P7 If it is possible to adopt and maintain a vegan diet, then gratuitous suffering caused by food production practices is preventable
P8 It is possible to adopt and maintain a vegan diet. — Postmodern Beatnik

Yes! I like this proposal. Thank you!

I said C3 follows from P6, P7, and P8 because P7 is an elimination of the biconditional. The biconditional adds a robustness in the ought claim, if it can be maintained with a defense of the soundness.

Also, are you interested in shorter and/or simplified versions of the argument? — Postmodern Beatnik

This is a simplified version where other versions I've drawn up offer additional conditional claims for the moral claim of eliminating gratuitous suffering (e.g., a reasonable cost condition). I thought for the sake of analysis of the formal aspect of the argument, the simple argument was the best so people don't get wrapped up in the content of the premises.

*edited*

I would take issue with that premise as well. I've denoted questionable premises with an (*). They're not necessarily bad premises, but require a lot of support.

I'm inclined to say x and z are not sufficient or necessary to qualify as being human, but if a being does not have any of {x, y, z}, then that being is not human. Another way to state it, having a trait x is does not make you human, but not having any of {x, y, z} means you are essentially not human. That may not fall under a strict heading of essentialism as a single property in common but closely fits your family resemblance idea.

*edited*

But when it comes to something like humanity or personhood then we have to abandon essentialism and accept instead a family resemblance among the things which we – as a matter of convention – designate as "human" or "person". — Michael

Is essentialism confined to identifying one characteristic or trait as essential or can it identify a set of traits such that no single trait is necessary or sufficient in themselves but when all are absent, the identity of the object is essentially different? For instance, to be human is essentially to have any combination of traits {x, y, z} such that if one does not have any combination of traits {x, y ,z}, then they are not human. The essential feature is the "any combination of traits {x, y, z}".

it doesn't rest on the assertion that there is no God, but rather that God offers no insight into subjectivity (i.e., God stands opposed as an Other). If you appeal to God as a source of meaning or responsibility for action, you are denying your own subjectivity. When you draw into yourself, you don't find God, you find yourself as the author of your subjective existence. It doesn't follow from this that there is no meaning, but that you must supply the meaning from Your own being. The foundation of Existentialism rests on a shared experience of Subjectivity, and from that experience arguments are built upon to develop an entire system of belief.

one comment about the approach you seem to want to take to reach a conclusion about the various "isms", Existentialism in particular, is that the analytical approach is ill-suited to those "isms". An analytical contemplation of the nature of being confines being to an object, whereas Existentialism is an inquiry about the subject. To investigate the subject, a phenomenological approach is better suited. Go out in the world. Interact with people and objects. Don't build a philosophy about the subject by analysing the terms. You might develop a reasonable enough argument at the end of the day by sitting about and thinking about "the subject", but in doing so you've missed out on one of the fundamental aspects of subjectivity, (i.e., living a life).

As I understand Stoicism, the goal is simply to assign responses to the proper faculty (emotion versus reason). It's not that the Stoic is cold and indifferent, it's that emotion has a function and reason has a function, and it is a mistake to apply emotion where reason is better suited and vice versa.

I understand the pressure to produce results can lead researchers to "fudging" results or building biases in to the studies, but the Reproducibility Project also strikes me as prone to such criticism. As you stated, 62% is significant. Is it possible that such a high number is the result of researchers in the project looking particularly hard for deviation rather than reproduction to spice up the findings? A study of agreement is far less sexy than a study of, "oh my God, our discipline has problems!"

did anyone test the results of the test, to see if the test results hold up? Perhaps the testers didn't understand the methodology of half the studies and were unable to reproduce results because of bad reproduction of methodology.

