Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Huh!? It's about the predator/prey relationship Draqon..
And about how over-analyzing can put you on the wrong track.
Is eating meat morally wrong
- Thread starter Theoryofrelativity
- Start date
Huh!? It's about the predator/prey relationship Draqon..
And about how over-analyzing can put you on the wrong track.
you see that antilope? its a representation of beauty and how women always picture themselves...separate of species means separate of sex in this case. The huge distressed lion is representation of a husband or a male...and the doctor (a human) has made the lion overanalyze himself and come to a conclusion that all men are evil and are just not worthy to live. Basically the conclusion of this "comic" is that all men are evil. And I immedeatly picture a fat dude sitting on a sofa eating chips and drinking beer while watching a soap opera and his beautifull BMI 8 wife comes on from work just now...
sexist...sexist...sexist
YES over-analyzing is wrong...but the idea behind this is also wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?vi...sToPDskKv2a-iFhqVLcyFYEtb_r95&&rel=1&border=0
wait...did I just over-analyzed this over-analyzed' is wrong themed cartoon?:bugeye:
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Which people are those, i dont think ive ever heard anyone express such a view.
I dont kill insects, or at least never knowingly do so, does that make me a hardliner mentalist?
There are people like that. They are some of the more extreme examples, but that is what we are talking about right? extremes? same for the pet marrying....it happens
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=61f_1195059149
If you constantly make an effort to never kill a bug, then wherever you live must be hospital clean and sanitized. let me tell ya..I see an ant or spider in my place..*squish*
I'd be more disturbed by it if it was two lions sitting on the couch....
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
It's not about men and women. But even if it was, the cartoon is meant to mock they very thing you think it concludes.
heliocentric
Registered Senior Member
Whats the point youre trying to make though - extremism is inherently evil/perverse/suspicious?
I really have no idea what statement youre trying to make here.
I dont have to make any effort, i just try to watch where im going and leave what ever it is thats crawling about to its own devices (or) i just take it out-side.
*swoon*
James R said:
Take all the time you need, James. I'm a bit like you in the sense that much of the current discussion is rehash. Additionally, I'm aware that a lot of our disagreement hinges on interpretive differences. For the most part, I'm just sticking myself into this phase of the discussion as a pace car.
It's kind of like at the Sasquatch Festival when my brother started throwing hard change at people for no real reason. Okay, he was drunk, but I don't wish to carry over that part of the analogy. Or perhaps that's important, because he's usually the one restraining my behavior when we drink together. You know, the whole, "Calm down, dude, you're attracting attention," bit. And then here he goes winging quarters at people. Point: it is statistically highly unusual to see him behaving like that. I was telling one of my friends about it, and in the years we've all known each other and consumed fair amounts of booze &c. together, he's never seen anything like it. I told my brother's college buddy about it, and while he saw some strange behavior then, he'd never seen anything so obnoxious as throwing coins at people. And these weren't soft tosses. These were hard arcs and fastballs.
And that was funny. It really was. In part because I'm at least slightly antisocial. But I also knew that kind of thing wouldn't hold. I felt lucky to get through the evening without getting into a fight with one or another of the targets.
But this, man ... you really aren't presenting yourself as open to much. Like our zealously religious neighbors, about all you're open to is hearing what you want to hear. It's not exactly funny, and while it certainly isn't zinging people with small metal discs, it is a bit of a spectacle from one who generally maintains strict demands for and adherence to rational processes and arguments.
Obviously, it's important to you; it seems religiously important, according to your behavior.
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My permission is not required; what you choose to respond to is your purview. Notice that I never ask for permission to ignore you. Not that there can be any doubt that this disclaimer is a cheap attack tactic, but hey...
No, don't be silly.
Maybe some other time. Even if I hadn't decided ahead of time to stonewall you, this line of questioning is argumentative and, anyway, yet another attempt to get me to play on your terms. When will you accept that I'm not going to do that?
Funny, you didn't aknowledge any difference between the two categories of thinking people in the assertion I was replying to. I do see a pattern emerging in our interaction, however: you make a bald assertion, and I reply with a counter-assertion and add a zinger to the end. You respond by complaining that my assertion was unsupported, and pretending to be indignant about the zinger. I point out how this makes you look, and then you start all over again. Do you perceive yourself to be making progress?
And I've already rejecting this (unsupported) assertion. Why do you think repeating it will convince anyone of anything?
Ah, more unsupported assertions and personal attacks designed to bait me into playing your game. How many times do I have to explicitly tell you I'm not going to fall for this before you give up? I know my own thoughts, and am unconcerned if you want to misrepresent them. I've told you repeatedly that I don't care what you think of me, and your tone and tactics are such that I have little concern of someone I do respect taking your accusations to heart. Baiting tactics simply are not going to work.
More old than big. But the reason for invoking them is not derived from my ego: it just so happens that they're the only demographic where your approach to this issue is taken seriously. For my part, I tend to view all undergraduates with roughly equal disdain.
