It's time to stop killing meat and start growing it

[bascule]

You'd have to justify that analogy first.

 

The point is there's nothing remotely bordering upon a conscious perceiver in a plant.

 

For one thing, I'd say a prerequisite of a conscious perceiver is: a nervous system.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

The point is there's nothing remotely bordering upon a conscious perceiver in a plant.

 

For one thing' date=' I'd say a prerequisite of a conscious perceiver is: a nervous system.[/quote']

I believe this was covered before:

Only because you define 'suffering' as what 'feeling[ins=July 11]concious[/ins'] beings' feel.

[Severian]

Plants dont feel anything' date=' thats the difference, they dont have mental experiences.

[/quote']

Mental experiences are simply chemical and electrical interactions. What makes them so special? In particular what makes them more special than the chemical interactions inside a plant?

 

You're going to have to reason better than that. Whats the argument that says evolved things can only be evolved things period and never correspond to moral characteristic?

That really is a bit rich - you were the one who claimed that evolution has nothing to do with morality. I happen to agree with that - I was pointing out that your statement that pain is 'bad' is ridiculous because it serves a very useful function (and has evolved for that very reason).

 

Come on, get serious, if any doctor tried to perform experiments on humans without anasthetic no one would believe that he was justified because "their pain is a very useful feedback mechanism!".

You seem to be really missing the point. In fact you little diagrams reinforce the point I was making - that pain is only a signal of bad things happening to an organism. Pain is there to give a fast unignorable warning of danger, so in your second diagram the chef gets a nasty injury because he does not realise quickly enough that his hand is burning.

 

Let me put this another way. Have you ever read the novel 'Pandora's Star' by Peter Hamilton? In that book mankind encounter an alien being who is a sort of hive being: there is an immobile central being which thinks and rationalises, and this being communicates telepathically with 'motiles' which are basically extentions of itself which can move around an perform simple tasks. The motiles have no sense of individuality because they are only an appendage of the central being. There are new motiles being 'grown' constantly and since they are expendable and the telepathic ability is rather slow there is no evolutionary advantage in sending 'pain' back to the central mind.

 

The alien captures two humans and assumes that they are motiles of an alien being. It is curious, so it starts to dissect them and doesn't understand why they open their mouths and make a lot of noise. It has no concept of pain and doesn't understand that they are beings in their own right and not motiles.

 

The idea of pain, suffering or even happiness being the only things that matter to a being is an assumption that you are making, and I don't think it is a correct one.

 

This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my entire life, do you mean to tell me you dont make moral decisions without taking happiness and suffering in consideration? I'd really have a hard time believing that, because I'm pretty sure if someone tied you to a chair and started torturing you for hours on end, you wouldnt think to yourself "what moral objection can I possibly have? is it the fact I'm being tortured, or is it because I'm not going to make it to work on time today?".

I would be more pissed if the damage was permanent than if it was temporary. Pain can of course cause phychological damage. But that is not the point - the point is that it is the damage which is the problem rather than the pain. You have elevated pain and suffering to a level where it is everything - all I am saying is that there are other concerns, such as damage to an organism which are more significant. You are completely neglecting these because you see pain as primary.

 

More importantly, you havent even attempted to show that I've wrongly argued anything, you havent even attempted to provide a superior ethic, you havent provided anything except to quibble about things which we are already in agreement or to call me an athropocentric despite the fact that I support efforts to fight anthropocentricism.

The only difference that I can see between electrical impulses sending signals to the brain and chemical messangers in a plant are the method of communication. The pain is designed to be unignorable as a safety mechanism to prevent damage, but the idea that this is the only form of communication possible in organisms which is important is clearly ridiculous and clearly anthropcentric.

 

Seriously, if you have a superior ethic, I'd LOVE to hear it more than anything. You wouldnt believe the sacrifices I make everyday to adhere to my moral principles (not just being a vegan, but also the huge amounts I give to charity, letting anyone stay in my house for the night, and supporting environmental causes whenever I can, etc) even when theres no legal consequence for not being a vegan, even when I miss out on a lot of things like spending holidays with my family because they murder animals everyday of their lives --- seriously, if everything I do is actually morally wrong, I'd really like to be corrected, and I'd be very interested to hear your superior ethic if you really have one.