For instance, in one study this is included:

Differences from the Original

In addition to the original study design, we added the following question: “Are you a vegetarian or a vegan?” We planned to perform a one-way ANOVA to see whether there is a difference in the total number of thoughts reported by vegetarians/vegans compared to non-vegetarians/non-vegans. — Reproducibility Project

The Reproducibility Project did not follow the methodology of the original studies, but created new methodologies allegedly suitable for confidence in reproduction. What effect does the different approaches have on the outcome of the studies? How much of the inability to reproduce results hinges on the changes?

Is posting a farewell on a forum a suicide letter and attempt done for attention that may, on occasion, actually succeed? Why bother saying something if you want to leave instead of just leaving?

I'm interested in the notion of romantic love specifically, but maybe there's some deeper connection there. — The Great Whatever

My point is that romantic love is played out differently and involves different behaviours, particularly involving sex, but the psychology attachment that accompanies romantic relationships is derivative of the more primitive and primary mother-child attachment. Love as a romantic feeling piggy-backs on the already developed mother-child attachment. Evolutionarily, we don't need love in order to have sex, but we need mothers to protect and care for children, and children not to stray from mothers for the species to survive. If evolution started to favour romantic love for species survival, it could be a mutation of the mother-child attachment rather than an independently developed faculty and maybe even sexually selected by the female.

But see, this just shows you the very theoretical nature of evolutionary psychology. — schopenhauer1

Some would call it pseudo-science, and as such, I must admit that the evolutionary development of romantic love and the mother-child attachment may be completely independent of each other.

Perhaps a criticism of internet philosophy is that it is a user-directed search that can land upon an isolated community such that an internet philosophical movement is a collection of individuals that share a common cognitive bias and continually reaffirm that bias in their own blogs. Of course the case can be made that the same happens in academia and schools, but if the internet (search engines) directed you to opposition to your position in the way a library might arrange books by topic, there might be more of a realization that there is serious work opposed to the movement. I wouldn't categorize philosophy on the internet as fruitless, but it can give the appearance of a greater understanding and consensus and should be cautious of becoming a "safe" community absent of dissent.

This is an interesting exercise because it seems to be asking us to identify our own biases, which might be hindered by the blind spot bias.

On the language issue, I am tolerant of "fancy" words in the interests of being concise, and wordiness is more of a distraction for me than obscure words. I often question whether rambling arguments are trying to hide a weakness by repeating points or adding lots of irrelevant information.

Age (and/or my health) has given my thoughts a particular cloudiness that makes it difficult for me to discern if I have a worthwhile thought. I recall a time when I had a distinct sharpness to my thinking, which is no longer present. Luckily, the condition itself also makes it difficult for me to discern whether this is a actually a problem.

I tend to stay within the sub-discipline of ethics and I have a tendency to import optimism and idealistic outcomes into my moral thinking. I have a healthy amount of cynicism (in the contemporary meaning and not referring to the philosophy of the Cynics) and would categorize myself as a misanthrope, but on occasion I still get accused of being too idealistic.

Love is not ineffable but it is innumerably describable (or at least describable in many ways) and that makes it equally difficult to nail down. We can survey people to get a data set and try to extract a common element to love, but there are going to be outliers and those tend to be exaggerated when contemplating love.

I would guess a biological/evolutionary theory of love would make the mother-child relationship primary and all other "loving relationships" are a by-product of the mother-child attachment. We could probably extrapolate from the mother-child relationship to your theory insofar as the closer the roles of the male and female approach the mother-child relationship (high-status woman, low-status man), the stronger the love claim.

From a computational perspective, humans are just like computers. But it's immoral in many cases to stop someone from pursuing their preferences. — darthbarracuda

These have the appearance of substantial claims but both fall flat. The first claim falls apart by recognition that it is a likeness by analogy. Humans are not just like computers, but we can make sense of cognition by making an analogy to computers. Analogies are only as strong as they approach equivalence, but in this case, the difference between humans and computers is precisely what we are after so we cannot use the analogy to make sense of the difference in cognition.

