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Niggas in Space > Oh the Humanities! > We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
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We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat

  1. 2018-09-20 at 10:41 PM UTC
    #1861
    Obbe Alan What? [annoy my right-angled speediness]
    Originally posted by mmQ I'd convince them by brainwashing them into believing that we're morally obligated to not eat meat, and then ask them to explain why they feel that way after my brainwashing is complete.

    Nobody is morally obligated to do anything. If "moral truths" are just "ought statements", and if "ought statements" have no "truth value" because they are just statements about how someone thinks the world should be rather than statements about how the world is or is not, then "ought statements" and "moral truths" are just peoples opinions and preferences and nobody has any obligation to adopt someone else's opinions or preferences.
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  2. 2018-09-20 at 10:54 PM UTC
    #1862
    mmQ Lisa Turtle
    I agree. At the end of the day there's no way any one person or group of people could be able to say anything is objectively moral or immoral, despite how "clear" some of those things may already seem to be or thought of or accepted within the global population.

    I can say you ought or you should, but those to me mean nothing more than opinion. I can say you need to breath air in order to continue living for more than a day, and that would be true, but you're not morally or any such way obligated to keep breathing.

    I guess if I wanted to convince someone they were morally obligated to do something like breathing, it wouldn't be any different than me saying you're morally obligated to not kill yourself because because the air NEEDS you to breath IT. haha

    In other words, I agree. I can only give a million reasons why something ought to be, but can never give reason why something HAS to be, because it doesn't.
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  3. 2018-09-21 at 2:52 AM UTC
    #1863
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Originally posted by Obbe Right it's saying how the world "ought to be" but that's not saying anything about how the world actually is or is not … Truth is how the world is or how it is not.

    I'd argue how the world ought to be is a statement about the world. It seems like there are statements with truth values that are not about the world right now. For example statements about how the world will be, or how it would be if something were other than it is. Why is a statement like how the world ought to be, even if it's not a statement about how the world is right now, something that isn't true or false?

    It doesn't. The structure of your sentence demonstrates this… "If Y then X is true". X depends on Y. If Y is unknown, or isn't even mentioned, X must be unknown. If there is no Y then X has no truth value.

    I don't think that follows. It's perfectly reasonable to assert X on its own, even if there's logical relation involving X like "If Y then X". Why on earth would a statement not have a value if it's not conditional on some other statement? It seems like the vast majority of statements we consider as having truth values don't take on the "if Y then X" structure.

    You're determing the condition of one by the condition of the other.

    I don't really understand what you're saying here.

    Yes but I do not beileve that has the same meaning as "you should train".

    I do not believe "you ought not eat meat" is the same as "you ought not eat meat because of <insert reason>".

    So then if I were to say that when I said "you ought not to eat meat" what I meant was "If <all the facts about the world> then you ought not to eat meat" then you'd agree that what I meant had a truth value to it? Because I think that's pretty close to what's meant by most people when they say something ought or ought not to be the case.

    I do not believe "ought statements" have a truth value because they are not statements about how the world is or is not, they are statements about how someone thinks the world should be.

    Yes, when someone says "I think the world should be a certain way" they're expressing how they think the world should be. Just like saying "I think the earth is round" is expressing how someone thinks the earth is shaped. It seems like all declarative language expresses opinions, but this doesn't rob these statements of truth value.

    And I would think the example I gave before of wanting the world to be some way, and thinking it ought to be another would be a pretty convincing refutation of the idea that ought statements are merely an expression of how we want the world to be.

    I have been asking you all day to to explain how you would convince someone to believe otherwise, and you are not even trying to do so.

    Well what's happening right now is an effort at convincing you. What do you think trying to convince you should look like if not trying to get you to explain your objections to the idea that ought statements have truth values and explaining why I don't think your objections are successful?
  4. 2018-09-21 at 3:12 AM UTC
    #1864
    The Self Taught Man Black Hole
    It has been 55 minute since I took dph for sleep, and I can hear the boogeymen outside my door already.

    Lanny, do you have response to my last post?
  5. 2018-09-21 at 4:06 AM UTC
    #1865
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Oh, sorry. I guess I missed it.

    Originally posted by DietPiano My argument encompasses everyone needing to use the same foundation and rules for morality in order for one to justly force moral pressure on another.

    I don't think anyone has seriously said anything about "justly forcing moral pressure on another". I certainly haven't. So I'm not sure why you bring the subject up.

