Rocsteady wrote:I think that's a bit of an abdication of responsibility[...]
That's fine, I'm sure plenty of people do. I don't personally think I'm obliged to research the manufacturing process behind every product I buy (and I would argue lamb meat is a product like any other, and slaughter is a manufacturing process like any other). I generally just lean towards the view that if it's openly sold on the high street then in most cases it's tough to say someone's evil for popping in and buying it. I'm sure I would die of guilt if I truly understood the moral impact my decadent Western lifestyle was having worldwide, but dying of guilt doesn't seem very productive to me, so I try to focus on more practically useful methods of exerting moral influence in the world (i.e. voting anyone-but-Tory!).
Maybe that's not very sophisticated. But we all have our bugbears, me included: I get a little annoyed at people who drive when they could easily take some equivalent public transport. I'm not sure I can necessarily justify that it's 'morally wrong,' but it irritates me, whereas plenty of others think that's fine and understandable. (I get along perfectly well without a car and have never felt particularly inconvenienced --
and I'm doing my bit for a greener Earth don't you know!!! ...Just kidding...) I think the take-away is that even people who are educated and in theory care to some degree about their personal impact will express that in different ways.
mic wrote:Karl wrote:...as you ignored in my last post, there is already a theoretically-best diet plan...
Ignored a post from you? Never. However, there's nothing immoral about the vegan diet, so what is to be gained from subsisting entirely on that vile protein shake-looking alternative to actually eating?
Isn't it the case that your impact on e.g. the environment is clearly measured along a gradient? It's not "meat bad, plants good"; some crops will have more impact than others. I'm telling you there's a horrible sludge out there that is optimal. They've thought about carbon footprints and calories per square mile and how many field mice are run over by tractors and come up with the absolute most-moral way to ingest nutrients. You should be drinking that sludge for the good of the planet!
OK, OK, they don't actually claim to be the most moral choice of food. But it's easy to see that they might well be - producing a complete sustenance option from a very limited range of plants - so if you indulge me for a second and assume they are, aren't you a bad person for putting the pleasure you get out of eating a variety of actual plants above those concerns?
I don't think you are, but I don't think I'm bad for eating meat either.
mic wrote:Karl wrote:...sentient = torture bad; sapient = killing bad. Why? Because sentience implies you can feel pain, and I don't want anything that can feel pain to feel it unnecessarily. But sapience is the threshold for having a true, introspective understanding of your life and desires and what the effect of death would be on them. That gives your continued life an inherent worth that simply isn't there in nonsapient beings.
Your evaluation, while undoubtably scientific, seems disingenuous. How about, sentient and sapient = torture and killing bad?
Why is sapience the benchmark of inherent worth, as opposed to intelligence or depth of feeling? Is all of this your personal opinion - what you tell yourself to justify your animal testing - or did some science council make the determination?
All of our moral choices are ultimately based on our own rationales for believing certain actions are good or bad. I've just tried to present my view, which I think is simple, self-consistent and intuitive, being based on what respective species are actually able to experience and in some sense 'expect' morally.
There's no hidden agenda: I'm clever enough that I could go and work in a different industry if animal testing bothered me, so I have no motive to lie to myself.
mic wrote:Also, aren't some animals suspected of sapience, such as primates and dolphins?
It might one day be shown that some of our primate cousins are capable of the same higher, abstract thought that we are. I strongly suspect they aren't, and current studies (where they even exist) are so inconclusive as to be not worth talking about -- but if the body of evidence builds and eventually it seems likely to be true, then I would go beyond animal rights and support some analogue of
human rights for those species.