So your morality must be correct because you have put so much effort into it? That sounds like an appeal to authority. Does your 'giving to charity' include your support of terrorist organisations like PETA?

 

I was not intending to present a superior ethic - I was simply pointing out why your reasoning for yours is completely wrong. The morality itself is not wrong as such, because you can believe whatever you like is 'right'. Any statement of that sort is underivable and unprovable, and hence arbitrary. The point is that you claim to derive your morality from the notion of 'interests', while I have been pointing out that your definition of 'interests' is anthropocentric and completely flawed.

 

I thought I held pretty consistently that its only relevant to talk about moral characteristics in so far as they're affected, and that theres no point in talking about other characteristics that dont affect the outcome of a moral equation.

The problem is that it is you who is deciding what constitutes a characteristic worthy of moral relevance, and if anyone disagrees with your choice of these characteristics or even just asks why you picked these characteristics over others you just call them 'silly'. That doesn't seem very mature and it doesn't seem a very well reasoned argument.

[john5746]

Is this the solution? Can we have our meat and eat it too?

 

We are fortunate to be able to worry about this. I think we should concentrate on the most economical way to produce healthy protein and teach the third world countries to do that.

[padren]

The point is that you claim to derive your morality from the notion of 'interests'' date=' while I have been pointing out that your definition of 'interests' is anthropocentric and completely flawed.

 

 

The problem is that it is [b']you[/b] who is deciding what constitutes a characteristic worthy of moral relevance, and if anyone disagrees with your choice of these characteristics or even just asks why you picked these characteristics over others you just call them 'silly'. That doesn't seem very mature and it doesn't seem a very well reasoned argument.

 

 

Severian, I just interject because I can't understand for the life of me what would be better than an anthropocentric sense of interests when trying to make moral decisions.

 

What other xyz-centric sense do we have to work with?

 

Its also worth noting that it is not so much anthropocentric, as trans-anthropocentric (ie, traits we appear to share with others, human or not, instead of simply ones we possess) since we are making these decisions based on what in the other being we can relate to, such as a shared sense of pain, a sense of conscious perception, and the like.

 

I can't think of a single other tool we have at our disposal to make moral decisions, and the "trans-anthropocentric" seems like a very good fit to me.

Can you explain why you feel it is flawed, or what we have at our disposal that would work better?

[Severian]

Can you explain why you feel it is flawed' date=' or what we have at our disposal that would work better?[/quote']

 

I don't think it is flawed in itself. I just don't think it is derivable or provable. I have no objection with people holding whatever views they like.

 

What I object to is the claim that this 'morality' is objectively better because it can be derived from undeniable truths. The 'truths' are not undeniable (and in my opinion not even true) and the logic behind the 'derivation' is also flawed.

 

But if you ignore the derivation and just take the conequences as your set of moral values then I can't complain. It is just as arbirary as any other moral viewpoint (and similarly unprovable) but people should be free to believe what they like.

 

I still disagree with the moral viewpoint though.

[Jim]

Finally, their are just too many non-sequitor leaps between saying "animals cant appreciate opera" and "its ok to kill animals to serve human interests". Aside from the fact that animals lack no more "uniquely human experiences" as their mentally similar human counterparts, animals and humans share many important interests that have almost nothing to do with uniquely human experiences at all. Animals and humans have an interest in being free from torture, having something to eat rather than starving, having freedom of movement, having shelter, and so on; wheres the argument that says causing two being identical amounts of profound suffering for identical durations of time have drastically different moral consequences because one being enjoys opera and another being doesnt? I dont think its justified to weight moral characteristics that arent even affected in a moral equation at all.

