I know I personally cant see any other reason for cow or pig or deer on this planet than to be in my belly.
Is eating meat morally wrong
- Thread starter Theoryofrelativity
- Start date
I know I personally cant see any other reason for cow or pig or deer on this planet than to be in my belly.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
It's odd that so many people see it as their God given right to kill and eat people animals when they get all upset and revengeful when once upon a time a shark takes a bite out of a human.
Could it be hypocrisy ? Or maybe blatant arrogance ? Stupidity comes to mind as well... :scratchin:
animals when they get all upset and revengeful when once upon a time a shark takes a bite out of a human.Could it be hypocrisy ? Or maybe blatant arrogance ? Stupidity comes to mind as well... :scratchin:
Last edited:
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
nah its not moraly wrong but......
well i joined this dating site i thougth was a dating site
turned out to be a sex site
and i couldnt understand why all these guys were asking me out
so .... a freind told me what it really was andi cancelled my thingy
and i deleted all the guys emails and blocked em
frig i feel like im 2 feet tall hahaha god i felt like a dick head
i think those things are morolly wrong not meat
well i joined this dating site i thougth was a dating site
turned out to be a sex site
and i couldnt understand why all these guys were asking me out
so .... a freind told me what it really was andi cancelled my thingy
and i deleted all the guys emails and blocked em
frig i feel like im 2 feet tall hahaha god i felt like a dick head
i think those things are morolly wrong not meat
and the uncany thing about this site is i saw a freinds name on it so i checked it out
it turned out to be a guy i was seeing but i dumped him on his arse
walked out for good yet it was him how friggin uncany is that hahaha
fucking luck of the irish or what and hes been in there for ages lucky i found it i hate the jerk now with a bloody pasion MATE
it turned out to be a guy i was seeing but i dumped him on his arse
walked out for good yet it was him how friggin uncany is that hahaha
fucking luck of the irish or what and hes been in there for ages lucky i found it i hate the jerk now with a bloody pasion MATE
I love women
heliocentric
Registered Senior Member
The thing is youve trapped yourself in a really really self-contradictory position here.
The problem with your argument lies in the fact that we're designed for lots of things which are entirely natural, alot of which you dont and wont do on moral grounds.
For example - a 12/13 year old girl is as far as nature is concerned 'ripe for the plucking', as long as you can still get an erection she's fair game.
Likewise a man who may be on the look-out to steal your gf or a potential mate, is much better dead than alive if you want to sew your seed.
And again, if you did kill a potential suitor youd be well within the limits of natural conventions - your genes won out - his didnt. All perfectly natural.
The problem is you wouldnt do either of those things, and you wouldnt do them because you dont *just* live according to your instincts, you live according to very abstract sets of principles handed down to you from previous generations.
Now this puts your 'its ok to eat meat because thats what nature intended' argument on very shaky ground, youre contradicting yourself.
The only way to rationally approach this is to either...
A. argue that you reject all abstract principles and choose to live purely how you were 'intended' to (resolving your dissonant self-contradiction)
Or B. rationally argue why you favour abstract moral principles in one instance but prefer simply to 'appeal to nature' in the other.
You know, if you really want to be seen as above "personal bullshit," the easy way would have been to refrain from it for the 40+ pages preceding this post. But, hey, you do seem to finally be trying to live up to your claims of propriety, so don't let that stop you from repeating this again. Maybe it has a mantra-like effect on you or something.
That assertion would be far more convincing if it didn't come on the tails of an extended critique of relativism based almost exclusively on the supposed advantages of absolutism. Or perhaps it's simply the term "absolutism" that bothers you; substitute "universalism" whatever you like if that's more comfortable for you. The objections remain unchanged.
No, it's really not. I understand that you refuse to aknowledge the aesthetic foundations of your moral system, but you haven't provided any convincing alternative (repeated assertions on the clarity of your position notwithstanding).
So you DO admit that you had a moral sense before you arrived at a formal theory that reflected it? While my characterization was, of course, exaggerated, do you really expect us to believe that your vegetarianism followed from your reasoning, and not the other way around? Because I've never encountered anyone that's true of, and your position seems pretty clearly tailor-made to produce the results you want with respect to animal rights and meat-eating.
