Arnold Layne wrote:

Blip wrote:

Arnold Layne wrote:
Actually, everyone is entitled to their beliefs, as long as those beliefs don't result in harm for anyone else. Not many choose to air them on an open forum, particularly one like this one. But when someone does air them, they should expect to be challenged. That's all.

To be honest, I've not once, in my time here, seen any one person change their beliefs based on those challenges, but, hey-ho, it's just fun! Just like Jamest's posting style, just fun!

I became a vegetarian as a result of being challenged about my objection to bullfighting and heading off to do some research. So it can happen.

Ha! I really never thought of it that way. Normally I think of religious beliefs...or metaphysical beliefs. Thanks for your example!

You're welcome. I stand, only, gazing at the foothills of philosophy: ethical beliefs, I guess. I might write further about 'harm for anyone else', but that would be to risk a derail.

Blip wrote:You're welcome. I stand, only, gazing at the foothills of philosophy: ethical beliefs, I guess. I might write further about 'harm for anyone else', but that would be to risk a derail.

Why not in a new thread then? It would be good to have something from beyond the small group of regular contributors. I'm a vegetarian and if things haven't changed so is jamest, so we might find some common ground.

logical bob wrote:

Blip wrote:You're welcome. I stand, only, gazing at the foothills of philosophy: ethical beliefs, I guess. I might write further about 'harm for anyone else', but that would be to risk a derail.

Why not in a new thread then? It would be good to have something from beyond the small group of regular contributors. I'm a vegetarian and if things haven't changed so is jamest, so we might find some common ground.

I would start a new thread, but I think the ground is similar to that covered here not so long ago.

Blip wrote:

logical bob wrote:

Blip wrote:You're welcome. I stand, only, gazing at the foothills of philosophy: ethical beliefs, I guess. I might write further about 'harm for anyone else', but that would be to risk a derail.

Why not in a new thread then? It would be good to have something from beyond the small group of regular contributors. I'm a vegetarian and if things haven't changed so is jamest, so we might find some common ground.

I would start a new thread, but I think the ground is similar to that covered here not so long ago.

Not necessarily. The question addressed in the other thread is whether it is moral to eat meat. I think a broader discussion of the basis for deciding whether carnivory is moral could be a lot more interesting. There are many ethical paths to vegetarianism, and some of them can even be mutually exclusive. This is a fantastic example of the journey being potentially far more interesting than the destination.

I am not a vegetarian, but I do eat a restricted variety of meats for simplistic ethical reasons. So the binary thing simply doesn't interest me. It's fundamentalists on both sides, as often as not (do not construe this as calling anyone a fundamentalist, please). But the ethical ramifications of the issue, if explored without a particular end in mind, are potentially endlessly fascinating.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

I am not a vegetarian, but I do eat a restricted variety of meats for simplistic ethical reasons.

Hrmm, what do you eat, and why?

When I eat meat, which is probably 50% of my days, its chicken and fish for health reasons. Logic or ethical thinking seems to suggest I should eat beef because I'll get a lot more meals per murder that way.

Little Idiot wrote:

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

I am not a vegetarian, but I do eat a restricted variety of meats for simplistic ethical reasons.

Hrmm, what do you eat, and why?

When I eat meat, which is probably 50% of my days, its chicken and fish for health reasons. Logic or ethical thinking seems to suggest I should eat beef because I'll get a lot more meals per murder that way.

My ethical basis is unabashedly anthropocentric. I try not to eat meat which is less alien than a certain arbitrary point of difference. When I'm being less serious, I refer to myself as a "no-nipple-arian." Though, to be fair, I would probably balk at eating a platypus as well, and they don't, technically, have nipples.

By your hypothetical reasoning, in which it's more ethical to eat one cow than to eat 272 chickens because the one cow represents fewer deaths than the almost three hundred chickens, it's possible to extend things to an even more absurd point by pointing out that disinfecting a hospital results in the deaths of billions of bacteria every time someone cleans. Wouldn't it be more ethical to let the patients die than to kill those billions of bacteria, given that the former case represents fewer murders?

Not sure we should take this derail very much farther, though. I guess it can always be split off if needed. Apologies to the mods for the extra work in that case.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

Little Idiot wrote:

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

I am not a vegetarian, but I do eat a restricted variety of meats for simplistic ethical reasons.

Hrmm, what do you eat, and why?

When I eat meat, which is probably 50% of my days, its chicken and fish for health reasons. Logic or ethical thinking seems to suggest I should eat beef because I'll get a lot more meals per murder that way.

