosophy literature going nowhere. — Andrew4Handel

It's not going nowhere. I became a vegetarian and started giving significant amounts to Oxfam and similar organisations after reading Peter Singer's 'Practical Ethics'. I know others that have been similarly influenced by philosophical literature to change their lives to do less harm and be more helpful to others,

There is no consensus in the literature and certainly no consensus on Singer. His views are controversial. The fact you were swayed by Peter Singer is no more convincing to me than if you were swayed by reading the Bible.

For a moral argument to be authoritative it would have to receive almost universal agreement.But far from that there is huge literature with no consensus.

Personal I think having children fatally undermines any moral claim in terms of consent, not harming others and so on.

For a moral argument to be authoritative it would have to receive almost universal agreement — Andrew4Handel

We are not talking about 'authoritative'. To wish for a moral argument to be authoritative is to wish for the impossible. You said the literature was 'going nowhere'. I gave examples of where it has led to a reduction of the suffering in the world, thereby contradicting that claim. There are such examples everywhere for those that care to look. 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.

An animal can (hypothetically/occasionally is) live longer in captivity and be treated nicely and then killed swiftly but I think most vegans object to just the taking of an animals life but considering there is no nice way to die in nature its seems incoherent. — Andrew4Handel

Again: so because humans must die (and death is never "nice") it is therefore okay to kill them?

I don't agree with the concept of a naturalistic fallacy because... where else but nature can we get moral guidance from? — Andrew4Handel

We get morality from reason and empathy. Not from emulating nature. If we did, we'd be allowed to eat our own babies (like alligators do), kill our mates (like black widows), gang rape (like dolphins) and so on.

The naturalistic fallacy is a well-established logical fallacy in the discipline. You can't just dismiss it, because it's caught you in a wrong-headed argument.

These kind of points need to be subject to expert scrutiny. Where did the term hunter gatherer derive from and why do ancient cave murals depict hunting? — Andrew4Handel

That's fairly recent in human history. Before the invention of agriculture and weapons we lived much longer as herbivores and insectivores.

The idea that harming animals is wrong is also derived from nature and passing value judgement on natural occurrences. — Andrew4Handel

Nope. Again, empathy and reason. I feel bad if I step on my dog's tail; there is no moral difference between my dog and a cow; therefore I don't participate in the harming of cows. It's simple really.

Again: so because humans must die (and death is never "nice") it is therefore okay to kill them? — NKBJ

This is a red herring or straw man or whatever. Where have I said we can kill animals because they are going to die anyway?

I have specifically pointed out they are being killed for food and not for fun. It is not wrong to kill another species for food. Humans even eat each other in famine as a means of survival.

It doesn't follow that if you accept one form of killing you accept all. The point is that by not killing animals for food we are not preventing their death. It is not an act of benevolence because as I have pointed out they have horrible deaths naturally.

Why would someone who kills animals for food feel the need to randomly kill another human? I don't see how you are making that leap. I already pointed out that the idea it is wrong to kill is flawed and actually we only think killing is wrong in very specific situations not as a rule.