And as humans I see nothing wrong with eating other animals (outside of animal cruelty, e.g. factory farms). As animals, we naturally eat each other. If there is something immoral about this, does that mean a rabbit is morally superior to a fox?
And as humans I see nothing wrong with eating other animals (outside of animal cruelty, e.g. factory farms). As animals, we naturally eat each other. If there is something immoral about this, does that mean a rabbit is morally superior to a fox?
Right.
>And as humans I see nothing wrong with eating other animals (outside of animal cruelty, e.g. factory farms).
Bears can't have moral culpability because they aren't intellectually sophisticated enough, much like how a theoretical profoundly mentally disabled human, or an infant human, wouldn't be morally culpable for killing someone. The "mens rea" can't be established. However, nearly all adult humans do possess the capacity for moral reasoning.
>As animals, we naturally eat each other.
Even though bears and humans are animals, and animals often eat each other, we're the only animals blessed/cursed with the knowledge that if we were to maul someone to death, they'd experience terrible pain and suffering, their life would be cut short, and their family would mourn their death and lose resource support and potentially suffer and die themselves. If a bear had those thoughts, they would be morally culpable, but they almost certainly don't.
>If there is something immoral about this, does that mean a rabbit is morally superior to a fox?
No, because a rabbit's moral reasoning is in the same class as a bear's and a fox's, and not a human's.
In contrast to humans, animals such as dogs, cats, birds, and fish are commonly held NOT to be moral agents or moral persons. In the jungle, a lion eating another animal or killing a human for any reason is not considered morally wrong or blameworthy.
Pet owners frequently chastise their pets for undesirable behaviors such as urinating on the carpet, digging in the garden, or failing to obey a command, but yelling "bad dog" is not usually interpreted as moral agency. One could argue, however, that the owner is engaging in moral expectation or anthropomorphism.
If we admit the idea that some lives can have negative value for example if they consist solely of suffering it would be OK to breed kid burgers so long as they had a pleasant existence up until slaughter at 7 followed by a quick trip to McKid.
I suspect that my moral philosophy and likely yours is simply insufficient to deal with hypothetical persons and we ought to simply reason about how to treat actual beings that exist.
If there were a human serial killer killing people via a projectile energy weapon that always instantly killed someone from a long distance before they had any idea what was happening, I don't think you'd argue for a greatly reduced sentence due to their humane method of disposal. If there were an ancient human civilization that went on hunting trips to kill and eat humans in other villages because they believed human flesh was the most prized meat, and they defended it by saying that they were probably all going to soon die of war or starvation or disease anyway, I don't think you'd just go "oh yeah true" without batting an eye.
The sole reason - the necessary and sufficient reason - hunters find hunting justifiable is they attribute no moral value to the lives of non-human animals. Anything else is self-serving rationalization. If you attribute no moral value to them, that puts you in the company of almost everyone who's ever lived, but just state it plainly instead of trying to wiggle around it with mental gymnastics.
> The sole reason - the necessary and sufficient reason - hunters find hunting justifiable is they attribute no moral value to the lives of non-human animals.
Into this:
> The sole reason meat-eaters find eating meat justifiable is they attribute no moral value to the lives of non-human animals.
Animals do not have similar food-providing mechanisms. When you eat an animal, or part of an animal, it'd dead. It doesn't grow back. It wasn't designed to.
All nutrition comes from plants (or the microbiology around them). All protein comes from plants. Anyone who equates the barbary of eating animals with eating plants is choosing to deceive themselves and others.
The amount of convincing arguments for needlessly causing suffering in beings that clearly experience it are vanishingly small.
Some things die so others may live. That is the way it always has been, and always will be, regardless if some subset of humans decides that "that's immoral". I will continue to eat meat and hunt animals and feel zero guilt. I do not care that something was killed for food when... I dunno, grass juice and pitaya could theoretically sustain me instead (lol). Animals taste good and are calorically dense. That's 100% convincing enough for me.
Peter Singer is an excellent starting point for exploring the dimensions of morality for eating animal flesh.
I can't argue against your own sense of guilt, since it's possible for some people to feel not at all [0]. Your other comment about willingly and guiltlessly drowning mice [1] in a bucket is not indicative of a healthy mind.
1. I drowned two rodents that lived, shit, probably bred, and carried diseases through my walls and attic
2. I eat meat and feel no guilt
And then used that to call me a psychopath. Thank you for the amusement. Goodbye.
Please try to research a more philosophical approach to morality and ethics. Shutting down in the face of an alternative viewpoint is hardly a productive approach to conversation. Cheers.
Suffering is inevitable, abuse is not. The best we can do in life is minimize abuse while maximizing enjoyment.
Meat is not immoral, abuse is. It's really that easy. Unfortunately, most meat comes from abused beings.
I see lots wrong with it, since it creates pain and bad life experiences. This bothers me. But that's also a choice, of what kind of morality you embrace.