(November 14, 2018 at 5:44 pm)Khemikal Wrote: We maintain that there is something relevant that is objectively different between ourselves and pigs. We may be wrong about this..but if we were..we would be objectively wrong, and so that purported difference would not yield the conclusion that we now arrive at.There's something objectively different between black people and white people, too. Or between men and women, or straight men and the Baskin and Robbins of gender declarations that we now deal with, or between you and me. But it is because of very strong feelings about black people, about women, or about straight men, that we now have the luxury of being so strongly entrenched in moral positions about those groups that we consider statements like "racism is wrong" or "women should be treated equally" objective truths.
How do you objectively arrive at the truth, "Pigs can't have rights because they aren't people"? You can't. You decide arbitrarily, very much without any negotiation with pigs, that it's better to call rape "artificial insemination," murder "humane cultivation of the animals" and so on.
How do people arrive at the idea that eating meat is morally wrong? I think in very many cases, it's because they think about (or see) the treatment and slaughter of animals, and develop a very strong negative emotional reaction to it. And that's why feelings about eating meat vary so much-- it's not rational, not really, it's because some people's feelings of "Yum" are stronger than their feelings of horror (in many people, completely absent), or vice versa.
