Here’s another angle: chickens and sheep and cattle are prey species. They’re supposed to be eaten.
And another: retort to the questioner why they aren’t questioning the consumption of vegetables. After all, plants are living things too.
It’s not so easy for me, however.
There is the issue of degree. Killing bacteria, say, surely causes less suffering than killing an animal.
How can I justify eating animals when there are alternatives which cause less suffering by which I could sustain myself?
What’s to stop an alien race from simply defining us as a prey species?
Bearing in mind if it weren’t for our technology we would not be at the top of the food chain. An alien race might justify eating us as restoring us to our “correct” place.
Again, it’s a question of degree. Killing plants surely ranks as less immoral than killing animals.
Someone who subsists on a diet of plants only is less immoral than someone who eats plants and animals.
Like Frylock I’m am not at all convinced by the arguments I’ve heard, and I feel like vegetarians totally have the high ground in this debate.
The arguments by which I defend my meat-eating have always felt weak to me, but from the sound of things, there is no good justification.
That’s why I prefer eating free-range humans.
I think there’s no stronger argument than “I don’t care if cows suffer and die, so long as I get my steak.” (It’s even slippery-slope-proof, because it doesn’t work on anything you do care about.)
What’s weak are the justifications.
Yes, and ? How does that modify our position WRT to the rest of the food chain ? They’d be the new top predator in town, that’s all. And we’d do what prey do : avoid or fight the predator to the best of our ability, all the while trying to secure our own prey to stay alive. I don’t see what’s so shocking or inconceivable about that.
Again, why ? What’s the basis for this statement ? Besides the fact that plants don’t have soulful eyes and bleating throats to communicate their displeasure to you ? Why would killing a tree, a bacteria, a mosquito or a rat be any less immoral than killing a chicken ?
If we had definite, 100% proof that cows do understand that they aren’t free and feel angst about it, are afraid of death and suffer when killed (something which is doubtful in the first place), and we engineered lobotomized cows who didn’t, would herding, killing and eating the modified cows be any less immoral ?
The food chain argument can be used, eating meat help humans evolved higher intelligence. That said, I believe an omnivorous diet is or was essential to mankind I don’t necessarily agree with the meat eaters defense though. I don’t kill small animals needlessly because they, as animals, have a less fufilling existence than I, the human. You eat/kill meat to live or you kill those who are pests. Mice, rats, cockroaches, parasites spread disease, etc. If there is not a practical reason to kill, then it shouldn’t be done.
Well if those who believe eating meat is no longer necessary to humans, then eventually all humans will become vegetarians, providing that logic prevails. Hopefully such a higher evolved being will have realized the same concept. If not, we still have weapons. If that doesn’t work then, I’m gonna find a way to look unappetizing or look too precious/advanced to be eaten. The same way (almost?)nobody eats beautiful red cardinals or intelligent dolphins.
In a nutshell, what I’m saying is that the argument about being a “higher” lifeform isn’t really valid. Its not about being greater, its about survival.
Well, perhaps I should have said “carrion eater.” Is there a term for that?
You are completely incorrect when you assert “carnivore” is value-neutral. Participate in enough of these discussions and you’ll see, as I do, countless peolple laying claim to “carnivore” with expressions of pride, smilies, and/or smugness. On Animal planet they follow the carnivores around with cameras. People admire the perceived strength, speed, and precision of carnivores and marvel at their savagery. Carnivore is very often used in these duscussions as a badge of honor, quite often by someone who has necver killed and only eats dead flesh prepared by others. As you say, that’s technically carnivorous, maybe, but no display of strength, speed, or precision was involved in the feeding. People try to assume the glamor of the lion while practicing the habits of the vulture.
I am trying to counter this attempt at shaping the debate with an emotionally-laden word, you’ve caught me. But don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m getting at.
Yeah, that’s worked great for all the other behaviors we have that are bad for us, bad for the environment, or involve inflicting harm on others.
The “and” is that this was the whole point of the OP.
You’re effectively biting the bullet and saying that from the higher being’s point of view, killing and eating humans would not be wrong.
So, say the higher beings summoned you and said: “You seem to experience a lot of displeasure watching your friends get killed and eaten. Can you give us any moral argument that what we’re doing is wrong?” you’d respond with “No, not really. We eat chickens after all…”.
Because of the difference in potential suffering.
We don’t know for sure that a given species feels subjective pain as humans do. However, there are certain indicators e.g. existence or absence of a nervous system, that affect the likelihood. You could sort animals by “likelihood of suffering pain as humans do”.
Clearly there are things that cows don’t think. I doubt many of them are concerned about the global economic crisis for example.
However, there’s growing evidence that animals feel subjective pain much as we do. I can’t be arsed to find the cites right now, but will if you ask. It’s a topic that’s been done on this forum recently.
And as for being free, it’s not so much that they realise that they aren’t free as that the quality of their environment starts to affect them mentally. e.g. A chicken in a battery farm probably isn’t aware of its lack of freedom. However, it may feel a simple sense of frustration from not being able to carry out behaviours like mating, wandering, gliding etc.
