Morality from the ground up

[bennyboy]

When it comes to food, there is no pass and no need for a pass.  It's not something we can choose.  We have to eat.  Obviously, we want to feed ourselves in an ethical way, but if we had to do the unthinkable in order to get food, we would, and it would be pointless to give anyone the crooked finger for it..since, if there's -anything- that can obliterate our moral agency utterly and completely.....it would probably be starvation.

That may be the ideal for you, but it's a non-issue for me and most of the human race.  First world privileges Benny.  

Yes, first world privileges indeed.  But I am part of that first world, and I DO have that privilege.  I'm not the first one to think that with that privilege comes added responsibility to minimize in other ways the harm which I do.

My own vegetarianism comes from guilt, by the way: a needless accident cause by wreckless driving on the Trans-canada highway: doing like 140k (90miles/hr I guess) on an icy road with bald summer tires.  I crashed into a Caribou, and when i couldn't find the body I reported to the police immediately.  They told me that beautiful animal dragged itself out to the woods to die, probably after at least a couple days of excruciating pain.  I'm vegetarian because of a disgust with my own wastefulness and arrogance, and lack of consideration of the world, not so much because I'm on a campaign to save cows.

So I'm not really a preachy moralist on the issue I think-- although in the context of this thread, I do have to wonder if there's a rational reason for ANY of the lines we draw, or if it's all really just chimps with language, talking about their feelings about things.

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It's a rational point.  It would be anthropocentric bias if there was no indication that it were true and assumed so anyway, but we have every indication that it's true.

The anthropocentric bias isn't so much in the belief that people can suffer more. It's in the decision to accept that as a moral argument for allowing the suffering of non-humans.

You've created a society in which people can be drugged and drug off and then maintain that you've caused no suffering?

Is -that- a rational point?

If the relative amount of suffering is a prime moral consideration, then it is. So yes, it's rational, but only if you take a previous point as axiomatic.