Ah, way to miss the point. Which was exactly that the charges exist regardless of whether we have a theory to explain why. We don't need a "logically defensible" formal system of physics to know that charges exist. We only need our senses. Likewise, we don't need a formal system of morality to know that murder is wrong; we know this already. Moreover, we would have no trouble rejecting out-of-hand any formal system that disagreed with these conclusions, no matter how logically compelling it might otherwise seem. This is how we arrive at useful formal systems.
Yes, I'm aware of that. And that would be a great retort if I'd made a statement like "James R believes that moral systems are foundationally based in aesthetics." However, this is not what I was saying. Rather, I was correcting your misapprehension of the role that aesthetics plays in morality according to people who *do* subsribe to this view. This was necessary because your criticism was based on an obvious misapprehension. So, believe it or don't, but at least understand what it is that you're denying.
Perhaps that's because it's not a terribly clear issue. If it were, human civilization would presumably already have arrived at a universally accepted moral code, or else agreed that no such code is possible. In reality, there's a third option, which I have already repeatedly articulated: some issues are simply more relative than others.
More than that, any approach that DOES produce a clear-cut answer to this question is suspect in my book, as it goes against the manifestly problematic nature of this question.
Everyone has a different perspective on the same moral world, and everyone experiences a different level of clarity in this perception. Just like how everyone's physical senses give them a different perspective on the physical world. There are some aspects that are so ubiquitous that (essentially)everyone perceives them and agrees on them, and there are other aspects that are less universally apparent. Again, just like physics.
See above.
It's funny how you say this as though I haven't been telling you exactly this for 2-3 posts now. You should go back and reread until you understand what I'm talking about.
A simple majority? Certainly not. But the confidence is high on issues of near-unanimity. The less manifestly obvious a proposition is, the more extraordinary the support needed to justify it. Just like in every other field of rational inquiry.
Not really. We'd have to endeavor to know the minds of millions of long-dead people to answer that question, something I don't have the time and resources for, even if I did have the inclination to pursue this matter (which would take us far, far afield anyway). If I happen to run into any worthwhile references that explore the issue, I'll happily forward them along, but I'm certainly not going to fall into such a crude trap as accepting an open-ended, wide-raning homework assignment from you.
Untrue. Is this one of those well-supported arguments that you're always demanding from people? Anyway, exactly what is the alternative to aesthetics or a higher power? "Logic?"
Indeed, and that's why I'm able to be so sure that your system is grounded in aesthetics, and perceive your pathology in denying this.
Actually, what the heck. We seem to have more or less exhausted your more peurile impulses, and there's no point in giving you TOO much justification in demanding support for assertions (especially now that you yourself have stopped supporting your own). So let's take a look at a fundamental part of your argument and see how aesthetics figures in. You demand throughout your presentation that formal systems of morals be "logically defensible." While I don't recall you presenting any exact definition of what you mean by this, the usage seems to indicate that the system must be self-consistent, and able to produce logical justifications for all of its conclusions.
But where does this requirement come from? What basis do we have for assuming that a system of morals must be logically defensible to be correct? Certainly, it's possible that the only "true" moral system is simply a list of all possible acts, followed by designations of their morality, and that no finite number of axioms and rules of logical inferrence can ever encapsulate this. This is logicaly defensible in a trivial sense, in that its conclusions and principles are one and the same, but this brings up an important point: "logical defensibility" only adds layers of abstraction to the fundamental question of "why?" Eventually, you end up with the answer "it follows from the assumptions we based this system on." When you ask why those assumptions were chosen, the only answers that are available are either aesthetic considerations ("well, it sure seems reasonable," "without it, we couldn't advance a logically defensible system, and those are pretty/handy" "otherwise, the universe would be an illogical, unordered place, and there'd be nothing for moral philosophers to talk about"), conformity with pre-existing knowledge of moral facts ("otherwise we'd conclude that act X, which we know to be immoral, is in fact okay") or religious ones ("God told me that principle was true"). Since you reject the latter two foundations, all you're left with is the first one. Unless you can suggest an alternative?
