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DrBox posted:That's a good clarification. Do I have it right that intelligence only matters as far as the animal's ability to recognize and take issue with the conditions they are in? Probably not, because I am emotionally attached to dogs and cats.
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Oct 17, 2022 19:56
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Ohtori Akio posted:Probably not, because I am emotionally attached to dogs and cats. I have met some smart dogs and some incredibly dumb dogs. I love them all, but that is due to exposure to them and being able to empathize with them. I would argue the same ability to form connections and become emotionally attached is possible for nearly all animals. When saying you are categorically opposed to farming dogs and cats even without a 1 on 1 connection with every individual, do you agree there is a double standard that goes beyond the intelligence of the individual animal? Why not give all animals the dog and cat treatment rather than privilege certain animals based on a culturally influenced spectrum?
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Oct 17, 2022 20:09
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DrBox posted:I have met some smart dogs and some incredibly dumb dogs. I love them all, but that is due to exposure to them and being able to empathize with them. I would argue the same ability to form connections and become emotionally attached is possible for nearly all animals. Yeah I hold a double standard. I do not approve of eating the kinds of animals I like.
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Oct 17, 2022 20:12
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Ohtori Akio posted:Yeah I hold a double standard. I do not approve of eating the kinds of animals I like. Treating some animals like family and others like resources to be exploited only because of cultural norms or how I personally feel about a species does not seem like a tennable moral position and I hope you give it some more thought. Until then I think we have hit a bedrock disagreement. With that logic, being born in another country or into another culture where the "food animals" are different would likely change your perspective on the morality of dog farming and because it is that arbitrary it highlights how culture or social norms are a poor guide for morality. I really appreciate the chill back and forth discussion.
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Oct 17, 2022 20:38
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DrBox posted:Treating some animals like family and others like resources to be exploited only because of cultural norms or how I personally feel about a species does not seem like a tennable moral position and I hope you give it some more thought. Until then I think we have hit a bedrock disagreement. likewise brother.
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Oct 17, 2022 20:41
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It seems totally possible to have an objection to something without it being a moral objection. There's plenty of stuff I don't want to do, or see done, or in some cases even have done at all, that I don't think is necessarily immoral. We can probably afford to have an irrational attachment to cute animals to the point of making laws to protect them, because it doesn't seriously impact our own quality of life. But if we were in a situation where humans would be severely negatively impacted by that attachment, I don't think it would last very long.
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Oct 17, 2022 20:51
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XboxPants posted:And my response is that vegans do talk about reduction, rather than abstinence. This makes me question who you're targeting that advice towards, if not towards vegans that you think are advocating abstinence. And then I'm calling that a strawman since I don't see those people. you know, if what you said here had any relevance to what i was saying a couple days ago, the last couple pages would have been the most profound vindication i could think of, so perhaps next time dont invent implications that dont exist?
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Oct 17, 2022 20:51
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Colonel Cool posted:It seems totally possible to have an objection to something without it being a moral objection. There's plenty of stuff I don't want to do, or see done, or in some cases even have done at all, that I don't think is necessarily immoral. I agree you can br opposed to all sorts of things without it being an ethical or moral issue. The question of whether or not to save a historic building downtown is not a moral one. In this particular thread we are talking about harming animals when alternatives exist. The question of whether or not we should cut an animals throat for a burger is absolutely one of those moral objections. The fact that animals don't fall into the category of things that have moral value for some people is what we are trying to change. DrBox fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Oct 17, 2022 21:20
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DrBox posted:I agree you can br opposed to all sorts of things without it being an ethical or moral issue. The question of whether or not to save a historic building downtown is not a moral one. Sure, of course. I understand it's a moral question for many people. I just don't think having a preference for some animals over others is necessarily a moral inconsistency, if your objection to some animals being killed and other animals being spared is a cultural one and not a moral one.
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Oct 17, 2022 21:23
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Colonel Cool posted:Sure, of course. I understand it's a moral question for many people. I just don't think having a preference for some animals over others is necessarily a moral inconsistency, if your objection to some animals being killed and other animals being spared is a cultural one and not a moral one. Oh I see what you're getting at. It may not be a moral inconsistency if you can articulate the morally relevant difference between animals we can kill and animals we should not. If the only difference is "I like these ones" that is not a reasonable justification because we can show how your preference is likely socially or culturally influenced and culture is not a good way to determine what is right and wrong. It can only tell us social norms.
