there is no law of the Universe — RosettaStoned

And that's the end of it. We don't get any of our laws from the universe. Never mind about conservation of energy, gravity, momentum and all that. I'm talking about Hammurabi-type law, canon law, common law, and so forth.

So, the only law that matters in court is human-made law, and human-made law sort of frowns on killing babies and raping women (officially, at least)--especially when our ox is the one gored, so to speak. Every now and then there is a regrettable outbreak of arson, rape, and bloody murder by the good side (we expect it from the other side) which requires some fairly stern due process.

Well, not all of these things are bad, in my humble opinion. Take that one episode of M.A.S.H. The man killed the baby. How could he kill a baby? It was the save his other troops. More people would of died had he not silenced the baby, as they were in enemy territory, and would have been spotted. There are loopholes in the common law, because if a similar event were to occur today, the person who killed would be convicted of crime.This has in fact happened before modern time. Also, I'm probably going to drop the Universe thing, as that isn't going to go anywhere.

It's such a simple question. But put a human face and a human voice on the oyster, on the grain of wheat, on the screaming carrot. If you make a radical equality of all forms of life, then to eat is to be cannibal. Such extremity comes to folks rarely, but if to eat is to consume one's brethren, then there are those who will eat, and there are those who would rather die. I would rather die.

While I do believe in morality and rights, that does not mean I recognize them to be real. — RosettaStoned

That is a contradictory statement. But whatever. You admit to believing in morality, and we should be discussing the actual topic at hand and not your metaethical ruminations.

It's not new news, but it's back in the news:
We need to stop eating meat to save the planet--yes, that includes plants.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/17/scientists-call-global-agricultural-revolution-and-planetary-health-diet-save-lives

Just like the muddied climate 'science' with all its contradictory interpretations by obviously studied and well-intentioned people, this topic is going to go unsettled for a long time.

In the end, Julius Caesar said it best: Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.

"People gladly believe what they wish to."

My own version of that is this: Belief is convenient.

You don't think plants and trees are life forms?

My point was that we have a choice about which ones we eat.

We need to be more careful about what we eat. We're killing the planet and ourselves on top of all the animals we needlessly murder.

I wonder how it would feel to get eaten alive. Is it the worst experience one can possibly have, or does the mind becomes somehow disconnected from the body at that point? In the first case one could argue that the suffering caused from eating is much greater than the pleasure felt, while in the latter case one could argue that not much suffering is caused when eating other beings. The first case gives me a very bleak view of existence, while the second one gives a much more joyful one.

Life is a struggle. We can't just live, we have needs to fulfill or else we die. It's sad in a sense, but then again maybe it is the struggle and the ephemerality of it all that makes joy possible. When one's needs are all fulfilled effortlessly life becomes colorless, and constancy is death.

Even though I've been critical of your views, I sympathize with them in general. I agree that humanity needs to rethink the way it is currently behaving in relation to the planet.

However, the more I think about this problem, the more it becomes apparent to me that life needs to consume other life in order to live. One may eat plants under the assumption that they do not feel pain, but this isn't certain at all.

It seems that somehow one needs to reconcile the fact that one's existence almost inescapably causes suffering to other living beings, whether they be animals, plants or other humans. I think this is quite a challenge.

Yes, either it's possible to live without eating any other being in a way we haven't found yet, or we have to cause suffering to other beings to live. Or we may find solace in believing that death is a liberation rather than suffering. But then the question becomes why not liberate oneself?

Or we can have the usual cop-out that since we can't know might as well believe what we want and keep living without pondering, blinding ourselves in a way. Live worry-free blinding ourselves to the suffering we cause.

It's all a strange show.

Yes, but how much suffering is still something we can control. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater and saying "might as well cause more, even though I could cause less, because I have to cause some" is just illogical.

But how do you know whether eating an apple from a tree doesn't cause immense suffering to the tree? If you don't know how other beings suffer, how do you know how you can cause less suffering?

It's not clear how a tree could feel pain. It's pretty unlikely that it can. It's so unlikely, that it's safe to say it can't.

It is clear that a cow can feel pain.

