Why is the naturalistic fallacy a fallacy? Basically, it isn't at all clear that X is good necessarily follows from X is natural. — petrichor

That naturalistic fallacy has been used in relation to homosexuality because people said homosexuality is bad because it is unnatural.

But then due to the naturalistic fallacy you can't argue homosexuality is good just because it is widespread in nature.

So invoking this fallacy helps neither side of the argument. I think the fact that homosexuality is found in other animals solves disputes about it such as the claim that it's a choice and the discovery of a gay gene (complex) would further prove it wasn't a choice. So you just have to turn to nature to resolve a moral dispute.

So referring to that actually happens in nature is really the only realistic referee to what is the case. Because there is no other further, ideal moral dimension we have found to arbitrate moral claims. I don't see reason as a moral or non natural domain either. Reason is limited by what is the case.

Are they? I think most people opposed to Israel are not anti-Semites. — René Descartes

How would you know that? To me it is the only explanation for the disproportionate and biased coverage of the conflict.

People don't think the Jews should have a state and Israel should never had existed meanwhile there are hundreds of millions of Arabs with large countries in the middle East and a small area of land for the Jews. Why shouldn't the Jews have a nation and why should they be forced to live in exile? They have historical roots in the region. The surrounding Arab countries mistreat their Palestinians force them to keep refugee status and live in camps even though a lot of them were born in these countries.

Israel clearly faces an existential threat to its survival and the Jews as a whole already faced that threat so they have my support for the foreseeable future."Pro" Palestinians are also clearly worsening the conditions for the Palestinians (B.D.S. and so on).

The folly is not to be discussing the whole contentious issue of the validity of nationhood, countries, borders and over population, parental responsibility etc.

but instead they're discussing tit for tat grievances, quasi religious or religious ethnic identities and land statuses and raking over historical minutiae.

I don't understand how a species that flew to the moon could be so dysfunctional.

What if you owned a house and it was stolen from you? — René Descartes

We need to differentiate between land and housing. I think everyone deserves a roof over their head.

Life involves exploitation of each other and resources we benefit from cheap produce made from minerals mined by slaves in places such as the Congo that I mentioned earlier and labour in undemocratic China and poverty hot spots like India. I can't justify my lifestyle because societies are based around exploitation. I am just thankful not to be homeless.

If I lost my housing I would hope someone else could find mey a property to live in.

We are not discussing this type of scenario anyhow we are talking about strong claims about ethnic or national groups owning a whole territory. Well ...Palestine has been owned that way by different groups and for the longest period it was owned by the Ottoman Empire and never self determining.

Anyway if I became homeless I would not have 8 children because that would be cruel and irresponsible. I have no desire to live in the Middle East which has no redeeming features for my and breed hordes if offspring to become fresh victims for an ideological dispute.

I think the bible may have got it right when it talks about stewardship.

We should be looking after the land not exploiting it and fighting over it.

The naturalistic fallacy is a well-established logical fallacy in the discipline — NKBJ

I don't have to accept an alleged fallacy if I can prove to myself it doesn't make sense. In the literature I have read it is usually accepted that this idea of G. E. Moore leads to moral non naturalism which as I say is puzzling because I can't see any other source for moral claims.

People only use the most trivial version of the fallacy without realising it is just an extension of Hume's Is-Ought problem and the idea that you can't get values from nature.

We get morality from reason and empathy — NKBJ

Are you saying these things are not natural? Are you not selecting natural attributes you are assuming are good?

I don't think reason and empathy lead anywhere near a moral society or Utopia. I think reason and empathy are more likely to lead to antinatalism, nihilistic view points and a negative view of the essential cruelty and arbitrariness of life.

If you are rejecting carnivore behaviour and death then you're rejecting life imo. I think( as was discussed in an article I linked to earlier ) a better goal is to have a more pragmatic morality based on a realistic view of human attributes. Unfortunately I am not convinced we can morally reason our way out of our dilemma and become Utopian or anything near.

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.

No one is denying what happened in the Congo — René Descartes

They are not discussing is the point I am making.

Of course Anti Israel sentiment and Antisemitism are going to be closely linked. I don't think I can debate with you if you keep up this low level of discourse.

Someone steals your house or your farm, how would you feel about that? — René Descartes

I rent my house

What the hell are you talking about? — René Descartes

Have you ever heard of an animal other than human owning land?

