Hacker News Reader

Comment by Amezarak | Hacker News Reader

I have, and it's not really a big deal.

Humans and many other great apes are opportunistic carnivores. The idea that we should have moral compunctions about biological reality seems absurd to me, and I have yet heard any argument than "suffering is evil; animals experience suffering; killing animals necessitates their suffering; therefore eating animals is evil." I don't deny the second proposition, I deny the first, and my personal feeling is the reason some of us now feel differently has much to do with the enormously sheltered and privileged lives modernity has afforded us.

View on HN

So if suffering isn't ethically inacceptable, then torture of human beings is also OK for you? To me it seems that what you're saying essentially means that you just don't have any morality at all.

I take the view that morality is herd instinct in the individual, and that it is more productive to look at it as a sociological phenomenon instead of resurrecting platonic idealism. Whatever the herd deems good is Good, whatever the herd deems evil is Evil. There is no objective morality written on stone tablets that we can consult to determine that torture is Evil or that killing animals is wrong. That's why we have plentiful examples of cultures throughout human history, composed of intelligent, thoughtful people, who saw absolutely nothing wrong with torture.

This 'herd instinct', by evolutionary necessity, will tend towards in-group altruism in any social animal, but the details, the bylaws, and everything else will be driven by accidents of history and by fashion. It may be that one day that the great human herd of western civilization will collectively decide that eating meat is evil; I sure hope not, I prefer our current fashions (but then I would, having grown up with them.)

Suppose the "subject", the one who experiences all your perceptions, all your qualia, is the same subject who experiences all qualia of every entity (see open-individualism). If this is true, then all suffering is YOU suffering. Would this change your opinion?

No. My personal attitude is something approximating this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_fati

In fact, I actually think that would be a very dangerous attitude to take, since I would believe that the only person who would be suffering by my taking any means necessary to change the world however I like it would be me, who would of course be perfectly willing to do so.

You gave an interesting explanation of what morality is and where it originates (in your opinion). However, that's besides the point.

Even if morality was just herd instinct, what you were saying previously is that suffering for you is not immoral. And even though, many intelligent people saw absolutely nothing wrong with torture, what about you, right now?

What I'm getting at is that your original statement which basically said "suffering is OK" (you didn't indicate any restrictions or conditions) is just bullshit.

You seem to be constructing an argument like "if suffering is not immoral, then you must also think that torture is moral". That's a straw-man argument. It is a perfectly valid position to assert that inflicting suffering is morally wrong while at the same time rejecting that all suffering is morally wrong.

When someone says that something is not immoral (or evil), they can be arguing to things: either it is moral, or it is amoral (i.e. is not affected by qualifications of morality). The GP is arguing the latter: that, in the context of nature, suffering is an unavoidable consequence of competition for life. Is the lion evil for targeting the weakest wildebeest? Is toxoplasmosis evil for disrupting the fight-or-flight response of its host?

That just suffering by itself is not immoral is quite obvious. We were talking about _inflicting suffering_ the whole time. And, to be even more precise, about knowingly inflicting suffering by human beings. Therefore all the questions you stated are besides the point.

Now it seems the next argument that will come is that we as human beings are also animals and part of nature, and therefore we can also kill other animals as e.g. lions do.

Well, a female mantis occasionally decapitates its male mates after copulation. Does that mean that it is moral for women to do the same to men? Amezarak's original statement is just too broad.

Well, a female mantis occasionally decapitates its male mates after copulation. Does that mean that it is moral for women to do the same to men?

No one is arguing that nature is moral.

The notion that animal suffering is real, and that food animals should at the very least be killed humanely out of respect for their pain, is more than a thousand years old at the very least.

I feel that there's nothing inherently wicked about eating meat, but it seems obvious that we should make an effort to avoid inflicting undue suffering in the process.

I perceive you argument to be incomplete. It takes for granted that simply because something is biological reality it is not worth going against.

Your argument as seen by me, ends on a cliff-hanger: Because great apes are omnivores they eat meat which is a biological reality. It is biological reality for humans to eat meat so it is okay to eat meat...

Question: Why does biological reality make things ok in a way that does not boil down to an appeal to nature?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com