(August 3, 2017 at 6:20 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Maybe, hard to say not knowing why that would be, but obviously not from the system of harm or suffering, as no harm or suffering need be caused there. Though, again, if there were some shitty moral component to food production..and in practice there usually is something, we'd still be choosing the least egregious among a field of sub-optimals. That's -generally- not seen as grounds for moral condemnation even when the act in a vacuum might be considered immoral.The reality is that the animals involved in food production are treated really horribly, even the ones used to make the milk that I drink. We do not, in fact, choose the "least egregious." For the most part, out of sight, out of mind, and pass me the steak sauce.
Quote:-that's lazy. Yes, they're dehumanized, but it goes deeper than that..the nazis weren't gassing german shepherds. They treated them as -less- than animals. They extended their notions of morality and noty being cruel, for example...to dogs, but not to those jews.They weren't gassing german shepherds only because they had no reason to. But this is a two-way street: we anthopomorphize pet animals, and dehumanize people we intend to abuse.
Quote:I want to point out here, that in all of the above, you refused to continue the discussion of the rationalization you argued to -be- rational. You refused to consistently apply it, you refused to entertain the logical consequences of it when it determined that killing bessie was -not- immoral even though killing the immigrant was..and not because one was human and one was a cow - and now, you're just trying to start that again, up above.Too much meta-commentary. You have in your comment about German shepherds demonstrated that animals CAN selectively be included under the umbrella of moral consideration. The next question should be obvious: is there a rational basis for this consideration, or is it emotional?
My position with regard to both German shepherds and Jews is that we decide who we will include under our umbrella, and who we will exclude, and the latter group is basically fucked. But we don't have to be nazis to do this-- we just have to be human.
Quote:-here's something fun to point out, rather than go full balls to wall crazy with "harm doesn't matter", you could have asked whether or not a society in which livestock production is okay is a society that creates suffering - for the animals. After all, just because the law says we have to do x, doesn't mean we will, or that everyone does x.I would prefer you only quote things I've actually said. I said that "suffering" as a single metric for moral ideas is incomplete, because you can do things we'd consider immoral (e.g. murder) without causing suffering, or at least causing very little. So we have to extend the list of axioms from "Minimize suffering" to something more than that.
As for harm-- well, are we going to define death as harm, or not? And if so, on what basis does the cessation of conscious agency constitute "harm"?
