Animals, Eating Meat and Moral Standing

Respect for humans is also selective; many people have no respect for the lives of strangers, or for foreigners, or for people they morally disapprove of. Is this acceptable?

Im sure you can do better by giving the subject some thought.

To imply that dentition and vsion predetermines a dietary "fitness" is obvious. To then try to make a parallel statement that opposable thumbs predetremines antisocial acts is , of course stupidly ridiculous.
PS are you stews meatatarian evil side?

I'm not disputing that anatomy determines fitness for certain purposes. I'm saying that it doesn't tell you anything about what is permissible. Opposable thumbs can be used very effectively for strangling people, just as human teeth can be used very effectively for chewing meat.

PS no, I'm not.

Certainly it is. Where would organized religion be without such attitudes?

Are you telling me that, if I put a tray of freshly boiled water into a freezer and anotjher tray of cold water into another freezer, the tray of freshly boiled (andtherefore almost boiling hot) water will freeze first?? Do you have any experiments that proved this? I can believe that a tray of previously boiled water (then cooled before putting in the tray aould freeze faster than a tray of cold tap water, mostly because of the degassing of the water.

Eating meat falls outside the scope of morality, because life evolved eating it and has not quit eating it, despite the efforts of the few. My eating a juicy porterhouse is no different than a fox devouring a chicken. Or a worm eating an apple, for that matter.

Well, i didn't specify freshly boiled water, but i would suspect that that would be true. Evaporation is a significant component of freezing, and that's why hot water (and all i specified is hot water) freezes faster than cold water.

This page on the subject comes complete with reference notes and bibliography

Ive heard of the Mpemba effect and thought that it was bullshit. It relies on the evaporative effect lowering the temperature and then happening at a rate that just "shoots past" the temp decline in cold water fresh from the tap. While this "MAY" work for an amount of water so miniscule so as to equate the two effects of lowering temp externally and by evaporation.
Actaully, supercooling can best occur in a fluid that is exposed to extremely cold temps and then introducing a nucleation poarticle like a rock.

Im gonna say that we oughta send this to mythbusters and see if they can support it. Im goin with the "common sense" story for now.


Too many p chem books lying around

Go with whatever story you like--i can think of few less reliable sources than Mythbusters, c.f. that bullshit of theirs about splinters from cannon fire in wooden sailing ships. Not only have i provided a source (which you are, of course, free to ignore), i've seen David Suzuki tackle the issue on his excellent television program, The Nature of Things (that was on the same episode that he demonstrated that painting little black dots on the inside of window glass is the fastest way to "defrost" it--great show).

You neatly dismiss the mice as collateral damage, yet are unwilling to accept factory farming, based solely on the premise that humans don't need to eat meat.
Humans don't need to drive cars either, Which, by your standard, makes the deer's death immoral. Except, of course, if your personal desire to drive a car causes you to adjust your morals a bit.

Morals are not anything other than a social contract between members of our own species. You, yourself have just reduced them to the opinion of most people in the deer example. You call the mice collateral damage one moment then want to say there's nothing wrong with giving them moral consideration the next. It is quite obvious that morals, for you, are subject to personal preference with a little added support from most people. Just who gets to weigh in on these morals, do most field mice get an opinion?
Maybe you should try demonstrating that morals are anything other than a social contract first.

Calm down there set. Im just curious. I can think of at least 2 means that argue the case about the different freezing times from a pChem basis and I cannot think of one reason that supports the claim about the mpemba effect.
(Sounds too much like mbemba, anothet myth).

I understand you dont like Mythbusters, we disagree. I think they are one of the best ways on tv to train kids about questioning these myths. The only thing about the shows I hate, is that they drag theirfeet to put it all in a 50 minute show, and they leave the big punch lines till the end.

They actually tested the explosion of wood shards by cannon and experimented as to howthese shards werent lkethal. NOW, could that have been due to the type of woods used (close grained old growth v wide grained new growth). They did as much of an objective test as they could have and failed to show the pig carcasses suffering anything more than paper cuts. Course I dont have wooden ships in my blood, Im more of a fibreglass or kevlar over woodframe kinda guy.

