Nope, you still fail to address my concerns. Both of you have. It's a pretty simple request that someone be clear about their metaethics before continuing a conversation about applied ethics... His refusal to answer and his ungallant retort to this request were the end of the actual discussion. Everything else since has just been passing time amusingly.

Since you, however, seem to have nothing yourself to add to the discussion, I will leave the two of you to your unfolding love story.

Soooo, you got nothing and continue to evade--frankly, I'm not surprised. Let me know when/if you ever figure it out.

Still waiting for you to enlighten me as to his true meaning....?

As sweet as it is for you to sweep to your friend's defense here, both of you have only suggested how obvious and clear G's statement was without actually elaborating on what it was he was saying. I pointed out what was incongruous in his paragraph... an issue neither of you have of yet even attempted to address.

I'd be extremely curious to see that if in a sort of blind test you both could produce the same interpretation of his words considering the contradiction in his fundamental ethical position he displayed.

It worries me that such a simple and clear statement confuses you. That probably explains much of your commentary — Graeme M

It seemed at first like you were a smart and interesting new interlocutor. Now you're becoming unpleasant, and I don't have the time or patience for that. Best wishes for your future endeavors though.

So consider my arguments framed in the context of those animal uses that are able to be defended on valid grounds (ie there is some actual genuine value for us). — Graeme M

You'll have to be more specific, because other than animal use for food (which is only of pleasure value and not genuine value), I'm not sure what your example of the pasture-raised and painlessly-killed steer is supposed to defend.

So cows and humans avoid being harmed because they do not want to be damaged. That is different from not wanting to die. — Graeme M

So... now you're saying humans don't care about dying either? And if you think humans do... why in the world would you think animals do not possess the same fear? Just because you haven't heard them say it in so many words? That seems rather self-serving considering evolutionary theory alone tells us that any capability we find in one animal exists to varying degrees in others as well. Unless you are religious and believe some supernatural creature endowed us with abilities other animals don't have? At which point this conversation is moot, as we wouldn't have enough common ground to continue.

A cow might grieve the loss of a calf or a fellow cow. But it doesn't follow that she knows that she can die. — Graeme M

Your entire argument seems to boil down to "but we don't KNOW that the cow thinks x, y, or z" without any reason to suggest that she wouldn't. Again, we have all the evidence in the world which leads to the strong inference that she does, and no evidence to support the inference that she wouldn't. Perhaps you are adverse to inferential logic, but in the realm of ethics and real-world problems, that's usually all we got.

Brian Tomasik — Graeme M

I think his essays look pretty well-crafted for an amateur (he seems to know how to put together a bibliography), but I don't know that he's any kind of authority on the matter either by academic virtue or via field work. Most of his essays just seem to posit hypotheticals. He himself admits right upfront that his view is controversial... although there he fails to suggest to the reader where these alternative views might be found... not very promising. I mean who disagrees with him besides Singer? Does he take up the alternative views of neurologists, animal behaviorists, etc? Not as far as I can tell.

There is no ultimate moral code, we answer to no-one but ourselves and natural circumstance. If we must use other animals for a good reason - and there seem to be such reasons - then it is up to us to decide whether we should to do that ethically. — Graeme M

This is just so convoluted, I'm not sure how to begin unwrapping it.

What are "good reasons" and what does it mean to do something "ethically" if we answer to "no one but ourselves" and there is "no ultimate moral code"? You are, in the space of a single paragraph, jumping from radical moral relativism to the ideal of an objective morality--or at least are being so sloppy with your language that you seem to be doing this.

Another point of sloppiness--how do you propose I try to "answer to [...] natural circumstance"?

I could get into the nitty-gritty of your having thus far not provided any good reasons for killing animals, especially not for food (and might I remind you, this thread is about vegetarianism and meat-eating)... BUT I think it's better to first let you clarify what your metaethical position is before we dive any further into applied ethics.

