This argument is however not on solid ground.
It's not OK to cause pain and suffering to a creature capable of intelligence and emotions just because it's less intelligent than an arbitrary, conveniently chosen threshold.
It's not OK to cause pain and suffering to a creature capable of intelligence and emotions just because it's less intelligent than an arbitrary, conveniently chosen threshold.
Were they mature?
You must fundamentally have a problem with existence because nearly any creature that lives in the wild is going to have a very gruesome, painful lonely death.
If the worst thing that can happen is a chicken is protected, fed, given medicine when sick, have offspring and then eventually slaughtered in a rather human way after adulthood, I don't really see how it's so terrible.
Then imagine if they said: "it's likely that due to advancements in science, in 50 years we won't need to do this anymore because we'll have lab grown organs so we'll just leave you guys alone when we have what we need". I would double take that deal. This is likely where we are now.
The major difference with all of this discussion though is that obviously, animals are conscious, I don't believe they're capable of reasoning where they would be disturbed or troubled by such a deal. We're capable of understanding that our kids will be slaughtered for organs in 70 years from their birth. We also have strong emotions tied to this. So we'd be upset about it so I think that makes it a worse deal. Not the worst possible deal in such a theoretical circumstance, but it would be better than annihilation.
Definitely not saying this means this is ideal for anyone, animals or humans, nothing is perfect, I just don't think it's catastrophic.
Anyway, if Squid are conscious and have such high levels of thought as you describe, then they understand the game and are likely undisturbed by it. If squid went vegan, then I'd feel worse.
This is why I think hunting is a much more fair way of obtaining protein. We're playing a much fairer game, factory farming and raping the ocean with super trawlers isn't.
1. If you have the time to cook the required amount of vegetarian food (not easy from experience).
2. If you can digest legume based protein without issue.
3. If you want to participate in social or culture events where eating meat is part of having a social life.
Are you a full time vegan / vegetarian? I did it for 2 years, I actually would call it a "luxury".
I moved to a country where it's not yet "hip to be vegetarian" and it's virtually impossible to survive in that place. There is no "Whole Foods" in many parts of the world.
This line of reasoning begins with a false dichotomy.
>I don't believe they're capable of reasoning where they would be disturbed or troubled by such a deal
There are humans with significantly reduced cognition that one could also argue would not be troubled by such a deal; suddenly the rationale seems a little flimsy when we consider taking mentally disabled people and 'harvesting' them simply because they don't understand it's a raw deal for them.
I wish I could articulate it generally (newborn, low on sleep atm) but there's something here about mixing levels of consciousness when determining morality that seems flawed.
There are humans with significantly reduced cognition that one could also argue would not be troubled by such a deal;
Families would care
I don’t necessarily disagree with you, merely pointing out that ultimately every moral system rests on non-observable abstract principles. Metaphysics, in other words.
I grew up in a farm. In my experience, the people less likely to feel empathy for animals were those who actually worked with them every day. This does not mean that they were cruel, at all, but rather that they understood rising and killing animals as fundamental for their livelihood.
This reality is very remote for many urban dwellers, for whom animal products come into existence in the supermarket aisle, and who mostly only see live animals as pets.
The banality of evil. Enron executives' behaviour was also fundamental to their livelihood.
2. That's irrelevant on multiple levels
3. Cognitive abstractions aren't beings, can't have a morality to evaluate.
"As moral as Darwinian Evolution" is not a good look, particularly in regards to livelihood rather than survival.
and i typed _modern people_ from cities & despite city people sometimes contributing or doing great crimes for money, i don't know if that is justifiable to use as a counter argument... as we are chatting about how a modern people, who is probably empathetic/civilized enough to realize that killing an animal is unfair/horrible when there isn't a plausible reason to do it ¶ are rural people aware the complexity of a mammalian? because i can see the love for cats and dogs and some bird species... negating pigs and cows or rats feels a specie prejudice! specially, again, when we proved already that it's more economical, ecological and if done correctly more healthy (animal protein is synthesized differently and if we were black and white, plant and fungi based are easier to swallow [but just a curiosity, as that may only build up to diabetes or cancer if one eats like an average +medium-class North American or the likes]). not long ago, like less than 8 generations, we slaved and raped people in America while building churches talking about Christ love... so i don't think we can go back "the days we eat carcass and hunt mammoths" to justify stuff if we truly want to evolve
"not eating animal products is the bare minimum you can do", actually
edit: a bunch of errors, i'm sleep deprived but do you know that even FLIES suffer from indecision? fungi have the capacity of memory (tho i think we can eat those :), ants are a pretty complex organism for the amount of neurons they have... maybe the day we stop to anthropomorphizing intelligence we'll figure out the holocaust (rolling right now)
Grandin also developed an objective, numerical scoring system for assessing animal welfare at slaughtering plants. The use of this scoring system resulted in significant improvements in animal stunning and handling during slaughter. This work is described in "Objective scoring of animal handling and stunning practices in slaughter plants"
Chimps have superhuman short-term memory, but they're not granted personhood.
A tree can be infinitely intelligent. If it doesn't do anything with that intelligence and can't communicate, and we couldn't profit from that intelligence in any way, we wouldn't care about it -- even if we somehow noticed it.
If the tree can benefit us if we don't harm it, we suddenly care.
If it can hurt us if we hurt it, we care.
If other entities which can help us will do so as long as we don't hurt the tree -- or if they will hurt us if we hurt the tree, we care. (For example, this can be other humans with respect to their pets.)
If it exhibits the specific kinds of intelligence that we care about, like talking, or if it simply moves us emotionally, we'll care.
These are all reciprocations of social contracts we're forced, by our biology and by game theory, to respond to.
That's the threshold. Power grows from the barrel of a gun, not an abstract notion of intelligence or consciousness (which, spoiler: is a religious nonsense concept) or whatever.