Honestly, what would have solved the problem would have been not to create Israel in the first place. — René Descartes

Have you bothered even reading one history book? What a fatuous comment

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.

Personally I don't think anyone has a right to land.

Land ownership is just a stance not a metaphysical reality. I think we can only survive through cooperation and not making excessive claims on land. We can enforce landownership but through armies, police and war not justification.

I don't think that claiming rights over a bit of land means you can overpopulate it and excessively exploit it's resources.

I was disturbed in the late 90's when watching an Open university documentary on Demography and someone on the Gaza strip said he had 8 children because he was trying to outnumber the Jews but he was apparently living in a one bedroom apartment. Well that is child abuse in my opinion. Creating children into a conflict zone is dubious but doing it as a conflict tactic is just futile and harmful.

I think having children does just add to the state of exploitation and conflict which is life. Responsible reproducing would surely eliminate various problems.

Anti Israel sentiment does smell of antisemitism because it is disproportionate considering millions of people have died in the Republic of Congo wars and received little attention or academic studies or appearances in The Lancet. People are clearly very selective about which cause to get behind.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

It would still be a moral issue, although the conclusion would be different. — BlueBanana

In what way?

I am beginning to think that making something a moral issue is always arbitrary because hypothetically we could try and make everything a moral issue.

The public appear to have some crude notions of morality. For instance a lot of people would except the claim "Killing is wrong".

But then when you investigate deeper it turns out killing in self defence is okay, killing to eat is okay, killing in war is okay, abortions okay, the death penalties okay and so on.

In the the end the actual "Thou shalt not kill" becomes far more specific, lengthy, subjective and contextual.
Something like "Thou shalt not kill except on these 20 occasions (consult list and essay for further details)"

In the end you might want to just say it is preferable to try not to kill when you can reasonably avoid it. But I consider this kind of statement not a command and less morally motivating.

I just see no place for a moral ideal although I suppose in the past religion claimed to have moral exemplars or moral law givers. But even the conduct of religious or mythical figures is subject to moral condemnation.

These two quotes from a article I have started reading reflect an opinion I am sympathetic with.

"Does "Ought" imply "Can"? And Did Kant Think It Does? (R.Stern)

"In a recent book and associated articles, Griffin has argued for what might be called a greater degree of realism in ethics, in the sense that we should begin by understanding ourselves and our capacities, as
a necessary first step to thinking about moral issues. He claims that moral theories have too often neglected facts about human nature and society, and as a result have become distorted and inadequate to our real needs: We have theorized in a vacuum, and so have failed to do so successfully."

http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/298/1/sternr1.pdf

"A particular example here, Griffin thinks, is utilitarianism.Utilitarianism has a commitment to impartiality, in the sense that it tells us that the right thing to do is whatever maximizes general utility. But, Griffin says, the reality of human life is that we usually cannot either calculate or act on what this maximization demands, because of our natural partiality to family, our interests and other commitments. Griffin therefore claims that human limitations mean that utilitarianism cannot play a genuine role in our lives, and as a result the moral norms it proposes should be rejected as spurious"

Just because something is common does not make that thing right. — Thorongil

I am not saying it is common but rather an innate part of the life-cycle where everything gets eaten at some stage and recycled.

Ah, now we come to the origin of your confusion! If it's true that you're a moral nihilist, then your problem isn't with vegan moral arguments against eating meat but with moral arguments per se. — Thorongil

I do have a problem with any moral claim but I think moral claims become more implausible the more at odds with nature they are.

I don't really believe mass adherence to veganism would improve the world think there are other moral debates that could take precedence. We may just have to be stoical about suffering or take an extinctionist position like antinatalism.

Because "ought implies can" (Kant). You cannot be morally obligated to do something that you cannot do. — NKBJ

I think it is hard to defend the claim that anyone ought to do anything whether or not they can do it.

I could take swimming lessons in case I needed to save a drowning person or I could train to be a medic to save lives. I think there are things we can and can't do easily and things we can learn to do or not do.

I think if you have to artificially adapt your behaviour then you are going beyond an immediate "can" to an obligation to transcend nature. Some people do want to alter nature to be less a harmful but that kind of ideology seems highly unrealistic (people have advocated genetically modifying carnivores) So you can end up with a real but somewhat absurd utilitarian stance that we should wipe out life to end out harm because we can.

The whole moral quagmire is what we can be obliged to do.

