Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Animals have self-awareness.. just differently.
Is eating meat morally wrong
- Thread starter Theoryofrelativity
- Start date
Animals have self-awareness.. just differently.
and the difference is enormous. Its why I eat them
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Not as enormous as you might think.
I wouldn't eat an ape, but I have no problem eating deer. Both are wild animals. I'm not gonna eat an animal that mourns the loss of a another.
I also don't eat lamb or veal.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
How do you know if an animal you do eat doesn't mourn ?
You eat meat because:
1- You 'need' it, minerals & vitamins.
2- It is commonly accepted.
3- You like the taste.
If it was commonly accepted to eat apes or people for that matter, you'd eat them too.
And yes, I do eat meat for those reasons, but there are reasons for which animals I will eat. I have never seen a cow, pig, or deer mourn. I've seen elephants, apes, pets mourn. You show me an animal that mourns and I won't eat it.
Its accepted to eat veal and lamb. I can't do it. I can't eat babies.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
That is a personal choice. On the whole what I said is true. You most probably would eat people if it was commonly accepted even if they are 'mourning creatures'. You just wouldn't know any better.
You did not answer my question about how you know the animals you eat do not mourn..
Why do you assume I blindly follow what others do, I blindly do what I am told? Vegetarians were raised to eat meat and they decided not to. I was raised to eat meat and I decided I never want to be a vegetarian.
I haven't seen it. I'm one of those 'prove it' kind of people. You prove a cow or deer mourns another member of their herd (like elephants do), I'll quit eating them.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
In a society in which you are raised with eating people there are less reasons to deviate than vegetarians have (meat = meat)
You're just making it easy for yourself lol But that's ok I guess.. most do anyway, me included.
oh please, when i bought my son his first pet, the pet shop owner said it is to live alone, because they dont play nice with other animals
There's an interesting take on the eating meat issue (Sorry if anyone has already cited this)
Maddox (2002)
Not my views, but i think the man has a point.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=grill
Maddox (2002)
Not my views, but i think the man has a point.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=grill
I read it. I understand it. I don't agree with it.
Your link says we should give equal consideration to like things. But humans and animals are not the same. People have rights, animals do not. They are things, not people.
You argue that the ability to suffer is the characteristic that gives one "rights". I do not agree. Rights are a creation of human beings that define how we should interact with each other. Not with animals.
Rights are based on natural law, or a social contract.
Under natural law, no being (including humans) can consider itself safe from being eaten by any member of another species it encounters. If I'm out at some swamp, asserting my "right" to not be eaten will do little to dissuade a hungry gator.
But humans are a social species. We need to work together and to be able to trust each other. So we created "rights". We agreed to honor each other's rights (under the "social contract) with the stipulation that no one would then violate our rights.
Animals can not understand the concept of rights. They will not abide by any social contract. They are not part of human society. They are either wild animals, or property.
If we come into contact with some intelligent alien species and establish peaceful relations, then they would also be protected by "rights". But if the intelligent aliens decide humans make good eatin', what good do our "rights" do us?
Rights only exist within the context of a society willing to protect them, and whose members agree to abide by them. Animals can no more have rights, then they can have a driver's license. It's beyond their capabilty.
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then you're not using your brain too well since your mandible jaw, absence of proper meat eating teeth, an inability to eat decomposed flesh, the presence of sweat pores, weak stomach acid, longness of intestine and a host of other biological indications indicate that somewhere along the line of evolution you took a radical change from your run of the mill carnivore
Orleander:
I'm confused as to how you decide what to eat and what not to eat.
So the wild/not wild distinction isn't important to you. Capacity to mourn apparently is. Why is capacity to mourn a deciding factor for you?
So eating baby animals is wrong? Why, if you eat the adults with no problem?
This sounds like "out of sight, out of mind" to me. How many cows have you actually watched when they have lost a calf? I'm guessing zero. How many pigs have you watched when they've lost a friend? I'm guessing zero. How many deer have you watched when a fawn has died? I'm guessing zero.
What's the difference?
I'm confused as to how you decide what to eat and what not to eat.
So the wild/not wild distinction isn't important to you. Capacity to mourn apparently is. Why is capacity to mourn a deciding factor for you?
So eating baby animals is wrong? Why, if you eat the adults with no problem?
This sounds like "out of sight, out of mind" to me. How many cows have you actually watched when they have lost a calf? I'm guessing zero. How many pigs have you watched when they've lost a friend? I'm guessing zero. How many deer have you watched when a fawn has died? I'm guessing zero.
What's the difference?
madanthonywayne:
Yes, they are, in all the things that matter to decide the morality of eating their meat. In particular, they have the same capacity to suffer pain, and they all have a sense of self as an ongoing entity which values its own existence.
You're begging the question.
You have not established that animals are just "things", while people are somehow not "things". What's the deciding criterion, according to you, which separates things from non-things?
