(February 15, 2014 at 12:13 pm)Creed of Heresy Wrote: Why is the ability to bind sensory inputs into a biological CPU more important than a decentralized input system?
It is the ability to be conscious that means that the activation of pain receptors causes the feeling of pain and suffering. Feeling and suffering is not just a function of activation of pain sensing neurons in the skin, for example. Rather they are the result of integration of those signals within conscious experience created by the binding of multiple sensory inputs in the brain. Its not just a question of the quantity of CPU power, its a structural feature of the way sensory inputs are processed that creates a qualitative change in information processing to allow consciousness to exist or not. Animals have this ability to be conscious, whereas plants do not.
I value the happiness of conscious animals, and wish to reduce suffering, so to me eating meat is wrong. Even if the animal were to be killed painlessly having lived a great life (which is almost never the case), one is still preventing an animal from living a long and happy life. With milking animals, dairy cows are still subject to a very unhappy life, including forced separation from their young, enforced pregnancy, and increased risk of mastitis from mechanical milking. All this produces a significant stain on animals health, which dramatically reduces life expectancy.
With eggs, to maintain a supply of chickens one must allow many of those eggs to hatch, 50% of which will be male chicks. The vast majority of male chicks are then killed because one only needs a few to impregnate females, and having too many together will result in fighting.
More broadly though I am becoming more convinced by the rights based argument rather than just a utilitarian argument. This starts with the acknowledgement that conscious animals have their own conscious desires and interests. When we take an animal as property we are saying that the interests of that animal should be subservient to our own, and that consequentially its life is of inherent less value. But on what basis? One could argue that animals have lesser cognitive abilities, but many humans also lack some cognitive abilities, such as babies or the mentally disabled, and we would not treat them as property (by for example harvesting their organs for transplantation). For me the only thing that matters is the ability to be conscious and have interests, and if one can do this then we should have right not to be treated as property.
Re vegan food etc, sorry to hear you are not into tofu. I only ever eat it when I go to Chinese restaurants, I think they must deep fry it or something, when it try it always turns out a bit soggy and bland. Soya mince can be pretty good though when cooked with plenty of olive oil. Anyhow I tend to get my protein from lots of whole grains, nuts and legumes instead. As for alternatives to hollandaise sauce with vegetables, I find that plenty of olive oil, a bit of salt, +/- balsamic vinegar and garlic is all you need.
