Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?

[TheJackel]

"Killing life" is not the issue at hand. It is causing unnecessary suffering. A plant is not conscious, does not feel pain. It's not about what I think. It's about what the facts demonstrate. Do you think that a carrot suffers? How would it suffer?

Again you are trying to turn what I say into something about magically plant suffering.. And last time I checked, loss of habitats and our competition with other animals for resources = animals suffering all the time due to human activity. You are not going to magically eliminate animal suffering just because you can eat veggies... The question I asked was not answered..

[mediamogul]

I'd never do such a thing, you vegetarian types are my best customers..lol.

(Again, you're defining "meaningful" as something which is synonymous with "like us" in the biological sense. There's no problem with this -to me-, but it would fall under the remit of speciesism. I'm not judging you for it amigo, it's kind of expected. The trouble is that any justification you draw from this can be criticized by demonstrating parallels between those species you have included in the group of "has rights" and those you have excluded. It's not as difficult as you might imagine. We aren't as "aware" of ourselves as we like to think, and plants aren't as "oblivious" of themselves as is so often supposed. We leverage different biological mechanisms to achieve the same ends, and they often have similar outward effects.)

Interesting argument.

Wiki defines suffering as such:

Suffering, or pain in a broad sense,[1] is an experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm in an individual. Suffering is the basic element that makes up the negative valence of affective phenomena.

Suffering may be qualified as physical[2] or mental.[3] It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and frequency of occurrence usually compound that of intensity. Attitudes toward suffering may vary widely, in the sufferer or other people, according to how much it is regarded as avoidable or unavoidable, useful or useless, deserved or undeserved.

Suffering occurs in the lives of sentient beings in numerous manners, and often dramatically. As a result, many fields of human activity are concerned, from their own points of view, with some aspects of suffering. These aspects may include the nature of suffering, its processes, its origin and causes, its meaning and significance, its related personal, social, and cultural behaviors, its remedies, management, and uses.


Are plants able to experience a state of pain or discomfort? It seems to me that if there is not consciousness there is nothing or noone to actually feel the pain or discomfort. In other words there is "nothing in there" or "noone home". This is why sentience has with it the necessary requirement of consciousness. This is meangful suffering. It means little to say that for instance a computer program to respond as if it is in pain is in any real way experiencing pain.

How would a plant suffer in a meaningful way? It's not simply discrimination for those things with nervous systems. It is a necessary precondition of the ability to suffer. If one lacks a nervous system, one lacks the ability to suffer.

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"Killing life" is not the issue at hand. It is causing unnecessary suffering. A plant is not conscious, does not feel pain. It's not about what I think. It's about what the facts demonstrate. Do you think that a carrot suffers? How would it suffer?

Again you are trying to turn what I say into something about magically plant suffering.. And last time I checked, loss of habitats and our competition with other animals for resources = animals suffering all the time due to human activity. You are not going to magically eliminate animal suffering just because you can eat veggies... The question I asked was not answered..

Well if it is not a point about magic plant suffering what are you saying? Killing a living thing is not wrong in itself. Violating the rights of and causing unnecessary suffering to another sentient creature is.

The second question is a bit more of a valid question. The goal is not to eliminate suffering. There is no way that could ever be a reasonable objective in the world. The goal is to act ethically and to not cause unnecessary suffering that we are ethically responsible for. I'm not convinced that vegetarianism would bring down the world's food system. This is somewhat alarmist. Raising animals in the sheer numbers required for meat production places an immense strain on the farming and agricultural system too. The problem is with the overwhelming number of humans (and animals) that need to be fed.

[The Grand Nudger]

That definition escapes speciesism how Mogul? You are assigning "rights" based on metrics determined by species. The vocal supporter of plants rights would say that we suffer in our way, with the equipment available, and that plants suffer in their way, with the equipment available (I would have to take off your shoes to count how many times I had to sit through this argument from just one very vocal "sacredness of nature" type). I'm on your side btw, I don't think that plants have rights, and I don't think that they suffer the way we suffer...but neither do cattle. So where does that leave us? I don't think your decision to be a vegetarian is a "bad" decision, morally or ethically speaking, I think it's neutral. I don't think it's a decision you can provide a ration justification for by means of assertions with a demonstrable value of objective truth. I think it's a decision you made and rationalized. Subtle but important distinction when you go about telling others how they are violating the innate rights of this or that by consuming chicken tenders.