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Oct 17, 2022 21:28
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DrBox posted:Oh I see what you're getting at. It may not be a moral inconsistency if you can articulate the morally relevant difference between animals we can kill and animals we should not. If the only difference is "I like these ones" that is not a reasonable justification because we can show how your preference is likely socially or culturally influenced and culture is not a good way to determine what is right and wrong. It can only tell us social norms. Let me put it another way. I like living in a society where we don't kill and eat dogs and cats, but that doesn't mean I think societies that do eat dogs and cats are immoral for doing so. I don't think having a cultural bias is morally inconsistent, unless you're trying to push that cultural bias into being a moral issue.
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Oct 17, 2022 21:39
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Colonel Cool posted:Let me put it another way. I like living in a society where we don't kill and eat dogs and cats, but that doesn't mean I think societies that do eat dogs and cats are immoral for doing so. I don't think having a cultural bias is morally inconsistent, unless you're trying to push that cultural bias into being a moral issue. Do you think dogs and cats should be protected under law where you live? Why do you give preferential treatment to them when cows pigs and chickens are capable of the same range of emotions and depth of suffering? What is the difference beyond just "I like them"? There has to be some features to point to when we're justifying harm to other animals based on that difference.
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Oct 17, 2022 22:07
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DrBox posted:The question of whether or not to save a historic building downtown is not a moral one. It very much is to many people. Buildings, particularly community buildings, can greatly affect how communities meet and organize. What you are doing here is the same thing you are doing in your other arguments. You are presuming that your personal conceptions of morality are universal. The preservation of old buildings is very often considered a moral question especially if they still serve ongoing important functions (both material and symbolic) to a community.
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Oct 17, 2022 22:57
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DrBox posted:Do you think dogs and cats should be protected under law where you live? Why do you give preferential treatment to them when cows pigs and chickens are capable of the same range of emotions and depth of suffering? What is the difference beyond just "I like them"? There has to be some features to point to when we're justifying harm to other animals based on that difference.
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Oct 17, 2022 23:11
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DrBox posted:Do you think dogs and cats should be protected under law where you live? Why do you give preferential treatment to them when cows pigs and chickens are capable of the same range of emotions and depth of suffering? What is the difference beyond just "I like them"? There has to be some features to point to when we're justifying harm to other animals based on that difference. I don't think there does have to be a meaningful difference other than "we like them". Not all laws are based in morality. I think laws reinforcing an arbitrary social preference are entirely valid, and I think we have plenty of those on the books already.
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Oct 17, 2022 23:17
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yeah a lot of plants demonstrate an aversion response to danger or "pain", they just dont exactly move very fast, so if we're going to completely ignore brainpower in our calculus, modern science has presented us with a problem
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Oct 17, 2022 23:20
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It’s interesting to me how wildly divergent this thread is in its main topics of discussion from the conversations I tend to have with the vegans and vegetarians in my life (a very small and anecdotal sample to be sure). It does really seem, however, that at least for the half-dozen or so people that I know and have talked about this at any kind of length IRL with, animal ethics is a secondary concern—not something to turn your nose up at, for sure, but definitely not the main motivator for not eating meat compared to environmental concerns, land use, disgust at handling raw meat, price, nutrition—and when we do talk about ethics, it’s not the killing itself but the forced breeding and living conditions that come up.
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Oct 17, 2022 23:24
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GreyjoyBastard posted:yeah a lot of plants demonstrate an aversion response to danger or "pain", they just dont exactly move very fast, so if we're going to completely ignore brainpower in our calculus, modern science has presented us with a problem Would it resolve the problem if I told you I would be happy to switch to a 100% lab-grown diet, as soon as that becomes available? Removing both plants and animals from my diet isn't one of the choices I am presented with. Removing animals is a choice I can make.
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Oct 17, 2022 23:31
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HookedOnChthonics - I don't think there's much interesting discussion to be had in a lot of those points, basically. Nearly everyone* agrees veganism (or near-veganism) is better for the environment/health/land use/economics. Nearly everyone* agrees factory farming is terrible. So the discussion moved. *In this thread, anyway.
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Oct 17, 2022 23:35
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GreyjoyBastard posted:yeah a lot of plants demonstrate an aversion response to danger or "pain", they just dont exactly move very fast, so if we're going to completely ignore brainpower in our calculus, modern science has presented us with a problem Magnets show an aversion response when being held near to the same pole as another magnet, are you saying magnets need moral consideration?
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Oct 17, 2022 23:44
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Enjoy posted:Magnets show an aversion response when being held near to the same pole as another magnet, are you saying magnets need moral consideration?
