Europe, Boring Until it's Not

[SuburbanFarmer]

We dont have three stomachs. Look at any predator. Much less gut than an agrarian animal. Eating meat is in fact an evolutionary cheat code that allows us to develop in other ways. There is nothing unethical about this fact unless the power is used towards malfiscient ends. I as well have many ethical concerns regarding our meat industry. I do not think however that an unnatural diet is the solution to the problem. We should act as wardens concerning the animals.

I don't think I've ever agreed with you 100%, but, here we are.

I just said the same thing to myself.. surprising. lol

[SuburbanFarmer]

I am dying right now. Today is a fasting day, but it was also a strength-training and running day combined. I have two salmon fillets waiting to be heated up in 40 minutes. I don't know if I can make it. I am so hungry right now.

Lol.

So fasting day ...is to eat two salmon.


Oh, it was two fillets. But still, that's a normal hefty meal.

Day ends at midnight. It wasn't a fat loss fast. It's a religious observance.

Does Jesus recognize time zones? Leap seconds?

Better wait an extra day, to be sure.

[JohnDonne]

There might be a fundamental incompatibility in how we view ethics, and I have been reticent to address it because I can't really think of a way to do it without making this discussion even more prosaic (as much as I have enjoyed it).

I am not a consequentialist, in that I think one's motivation for a behavior is more ethically relevant than the result. As such, if a person is compelled to avoid eating meat because they feel guilt over causing the death of a living being, that may be rooted in empathy, and as a result, is an ethical thing for that person to do. The fact that the result is fewer dead cows doesn't really have much ethical value at all, as far as I am concerned. However, if a person wants to justify this 'objectively' by claiming there are no moral distinctions between animals and humans, this is very much 'anti-human,' and a wanton abandonment of empathy and morality, even though the result may be the same.

For the person who legitimately feels guilty for eating meat, I suspect they are suffering from a sort of neurotic obsession with maximizing empathy as the only dimension of conscious experience with any ethical import, but I would never attempt to force them out of their guilt by demanding they eat steaks until they get the fuck over it. I am happy to let them continue to empathize with whatever they like, and let that motivate their behavior, and I am happy to call this ethical. I do not, however, feel compelled in any way to adopt their empathy as my own, and extend it to whatever they think I ought to. And I certainly think it is unethical of them to try to force that upon me, as I think it is unethical for them to attempt to justify their imposition by reducing the status of human consciousness, as reducing the status of human consciousness only corrupts ethics.

Since you insist on comparing my bigotry in favor of human beings to the bigotry of a slaveholder, I'll point out that it was only when the enlightenment convinced us to view all people as more than animals, and morally equivalent by virtue of their humanity, that you began to see vigorous moral attacks on the institution of slavery. It wasn't until more modern thinkers decided to reduce humans back to the status of animals that you begin to see some truly disgusting, morally deranged justifications for things like eugenics.

Try to pursue your noble calling to defend chicken and fishkind in a way that doesn't lend itself so easily to dehumanizing the only creatures on earth that we can be somewhat certain have human level consciousness, and are capable of human level moral reasoning and intuition.

Not sure I understand your first paragraph. You say an act with a motivation rooted in empathy is thereby ethical. If that's true it would follow in my case that the act of claiming that there is no moral distinction between cows and humans is an ethical one, since it is ostensibly rooted in empathy. I should be in the clear so far...
Yet you then say this is an abandonment of "empathy" and "morality" and is "anti-human." What is it that is abandoning empathy and morality? The person who is by definition acting out of empathy, or the action that is by definition rooted in empathy? Why does it follow that this is an abandonment of those things, and if consequence isn't ethically relevant compared to motivation, why does it even ethically matter, and by what objective standard?

You can prefer to exalt human consciousness and view all other consciousness as worthless, but if you argue that exalting consciousness in general would degrade ethics, that's a pretty objective claim, can you explain this objective basis for ethics and why humans have the only ethically valuable version of consciousness?

The fact that humans used their cruelty to sentient animals as justification for their cruelty to sentient humans kind of implies that the justifications for the cruelty to animals can be readily applied to humans. If all sentience were recognized as ethically valuable then such justifications and precedent wouldn't exist. For man is an animal, if animals are worthless, it makes it that much easier to decide that man is worthless.

