Europe, Boring Until it's Not

[SuburbanFarmer]

I never argued predation in the wild was unethical, I never even argued that human society eating meat is by itself unethical, but human society eating meat when it has advanced sufficiently that eating meat is unnecessary is unethical.

Again, you are not addressing the ethics, you are repeating the argument from nature fallacy, over and over again whenever you generalize that "things kill things."

I could offer all sorts of reasons that the “unethical” behavior of eating meat is not unethical, but you seem to want me to prove that it’s actually more ethical.

Well, given that the survival of your family and species are the top priority (ethically), restricting their food options to a single source is in fact unethical.

The world will not always be as it is now. Life will not always be so secure and easy. And when the next civilizational swing occurs, you want those around you to be best adapted for survival. The best chance for that is as widely varied a diet as possible, along with the personal skills to procure nutrition in any way possible.

Lol, It's important to keep eating steaks in case we forget how.

It takes a period of months for a full-on vegan to adjust back to an omnivorous diet. This is known.

I was speaking more in terms of society though, and personal hunting skills. If we moved everyone to a vegan diet, we would be incredibly vulnerable to crop blights, and - in terms of a civilizational event - vegetables would not even be an option for months, if it happened at the wrong time.

[JohnDonne]

And here’s a strange thing, if one were to decide that the intrinsic creator of value that is consciousness doesn’t have value, then it implies that whatever is making that judgment has value enough for the judgment to matter, which is of course that same consciousness.

Kind of like the statement “there is no objective reality” implies objective reality.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

I am saying that it's possible to be acting in accordance with ethics without being aware of or considering those same ethics. To not be considering ethics is the same as to be amoral, so those two things, ethical behavior and a state of amorality are not strictly mutually exclusive. That's all I mean.

I am not saying that survival is "natural" and that this "naturalness" makes it fall within the realm of the ethical, more that I am applying a common ethical standard by which humans are judged. It is common to say, "But he did it to survive," or "He was defending himself" in defending someone's otherwise unethical actions. Clearly necessity of survival takes precedent in determining the ethics of ones actions, and I think the reason that is probably goes back to the concept of the intrinsic value of the ability-to-value-itself-conscious mind.

And I eat vegan butter.

Ah, we are just using 'amoral' differently. I am using it to describe a situation that has no moral dimension, not ignorance or rejection of a moral dimension.

As for the rest, we seem to be at loggerheads, since "clearly necessity of survival takes precedent in determining the ethics of ones actions" reads, to me, as an explicit appeal to nature. One that allows you to forgive what would otherwise be deemed as unethical.

And you don't eat vegan butter, you eat a vegan spreadable-butter-facsimile.

What we’re digging around is really the root of ethics itself, which could be interpreted as an appeal to nature. I see it more as an ethical appeal to ethics, that tautology again. But my saving grace is I’m merely applying the rules as I observe them and bringing them to their conclusion. I am not arguing that ethics as a self perpetuating abstract concept makes abstract sense and is the way to go, just that if you want to be ethical, here’s what is consistent. If you decide consistency doesn’t matter then you admit it’s all a game and we may dispense with the pretext of moralizing about this or that, for if ethics doesn’t matter, then what does and join what basis?

The premium you place on consistency is what I was arguing against. I am arguing that it is unethical to treat humans and animals consistently. In, fact, I would argue that it is unethical to even sacrifice an iota of human pleasure for the sake of a chicken or cow.
I am consistently humanist, and a hedonist.

[Montegriffo]

Ah, we are just using 'amoral' differently. I am using it to describe a situation that has no moral dimension, not ignorance or rejection of a moral dimension.

As for the rest, we seem to be at loggerheads, since "clearly necessity of survival takes precedent in determining the ethics of ones actions" reads, to me, as an explicit appeal to nature. One that allows you to forgive what would otherwise be deemed as unethical.

And you don't eat vegan butter, you eat a vegan spreadable-butter-facsimile.

What we’re digging around is really the root of ethics itself, which could be interpreted as an appeal to nature. I see it more as an ethical appeal to ethics, that tautology again. But my saving grace is I’m merely applying the rules as I observe them and bringing them to their conclusion. I am not arguing that ethics as a self perpetuating abstract concept makes abstract sense and is the way to go, just that if you want to be ethical, here’s what is consistent. If you decide consistency doesn’t matter then you admit it’s all a game and we may dispense with the pretext of moralizing about this or that, for if ethics doesn’t matter, then what does and join what basis?