    Those different systems are equally valid because morality is based on feelings. You can say it's about law or canon, but it isn't, as feelings must enter the equation when formulating morality…

    It's no more reasonable to say "feeling must enter the equation when formulating morality" than it is to say "feelings must enter the equation when formulating the scientific method". Like sure, we all have emotional states and both scientific institutions and moral systems are created by people, but this certainly isn't grounds for dismissal of those things.

    Yes, my arguement also asserts that theories of how people "ought to think" of their fellow man (ehtics, morality, perhaps other fields) are not calculable, quantifiable, or able to be physically sensed by humans. Therefor, it can not be expected that two men should come to the same moral conclusions
    …
    Okay, I agree with you now that mathematical theorems are not empirical. However, unlike morality, math is calcuable and quantifiable, which means it is reasonable to expect two men to always reach the same conclusions. 2+2 is always 4.

    Why isn't morality "calculable"? There's a fair amount of literature on "hedonic calculus" in the utilitarian tradition, a good deal of it is even empirical in nature. As for physical sensation, I point again to mathematics, which is not sensible by any human organ and unsupported by empirical evidence but where there seems to very clearly be right and wrong answers to mathematical questions. So why not to moral questions?

    Feelings about observations, the basis for morality

    Why do you think that's the basis for morality? I've presented both Kant and divine command theorists that make no reference to feelings in their formulation of morality. To Kant determining moral action is a purely logical practice, divine command theorists resolve moral questions by the highly reproducible process of consulting canon. Even utilitarians who do think some kinds of feelings are the yardstick by which we measure the moral status of an action don't just say "whatever you feel is what's right man", and have a rough and ready means of coming to conclusions on moral issues.

    I see the world "as is", and I don't necessarily think that it "ought to be" anything. I can't PROVE that is ought it not to be something, but you can't prove that it ought to be something either.

    Ok, I won't pretend like ethics is a solved problem and I have a knockdown argument that's the be all end all of moral reasoning. But we can at least agree that moral propositions have truth values, yeah? Like maybe we don't have perfected tools for determining if a given action is moral or not, in the same way we don't yet have perfect tools for determining which regions of brains are responsible for a given cognitive function yet, but just like we can say "the pre-frontal cortex is responsible for executive function" is either right or wrong and investigation may yield a more certain answer, can we agree that moral propositions like "it's wrong to eat meat" are either true or false and that it's at least conceivable that we could discover the fact of the matter? Like maybe god comes down and just says "look bitches, eat whatever you want, it's all good" or something, at least the possibility exists that we might learn the fact of the matter on moral issues, yeah?

    I don't know what that is. Think of any mathematical equation you want. I measure it with mathematical units, and I compute it with a calculator or my mind, which calculates.

    That's a logical argument, with less notation it's:

    If P then Q,
    P is true
    Therefore Q is true

    My point here is simply that the notion of "measurement" is not native to first order logic, or most "pure" logics. Many useful propositions like "sticking your hand into a fire will hurt" aren't really about measurement at all, so if you're trying to say "we can't know anything about morality because we can't measure it" poses an issue because a great many things you'd probably agree with are difficult or impossible to measure.

    To build up to them yes, but that building is founded on your feelings, which I cannot feel.

    Well again, I pointed out some examples of ethical systems which are not founded on feelings earlier.
  6. 2018-09-21 at 4:11 AM UTC
    #1866
    mmQ Lisa Turtle
    Is empirical the same as infallible?
  7. 2018-09-21 at 11:50 AM UTC
    #1867
    Jim "fuck latinos" Carrey Yung Blood
    Originally posted by Zanick Taste is not a very good point upon which to mount a defense for the practice of murdering millions of helpless animals every year, but ease of access is a real concern. The first world can, in my belief, afford to move to a completely vegetarian diet. Economically, this would be difficult to stomach but it would be possible. But in shitty countries where there is a scarcity of food (not just meat) and animal products are the most nutritious available options, it would help for Western governments to invest in them agriculturally. Animal well-being isn't the only reason we should do this; Americans in particular enjoy a very good lifestyle on the whole, and it's about time they gave a slice of that to the people struggling to swallow their cakes of dirt. There's absolutely no reason children should be starving over eggs in India when they could be given enriched rice or soy or some other easily cultivated plant-based protein source.

    Animals are helpless, which means they will naturally live a life of suffering when left to their own devices. The default mode of four-legged existence is suffering. Life sucks when you have four legs and no fingers.