I disagree that I am dehumanizing humans, any more than I lose rights by other people being granted them.

The only people who are using cruelty towards animals as a justification of cruelty towards humans are the people who are claiming there is no moral distinction between them. The rest of us humans are not so morally confused.

Now:
"but if you argue that exalting consciousness in general would degrade ethics, that's a pretty objective claim"
is followed by:
"For man is an animal, if animals are worthless, it makes it that much easier to decide that man is worthless. "
I am arguing that man is more than just an animal, and thus worthy of special consideration. It is your arguments in support of veganism that show a deterioration of empathy for humans by placing them in the same moral sphere as beasts, and making it easy for you to consider them worthless. I suffer from no such conflict. Humans are an animal, but they are an animal with unique moral attributes that put them into the moral sphere. Easily done.
I do not need to provide an 'objective basis for ethics' to argue that, deontologically speaking, humans are both the source and sensible object of moral obligation. Nor am I asking you to provide an 'objective basis for ethics' to justify the guilt you feel over consuming animals.

Clearly, believing in the 'objectivity' of your position is important to you, but you seem to rely exclusively on a version of absolute moral parity for that objectivity. Prove that parity is an objective condition for morality without resorting to a tautology, and perhaps you will have a point. Until then, we can just dispense with the pretense to objectivity when we talk about ethics.
Empathy and compassion are ethical motivations for action. Trying to carve out an objective reason for that empathy is, morally speaking, neutral, and pointless. Trying to compel me to act a certain way on account of your feelings of empathy towards animals is selfish, autocratic morality policing, and, I would argue, unethical.

If consequences are what matter, and not motivations, then you can only ever judge the morality of an action after the fact (and then, really, what is the point of establishing an ethical framework at all), and, furthermore, you can justify any depraved action as long as you can reasonably claim the results will be worth it. This is, in my opinion, a terrible basis for ethics and morality, and certainly not more objective or consistent than idealism or virtue ethics.

By way of a tl:dr:
If we agree that empathy is important to virtue and morality, animals are out of the equation, since you can not understand what it feels like to be a non-human animal. You can pretend you do by anthropomorphising them, but that is it.

"Humans are more than an animal because of unique moral attributes that put them into a moral sphere."

"Humans are both source and sensible object of moral obligation."

Okay, that's kind of like my argument, the one you called a tautology, you know when I essentially said self-valuing consciousness is both the source and sensible object of ethical value. And since we can dispense with the pretense to objectivity in talking about ethics...

Your basis for human value is no less tautological, and seems to be a differently worded version of my basis for sentience value. If you agree with laws coercing humans to respect humans because they're ethically valuable according to your tautology, then you can't be against laws that I propose for humans to respect sentience when it's using basically the exact same tautological proof. So what are you trying to pull here?

And I'm pretty sure I never said or implied that I was a consequentialist.

As for the last bit about empathy, if we were to agree empathy is important to virtue and morality the rest of the statement still doesn't follow, anymore than to say to say women are excluded from male ethics because men can never understand what it's like to be a woman.

[Speaker to Animals]

Lol.

So fasting day ...is to eat two salmon.


Oh, it was two fillets. But still, that's a normal hefty meal.

Day ends at midnight. It wasn't a fat loss fast. It's a religious observance.

Does Jesus recognize time zones? Leap seconds?

Better wait an extra day, to be sure.

Why wouldn't he recognize time zones?

In any case, fasting is what the Church commands. It wasn't a direct command from Jesus (though it carries that weight when they demand it). They can adjust the fasting rules as they see fit (and have a great deal).

[SuburbanFarmer]

Day ends at midnight. It wasn't a fat loss fast. It's a religious observance.

Does Jesus recognize time zones? Leap seconds?

Better wait an extra day, to be sure.

Why wouldn't he recognize time zones?

In any case, fasting is what the Church commands. It wasn't a direct command from Jesus (though it carries that weight when they demand it). They can adjust the fasting rules as they see fit (and have a great deal).

Well, maybe the "day of fasting" should be set to Jerusalem time...

