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Comment by triyambakam | Hacker News Reader

So your moral framework is arbitrary? Or it is flimsily dependent on your emotional attachments?

No, I don't believe there's anything wrong with killing animals for food, I just like my dog more as a pet. I don't believe there's something morally wrong about killing one's pet for food, either.

I am not claiming you said so. But you've rather affirmed again, you have an emotional attachment to your dog, so you won't eat it, so your moral framework is emotional based and is logically inconsistent

No, I seem to not be communicating my thoughts properly. My moral framework is, "killing animals to eat is okay." I have no issues with it. My preference is to keep my pet alive because I do not need him for food and I like him better as a pet. I didn't say I wouldn't eat him: I would have no moral issues killing him for food, though I probably wouldn't much like it. If not for the fact that animals that die of natural causes aren't very tasty, I'd probably eat him when he died.

> I would have no moral issues killing him for food, though I probably wouldn't much like it.

You wouldn't much like the taste, or the act of it?

So you have no emotional attachment at all to your dog? What benefit then do you get from your dog?

I'm saying that an emotional attachment doesn't affect whether I believe it's moral to kill him. It causes me to place a higher value on my dog such that I value him more alive as a pet than dead as food. Were I starving, I'd value him more dead as food. This value doesn't change whether or not it's moral to kill him.

As an analogue, I might have a car I like. The car could be worth more to me than its fair market value because of an emotional attachment, and that may mean I prefer not to sell it. If I'm in dire need of money, however, I'd probably sell it anyway.

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