Didn't we just go over this? I'm willing and able to discuss various facets of your behavior, personality and approach in this thread, and so that's what I'm doing. If you're not interested in this, the easy solution is to ignore me, as I suggested previously. Insisting that I either play on your terms or leave is not going to get you anywhere.
Well, not anywhere that you'd like to go, anyway...
Indeed, I had a rather excellent cheeseburger for lunch earlier today...
That's correct.
My crowing has been about your pathology, not my diet (a couple of incidental comments aside). I was perfectly content to watch this thread play out on its own about 10-20 pages back, when it was you and Tiassa (and others) exhaustively covering the various arguments that can be advanced on the topic. At some point, however, it became apparent that you are not content with presenting the best case you can come up with, and allowing others to do the same, and you degenerated into the sort of zealous, absolutist behavior I (and others) have been complaining about.
Mmm, this is a pretty concise encapsulation of the pathology in question. As I asserted at my entry into this thread, it seems to me that people are reacting to your behavior, not the other way around. Even if someone else "started it," doesn't your status make it incumbent on you to be the bigger man, and also consider the effects on the overall tone and quality of the discourse? But, no, you're more interested in calling people stupid, lazy, baby-raping monsters, while claiming the sanction of logic and reason.
They're not so much my cheer-squad as people who were browbeaten and calumnied by you in this thread. While you certainly don't intimidate me, you are very much in attack-dog mode, and are not entirely ineffective at it. And as far as public support goes, you seem to be ignoring certain posts in this very thread. Even apart from explicit congratulations directed at me, there's plenty of other posters agreeing with my basic stance.
Yes. Do you?
Decidable is not the same thing as provable. Any results you come to will still depend on unproven axioms, and any consistent moral system is necessarily incomplete anyway. For that matter, it would be no problem to come up with a consistent set of moral principles that would approve of any number of heinous actions. This doesn't mean that those heinous actions are actually moral; it just means the moral system used to arrive at them was poorly chosen. But here's the thing: the selection of a moral system is an *aesthetic* (as opposed to logical or scientific) matter. You do it by trying to choose a small number of clean-looking axioms that manage to encapsulate as many true moral statements as possible, without producing any immoral outcomes. The crucial point here being that the moral truths are known *before* the formal system is selected, and are a part of the aesthetic process. Logic does not tell us what is or isn't moral; we have to have a pretty good idea of that in order to produce a logical system of ethics in the first place. To put it concretely: we don't need the law to tell us that murder is immoral. We need it to help us figure out exactly what counts as murder, exactly how immoral it is, and how it relates to other moral considerations. And the corollary: one need not have a well-developed formal system of morality in place to know that an action is right or wrong. In fact, it's very much the other way around.
You seem to harbor the confused notion that the use of logic and reasoning places your moral judgements on some unassailable level, as though it is simply a facet of objective reality. What other explanation is there for your apparent belief that opposing positions, no matter how well argued, are wrong in some objective sense? I.e., the insistence that anyone who disagrees with you either hasn't thought about it, isn't smart enough to get the 'right' answer, or is simply evil (i.e., not interested in morality). This is an extremely serious fallacy. Logic and reasoning are great tools for encapsulting certain amounts of truth, and refining our understanding of it. But they are incapable of telling us anything other than the consequences of our assumptions. And the selection of assumptions is necessarily a question of aesthetics. And faith, for that matter.
You are, of course, ignoring the point. Which is that, by maintaining that a huge percentage of the human population are immoral, and so either lazy, stupid or evil, you reveal a serious aesthetic flaw in your theory of morality. To accept your position, one has to be willing to accept the idea that the overwhelming majority of people are stupid, lazy and/or evil.
Again, the fallacy rears its ugly head. Not coming to the same conclusions as you does not imply being unprincipled. Furthermore, not having a principled explanation for your position is not the same as not caring or knowing about morality. Here is what a correct version of your complaint would look like:
"All you've established is that 90% of the population of the US either can't or won't justify their actions with reference to moral principles in a way that James R will accept. They are happy to go right on doing what they are doing, regardless of whether James R agrees that they are in fact acting morally or immorally."
Hopefully that illuminates where you've gone astray in your rhetoric.
The requirement of consistency of relativism is a red herring. Just because relativism applies to one issue does not mean that it applies everywhere. Some aesthetic judgements are more controversial than others, and reasonable people have no trouble adjusting to this reality.
I say tomato, you say tomahto.
30-odd pages of "discussion" says otherwise.
Nonsense. A moral philosopher ought always to be able to justify his or her positions according to some logically defensible moral principle. But moral humans don't have to invoke reason or logic to know right from wrong. The reasoning and logic part of it only comes into the picture when people need to resolve conflicts in their perception of morality, or seek to convince others of the righteousness of their position.