[JohnDonne]

Not sure I understand your first paragraph. You say an act with a motivation rooted in empathy is thereby ethical. If that's true it would follow in my case that the act of claiming that there is no moral distinction between cows and humans is an ethical one, since it is ostensibly rooted in empathy. I should be in the clear so far...
Yet you then say this is an abandonment of "empathy" and "morality" and is "anti-human." What is it that is abandoning empathy and morality? The person who is by definition acting out of empathy, or the action that is by definition rooted in empathy? Why does it follow that this is an abandonment of those things, and if consequence isn't ethically relevant compared to motivation, why does it even ethically matter, and by what objective standard?

You can prefer to exalt human consciousness and view all other consciousness as worthless, but if you argue that exalting consciousness in general would degrade ethics, that's a pretty objective claim, can you explain this objective basis for ethics and why humans have the only ethically valuable version of consciousness?

The fact that humans used their cruelty to sentient animals as justification for their cruelty to sentient humans kind of implies that the justifications for the cruelty to animals can be readily applied to humans. If all sentience were recognized as ethically valuable then such justifications and precedent wouldn't exist. For man is an animal, if animals are worthless, it makes it that much easier to decide that man is worthless.

I disagree that I am dehumanizing humans, any more than I lose rights by other people being granted them.

The only people who are using cruelty towards animals as a justification of cruelty towards humans are the people who are claiming there is no moral distinction between them. The rest of us humans are not so morally confused.

Now:
"but if you argue that exalting consciousness in general would degrade ethics, that's a pretty objective claim"
is followed by:
"For man is an animal, if animals are worthless, it makes it that much easier to decide that man is worthless. "
I am arguing that man is more than just an animal, and thus worthy of special consideration. It is your arguments in support of veganism that show a deterioration of empathy for humans by placing them in the same moral sphere as beasts, and making it easy for you to consider them worthless. I suffer from no such conflict. Humans are an animal, but they are an animal with unique moral attributes that put them into the moral sphere. Easily done.
I do not need to provide an 'objective basis for ethics' to argue that, deontologically speaking, humans are both the source and sensible object of moral obligation. Nor am I asking you to provide an 'objective basis for ethics' to justify the guilt you feel over consuming animals.

Clearly, believing in the 'objectivity' of your position is important to you, but you seem to rely exclusively on a version of absolute moral parity for that objectivity. Prove that parity is an objective condition for morality without resorting to a tautology, and perhaps you will have a point. Until then, we can just dispense with the pretense to objectivity when we talk about ethics.
Empathy and compassion are ethical motivations for action. Trying to carve out an objective reason for that empathy is, morally speaking, neutral, and pointless. Trying to compel me to act a certain way on account of your feelings of empathy towards animals is selfish, autocratic morality policing, and, I would argue, unethical.

If consequences are what matter, and not motivations, then you can only ever judge the morality of an action after the fact (and then, really, what is the point of establishing an ethical framework at all), and, furthermore, you can justify any depraved action as long as you can reasonably claim the results will be worth it. This is, in my opinion, a terrible basis for ethics and morality, and certainly not more objective or consistent than idealism or virtue ethics.

By way of a tl:dr:
If we agree that empathy is important to virtue and morality, animals are out of the equation, since you can not understand what it feels like to be a non-human animal. You can pretend you do by anthropomorphising them, but that is it.

"Humans are more than an animal because of unique moral attributes that put them into a moral sphere."

"Humans are both source and sensible object of moral obligation."

Okay, that's kind of like my argument, the one you called a tautology, you know when I essentially said self-valuing consciousness is both the source and sensible object of ethical value. And since we can dispense with the pretense to objectivity in talking about ethics...

Your basis for human value is no less tautological, and seems to be a differently worded version of my basis for sentience value. If you agree with laws coercing humans to respect humans because they're ethically valuable according to your tautology, then you can't be against laws that I propose for humans to respect sentience when it's using basically the exact same tautological proof. So what are you trying to pull here?

And I'm pretty sure I never said or implied that I was a consequentialist.

As for the last bit about empathy, if we were to agree empathy is important to virtue and morality the rest of the statement still doesn't follow, anymore than to say to say women are excluded from male ethics because men can never understand what it's like to be a woman.