Ill have to look for the NAture of Things, is that on cable?
It also helps to have the winshield facing the morning sun. I often use my black leather gloved hand to act as a sunlight absorber and a heat transmitter to make little handprint sized defrost marks and Ill drive off looking through the handprint until the defroster catches up.

Again, rather than respond to the challenge, you simply try to divert from the issue.

But here you go:



source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_animals#Pain_in_different_species

So, with that said, these side considerations of whether plants have the same interests as animals, is irrelevant. Moving on now...

I don't give a rat's ass what you deem necessary for moral consideration--your opinion on "moral" issues is a matter of indifference to me.

It's not about what I think, it is a matter of normative argument. I, unlike you, propose interests as objective criteria for moral considerability. You can debate that criteria for sure, but what have you offered substantively to the discussion besides an immature style of arguing? How have you argued against the claim that interests arn't morally relevant? And if so, what makes human's morally distinct from animals? What is the criteria for that? I would be happy to see you provide an answer.

Thanks for the response Edgar.



Simply put, your argument reduces to what is 'natural' and because what is natural lies outside the scope of morality, moral judgements need not apply. Is that a correct interpretation?

However, I see problems with this line of reasoning.

First, I don't see how you could provide an adequate justification for animal welfare. Why is eating meat not wrong, but cruelty is? If how we treat animals is simply 'natural', there is nothing else we can really say about the subject. Further, I'm interested what criteria subjects human beings to moral evaluation, but not animals? Is that possible?

Second, your reasoning commits you to a hierarchial view of species, which basiclly reduces to "might makes right". Homosexuality is often argued against as being 'un natural' but doing so is nothing more than just bias. This is a problematic form of reasoning, and I think you should familiarize yourself with the problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

In terms of ethical deliberation, naturalism is far from what we consider to be moral. The whole point of morality is to transcend the status quo.

If you are so against eating meat, why is your name "bigstew"?

You neatly dismiss the mice as collateral damage, yet are unwilling to accept factory farming, based solely on the premise that humans don't need to eat meat.

Reason being is that there is a contextual difference between the two. My argument against factory farming is that it involves unnecessary cruelty to animals for the purposes of eating meat, which is also unecessary.

Plowing a field, and harming mice isn't necessarily cruel in the above sense. Where mice take up residence isn't the same as systematiclly subjecting farm animals to factory farm conditions.

Your right, human's dont need to drive cars, but if a deer is accidentally hit, just like if a mouse is accidentally killed, is any moral wrong committed in an intentional sense?

Growing food is necessary, and perhaps steps can be taken to try and mitigate the effects of animals that might be affected, but lets be practical and reasonable here. Your standard of perfection might be pushing the limit a bit much.



While I find contractualism an interesting moral/political theory, it is definitely contestable in the fields of both ethics, meta ethics, and political philosophy whether morals are anything but contracts.

My reference to most people is simply to recognize the intuitions of people, and what they would find reasonable. This is a normative argument remember. Remember, direct interests is compatible with contractualist principles, that is, under certain conditions we all agree to certain rules for an ideal outcome. I don't see how recognizing the interests of animals is precluded by that. If you are going take a Hobbesian line of contracting, well, there are many problems associatted with that as well...



Of course mice are subject to moral deliberation. If we recognize their interests, as we do other humans, then we need to take into account how our actions affect them. Your plowing example is a good example of a hard case, where the benefits in certain circumstances may out weigh the costs, but the outcome relies on good reasons.

Are you familiar with Tim Scanlon's contractualism? Here is the essence of what he argues:

An act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any set of principles for the general regulation of behaviour that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced, general agreement.