(and this is laying aside Jackels comment on your inability to prevent "needless suffering" of sentient creatures by not eating them, this would barely register as a blip on that count. So you don't eat the flesh, but you walk on sidewalks, post messages on these forums with an electronic device, etc etc etc. All made possible by animal byproducts. None of this is "needful suffering", is it?)

[mediamogul]

That definition escapes speciesism how Mogul? You are assigning "rights" based on metrics determined by species. The vocal supporter of plants rights would say that we suffer in our way, with the equipment available, and that plants suffer in their way, with the equipment available. I'm on your side btw, I don't think that plants have rights, and I don;t think that they suffer the way we suffer...but neither do cattle. So where does that leave us?

Please demonstrate to me that a carrot feels pain and I will eat a piece of bacon this moment.

It's a statement about a plant's ability to feel pain. A plant cannot feel pain or suffer. It's not simply a discrimination about one type of pain over another. Pain is a byproduct of a nervous system and consciousness. Lacking those two things an organism cannot experience pain or suffering. It's not that they are suffering of different types. It is literally that one is capable of suffering and one is not.

A more interesting argument to make might be of an ant. An ant has a basic nervous system capable of pain responses. The ant appears to be suffering when burned with a magnifying glass. The distinction is in that I do not think the nervous system is sufficiently complex to support consciousness. I, of course, have no way of knowing this definitively. I always found this point to be one of the weakest parts of my argument. The problem of consciousness and verifying it in other organisms. I feel comfortable saying that a carrot has no consciousness but can only venture a guess as to whether a fish is or is not conscious.

[The Grand Nudger]

Actually ant's don't "appear to be suffering" unless the plant that shrivels from toxins at the root zone "appears to be suffering". They are both merely avoiding further injury. Flora and fauna respond similarly to negative stimuli. You have no way of knowing this objectively, and so rely on the effect. Again, plants exhibit effects. Even so, they can't be said to be "suffering like us". "Sentience" isn;t a very good metric for this anyway. Some human beings are less sentient than others. Do they have fewer "innate rights"? We've been woefully wrong about sentience in the past as well, are you really ready to hitch your wagon to this one? How about the hypothetical trouble of AI or simulated beings. If the effect is what we rely on to assign rights, then at what point would an illusion become so convincing that it was no longer an illusion, but a legitimate effect? Is there any difference? Do androids dream of electric sheep?

This is all beside the point, you're again promoting speciesism as a metric for assigning rights. Are you okay with this? ( I am, and I go one step further, we're the only ones that have any, and only those we grant ourselves and extend to other human beings. If we want to assign rights to other animals we can, and we clearly do and have. None of that makes it innate. There is no condemnation of eating meat in any of that, unless we decide that there is.)

[mediamogul]

Actually ant's don't "appear to be suffering" unless the plant that shrivels from toxins at the root zone "appears to be suffering". They are both merely avoiding further injury. Flora and fauna respond similarly to negative stimuli. You have no way of knowing this objectively, and so rely on the effect. Again, plants exhibit effects. Even so, they can't be said to be "suffering like us". "Sentience" isn;t a very good metric for this anyway. Some human beings are less sentient than others. Do they have fewer "innate rights"? We've been woefully wrong about sentience in the past as well, are you really ready to hitch your wagon to this one? How about the hypothetical trouble of AI or simulated beings. If the effect is what we rely on to assign rights, then at what point would an illusion become so convincing that it was no longer an illusion, but a legitimate effect? Is there any difference? Do androids dream of electric sheep?

This is all beside the point, you're again promoting speciesism as a metric for assigning rights. Are you okay with this? ( I am, and I go one step further, we're the only ones that have any, and only those we grant ourselves and extend to other human beings. If we want to assign rights to other animals we can, and we clearly do and have. None of that makes it innate. There is no condemnation of eating meat in any of that, unless we decide that there is.)

