spin

spin:
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Neither are your young children, but that won't help them, will it?
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99%
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Children are protected by their parents.
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Get the point?

spin:
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And I wouldn't hold the constitution up as you do. This was the consitution under which black Americans had almost no rights until about thirty five years ago, and under which the Native American population was decimated. So much for theories.
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99%
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Actually, the Native American population was (mostly) decimated precisely because they did not enter this contract, for unfortunate reasons.
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Here, Native American, take these disease riddled blankets. Here, Native American, take these bullets. We're offering you a contract that will benefit you, while we steal the land you live on and your heritage.

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: spin ]</p>

spin

spin:
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I have categorized all the "attempts" at a defence as "I like it and I can" or "I can't help it".
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Bill Sneddon:
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Human consciousness is specifically and materially different from non-human animal consciousness. There is no evidence of which I'm aware that supports the idea that any non-human animal can engage in the type of abstract reasoning necessary to develop complex ethical systems.
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OK, you're right, this is a third and related to PB's contract usage: ie I can cook the books so that I can exclude those I want to eat. This is the approach that ruling governments take when they rearrange electoral boundaries in their own favours. There is nothing I can see which is moral in doing so.

Bill Sneddon:
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Therefore, animals have no conception of ethics or morality and such concepts are moot when applied directly to them.
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That permits you to eat your children.

Bill Sneddon:
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Animals have no conception of "murder" or "cannibalism". Lions don't murder gazelles. If a non-human animal were even capable of conceiving its place in the "food chain", it would still have no conception of the rightness or wrongness of any actions taken by the other animals above or below it.
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As you can conceive, you are not bound by it.

Bill Sneddon:
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Animals, therefore, lack what I would call a "right of self-determination" simply because they do not possess the ability to conceive it.
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Societies usually protect those within the society who fit into these criteria.

Bill Sneddon:
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Humans, on the other hand, do possess this ability and ethical systems created by humans will therefore acknowledge it.
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Some do.

Bill Sneddon:
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In other words, there are specific and material differences between human and non-human animals that allow us to make ethical differentiation between the two. These differentiations are obviously not based on preference, or desire, nor are they "arbitrary" as you like to claim. They are matters of objective fact and therefore cannot be other than as they are.
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Having control of where one places the goal posts puts the situation in the hands of the goal post controller and their whims. This is obviously arbitrary.

spin:
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There was one exception, which was an attempt to abuse contract theory which I realise is something you seem to support in some sort of way. Yet, as I pointed out in the last thread, the attempt was based on form and not spirit. Whereas the people who formulated the approach were attempting to include and defend the most possible, the user of the idea was simply attempting to exclude. I see this as a misapplication of the reasoning behind the development.
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Bill Sneddon:
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And, as I and PB have pointed out repeatedly, your assessment and understanding of contract theory is simply wrong. I will reprint here again, the objective facts that you have so far seen fit to ignore.
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As I said to bypass the speciousness of this sort of comment, as you don't live in the conditions of those who first formulated this notion (and it goes back to Plato as well), it is irrelevant to you. Do you have a local society for the prevention of cruelty to animals? Was there such a thing in the time of Hobbes or Locke?

Bill Sneddon:
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1) Read Hobbes, Locke, & Rousseau. You will find no mention of animals.
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God, Bill, when were Hobbes, Kocke and Rousseau writing and what were the conditions. Slavery was rife in England and the social conditions were getting so bad in France that a popularist revolution was necessary. How do you expect people in such conditions to have the perception of the problems of animals when they were treating each other so badly?

Bill Sneddon:
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You will find a great deal of mention of Man and his rational facilities. You will find mention of what a "contract" is and what it isn't. You will find mention of how "rights" are explicitly formalized and guaranteed via contract and not by any other method. You will see that their true aim was to develop an ethical/political system in which individual citizens (that would be humans) could be ensured of the protection of their freedoms without having to surrender to tyranny.
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In our day and age when we are attempting to protect those who cannot protect themselves, what you are on about is using models for an idea that is not appropriate for today, while it was for the era in which they were developed. This should not be so difficult to understand.

