physicsisphirst said:
so my point still remains that you don't need any fancy ethical theories here - just a simple understanding that you will not kill unless you have a need to.
I need a system if I'm to claim that what I'm doing is the
right thing to do.
the benefit to you presumably is that you consider killing without sufficient reason to be cruel or immoral or something like that and by not killing unnecessarily you benefit yourself by not being cruel or immoral or something like that. are we in agreement with this?
No, we are not. I don't not kill because it is of benefit for me not to kill. I simply don't do anything, at all, unless there is a good reason to do it. Okay, maybe I'll make weird facial jestures or break into song, but that's about it. This isn't about being cruel or immoral, which I thought I specified by saying that I don't even kill non-sentient beings unless I have a good reason to do so.
However, I'd like to state that you are pretty obviously trying to make this about me and what I do. That is not what is being argued here. The question is "Should we eat meat?" Not "Does Adam eat meat?" Why don't we put aside the posters personal actions and stick to what should be done and why it should be done.
if you want to consider what i have just written an ethical system, go ahead. if you don't, it doesn't matter to me, because i think you have stated your criteria fairly clearly - you will not kill unless you have a sufficient reason to (like those bugs destroying your garden or those people attacking you etc). once again, is this sufficient for us to agree on, without insisting on some formal and complex ethical system?
No, it isn't. This is sufficient for explaining my personal actions in most cases, but that's about it. It has nothing to do with the morality of the actions. I pretty explicitly stated my criteria for when I will consider killing to be wrong and when I will consider it to not be wrong in an earlier post.
i think to some extent you do. you are willing to kill bugs that destroy your garden. i think you are killing those bugs not so much for the benefit of your garden (and its "right to life"), but because you want to keep your garden.
Again, you are confusing my personal actions with what should be done. A lot of times my actions are in accordance with my personal system of ethics. Sometimes they aren't. But this is what you get when you make this a personal issue of how I do or don't behave, which is not what this should be about.
Ridding my garden of pests is not an ethical matter to me; it's a pragmatic matter. The action is amoral - it has no moral worth of any kind, either good or bad.
yes we know that you have these ingenious ways of killing humanely and you hopefully want to do away with factory farming to remove both the suffering and the ecodamage. but if we didn't eat meat we wouldn't have these problems caused by the industries in the first place, right?
Have I ever disputed this? You've presented one solution to a limited problem. You have not presented the only solution, nor have you presented your reasons this should be done, ethically speaking. Perhaps you think you have presented the best solution. Why is that?
well i don't really see why you think I'm not accepting these alternate solutions. if you want to eat meat, do as suggested by that guy in my earlier post. wait till the animal dies, then eat. make sure that there are only a few animals on small farms and you'll do the ecosystem a favor too.
At what point do you suggest we stop the ecosystem destruction? How much must we give up? Building a city disrupts an ecosystem more than any farm. Should we abandon our cities as well?
I don't ask this in jest, either. I think this is a serious question that is not being addressed by anyone in here. It seems to be implicit that vegetarianism is necessary because of the ecological benefits, but if things are necessary simply because they are of ecological benefit, should we not then do all things that fit this criterion? This would include not only giving up meat, but also giving up telecommunication, mass transit, synthetic fibers. Furthermore, it really says nothing about the eating of meat. It only speaks to factory farming that is harmful to the environment. Humans ate meat for thousands of years without doing any harm to the environment. Do you think this was the wrong thing to do? If so, then harm to the environment must not be your reason.
There is a tradeoff between conservation and human industry, necessarily. At what point is ecological integrity preserved? If I eat only one steak per week? Per month? If I eat only fish? If I investigate the operational habits of every seller that I buy from to be certain that they are doing all they can to conserve?
do you arrive at this conclusion through a process of elimination or wishful thinking?
I pretty explicitly stated the process by which I arrived at my conclusion. I do this with all of my conclusions as a matter of courtesy in posts to the philosophy forums. That is how a proper philosophical discussion is carried out.
well you haven't exactly solved the problem, you have only suggested some solutions along the lines of the killing (you really haven't dealt with the eco-issue, at least not in these recent exchanges). i have also offered a solution by which both the eco-problem and the suffering will be terminated. are your arguments against my solution essentially:
1) there are other solutions
2) there is a secret agenda to stop all killing
Did I ever say I solved the problem? Again, this is not about me and what I have or have not done. This is about what is the right thing to do and why it is the right thing to do. Perhaps in context in which I live, giving up all or at least most meat would be the right thing for me to do. But is this what you are arguing? Or are you arguing that the eating of any meat is always wrong in any context? You seem to waver back and forth from one position to the other.
i don't think you understand that we are not talking about charlotte's web here. we are talking about factory farms. if you would actually research some of this rather than spin 'logical arguments', you would see that your not having 'seen any mistreatment' is hardly something to base an opinion on.
the problem we have here is that you won't look, therefore you can avoid the reality.
I think you don't understand that this doesn't matter to this discussion. All of these links might provide perfectly fine reasons why I shouldn't be eating meat from these sources. It isn't a reason to say that eating meat itself is wrong, or even that eating meat that has been killed by humans is wrong. For all you know, I still live on a farm and only eat meat that my own family raised.
yes, yes that's fine. however, this at least answers the question i was asking - you at least grant them the "their right to be treated humanely and not be made to suffer needlessly". now, exactly on what basis do you feel that animals have a "right to be treated humanely and not be made to suffer needlessly".
Pretty much the same basis as Dan. When I suffer, it feels awfully bad to me and so I extrapolate to the conclusion that suffering in general is a bad thing and is to be avoided unless absolutely necessary (for instance, in military training or childbirth). On that basis, I will grant the right of all sentient beings to not suffer unless absolutely necessary. Of course, there is some question as to which organisms are sentient and which are not. The minimum qualifications are probably at least the structural portions of the brain identified with pain perception in humans. This qualification is met by all mammals and birds and most reptiles.
