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Morality

Post by pikeyboy

@ Asakawa. I have killed, skinned, gutted and eaten rabbits, pigeons, pheasants and squirrels. I did so, with an air rifle (head shots, so as not to wound an animal and leave it to suffer) because I was very poor at the time. Using them for my food, given their abundance in pest proportions, seemed better to me than buying processed and packaged beans and tofu, given the food miles involved and the fact that I did not know where and how they were produced. I take full responsibility for that, and do not feel guilty.

Other than that, I can't offer a positive ethical position for eating animals. All I can say is that if you want to eat meat and fish, ask your supplier how it was produced, and accept your choice. If I'm feeding guests, I buy organic, free range, certified meat, and I've found a fishmonger who I can trust; he won't sell cod or haddock for example, but does sell rope grown mussels, which I think are actually beneficial for marine ecosystems.

If you don't want to take life, or be complicit in cruelty, Don't! Good on you! Just be aware that factory farming of vegetables can be just as destructive to wild animals (who also deserve a place to live) and the land, as the same processes applied to animals.

Post by Adamsm

@Adamsm
But they're neither sentient nor living at that point. Doesn't remove what they used to be.

So are you a vegetarian?

Hat

No, I'm not; but I don't count farm animals the same way I do humans.

Post by Squishalot

Is that from a sentience point of view?

Post by Adamsm

Is that from a sentience point of view?

To a point, especially considering how smart pigs are.

Post by fenomas

I meant both of us believe the guy is objectively wrong and deserves punishment, making the man and what he did objectively bad. If it was subjective we'd disagree that he's bad and what he did was bad and disagree that he deserves punishment for what he did.

The fact that we all agree about something doesn't make it objective. Objective means essentially that the answer exists outside of anyone's head - that the answer can be reached by some sort of process (like an experiment), and anyone who follows that process will find the same answer regardless of what opinions they hold.

Concrete example: suppose there is a movie that everyone in the world agrees is bad. (The 90s version of "The Avengers" springs to mind.) Even with all the world in agreement it wouldn't be "objectively" bad, because obviously there are no objectively testable ways of knowing if a movie is "bad" or not. It would just mean that everyone shares the same subjective opinion about that movie. The same is true about the morality we're discussing here - even if we all agree that people who harm others should be punished, that doesn't mean it's objectively provable (through experiment or the like). We may all agree, but it's still strictly inside our heads.

Post by fenomas

@Soldrethar, you're describing what I pointed out as a naturalistic fallacy.

Logical fallacies aren't necessarily and immediately incorrect, they're just examples of poorly drawn lines of logic and debate. In this case the fact that it is natural doesn't equate to it being moral.

Doesn't necessarily equate to it being moral. I think the appeal to nature still has considerable weight, or it should do for any rationalist.

To wit, consider the most extreme pacifist morality - the "harm no living thing" that some draw from Buddhism. That strikes me as similar to a moral system that claims it's wrong to poop. It's a perfectly defensible view - pooping offends the senses, causes disease, ruins the environment, etc. And yet we can no more refrain from pooping than we can refrain from inhaling microbes, harvesting crops, driving over worms and so forth. Thus both such systems are not so much telling us which actions are moral, but asserting that we are born into an immoral world where we cannot but behave immorally. (Which is ultimately more a religious claim than a moral one.)

In this way I think we can generally make strong arguments against any moral system that forbids "natural" activities. It doesn't guarantee such activities are moral (nothing does, after all), but I think it generally creates a presumption of morality, to be discarded only with strong and specific reasons. (After all, declaring that something natural is immoral is akin to claiming to "know better" than nature - which in some cases we probably do, but it's not a claim to be made broadly.)

Post by asakawa

@Pikey
Yes, this is what I've tried to do. Brits might be aware of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's (and I bet the Americans reading will enjoy that name ^_^ ) campaign for getting people to pay more for chicken only buying free range meat and eggs from "happy hens". It was a bit of a band-wagon but it did have an effect on how we buy meat.

I greatly respect someone so in touch with their meat eating that they are willing to (or have had to in their life) kill and prepare their own meat. I think that there's too many people who are happy to think that meat comes, not from animals but from supermarkets.
Also the situation you described is one of necessity and I think this touches on what Fenomas says. The naturalistic argument I think holds a lot of weight when it comes down to necessity. When not eating meat means that we don't eat or even just that we don't get a rounded diet.

If we don't need to eat meat do we have the right to take the lives of animals when it's simply for our pleasure?

In Fenomas' example, if we didn't need to "poop", if it was a choice, then that comparison might be more applicable. Or perhaps it's already applicable - we've created a safe way to deal with the process of excretion that also removes much of the unpleasantness. Now, if someone has access to proper toilets is it then immoral to go in the middle of a public street, a street where children play perhaps? I think it probably would fall under the umbrella of "immoral".

Post by gamerunknown

Oh I'd just like to point out that there are a few problems with hypotheticals: namely ecological validity (how well the test predicts someone's behaviour in their natural environment). There are two factors which contribute to lowering the ecological validity. The first is unrealistic scenarios, where behaviour would not have the same outcomes in reality. In real life, it's highly unlikely that a man would be fat enough to stop a tram from killing five people - at least predictably. He'd also be hard to shift. Such physically impossible scenarios can damage validity even if the reliability of tests remains intact. Another is socially desirable results: people want to have a harmonious view of themselves as "good". They'll say they'll be helpful and friendly in greater proportions than they are helpful and friendly when not being observed.

Post by 588688

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by hatman555

What good do you think moral relativism can accomplish? Like honestly, what is the point of this belief? All it does is let people justify immoral behavior by saying nothing is objectively right or wrong, so why don't we all just do whatever the hell we want? Why have laws, why be kind to others? Why don't I just break into some woman's home and rape and murder them? Why not, why should I feel bad? Why should I be punished? I could say I did nothing wrong from my point of view, and there is no right or wrong anyway, so who gives a ^&*!
Some of the people that do those things feel bad about it, but others don't. Just because we say that morality is subjective and different from person to person, doesn't mean we support them and say "Oh, don't mind him stabbing you, he just thinks its moral ok." No, the morals of the great numbers make the laws, and others need to abide by them. I don't think its morally right that more money from my taxes goes towards the US defense budget than to the education budget, but I don't control the laws, I only have a small small influence on them, and the majority of the people have decided that defense is more important than education.

Do you or any other moral relativist honestly believe that your view can do anything other than create anarchy? Oh wait, anarchy being bad is subjective, MY BAD. Oh, that's subjective too.Cute =P

Cheers,
Hat

Post by 588688

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Adamsm

Moral apathy is the idea that nothing has morals, so you don't do anything at all.

Morals are meaningless if they're subjective, because two opposing moral views (rape is okay, rape is not okay) cannot coexist.....You realize of course Sold, is that there are people out there who don't believe rape exists.....

Post by OverZealous

I don't personally support people going around stabbing others, even if they find it morally acceptable - but that doesn't change the fact that morality is inherently subjective. You can accept that morals are relative without being a person that shrugs of everything as different morals, such as the people you describe in your example(s).

Post by 588688

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Azazel

Morals are meaningless if they're subjective, because two opposing moral views (rape is okay, rape is not okay) cannot coexist.....You realize of course Sold, is that there are people out there who don't believe rape exists.....

And those people are completely retarded.

And that isn't subjective? :P

Morality

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