are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[littleendian]

Best way to illustrate this point is that throughout history, people have valued stuff we value more/less today or not at all. For instance, slavery was deemed OK because people argued that other people could be viewed as property and they used all manner of justification for that. Today we have more egalitarian values, so people are valued the same despite being different from one another. This change, despite being some objective morality move or even correct, is more just a trend of the culture and values thereof. If you want real objectivity then biology and anthropology would be a better bet than assigning (very) human values unto our environment.

Suffering and fear of death is not something specific to humans at all, very much the opposite, its the ultimate common denominator of all life.

That's not my argument at all, no.

Then why attribute human values unto animals?

I do not attribute human values unto animals, I attribute human values unto human actions. The wolf killing a lamb is not acting immorally, neither is the human who needs to rely on animal agriculture to feed himself because not much else but grass will grow in his native land.

Indeed, yet it seems very likely that our value systems are much more defined by the "thinking" of the superstitious masses, not the few outstanding rational individuals. Also, many of the great philosophers and people you would refer to as early pioneer scientists were themselfs in fact devout Christians and derived their value systems from the bible.

I don't, and I eat meat. Ecological meat, but still meat.

But our values are not just or maybe not at all the product of our rational thought, they are also a product of what we feel is right and what we feel is wrong. Most people feel it is right to eat beef, I would argue because of our cultural inheritance and our upbringing, in which it was never questioned, hence they never bring this question into the conscious, objective realm of reasoning. However, that is exactly what a thinking person must do, question the values we take for granted and re-evaluate them based on reason, and reason alone. That process is exactly what rid us of slavery and is what I propose we apply to our relationship to other animals on the planet.

And if we change our animals as described in the previous paragraph?

I'd be the first to buy a juicy lab-grown steak! Unfortunately it's still outside of what I would consider affordable (the first one cost 250,000 USD or something like that).

If your sole argument is that of suffering, and experience thereof, then I don't' see why we couldn't accommodate that and alter the animals that we eat.

I completely agree, but that is unfortunately not how our meat is produced today, hence the discussion.

Reciprocity ≠ Theory of Mind.

Sure, I didn't mean to claim this, however also Theory of Mind, even if it was a solely human trait, which I still doubt, would still not give a good reason for why man should have no moral responsibilities towards other species.

Theory of Mind is very important to the question of suffering, because they don't have a concept of suffering without a mind to go with it, now do they?

Not having a theory of mind is not the same as not having a mind, although of course the minds of animals are far less capable to reason than that of man, which is precisely why we humans have a great responsibility towards our dumb little brothers and sisters in the rest of the animal kingdom

We are special. We're the only animal with a Theory of Mind.

I don't think it is on Theory of Mind necessarily but yes, humans are special in our ability for reason. However, with great power comes great responsibility.

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And also, if we're going to start talking about animals having feelings etc, could we possibly take a step back and maybe start treating each other better before we move onto animals?

Welcome to the discussion I would argue that great compassion to our fellow animal species would lead to greater compassion for our fellow man. Its not uncommon that the aggressor reduces the victim to animals, for example "rats" or "vermin" before committing attrocities, in order to justify the cruelty. Blacks were considered to be non-human animals when caught and taken from Africa to do slave work, Jews were "rats" in the Third Reich. However, if our values would not distinguish so clearly between human and non-human but would focus on the objective realities of suffering and fear of death, these crimes would be much harder to justify.