I don't understand. Why is that problematic? If we couldn't manage without meat, then it could not be a issue, one can only make a moral issue of what is possible — unenlightened

It is possible to turn anything into a moral issue.

In the Bible God commanded people to stone a man to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath and as a child my mother made a traumatic scene on the one occasion I shopped on a Sunday.

But I think that to make something a moral issue has to be more careful than just trying to invoke negative feelings in someone about something. Also in my childhood radio and TV were forbidden and while range of other things and I know what it is like to have lots of enforced guilt.

I am only now just racking my brain to think what might make something a moral issue or not. I think (fundamental) lack of necessity might be one attribute.

But to artificially make something unnecessary seems problematic, so for example making a child walk to collect water from a well is not necessarily wrong even if you have taps because it sill has attributes of daily survival.

I would say moral harm would probably involve a desire to harm, or inadequate consideration of harms, or harm for excess personal gain.

This dimension is in large measure the very thing that makes us unique as a species... — Thorongil

But vegans and animal rights activists are eager to stress the similarity between humans and animals as the reason they should have rights and not be eaten.

There is a definite tension between claiming animals are just like us with similar feelings goals and desires and then making is suddenly the only species capable of a profound transcendental moral world view.

The reality seems to be clear that humans and nature are cruel and that there is certainly no inherent tendency in nature for a just world and ethical progress. And even if you think humans make moral progress there is no plausible way of engineering harm out of nature.

Personally I am a moral nihilist, antinatalist and I think all we can have is a bit of hope that life is somehow on an upward trajectory and meaningful. But Nature as we observe it and our human conduct seems to me far removed from an ethical ideal.

Who said that? — Thorongil

Several high profile vegans on YouTube put continuous emphasis on the claim it is unnecessary to eat meat even though acknowledging that it entails taking supplements. I can post links to videos if needs be.

The problem is that killing animals can only start to be deemed being cruel if it is seen as unnecessary. The reality of carnivores, predation and death in nature as an essential part of the life cycle means that humans consuming meat cannot be considered an aberration and I don't know anyone that eats meat just to see animals suffer.

If you wanted to make an animals suffer you could do that without eating them. eating the animal you killed is not really evidence of sadism.

Consuming nutrients is necessary to prevent malnourishment and starvation, however something like rape is never necessary. Killing may be necessary in self defence and theft ,may be necessary to avoid starving but eating and drinking are among the most fundamental things needed for immediate survival.

I am never convinced that vegans have a realistic picture of nature where animals starve en masse, ,drown en masse, get eaten alive and don't retire to Old Persons homes.

Is that true? — T Clark

It must be true because if humans were carnivores we would have to eat meat and there would be no plausible veganism.

I don't see good grounds for vegans to judge us differently than a lion eating meat and why we are the only species supposed to eat with some ethical dimension.

The position seems completely divorced from the reality of nature.I think a morality that separates us from nature is implausible unless you think we can transcend nature in some supernatural way.

Human beings exploit each other profoundly so I don't think we treat people with similar humans characteristics more fairly than the rest of nature.

The issue with determinism and preserving the truth value of mental states concerns the ability to evaluate and reject false perceptions.So that we are not compelled to just have beliefs forced in us by brain states.

The other issue is that if brain states are identical to mental states or tied very closely it is not clear how brain states could communicate there mental content accurately.
Imagine if you wrote lots of words on some balls and then you randomly picked the balls out of the bag, Then you would be very unlikely to pick out a coherent sentence.
So you need to know what one brain state means to link it coherently to another one but also you need flexibility to create new meanings and evaluate old ones.

As I mentioned there was the behaviourist conditioning model of constant conjunction the problem with that as I mentioned was it set up meaningless connections because neurons cannot reflect on the nature of two or more stimuli coming into conjunction.

I am not sure how a determinist could claim that we were free to believe what we believe and free to reach the conclusions we reached.

Meaning is the relationship between cause and effect - ALL cause and effect relationships. — Harry Hindu

I am not sure what this means.
A meaningful thought might be "President Trump might cause World War 3"

I suppose the name Trump is caused by the person Trump.

The title of President is an invented status I am not sure what caused the origin of that word.

World War 3 is a hypothetical future event so the term can't be cause by something that hasn't happened.

The overall sentence is speculative. I think most thought is speculative and a dead end where you ruminate and then don't act. I am looking for a causal mechanism that would make a thought in some circumstance be part of a well delineated causal network.