My ethical basis is unabashedly anthropocentric. I try not to eat meat which is less alien than a certain arbitrary point of difference. When I'm being less serious, I refer to myself as a "no-nipple-arian." Though, to be fair, I would probably balk at eating a platypus as well, and they don't, technically, have nipples.

By your hypothetical reasoning, in which it's more ethical to eat one cow than to eat 272 chickens because the one cow represents fewer deaths than the almost three hundred chickens, it's possible to extend things to an even more absurd point by pointing out that disinfecting a hospital results in the deaths of billions of bacteria every time someone cleans. Wouldn't it be more ethical to let the patients die than to kill those billions of bacteria, given that the former case represents fewer murders?

That's a point of technical accuracy, but it depends at which point is killing o.k. (and so at which point is it 'bad' to kill). Bacteria don't count, their claim to life being dismissed with a scoff and even carrots and the like get but a gentle shake of the head and a long look down the nose.

Not sure we should take this derail very much farther, though. I guess it can always be split off if needed. Apologies to the mods for the extra work in that case.

Doesn't look like the OP needs it any more.

Nice move Blip

I'll eat all the "common" types of meat provided for eating. I just don't really take a moral stance on it.

Having said that, since Xmas. I've been reducing the intake of red meat on more health grounds than moral.

That's it, really.

Were I to have a goal in this conversation, and one hasn't gelled yet, my goal would probably be to get my interlocutors to admit that whatever lines they've drawn are arbitrary, and poorly amenable to a systematic application of ethics. Beyond that, I applaud everyone who's even put any thought into the matter, regardless of the conclusions they may have reached.

Questions to explore: Does meat fall on the same spectrum of ethical consideration as animal rights? Are humans in a special position with respect to the issue of ethics? Variations of those two questions, and quibbling about how one supports whatever position(s) one has regarding those issues. I think the second question is more problematic than most vegetarians presume, given that placing humans in a special ethical position draws the same sort of line that eating animals does, in a twisted sort of way.

I try really hard to be amoral; I fail frequently.

The whole concept of morality is an illusion in a similar sense to things having colour. I have a capacity to sense colour, and in a similar way I have a capacity to sense "morality". London double-decker buses are not red, we just call the experience of seeing them red.

I may or may not sense "moral objections" to eating certain animals. I would suggest try arguing for a rational reason for eating or not eating that animal. Ultimately this ends up with a "I want" somewhere.

romansh wrote:
I may or may not sense "moral objections" to eating certain animals. I would suggest try arguing for a rational reason for eating or not eating that animal. Ultimately this ends up with a "I want" somewhere.

This points obliquely to something I would like to mention here.

Many of the morality discussions I witness, including this one, have a very present and palpable, but unspoken element of individual human competition to them, which is actually at odds with the idea of the morality being discussed. Perhaps I am imaging things, and others can say so. But in comparing what is okay to kill or eat, I think I see competition over who is the most thorough in supporting their claimed beliefs, more than just the definition of those beliefs.

I suggest that it improves ones own efforts to make moral decisions, when one is aware of such motivations.

I hope this doesn't devolve into who's awesome because they don't eat meat, or who's awesomer because they do sort of thing. It does seem to be the most likely path. We'll see. I intend to bail of we get into a pissing contest, that's old and smelly chewed-over cud.

For those who hold to the position that it unethical to eat meat, I have some questions:
is it unethical to feed meat to non-obligate carnivores and omnivores that are kept as pets or in zoos? If It is unethical, would you give a vegetarian diet to a wolf, dog, or bear? What should be done about the wild bears and wolves that cause so much death and suffering for their prey?

If it is ethical to feed meat to these animals, how do you reconcile the huge amounts of murder that goes into feeding dogs and other non obligate carnivores and omnivores with your ethical stance? Is it ethical to keep cats and other obligate carnivores as pets?

scott1328 wrote:For those who hold to the position that it unethical to eat meat, I have some questions:
is it unethical to feed meat to non-obligate carnivores and omnivores that are kept as pets or in zoos? If It is unethical, would you give a vegetarian diet to a wolf, dog, or bear? What should be done about the wild bears and wolves that cause so much death and suffering for their prey?

If it is ethical to feed meat to these animals, how do you reconcile the huge amounts of murder that goes into feeding dogs and other non obligate carnivores and omnivores with your ethical stance? Is it ethical to keep cats and other obligate carnivores as pets?

This points to another often assumed, rarely overtly explained element to this: the assumption that only Humans can have moral issues.