The premium you place on consistency is what I was arguing against. I am arguing that it is unethical to treat humans and animals consistently. In, fact, I would argue that it is unethical to even sacrifice an iota of human pleasure for the sake of a chicken or cow.
I am consistently humanist, and a hedonist.

So on that basis would you be happy to see a return of bear baiting and cock fights for your pleasure?

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

What we’re digging around is really the root of ethics itself, which could be interpreted as an appeal to nature. I see it more as an ethical appeal to ethics, that tautology again. But my saving grace is I’m merely applying the rules as I observe them and bringing them to their conclusion. I am not arguing that ethics as a self perpetuating abstract concept makes abstract sense and is the way to go, just that if you want to be ethical, here’s what is consistent. If you decide consistency doesn’t matter then you admit it’s all a game and we may dispense with the pretext of moralizing about this or that, for if ethics doesn’t matter, then what does and join what basis?

The premium you place on consistency is what I was arguing against. I am arguing that it is unethical to treat humans and animals consistently. In, fact, I would argue that it is unethical to even sacrifice an iota of human pleasure for the sake of a chicken or cow.
I am consistently humanist, and a hedonist.

So on that basis would you be happy to see a return of bear baiting and cock fights for your pleasure?

I don't see the appeal, but it doesn't bend me out of shape if someone else does. Legalize them shits, and then we can democratically decide what restrictions we are comfortable with. I care about what humans want, but since they want different things, the ability to compromise is important.

[TheReal_ND]

[JohnDonne]

Ah, we are just using 'amoral' differently. I am using it to describe a situation that has no moral dimension, not ignorance or rejection of a moral dimension.

As for the rest, we seem to be at loggerheads, since "clearly necessity of survival takes precedent in determining the ethics of ones actions" reads, to me, as an explicit appeal to nature. One that allows you to forgive what would otherwise be deemed as unethical.

And you don't eat vegan butter, you eat a vegan spreadable-butter-facsimile.

What we’re digging around is really the root of ethics itself, which could be interpreted as an appeal to nature. I see it more as an ethical appeal to ethics, that tautology again. But my saving grace is I’m merely applying the rules as I observe them and bringing them to their conclusion. I am not arguing that ethics as a self perpetuating abstract concept makes abstract sense and is the way to go, just that if you want to be ethical, here’s what is consistent. If you decide consistency doesn’t matter then you admit it’s all a game and we may dispense with the pretext of moralizing about this or that, for if ethics doesn’t matter, then what does and join what basis?

The premium you place on consistency is what I was arguing against. I am arguing that it is unethical to treat humans and animals consistently. In, fact, I would argue that it is unethical to even sacrifice an iota of human pleasure for the sake of a chicken or cow.
I am consistently humanist, and a hedonist.

You may be a humanist, but you fail to outline what makes your standard different than bigotry.

For if consciousness takes a complete back seat to the ethical primacy of species, why not to race and skin color? In rigging the game to turn up human you validate the arbitrary means by which you rig it, and thus jeopardize the foundations of why we value any sentient life.

[Speaker to Animals]

Most humans are not conscious but for a few moments out of the day, and at some point in recorded history, there were few if any conscious humans. Consciousness is a cultural invention that arises from the neural plasticity of the human brain combined with written language. You can just look at thge interactions between the Spanish.and the Inca to see how that plays out. Conscious humans were historically freaked the fuck out by non-conscious humans. From the other side's perspective, our capacity for deception is pretty fucked up. This is why something as stupid as a Trojan Horse, or driving the Incan emperor into surrendering himself like that was ever possible.

Animals do not possess consciousness. I love my dogs to death, but they only possess a vague concept of me, not an "I".

[TheReal_ND]

Most BOOMERS maybe. We have grown up with the internet and have been consciously reading and writing for more hours of the day than we sleep.

[Speaker to Animals]

Most BOOMERS maybe. We have grown up with the internet and have been consciously reading and writing for more hours of the day than we sleep.

Consciousness is not awareness. It's the cognitive space you have in your mind to model the world and where it becomes possible to model yourself objectively.

This is why primitive people couldn't deceive very well. It's why they would pull a giant Trojan Horse into the city walls. They didn't have the capacity to model things in the way we do.