Also consider that fewer plants are killed in the process of feeding vegans than omnis cause of the plants used to feed the animals they eat.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Flivekindlyproduction-8u6efaq1lwo6x9a.stackpathdns.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F06%2Fvegan_22_plants.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.livekindly.co%2Fplants-feel-pain%2F&docid=TTXU4VXmpcto-M&tbnid=WP3Jpa1Fqr-XoM%3A&vet=1&w=720&h=720&hl=en-US&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim

How can you attach any probability to it? How would you know that a brain is required to feel?

I know that life forms with brains feel pain.
I have no proof whatsoever that life forms without brains feel pain.
I have to go with what I know over what I can only make vague guesses about.
And even if brainless life forms felt pain, avoiding animal products protects more of them too, so the sum total of suffering is less.

You just know that you feel pain, and you know that other beings with brains appear to feel pain but you have no proof that they do feel pain either. And the fact you wouldn't know how a life form without a brain could feel pain has no bearing on the likelihood that it does feel pain. And then you wouldn't know whether a plant suffers much more than an animal, so you couldn't tell whether you cause more suffering by killing one plant or a thousand animals.

Many animals need plants to survive, and plants need light to survive, and supposedly photons can be converted into matter and photons never die, maybe we could devise a way to feed ourselves with light, but then the Earth is a limited space so we can't multiply indefinitely, unless we go out and explore other worlds, and then who knows what's next...

Myself I'm not happy with killing neither animals nor plants to survive, but then if I don't survive I can't find a solution and then others will just keep killing both animals and plants, I guess that's one way to rationalize it...

I guess we can't solve a problem without believing it can be solved. We tend to limit ourselves with what the 'laws' of physics say, but then maybe these laws are limits we impose to ourselves. We tend to be very fatalistic, believing that things can't be changed, but do we really try?

[reply="leo;247810"ho

You're entirely ignoring the fact that the total sum of suffering is less if you don't kill animals for food.

And your hypotheticals are just silly. We have to go on what we know. You can pretend to be all cynical about it, and pretend that you question how much we can know about the inner lives of anyone but ourselves, but in reality, we acknowledge that others feel pain.

We can locate where in the brain pain is processed. We know the biological function and process of pain. It's not some huge mystery.

And just to reiterate, so you don't forget: fewer plants AND animals die and suffer when you avoid eating the latter.

We tend to be very fatalistic, believing that things can't be changed, but do we really try? — leo

Vegans try. It's the stubborn omnis who want to posit that plants have feelings to and therefore lets slit pig's necks who don't want to change a darn thing about the status quo.

Vegans take comfort in their choices because they haven't met a plant that can object to their actions.

In any case, why should pain be the determinant of the ethics of one's use of another's tissues? Isn't it the use that should be questioned, and not the outcomes? How about consent in principle? Would animals object to our killing them for food and leather if they could do so in a way we can appreciate? Is it that because plants don't appear to object that we can safely infer they are edible ethically? If the latter, then one must subscribe to a teleological orientation to such things and not to a deontic approach.

Vegans take comfort in their choices because they haven't met a plant that can object to their actions. — gloaming

FEWER PLANTS DIE WHEN YOU AVOID ANIMAL PRODUCTS.

Jeez.

Uuuhhhh……………………………………………………………………………...yeah.

And THAT makes eating them more ethical? LOL!

And THAT makes eating them more ethical? LOL! — gloaming

Obviously.

If you have to kill 100 innocent people or 50 innocent people, but you have to kill some, it's obvious to anyone with a brain that killing 50 is better.

Even if plants could feel pain, I’d still eat them anyway because plants are inferior to humans.

What basis of superiority are you using?

Plants can't reason and humans can.

Trees are superior to humans because trees can live hundreds of years and humans can't.

Okay, so eating a human infant is fine then?

How about the severely mentally disabled?

How about people in comas?

Or just anyone who is in deep sleep?

And does that mean smart people are more valuable than not so smart ones? Does that mean the Mensa people can cannibalize the rest of us now?

Of course not.

Okay, so eating a human infant is fine then? — NKBJ

See A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.