"Well, that's more or less my point. I am saying the cow does not have an express interest in living. When I speak about a "biological" disposition, I am speaking about an inherited behaviour to avoid damage. Animals, indeed all organisms (including plants) have evolved defences against damage. There is no actual intent here, it is a blind evolutionary outcome. A cow's desire to live on is not really such, it is the evolutionary imperative of reproducing successfully. Just like a potato plant. Humans on the other hand have the abstract idea that they can die, so our interest in living on is an express one (as well as the underlying biological disposition).

Cow's also have a desire to avoid harm, as do we. Again, it's largely an evolved defence but it IS accompanied by painful feelings so for both us and the cow there is an actual desire or interest. If a cow could speak, it couldn't say that it doesn't want to die, but it could say it doesn't want to be hurt. I would suggest that we can farm cows in such a way as not to cause them harm, day to day (ie, pain and suffering)."

So first of all, I’d like to know how you think you know what a cow would or could say if a cow could speak?
What we do know, based on the studies of animal behaviorists, psychologists, neurologists, etc etc. is that animals show the same or at least very similar reactions in the face of danger as humans do. Plants do not. Since plants don’t have brains, the suggestion that animal reactions to danger were similar to plant reactions is just kinda ludicrous on the face of it. But that aside, we have a preponderance of evidence that animals do feel as we do in the face of danger, and a total lack of evidence that they are missing something.

"In regards to the difference between the interests of a non-imapired human and an impaired or immature human, the reason for that moral duty is nothing to do with the biological interests of the person, but rather some broader species-specific interest. Put another way, in our society we are of the view that babies and impaired persons attract the right to life merely because they are human. In other times and places, that moral duty may not apply (for example, utilitarians may believe there is a strong case for euthanising persons with severe disability)."

Utilitarians only believe there is a strong case for euthanizing disabled persons who are acutely suffering, actually. And they do not advocate for it on the basis of species-bonds, but on the individual’s experiences and out of concern that the life of such a person is less pleasurable than painful.

In this context, we have come to see other humans as deserving of rights that trump any interest we might have in depriving them of life (eg it is murder to kill your severely impaired daughter). But this may merely be a matter of convention, subject to change in the future. It would only remain so if we believe that the course of ethics is to improve our beliefs and behaviours. I'm not sure that an evolutionary/historical account would bear that out.

"On the other hand, our interests in using other animals for life sustaining purposes of ours may still trump their interests in avoiding harm (again, I am of the view that if we don't harm them day to day, then there is no interest we have quashed by using them to our ends). The real question is how much harm we agree is acceptable to cause them. Vegans would ask that we harm them not at all."

We’re not killing animals to sustain our own lives. We’re doing so to enhance the pleasure of our own lives. Big difference.

"I'm not quite sure of your argument here. Yes, of course, feeling pain when being killed is a harm. If the steer, you or me can be killed without pain, then we have not been harmed in that sense. However, there is a broader sense in which death is not a harm. Harms accrue to living beings. Once dead, you do not exist and cannot be harmed. So, if in killing you I cause you no pain, you are not harmed. And once dead, no harm can accrue. So there is no harm in killing someone painlessly, at least not to them."

Is that going to be your plea to the judge when convicted of murdering and eating your neighbor?

"The best we can say is that death thwarts our future potential but I consider that an uncertain claim for the reason that we cannot say what that potential is. It may be that if I don't kill you today, you will die from a heart attack tomorrow. Of course, your death will cause harm (suffering) to those that love you or have some close personal relationship with you, so we do consider that of relevance in the human case. I am not convinced that is such an issue with other animals. It seems to be with elephants, for example, but I'm not sure it is with cattle. It's probably an open question whether a typical herd suffers from the loss of any of their number. I believe The Last Pig does, if the movie of the same name is any guide."

“How Animals Grieve” by Barbara King is an excellent resource on the matter. There are numerous other books and accounts that describe the grief herd animals go through when one of their own, especially their offspring, are taken or killed.


"If we eradicated factory farms and the evils that go with it, the vast majority of people would still have to go vegan because there simply would not be enough meat to go around.— Artemis

I completely disagree. How could you possibly come to that conclusion?"

You can disagree as completely or incompletely as you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that our current meat-consumption habits are dependent on the mass-production only a factory farm can afford. 99% of our meat comes from the factories. We don’t have the farm land or labor force necessary to sustain both the pastoral ideal and our overconsumption.