This is important, because it is also one of the especially recent arguments being made AGAINST morality of any kind. I.e., that we should all simply revert to our most "animal" selves, and let our most rudimentary urges decide everything for us.

igorfrankensteen wrote:
This is important, because it is also one of the especially recent arguments being made AGAINST morality of any kind. I.e., that we should all simply revert to our most "animal" selves, and let our most rudimentary urges decide everything for us.

Weird. Who decided that the "rudimentary self" of a social animal would necessarily be amoral? I could see it if we were solitary predators like cats, but we're the most highly social primates on Earth. The ignorance required to suggest humans are largely capable of amorality seems almost as great as the requisite ignorance for deciding that there's a non-arbitrary line between humans and animals.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:
Weird. Who decided that the "rudimentary self" of a social animal would necessarily be amoral? I could see it if we were solitary predators like cats, but we're the most highly social primates on Earth. The ignorance required to suggest humans are largely capable of amorality seems almost as great as the requisite ignorance for deciding that there's a non-arbitrary line between humans and animals.

If any contributor hasn't seen the video I posted here, in which Janet Radcliffe Richards speaks about your latter point, it's worth half an hour of your time (and if you watch the whole thing, you'll hear me suggesting that vegetarianism is a rational corollary to a post-Enlightenment, non-hierarchical view of the animal kingdom).

The video also has relevance to your second question earlier, ScholasticSpastic, so if you haven't viewed it, I recommend it particularly to you.

scott1328 wrote:For those who hold to the position that it unethical to eat meat, I have some questions:
is it unethical to feed meat to non-obligate carnivores and omnivores that are kept as pets or in zoos? If It is unethical, would you give a vegetarian diet to a wolf, dog, or bear? What should be done about the wild bears and wolves that cause so much death and suffering for their prey?

If it is ethical to feed meat to these animals, how do you reconcile the huge amounts of murder that goes into feeding dogs and other non obligate carnivores and omnivores with your ethical stance? Is it ethical to keep cats and other obligate carnivores as pets?

I'd comment in this way, scott1328. Obligate carnivores have no choice in the matter and I don't view them as moral agents or see their behaviour as relevant to our own.

I'd prefer not to have zoos on the current models, but to have any breeding programmes managed in reserves where the behaviour of obligate carnivores fulfils its role in evolution by natural selection.

My own companion animal is a cat: a choice which predated my adoption of a vegetarian lifestyle. I do indeed experience conflict over this; my (partial) resolution is to feed Boo a fish-based diet, which she very much enjoys. I do not feed her the flesh of other mammals. This may be an arbitrary distinction; I suppose I view it in terms of common ancestry and relatedness.

If I had responsibility for a non-obligate carnivore, I'd take veterinary advice and feed a balanced vegetarian diet.

Blip wrote:

scott1328 wrote:For those who hold to the position that it unethical to eat meat, I have some questions:
is it unethical to feed meat to non-obligate carnivores and omnivores that are kept as pets or in zoos? If It is unethical, would you give a vegetarian diet to a wolf, dog, or bear? What should be done about the wild bears and wolves that cause so much death and suffering for their prey?

If it is ethical to feed meat to these animals, how do you reconcile the huge amounts of murder that goes into feeding dogs and other non obligate carnivores and omnivores with your ethical stance? Is it ethical to keep cats and other obligate carnivores as pets?

I'd comment in this way, scott1328. Obligate carnivores have no choice in the matter and I don't view them as moral agents or see their behaviour as relevant to our own.

I'd prefer not to have zoos on the current models, but to have any breeding programmes managed in reserves where the behaviour of obligate carnivores fulfils its role in evolution by natural selection.

My own companion animal is a cat: a choice which predated my adoption of a vegetarian lifestyle. I do indeed experience conflict over this; my (partial) resolution is to feed Boo a fish-based diet, which she very much enjoys. I do not feed her the flesh of other mammals. This may be an arbitrary distinction; I suppose I view it in terms of common ancestry and relatedness.

If I had responsibility for a non-obligate carnivore, I'd take veterinary advice and feed a balanced vegetarian diet.

Pretty sound response there Blip.

I am not a vegetarian, (although I restrict meat eating to mainly small amounts of chicken and fish mainly on a health rather than ethical basis, with the occasional BBQ binge - If I'm damned anyway, I may as well enjoy it, right?).
I don't think we have the right to inflict our ethics upon an obligate carnivore, I think it does not commit error when doing it's thing, but I think we would commit ethical error by forcing it to eat vegetarian.

From that position I don't think it's wrong to feed meat to animals in zoos, I wouldn't force vegetarianism on carnivores and I wouldn't see need to do anything about the diet of wild animals.