MadKally

How many other species use a knife and fork?

spin

Toto:
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I avoided the previous thread, because life is too short, etc. I tried to be a vegetarian for many years, but I finally had to admit that I could not stay healthy on a non-meat diet. Some people have the body make up to survive as a vegetarian, but most of us do not. I had to accept myself as someone who could not live on tofu alone. (And it's not the taste - I really got to like tofu and brown rice, and I could eat Chinese vegetarian food all day.)
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No-one has asked you to live on tofu alone. I have never eaten tofu. As there is such a wide range of food available, I find it hard to believe you. You may be correct.

spin

baloo,

I'm sorry, I find your reductionist example unrelated to the topic. We are talking aout the ethics of eating meat. You are not.

You need to use the dictionary to find out what the word "life" means.

For the third and last time, as you have failed to relate your computer program to the subject, I see nothing more to say about it.

spin

spin:
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I don't think we can dispense with [the comparison between eating meat and cannibalism]. I think it is reasonably apt.
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Jeff:
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Yes, you think it reasonably apt, but you're wrong. The difference between eating meat in human society and being a cannibal in human society is tremendous. If you can't differentiate between the two, perhaps you shouldn't be dictating morals and philosophy to others.
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You need to make the difference, not assume it. I don't dictate morals. I'm asking for a moral justification of eating meat, which didn't fit the categories I provided, as I indicated I didn't find either ethical.

spin:
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Cannibalism has been practised in various parts of the world, as I have already stated.
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Jeff:
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Agreed, but never indiscriminately.
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But that was never a criterion.

Jeff:
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The two most common occurences are in indviduals with deviant pyschologies and, in highly-restricted form, some religions. If you disagree, name any major city where you can walk into a restaurant and order human meat off the menu.
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There is nothing to disagree with. It seems not related to what we are dealing with. What's the difference between eating one's own species and some other animal species?


Jeff:
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I was explaining why being carnivorous and being cannabalistic in the human race has different social ramifications.
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What has that got to do with eating either human or other animal meat to you? And how do those ramifications affect your views on the ethics of eating dead animals?


spin:
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Man has often been a pack animal and if you didn't belong to a particular pack, well, you suffered the consequences.
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Jeff:
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Yes, and historically, under rare occasions cannibalism was performed on the losers of a battle, although this was very rare. The key word is "Indiscriminately". To my knowledge, there is not now, nor has there ever been a culture that practiced cannibalism indiscriminately and has survived to present day.
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What has whether cannibalism was practised indiscriminately or not got to do with the comparison between eating other animals and eating your own species?

Jeff:
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Hence, the difference between that and eating meat. Almost all cultures today are meat-eaters, and can do so without social stigma.
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Ubiquity is not a useful criterion for morality.

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: spin ]</p>

Pomp

spin,

I'm glad you have made it plain that you plaace yourself in the category of moral relativist, which cashes out to me to mean amoral.

You are entitled to your opinion. Moral subjectivists, however, acknowledge that they are bound by any number of moral constraints, so I fail to see how we can be acurately described as "amoral." Further, mainstream ethical philosphy considers moral subjectivism to be a defensible stance. If you believe that it is amoral, I suggest that you provide justification for yoru view, rather than dismiss all subjectivist arguments.

I think it also nullifies your abuse of contract theory,

I don't know what you mean. How does my stance as a moral subjectivist "nullify" my supposed abuse of contract theory? Further, it has been pointed out to you several times that I am not abusing contract theory in any way. Did you read the link I provided to a short encyclopedia entry on <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism/" target="_blank">contractarianism</a>? It's a quick read, and I think your understanding of the theory would benefit greatly from it.

...so, while your "moral relativism" can justify Dahmer, your contract theory, is merely a trapping, probably because you don't think it's good to reservedly put your moral relativism behind his stance.

I have no idea what you are saying. I get the impression that you're trying to insinuate that I'm "guilty" about holding a philosopical position that could justify Dahmer's behavior so I feel the need to hide it behind contract theory. I assure you that this is not the case.

Once again, I will repeat my request: rather than repeatedly asserting that you think it's wrong to kill non-human animals for food, please describe the moral theory that you used to arrive at that position, thereby giving us an argument to consider.

DRFseven

You're right to doubt this, spin. People can live quite healthy lives without any meat at all and no one over the age of three needs milk. Think about it; where in the prehistoric world would people have gotten milk? What happens to all those people in other countries who, once weaned, never drink milk? Yes, milk is rich in calcium, but so are some other foods, such as nuts, dark green leafy vegetables, broccoli, and seeds. Fish are also good sources, but if you're only talking vegetables, go with those.

Baloo

Wow, how to make this one simpler....

Spin,

The subject is that you are arguing that
1) it is not necessary to harm or kill sentient beings for meat and
2) it is immoral to unnecessarily harm or kill sentient beings.

Your entire focus seems to be on justifying point 1. However, even conceding point 1, without point 2, you have no basis for the condemnation of eating meat. It is point 2 I am attacking.

OF COURSE it is absurd to consider unnecissarily harming a robot immoral. I am attempting to show that your moral system is inconsistent, as it leads to this absurdity.