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Oct 17, 2022 23:57
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Bar Ran Dun posted:It very much is to many people. Buildings, particularly community buildings, can greatly affect how communities meet and organize. What you are doing here is the same thing you are doing in your other arguments. You are presuming that your personal conceptions of morality are universal. The preservation of old buildings is very often considered a moral question especially if they still serve ongoing important functions (both material and symbolic) to a community. Well ok yes I need to be even more precise. The building getting torn down is not a moral issue because of the building itself. The building is not a victim. There could be externalities impacting people that would change the conversation of course. Trapick posted:You're going to end up being arbitrary on some dimension, aren't you? Or should we have the same rules for mammals, fish, birds, insects, crustaceans, worms, sponges, coral, mollusks, plants? They're all living things and we can view them all as having some kind of 'suffering' or 'preference for life'. Colonel Cool posted:I don't think there does have to be a meaningful difference other than "we like them". Not all laws are based in morality. I think laws reinforcing an arbitrary social preference are entirely valid, and I think we have plenty of those on the books already. GreyjoyBastard posted:yeah a lot of plants demonstrate an aversion response to danger or "pain", they just dont exactly move very fast, so if we're going to completely ignore brainpower in our calculus, modern science has presented us with a problem
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Oct 18, 2022 01:22
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DrBox posted:If you cannot quantify why what characteristic gives them moral consideration then it's hard to have a conversation on the ethics of exploiting them. I'm not talking about jaywalking. This is harming sentient beings for culture, tradition, and taste. The issue is that this is begging the question. Of course if you define harming sentient beings as inherently unethical then everything else in your argument follows logically from that. I don't define harming sentient beings as inherently unethical, so the rest of your argument is unconvincing to me. We lack the ability to convince each other, because the disagreement flows from a different moral foundation. Just like how I can't convince someone who thinks that human beings are worthy of moral consideration from the moment of conception of anything related to that, and he can't convince me of anything related to that.
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Oct 18, 2022 02:04
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Colonel Cool posted:The issue is that this is begging the question. Of course if you define harming sentient beings as inherently unethical then everything else in your argument follows logically from that. I don't define harming sentient beings as inherently unethical, so the rest of your argument is unconvincing to me. We lack the ability to convince each other, because the disagreement flows from a different moral foundation. Just like how I can't convince someone who thinks that human beings are worthy of moral consideration from the moment of conception of anything related to that, and he can't convince me of anything related to that. Harm alone is not inherently unethical. Unjustified harm is. There are justifications for harm such as life saving surgery on a child too young to comprehend why you're doing it, but that's still ethical because you have a justification for doing the harm and it's in their interest despite the short term suffering. Unless we're talking about religious reasons which will be impossible to argue for logically, it's hard for me to fathom why something would be unethical that does not in the end come out as due to harming a sentient being. Go the other way then. Explain what makes something unethical in your view. DrBox fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Oct 18, 2022 |
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Oct 18, 2022 02:13
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Enjoy posted:Magnets show an aversion response when being held near to the same pole as another magnet, are you saying magnets need moral consideration? Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, I wonder what kind of a moral calculus system one could conjure up where the autonomy of electrons was a major concern. Of course it'd be super hosed up if the universe worked like that, but then again, just look at the rest of the universe. That said, plants do possess qualities that we can point at and dub 'life', which at the moment isn't true for electrons. Of course a fifth-level vegan is a simpsons joke, and this conversation has revolved around the capability of feeling pain, discomfort and a "preference for continued existence" rather than just plain old life itself. But it seems a little blithe to counter the idea of plants "preferring life" by naming objects or categories which we associate with "non-living" categories, picturing a big honking ACME horse-shoe magnet here, etc. 
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Oct 18, 2022 05:52
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Colonel Cool posted:The issue is that this is begging the question. Of course if you define harming sentient beings as inherently unethical then everything else in your argument follows logically from that. I don't define harming sentient beings as inherently unethical, so the rest of your argument is unconvincing to me. We lack the ability to convince each other, because the disagreement flows from a different moral foundation. Just like how I can't convince someone who thinks that human beings are worthy of moral consideration from the moment of conception of anything related to that, and he can't convince me of anything related to that. It is fair to say that if you don't share the presupposition "harming sentient beings (for consumption) is unethical" then arguments that follow from that are not going to be particularly compelling. This is why people often point out the clear environmental harm, inefficiencies, potential health risks and other impacts. It is fairly likely that one or more of these will impact your existing moral concerns.
