The mature thing to do would be to respond to the post above, — karl stone
I see. Why were you out in the wilderness? Was it necessary for your survival? Furthermore, human settlements, like cities, exclude "wild life" but all take up vital space and resources from "wild life". Are they necessary or unnecessary? — Πετροκότσυφας
My original query is,
Is natural law unethical?
I'm investigating, not assuming that it already is. I'm trying to understand it from as comprehensive a perspective as I can.
What about the wild animals? How do we deal with them?
Do animals have the right to free-will? — BrianW
I've reviewed my arguments and I think I will stick to my personal opinion rather than attempt to include perspectives I don't fully understand.
Personally, I agree that it's cruel to kill animals for food. As to whether it's ethical or not, I don't know. I think it depends on one's basis for ethics and whether it applies to animals as well. However, as far as I know, there is no such world-wide ethical acceptance.
Now, please allow me to bow out of this discussion, thanks. — BrianW
No. You're not understanding what I'm saying. Let's do this one step at a time: first, just to be clear, a justification for a moral action can't be something that's just factual; it would have to itself be a value judgment the person is making.
Do you understand/agree with that part? — Terrapin Station
If we forget about other people for now, may I ask you this. What is your basis for ethical/moral decisions? Meaning, how do you differentiate a good action from a bad action? — chatterbears
Do you believe how you "feel" is a sensible reason to base your moral actions on? If so, do you believe how someone else "feels" is a sensible reason for them to base their moral actions on? — chatterbears
I don't know if I think it's "sensible," but it doesn't matter. It's a fact that (foundational) moral stances are how an individual feels about interpersonal behavior, and that's all they can be. — Terrapin Station
My ethics/morality is derived partly from previous precedence and partly from my own analysis. The idea that killing animals for food is unethical has no long-standing precedence in most of the world. In fact, it's quite the opposite. And, where there's precedence, it is expressed primarily through religious/spiritual dictates instead of some kind of empiricism (like we now have knowing that animals express emotions and they can suffer).
On the flip-side, there are long-standing traditions based on ideas such as humans are decidedly superior to animals, or that animals exist to serve humans, etc. In terms of empiricism, the superiority of humans over animals is obvious. Also, concerning suffering from fear of death, a lot of progress has been made to alleviate that. — BrianW
As to suffering due to inhumane conditions, it has not yet been established whether animals have the capacity to realise an unexperienced alternate lifestyle over which they could yearn for. Once animals are fed regularly, are sheltered well enough and have the company, especially, of their kind, it is difficult to prove substantially that they are in any further need, the lack of which, results in suffering.
Therefore, I think it would be unfair to suppose an ethical/moral superiority over those who act different from me when it is not based on any absolute system of qualification. — BrianW
For example, personally, I think all animals should be under partial or complete domestication. This means that, even wild animals should be regulated through family planning methods until their numbers are greatly reduced and manageable. Also, we should tag all animals (if possible) so that we know where and how they are at all times for the sake of regulating their activities, like in times of natural crises or to protect them from human activities that may harm them. — BrianW
However, all that is my opinion. It can be compassionate, intelligent, or any other positive adjective but cannot be superior to others' opinions, unless relatively. And, I can't argue that relative ethics/morality must hold for others because that would be plain wrong. — BrianW
On the bright side, through persistence and insistence, it is possible to turn around the current status quo and possibly have a future where humans are more caring of animals. Current trends already show an increase in plant-based diets, which I fully support. — BrianW
how do you differentiate a good action from a bad action?".
...I understand that you derive your moral stances on previous precedence and your own analysis, but I wanted specifics. — chatterbears
You don't think one moral stance can be superior to another? — chatterbears
Factory farming industries harm animals. — chatterbears
It does matter to me, because I want to understand how you determine right from wrong. What mechanism do you use to differentiate a wrong action from a bad action? — chatterbears
Why is it okay to needlessly kill non-human animals for food, but not humans? — chatterbears
The logical thing to do would be to not invest time in trying to explain such things to those who show no evidence of being capable of ever getting it. Such a procedure is a waste of everybody's time, and accomplishes little more than generating pointless conflict.