What's the defining characteristic that defines why a human infant has these rights while an adult cow, say, does not?
This is an example of the "appeal to nature" fallacy, once again.
Human infants and intellectually disabled people cannot agree to this "contract" of yours. Is it ok to eat them?
Are human infants property, too, to do with as we please?
This is a moral argument, not an argument about ability to enforce. Besides, the measure of a moral person is how he treats those he has power over, not how he deals with those who have power over him, surely?
Yes, they are, in all the things that matter to decide the morality of eating their meat. In particular, they have the same capacity to suffer pain, and they all have a sense of self as an ongoing entity which values its own existence.
You're begging the question.
You have not established that animals are just "things", while people are somehow not "things". What's the deciding criterion, according to you, which separates things from non-things?
What's the defining characteristic that defines why a human infant has these rights while an adult cow, say, does not?
This is an example of the "appeal to nature" fallacy, once again.
Human infants and intellectually disabled people cannot agree to this "contract" of yours. Is it ok to eat them?
Are human infants property, too, to do with as we please?
This is a moral argument, not an argument about ability to enforce. Besides, the measure of a moral person is how he treats those he has power over, not how he deals with those who have power over him, surely?
So the wild/not wild distinction isn't important to you. Capacity to mourn apparently is. Why is capacity to mourn a deciding factor for you?
Because I can't. That's a level of self-awareness that I don't want to eat.
So eating baby animals is wrong? Why, if you eat the adults with no problem?
If I EVER said it was wrong, I mis-spoke. I said I couldn't, not that others shouldn't. They're just babies, I can't eat babies. Some people can't eat meat, I can't eat babies. But I never sit on my high horse and demand that others do as I do.
This sounds like "out of sight, out of mind" to me. How many cows have you actually watched when they have lost a calf? I'm guessing zero. How many pigs have you watched when they've lost a friend? I'm guessing zero. How many deer have you watched when a fawn has died? I'm guessing zero.
I grew up on a farm in a hunting family. I've seen cows defend a dead calf. I assume a deer would do the same with a dead fawn. I've also seen cows abandon their calves and pigs eat their young. When a mother who has just given birth is raging with hormones, I discount standing over the dead baby as mourning. Its instinct.
So I guess you need to keep guessing.
nnnn
I find the idea that the ability to suffer as the basis of rights to be perverse. Tell me, would a person with hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy have no rights? These diseases result in an inability to feel pain. So these people never suffer. It can be so severe in some cases that they will chew off body parts.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/01/27/rare.conditions/index.html
If we intentionally bred livestock with this disorder and ate them, would that meet with your approval?
The deciding criterion is that humans are humans. Beings with a level of intelligence high enough to acknowledge and understand a social contract.
As I said, rights are a convention established by humans to allow for peaceful relations between ourselves. While it might be appropriate to extend these rights to other intelligent species we come across, it is wholly inappropriate to extend them to animals incapable of understanding or acknowledging the very concept of rights.
Infants and the disabled are protected by these rights solely on the basis of being human. Some societies, notably the Nazis, have done away with this convention and removed human rights from the disabled.
You might take note of the fact, however, that infants, children, and the disabled are accorded a much lower level of "rights" in accordance with their reduced capacity to understand the concept.
Children are, to a large extent, treated as property. So are the disabled. They must have someone to take care of them, or they become "wards of the state".
No, it's not. By no means was I saying that everything natural was right. But our "rights" have some basis in "natural law", that is, in our nature as human beings. In the behavior of uncivilized humans. So any conception of "animal rights", should also be based upon the behavior of animals in the natural state.
As I said, they are humans, but have fewer rights owing to their inability to understand or make rational decisions.
sowhatifit'sdark
Valued Senior Member
Given that it is a convention we can certainly extend this convention to include other species, perhaps for reasons that are not exactly the same as the reasons we extend them to humans. Perhaps these would be more focused on their ability to suffer, etc.
This seems like a perfectly viable option, in fact certain cultures and subcultures do do this.
But not in terms of their right to life or suffering. And practically speaking pet owners treat their pets with a similar morality. They control facets of their pets lives that they would not another adult human's but they do consider their pets as having rights to life and freedom from suffering. Attempts to go against these rights by another person will be met with unbelievable resistance.
It sounds like you are saying we can't really give them rights. But in fact we can and do, even wild animals.
To say we shouldn't seems odd too. If we want to where does this meta-ethics come in to say we shouldn't here but it was OK with humans. If the issue is practicality, well, again, one can point to numerous examples animals being granted rights working out just peachy for really a rather large number of people.
Much of these rights are legislated. We can argue about where the lines are drawn, but animals certainly are granted rights in related to unnecessary suffering in most Western nations. I see no reason not to view this conventions as right based. The laws were not passed to reduce damage to our ears from their screaming.