The second claim has a bit of a weasel word that intimates a strong position, but actually fails to take any position at all. By including the word "many" you implicitly suggest there is something inherent about the impermissibility of preventing someone from pursuing preferences, but "many" can also be used to imply that there is at least one case where it is not immoral to stop someone from pursuing preferences. We need to know what the salient features are that make this immoral or not before we can make a judgement about NPCs.

Good - then it follows that the scientist should not believe that the limits of scientific observation is equivalent with the limits of the world. — Agustino

This doesn't follow at all. It introduces a term not mentioned previously, in particular I'm not sure where the normative declaration "should" is coming from.

which is traditionally thought to be the equivalent of all that exists. — Agustino

A better way to phrase it would be, which is scientifically thought to be the equivalent of all that exists. Which is only to say, the Universe is the limit to our scientific observation. We cannot comment about existence outside our Universe with science because it is currently not accessible to observation or empirical measurement so is outside the domain of science. Other traditions might have their own interpretations of the Big Bang and what we can say beyond our Universe, but we should be concerned with and only with the scientific view here.

I don't follow, if there is empirical evidence of an event that resembles what we call the Big Bang, leaving aside the "existence itself has a beginning" part you've tagged onto it, why should we a priori reject that model?

Is the Big Bang nonsense or is the interpretation of the Big Bang you've imported to the scientific understanding of the Big Bang nonsense? As far as I know, scientists are very comfortable with saying our knowledge of the cosmological genesis of the universe is limited to fractions of a second after some massive event. The inference of a Big Bang is useful for explanatory purposes, but ultimately outside the domain of science, for now.

I'm not sure I follow why science must look outside its own domain. Science is self-contained for the inquiry about which it is concerned. There are other disciplines outside science where knowledge can potentially be gained (e.g., history), but this doesn't mean science needs to be instructed by these disciplines to be coherent. If science meets with an absurdity, it either aims to resolve the absurdity with science or leaves the problem scientifically unanswered and outside its domain.

Although most gods in our history haven't been that type. — darthbarracuda

I don't know about that. A God that allows the Holocaust might be that type of God.

That analogy fails though, because it ignores the possibility of allegiance hating kings that chop off heads for pledging allegiance to them. So we have to consider that pledging allegiance and not pledging allegiance can both result in having your head chopped off. What should I do then?

It's only tenable because it ignores the possibility that God is malicious. I'm not even sure there's a good reason to say any currently worshipped God is not actually devious and malicious aside from a supposed promise from that deity, but if I were a malicious deity, then I would promise that I was not malicious. It's the oldest trick in the book of malicious deities.

Theistic deities that are the sorts that the wager are meant to point towards are anthropomorphized beings with personalities. A deity that has no personality (i.e., no interest in our action) has no pull on the wager. So we must populate the wager with the personality of whichever God we are placing a bet on, and we can definitely get the personality wrong.

Pascal's wager is disingenuous in the way it favours theistic belief over nonbelief. For instance, it doesn't consider the harm that might come from belief in the wrong deity, or if belief held as a result of a wager disqualifies any potential benefits. Pascal's wager strikes me as a tool for fence-sitters that want a reason to believe and have manufactured that reason.

I haven't yet made my relationship with this forum exclusive. Part of my reluctance to commit to one forum is the lack of content on this forum from other users. I'm more of a lurker than a poster, so my lurking needs are not yet being met here. I've tried to supply more content here than I normally do at the other forum, but my discussion quality leaves something to be desired. I am actually cheering for this forum because I feel like I am a part of the history of the forum and I have a (misplaced) sense of responsibility in the success or lack thereof.

I do not believe in God because God has never given me a reason to believe, and absent of reason, there is no wager to be made that suggests belief is a better bet than nonbelief.

For all the alleged inconsistencies and incoherence of a deity, if said deity compels belief then I presume I would have no choice but to believe. I am not compelled to believe, so I don't.

