Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Unseen on July 13, 2012 at 12:18pm

Well, any argument based on the notion that an opinion or attitude is unexaminable and assumed to be true falls flat on its face right there.

Your argument is only for those who don't want to examine whether that assumption is also a fact and until you deal with that it is on a par with all other assumptions.

Here's just one problem you have:

If I'm attacked by a bear, and I have a powerful gun with me, your arguments say it would be morally wrong to defend myself.

After I kill the bear, your arguments imply that I must waste it's flesh and not eat the bear.

This fishy prima facie-ness of yours is a bit too strong to pass the most basic test of practicality.

BTW, what's your stand on keeping a pet? It's slavery according to your worldview, isn't it? Even if you treat the animal well and even if it seems to enjoy being a pet, it really deserves to have the life nature intended out in the wild.

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Permalink Reply by John Major on July 13, 2012 at 2:02pm

i covered your bear issue. I mentioned self defence. As I said above, eating the meat of an animal killed in self defence is not morally wrong.

I think a lot of people, though not you, would assume causing harm is prima facie wrong. It's linked to compassion, to recognising the evolutionary thrust to survive. I'm not sure how you support your ethical position on a subject and not include an opinion. I know you believe ethics are subjective, isn't opinion implicit?

Surely we all make lots of assumptions when forming ethics? Don't we assume others feel as we do, react like we do. This is all assumption, probably a good assumption, but something beyond proof.

It is a practical argument, one believed and put into practice by many who share an ethical objection to eating meat.

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on July 13, 2012 at 4:54pm

I assume some things. I assume my senses aren't deceiving me, at least most of the time, that my belief I'm a male human living on the shore of Lake Erie in Ohio is a fact, that my hair won't grow back, that I know what blue is, etc. But those are all beliefs and thus are not facts. I can't build an argument on them and build to a conclusion that is anything but tentative and opinion-based.

However, if you want to build an ethical system, it needs to be right or it can't lay much of a claim to being ethical.

BTW, you didn't affirm that pet ownership is slavery.

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Permalink Reply by John Major on July 14, 2012 at 4:14am

Are you saying that you don't make assumptions about the interests of others when coming to an ethical position? You can't prove your ethics are true any more than I can. Any time you form an ethical response involving another, you make assumptions, just like me.

"However, if you want to build an ethical system, it needs to be right or it can't lay much of a claim to being ethical."

How can you prove any ethical system to be right, when it's just subjective, just your opinion. You do believe ethics are relative and subjective, right?

I know you like to pick fringe issues to confuse matters. Pet slavery. Don't understand the term?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery 

If I felt inclined to discuss pet ownership, I would consider whether it involves unnecessary harm/suffering. I would consider the interests of the pet because it can feel pain and suffer. I would also consider the interests of the pet owner, again on the criteria unnecessary harm suffering/ promotion of happiness and well-being.

This mayhelp you.

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on July 14, 2012 at 9:11am

Are you saying that you don't make assumptions about the interests of others when coming to an ethical position? You can't prove your ethics are true any more than I can. Any time you form an ethical response involving another, you make assumptions, just like me.

Of course, I simply am not making a claim to universality. I don't claim to make choices for others.

"However, if you want to build an ethical system, it needs to be right or it can't lay much of a claim to being ethical."

How can you prove any ethical system to be right, when it's just subjective, just your opinion. You do believe ethics are relative and subjective, right?

To be an ethical system that determines what's right not just for you but for others, it needs to be based on facts, not attitudes. I can't see how such a system is possible. The upshot is to stick to deciding what to do for yourself and don't preach to others based on a very iffy "system."

I know you like to pick fringe issues to confuse matters. Pet slavery. Don't understand the term?

"Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work."

If one substitutes animals for people in the above definition (from the source you gave) then clearly keeping pets is both kidnapping and slavery. A pet is property and is used for the entertainment and companionship of the owner. In the same way that you guess that animals don't want to be subjected to unnecessary pain and suffering, what is necessary about a cat or dog or parrot being used in this way? Set them free!

If you truly believe that animals need to be considered in terms of pain and suffering and that they need to be allowed to enjoy the pleasures of a full life without interference from humans, it would seem to make keeping pets a form of animal slavery. Instead of letting your dog, cat, or parrot live the life of its wild peers, one co-opts its life in order to entertain a human. Sounds like a form of animal slavery to me. If someone did that to you, you wouldn't consider it harm.

How weird!

It's just a matter of working out all the additional consequences of what you base your vegetarianism on. This is a standard way of critiquing proposed systems of all kinds. When some of the consequences seem reasonable but other clearly seem wrong, there is a good reason not to adopt the system.

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Permalink Reply by John Major on July 14, 2012 at 11:37am

Well I am not claiming to make choices for others either. I explained the basis for my ethical position and gave my reasons, making assumptions like you do but showing a logical rationale.

You call it preaching, I don't see it like that at all. No one has a gun to anyone's head, demanding they read anything I write. But I think I have a right to argue my position. Not unlike those who opposed slavery in the recent past.

I know you see no merit for my opinion, perhaps contempt. But what I think I have is an alternative to religious morals, something that I have given thought to and am prepared to try to be consistent about even where it goes against my own self,interest. 'Bully for you' I hear you say, but I'm not trying to impress you.

Pets as slaves. Not sure pet dogs have a place in the wild. Caging birds seems to cause unnecessary suffering to me. Cats, not sure they miss out on a natural life. Other animals would not I think suffer the injustice of captivity as would a funtional human being.

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Permalink Reply by John Kelly on July 13, 2012 at 1:32pm

John Major, I think it isn't as much compassion that drives #2, as it is the avoidance of what Tooley-Singer call specieism.  It seems you say "It would be wrong to eat another human, on account of not wanting to be specieist, it should also be wrong to eat another animal.

But I would argue that the research done by Haidt and others show that disgust is tied to what is bad for the health and survival of a person and the person's species.  It wouldn't be related to compassion but rather survival.

That having it be wrong to eat another human is tied to survival, seeing humans as a food source would be bad.  I think it also matters how sentient of a creature we are talking in relation to compassion.  You don't want to eat something that triggers your "humans are not safe to eat disgust mechanism". Mixing the tooley-singer philosophy in with the natural "don't eat your own species" mechanism, is a bit of a mistake.  It is an unnatural forced-over application of something that isn't intended to serve that purpose.

That is why eating Unseen's bear wouldn't be wrong.  But eating an alien would be, because there are more factors involved there.

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Permalink Reply by John Major on July 13, 2012 at 3:17pm

John Kelly. What I'm saying is that we treat other humans ethically, not on the basis of their uniformity, but on the basis of their capacity to feel pain and suffer. We wouldn't discriminate amongst humans on the basis of colour, sex, intelligence, height, weight, whatever. These are arbitrary measures. But, given the huge variance within the species, it would (and has) been possible to do so.

So, rather than pretend we are all the same and use that as a basis for fair or equal treatment, we recognise in others the capacity we know we have, that is to feel pain and us suffer. This is the basis of the Golden Rule that many atheists espouse, we know what we don't like, so owe don't do it to others.

But, once we recognise pain and suffering as a basis for ethical consideration, the question arises, why limit it to our own species? Just like humans have interests that require consideration from an ethical standpoint, based on a capacity to suffer and feel pain, so too do other animals.

We can't pluck arbitrary distinctions from the air to suit our own species (intelligence is a favourite) since we have already conceded this is not a sound basis for ethical consideration. Accepting consistency is a foundation of good ethics, those non human animals that are sentient similarly deserve to have their interests recognised.

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