DRFseven

Spin, having been a vegetarian and having been married to a modified vegetarian (he eats fish) for thirty years, I would be one of your best bets for a sympathetic listener, since I am vegetarian-friendly. However, a personal opinion does not an absolute make, and morals are conglomerations of personal opinions. It is not absolutely wrong to kill people, we have only agreed that it is, so by what rationale would it be wrong to kill anything else? In other words, the world only barely agrees that we are better off not killing each other; how could you ever hope to convince everyone we'd be better off not killing animals? The only reason that cows, pigs, and chickens are even here is that people like to eat them; in that sense, they're like Christmas trees on Christmas tree farms. Are you saying it's wrong to kill them, but not wrong to make them nonexistent?

Viti

hiya spin! I am afraid this thread will also end up going around in circles and cause you further frustration. I do not believe anyone will be able to satisfy your demand for justification.

When discussing moral issues, there is no objective "line in the sand" where everyone on one side has goal/belief/stance A and those on the other goal/belief/stance B. Every person has their own set of values, and may or may not feel strongly enough about any one of them to expend effort justifying it.

Some meat eaters simply don't see any moral issue at all. Animals higher in the food chain eat other animals beneath them and that's just the way it is. Raising animals specifically for food is equal to growing crops in their mind.

Others (like myself), feel we have an obligation to raise and slaughter our food animals in the most humane and least stressful way possible (and with the least impact on the environment). I demonstrate my stance on this by buying free range chicken, cage free eggs, and my meat comes from small independant farms rather than "factory" farms. I pay more for this, but that is what my personal values dictate I do.

I grew up in Colorado, I have visited numerous farms and ranches, I have seen animals slaughtered. I have also seen the impact of deer overpopulation, and can only imagine what would happen if cattle, sheep and pigs were wild animals. There are not enough natural predators left to control the situation; there is no habitat which would be suitable. These animals would then die of disease, starvation, getting hit by cars (I saw 40 deer dead one day on I-25 when part of the AFA herd tried to cross)

Someone else may feel differently...it is all subjective. You will never change your stance, and most people will not change theirs, if they felt the same way you do, they wouldn't eat meat. Was your decision to be a vegetarian based on a debate? Was it based on someone telling you "Hey, eating meat is wrong ya know"?

Not Prince Hamlet

Let's just dispense with the carnivore/cannibal comparison. It's not a very good one.

Natural selection has no problem with carnivore, but Dahmer-like cannibalism is a different story.

Man is a social animal, has prospered as such. Cannibalism directly opposes this. How can I trust my buddy to hunt with me if the moment I turn my back, he'll whack me with a rock and eat me?

Therefore, canabalism has been bred or taught out of us. Those who still do consume human flesh are pariahs, considered more horrible than a murderer, because cannibalism in an inherently more treacherous crime to permit. Everybody gets hungry sometime, and if it cannibalism were indulged, it would undermine society far more than "mere" murder.

Compare this to being a carnivore. Here, there is no such risk to society. In fact, in many ways, it helps establish a species's dominance over other species.

Therefore, this constant comparison of being a carnivore to being a cannibal is an inappropriate one, and a cheap ploy. It appeals to the ingrained emotional response most humans have about cannibalism but in way that utilizes its emotion without logic.

It's saying that George Bush lived in a house that was once owned by a child-molester. There is no implication that Bush himself was ever a child-molester, but tying the two together in the same sentence brings about an inappropriate emotional response.

Jeff

DRFseven

Might has everything to do with morality, because it determines what kinds of moral beliefs are out there for the learning. That's like saying advertising has nothing to do with which products get bought.

Aethernaut

I don't think that there is really any social moral issue involved considering evidence in the fossil record that the human diet has included meat for approximately 2.5 million years:

"The current state of knowledge regarding the diet of our prehistoric ancestors is nicely summarized in Speth [1991, p. 265]:

[S]tone tools and fossil bones--the latter commonly displaying distinctive cut-marks produced when a carcass is dismembered and stripped of edible flesh with a sharp-edged stone flake--are found together on many Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites, convincing proof that by at least 2.0 to 2.5 Ma [million years ago] before present (BP) these early hominids did in fact eat meat (Bunn 1986; Isaac and Crader 1981). In contrast, plant remains are absent or exceedingly rare on these ancient sites and their role in early hominid diet, therefore, can only be guessed on the basis of their known importance in contemporary forager diets, as well as their potential availability in Plio-Pleistocene environments (for example, see Peters et al. (1984); Sept (1984). Thus few today doubt that early hominids ate meat, and most would agree that they probably consumed far more meat than did their primate forebears. Instead, most studies nowadays focus primarily on how that meat was procured; that is, whether early hominids actively hunted animals, particularly large-bodied prey, or scavenged carcasses...

I fully concur with the view that meat was a regular and important component of early hominid diet. For this, the archaeological and taphonomic evidence is compelling."

and...

"The comments in Mann [1981, pp. 24-25] further illuminate the above:

Nevertheless, given the available archaeological evidence and what is known of the dietary patterns of living gatherer/hunters and chimpanzees, it appears unlikely to me that all early hominids were almost exclusively carnivorous or herbivorous. It is more reasonable to suggest that the diet of most early hominids fell within the broad range of today's gatherer/hunter diets, but that within the wide spectrum of this adaptation, local environmental resources and seasonal scarcity may have forced some individual populations to become more dependent on vegetable or animal-tissue foods than others.

The remarks by Mann remind us of the obvious: that early hominid diets, like hunter-gatherer diets, are a function of local flora and fauna; such diets are limited to the local food base (and to food acquired via trading)."

more...