People have a lot of false beliefs and wrong impressions. For example the famous Muller-Lyer illusion where the lines look different lengths but aren't. This misperception means that we don't always represent the world veridically/truthfully.

I'm puzzled by this. Do you think these are facts if there were no human brains at all?
~If so how? — charleton

Either they would be facts or brain dependent entities.

If somethings existence doesn't rely on the brain then I would describe them as mind independent facts.

That's because the same thought in different circumstances can have different results. — Harry Hindu

But are you arguing that all mental activity causes some physical behaviour?

I think to make a strictly determinism account of a thought you would have to isolate a causal bridge concerning what caused I thought and what it caused and then a mechanism.

It is not clear to me what spatial-temporal-material features semantics could have to create a causal narrative with.

I don't understand your problem. What truth?

Are you taking into account some form of indirect realism where the brains (and the neurons they are made of) that we see are just mental models of what is in the real world? — Harry Hindu

The issue for me is that facts are more important than the patterns of neurons firing.
As I said in the opening post 2+2=4 is true regardless of which neuronal firing patterns correlated with having that thought.

To me it is not determinism if the truth of a proposition determines the neuronal activity because that is top down causation. For example if I write Hello" in some sand. My intent to write hello determines the physical movement of the sand. If thoughts determine brain states then that is the definition of free will.

However if thoughts were created by brain states that would main the brain state would determine thought regardless of the validity of the content. The Pavlov Dog's paradigm showed how two conceptually unrelated can be come triggered due to constant conjunction. It is not clear how being repeatedly exposed to stimuli would crate valid concepts about them. There is an extra step from having vivid perceptions to creating a semantic concept. Once again top down influence is posited in perception which is not compatible with strong determinism really.

It caused you to type those words on your keyboard and click send so that we could read it. Speaking and writing are both physical behaviors triggered by thought. You could say that speaking and writing involve semantics as you convert your thoughts into sounds and scribbles to communicate your thoughts to others. Every post on this forum is a physical effect, and therefore a representation, of mental causes. — Harry Hindu

This is a misrepresentation. I selected the example here "Paris is the capital of France" as opposed to those words causing me to type anything. Usually the vast majority of my thought don't cause me to type anything. I don't think you could give a convincing causal explanation as to which thoughts specifically causally determined me to type something. The main thing that is making me type here is the necessity to do so in order to have a discussion.

The same exact thought can have different causal relationships on different days. There is no causal law or regularity that entails that if I think "Paris is the capital of France" then I am compelled to exhibit behaviour X. And it is hard to imagine what that causal law would be. It would be inconvenient if every time I thought X it determined the same behaviour. the value of thought is that you can reflect without action. Physical causes don't have this luxury.

By the way this thread is about determinism and not the nature of thoughts.

What are the physical processes in the brain for? — bahman

Sir Charles Sherrington (physiologist) once claimed that most brain activity was related to action.

"The brain seems a thoroughfare for nerve-action passing its way to the motor animal. It has been remarked that Life's aim is an act not a thought."

Ideas trigger similar, or related, ideas in my head. So my ideas are causally influenced by some other idea, and it's not the same for everyone, as it is based on experience. — Harry Hindu

I don't see how semantic content is causal like say neuronal firings. Ideas are conceptually related but that does not equal causal relations. Thinking "Paris is the Capital of France" doesn't cause any more behaviour or thought in me or any determined next content (such as I rush to the shop to by garlic bread).

I am also concerned with a proposed linkage of mental states to brain states and how mental content could be determined this way and preserve coherence.

The behaviourist model is that idea that constant co-firing of neurons makes one idea trigger another through constant conjunction like Pavlov's dog's saliva and bells. However salivation was an inappropriate response to a bell because bells do not always signal food (nor do they "mean" food) and that type of learning makes lots of errors that we don't.

The main problem I was highlighting though is that if thoughts are determined then we can't evaluate them for truth. Like the dogs couldn't control salivating.

I experienced a breakdown of meaning when life stopped making sense to me.

It was like the more problems you have the less sense life makes. It is like problems make you become aware of the fragility of life or its arbitrariness or unfairness.

It could result from a failure of defence mechanisms as well.

Can you think of things that happened before this event that might have led you here?

What worldview did you have beforehand?
What beliefs and values did you have?
What did you read about or see in the news or history books?

Ralph W. Emerson said that "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." — Bitter Crank

That was Henry David Thoreau apparently. a nice soothing quotation for those feeling alienated I suppose.