It might well be less immoral, IMO. As I’ve already alluded: I don’t see anything particularly immoral about rearing animals in conditions that are the same or better than their natural environment, killing them painlessly near the end of their lives, and then eating the remains.
It’s all about the suffering for me.
Nothing. You have no point here. Humanoids were prey species at one time. And some primates still are.
Sorry, but you’re still killing something. In some cases, it’s worse, because the fruit is designed to be eaten to disperse the seeds (which pass through the digestive tract unharmed or even activated) but our waste goes instead to sewage works or septic tanks. Or we put the seeds or apple core or whatever in the rubbish bin.
Part of the life cycle of prey creatures is that they are eaten. A prey creature past its prime is easier for predators to catch, thereby ensuring that it is taken preferentially over younger ones who have yet to reproduce.
Relate it back to the OP.
To repeat my comment from my preceding post:
And I’m sorry but I’ve said several times for me it is all about the suffering, not the killing. Killing bacteria is not at all immoral to me. Keeping a chicken in a cage its whole life is immoral, whether you kill it or not.
I don’t know what you’re arguing here. Perhaps that “Prey getting eaten is natural. Doing what is natural is morally right, therefore eating meat is morally right”.
This would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy. And that’s if modern-day industrial meat production could be considered “natural”.
No, no it wouldn’t. It’s obviously something humans spend a great deal of time thinking about, if Hollywood is any indication. Do we begrudge Alien or zombies ? Do we think they shouldn’t eat us because it’s not nice ? No. We hate them, and we fear them, and we deem them evil *because *they eat us. But we never expect them to stop eating us.
You could also sort them by “likelihood of feeling a moral dilemma come lunchtime”. Can you be sure we’re the only one who understand what we’re doing ? Why would we be ? We’re nothing special.
And like I said, that’s why I’m against industrial meat herding, and expect animals to be treated as humanely as possible. But that’s no argument against meat eating itself.
Consider something akin to the Matrix. Humans are being grown in pods by aliens. They do not know it, nor do they suffer from it for one second, because they believe they’re experiencing a normal life. When lunchtime comes, a drug is added to the human food supply, and he dies peacefully in his sleep, after which his body is processed and cooked.
Is it immoral for aliens to do so ? Would it be immoral for *humans *to do so ? And is the guy doing the rounds with red pills the hero, or the asshole ? 
Me, I think it would be immoral. You could pump a cow full of booze before you send it to the knackers, so that it’s just as little aware it’s being killed than a human would. You could keep it boozed up its entire life - it doesn’t make a difference. We wouldn’t like it being done to us. And we’re no different than anything else.
(Parenthetical clarification provided by me.)
Boiling down what you said:
I can not make sense of this. Since when does an action’s being wrong mean we expect the action to cease? Since never–it’s a commonplace that actions that are wrong take place, and will always take place. Our expecting or not expecting the alien to stop is irrelevant to the question whether what the alien is doing is wrong.
I didn’t mean to say that their action is evil in absolute - but that we deem them evil because they do it to us. Better ?
I wasn’t asking about the “we deem them evil” line. I listed it in my paraphrase, but only to make the the paraphrase flow rhetorically. I took your argument to be:
That’s the argument I can’t make sense of. We don’t generally expect people to stop doing evil things once they’ve started–but that doesn’t mean their actions aren’t evil.
But maybe you can make it more clear what the argument is. Maybe I’ve misunderstood.
We don’t ?
But anyway, I wasn’t trying to say that an alien eating us isn’t evil - or rather, I was asserting that it’s no more or no less so than if it were eating anything, and that we only deem it so from an anthropocentric P.O.V… The only way to live without destroying lives and causing undue amounts of suffering is to cease living*. That was the gist of that particular line of reasoning, nothing more to it.
Like I said further down, if we grew cows in vats and plugged them into The Mootrix, we’d *still *be evil bastards.
ETA : *that is, as long as we haven’t figured out a way to extract nutrients from thin air. I’m not holding my breath (pun intended).
I think you’re confusing two different definitions of “expect”. We do not expect them to stop eating us in the sense that it is not probable, but we do expect them to stop eating us in the sense that we see eating us as unjust.
If you believe the ethical grandstanding of vegetarians truly evolutionarily advanced species will think eating meat is barbaric.
It seems as if a lot of people are saying that some forms of life are more important than others based on suffering or thinking.
If you can make decisions about which form of life is more important on that basis, others should be allowed to decide on which form of life is important on another basis, say beauty, or size. Someone might say that only ugly life should be eaten, or only slow moving life should be consumed. I choose to say that all life is equally important.
Death is Death. If you must take a life, do it with respect, but admit it. Trying to say that cute pigs are more important than ugly broccoli is kind of silly.
No, we don’t. Now I’m really confused. How can you deny this?
I hope someone doing evil will stop, but I don’t generally expect them to stop. (To be a bit more precise, whether or not I expect them to stop depends on the particular case. I have no general expectation that people doing evil will stop. In fact, gun to my head, I’d say in general I expect people doing evil will tend to keep doing evil.)
I’m a bit dumbfounded as to how to argue for this point. It strikes me as basic. Apologies for that!
That’s fair enough. You did say that an alien eating us isn’t evil. But I can accept that you misspoke.