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ribozyme
Guest
Because those animals only suffer for our pleasure with no apparent benefit.
Plants do not suffer as they do not possess a nervous system.
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Plants do not suffer as they do not possess a nervous system.
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jman507
Guest
You don’t actually need to eat? I thought that everyone who was alive needed some source of energy to supply metabolism. Now isn’t that an apparent benefit, other than pleasure?
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ribozyme
Guest
Meat tastes good. Don’t you agree?
Yes, vegetables can do that.
Personally, I eat two meals a day
Usually
breakfast: oatmeal, frozen berries, soymilk, and walnuts… (supplemented with whey protein powder)
dinner:
A mixture of stir-fried vegetables (broccoli, tomatoes, red bell peppers, zucchini, carrots, and mustard greens) with pepper and tabasco sauce
or a salad
However, I also take a multivitamin and fish oil. Trust me, you do not need to eat the meat of poultry, swine, and cattle to survive in the developed world.
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freesoulhope
Guest
When we personalise animals, we find it hard to realise that they are just animals. Just becuase animals feel pain when they die, doesn’t mean it is wrong for them to die. When a lion eats another animal, we don’t claim that they are immoral for eating them. When a human takes the life of an animal and eats it, they are not killing a person, its not murder; they are killing an organism. We might not need to eat meat, but i fail to see why we can’t.
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john_doran
Guest
but you’re a (negative) utilitarian - maximizing pleasure is the only relevant moral benefit…
right?
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ribozyme
Guest
I thought it was minimizing suffering. That’s what the Abolitionist Directive is all about.
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jman507
Guest
Meat may taste good, and so can vegetables. So far I think we’ve established that food can be both a energy source, and taste can be pleasurable.
I think you have brought up pain and suffering, so perhaps you can elaborate on the exact wrongness of that. Animals in situ may endure pain and suffering due to other animals. People endure pain and suffering in their living. It seems to me that pain and suffering could not objectively be considered wrong in all situations, and is an occurance in the normal course of life. Another animal in the course of it’s life providing energy for another organism is actually apart of the nature energy cycle, be it providing energy for another carnivore or omnivore or decomposer. Excessive pain and suffering though could reasonable be considered wrong, but if your going to make a stake at saying it’s wrong, I think you ought to atleast make some distinctions given the context of the nature situation.
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john_doran
Guest
sure - but the quantity of suffering is determined as a result of a calculus of pain and pleasure. in other words, the greater net amount of pleasure that exists, the less net suffering there is.
also, the frustration of the preferences of meat-eaters, not to mention the financial security of the people employed by the meat-industry, need also to be included as “suffering” in the calculus…
i posted a question to you about how you intend to escape the obvious moral problems entailed by (negative) utilitarianism, but you never responded. those problems remain, and still require circumvention. at least if you’re interested in having a consistent, non-arbitrary moral worldview…
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Jean_Anthony
Guest
Please stay on topic, people. Take side issues to new or existing threads. Thank you.
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jman507
Guest
I would guess that if you would think it is wrong to eat animals, then no one is going to breed those animals in a large scale. You don’t really need to enslave the home erectus. Anyway if they are not really all that smart, exactly what role are they going to play? We don’t enslave people with low IQ. If they cannot take care of themselves; we have people care for them, or at least intent on that. Other higher primates we don’t enslave. I assume we would do like we do those. We preserve in the wild, and we preserve some in a zoological setting. Granted we use some in research; it’s a controversial topic. I assume there would be further debates about that.
In conclusion, if they were not extinct, there numbers would never be that huge. Given the huge amount of land they would need in the wild, perserved land would keep their numbers low. In a domestic situation, I doubt they would be practical to have as slaves, making the point rather moot. As a food source, granted we are still debating objectively the rightness or wrongness, it would be another moot point, because in general I would think it would be taboo to eat them. A small modest number would be used for various research.
In conclusion, if they were not extinct, there numbers would never be that huge. Given the huge amount of land they would need in the wild, perserved land would keep their numbers low. In a domestic situation, I doubt they would be practical to have as slaves, making the point rather moot. As a food source, granted we are still debating objectively the rightness or wrongness, it would be another moot point, because in general I would think it would be taboo to eat them. A small modest number would be used for various research.
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jman507
Guest
Homo erectus, who appeared about 1.7 million years ago with a somewhat larger brain, made the more sophisticated Acheulian stone tools, including bifaced axes, that would have required concrete operationing thinking of the kind achieved by contemporary European 7-8-year-olds. From this it can be inferred that their IQ would have been about 50."
From the quote of the OP. I think it would be folly to attempt to enslave them. They are not dumb enough to easily train them to do some meanial task, nor are they smart enough to really take on the complexities of higher ordered tasks. Really if you have a gaggle of perpetual second-graders chances are you’d be the one enslaved. You’d be run ragged trying to keep up the care for them. Then you’d have one find a lighter and burn the whole factory down. So I say nay, but if you wanted to create a tv pilot, it might last for half a season.
From the quote of the OP. I think it would be folly to attempt to enslave them. They are not dumb enough to easily train them to do some meanial task, nor are they smart enough to really take on the complexities of higher ordered tasks. Really if you have a gaggle of perpetual second-graders chances are you’d be the one enslaved. You’d be run ragged trying to keep up the care for them. Then you’d have one find a lighter and burn the whole factory down. So I say nay, but if you wanted to create a tv pilot, it might last for half a season.
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The_Truthinator
Guest
I think your article is interesting. (I love biology by the way! One of my favorite subjects…)
Anyhoo…
The definition for “human” (from a theological/philsophical standpoint) encompassess a corporeal *and *spiritual aspect, that is, a soul: self-awareness, self-determination, artistic expression in various forms, and a certain capacity for God (a primitive form of religious expression or ritual then would be expected).
I, personally, think that we should live and let live. The less we brutally slaughter any creature, the better, in my mind. (I’m a vegetarian.
) Experimentation I think generally should be avoided, too. Note “generally.”As for a Bill of Rights for non-human creatures, I can’t see any urgency or necessity to it, though.
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