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Bells
Staff member
I doubt I am a monster because I happen to eat meat. My children are little monsters, but not because they eat meat.
On this issue, I do not view it as a moral prerogative anymore. I see it as something that is necessary to my wellbeing, as well as my children's. I had been a vegetarian (due to the moral issues of eating meat) for a while and the result? I suffered and still do suffer from iron deficient anemia. It became worse when I realised I was pregnant with my first child. My child had basically leeched everything from my body and the diet I was on was simply not able to keep up. I then found out I was running the risk of harming him and myself. Sadly, it appeared my body had a severe aversion to beef, during my pregnancy (couldn't even smell it without throwing up), so I found myself being force fed lamb and other meats to attempt to beef up my iron levels (no pun intended) as well as consuming copious amounts of iron tablets.. as well as iron injections, accompanied by vast quantities of spinach and legumes. After the baby was born, I was forced to undergo about 4 blood transfusions, none of which took. There was no question about it for me then. I either adhere to the morality of not eating meat or I ran the risk of harming my unborn child, as well as myself. I'm sorry, but I consider my child more important.
I am still suffering from anemia, as the lack of iron in my diet just prior to falling pregnant and during the start of my pregnancy depleted my iron stores to virtually zero. I made my choices then that being a vegetarian was not good for my health or my children's health. And as a breastfeeding mother, I can assure you, I will not even consider taking such a risk again. Nor would I after I stop breastfeeding. Iron pills, injections and infusions, as much fun as they all are, just are not enough. To this day, just the smell of a vitamin C tablet makes me gag (I had to have a tonne of those as well). And I honestly could not even begin to consume the sheer volume of iron rich vegetables and legumes to restore and replenish what I had lost. While legumes and some vegetables are good sources of iron, they are also less easily absorbed by the body. The iron from meat however, is absorbed much easier by the human body.
I do not consider a dancing actor with butchers as his back up dancers as being the force in my decision to eat meat and to feed it to my children. I may be an idiot James, but I am not that much of an idiot.
Their diet was a lot more balanced than the Western diet of today. However, we still need to recognise that meat was an essential component of their diet, development and evolution.
Because we have the recognition that killing is bad? I am sure they too viewed unnecessary killing as being bad. Animals do. But killing for food was necessary and it provided a vital food source. As it does today.
So we virtually have two choices. Deny our bodies of the nutrients we need to survive and develop, or adhere to a moral principle that killing an animal for food wrong. You have chosen to follow your moral principles and I have chosen to eat a deceased carcass. My choices are my own. As immoral as they might be, it is the best way for me to maintain the nutritional balance I need. It also ensures my children are getting the nutrients they need to develop and grow. And that, I can assure you, is my moral foundation for consuming meat. You might not agree, but that is fine. I promise you, I will never try to force you to eat a steak.
So do we all stop eating meat and then kill the extra live stock so they stop polluting the environment with their excessive amounts of gas?
I am sorry. I should have been a bit more succinct. I meant the proteins, minerals and other nutrients found in meat are essential to a child's physiological development and physical growth. Zinc is one. Iron is another.. and iron from red meat is more easily absorbed by the body.
I had posted this link before:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21planck.html?ex=1337400000&en=3287884b913bd4bc&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
http://www.dairycouncilofca.org/PDFs/ascd.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/nutrition/nutrition_for_everyone/iron_deficiency/
Now my children eat a whole balanced diet, vegetables (including green leafy vegetables and beans and legumes, , etc with a hell of a lot of difficulty and coaxing) as well as meat to make sure they get the recommended amounts of iron and zinc, as well as the essential vitamins they need. And a strict vegan diet would not.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/T0562E/T0562E05.htm
I could ply my children with pills to make sure they get the nutrients that are essential to their development, but I prefer not to. Supplements can also have adverse affects and I feel a balanced diet, including all the food groups, as being more beneficial than popping pills to meet the nutritional demands of our bodies. To each their own James.
My own experiences and knowing what my children do and do not eat, and what they can and cannot eat tells me it is essential. I too know many people who became vegetarians from an early age. Some of them are healthy and some of them are not. I have a 2 year old and a nearly 8 month old. As it stands, they need the nutrients from all food groups to ensure their development stays on course.
No offence James, but sanctimonious guilt trips do not work on me. Having strict Catholics for parents made sure of that.
I could feed my children supplements or I could kill hundreds of animals for them to eat. I choose to kill the animals. Not only do supplements not always work, but they should not form the nutritional basis for my children's essential nutrients, nor for myself. You might view plying my children as a "mild inconvenience", but to me it is a major inconvenience and also has added risks involved. A strict vegan diet would not be beneficial to my children, or to myself. So yes. I will eat the embryo's of chickens, as well as drink and eat dairy products. I will also feed them to my children. I will also eat meat and feed them to my children. Am I immoral in doing so? Maybe yes. But my number one priority is to ensure my children's health and wellbeing, also to ensure they receive the vital nutrients needed for their development and growth, as well as my own wellbeing. You may not think my children need to eat meat, and that is all well and good for you. But for me, with past experiences and the current effects of the past still haunting me, I'd rather they eat a balanced diet, including meat. When they grow up and are old enough to decide for themselves, they can become vegans or vegetarians. I'd rather not take the risk and do everything I can to make sure they reach the potential to make such a decision for themselves.