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Oct 18, 2022 05:56
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What if human predation fulfills a cultural or locational need? How do you convince the Native American tribes that their attempt at recapturing their cultural heritage of hunting and fishing is morally and ethically wrong? How do you handle societies that still require hunting due to not being a component of a globalized supply chain? To the isolated societies that function still as hunter-gatherers (diminishing as they are), what would you say? I struggle with coming to full agreement with anyone who proposes high level of veganism because it always makes me feel like that is a modern, intellectual denial of our part in nature that has come about in no small part due to industrialization. We have challenged and disrupted the natural order of ecosystems, but I don't inherently agree that we should remove ourselves entirely from the order. Are humans somehow superior to the animals they hunt or rear for food production? If what differentiates us from the rest of the carnivores and herbivores is that we can recognize ourselves in each, why can't a human choose to be a carnivore? Because of our higher degree of self awareness placing us into a position of greater moral or ethical superiority in relation to our fellow animals?
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Oct 18, 2022 07:32
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I hesitate a bit to post because I still haven't read through the whole thread, so apologies if this repeats points already raised, but since you're also a first-timer to the thread and you're asking questions unconnected to the current conversation hopefully this isn't a big deal:rargphlam posted:What if human predation fulfills a cultural or locational need? How do you convince the Native American tribes that their attempt at recapturing their cultural heritage of hunting and fishing is morally and ethically wrong? How do you handle societies that still require hunting due to not being a component of a globalized supply chain? To the isolated societies that function still as hunter-gatherers (diminishing as they are), what would you say? 1. The thread title is "why you should go vegan." I take it you're not a member of a Native American tribe who is making some attempt at recapturing your cultural heritage of hunting and fishing. When it comes to stuff that we want to do, humans are very good at justifying it to ourselves. This is true even when the justifications are not very good. "Other people ought to be allowed to do it" is not always a good justification for your doing something. If someone who is not earning very much money ought to pay little to no income tax, this doesn't mean rich people ought to pay little to no income tax. So, is your concern really for people in this situation? Or are you using this as an excuse for people in other situations (like, say, yourself) not to go vegan? 2. Again, focusing on people who are differently situated: many of the challenges people in these societies face in terms of being able to live traditionally come from environmental degradation caused in large part by eating animals. Overfishing, overhunting, habitat destruction for the sake of farmland for cattle or cattle feed, habitat destruction from climate change to which animal consumption greatly contributes, and so on: these sorts of things make it difficult for (e.g.) an isolated society to exist. If we care about these kinds of societies, most of us need to go vegan (and do other things as well!) so as to protect their ability to continue to exist. 3. "Tradition" is not a monolith. No society has stayed the same forever, nor is it possible to stay the same forever. Living traditionally doesn't mean never changing anything. Whether the parts of a traditional society that rely on eating animals are crucial to that society's traditions is itself not set in stone. These are topics which must be negotiated by the people that live in these societies. Traditionally for Passover Jews would slaughter a lamb. Most Jews don't do this anymore. Traditionally for Passover Jews would have an animal bone as part of the seder plate. Most Jews still do this. But some Jews don't. They've replaced the animal bone with something else. Societies can change gradually without losing what's valuable about tradition. Potentially this is true of these societies that hunt and fish and so on. Maybe not. But this is not the sort of thing it's easy to know in advance, by fiat. Certainly it makes sense to try to change before deciding nothing can change. 4. Think about what you would say about a traditional society doing something you don't approve of for the sake of tradition. For instance, instead of harming non-human animals, imagine this society harms humans. Perhaps they are a cannibal society, or they engage in traditional mutilation of girls, or something like this. In situations like this, it's not obvious that tradition is so important that it trumps harm. Certainly in our own societies, we tend to think that traditions like this ought to be phased out. Perhaps these societies should also phase out their harmful traditions. rargphlam posted:I struggle with coming to full agreement with anyone who proposes high level of veganism because it always makes me feel like that is a modern, intellectual denial of our part in nature that has come about in no small part due to industrialization. We have challenged and disrupted the natural order of ecosystems, but I don't inherently agree that we should remove ourselves entirely from the order. Are humans somehow superior to the animals they hunt or rear for food production? If what differentiates us from the rest of the carnivores and herbivores is that we can recognize ourselves in each, why can't a human choose to be a carnivore? Because of our higher degree of self awareness placing us into a position of greater moral or ethical superiority in relation to our fellow animals? 1. There's no such thing as "the natural order of ecosystems." Ecosystems are not static entities that sit around unchanged until humans show up. It's pointless to think there's some kind of order that we are in danger of removing ourselves from. 2. Even granting there's such thing as the natural order of ecosystems, we're loving up those natural orders at pace so rapid it is hard to comprehend. Every day more than 100 species go extinct, many of them due to the impact humans are having on the environment. Among the ways we can begin to mitigate the almost inconceivable damage we do to the world, going vegan is one of the most effective. 3. The animal stuff that people eat (meat, milk, eggs, etc.) by and large does not come from our participation in the "natural order" (again, pretending such a thing exists). It comes from industrial food production. 4. Humans aren't superior to other animals in a sense relevant to whether it is okay to kill and eat them. Some of us are superior in some ways: I'm smarter than any dog I've ever met (although when I was an infant, I was not). But this doesn't give anyone a right to kill and eat anyone else. I'm smarter than any infant I've ever met, but it would be morally objectionable for me to kill and eat infants! And so choosing to be a carnivore is no more licensed by (e.g.) intelligence than any other morally objectionable act.