"Also, people like to suggest that "nature is red in tooth and claw," but if you look at the average day-in-the-life of a wild animal--especially a large, herding herbivore like a cow-- it is (or would be) pretty pleasant.— Artemis

I think that claim is subject to scrutiny. I suspect that on average, a wild animal's life is quite stressful and filled with suffering. In fact, I suspect that the vast majority of those born do not make it to sexual maturity which must bias the odds in favour of suffering outweighing happiness. It's worth considering the fact that in everyday terms, we cannot do much to alleviate the suffering of wild animals. The farmer on the other hand, can do a great deal to alleviate the suffering of farmed animals. On balance, it should be the case that a farmed animal subjected to ethical methods should experience more happiness and far less suffering than a wild animal."

You suspect it is stressful, but again, you’re just throwing claims out there in the hopes that they might be true or true enough to make your case.

Grazing herd animals when found in the wild are not constantly being picked off and eaten. They do not reproduce quickly enough for that to be the case. Animals like mosquitoes get picked off by the hundreds before they lay eggs—which is why they lay hundreds of eggs. But even if it were true that animals get eaten in the wild too… I mean that just suggests their life in the wild might be as bad as being in captivity and doomed to the slaughterhouse. That certainly doesn’t justify the act of killing on the part of any moral agent.

But again, even if you were right about all that, you still come back to a moral theory which suggests “I did you a good, now I’m allowed to do you a bad” which is just obviously and completely bankrupt—especially a system in which you are allowed to force the good and then therefore the bad on unwilling or at least non-consenting participants.

Show me where I'm contradicting myself. — BitconnectCarlos

I already did.

don't need to pick a position in regard to meat eating vs. vegetarianism. — BitconnectCarlos

I didn't ask you to. My post was all about your waffling on animal and human moral value.

Ethical vegans claim that the interests of other animals should be afforded the same weight of consideration as those of humans, — Graeme M

Well, actually only some vegans would make that claim. To be an ethical vegan only requires the recognition that the interests of a cow to live and be unharmed outweigh our interests to eat their carcasses for pleasure.

I would suggest however that is not true - I propose that other animals have no interest in so doing, IF we are talking about an interest over and above a natural biological disposition. — Graeme M

I don't see how or why you're suddenly setting the goalpost at interests above natural biological ones? Don't humans have natural biological interests that we take very very seriously for no other reason than that they are our natural biological interests? Surely you wouldn't kill a baby, mentally disabled, perhaps very depressed person, or any other human being because the only interest they feel in continuing to live is a natural biological interest?

But you contradict yourself here anyway:

Some would suggest that killing the steer is a harm, but I'd disagree if we do so in such a way as he is unaware of his death. — Graeme M

Unless of course you actually meant to say "he is unaware of any pain associated with his death." Because otherwise you're admitting that it is harmful to take the life away from a creature who even "only" possesses a natural biological interest in continuing said life.

However a beef steer on a free range farm may enjoy a life considerably better than his wild counterparts and on the whole may attain considerable happiness and well-being. — Graeme M

It's possible, but not the norm. You can't defend the meat-eating for the majority of people in the masses that humans do on the basis of some pastoral ideal that comprises perhaps about 1% of the entire meat industry. If we eradicated factory farms and the evils that go with it, the vast majority of people would still have to go vegan because there simply would not be enough meat to go around.

Also, people like to suggest that "nature is red in tooth and claw," but if you look at the average day-in-the-life of a wild animal--especially a large, herding herbivore like a cow-- it is (or would be) pretty pleasant.

And even if they did live better lives on farms, it's still not a good enough justification for killing them. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is an excellent novel portraying why that would be immoral to do to humans, and I can't see an argument for why it would suddenly be okay to do to any other creature who values his or her life. "I treated you nicely for a while, now I'm allowed to kill you and harvest your body" just isn't a very good moral code.