Refer to above.
I've been down the vegetarian road James, for the very reasons you are arguing for. Not only did it make me sick then, I am still trying to recover from it today. If being a vegan works for you morally and nutritionally, then that is great for you. But it is not something that works for everyone James. And demands that I somehow justify my eating habits to you is, in my opinion, silly and unjustified.
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quadraphonics:
Excuse me if I skip to the more interesting parts of your post and ignore some more of the personal bullshit.
This piece of rhetoric just makes you look stupid. You need to go away and study some moral philosophy.
I get the impression you view everybody with roughly equal disdain.
Of course you read it that way. But you have a bias and a chip on your shoulder, don't you?
I do not agree that the process is an aesthetic one. That is the position of the relativist, and I am not a relativist.
So your position is basically that everybody has an innate sense of right and wrong, and moral philosophy has no useful role to play in helping us to decide right from wrong. You say that we construct moral philosophy to match our innate sense.
One problem with this is that there can be no meaningful answer to the question "Why is action X wrong?" or "Why is it good to do Y?". You only answer to those questions is: "X just feels wrong to me." and "Y seems like a good thing to me."
A logical and consistent moral system is demonstrably superior in terms of outcomes than the one based on individual "aesthetic" choice that you advocate. For a start, it can be used to convince others of the rightness or wrongness of positions, in a way that "I feel that X is wrong" never will.
I disagree. The foundations of human morality are demonstrably cross-cultural. If assumptions were merely a matter of aesthetics, then we would expect to see different aesthetics in different cultures. And yet, when it comes to matters as basic as human rights there is almost universal agreement.
When the majority of people supported human slavery, were they stupid, lazy and/or evil, or would you say they just chose a different aesthetic?
Taking your view, that you can't actually conclude that human slavery is right or wrong, per se. The best you can do is say how a particular group of people in a particular time and place regard it.
It does if I can be shown to be principled. I do not share your relativism, as I said.
No. Any good moral system ought to be self-consistent.
I don't dispute that people have gut feelings. I just don't believe, as you do, that gut feelings make for a good moral system.
Excuse me if I skip to the more interesting parts of your post and ignore some more of the personal bullshit.
This piece of rhetoric just makes you look stupid. You need to go away and study some moral philosophy.
I get the impression you view everybody with roughly equal disdain.
Of course you read it that way. But you have a bias and a chip on your shoulder, don't you?
I do not agree that the process is an aesthetic one. That is the position of the relativist, and I am not a relativist.
So your position is basically that everybody has an innate sense of right and wrong, and moral philosophy has no useful role to play in helping us to decide right from wrong. You say that we construct moral philosophy to match our innate sense.
One problem with this is that there can be no meaningful answer to the question "Why is action X wrong?" or "Why is it good to do Y?". You only answer to those questions is: "X just feels wrong to me." and "Y seems like a good thing to me."
A logical and consistent moral system is demonstrably superior in terms of outcomes than the one based on individual "aesthetic" choice that you advocate. For a start, it can be used to convince others of the rightness or wrongness of positions, in a way that "I feel that X is wrong" never will.
I disagree. The foundations of human morality are demonstrably cross-cultural. If assumptions were merely a matter of aesthetics, then we would expect to see different aesthetics in different cultures. And yet, when it comes to matters as basic as human rights there is almost universal agreement.
When the majority of people supported human slavery, were they stupid, lazy and/or evil, or would you say they just chose a different aesthetic?
Taking your view, that you can't actually conclude that human slavery is right or wrong, per se. The best you can do is say how a particular group of people in a particular time and place regard it.
It does if I can be shown to be principled. I do not share your relativism, as I said.
No. Any good moral system ought to be self-consistent.
I don't dispute that people have gut feelings. I just don't believe, as you do, that gut feelings make for a good moral system.
Bells:
Notice that I didn't say you're a monster if you eat meat. I said that you're a monster if you eat meat and cannot justify doing so according to some logically defensible moral principle. In fact, it's probably not quite as bad as that. What would be worst of all is if you ate meat and didn't even feel a need to justify or explain your actions.
You're obviously not a monster, since you honestly believe that you and your children need to eat meat to survive. My only problem is that I'm not convinced that your belief is justified.
It seems to me that special circumstances apply to you that do not apply to most of the population. You suffer from anemia; most people do not. Most people do not develop anemia if they become vegetarian. This may put you in a special category.