    I read a few months ago that something like 70% of moose in Maine die in the wild from ticks. If you've ever seen a moose covered by ticks over 80% of its body, you know how scary nature really is. Others die from freezing to death when they get mange or chronic wasting disease. Getting predated upon is a very painful, slow, terrifying experience.

    We can look at the miserable state of wild animals, and allow them to suffer pointlessly because of their natural handicaps, or we can reach in and take advantage of all the benefits of animal domestication, while giving these animals a fairly decent improvement in comfort and safety of the course of their lives.


    Anti-meat/milk activists also have no answer as to what to do with animals when we stop killing/milking them. Do we let them loose? If so, they cause much environmental destruction and crop losses. They also get brutally killed by other animals or ticks, or cold wet winds, or hunger. They also take land from wild animals such as deer and the American and Eurasian bison, which are finally resurging after being nearly exterminated. Encounters between them and freed cows would lead to further hybridization; this is irresponsible.

    The only "moral" solution would be to end the "holocaust" by simply exterminating all domesticated animals once and for all. But no one wants to do that, and it defeats the entire purpose as well.

    The truth is, morality is not the be-all and end-all of human decisions. The biggest con the system ever taught us was that it is, and that we have to have these pointless discussions about abstract ideas like "morality" to justify our actions. We do not. There is something else called reality, and it's far more important. Human actions are about 75% reality, 25% morality. It's what works.
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  8. 2018-09-21 at 4:32 PM UTC
    #1868
    playingindirt Tuskegee Airman [nevermore overpopulate your whitweek]
    Originally posted by Lanny
    That's a reasonable question to ask, but unfortunately it doesn't have a single direct answer. There are a number of moral positions that fall under the heading of "moral realist", and they each have different ideas about ideas about where we get the basic moral propositions that we build moral systems upon. You can read about Kant's categorical imperative for one of the most famous examples of a realist metaethical argument.

    But even if you are wholly unconvinced by the arguments put forward by any moral realist, the point I was trying to make to DietPiano was that ethical claims made by realists, structurally, do not depend on consensus e.g. they are either true or false in fact, regardless of what people think about that matter in the same way the proposition "the earth is round" has a truth value that's not contingent upon people's opinions. And also that collecting empirical evidence is not the only way we go about learning things, and there are things which are widely believed to be true (even by DP) which have no empirical support.

    I don't claim to know everything, and I'd say that I have significantly less confidence in my concrete ethical position that eating meat is morally unacceptable than I do in these structural points about moral propositions in general, and evidence supporting them. I'd prefer to reach a common understanding on these points before venturing into specific moral propositions. There's not much point in trying to make the case that "we ought not to eat meat" is a moral truth if we don't have a shared understanding of what is meant by "moral truth".



    I never said you promised me anything. Where did you get that idea?



    No, you did more than link a national geographic video, you made the claim that plants "feel" in a comparable way to humans. If you don't think this is the case I can link your post where you do it (see how that went? I claimed something (that you made a particular statement about plants) and offered to present evidence in support of that claim).

    If you want to back away from your claim then that's fine. Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and all of that. But don't keep claiming that the natural of plant experience is well understood by "science" and then refuse to provide any evidence in defense of that claim.


    I should have been much more specific with my choice of words. how I worded it did make it sound as you say.
    I should have said,

    plant have plant "senses." that's how I describe them.
    plants "sense" and process a huge amount of environmental information with the ability to sense and adjust to their environment. plants process information but for the most part much more slowly.
    this doesn't mean plants are intelligent in the same sense used for humans and other animals. they don't have nervous systems, let alone brains.

    whatever intelligence plants have, it’s nothing like ours but our entire life is dependent on plants and they are vital to all life on earth.
    our agricultural practices and in our daily lives we treat them as though they are just organic machines for producing food, lumber, fuel, and so forth. this implies that "feeling" is a requirement, making it okay to bulldoze a forest indiscriminately and without care. sure they plant new seeds but they cut trees down faster than trees grow.

    I think if people have as much concern for plants as they do for animals people would see plants and our world in a whole new light.
  9. 2018-09-21 at 5:01 PM UTC
    #1869
    tee hee hee Naturally Camouflaged [slangily complete this slumberer]
    "Anti-meat/milk activists also have no answer as to what to do with animals when we stop killing/milking them. Do we let them loose? If so, they cause much environmental destruction and crop losses. They also get brutally killed by other animals or ticks, or cold wet winds, or hunger. They also take land from wild animals such as deer and the American and Eurasian bison, which are finally resurging after being nearly exterminated. Encounters between them and freed cows would lead to further hybridization; this is irresponsible."