I don't see how this pre cludes the moral consideration of animals, as a matter of normative debate. Further, I don't want to side track this discussion with ethical theory. You'll notice in my OP that I advanced a incompletely theorized argument, and that though particular issues may be debateable one way or the other (like your mouse case), we can agree on general principles (animal cruelty/factory farming is wrong) without pre supposing a major ethical theory. It happens all the time in law.

There was no challenge for me to respond to. I made an open statement, and then i responded to a comment by Thomas. At no time did i respond to any post of yours. You decided to stick your nose in, and, assuming that you must be a legend in your own mind, you accused me of misrepresenting your position, when i'd not represented your position at all--you're nothing to me as i've already pointed out, and i hadn't responded to you at all until you addressed me directly. You did so when i had said that i saw no reason to consider plants to be worth less than animals. You responded that they aren't sentient (but cockroaches are? . . . you really didn't give this much thought), aren't social, don't feel pain, etc.

I asked you how you knew that, but you've never responded. You just provided vague bromides about common sense and scientific consensus, which functionally were argumentum ad populum fallacies. Now you respond with a single Wikipedia entry which casts doubt that plants can experience pain. So, you've still not answered the simple question of how you know that plants are not sentient, do not act socially, etc. (you can go back to your own post for your laundry list of why animals are superior for moral consideration to plants). However, now i'm going to up the ante--what evidence do you have that members of the order insecta are sentient? Do they feel pain or regret? After all, they're animals.

Prating on about normative argument doesn't provide the fig leaf for your attempt, your puerile attempt, to beg questions and to act as thread gestapo. You don't get to tell me what i can discuss. Don't tell me about an immature style of arguing when you're attempt to dragoon me into to discussing the drivel you've been posting--i'm not obliged to take up the cudgel to confront your tedious logic chopping.

I haven't argued against a claim that interests are morally relevant, i don't give a **** about that. I was speaking to the issue of people assigning values to animals because they are animals, as distinct from plants. So i posed the questions of the relative value of a bristle cone pine tree, which lives for thousands of years as opposed to a domestic chook which doesn't live for a half a dozen years; or the relative value of a quaking aspen grove, the largest known living thing on the planet weighing in at over 6000 tons as compared to a hen's egg.

You can sit in the corner and stroke off about the excellence of your normative argument and the moral considerability of animals as compared to plants to your heart's content. One thing you can't do, is drag me along on your obsessive little journey.

I see you find yourself in conflict with rats and insects. What conflict do you find yourself in with cows, chickens, and pigs?

Your argument that giving moral standing to other species would inhibit such a practice is specious. One need only to look to our own intra-species ethics on conflict to see where your defense resides.

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I'm not going to agree to tie the two together like that. Factory farming is one thing, animal cruelty another. Factory farming does involve a certain amount of avoidable cruelty. This is mainly attributable to economic concerns rather than carnivorous behavior.

From the perspective of human decency, animal cruelty is wrong. I can agree with that.

Factory farming supplies cheap meat, and a whole slew of other animal products. It would be no solution to call for everyone to stop eating meat. There are animal byproducts throughout our daily lives. We aren't at all prepared to change all that. Attempting to ascribe morality to the situation only results in fruitless discussions, preventing any real improvement in the process.

A simple appeal toward human decency would most likely have greater effect. It is really no different than the field mice, at this point.
To think we can remove meat and animal byproducts from our lives so easily, is naive. I doubt you will find many who don't agree we should treat animals as humanely as possible. I can't think of a more counter productive argument than ascribing moral standing to animals - and entirely unnecessary to boot.

Morality is at least a dual proposition, for humans. We anthropomorphise nature and we make friends with animals. We place ourselves in the other entities' flesh, so that when it suffers, we also suffer. But, we have a split personality. We can love a chicken or a pig, but we can eat a chicken or a pig, because we compartmentalize. I can do this with a clear conscience, because eating meat is not wrong. As I said earlier, every living thing is on a menu. - I would be willing to bet most vegetarians would revert to meat eating in an instant, if the best, most tasty plants were no longer available.