I could argue about the "essential". I've already agreed that it was probably important. But my following point still stands:
This is where we disagree. I do not think that killing the huge numbers of animals we kill every year is necessary; nor do I agree that the food source it provides is "vital". It certainly is not vital for me, for example. I'm just fine.
I wonder, though, how much meat you eat (and the same goes for the other meat eaters in this thread). How often do you eat meat? 5 times per week? Every evening meal? Breakfast, lunch and dinner? Or what?
I wonder whether, if people feel like they cannot give up meat, they are open to the idea of eating just a little less of it.
I'd never force you NOT to eat one, either.
One thing you notice when dining in a mixed group of vegetarians and meat eaters: it is invariably the meat eaters who raise questions about dietary choices. It's alway starts with "Why are you a vegetarian?", not "Why do you eat meat?" Or else, it starts with flaunting such as we keep seeing in this thread: "Gee, this steak is delicious! You vegetarians don't know what you're missing!"
I suggest we let the remaining ones live out their natural lives, but stop breeding so many to replace them.
Most livestock are bred for no reason other than their meat, you know.
Yes, but meat is not the only source of all these things.
(I think we've had this discussion earlier in the thread, haven't we? Soon somebody will mention vitamin B12 again.)
That suggests two things to me:
1. Being vegetarian need not have adverse health effects.
2. If you are vegetarian, you need to be careful to get all your dietary requirements.
This may sounds like a down-side to vegetarianism, but there are down-sides to meat eating, too. Eat meat and you increase your risk of heart attack, food poisoning and a number of other health problems, compared to vegetarians.
It's only a guilt trip if you have something to feel guilty about!
All I'm doing here is putting a point of view. If people feel guilty as a result, that's something they need to deal with.
I'm sure that's true. But I think it would "work" for most people, without too much effort.
As I said, it's a balancing process: inconvenience vs. needless killing and associated cruelty.
Notice that I didn't say you're a monster if you eat meat. I said that you're a monster if you eat meat and cannot justify doing so according to some logically defensible moral principle. In fact, it's probably not quite as bad as that. What would be worst of all is if you ate meat and didn't even feel a need to justify or explain your actions.
You're obviously not a monster, since you honestly believe that you and your children need to eat meat to survive. My only problem is that I'm not convinced that your belief is justified.
It seems to me that special circumstances apply to you that do not apply to most of the population. You suffer from anemia; most people do not. Most people do not develop anemia if they become vegetarian. This may put you in a special category.
I could argue about the "essential". I've already agreed that it was probably important. But my following point still stands:
JR said:
Bells said:
This is where we disagree. I do not think that killing the huge numbers of animals we kill every year is necessary; nor do I agree that the food source it provides is "vital". It certainly is not vital for me, for example. I'm just fine.
I wonder, though, how much meat you eat (and the same goes for the other meat eaters in this thread). How often do you eat meat? 5 times per week? Every evening meal? Breakfast, lunch and dinner? Or what?
I wonder whether, if people feel like they cannot give up meat, they are open to the idea of eating just a little less of it.
I'd never force you NOT to eat one, either.
One thing you notice when dining in a mixed group of vegetarians and meat eaters: it is invariably the meat eaters who raise questions about dietary choices. It's alway starts with "Why are you a vegetarian?", not "Why do you eat meat?" Or else, it starts with flaunting such as we keep seeing in this thread: "Gee, this steak is delicious! You vegetarians don't know what you're missing!"
I suggest we let the remaining ones live out their natural lives, but stop breeding so many to replace them.
Most livestock are bred for no reason other than their meat, you know.
Yes, but meat is not the only source of all these things.
(I think we've had this discussion earlier in the thread, haven't we? Soon somebody will mention vitamin B12 again.)
That suggests two things to me:
1. Being vegetarian need not have adverse health effects.
2. If you are vegetarian, you need to be careful to get all your dietary requirements.
This may sounds like a down-side to vegetarianism, but there are down-sides to meat eating, too. Eat meat and you increase your risk of heart attack, food poisoning and a number of other health problems, compared to vegetarians.
It's only a guilt trip if you have something to feel guilty about!
All I'm doing here is putting a point of view. If people feel guilty as a result, that's something they need to deal with.
I'm sure that's true. But I think it would "work" for most people, without too much effort.
As I said, it's a balancing process: inconvenience vs. needless killing and associated cruelty.
Wow, hearing that the second time really proved something to me. Probably not what you intended it to, but still...
Funny, I thought you found personal bullshit objectionable. I guess that only applies to personal bullshit direct at you... Anyway, why would I go away when I'm just starting to get to you? Have you listened to nothing I've said?
Not at all. But don't let that stop you from pursuing off-topic tangents for the purpose of insulting me. That is, after all, exactly what I'm trying to bait you into.
I could say the same thing about you, but what would it prove to anyone? By the way, nobody seems to have voiced any agreement with your reading. And I notice that you have no response to the point that complaining about who started it is a childish tactic that should be beneath any self-respecting moderator (or, for that matter, adult).
