If one tries to find out why we balk at hurting our own kind we reach the conclusion that it all has to do with the ability to feel pain and suffer.
I think it's more than that. Especially in the case of killing, you're ending that being's potential. Humans have potential, cows don't. It's not just about ability to feel pain. Closely related to potential is cognitive and creative abilities. — BitconnectCarlos
I'm not really talking about the species I'm talking about the individual. — BitconnectCarlos
When we make moral decisions in the real world we're dealing with actual, flesh and blood beings in the here and now. In the current reality that we face humans have that potential that we don't see in cows. — BitconnectCarlos
Isn't there also the potential that the cows turn into an extremely intelligent, powerful species and wage war on the humans? Shouldn't we get a head start on that and eliminate them then? — BitconnectCarlos
This is why you don't base your practical ethics on some possibility which may arise in 10 million years which wouldn't involve any of the participants of the ethical scenario. — BitconnectCarlos
I think it's more than that. Especially in the case of killing, you're ending that being's potential. Humans have potential, cows don't. — BitconnectCarlos
Potential to do what exactly? Are you really going to base a system of ethics on any given individual's ability to "potentially" create a Mona Lisa or an Etude in C Minor? Or is your bar a little lower than that?
The reason I ask is because I do not see a bar of potentiality that would be able to encompass all of the humans we'd want to protect, including all mentally and physically disabled persons, that would not simultaneously encompass cows.
However, I dont think that all the animals vegans/animal rights folk believe shouldnt be eaten are going to be shown by science to have anything like the human ethics or suffering. I think some will, and based on suffering as a metric we shouldn't (ethically speaking) eat those animals. That would be consistent with the premiss of suffering as the metric. — DingoJones
Potential to make the world a better place, to form positive connections/relationships, potential to create something beautiful, etc. — BitconnectCarlos
This sounds very vague. What meats specifically? What vegetarians specifically? I've been finding it incredibly difficult to actually apply your criticisms.I dont think that all meat would be entirely excluded in that calculus, we would find some meats (maybe alot) that would be ok to eat. — DingoJones
This sounds very vague. What meats specifically? What vegetarians specifically? I've been finding it incredibly difficult to actually apply your criticisms. — InPitzotl
But I don't see any inconsistency, even here:The vegetarians im referencing have been the ones that dont eat meat because it causes suffering to the animal providing the meat and ones that think hey have the moral high ground for not eating meat. — DingoJones
Such vegetarians draw a line arbitrarily, but it's a false equivalence to say that this makes it the same exact calculus, because said vegetarians factually would eat less kinds of things than the people they claim to hold the moral high ground over. To say this is the exact same calculus is to commit a fallacy of the heap. Your "obvious reasons", to me, sound more like rationalizations; irrational ones at that.Anyway, once you decide insects arent to be included as suffering creatures you are making the same calculus as a meat eater, arbitrarily drawing the line at insects the way a meat eater might draw the line at dogs, or monkeys. Thats problematic for what I hope are obvious reasons. — DingoJones
↪DingoJones I see what you are driving at. So if we are to use pain and suffering as our moral benchmark, some organisms may be excluded from consideration. For example, if we are confident that wheat doesn't feel pain, we have no need to concern ourselves with any moral duty to any particular wheat plant (we might however, on a different basis, have some concerns about a wider ethical concern relating to the growing of wheat as a commodity). Similarly, the same should apply to any animal that does not experience pain (if we are sufficiently confident that an oyster for example isn't likely to suffer any more than a stalk of wheat). — Graeme M
This seems to point in the right direction. Broadly then we could see an endorsement for vegan ethics in regard to animal farming - that is, those animals which can feel pain and suffer would be those we'd owe the greater duty to. Wouldn't the typical farmed animal fall within that scope? And as I mentioned earlier, we have some reasonably sound empirical grounds for excluding insects from that duty which would free us from particular concerns about insects as individuals. That would mean we can happily eat insects and kill them in crop farming (with the same caveat as earlier - for example, a broader ethical duty to insects as species and members of the ecosystem). — Graeme M
Just as an aside, is there a particular objection to folk seeking the higher moral ground? I'm not sure I'd advocate for chasing the lower moral ground!! — Graeme M
I disagree that it's an impasse, so I cannot "agree to disagree". In my mind, you're simply refusing to voice specific complaints about actual moral high grounds real vegetarians have, and are giving the excuse that I haven't said anything of substance. (Maybe you misunderstand the complaint? Saying that my response is "scarce on substance" is a bit odd to me... presumably, you're griping about vegetarians holding moral high ground. I'm assuming you're saying they don't hold moral high ground by their own rules. The question then is, are you correctly applying those rules? Are you actually refuting them? Nothing I see in your complaints is genuine... it all seems straw-mannish).I would guess we have reached an impasse, as your responses seems scarce on substance to me as well. — DingoJones
Well I wouldnt qualify the capacity for pain and suffering alone. I think it needs to be an experience of suffering/pain of a certain kind, a kind that fits the same criteria for why pain and suffering is wrong to inflict on humans. Aside from that consideration, yes I think ethics (with preventing suffering as the moral metric) would demand we be more careful about what animals we eat. — DingoJones
if we had to make a choice between saving 100 humans or 100 frogs we'd remain totally indifferent. — BitconnectCarlos
We don't determine ethical value based on extreme scenarios though.
That's like me saying, who would you save, your son or your daughter, and whoever you don't save has no ethical value and under all circumstances, not just these fringe ones, should be slaughtered and eaten.
I'm only talking about the question of whether the two have equal moral value or ought to be valued equally. It doesn't follow from this that the one who doesn't get saved has no ethical value nor am I seeking to validate the morality of meat eating here. — BitconnectCarlos
Again, the extreme scenario doesn't help you determine moral value AT ALL under normal circumstances. It tells you nothing about how cows or humans should be treated in non-life-or-death scenarios.
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