I'm not convinced that stating plants do not suffer is speceism. It is simply the fact again that they do not suffer and has nothing specifically to do with the species.

On the other hand, you raise a good point which is, in my opinion, the most difficult challenge to this sentience argument. Is it ethically acceptable to kill and eat another human being provided that human being does not have the ability to suffer? I can't help but think of the abortion argument. Why is it that abortion is acceptable up to a certain point in the fetus' development and not afterwards? Is it because it has developed into a being capable of suffering? Is it because it is considered a "human being" after a certain point and therefore it has rights or is then ethically objectionable to terminate?

I want to say that it is wrong but under the sentience argument I'm not sure that it could be considered ethically objectionable. If the person was conscious and able to object to being killed then it's obviously a different story. On the other hand, we do pull the plug on people in comas often. I also want to say that a being either has sentience or it doesn't. There aren't degrees of ethics which correspond to degrees of sentience.

This is one I struggle with.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

I don't buy into cultural and moral relativism where nothing is true or ethical.

Sorry.Had to respond to that claim;it's misleading as an in principle definition.

Cultural relativism is simply the recognition that meaning of actions vary between cultures often a lot.


Moral relativism is a broad term.It MAY claim there is no OBJECTIVE reality, (as do I )AND it MAY claim there is no morality,but that is not THE definition of moral relativism. Moral relativism also recognises that moral values tend to vary between societies. By inference,it rejects the notion of absolute universal moral imperatives. Not the same thing as 'no morality'. Moral relativism says nothing about truth. A skeptic, I avoid truth statements as does science.

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Wikipedia is a good place to start:

Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities are understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism

Moral relativism may be any of several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures. Descriptive relativism holds only that some people do in fact disagree about what is moral; meta-ethical relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong; and normative relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism

[Minimalist]

I just made a flank steak with a Jamaican marinade. Absolutely fantastic.

[The Grand Nudger]

"Sentience" is not determined by species? News to me. Are there sentient carrots and non sentient carrots then? Sentient cattle and non-sentient cattle? "Sentience" is a description of an effect that seems to be the product of a specific type of biological machinery which is doled out in certain species. Hell, only one species was involved in forming the definition of the word to begin with......Perhaps that's the trouble right there, we started with a shitty definition?

Under the "either you have it or you don't" argument, couldn't I just anesthetize any animal before slaughter? Or perhaps I could stun them so that they were not aware of what was about to happen, thereby eliminating any suffering? Like, IDK, a captive bolt or penetrating stunner to the head?

[mediamogul]

I don't buy into cultural and moral relativism where nothing is true or ethical.

Sorry.Had to respond to that claim;it's misleading as an in principle definition.

Cultural relativism is simply the recognition that meaning of actions vary between cultures often a lot.


Moral relativism is a broad term.It MAY claim there is no OBJECTIVE reality, (as do I )AND it MAY claim there is no morality,but that is not THE definition of moral relativism. Moral relativism also recognises that moral values tend to vary between societies. By inference,it rejects the notion of absolute universal moral imperatives. Not the same thing as 'no morality'. Moral relativism says nothing about truth. A skeptic, I avoid truth statements as does science.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wikipedia is a good place to start:

Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities are understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism

Moral relativism may be any of several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures. Descriptive relativism holds only that some people do in fact disagree about what is moral; meta-ethical relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong; and normative relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism

How is that different from what I said? That morality is relative and purely a function of cultures and individual beliefs regarding ethics. I disagree completely. I am not an absolutist but believe that we can know truth in a fallible sense and also morality through the use of logic. Moral relativism states that that there is not morality only morals held by individuals that cannot be considered right or wrong. I think this is the most vapid of moral theories and a complete cop-out. Everything becomes grey and slips into the void of nobody being able to make ethical statements about anyone else's beliefs. Just because the Nazis believed what they were doing was ethical it doesn't mean jack. they caused unnecessary suffering and therefore were unethical in their actions.

I am much more ready to accept cultural relativism in the sense that cultural practices are essentially relative to the cultures and provided that they do not violate ethical principles people are free to practice whatever manner of customs they choose.