Furthermore, given a logically defensible moral system that is "true" in whatever sense is deemed important, we can immediately produce a casuist system with exactly the same outcomes, but no meaningful logical defensibility. What reason, then, do we have for preferring the logical one? Well, it's more compact and elegant, certainly, and useful for convincing others, but these are all aesthetic (and perhaps utilitarian) considerations. None of them have anything to do with the basic truth (or lack thereof) of the system's conclusions (since, of course, they agree on every point). So, we see that the requirement of logical defensibility is spurious to moral truth. It is included solely for reasons of aesthetics and practicality. Since the requirement of logical defensibility is the foundation of your position, you're left standing on aesthetics.
And this, of course, is without rehashing Tiassa's observations on the role of aesthetics in determining which entities are assumed to be possess consciousness. Or bringing up the implications of Godel's work for approaches to morality based on formal systems.
Exactly. Perhaps you should take a hint.
What the hell are you talking about?
Bells:
What is a cow, then? Just a grass-eating, milk producing, little-cow producing factory machine, an automaton?
Do you have any pets? Are they "someone else", or just a way to waste a little of your shopping money?
No, I'm not saying that.
I'm not actually advocating veganism at this point - just vegetarianism. Given the reaction I'm getting to basic vegetarianism, the chances of getting any of the meat eaters here to see the point with veganism would be slim indeed.
Then you're a special case, as I said before.
You can go away content that you eat meat out of necessity, and we have nothing further that requires discussion regarding yourself.
The fact remains, however, that most people do not have to eat meat.
Don't lump in general morality with morality on this one issue. I'm not saying that everyone who eats meat is immoral in every sense; that would be silly. I'm only saying their moral compass is misaligned on this particular issue. And I'm not saying that there is any deliberateness or malice in that, either, contrary to one of quadraphonic's assumptions above.
Don't take this personally, Bells. I'm not at all trying to imply that you are personally lacking in general morals, as I said.
However, I do not believe that you yourself would argue in many cases that one shouldn't condemn another person who is acting immorally. Taking a moral position involves having the moral courage to stand up for what you believe is right. I've seen you do it in this very forum on many issues. So forgive me if I wonder why there's a sudden double-standard when it comes to the present discussion. Why is this issue supposed to be off limits? Why can nobody be questioned on their dietary preferences in the same way that they can be questioned on their preference for owning a gun, or having an abortion, or their sexual preference, or whether they give enough to charity, or whether they jay walk or don't buy a ticket on the train?
madanthonywayne:
Your body is the way it is through a series of evolutionary accidents. Another of those accidents left you with a brain and supposedly a moral sense. Yet you choose to ignore one thing you were "designed for" (thinking) in favour of
the other (acting on "instinct", consequences for other beings be damned).
heliocentric put this much better than I could have, above, of course.
What is a cow, then? Just a grass-eating, milk producing, little-cow producing factory machine, an automaton?
Do you have any pets? Are they "someone else", or just a way to waste a little of your shopping money?
No, I'm not saying that.
I'm not actually advocating veganism at this point - just vegetarianism. Given the reaction I'm getting to basic vegetarianism, the chances of getting any of the meat eaters here to see the point with veganism would be slim indeed.
Then you're a special case, as I said before.
You can go away content that you eat meat out of necessity, and we have nothing further that requires discussion regarding yourself.
The fact remains, however, that most people do not have to eat meat.
Don't lump in general morality with morality on this one issue. I'm not saying that everyone who eats meat is immoral in every sense; that would be silly. I'm only saying their moral compass is misaligned on this particular issue. And I'm not saying that there is any deliberateness or malice in that, either, contrary to one of quadraphonic's assumptions above.
Don't take this personally, Bells. I'm not at all trying to imply that you are personally lacking in general morals, as I said.