A better approach would be to try to identify those who have already decided to move towards a plant based diet, but are new to the subject and need some assistance with their transition. For example, a website with a title something like "How To Become A Vegetarian". — Jake
And when you discuss it in depth, as we have here - I've often found that it's not so much a love of animals, but a dislike of people — karl stone
Not eating meat gives them a cheaply purchased sense of moral superiority they cannot help but flaunt; and the reason you don't like me digging down - is that, it puts that moralism at risk. — karl stone
If I said I tortured a dog, and used the dog's skin to make shoes, most people would call me an immoral monster. But what if I paid someone else to torture a dog, so I can get shoes made of dog skin. Does it make me less immoral, just because I am not doing the dirty work myself? I am still contributing to the torture of that dog, so I am partially responsible for what happens to that dog. This is simple supply and demand. The same thing happens within the animal industry. You (the consumer) pays (demands) for an animal (the supply) to be killed, whether that is for food, clothing, etc... — chatterbears
The main point here is, the killing of these animals is unnecessary. We do not need to exploit animals for our survival. We do it for pleasure and convenience. But is pleasure and convenience worth the torture and death of innocent sentient beings? — chatterbears
So, you ended up harming a wild animal in self-defense, when you didn't need to be there in the first place. In reality, the animal was in self-defense, since you were invading its natural habitat, despite the fact that more wilderness had already been taken up, so that we can build the city, which more or less makes our visiting to the wilderness unnecessary for matters of survival. Yet you say it was necessary (thus moral, I presume). — Πετροκότσυφας
Cities, even towns and villages, are necessary for our pleasure and convenience, not survival. And they were possible only through agriculture, which you appear to reject. Your whole argumentation takes us back to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle (where animals are exploited too). — Πετροκότσυφας
Either way, there are more fundamental problems than the ones I pointed out above. So, to get to the bottom of it, your view is such that it can't allow survival to function as the basis of morality, even though this is what it tries to do. You can't use survival that way because there's nothing necessary about survival. Ultimately, it can only be deemed as necessary on the grounds that you try to deny. The necessity of survival rests on the view that survival is the natural way things are. That's the way it is folks, we must survive, it's natural for us to want to survive (and maybe harm and exploit other life-forms in the process of surviving). In fact, every appeal to necessity, for things that are otherwise physically possible, leads to that. If you appeal to necessity, you open the door to the naturalistic fallacy you accuse others of. If you don't appeal to necessity, there's nothing necessary about survival. So, there's a contradiction here. — Πετροκότσυφας
You can get out of this contradiction if, for example, you let survival function as an axiom. But, if it's an axiom, you must change your mode of arguing. Before you judge others based on it, you must first convince them to adopt it. And if they don't share a foundationalist conception of ethics, you must first convince them to adopt such a conception before you convince them to adopt survival as the foundation from which moral inferences will be derived. — Πετροκότσυφας
Also, there's the question of whether someone would be ok to suffer a particular influence. If not, then it would be immoral to cause others to suffer through such. Though, this depends on equality. For example, stealing. There's previous precedence that makes stealing a unanimous no no. Also, personally, I'm against it due to the negative effects it has. And, since I would not like to be stolen from, I think it would be wrong to steal from others. — BrianW
Only with respect to relative opinions. Rape is unanimously frowned upon, therefore, it's determined as unethical/immoral by everyone. — BrianW
In what way?
(I mean, is it clearly defined harmful activity or is it relative harm. Most of what I've seen is, to a large part, relative harm from the point of view of the difference between a human and an animal. This is because animals may not have the same rights, knowledge and awareness as humans. However, if one considered animals to be equal to humans, then, I agree that farming industries do harm animals.) — BrianW
And from what you are saying, is it ok to torture/kill something, just because it doesn't have the same rights / knowledge / awareness as a human? How about a dog/cat? How about the severely mentally disabled human who has the same awareness and knowledge as a cow? — chatterbears
I've only just met you, and already you've told me you're a meat-eater. Funny, that.they apparently feel compelled to communicate that objection at every juncture. I have never met a vegetarian - I only later discovered was a vegetarian. — karl stone
Would any meat-eater like to tell us why it would be wrong to kill and eat a severely mentally subnormal human - who, let us say, does not even have the mental ability to learn and speak a language - and how this would be morally any different from killing and eating a pig or sheep or cow? — Herg
Are you saying that it's morally wrong to eat any member of the species homo sapiens, but morally okay to eat a member of any other species?Doesn't have to do with "mental normalcy" but species membership. — Terrapin Station
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