Vegetarianism vs Omnivoreism .... discussions btw Kichi and bennyboy

[Angrboda]

I would grant you some of your points, I just wonder if the metric of suffering isn't more concerned with protecting the feelings of the vegetarian, rather than that of the animals. I don't know what a chicken feels. I don't know what its suffering means. But the typical vegetarian stance appears founded on a reaction to emotional revulsion, rather than a consistent ethical framework. It's hard, I think, because at this time, ethics, in my view, faces a crisis. The traditional foundations of ethics appear flawed, so people are hunting for replacements. An ethics based on compassion is very popular, and superficially seems compelling; I just don't think that this seeming superficial rationality of the position holds up under scrutiny. I'd be the first to admit that there are unanswered questions in my ethics, but I think an ethics based on empathy is a dry hole. Empathy is a useful guide to moral judgements, but a highly fallible one, and as such it more "points toward the foundations of ethics" than suffices as a foundation for ethics itself. One might consider Sam Harris' book The Moral Landscape an attempt to propose a cohesive framework of ethics based on compassion and empathy (the metric in his case being "well-being"), but I think he faces the same problem. Lack of suffering and well-being appear to be useful things to aim for, but they don't fundamentally answer the question of why their utility should be considered important. The answer to that question is largely silence.