However, I do not believe that you yourself would argue in many cases that one shouldn't condemn another person who is acting immorally. Taking a moral position involves having the moral courage to stand up for what you believe is right. I've seen you do it in this very forum on many issues. So forgive me if I wonder why there's a sudden double-standard when it comes to the present discussion. Why is this issue supposed to be off limits? Why can nobody be questioned on their dietary preferences in the same way that they can be questioned on their preference for owning a gun, or having an abortion, or their sexual preference, or whether they give enough to charity, or whether they jay walk or don't buy a ticket on the train?
madanthonywayne:
Your body is the way it is through a series of evolutionary accidents. Another of those accidents left you with a brain and supposedly a moral sense. Yet you choose to ignore one thing you were "designed for" (thinking) in favour of
the other (acting on "instinct", consequences for other beings be damned).
heliocentric put this much better than I could have, above, of course.
quadraphonics:
There's not much that I am completely opposed to in your latest post (ignoring again the additional personal stuff you couldn't help yourself from injecting at the start).
However, you've drifted off the topic of the thread into the realm of meta-ethics. That is an oft-used tactic to avoid discussing the issue at hand, and I do not really wish to pursue matters such as where morals come from in the current thread.
If you are willing to start a new thread posting your personal opinions on the source(s) of morality, then I will be happy to post my opinions on that question and we can have a separate discussion. However, you have forfeited the goodwill which might have otherwise led me to give you a detailed explanation of my underlying moral principles, at least in the current thread and in the absence of any evidence of similar expenditure of time and effort from you.
At this stage, it is probably sufficient for me to point out that it is not necessary to take an extreme position of relativism or absolutism. Like a lot of things, these are two ends of a continuum, though they are often falsely viewed as dichotomous (as I pointed out in my previous post). However, I'm sure I don't need to convince you of that, since you have already stated as much yourself. You have claimed twice now that "some issues are more relative than others".
Unless a person is a tree-hugging animal lover at heart, I find it hard to think of a reason why they would become a vegetarian other than through a process of reasoning. There are many good reasons for adopting a vegetarian diet, of course; the moral argument based on animal rights just happens to be the only one I'm arguing in this thread.
Did you really expect that the moral arguments I'd put in a thread such as this would NOT be tailor-made to supporting the argument I've been trying to make? Strange.
All that matters in the end is whether the arguments are convincing or not.
You're begging the question here by using the term "murder". Of course we know murder is wrong, because murder, by definition, is wrongful killing. The wrongness is assumed in the word itself; it is a given.
Replace "murder" with the more neutral "killing", for example, and things aren't so obvious any more: "Likewise, we don't need a formal system of morality to know that killing is wrong; we know this already."
The thing is, we don't know this already. Look at the ongoing abortion debate, or the ongoing debate over euthanasia. If we "just knew" that these things were wrong or right, there'd be no debate.
There's not much that I am completely opposed to in your latest post (ignoring again the additional personal stuff you couldn't help yourself from injecting at the start).
However, you've drifted off the topic of the thread into the realm of meta-ethics. That is an oft-used tactic to avoid discussing the issue at hand, and I do not really wish to pursue matters such as where morals come from in the current thread.
If you are willing to start a new thread posting your personal opinions on the source(s) of morality, then I will be happy to post my opinions on that question and we can have a separate discussion. However, you have forfeited the goodwill which might have otherwise led me to give you a detailed explanation of my underlying moral principles, at least in the current thread and in the absence of any evidence of similar expenditure of time and effort from you.
At this stage, it is probably sufficient for me to point out that it is not necessary to take an extreme position of relativism or absolutism. Like a lot of things, these are two ends of a continuum, though they are often falsely viewed as dichotomous (as I pointed out in my previous post). However, I'm sure I don't need to convince you of that, since you have already stated as much yourself. You have claimed twice now that "some issues are more relative than others".
Unless a person is a tree-hugging animal lover at heart, I find it hard to think of a reason why they would become a vegetarian other than through a process of reasoning. There are many good reasons for adopting a vegetarian diet, of course; the moral argument based on animal rights just happens to be the only one I'm arguing in this thread.
