Shadowy Man

And yet she probably has no problem with the wholesale slaughter of vast quantities of vegetable life.

Doesn't anyone think of the vegetables???

dshimel

Vegitables don't feel or think. They are fair game. Any feeling or thinking ability, then they are equal to humans.

Theli

Let me try.

dshimel...
This is too easy, your entire argument rests on an "if". That is: "if there were objective morality...".
And you compared this invented possible objective moraity to your own subjective morality to check if it correlates. And ofcourse it does, because you invented this "objective morality" wich makes it infact subjective. Based on your own opinion.

You have not showed it to be not ok, you simply stated an example based on a possibility.

Yyyiiiaaaaaaii!!!

Theli

That animals are equal to humans in a moral sense is completely subjective, there is no objective rule of asigning worth.
In fact, for us to asign worth to a thing, wich prohibit us from destroying it in favor for a new thing (burger ) we would need a reason to. And reason is very much subjective.

BTW, what kind of horseshit is this? Is it the smelly kind?
If lions had no capacity at all for rational thought, they would not hunt animals either. They would have no way of knowing how to. And they would all be dead.
If I weren't a human myself, I would call this human arrogance. To think that our ways are universal.

Shadowy Man

How do you know this?

But earlier you said that Lions don't have rational thought. So are they fair game as well?

Where is the line being drawn? Because there is a line being drawn. Some life forms are ok to exterminate, and some are not.

braces_for_impact

Is it not we humans that assign value to animals? How much are animal lives worth if humans weren't around? Isn't that what's being asked here?

I see no objective morality. Of course, I've never been fond of the idea anyway.

Seems subjective to me.

Sorry, philosophy isn't my strong area...come to think of it, do I have a strong area?

tronvillain

I will point out that this does not appear to be dshimel's own position.

Theli

Are you sure? He continues to argue for it.

dshimel

The point was, that using a subjective moral assertion, one can try, but will fail to prove that morality is objective.

It is not an incorrect form to say:

If A, then B.
Not B.
Therefore, Not A.


Sticking in morality and killing animals, we get:

If morality is subjective, then killing animals for food or sport may be okay.
Killing anlimals for food or sport is never okay.
Therefore, morality is not subjective. (Morality is objective.)


Clearly, the problem with this argument is not the form, but the use of a subjective assertion that killing animals for food and sport is never okay.


This is a parallel, if simplified, argument to the one going on in another thread. That proof for objective morality, in addition to redefining "objective" to allow subjective ideas in, basically follows the same reasoning. As humans here and now, we can use reason to decide morality, and thus this reasoned morality is objective. Unfortunatly, the originator of that other thread takes about 20 times as long to get to the point. All I can guess is that he assumes that the problems with the proof will be lost in the 52 tons of crap that he hid them in.

Rather that wading through the crap and dealing with the true argument, I constructed a straw man that I could easily burn. This was done for 2 reasons. To make myself feel good for burning him in ephigy, without putting in the work to do it right, and in hopes that author might see that his argument really is little more than this straw man once he gets through all his massive verbage.

The desire for objective morality is to justify why everyone should have your moral beliefs. Well, they don't, and you can't force them to. Morality is subjective, guided by the golden rule, created not discovered.

LordSnooty

I'm pretty sure that nobody would make the argument you put forward.

It doesn't even make sense.

Paul