 

To be fair, the author didn't just talk about enjoying opera. His point was:

 

There are many uniquely human experiences to which we ascribe high value-deep interpersonal relationships, achieving a life's goal, enjoying a complex cultural event such as a play or an opera, or authoring a manuscript. Therefore, it would seem improper that social and ethical considerations regarding animals be centered entirely on the notion of a biological continuum, because there are many kinds of human experience-moral, religious, aesthetic, and otherwise-that appear to be outside the realm of biology.

 

You reduce this large spectrum of human activity to "enjoying opera." He makes a point which I've tried to make in the past and which is often ignored in this debate: "In the strict biological sense, human beings are animals too, but in the broader sense, human beings are much more than animals. The life of a man, woman, or child is worth far more than the life of a mouse, rat, dog, or monkey." This language speaks to the difference in kind, not degree, between humans and animals.

 

Finally, their are just too many non-sequitor leaps between saying "animals cant appreciate opera" and "its ok to kill animals to serve human interests".

 

He simply said that the life of a human is worth far more than that of a mouse, rat, dog or monkey.

 

Aside from the fact that animals lack no more "uniquely human experiences" as their mentally similar human counterparts, animals and humans share many important interests that have almost nothing to do with uniquely human experiences at all. Animals and humans have an interest in being free from torture, having something to eat rather than starving, having freedom of movement, having shelter, and so on; wheres the argument that says causing two being identical amounts of profound suffering for identical durations of time have drastically different moral consequences because one being enjoys opera and another being doesnt? I dont think its justified to weight moral characteristics that arent even affected in a moral equation at all.

 

You are reducing what has value down to the most basic elements - not suffering, not dieing, freedom of movement, comfort, security. Humans and many animals want these things. This does not address the point that the loss of a human risks losing many high-value human experiences which are not shared with animals.

 

The author, I suspect, is using linguistic sleight of hand, and he probably argues that humans having some experiences makes them entitled to better treatment in all respects.

 

Why is this linguistic sleight of hand? He clearly says that he does believe that humans have more value because they have more enriched experiences.

 

However, thats an inferior ethic with respect to the following: we treat creatures similarly in so far as they have similar capacities, and we can entitle some creatrues to particular rights if they have capacities which other creatures lack.

 

Simple demonstration: men and women are moral equals with respect to the capacity to suffer, be rational, and practice moral reciprocity, but only women are entitled a right to an abortion. With respect to uniquely human experiences, we can take animal suffering just as seriously as human suffering, but we can also say humans are entitled a right to vote and listen to opera because they have the requisite capacities that animals lack. In this way, we can rationally afford animals and humans equal moral status with respect to their similar capacities, and they have unequal moral status with respect to their differing capacities. What could be simpler

 

If simplicity is a goal, it would be simpler to (i) recognize human beings, not animals, legally and morally as persons, (ii) define the taking of the life of a person without legal cause as murder, (iii) err on the side of protecting human life. This is an enforceable rule which protects the sanctity of human life. Having some sliding scale dependent on animals’ capabilities at a given age does not seem simpler than the status quo. It seems unworkable and would more likely lead to the diminution of the worth of human life… as is evidenced by your answer to the Child v. Chimp issue.

 

Your approach of affording animals and humans equal moral (and legal?) status with respect to similar capacities draws an equivalency between biological capabilities and the non-biological high-value capabilities described. Animals have some enhanced biological capabilities relative to humans – strength, speed, sonar, etc. Perhaps they have an enhanced ability to feel pain relative to humans. However, the high-value capabilities you value, e.g. the “morally relevant” capabilities, are capabilities which are enhanced in humans. Why not just take the extra step and recognize that humans themselves have enchanced value and that we can get into trouble having a soft changing line when it comes to the question of what life human society will value.

 

Please note that these arguments do not even require a transhuman POV.

[Norman Albers]

I will lighten up about screaming sprouts, as I think it to be the smallest degree of 'slaughter' by which we can feed ourselves. I find a narrow viewpoint about plants, though. They use CO2 and produce oxygen; they shade and protect the earth from the elements of wear; they alter the water ecology of each area. These are what IMM says are 'external' benefits, no?