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Oct 18, 2022 09:34
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TychoCelchuuu posted:1. The thread title is "why you should go vegan." I take it you're not a member of a Native American tribe who is making some attempt at recapturing your cultural heritage of hunting and fishing. This might be true, but here is also a possible explanation for trotting out this hypothetical: in internet arguments people like to discuss edge cases because they are more interesting, and allow posters to examine their beliefs. Assuming that most of the posters here were NOT raised in an old cultural tradition of vegetarianism/veganism (no being from Berkeley or Portland doesn't count), and became vegan/vegetarian for left-wing political reasons, the poster is trying to create a moral dilemma for posters in this thread to resolve. TychoCelchuuu posted:4. Think about what you would say about a traditional society doing something you don't approve of for the sake of tradition. For instance, instead of harming non-human animals, imagine this society harms humans. Perhaps they are a cannibal society, or they engage in traditional mutilation of girls, or something like this. In situations like this, it's not obvious that tradition is so important that it trumps harm. Certainly in our own societies, we tend to think that traditions like this ought to be phased out. Perhaps these societies should also phase out their harmful traditions. This is a very common type of left-wing moral dilemma. Do we defend this aspect of a minority culture, even when it contradicts our own beliefs?
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Oct 18, 2022 11:42
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DrBox posted:Harm alone is not inherently unethical. Unjustified harm is. There are justifications for harm such as life saving surgery on a child too young to comprehend why you're doing it, but that's still ethical because you have a justification for doing the harm and it's in their interest despite the short term suffering. I suppose causing a certain level of unjustified harm to a human being currently capable of feeling sentience. There's a bunch of grey areas there about things like advanced non-human beings like theoretical aliens or AI, and exactly how much responsibility do we have to avoid causing harm to future humans that don't exist yet, but I'm pretty satisfied that humans as a category are sufficiently different from any known animal species as a category that it's a solid enough distinction there. Content to Hover posted:It is fair to say that if you don't share the presupposition "harming sentient beings (for consumption) is unethical" then arguments that follow from that are not going to be particularly compelling. Yeah, absolutely. The environmental benefits of the world going vegan is very compelling. However, me personally going vegan has approximately zero impact on that so I don't feel any particular compulsion to do so. I don't think anyone has a responsibility to massively impact their own life as a symbolic gesture. I do support laws to reduce the consumption of animals, because that would have a measurable impact.
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Oct 18, 2022 13:38
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DrBox posted:Yeah in the end you have to pick something to value. I pick sentience and conscious experience. And the picking is precisely the problem. Morality as we apply it to ourselves is entirely human-made, unless you want to argue from religion. If someone starts from different assumptions then arguing that (some? all?) animals shouldn't be killed for food because some animals have a degree of sentience or conscious experience is unconvincing. I would also caution that arguing there is cognitive dissonance or internal contradiction between someone's moral positions may not be convincing either, such inconsistencies may simply be accepted and a fully internally consistent set of rules may not be achievable anyway.