Bill Sneddon:
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2) Read Rawls, Gauthier and their critics. You will find them defending essentially the same ideas that Hobbes, Locke, & Rousseau developed. Again, non-human animals are not part of the construct. In fact, one of the major criticisms of contractarian ethics is that it excludes those who are unable to enter into contracts. I suppose that might even include non-human animals.
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If you hadn't noticed before you went through this the previous three times it has been precisely this which I have been talking about.

Bill Sneddon:
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The point, of course, is that PB and I are not distorting this theory. It explicitly excludes, and was designed to exclude, those who are unable to contract. Non-human animals are unable to enter into contracts and are thus excluded from this theory.
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What I have said to you was that you are not distorting the theory (and let me add, in your slavish application), you are missing the intent of protection. And you will support the protection of beings unable to enter into the contract despite the fact that the contract doesn't cover them.

Bill Sneddon:
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Your desire to somehow expand the theory to cover animals can only be understood as a criticism or attack upon the theory. In no way does your line of thinking represent contractarian ethics.
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I have never said anything about expanding the theory. I have talked about people wishing to apply it inappropriately with the sole intent of excluding animals. As I have said this so often to those propounding the application of the theory, all I can assume is that they are not even prepared to look at what is being said to them. The only comment in response to me on the subject has been, I ignore the conditions of development of the theory and the moral intent of the writers to increase the quality of life of more beings, I will apply a variety of the old contract anyway.

Bill Sneddon:
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The very name illustrates your error: Contractarian Ethics. Non-human animals cannot enter into contracts. They lack the necessary reasoning abilities. They are therefore, by design, excluded.
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So do your children. So do the insane. So do those in coma. Yet you do not exclude them. You are persistent in your arbitrariness.

Bill Sneddon:
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Your claim that PB & I are somehow distorting this theory is therefore objectively disproven. Q.E.D.


quote:
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Originally posted by spin:
So, please decide what to do with your red face.
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Bill Sneddon:
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The red face is an indication of displeasure. Your obfuscatory approach is not appreciated.
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Obfuscation, Bill? What has been the content of your last few posts, if not an obfuscation of a present situation by projecting a past, no longer appropriate, solution onto it, especially when you yourself do not adhere to it? Or do you make arbitrary exceptions for your children, your insane, and your coma victims?

Unless you can make a qualitative improvement on your ad hoc use of contract theory with the intent to exclude those who cannot protect themselves from contract members, I see no reason to respond to this argument yet again.

This approach is in the end a variety of the first inacceptable response I mentioned: "I like meat and I can (by rigging my own morality to allow me to)."

Bill Sneddon:
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You repeatedly ask for serious arguments and upon receiving them repeatedly, ignore them completely, or mangle your reponses to them so utterly as to make us all wonder if in fact you are interested in discussion at all.
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It is a common response by those who don't like what they receive as a reply to their arguments to claim that their arguments are being completely ignored. You can do better than that, I would hope.

spin

Jeff:
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You can reply to this if you want, but I'll likely only skim it at best.
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My sentiments exactly.

spin

-----------
Spinmeister
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"spin-docteur" if you please.

spin

--------------------
Amazingly enough, I enjoy this thread more just reading the responses.
--------------------

Thanks, Malaclypse, for reducing the noise factor!

spin

My basic position is that the eating of meat is institutionalised, just as religion is, just as the adversarial legal system, and the totally inefficient and discriminatory education system. I have asked for a moral defence of eating meat. The sorts of responses received I have categorized as:

1) "I like it and I can" which includes a vocal variant, "and I can cook the situation so I can" euphemistically called "contract theory". The cooking the books to exclude other animals is strictly analogous to cooking the books to exclude people who were not born here, or who are not white, or who believe something other than you. It all depends on who writes the contract. The people who wrote the American constitution attempted to be as inclusive as possible. It has still needed a bill of rights and several amendments.