You always ask just the right questions. Kudos to that. I suppose in practical terms the consequence is nil. Part of the appeal of deontology to me is that it is not just a normative ethical theory but descriptive as well, insofar as it describes how we act whether we know that it underlies our decision making. Even a deliberately wrong education of deontology does little or no harm to the ability of the moral agent to get it right when acting. The consequences may be confined to academic and doxastic interests.

When I encounter opposition to deontology it often falls back on the same criticism about our intuition that lying is sometimes permissible (e.g., white lies and inquiring murderers). I'm not sure this is the sticking point for some to reject deontology, but it comes up frequently as an argument of how deontology has got it wrong while itself being a perpetually transmitted inaccuracy. From my observation, the idea persists because of how deontology is taught in introductory courses, and so if a minute correction to the instruction can clear up the confusion it might be worthwhile. For instance, is the setup to compare and contrast consequentialism and deontology the source of the error? Is there another way to teach the respective theories that is equally accessible and doesn't lead to this error?

But since there cannot be any certainty about anything, does this mean that any opinion is equally valid? Does this destroy the entire enterprise of rational inquiry? — darthbarracuda

Opinions can be opined within the confines of specific contexts such that the context provides validation for some opinions over others. For instance, within the context of the English language, my opinion that all bachelors are happily unmarried holds more validity than an opinion that some bachelors are happily married.

The nature of the medium always matters. — Bitter Crank

This sounds like an artistic challenge.

Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis.

Diagnosed two weeks after my second daughter's birth at age 30 (4 years ago) although I had already suffered severe limitations in my motion and frequent loss of balance (and pretty much all the other typical symptoms of MS) as a strong indication that something was wrong. I have adapted to life with MS to be able to work and contribute very minimally in household maintenance and upkeep. My daughters, aged 5 and 3, don't seem to mind my disability and I am as active and present as I can be in both their lives. My wife has decided, for reasons I still cannot fathom, to ride it out with me and I am incredibly grateful for her. Other than that little thing, I'm healthy and relatively happy.

I don't know how much this comes into play in this view of language, but the vocalizations of babies are limited not just by language acquisition and understanding but physiological development of muscles involved in speech. Babies might have a greater understanding of language but are constrained by physiological immaturity.

I require validation of my ideas and not me personally. I voted to like the posts but not the members (unless you really do like me).

I actually disagree that we can know before a situation what will be morally significant and what won't be. — shmik

In your opinion, is particularism a moral theory capable of providing only post hoc judgements or is it that moral judgements are simply carried out while falling short of knowledge? Perhaps, you hold that we cannot eliminate any detail as morally insignificant and so must consider everything, no matter how seemingly trivial. If I am the person hiding a friend in my house, how do I use particularism to tell me what I should do when the murderer comes to my door? Do I need to examine the contents of the murderers pockets? Perhaps I should at least ask to test the weapon first.

Perhaps it’s morally correct to lie to the axe murder and the lying itself is good. — shmik

Specifically, is "perhaps" the best particularism can do? After the fact, what do we use to judge whether the action was right?

How did you decide that the position of Jupiter is morally significant if astronauts are traveling there. I'm guessing that you're not relying on a rule you learned about traveling to Jupiter or any other planet. — shmik

Moral theories that rest upon principles make discernment of morally significant details a feature of moral education with hopes that agents will learn to make sound moral judgement. We judge, to the best of our abilities, what aspects of action are morally significant, and through practice and the aim of a moral principle, become skilled and accurate at focusing our attention. I don't need to go to Jupiter or another planet to extrapolate from experience of the application of a moral principle that the position of Jupiter can become morally significant to astronauts travelling there while it is not significant when I am trying to decide if I should lie to a murderer at my door. My worry is that without a principle, we are aimless in our discerning the particulars as morally significant or morally insignificant.