I know. However, you're unable to provide any logical foundation for this position, because none exists. The only basis for absolutism is a higher authority (god, nature, whatever).
Yes, you may recall where I've derided your absolutism in my previous posts. The problem, however, is that you adhere to absolutist stances while trying to pretend that it's all held up by logic and reason. You can't have it both ways: either there exists some external basis for adopting the axioms your position is based on, or it is a matter of aesthetics.
A sense of the basics, yeah.
No, I was quite explicit about the role it plays. Did you not read my post, or are you actually dumb enough to think such a blatantly erroneous paraphrase would fly? It's not even much shorter than my original phrasing, for that matter...
Yep. Do you actually expect us to believe that you came into the world as a blank slate, contructed a complete moral philosophy from scratch using only pure reason and logic, and then derived your perception of morality from that? Because it's a pretty ridiculous proposition.
Depends on what you consider meaningful, although I should point out that your absolutism-sans-god position has the same flaw. It's just that you seem to think you can get away with pretending it doesn't.
It might put this in perspective to consider a similar question in the realm of physics: "why does an electron have a negative charge?" The only answer we have is: "well, it seems negative to us." Do you regard this as a flaw in physics?
False dichotomy. The aesthetics are involved in selecting which axioms the moral system will be based on. It was assumed that the resulting system is going to be logically consistent; otherwise the aesthetic considerations are moot. Aesthetics are the *basis* for constructing a formal ethical system, not an alternative to it.
Funny, I could have sworn that I explicitly mentioned this in my last post. Maybe you should go re-read it (and all of Tiassa's material) until you actually understand the positions you're arguing against.
As I said, some aesthetic issues are less controversial than others, and everybody possesses a sense of the general outlines of morality. When we say that aesthetics are the basis for a moral system, we're not saying "you just pick whichever moral outcomes you consider to be appealing." That's not an aesthetic approach to morality; that's casuistry. What we mean is that we try to construct a system that reflects our innate sense in the most elegant way possible (using the usual criteria of parsimony, consistency, etc.)
I don't know that there was ever a time where the majority of people supported human slavery. Tolerated, perhaps, but the support seems to have been confined to the exploitative classes and their immediate beneficiaries. Anyhow, the perception of morality is not a clear-cut thing, even for a single individual. As I said before, one of the reasons for constructing moral systems is to help refine and explore our perception of morality.
I don't need to conclude that; I know it a priori. You've got it entirely backwards.
Again, the complaint is the lack of a basis for your absolutism. You can't be "shown to be principled" in the way you're using the phrase. It is quite easy to construct logically consistent moral systems that reach different outcomes on the issue of eating meat (or anything else), and logic is not capable of deciding which one is "right." You have to either invoke a higher power, or settle for an aesthetic basis. Pretending this choice does not exist is not impressing anyone.
You're confusing different senses of the word consistent. Of course any formal system should be self-consistent. But that doesn't imply that different issues can't be assigned different degrees of relativism (by a logically self-consistent moral system). Murder? Everyone knows it's immoral. Jaywalking? Not so much.
Well, it takes MORE than gut feelings, but they are the basis. Your problem, however, is that you pretend your stance flows directly from reality via logic, independent of your moral sense. But everyone knows that you're putting the cart before the horse.
Again, a physics analogy: I don't dispute that people can perceive the physical world. I just don't believe that perception makes for a good physical model. Instead, we should decide a priori how the physical world operates using only pure reason (ignoring, of course, the fact that pure reason in a vacuum can't produce anything). And then when we inevitably arrive at conclusions that contradict the perceptions of others, go around telling them they're lazy and stupid for not agreeing with us.
Bells
Staff member
Why should anyone have to justify their diet James?
My eating meat does not make me any less moral than you. Just as you are not more moral than me or anyone else because you do not eat meat.
But why do you need to justify what I eat? Even if I ate meat and did not care about it's benefits, would that somehow make me immoral?
There should not be a special category.
I'll put it bluntly James. It is not for you to decide who is morally justified in eating meat. It is akin to someone saying an atheist is immoral because they do not believe in God.
But that is you. Not everyone is you or thinks and feels like you do. We are all individuals with our own moral codes of what is right and wrong. We all have our own needs and desires and wants. You might not think it is vital, but others do and others simply do not care.
If it were up to my doctor, I would be eating red meat 3 times a day. At present we eat an animal form, in one shape or another, approximately 4 - 5 times a week (that includes all meat and seafood products, as well as eggs). My 2 year old usually has 2 servings of meat or other protein rich food a day and my baby usually 1.. depending on both their moods. The rest of the time we tend to eat a vast array of vegetarian food really. The one thing I and my children consume daily and get 3 servings of, and that is dairy products.
I would imagine most people do not eat as much as you may assume.
I would hope not.