Throughout this discussion I've been making the point that animals don't have as much moral worth as humans. — BitconnectCarlos

Pick a position please and then please actually try to make your case. First you use an example to show that they are not of the same worth, then you admit that your example cannot really prove anything about their moral value, and then you go back to saying they're not of the same worth as though you've made a case for that somehow, which you haven't... I mean... what exactly is your point? Or do you even know anymore?

But the interests of cows are not the same as our interests. Equally, we can farm cows without causing them harm ( — Graeme M

Not every human shares your interests either. What's your point?

And the "farming" of cows could only be done without harming them if you waited until they dropped dead of natural causes to eat their rotting carcasses.

I know, I was only seeking to address the question of moral worth — BitconnectCarlos

That's contradictory. If you'd known that your example does not prove moral worth, you wouldn't have employed it to make a case about moral worth.

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.

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.

Potential to make the world a better place, to form positive connections/relationships, potential to create something beautiful, etc. — BitconnectCarlos

Cows can and do do all that.... Especially when you're willing to include the betterment abilities of severely disabled and comatose people into your ethical scope here.

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.

Well... This is the first time a ban has been really unexpected. Or--I should say--the behavior leading to the ban. I thought he was a good cookie :(

I mean, it's your baby. But there is an ethical argument to be made that you shouldn't publish about private persons without their knowledge and/or consent. There are also libel and slander laws about it, even here in America.

Whatever your publisher tells you to call it. — tim wood

Only a vanity press would accept a manuscript the author himself can't categorize.

Its contains some of harsh realities of society which People usual don't like to listens or discuss. T — B G Upadh

Pseudonyms and change all names, places, etc. for anonymity's sake.

It's kinda like asking, if I can learn without going to class, why bother taking lessons?

From learning math to a new language to an instrument, the vast majority of people not only fare better in a class or at the very least with a teacher, it's also the only way the learn at all. Several reasons:

-Personal drive is pretty low among most people.

-Teachers can give you guidance and answers and be otherwise helpful in ways you'd have to figure out for yourself otherwise... And that kind of snag would make lots of people just give up on independent learning.

-Peer pressure is useful. It's bad when your friends are doing drugs, but it's great to have a community to motivate you to do better.

Etc, etc.

And, yeah yeah, there are people who hated school and didn't learn anything (blah blah blah) or who do better learning on their own (stubborn mules) and class/church doesn't always work out so ideally (yada yada). But these are the reasons why class/church can help people be better learners/Christians.

However, what I'm arguing against is that womanhood, i.e. the mere fact of being a woman, has some causal import on morality. It's not that goodness is linked to the X chromosome and so having 2 of them, like all women do, makes one good.

Morality, to my knowledge, requires appreciation of its value just like any subject does and then deeds are modulated based on that which is understood and appreciation is something that is, as far as I can tell, NOT gender-determined. A woman and a man's ability to appreciate value are equal and so, goodness isn't, can't be, a female prerogative and nor is it a man's thing — TheMadFool

Like I said from my very first post, if you want to bring in OTHER arguments, you can probably make a good case that being female should not be a deciding attribute to be in government. I think the arguments you are listing are still very fallacious, but I want to stay on target for the moment.

Your Bathory argument still does not apply or make your case in any meaningful way whatsoever. If two X-chromosomes were to make a person good, hypothetically, then Bathory still does not invalidate that theory anymore than albino crows invalidate the genetic blackness of crows--albino crows and Elizabeth Bathory are both just chromosonal abnormalities and don't disprove the rule.

If it were the case that all women barring Bathory were morally good, then all your other assertions and hypotheticals about morality do not hold water. We would, actually, have very strong reason to think that morality is genetic.

If you say that most Germans barring Hitler are better than the French, you should upon meeting a non-Hitler German conclude you've met someone who's at least better than a French person.

it doesn't, in any way, support choosing women over men just on the basis of gender and that is the key point isn't — TheMadFool

Actually, it does. If your argument leads to the conclusion that most women (barring Bathory) are better than men, then yes it does in fact show that we should pick women over men.

Like I said in the beginning, there are OTHER arguments to refute such a notion, but yours does not hold water. It only proves the point, really.

