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How do you morally justify eating animals? (itt the OP discovers forum discussions)
- Thread starter sulam
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My point is that it just doesn't apply to animal eating. You're paying $50 a month for internet, why not send that to Estonia to feed some poor family? You're taking the time to post in this forum, why not use that time to help homeless people in your neighborhood? How is your desire to use your money to lead a pleasurable life any different from another person's desire to eat meat?
Um, what? Do you even realise what you just wrote? I don't know cultural boundaries, but there is a culture gap between USA and Pakistan. That is quite obvious. Morality is different in different cultures. Go on, refute me; try telling me there isn't a difference.
I was pointing that out as why cultural relativism is a stupid theory, not that I accept it as a legitimate one.
Like he already said, morals are decided by the current era and culture, culture being the people in the area you are.
Surely it isn't hard to see the different morals in different places in the current time, or the differences between morals of certain areas in different times.
Morals are all dependent on the person, the time, and the place.
Because I am not causing anyone to suffer by paying $50 a month for internet. Killing something is causing suffering.
You therefore need to specify from the outset what makes something "right" before getting into a discussion about morals, and then proceed to discuss how to achieve this. What's common is to try to maximise happiness overall: so genital mutilation is wrong because it doesn't really benefit anyone but eating a burger is if you're looking at the happiness of people. Most people's moralities are ultimately based on maximising their own happiness, which in many cases is lowered by guilt of doing something like killing another living thing or something.
To say that morality is absolute and not relative to cultures (without taking it down the ridiculous "well what if we just all raped looted and pillaged" road) is to say that every other culture in history except for the one you arbitrarily chose for your own personal set of morals (while ignoring the influence your current culture has on those very same morals, whether you admit it or not) was wrong. What knowledge is available to you that was not available to the rest of them? Or are you just that much more enlightened than everyone else?
Long story short, absolutism is arrogance.
Yes, you are not actively causing suffering, but what he was pointing out is that you are choosing to spend that money on your own pleasure instead of using it to potentially alleviate suffering.
There is clearly a difference between what cultures believe is moral and what they think is immoral, but that does not mean just because they believe it is that way it is actually that way. If it is than what any other culture does is morally acceptable and there is no way for another culture to criticize it which makes it a useless moral philosophy because it does not tell use how things should be only how they are.
people have to eat to live, and energy comes from eating other living things. i would like very much to just say "all living things are equal" and be done with it, but that opens a serious can of worms, for example, fishing is now on par with cannibalism.
so instead i just generalize. humans > things i like > things i don't like. i like dolphins, cats, and maple trees so i don't eat any of those.
i don't really see why animals should be broadly favoured over plants. you're still eating other things that were once alive. i think the usual argument is that animals feel pain or something, but if plants felt pain we would have no way of knowing it.
so instead i just generalize. humans > things i like > things i don't like. i like dolphins, cats, and maple trees so i don't eat any of those.
i don't really see why animals should be broadly favoured over plants. you're still eating other things that were once alive. i think the usual argument is that animals feel pain or something, but if plants felt pain we would have no way of knowing it.
Yes we are more enlightened than previous cultures. That is not arrogance it is a fact.
And there is a huge difference between causing suffering and not doing something to potentially alleviate suffering.
It's called evolution.
Please tell me how doing things for the betterment of humankind and to the detriment of various animal species is intrinsically "immoral" when animals do the same thing to each other all the time. It's the way things are, there is nothing wrong or evil about following our instincts.
Basically I fail to see why humans should give a rat's ass about other species considering that doing so (far moreso than killing animals) goes against the natural order.
Please tell me how doing things for the betterment of humankind and to the detriment of various animal species is intrinsically "immoral" when animals do the same thing to each other all the time. It's the way things are, there is nothing wrong or evil about following our instincts.
Basically I fail to see why humans should give a rat's ass about other species considering that doing so (far moreso than killing animals) goes against the natural order.
It's not just previous cultures, it's future cultures as well. Those cultures' morals will not be identical to ours. So do we know better than all possible future cultures?
What's the difference? The end result of both is the same: suffering.
Because if you accept that it is morally wrong to cause unnecessary suffering to another thing, than it would be morally wrong to eat animals.
First, how do you define "unnecessary"? I agree that causing suffering for no reason other than amusement is wrong, but causing suffering for one's own betterment is just the way things are; everything acts that way, including and especially the animals you seem to care for so much.
No we most likely will not know better than future cultures. They are probably ways we are acting immorally that we have not even considered, just as we are considering moral issues that other cultures did not.
My morals don't care about causing suffering to other things as long as it causes me some benefits - eating animals certainly gives me benefits; they taste delicious (usually). Why do you assume that your morals are right?
In the same way that our culture has evolved from previous cultures to become more "enlightened", thus insuring our survivability, why would you not make the same claim about our moral standards also evolving to improve our culture's survivability? You seem to be dead set on believing that there is some absolute moral standard, and I don't think you've yet explained WHY you believe that or WHERE that moral standard comes from. And please don't say god/religion because that's an entirely different debate where you would have to first prove that all that even exists to have any sort of ground to stand on.
I define unnecessary as something that is not needed to be done to survive. And for one's own betterment would seem to also justify slavery.
It doesn't justify slavery because there is a distinction between what one does to other species and what one does to one's own species throughout the animal kingdom. What I am talking about is how one treats other species. I agree, slavery is not just in the same way slaying people and eating them is not just. However, slavery of animals and slaying/eating them is justifiable because they are a member of a different species.
This is the exact same as how animals treat other members of their own species differently from members of other species.
All of those are completely separate debates which are very long. But in short, there must either be an absolute standard or there is no moral standard. Because ultimately anything in between devolves into no moral standard.
Where it comes from would be from ourselves. We each own ourselves and nothing else. Since we do not own any one else we do not have the power to do anything to anyone else without their consent or we are acting immorally. Just as we have the right to not have anything done to us without our consent.
What makes species the determinative factor, why not race or why not sex or why not religion?
There is no morally significant reason that it should be species, just like there is no morally significant reason it should, be race, sex or religion.
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