I have never really noticed that. Not when I was a vegetarian or as a meat eater. I honestly do not care if someone is eating meat or not. I usually tend to eat the vegetarian dishes or seafood when out since no one can seem to understand that some people actually do like their steaks well done. I never really pay that much attention to what other people are eating when I am out, nor do others with me.
Except when eating with my parents, in which case it is usually, "Shouldn't you be ordering red meat?!?".
No it is not. But meat is sometimes the best source as the body is able to absorb the necessary nutrients from meat a lot easier (eg. iron) when compared to other sources.
There are upsides and downsides to anything we happen to eat.
Mmmm hmmm. That's why you said one could be seen to be a monster if they cannot justify their eating meat.
And then of course we have this:
I am sure it could. But I would not want to take that risk with my children or with myself (again). We all do what works best for ourselves. Eating meat works best for me and for my children. That is basically what it comes down to in the end. It does not make me any less moral than you, because you choose to not consume any animal products.
Ok. So Bells is not a MONSTER. But the rest of us carnivores, we're monsters. LOL
Well sure, eating plants is fine for you. But us monsters require the flesh of freshly killed animals. Muuuuuuhuuuuu hhuuuuuu haaahahaahaaaa!
It's not a meal without meat. No meat= a snack. I usually have a mug of coffee and some vitamins for breakfast, a chef's salad (including eggs, bacon, and turkey or chicken) for lunch, and meat and potatoes for dinner.
Nope.
That's because eating meat is normal in our society and for our species. When you see someone doing something unusual, you become curious. You know, like man bites dog v/s dog bits man.
No guilt trip here. To me, the whole idea of vegetarianism seems comical. The arguments superficial and absurd. Bestowing human rights upon animals. Animals who gladly eat each other and even humans if given the chance.
Humans have as much right to eat meat as any other animal. It is no more wrong for a human to eat meat than for a lion.
madanthonywayne:
Funny. I thought I explained myself clearly. What didn't you understand?
:yawn:
Any reason, beyond the fact that you just like doing what you enjoy?
Lots of things have been called "normal" in the past and yet we realise they are immoral today. Think about it.
If the arguments actually were superficial and absurd, no doubt you'd be able to produce a counter-argument and easily show that meat eating is moral.
Also, I'm not sure you understand the arguments yet, as evidenced by your hazy use of the term "human rights" here.
You have given no argument that even begins to establish that.
Funny. I thought I explained myself clearly. What didn't you understand?
:yawn:
Any reason, beyond the fact that you just like doing what you enjoy?
Lots of things have been called "normal" in the past and yet we realise they are immoral today. Think about it.
If the arguments actually were superficial and absurd, no doubt you'd be able to produce a counter-argument and easily show that meat eating is moral.
Also, I'm not sure you understand the arguments yet, as evidenced by your hazy use of the term "human rights" here.
You have given no argument that even begins to establish that.
Bells:
Why should anybody have to justify killing somebody else?
Sorry, but that is yet to be established.
Do you understand the point about killing innocent sentient creatures just for your own pleasure? Surely I don't need to explain it again. You're smarter than that.
It may be akin to that, but if it is you've just put another hurdle in your path: showing that it is not valid for someone to say that an atheist is immoral because they do not believe in God. Faced with that question, I would of course ask that the person claiming the atheist is immoral should justify his or her statement with logical arguments. But I have done that for the case of vegetarianism in this thread.
I agree with you, of course, about all those things. But arguments about morals are about what we ought to do, and not so much about what we want, what we feel in our guts or what we care about. If those were the only things that were relevant, nobody could ever made a wrong moral choice, and we could never condemn anybody else's actions as immoral.
I think there has been some decline in consumption of meat in Australia in recent years. There aren't as many madanthonywaynes here any more. Some part of the reason for that is increased public awareness of animal rights issues, I suspect, as well as health concerns. The fact that the meat industry feels such a strong need to propagandise is a good sign, I think.
Perhaps. I'd need to look into that.
Why should anybody have to justify killing somebody else?
Sorry, but that is yet to be established.
Do you understand the point about killing innocent sentient creatures just for your own pleasure? Surely I don't need to explain it again. You're smarter than that.
It may be akin to that, but if it is you've just put another hurdle in your path: showing that it is not valid for someone to say that an atheist is immoral because they do not believe in God. Faced with that question, I would of course ask that the person claiming the atheist is immoral should justify his or her statement with logical arguments. But I have done that for the case of vegetarianism in this thread.
I agree with you, of course, about all those things. But arguments about morals are about what we ought to do, and not so much about what we want, what we feel in our guts or what we care about. If those were the only things that were relevant, nobody could ever made a wrong moral choice, and we could never condemn anybody else's actions as immoral.
I think there has been some decline in consumption of meat in Australia in recent years. There aren't as many madanthonywaynes here any more. Some part of the reason for that is increased public awareness of animal rights issues, I suspect, as well as health concerns. The fact that the meat industry feels such a strong need to propagandise is a good sign, I think.