Come to think of it, I was a little easy on you, Moral obligation is actually a sloppier tautology than mine. It does not follow that moral obligation is bound to be directed towards it's source, or any humans, it could be directed towards imaginary or alien beings at the expense of humans and it could still be called moral obligation, without first establishing that humans are actually ethically valuable structures worthy of moral obligation.

But self-valuing consciousness creates the very concept of value and directs it towards itself, it asserts its own value into a void, to ask why that should be considered ethically valuable is the same as to ask why anything in the universe should be of any value.

So I say again, "Inasmuch as humans are ethically valuable, animals are ethically valuable."

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Not sure I understand your first paragraph. You say an act with a motivation rooted in empathy is thereby ethical. If that's true it would follow in my case that the act of claiming that there is no moral distinction between cows and humans is an ethical one, since it is ostensibly rooted in empathy. I should be in the clear so far...
Yet you then say this is an abandonment of "empathy" and "morality" and is "anti-human." What is it that is abandoning empathy and morality? The person who is by definition acting out of empathy, or the action that is by definition rooted in empathy? Why does it follow that this is an abandonment of those things, and if consequence isn't ethically relevant compared to motivation, why does it even ethically matter, and by what objective standard?

You can prefer to exalt human consciousness and view all other consciousness as worthless, but if you argue that exalting consciousness in general would degrade ethics, that's a pretty objective claim, can you explain this objective basis for ethics and why humans have the only ethically valuable version of consciousness?

The fact that humans used their cruelty to sentient animals as justification for their cruelty to sentient humans kind of implies that the justifications for the cruelty to animals can be readily applied to humans. If all sentience were recognized as ethically valuable then such justifications and precedent wouldn't exist. For man is an animal, if animals are worthless, it makes it that much easier to decide that man is worthless.

I disagree that I am dehumanizing humans, any more than I lose rights by other people being granted them.

The only people who are using cruelty towards animals as a justification of cruelty towards humans are the people who are claiming there is no moral distinction between them. The rest of us humans are not so morally confused.

Now:
"but if you argue that exalting consciousness in general would degrade ethics, that's a pretty objective claim"
is followed by:
"For man is an animal, if animals are worthless, it makes it that much easier to decide that man is worthless. "
I am arguing that man is more than just an animal, and thus worthy of special consideration. It is your arguments in support of veganism that show a deterioration of empathy for humans by placing them in the same moral sphere as beasts, and making it easy for you to consider them worthless. I suffer from no such conflict. Humans are an animal, but they are an animal with unique moral attributes that put them into the moral sphere. Easily done.
I do not need to provide an 'objective basis for ethics' to argue that, deontologically speaking, humans are both the source and sensible object of moral obligation. Nor am I asking you to provide an 'objective basis for ethics' to justify the guilt you feel over consuming animals.

Clearly, believing in the 'objectivity' of your position is important to you, but you seem to rely exclusively on a version of absolute moral parity for that objectivity. Prove that parity is an objective condition for morality without resorting to a tautology, and perhaps you will have a point. Until then, we can just dispense with the pretense to objectivity when we talk about ethics.
Empathy and compassion are ethical motivations for action. Trying to carve out an objective reason for that empathy is, morally speaking, neutral, and pointless. Trying to compel me to act a certain way on account of your feelings of empathy towards animals is selfish, autocratic morality policing, and, I would argue, unethical.

If consequences are what matter, and not motivations, then you can only ever judge the morality of an action after the fact (and then, really, what is the point of establishing an ethical framework at all), and, furthermore, you can justify any depraved action as long as you can reasonably claim the results will be worth it. This is, in my opinion, a terrible basis for ethics and morality, and certainly not more objective or consistent than idealism or virtue ethics.

By way of a tl:dr:
If we agree that empathy is important to virtue and morality, animals are out of the equation, since you can not understand what it feels like to be a non-human animal. You can pretend you do by anthropomorphising them, but that is it.

"Humans are more than an animal because of unique moral attributes that put them into a moral sphere."

"Humans are both source and sensible object of moral obligation."

Okay, that's kind of like my argument, the one you called a tautology, you know when I essentially said self-valuing consciousness is both the source and sensible object of ethical value. And since we can dispense with the pretense to objectivity in talking about ethics...