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Oct 18, 2022 14:40
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Colonel Cool posted:I suppose causing a certain level of unjustified harm to a human being currently capable of feeling sentience. There's a bunch of grey areas there about things like advanced non-human beings like theoretical aliens or AI, and exactly how much responsibility do we have to avoid causing harm to future humans that don't exist yet, but I'm pretty satisfied that humans as a category are sufficiently different from any known animal species as a category that it's a solid enough distinction there. I agree we can distinguish between humans and non human animals but why specifically do you draw the line there? Colonel Cool posted:Yeah, absolutely. The environmental benefits of the world going vegan is very compelling. However, me personally going vegan has approximately zero impact on that so I don't feel any particular compulsion to do so. I don't think anyone has a responsibility to massively impact their own life as a symbolic gesture. I do support laws to reduce the consumption of animals, because that would have a measurable impact. suck my woke dick posted:And the picking is precisely the problem. Morality as we apply it to ourselves is entirely human-made, unless you want to argue from religion. If someone starts from different assumptions then arguing that (some? all?) animals shouldn't be killed for food because some animals have a degree of sentience or conscious experience is unconvincing. We have to pick something and I'm open to pick something else as a moral foundation if anyone can make a good case for it. So far sentient experience or conscious well being is the only thing that makes sense. You can ask someone why and keep drilling down and it always ends up at the impact we have on the subjective experience of sentient beings. DrBox fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Oct 18, 2022 |
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Oct 18, 2022 14:45
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Enjoy posted:Magnets show an aversion response when being held near to the same pole as another magnet, are you saying magnets need moral consideration? I think the "plants feel pain" argument against veganism is silly as anything but a game, but you are now literally comparing something moving because it is alive and reacting to stimuli, to something being moved by an external force applied by a magnetic field.
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Oct 18, 2022 14:50
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DeadlyMuffin posted:I think the "plants feel pain" argument against veganism is silly as anything but a game, but you are now literally comparing something moving because it is alive and reacting to stimuli, to something being moved by an external force applied by a magnetic field. Pretty ridiculous huh
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Oct 18, 2022 14:58
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Enjoy posted:Pretty ridiculous huh It's a comparison that demonstrates a fundimental misunderstanding between something being alive vs. an inanimate object. It's ridiculous to think it demonstrates anything at all besides that misunderstanding.
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Oct 18, 2022 15:17
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DrBox posted:If causing unjustified harm to humans is bad but causing unjustified harm to animals is not, why? That is broad enough that would seem to permit torture of animals and I don't think that is what you mean. Because of a foundational moral preference. At a certain point we have to pick something to value. I pick human life, you pick sentience. I don't think we can get any more fundamental than that. For what it's worth, I don't think you're wrong to hold your preference. But I don't think I'm wrong to hold mine either. quote:Do we have any obligation to live by our values? Whether or not I litter or burn garbage in my backyard has a negligible impact on the overall environment but I would not do that out of principle. I think this supports my point, not yours. We have laws against littering or burning garbage, which has a measurable impact on the world because we collectively participate. If we didn't have those laws and it was expected behavior to litter or burn garbage then my doing it or not wouldn't make a difference to the world and I wouldn't feel any particular compulsion to not do those things, if not doing them had a notable cost to myself.
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Oct 18, 2022 15:18
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Colonel Cool posted:Because of a foundational moral preference. At a certain point we have to pick something to value. I pick human life, you pick sentience. I don't think we can get any more fundamental than that. For what it's worth, I don't think you're wrong to hold your preference. But I don't think I'm wrong to hold mine either. Colonel Cool posted:I think this supports my point, not yours. We have laws against littering or burning garbage, which has a measurable impact on the world because we collectively participate. If we didn't have those laws and it was expected behavior to litter or burn garbage then my doing it or not wouldn't make a difference to the world and I wouldn't feel any particular compulsion to not do those things, if not doing them had a notable cost to myself.
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Oct 18, 2022 15:39
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DeadlyMuffin posted:It's a comparison that demonstrates a fundimental misunderstanding between something being alive vs. an inanimate object. It demonstrates that just seeing a change in an object isn't enough of a reason to give it moral consideration. I've explained in the OP why I think sentience is a good reason to give something moral consideration.
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Oct 18, 2022 16:03
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Enjoy posted:It demonstrates that just seeing a change in an object isn't enough of a reason to give it moral consideration. So there is no moral difference between something that is inanimate, and something that is alive, if there is no sentience? If I were to injure a plant, or break a rock, just for the hell of it, is there a moral distinction? What about a coral? Not a plant, but not really any more sentient. Living vs. not seems like such a strong line to me. DeadlyMuffin fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Oct 18, 2022 |
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Oct 18, 2022 16:11
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DeadlyMuffin posted:So there is no moral difference between something that is inanimate, and something that is alive, if there is no sentience? No moral difference if the plant is not aware and does not suffer. Same as a human being kept alive on a ventilator with no brain activity, or bacteria with no brain or nervous system in
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Oct 18, 2022 16:17
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