2) "I can't help it", humans are omnivores etc. A variety of this argument is that vegetarianism leads to unhealthiness, which this vegetarian knows from experience is unfounded. The basic argument is a denial of the fact that a human can choose and is, due to the expanded capacity of its brain, freer to adapt to situations than any other animal; and it is this ability to adapt that has categorized its survival: dominance of the world at the cost of most other animals (destroying the habitats, causing extinction, domesticating animals for the sole intent of producing meat -- and thus denying the very substance of the animal's existence).

I personally think this is shameful, arrogant, thoughtless and simply destructive.

I have proffered a very simple idea of morals for those who have asked: morality involves the protection and benefit of the most possible lives; where this is not possible, morality involves reducing the resultant damage to a minimum.

This is the criterion with which I judge the attempts at a moral defence of eating meat. I have found all attempts deficient. However, one needn't agree to the moral standard I use. If not, one needs to provide a coherent alternative moral standard. The two alternatives that I have noticed voiced are:

1) I myself am my moral standard (moral subjectivism, I guess also the standard of Jeffrey Dahmer); and

2) The society is my moral standard (while ignoring societies like most European ones of previous centuries in which the Jews lived; the American society of earlier centuries which condoned slavery and the extermination of most of the Native American culture).

I have compared the eating of other animals to Jeffrey Dahmer (and other cannibals) eating human animals, which has mainly caused the weak stomached reader not to consider the comparison to see whether it is valid or not. Some have attempted to argue through moral standard #2 above that the comparison is inappropriate, to which I have responded as I have to #2 above and demonstrated that there have been societies which have specifically condoned cannibalism, mentioning some from Papua-Niugini known from early last century and examples from the Maori societies of the time of the English navigator James Cook.

So, if people do not object to my moral standard, they will appreciate that I haven't seen a moral defence of eating meat. If they don't, they can happily ignore my comments and accept the alternatives offered.

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: spin ]</p>

Vorkosigan

1) I myself am my moral standard (moral subjectivism, I guess also the standard of Jeffrey Dahmer);

Spin, all morals are relative. It's just that some of us don't have any problem in recognizing that fact.

Where do your "absolute" morals come from?

As for Dahmer, his problem was a sickness, not morals.

<a href="http://www.apbonline.com/media/gfiles/dahmer/dahmer0814.html?s=pb_dahmer" target="_blank">http://www.apbonline.com/media/gfiles/dahmer/dahmer0814.html?s=pb_dahmer</a>
"In the end, after he'd been caught and sent to prison, Dahmer did express remorse at what he'd done. He said he always knew what he was doing was wrong, but that he couldn't stop himself."

Spin, you've managed to offend everyone in every thread you've posted. Maybe there's a clue in there somewhere, eh?

Michael

Alonzo Fyfe

Earlier in this debate I posted the argument that if it is wrong to eat meat then we must do away with all of the carnivores.

The only response I have found to this objected on the grounds that the carnivores do not have the capacity to choose.

However, the fact that a being does not have the capacity to choose not to do evil does not imply that we should choose to let the being continue to do it.

A human who, through mental defect, did not have the capacity to choose not to kill would not be given free reign to do so on these grounds. Nor should any animal.

So, I say say again, if it is wrong to eat meat, then we must get rid of all of the carnivores.

Bree

Spin -

I posted on page 2 of this thread (about halfway down) and you have not yet responded.

I assume that I have the ONLY "real reason" for eating meat - correct?

Aethernaut

I really don't think that anyone on this thread needs a moral defense for eating meat as there is nothing morally wrong with eating meat that is not subjective.

Again, if one feels that eating meat is morally reprehensible then don't eat it but it is far from being a widely accepted societal moral.

-SK

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: Schroedinger's Kitten ]</p>