Veganism

[The Grand Nudger]

Doing morality™ requires some kind of thinking, we agree there.

Moral realism isn't about who or what is making a judgement, though, those are the moral fact-making properties of subjectivism and relativism. A moral proposition being objectively true is determined by whether or not the inferences are valid and the premises sound. Just like any other statement. That's a state of affairs that (allegedly) obtains in reality regardless of who or what or even whether a given morality do-er has done that bit of thinking.

Similarly, the sum of 1 and 1 was 2 before any mind capable of comprehending addition had come into being. Or, if we prefer, we were harming animals and the environment before we ever did or even could realize it.

-just to get in front of this...it is possible that the allegedly up there is doing alot of work, and is in error. I accept that, though it would present a far greater problem than whether or not moral realism were true - it would present issues for any alleged fact statement we make...including all of your allegedly fact based objections to moral realism. I just don't think it is in error. I think that state of affairs does obtain in reality, and insomuch as a moral proposition satisfies (or fails to satisfy) the conditions of objective (as opposed to subjective or relative) truth, then it is true (or false) in a non-novel sense.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Doing morality™ requires some kind of thinking, we agree there.  

Moral realism isn't about who or what is making a judgement, though, those are the moral fact-making properties of subjectivism and relativism.  

Again: without a mind to make that judgement, where is any morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

Outside of a mind to comprehend the theory of evolution where is evolution?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Outside of a mind to comprehend the theory of evolution where is evolution?

"I'll take 'What is a false equivalence?' for a True Daily Double, Alex."

We can and have observed evolution in the fossil record, and so can affirm it exists separate from a comprehending mind. You cannot say the same for morality.

I'm tiring of this merry-go-round, especially when you've resorted to this sort of slipshod thinking.

[The Grand Nudger]

Wait, there are "observations" happening outside of minds....? We have and can observe the types of harm discussed in the ethical vegan argument too, by the same means and to the same standards we use in science..literally as a product of science...no?

As I've expressed a few times in thread, and pretty much always get around to in these discussions...I'm not suggesting that there aren't difficult questions or unsatisfying answers for or from realist or objective semantics and concepts. There are. Those problems aren't limited to realist or objective moral semantics and concepts, they are a potential for error propagation or cascading failure across any example of the set - which includes things like evolutionary biology...all of the sciences in fact, math, the very idea that there are parts and wholes and distinctions between them to coherently discuss, so that we can talk about things being object or subject or moral fact or moral consideration or moral desert or a whole encompassing any two or all, even. Ultimately, when I reach that point, I just tell it like it is. I'm aware of the problems with objectivism in general and in moral context - and all things considered, I still think it provides the most accurate description of the universe as I experience it and morality as it's attempted, even when the attempt fails or falls into other types of moral schemas. I still think the person is trying to make a fact statement.

If it is not a problem for evolutionary biology that the observations and thinking are being done by minds, it is not clear why it would be a problem for objective morality that the observation and thinking would be done by a mind. I would certainly agree that evolutionary biology isn't like subjectivist deistic deontology, but ofc that's not moral realism. Here's a q - I wonder if what's incredible to you (or anyone else) is that I believe that there are harms which are not a matter of mere opinion or cultural indoctrination. Or that I believe harm is an item of moral concern. The, or at least a, thing that moral consideration is about? When I say that livestock production (or veganism!) can harm animals and the environment regardless of whether or not a particular person accepts that it does, and even if no one knew about it, to do be doing any mindstuff on the subject....does that seem like something impossible to believe, or incoherent, or difficult to defend? When I say that our moral concerns swirl around harms that we believe exist in the world, is that something impossible to believe, or incoherent, or difficult to defend? Is it the combination of the two, or my insistence that only those moral statements which can be objectively certified as true are true?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Wait, there are "observations" happening outside of minds....?

I had assumed you could read plain English (you realize that much of the fossil record I mentioned was laid down when there weren't minds to conceive evolution), but somehow you seemed to miss my point yet again. Evolution happened in part before minds arose. Once minds arose we could see and organize the fossil evidence of evolution that has already happened when there were no extant minds. It follows that evolution doesn't require minds to occur -- only to understand.

At this point, I'm convinced you're being disingenuous and probably deliberately obtuse, and so I am ending my participation in this discussion. Enjoy the silence. You've earnt it.

[The Grand Nudger]

It seems like the harms referenced in the ethical vegan argument also occur when and where there are no minds to conceive of them. When's the last time you watched your chicken get produced? Reckon it and the environment weren't being harmed so long as no one else was looking?

Moral realism says the same thing about harm that you say about the fossil record and evolutionary biology. Once minds arose that could see and organize the physical evidence of harm that had already happened and that continued to happen, we began to form theories of morality.

Our first attempts look pretty basic. Basically trying to figure out why some natural evil had occurred. River gods are angry gods. We tried reciprocity, we tried magic. Eventually we realized that we often had some sort of culpability or agency in those harms that are not (or do not seem) like natural evils, and perhaps even some say in the mitigation of natural evil. So instead of treating the river god well in the belief that it would then treat us well, and instead of trying to cast a spell binding the river god from harm, we began to manage the rivers. We got pretty good at it. We damned them up, controlled their flow, produced energy, used them to reduce harms like starvation. Now, should an engineer make a colossal mistake or build in some intentional evil, and a dam bursts because of it flooding the town below and killing all the people...do we find ourselves saying something like "there's nothing objective to this, it's only an opinion that the town and it's people were harmed, there's no fact of the engineers responsibility for those harms his actions caused!"

No, we do not. You can see how this applies to livestock management too, I'm sure? Where, for our own ends, we created a system with oversights, flaws, and straight up built in harms, over which the subject of harm has no control. Where the manager is responsible for the outcome and consequences of their management decisions.