Perhaps. I'd need to look into that.
quadraphonics:
Excuse me if I skip to the more interesting parts of your post and ignore even more of the personal bullshit.
I haven't argued for absolutism.
False dichotomy.
Why would I believe a ridiculous proposition? You underestimate me.
Bad example. The term "negative" with regard to charge is just a label. But the reason there are positive and negative charges (and no other types) is an empirically derived fact of life. It isn't somebody's subjective imagining.
I do not believe that human moral systems are foundationally based in aesthetics. As I said.
You're not being very clear about whether you believe it is possible to advocate one system of morals for all (however arrived at) or whether it must be a matter of each to his own.
Is everybody's innate sense the same, according to you, or are there differences? Is everybody's personal morality built on their personal innate sense, or is there some kind of group agreement on a shared morality? And if there is a group agreement, why can we not then say that some actions are definitely moral while others are definitely immoral, if for no other reason than consensus of the group? Lastly, if there is a group consensus, do you think the majority is always necessarily and automatically right about the "moral rules"?
Weasel words.
Want to try answering the question?
You missed the point. Let's ignore the potential argument about whether a priori knowledge is even possible for now. In the past, people did not "know" a priori that slavery was wrong. If they knew, why did it continue for so long?
False dichotomy. You just haven't thought around the issue enough.
I pretend no such thing. I've been quite clear about the basis for my argument. Go back and read my previous explanations.
That was Aristotle's approach, and it slowed down scientific progress until Galileo came along.
Excuse me if I skip to the more interesting parts of your post and ignore even more of the personal bullshit.
I haven't argued for absolutism.
False dichotomy.
Why would I believe a ridiculous proposition? You underestimate me.
Bad example. The term "negative" with regard to charge is just a label. But the reason there are positive and negative charges (and no other types) is an empirically derived fact of life. It isn't somebody's subjective imagining.
I do not believe that human moral systems are foundationally based in aesthetics. As I said.
You're not being very clear about whether you believe it is possible to advocate one system of morals for all (however arrived at) or whether it must be a matter of each to his own.
Is everybody's innate sense the same, according to you, or are there differences? Is everybody's personal morality built on their personal innate sense, or is there some kind of group agreement on a shared morality? And if there is a group agreement, why can we not then say that some actions are definitely moral while others are definitely immoral, if for no other reason than consensus of the group? Lastly, if there is a group consensus, do you think the majority is always necessarily and automatically right about the "moral rules"?
Weasel words.
Want to try answering the question?
You missed the point. Let's ignore the potential argument about whether a priori knowledge is even possible for now. In the past, people did not "know" a priori that slavery was wrong. If they knew, why did it continue for so long?
False dichotomy. You just haven't thought around the issue enough.
I pretend no such thing. I've been quite clear about the basis for my argument. Go back and read my previous explanations.
That was Aristotle's approach, and it slowed down scientific progress until Galileo came along.
Bells
Staff member
I could easily justify killing someone if the need arose. I do not, however, consider a cow as being "somebody else".
Are you saying I would only be moral if I did not consume any animal products?
I do not view my nutrition as being a mere "pleasure".
Nor do I salivate and dream of steak when confronted with a cow. Eating meat is not a "pleasure" for me James. I eat it because I have to. I do not dance with glee and throw a celebration when I am about to eat a legged animal.
I agree with you. But our views about what constitutes as being moral differ. You consider me lacking in morals because I eat meat. I do not consider myself as being immoral because I eat meat.
An individual will rarely consider their actions to be immoral. For example, I could say that I find your judgmental attitude towards meat eaters to be immoral because you are basing your assumptions on something that could be, for lack of a better term, wrong. You are acting as if all of us are cold blooded murderers who lack all sense of morality. I disagree. You feel morally justified in your views, just as I feel morally justified in mine. I do not condemn you for not eating meat, just as I have the expectation you will not condemn me for eating meat. Contrary to what you may believe, I really am not a murderous wench hell bent on gorging myself a dead animal.
I personally think most people are now willing to explore other foods and leave the 'meat and 3 veg' days behind them.
Why do I enjoy it? That's the question. I enjoy it for the same reason I enjoy sex. For the same reason I enjoy sleeping. It is natural and healthy. It is what my body was designed for.
If an alien were to come down to earth and examine the taxonomy of the various lifeforms it would be obvious that humans were omnivores. Designed and built to injest meat and vegatative matter.
The argument is absurb because diet is not a moral issue. A human being is meant to eat a certain diet. Our digestive tract, our teeth, binocular vision, intelligence, it all points to a meat eating animal.
You, of course, are free to eat a diet better suited for a cow or a sheep. But don't get on your high horse and pretend your diet is more moral than my diet.
my view is if you can run it down and kill it with a pointy stick you should be allowed to eat it