If there were signatures on this forum I would be tempted to put as mine: "Pessimism can mean either a psychological disposition or a philosophical position." Most people either conflate the two or think pessimism only refers to the former. — Thorongil

I'm reluctant to view pessimism as a disposition but rather a predisposition. A disposition, to me, conjures an image of pessimism as a psychiatric condition and will treat it with anti-depressants or other therapies. A predisposition is the inherent character of the individual and can manifest as a pessimistic or optimistic disposition in given circumstances, but tending more towards pessimism. A pessimistic predisposition is more likely persuaded by pessimistic arguments and will see the merit in the pessimistic philosophical position.

I'm also reluctant to see the pessimist as having negative evolutionary value. The pessimist is useful in a society to point out the flaws from which the optimist can make changes or improve conditions. They work in tandem, so there is value in being a pessimist, even if the pessimist cannot see it. As long as the pessimist isn't harming others, have at it.

I suspect that if we converted or trained all the would-be philosophers to be welders instead, some welders would still do philosophy. Philosophy and welding are not mutually exclusive activities. If there were a program offered gratis for the re-education of philosophers to become welders, I would likely take it up, although I would not do so at the expense of forsaking philosophy in my own time.

If I lived in a society that required a strict division of labour for the continued survival of the society, I would be open, possibly at least in part because of my training as a philosopher, to taking on the necessary roles (e.g., welding) for the sake of the society. If there is a demonstrated need for more welders, and less philosophers, I am adaptable enough to do what is required. The money component might be demonstrative of a supply and demand value for the roles, where greater monetary value is placed on welders because the demand for welders is higher than philosophers.

Instead of applying moral principles the morally attuned person applies moral reasons to situations. — shmik

How does one become "morally attuned" and have "moral reasons" if not by applying moral principles?

The main difference here is that the actual specifics of a situation are primary.

Surely you mean the morally significant specifics of a situation are primary. The position of Jupiter probably doesn't matter when you're acting, unless the position has become morally significant (e.g., Astronauts travelling to Jupiter). How do we discern morally significant specifics from morally insignificant specifics under particularism?

Politeness often falls under the behaviour modifying category of etiquette. Etiquette is distinct from legal obligation and moral obligation where legal obligation is legislated and enforced by a recognized authority, moral obligation is legislated and enforced internally, and etiquette is legislated and enforced as social norms. In other words, etiquette is how one's peers expect one should act. Whereas moral obligation is maintained by a moral motivation (i.e., because it is good) legal obligation and etiquette are maintained through coercion (i.e., deter behaviour by fear of punishment).

Etiquette may align with morality, but it is not necessary for a rule of etiquette to be considered morally required. Politeness can govern amoral behaviour such as the arrangement of utensils on a place setting. Since etiquette is not synonymous with moral obligation, it will not suffice to appeal to an intrinsic or self-evident goodness of etiquette. Etiquette requires some degree of force to ensure that agents abide. The use of firearms is a tool of coercion within a culture to enforce social norms. The social norms vary between cultures, such that gang culture can use firearms to enforce etiquette suitable for the culture's needs.

It won't do at all to end a Nuclear war by starting a lengthy court proceeding. Other weapons can be handled that way because there will be that way to handle them later on, but Nuclear weapons threaten to level everything quickly, completely and without response.

If someone is intent on doing harm they will not stop because of lack of a gun. — Sir2u

I'm not persuaded by the "sufficiently motivated" argument because it posits a somewhat untestable premise. Counterfactuals are pointless and analogies are only as good as the similarity approaches equivalence. It is also foolish to conclude that because there might be sufficiently motivated individuals that we should make it easier for them by allowing access to the efficient tools for harm.

(As an aside, this debate is a bit one-sided. Anyone else besides Tiff want to put the opposing view?) — Baden

I contemplated the opposing view but everything I wrote came out indefensible or abhorrent. One view I am sympathetic to is that there are a plurality of reasons for gun ownership ranging from malicious intent to hobby and collection. We want to restrict one end of the spectrum while allowing the other end. Guns as self-defense lead to absurdities and an arms race.