Your basis for human value is no less tautological, and seems to be a differently worded version of my basis for sentience value. If you agree with laws coercing humans to respect humans because they're ethically valuable according to your tautology, then you can't be against laws that I propose for humans to respect sentience when it's using basically the exact same tautological proof. So what are you trying to pull here?

And I'm pretty sure I never said or implied that I was a consequentialist.

As for the last bit about empathy, if we were to agree empathy is important to virtue and morality the rest of the statement still doesn't follow, anymore than to say to say women are excluded from male ethics because men can never understand what it's like to be a woman.

The fact that humans are capable of comprehending and being concerned with morality puts them in the moral sphere. We only know this is true about humans. This is a descriptive statement, not a normative one.

We already agreed that any conscious being values itself, but it is not self-valuing that makes humans capable of comprehending morality, it is valuing something other than self, like virtue. This is one major difference in out arguments. One might even describe it as one of the main features and definitions of ethical behavior, and also descriptive rather than normative.

And I don't claim objectivity when I say that humans are the source and sensible object of moral obligation. I specifically make that as a claim about ethical deontology. I am arguing that this is a superior rule because it doesn't lead me into the moral absurdities that seem to attend valuing animals as much as humans, like forcibly sterilizing humans for their own good because I fail to recognize that human agency is sufficiently different from animal agency. I don't claim to know the basis for human value, I am claiming that moral rules are only relevant to humans because only humans can comprehend them.

When did I suggest laws coercing humans to respect humans because they're ethically valuable? We can talk about rules in moral deontology without talking about civics. The only time I mentioned using the law to coerce people is when Monte asked me about bear baiting, and I said I would be comfortable with democratically deciding what laws should apply to the industry. This a civic consideration, not an ethical one.

You implied you were a consequentialist when you asked me why ethics matter at all if I think motivations are more important than consequences, and when you justified forcibly sterilizing humans if the consequences of not doing so were sufficiently dire. And when you said you would suspend your moral condemnation of eating meat if it was deemed necessary for survival. Basically almost every moral argument you have made that isn't explicitly a tautology.

Early on I told you your argument looked like a tautology, and you agreed, and we moved on. If you think you can make an argument for parity being the objective source of morality that isn't a tautology, I would still be interested to hear it.

This: "women are excluded from male ethics because men can never understand what it's like to be a woman" is what some contemporary progressives argue, and, interestingly, what irredeemable chauvinists seem to believe, but I think it is absolutely ridiculous to claim that the difference between men and women is the same as that between men and beasts. As a man and a humanist, I am reasonably certain that women are still capable of moral comprehension, so my deontological claims still apply to them. But then, I don't have quite the low opinion of the fairer sex that is bandied about these parts... I am surprised to see you reduce woman to the status of animals, but I guess I should have expected it, you are a vegan, after all, with no special regard for humanity.

[Speaker to Animals]

I am not a huge fan of fish right now, but I am seriously considering switching to mostly wild fish for animal proteins. I suspect eating a lot of fish would reduce the inflammation issues from my chronic illness and possibly allow me to increase training frequency beccause of all the omega 3 fatty acids.

I love chicken. Don't get me wrong. But if Dwayne Johnson is eating mostly fish, then something is to it.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

I am not a huge fan of fish right now, but I am seriously considering switching to mostly wild fish for animal proteins. I suspect eating a lot of fish would reduce the inflammation issues from my chronic illness and possibly allow me to increase training frequency beccause of all the omega 3 fatty acids.

I love chicken. Don't get me wrong. But if Dwayne Johnson is eating mostly fish, then something is to it.

I have a really hard time preparing fish in a satisfactory way.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I am not a huge fan of fish right now, but I am seriously considering switching to mostly wild fish for animal proteins. I suspect eating a lot of fish would reduce the inflammation issues from my chronic illness and possibly allow me to increase training frequency beccause of all the omega 3 fatty acids.

I love chicken. Don't get me wrong. But if Dwayne Johnson is eating mostly fish, then something is to it.

I have a really hard time preparing fish in a satisfactory way.

It's not easy, because there's so much variety in them. Can't really go wrong with a butter drizzle and some pepper though. Add a squeeze of lemon for white meat.