Your argument can be easily won, and I can be easily silenced, if you would just explain, in concrete terms, why the hypothetical robot and an ant are different. The only difference I expect you to come up with is the property of "vitality", or the exhibition of a "life force"... a pseudoscientific concept if I've ever heard one. Does one need to accept the existence of a "life force" to be a vegetarian? Again, spin, I implore you - make me look like the idiot you think I am... give me the reason you wouldn't treat ants and robots the same way.

Not Prince Hamlet

I've not only made the difference, I've demonstrated it. The fact that you're too stubborn to recognize it is irrelevant. The points I have made don't support your arguments, so as usual, you simply ignore them and respond with your canned vegetarian propaganda.

Wrong. It was one of my criteria to differentiate between the two. Just because you don't like it doesn't invalidate it. Or are you saying that your morality is superior to my morality, and if so, by what right do you make that claim? (And if you claim it's so because you don't eat meat, congratulations: you've made a circular argument.)


No more than, say, the difference between an F-15 fighter jet and a lemming. I mean, they both move forward, right? They must be the same thing, by your logic.


I have no response to that. You just asked me what an answer to question X has to do with question X.

And my opinion on the ethics are irrelevant for this particular point. I was demonstrating that eating meat and cannibalism are equivalent. Whether they are wrong is an entirely different (and broader) subject.

Essentially, this entire discussion I've been having with you has been to address a single point you brought up: namely your comparing meat-eaters to cannibals. I have explained why this is not an apt analogy, but have not touched at all upon whether meat-eating is moral or not.

Once we resolve this cannibalism side-bar, however, I may be inclined to continue on the broader topic. In the meantime, I prefer to keep the discussion focus so that when we're done with this point, it won't keep coming up endlessly.

spin:
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Man has often been a pack animal and if you didn't belong to a particular pack, well, you suffered the consequences.
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Everything. It proves that society considers them different.

No, right. Apparently the only useful criterion for morality is: "Does Spin approve of it?"

Sadly, apart from divine fiat (and most Judeo-Christian religions support eating meat) or viewing things from a Natural Selection perspective (which definitely supports eating meat), I can think of no better criteria than whether society deems it moral or not.

Now, if you have some innovative direct hotline to the source of all moral imperatives, I'm sure that the other 6 or so billion people on this planet would love to hear why all their morals are wrong and yours are right.

Jeff

MortalWombat

I wouldn't quite call actively hunting and killing monkeys for food "opportunistic."

Yeah? And gorilla teeth appear more adapted to eating meat than humans (look at the massive canines on a gorilla), but eat nothing but plants. Does that mean that gorillas should eat more meat because of what their teeth look like?

Koyaanisqatsi

And we're right back to Spin just making declarations from the mountaintop, the sum total of all moral posturing.

The answer to your questions lies in a mirror, my friend. You have selectively decided that eating meat is morally unacceptable to you and that killing and eating plants is not, based upon your own unsubstantiated convictions/rationalizations about plant consciousness.

Take careful note of the phrases "selectively decided" and "unacceptable to you."

To ask us for a moral justfication for something we do not find immoral is identical to you stating, "Come on! No scientists considers plants conscious or capable of feeling pain!"

In other words, you do not find the killing and eating of plants to be immoral.

So, see if you can see the similiarities between these two sentences:

<ol type="1">[*] I do not find the killing and eating of plants to be immoral.[*] I do not find the killing and eating of animals to be immoral.[/list=a]

The only salient element, of course, is the qualitative differences between animals and plants, to which you declared, "Animals are conscious; plants aren't."

Your entire moral argument rests upon that single declaration, which you cannot adequately back up, only adamantly proclaim.

You are, therefore, identical to all meat-eaters you rail against in that you have selectively decided to imbue arbitrary qualifiers to one consumable over another (see the two sentences above).

Don't pretend that our responses were born out of some sort of defensive reaction to your piercing insight or the result of our hatred at being shown our "true natures" in the blinding light of your moral posturing, as that was not the case in the slightest.

The Dahmer analogy is just as applicable to your hypocritical double standard as you think it is toward ours. Just like you (and everybody, which is why these rants from the moral mountaintop always degenerate into this nonsense), he selectively decided what was morally allowed and what wasn't according to his own perspective, which, only becomes morally reprehensible from somebody else's perspective, as was pointed out to you repeatedly.

So, just like you, and excluding the big bad cannibals from the argument, what is the moral justification of eating something that I wish to eat? None required, since eating something that I wish to eat is, by and large, not a question of morality.

If you feel no moral compunction about killing and eating plants simply because you have arbitrarily determined that plantlife is qualitatively different than animallife, then that's your delusion, but don't stand indignant when someone uses the exact same rationalization when eating anything else they damn well please.

After all, I can just as easily ask you to justify the murder and consumption of vegetables on moral grounds and you would be incapable of answering, only asserting.

And just for the record once again, it was to your hypocritical double standard and moral posturing that my posts were addressing; hypocritical double standards that negated your piousness, not reinforced it.

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>