Veganism?

[genkaus]

Whether sentient creature should be killed an eaten for meat has nothing to do with any intrinsic right, just as whether fetus should be allowed to be aborted has nothing to do with any intrinsic right. There is no such thing as intrinsic right. What is determined to be appropriate for a particular purpose determines what is said to have any right, not the other way around.

I agree. There are no such things intrinsic rights, the same way things don't have an intrinsic meaning.

You are right, it is the purpose that determines the right. But whose purpose? I can choose the purpose of my life and if I kill an animal to eat it I'm choosing the purpose of its life as well. My rights are granted in recognition of my capacity of that choice. To not grant the animal the same rights is to claim that it is not able to make that choice. That claim needs evidence and I believe it lies in the level of the animal's consciousness.

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Interesting, and only slightly off topic....there has long been a tendency towards taboo with regards to what were considered "animals of a higher order" (as well as a market that caters to breaking those taboos). One of those quirks we seem to have with regards to food.

How many of you would eat a monkey?

How many a cow?

A dog?

Monkey - probably not.
Cow - will and have.
dog - probably.

Do you imagine the answers would be the same if I asked a Hindu? What if I asked someone from Korea?

I'm a Hindu - culturally, that is. And I have no problem eating cows.

Great Apes are currently the terminus of their line, but this is true of most species of plant we currently include in our diets. If "higher order" is going to be used as a smoke screen for "like us" that's fine, but lets be open about that. Then we can use much simpler language to describe our argument. "I do not feel comfortable eating things that remind me of some part or characteristic of myself". That's perfectly understandable, keep in mind that many pet lizard owners see something familiar in their lizards, or spiders, or fish, or any other animal one cares to imagine (and inanimate objects such as mountains, or tiny pebbles..really, everything). We have cultures who elevated certain animals to the "higher order" without any sort of scientific classification whatsoever, creating totems and taboos. Point is, the metrics you've used sound perfectly fine if one wishes to make a personal decision about what one's conscience can handle with regards to their food (and where it comes from/what it is). There's nothing in any of this that turns it into a question of morality that applies to us all.

The level of sentience or consciousness an animal has in not a matter personal preference. I know that we do not have enough knowledge about how consciousness works to correctly determine where to draw the line.

To be clear, I do not use "reminding me of myself" to judge whether the animal should be eaten or not. For example, if we compare relative immorality of killing and eating a 1 day old baby versus eating a gorilla, I would say that the latter is more immoral, even if I am more similar to the former.

The criteria, in its simplest form, is as follows: if the animal is capable of making rational decisions, if it is capable of acting inspite of its biological directives and if it gives indication of independent thought that is not simply a part of conditioned behaviour, then we should not eat it.