(July 29, 2019 at 1:31 pm)Shell B Wrote:(July 29, 2019 at 12:37 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: We had no general fundamental moral position on animal cruelty. If anything we thought it was morally good to modify animals to better suit our needs. What many people had were not a moral position but laundry lists of ad hoc "thou shall not"s with respect to particular coddled animals, which they then frequently sought to impose on others.
Isn't that what all of "morality" is? As for the particular coddled animals part, I've already established that my argument is the hypocrisy is what needs to be corrected, not the fact that we're making it a criminal act to harm animals.
Tribal morality might be just a list of thou shall nots. But in a complex society the basis of morality should be principles that can both be generally agreed to and not self-defeating in the sense that it relies on acquiesce of people who might come to strongly perceive their interests to lie else where.