"35,000 B.C. to 15-10,000 B.C.: The Cro-Magnons (fully modern pre-Europeans) thrive in the cold climate of Europe via big-game hunting, with meat consumption rising to as much as 50% of the diet. --Eaton and Konner 1985, "Paleolithic nutrition: a consideration of its nature and current implications." The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 312, no. 5 (Jan. 31, 1985) p. 284; Eaton, Shostak, and Konner 1988b, The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet and Exercise and a Design for Living. New York: Harper & Row. p. 71."

yet more...

"Remains of fossil humans indicate decrease in health status after the Neolithic. In most respects, the changes in diet from hunter-gatherer times to agricultural times have been almost all detrimental, although there is some evidence we'll discuss later indicating that at least some genetic adaptation to the Neolithic has begun taking place in the approximately 10,000 years since it began. With the much heavier reliance on starchy foods that became the staples of the diet, tooth decay, malnutrition, and rates of infectious disease increased dramatically over Paleolithic times, further exacerbated by crowding leading to even higher rates of communicable infections.

Skeletal remains show that height decreased by four inches* from the Late Paleolithic to the early Neolithic, brought about by poorer nutrition, and perhaps also by increased infectious disease causing growth stress, and possibly by some inbreeding in communities that were isolated. Signs of osteoporosis and anemia, which was almost non-existent in pre-Neolithic times, have been frequently noted in skeletal pathologies observed in the Neolithic peoples of the Middle East. It is known that certain kinds of osteoporosis which have been found in these skeletal remains are caused by anemia, and although the causes have not yet been determined exactly, the primary suspect is reduced levels of iron thought to have been caused by the stress of infectious disease rather than dietary deficiency, although the latter remains a possibility. --Ulijaszek, Stanley J. "Human dietary change." In: Whiten A. and Widdowson E.M. (editors/organizers), Foraging Strategies and Natural Diet of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans: Proceedings of a Royal Society Discussion Meeting held on 30 and 31 May, 1991. 1992, p. 112."

If meat truly is a natural part of the human diet I believe it really comes down to a personal moral choice of whether you want to eat it or not as opposed to a societal moral standard.

-SK (ovo-lacto vegetarian with occasional pescetarian tendencies)

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: Schroedinger's Kitten ]</p>

Pomp

spin,

It is very hard to get meat eaters to come up with anything more than an argument ultimately based on "I like the taste"

For those of us who are moral subjectvists, any moral argument will eventually resolve to a matter of taste. As tronvillain pointed out to you numerous times in the closed thread, we value the consumption of meat more than we devalue the slaughter of animals. Therefore,we eat meat.

The only other lines of approach offered were 1) that morals have no real value and are merely a reflection of public opinion,

To those of us who are moral subjectivists, morals have no "real," by which I assume you mean "inherent," value. They are the result of my taste constrained by your taste.

2) that it is just as immoral to eat plants.

I don't think anyone on the other thread (possibly Koy, I don't remember his exact stance) actually claimed that eating plants is immoral. I personally mentioned plants to demonstrate to that your choice of "consciousness" as a demarcation between things with rights and things without them was just as arbitrary as my use of "the ability to negotiate," and that your own arguments also apply to you. Perhaps you have a good reason for choosing "consciousness" as your demarcation. I don't know, because you never bothered to explain the foundation of your moral theory. Until you do, consciousness is just an arbitrary property that you assert we should care about.

I have already offered the challenge that people who eat meat of other animals are not too much different from Jeffrey Dahmer who ate meat of the human animal. This comparison was not appreciated simply because people didn't like being compared with Dahmer, and the comparison was not to any degree analysed for its appropriateness.

I analyzed this comparison for you, and so did Bill Snedden and tronvillain, among others. Dahmer valued the taste of humans more than he devalued the suffering of those humans. This was a perfectly valid reason for Dahmer to kill and eat human beings. Unfortunately for Dahmer, the rest of us disapproved highly of his actions and initiated cooercive force against him. In contractarian terms, Dahmer "cheated" on the contract but got caught, as I said in the other thread.

If anyone has a moral defence for the eating of other animals (but not our own species) I would be interested in seeing it.

I provided such a defense in the closed thread. You dismissed this defense because you apparently don't care for the moral theory upon which I based it. It's not clear what sort of defense you will accept, as you haven't yet described the moral theory to which you subscribe. As has been suggested to you time and again, it would be very helpful if you were to tell us what premises you are starting from to arrive at your conclusions.

I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm merely pointing out one reason why your position is not being accepted here.

Not Prince Hamlet

P.B.,

Yes, Spin's approach seems to be along the lines: "I don't like that argument, so I'll say it's invalid."

Jeff

spin

echoes:
-------------------
If we don't eat animals, their populations may grow too large, and cause a number of problems for the environment.
-------------------

This is an argument for cannibalism, it would seem. The only population which has seriously grown too large and caused a number of problems for the environment is the human population.

echoes:
------------------
Humans have evolved to eat meat, however not on the scale that we eat it today.
------------------

This is what I called not having any choice in the matter. You can choose, so it is not an argument.

spin

Macaclypse:
-------------------
The bottom line is that I am simply not answerable to you as to my preferences. The "argument" for eating meat rests simply on my opinion that it is not an ethical question, but merely an issue of preference.
-------------------

This is ultimately the morals have on meaning argument.

Viti

spin
Yes, we can choose, and many choose to eat meat. If you are arguing from the stance of "choice" then it comes down to opinion only. This will only lead to a circular "my opinion is better than yours" debate just like the last thread unless you wish to list your additional reasons for your choice as has been asked.

The consciousness argument is also largly a matter of opinion and the circle begins again. Do you perhaps have some other reasoning or justifications for your choice that we can discuss without simply repeating the previous thread?