    Huh, I've never even thoughr of that. Good point!
  10. 2018-09-21 at 5:47 PM UTC
    #1870
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Originally posted by Jim We can look at the miserable state of wild animals, and allow them to suffer pointlessly because of their natural handicaps, or we can reach in and take advantage of all the benefits of animal domestication, while giving these animals a fairly decent improvement in comfort and safety of the course of their lives.

    It really doesn't seem like factory farming can be called a "fairly decent improvement in comfort" over an existence in the wild, especially when we look at animals which are kept in conditions where they literally can not move when farmed for meat. Are you actually contending that the life of something like a battery hen is better than that of a wild chicken?

    Anti-meat/milk activists also have no answer as to what to do with animals when we stop killing/milking them. Do we let them loose? If so, they cause much environmental destruction and crop losses. They also get brutally killed by other animals or ticks, or cold wet winds, or hunger. They also take land from wild animals such as deer and the American and Eurasian bison, which are finally resurging after being nearly exterminated. Encounters between them and freed cows would lead to further hybridization; this is irresponsible.

    No answer my ass. I don't think anyone has seriously argued we should just release all current livestock to run amok over the country side.

    The only "moral" solution would be to end the "holocaust" by simply exterminating all domesticated animals once and for all. But no one wants to do that, and it defeats the entire purpose as well.

    Again, "no one wants to do that" my ass. We could simply stop breeding lifestock. I think the most ethical thing to do would be to care for all existing livestock in as dignified as possible until they died of natural causes without reproducing, with the possible exception of allowing some to be taken in as pets if anyone cared it, and allowing that to be the end of the domesticated species which are not viable in a natural environment. But if that's not economically possible I'd still support slaughtering all currently living livestock for their meat and ending our society's massive industrialized suffering machine.

    You seem to think just because someone thinks animals are morally considerable that they'll get teary eyed at the thought of an animal dying, but that's simply wrong. It seems like a number of people have confused ethics with some collection of emotional states but as I've pointed out repeatedly: most academic systems of ethics and divine command ethics are rule based systems where moral conclusions are reached through reasoning. Most moral realists would probably hold that a sufficiently sophisticated computer lacking all emotional states could engage in moral reasoning. Emotions really has next to nothing to do with it.

    Originally posted by playingindirt plant have plant "senses." that's how I describe them.
    plants "sense" and process a huge amount of environmental information with the ability to sense and adjust to their environment. plants process information but for the most part much more slowly.
    this doesn't mean plants are intelligent in the same sense used for humans and other animals. they don't have nervous systems, let alone brains.

    Sure, I agree with this 100%. It does seem like there's pretty conclusive evidence in support what you've just said.

    Originally posted by playingindirt whatever intelligence plants have, it’s nothing like ours but our entire life is dependent on plants and they are vital to all life on earth.
    our agricultural practices and in our daily lives we treat them as though they are just organic machines for producing food, lumber, fuel, and so forth. this implies that "feeling" is a requirement, making it okay to bulldoze a forest indiscriminately and without care. sure they plant new seeds but they cut trees down faster than trees grow.

    Well I do agree that deforestation is a real issue, but the issue is more about the consequences for humans and other animals than for the plants directly.

    To bring it back to ethical veganism, we can agree that plants are wholly capable of responding to stimulus and have "sense" in the way we have visual or olfactory senses, while still maintaining that plants don't have the cognitive faculties that are necessary for moral considerability. For example, we don't seem to have good evidence to suggest plants have the ability suffer or experience subjective well being (which is not to say that plants can't be harmed or "nourished", but that they don't have subjective experiences that are like our experience of pain and pleasure).
  11. 2018-09-21 at 6:22 PM UTC
    #1871
    playingindirt Tuskegee Airman [nevermore overpopulate your whitweek]
    Originally posted by Lanny
    It really doesn't seem like factory farming can be called a "fairly decent improvement in comfort" over an existence in the wild, especially when we look at animals which are kept in conditions where they literally can not move when farmed for meat. Are you actually contending that the life of something like a battery hen is better than that of a wild chicken?



    No answer my ass. I don't think anyone has seriously argued we should just release all current livestock to run amok over the country side.



    Again, "no one wants to do that" my ass. We could simply stop breeding lifestock. I think the most ethical thing to do would be to care for all existing livestock in as dignified as possible until they died of natural causes without reproducing, with the possible exception of allowing some to be taken in as pets if anyone cared it, and allowing that to be the end of the domesticated species which are not viable in a natural environment. But if that's not economically possible I'd still support slaughtering all currently living livestock for their meat and ending our society's massive industrialized suffering machine.

