Morality from the ground up

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

Some of them, for sure - and similarly there's no shortage of people willing to point out that this is unethical, even immoral, regardless of whether or not they're vegetarians.  

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.

They had no reason to gas the jews either.  Yes, it is a two way street.  We sometimes afford our pets more consideration than human beings.  No matter what our moral system, our moral agency is spotty.  

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?

A question already asked and answered - we generally set the lines along sentience in a rational moral system...but sentiment is also a strong selector, though theres a meta-issue here as well..in that even when we don;t think an animal is all that sentient, we sometimes think that the people who abuse them are still cruel, or immoral. We might even recognize that a person who mindlessly destroys inanimate objects is somehow broken. Not because the act, in a vacuum, causes any real harm..but because it strongly correlates with others that do.

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.

Well, ofc we decide that.  We can do it any number of ways..some of them rational, most of them not.  

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.

I've already shared my opinion there..that many of the additions will reduce to minimizing suffering.  Sure, though, we can make other considerations.  Do you have any in mind?  

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"?

Some do, some don't.  What do you think, is death harm?