Why? Haven't I proved that it's possible for women and power to be as lethal a cocktail as men and power? If so, then an argument in favor of women-dominated society premised on women being morally better than men doesn't hold water. — TheMadFool

Because an anomaly does not make data. I'm afraid your equation of the general criminal populations with outliers evinces a pretty weak grasp on how to apply statistics.

Albino crows don't mean anything when describing the coloration of crows. You don't say "well, because there are some albino crows, crows can equally be considered black and white."

If student A does 10-20% of his work all year long and student B does 80-90%, you don't say "well, because student A did some of the work, they both should get the same grade."

If you are a doctor and you have a medicine with 80-90% efficacy and another medicine that cured one patient over 400 years ago, you don't tell your patients that the medicines are equally effective.

I could go on, but you (should) get the point. At least I hope you do, because I'm not sure how better to explain this.

n the process revealing how women may not be better than men in the moral department and equality, if anything, is about goodness, no? — TheMadFool

But you haven't revealed anything. You mentioned a single case, which can easily be written off as an anomaly. It's absolutely irrelevant.

A very fine reason for accepting female domination would be if their moral compass is better than men's but I fear Elizabeth Báthory casts a long, dark shadow of doubt over this possibility. — TheMadFool

Something like 80-90% of the world's violent crimes and murders are committed by men... but sure, let's take some nut job from the 1500's to prove we're the same anyway in that regard. :roll:

There are good arguments to be made about female aggression and morality, but this is not one of them.

Philosophers have recognized that the emotion/reason dichotomy is a false one for decades.

For example, you cannot reason without emotion. In order to even attempt to reason, you must care to do so, but you have reasons to care about reasoning.

Because I think they do. — Possibility

No argument here.

I like to view this distinction in relation to particle-wave duality, but again, I’m not convinced that it’s necessarily a male-female distinction. — Possibility

Well, it's a good thing then that I was careful to talk about degrees of behavior that happen on average and not about any strict distinctions.

Both Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt have some interesting lectures on this — Nobeernolife

Peterson gets way too much attention for saying a lot of stuff that's more slightly controversial than substantive. Haidt's theory about moral disgust is so far the only thing of even marginal interest I've heard from him.

The bill is indeed total carp.

slay your political Gods — Baden

When I disagree with about 1% of what a politician does, I usually just leave it at disagreeing. I save my God-slaying days for the really bad ones.

Depends what you mean by choice. I mean that I don't think he thought he could get the American people to understand why he would vote against them getting money.

Why did Bernie sell out on the corporate bonanza bill? Anyone? — Baden

I think he thought he didn't have much of a choice.
Plus, he voted for the version with the oversight committee, a clause Trump just conveniently decided to veto upon signing the thing.

Is it possible that women may think fundamentally different from men, unless they are pressured to think like men, and that that difference is important to humanity? What if it is our potential to be more like bonobo (female domination) and less like chimpanzees (male domination)? — Athena

Of course it's possible. But it may not entirely be possible to distinguish nature from nurture in that regard. We can't raise children in a sex and gender-less society, because no such thing exists. We have no possible way to create a double-blind test for this. So, whether females are hardwired differently from men, and if so to which extent and how exactly may not be within the grasp of humanity for the foreseeable future.

What we do know is that whether nature or nurture is to blame, there are average differences between how men and women act, reason, perceive the world, etc etc. I emphasize average, because there are huge discrepancies within these demographics.

Are these differences important? I should think the answer is obviously. Again, whether you attribute such differences to nature or nurture, they are all part of what it means to be human.

For example, one thing feminist theorist emphasize as a good quality of feminine thinking, is the generally more "holistic," relationships-based view of the world versus the masculine "atomistic," view. Women are more likely on average to employ a greater degree of the holistic approach to reason, whereas men are more likely on average to employ a greater degree of atomistic thinking. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and neither is useful on its own.

Sorry, but you'll have to be less cryptic about that one.

Again the irony: there are indeed ad hominems in our conversation. But you won't find them in my posts.

You say this without any realization of irony, I presume?

If spam is God, then he's sitting right next to the Nigerian Prince in my trash folder. Hope they're enjoying each other's company!