    You seem to think just because someone thinks animals are morally considerable that they'll get teary eyed at the thought of an animal dying, but that's simply wrong. It seems like a number of people have confused ethics with some collection of emotional states but as I've pointed out repeatedly: most academic systems of ethics and divine command ethics are rule based systems where moral conclusions are reached through reasoning. Most moral realists would probably hold that a sufficiently sophisticated computer lacking all emotional states could engage in moral reasoning. Emotions really has next to nothing to do with it.



    Sure, I agree with this 100%. It does seem like there's pretty conclusive evidence in support what you've just said.



    Well I do agree that deforestation is a real issue, but the issue is more about the consequences for humans and other animals than for the plants directly.

    To bring it back to ethical veganism, we can agree that plants are wholly capable of responding to stimulus and have "sense" in the way we have visual or olfactory senses, while still maintaining that plants don't have the cognitive faculties that are necessary for moral considerability. For example, we don't seem to have good evidence to suggest plants have the ability suffer or experience subjective well being (which is not to say that plants can't be harmed or "nourished", but that they don't have subjective experiences that are like our experience of pain and pleasure).

    I read just about everything the internet could provide that was based on "scientific evidence" as possible and then some. lol
    I found that most of what was said about plants learning and remembering were theory based on experiments that would appear to be behavioral complexities but not necessarily fact.
    but what I learned about plants in the past few days is absolutely fascinating. it was good reading. it was worth it. lolz

    and after reading it I really think people need to reconsider how they see plants because they play such an important role for life on earth.
  12. 2018-09-21 at 6:58 PM UTC
    #1872
    vindicktive vinny Black Hole
    Originally posted by Jim The truth is, morality is not the be-all and end-all of human decisions. The biggest con the system ever taught us was that it was, and that we have to have these pointless discussions about abstact ideas like "morality" to justify our actions. We do not. There is something else called reality, and it's far more important. Human actions are about 75% reality, 25% morality. It's what works.

    morality is just a currency for socializing around and gaining the acceptence of the people living around you.

    a man living alone on an empty island have no need for moralty.
  13. 2018-09-21 at 7:38 PM UTC
    #1873
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Originally posted by vindicktive vinny morality is just a currency for socializing around and gaining the acceptence of the people living around you.

    a man living alone on an empty island have no need for moralty.

    "wrong"
  14. 2018-09-21 at 7:42 PM UTC
    #1874
    vindicktive vinny Black Hole
    Originally posted by Lanny "wrong"

    id like to hear you say what morality is and is not.

    in simple english.
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  15. 2018-09-21 at 7:43 PM UTC
    #1875
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Originally posted by vindicktive vinny id like to hear you say what morality is and is not.

    Well you're in luck since there's close to two thousands posts about that and related subjects, just a few clicks away.
  16. 2018-09-21 at 8:04 PM UTC
    #1876
    vindicktive vinny Black Hole
    Originally posted by Lanny
    Well you're in luck since there's close to two thousands posts about that and related subjects, just a few clicks away.

    i could barely see them behind all those camoflage of pretenciousness and grammar high horseness.
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  17. 2018-09-21 at 8:09 PM UTC
    #1877
    WellHung Black Hole
    Originally posted by vindicktive vinny morality is just a currency for socializing around and gaining the acceptence of the people living around you.

    a man living alone on an empty island have no need for moralty.

    yep.
  18. 2018-09-21 at 8:15 PM UTC
    #1878
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Originally posted by vindicktive vinny i could barely see them behind all those camoflage of pretenciousness and grammar high horseness.

    You might consider intermediate ESL lessons before trying to discuss ethics in English.
  19. 2018-09-21 at 8:39 PM UTC
    #1879
    vindicktive vinny Black Hole
    Originally posted by Lanny
    You might consider intermediate ESL lessons before trying to discuss ethics in English.

    the grander the truth, the simpler the language required to convey it.

    latin is very primitive compared to english and yet
  20. 2018-09-21 at 8:40 PM UTC
    #1880
    Lanny Bird of Courage
    Originally posted by vindicktive vinny the grander the truth, the simpler the language required to convey it.

    latin is very primitive compared to english and yet

    How would you support a claim like "the grander the truth, the simpler the language required to convey it" if the only truths you would seem to have access to are those that only require simple language to convey?
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