Did you really expect that the moral arguments I'd put in a thread such as this would NOT be tailor-made to supporting the argument I've been trying to make? Strange.
All that matters in the end is whether the arguments are convincing or not.
You're begging the question here by using the term "murder". Of course we know murder is wrong, because murder, by definition, is wrongful killing. The wrongness is assumed in the word itself; it is a given.
Replace "murder" with the more neutral "killing", for example, and things aren't so obvious any more: "Likewise, we don't need a formal system of morality to know that killing is wrong; we know this already."
The thing is, we don't know this already. Look at the ongoing abortion debate, or the ongoing debate over euthanasia. If we "just knew" that these things were wrong or right, there'd be no debate.
It's odd that so many people see it as their God given right to kill and eatpeople
Could it be hypocrisy ? Or maybe blatant arrogance ? Stupidity comes to mind as well... :scratchin:
you don't even want to get me started on that sharks kill may be 10 to 20 people a year tops humans kill over a million sharks a year. and sharks are supposed to be the mindless killing machines, right
Bells
Staff member
A cow is a cow, James. Like a human is a human.
That is a bit unfair, don't you think?
I beg to differ. My morality has yet to be established, apparently.
It is not vegetarianism that is getting a reaction at the moment James. It is the moral basis and the accusatory manner in which you are presenting vegetarianism, that is getting a negative reaction.
My "special" status should not matter. I eat meat, and therefore I am lacking in morality. That is the argument you are taking with everyone else.
No. But they choose to. I could pop about 8 iron pills a day, as well as calcium and zinc tablets, along with the B group vitamins. But they have other side effects. Now everyone else could also select to take supplements and suffer the consequences (and believe me, there are consequences). But they choose to eat meat instead. It does not make them bad. It makes them, as well as myself, human. Full of faults and imperfect, but not bad or evil.
Then that is how you should have argued your point. You lumped all meat eaters into a category, that was, to say the least, unsavoury.
It would depend on the case James. Not every issue is the same. For example, I would react strongly to someone raping a woman or beating a child. I do not believe that eating meat warrants the same kind of reaction. You do and that is fine. Vegetarianism is something that each individual has to address for themselves. Not have others address it for them.
I'll fight to the death for something I believe in. I guess I am finding myself on the opposite moral compass to you James. Lets just say we both took the gloves off. I honestly do understand your desire to make us see the error of our ways. But accusing us as you have been, is not going to work. Broad blanket statements and accusations cannot really be applied to something like this. If I had not explained why I eat meat, you would be condemning me, just as you have been with the others. And here is the thing. I, and the others, do not have to justify our reasons. I did out of respect and because we have known each other on these boards for a long time now and I do consider you a friend. We all make our choices and we live with them. I really do not equate eating meat as being the same as killing someone. You may and that is your prerogative. But I do not. If I were to look at the morality and react to everything that I eat, I would literally begin to starve myself to death. If I eat meat, I am killing a sentient beast. If I eat a vegetable, I am depriving a sentient being of a food source.. it is never ending.
How can I put this. I would condemn a murderer. But I would not condemn everyone who shares the same name as that murderer.
Bells
Staff member
Good argument. However, there is one huge difference between the "natural" urges to rape, murder, and eat meat.
When one rapes or murders, one violates the rights of human beings. Humans, as thinking beings, have rights. Animals, as unthinking beasts, do not.
When humans gather together and form a society, they agree to certain rules. This "social contract" requires that they respect each other's rights. It allows us to work together and thrive.
Animals are unable to participate in such "social contracts". They have no rights other than those we choose to give them. They eat each other, we eat them.
So morality does not enter into the decision of whether or not to eat meat. In the absence of moral guidance, we should do what is natural and healthy.
There is no absence of moral guidance, several members have offered moral guidance on this issue, not to mention the hundreds of charities, books, etc that offer moral guidance with a view to promoting vegetarianism.
As humans we are in a position to choose what we eat, I choose not to eat meat because of the digusting actions of the meat industry. A non-human animal doesn't have the choice in as much as they are never certain where their next meal is coming from.