Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[bennyboy]

The reason is that animals suffer, and that the willingness to accept limitations on one's own behavior to prevent suffering in others is one of the most sensible bases for a moral system. This is my reason: that it is wrong to knowingly inflict suffering on those who do not inflict suffering on you.

Why? Why is it wrong to inflict suffering on food animals? You haven't given a reason, you've just declared it so.

It's not intrinsically wrong to do anything. But there are many things we choose not to accept, for emotional or other reasons. This is the foundation of morality. I believe that unnecessary suffering is bad, and that inflicting it on others is wrong-- not because there is some objective code which makes it so, but because I dislike my own suffering, and see no sufficient reason to inflict it on others.

You will keep stating your value choice. I will keep stating mine; in the end, mine amounts to a challenge to the status quo world view, which vegetarians see as unnecessarily barbaric, but meat-eaters see as sensible and natural. I believe the status quo is gradually changing in favor of vegetarianism-- but we will see, I suppose.

And the generality of the formulation you've given makes all forms of punishment essentially immoral, as well as a host of other absurd consequences.

Punishment IS immoral, if someone has done nothing to merit it.

Reasoning from evolutionary psychology makes it within our self-interest to ignore the suffering of animals. I say self-interest is a more reasonable foundation for ethics than your bald declaration.

Yes, this might-makes-right interpretation of evolution-based morality has been used since Darwin. But slave-owners and pimps act in self-interest, too. Whether something benefits them is beside the point; morally speaking, the issue is whether they have a RIGHT to obtain this benefit at the cost of the well-being of others. I believe they do not.

But since you're the one, in this context, claiming that the suffering of animals should have moral value, it's your burden to demonstrate this.

It's not a burden. It's a statement of values, which (I believe) we've already accepted are arbitrary. I believe a value which seeks to eliminate or reduce harm-- ANY kind of harm-- is intrinsically better than a value which justifies harm for one's self-benefit.

You haven't even come close. All you've done is declare, "Animal suffering. Oog. Icky. Me not like, therefore bad." You're a non-cognitivist's dream.

"Nigger" suffering. Oog. Icky. Woman suffering. Oog. Icky. "Homo" suffering. Oog. Icky.

I'm not sure why you think an emotional reaction to the horrors of seeing suffering inflicted on others isn't sufficient reason for people to take a position against the causes of those horrors. Many of the changes to moral thinking have been emotional responses to unpleasant circumstances. This is not a symptom of the weakness of logic, but a testament to the strength of human compassion.