Killing animals to eat them isn't unethical, we are apex predators, it's what we do.

It's like bitching about a wolf pack or lion killing a person or eachother for trespassing in their territory, that's how they function, get over it, stfu.

Our role in nature isn't to be pretty butterflies spreading happiness and sunshine, we're supposed to kill shit.

Joe: By DVD cam I mean shooting films on DVD, as in 28 Days Later. Am quite possibly using the wrong term :p

Agent: Sorry, but I don't agree with some of that. Arguing the perception point is a neat way of dismissing the whole issue, but take it to the furthest extreme and you no longer have solid ground to stand on, ethically and epistemologically speaking. Unless you're psychologically damaged, I don't think it's possible to live according to the dictum that what is out of mind, be it a dying animal, person or whatever, no longer exists and is thus no longer relevant to ethics.

"When we kill animals, they don't know they're on the chopping blocks until a few seconds before we axe them."

Unless of course they've had their claws, wattles and beaks burned off without anaesthetic, crammed a dozen at a time into cages barely large enough to admit a single bird, forcefed in darkness and the stench of their own shit for six months before being finally disposed of in electric baths. Try reading up on factory farming once in a while :) Whether animals can recall and analyse past experiences in relation to future ones is open to debate, and thus so is the issue of their "victimhood" (if we agree with your suggestion that "victimhood" is a quality thinking creatures assign others, not independent from the observer's predilections) but it's safe to assume chickens subjected to such experiences are aware we don't intend them much good.

Useful points about the economy, subsidies and climate concerns.

"It's like bitching about a wolf pack or lion killing a person or eachother for trespassing in their territory, that's how they function, get over it, stfu."

Wolves and lions aren't mindless killing machines, and nor are we. If we have certain instincts or simply enjoy the taste of meat, we can overcome these urges. Arguing otherwise is like saying that brunettes should never dye their hair blonde, or that you shouldn't wear clothes, because it isn't "natural".

Clothes are natural, they are tools, any tool is natural for humans, we are designed to use them, hence our mental and physical dexterity that allows us to use them.  A blonde dying her hair is driven by instinct to be attractive, it is also natural, they are using a tool to achieve this as we do for absolutely everything we do, you can't take a shit without using a tool.

Using a tool is only human, perhaps, but which tools we use and how we use them is a question of choice. Making yourself attractive might be considered a "natural" urge, dying your hair blonde can be attributed to personal preference.

Can you, emofag, choose not to eat meat? Right.

I can choose to kill you, what's your point?

Of course we can choose to not eat meat.  Would the world be a better place if everyone made that choice?  Not likely.

emofag


I can choose to kill you, what's your point?

The point is you need to eat, but you don't need to eat meat.

There are several reasons why the world would be a better place if people didn't eat meat, Joe - for starters, the US wouldn't be blowing (as of 2002) over 300 million hectares on feed crops and pasturing for slaughterhouse animals - but it's not really a question of general social benefit, economic consequence, etc with me. I just don't like needless suffering.

Just remember that animals aren't humans.  They don't suffer the same way.  Chicken who grow up in cages don't know any different.  I doubt they are suffering or longing to go outside and "roam free".  I don't like animal cruelty, though, such as kicking or punching them, etc.  Cows don't know that they are about to die until they are already dead.  Once they are dead they don't even go to cow heaven because there is no cow God or cow Jesus.

Edwin are you suggesting that ethics are not purely subjective? 

Vegans are like wannabe humanitarian activists, they're like "fuck it, helping people is too hard, I can just sit on my ass eating rice and act like I'm doing good"

Emo: Ridiculous. The vegans and vegetarians I know are equally if not more disposed to campaign on humanitarian issues than their carnivorous peers.

Agent: the idea that ethics is purely subjective may be accurate - not that we're in a position to comment conclusively here, as total subjectivity somewhat paradoxically precludes the identification of "totalities" - but I'm not sure it's all that helpful or constructive. Human beings tend towards generalities, towards the notion of common truths, principles, behavioural norms, etc. I don't think we're "built" to believe in the utter uniqueness of our perceptions and judgements, and as such meta-ethical arguments against objectivity exist, like the concept of objectivity itself, in a theoretical bubble. I prefer to work *within* ethics, to assume that there *are* moral constants, perhaps borne from a mixture of sensibility, self-interest and natural cooperative instinct, and to devote my intellectual time to identifying and assessing them.

Much of the above is off the top of my head, so there are doubtless problems with my reasoning :p

Joe: We can't speak of what animals (or for that matter other humans) think with complete confidence, but the diverse and complex behaviours of cows and chickens suggest that they're more than automatons. The fact that humanity is descended from one "sort" (need to find the correct jargon here) of animal and is capable of forming relationships with many others is further evidence to the effect that animals share traits - and thus "natural" rights - with human beings.

Are you one of those freaky people who doesn't even believe in pet ownership?  That's PETA's stance.  PETA is just a bunch of terrorists, though.

I don't know enough about PETA to comment, really, but I'm not against pet ownership. That's a whole other issue though, and I've just had a few glasses of wine. :s

Edwin

Joe: We can't speak of what animals (or for that matter other humans) think with complete confidence, but the diverse and complex behaviours of cows and chickens suggest that they're more than automatons. The fact that humanity is descended from one "sort" (need to find the correct jargon here) of animal and is capable of forming relationships with many others is further evidence to the effect that animals share traits - and thus "natural" rights - with human beings.

That's just BS, we already don't eat most of the smarter species capable of these "relationships" dolphins, apes, canines, etc.  stfu.  And no chickens aren't capable of any complex behaviors, you moron.

Spoken by a man who evidently hasn't kept chickens and hasn't been to China or Japan ;)

Anyway: games. I'm reviewing Assassin's Creed 2 next (no I don't get to review MW2 because GRHGGHGGRGGH). Which areas would you chaps like me to address in particular, if any?

Actually I travel to China on a monthly basis for work and my grand mother used to raise chickens, you don't know what you're talking about.

not that we're in a position to comment conclusively here, as total subjectivity somewhat paradoxically precludes the identification of "totalities"...

fuck off   lol


When we're talking about absolutes and objective morality.  The first thing that comes to my mind is the ideas of determinism.  If the conditions in which we base our decisions exits before we make and the variables which our decision making is based on are also deterministic.  Where does choice fit in?  If everything we do is determinable, do we even make choices? 

Ethics are based on values.  Those are based on experience, chemical makeup of the brain, intelligence etc.  If ethics exist purely inside the human brain... Its like the old saying "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound"?

What happens to the Universe when we're extinct?  A Universe without ethics.  I don't think the Universe would give a fuck.

I'll agree that there are ideals.  Its ideal to not have suffering.  Because we feel pain, and we've marked it as not ideal.  Some people are compassionate and can relate to lesser animals.  You can't really say that animals not suffering is absolutely ideal though.  I happen to value a good steak.  Not having steak causes me more pain that knowing a cow got her skull bashed in for it.  So that's one value in which my food ethics are based on.

But if you don't value a good steak or even a burger more than the value of avoiding causing suffering then its easy to say you're being more ethical by eating a salad.  You could say the burden of ethics are placed on the people with emotional and intellectual sensitivities towards certain values.

If you went into a room full of developmentally challenged kids and they're throwing chairs all over the place and smearing shit and the walls.  You can't really expect more from them, they're fucking retarded.  Of course they won't have the same behavioral standard that we place on ourselves.  Things that we consider unethical, they wouldn't even perceive.  This has been addressed already but it paints a picture of a continuum that has objective lines.  We place the lines wherever we're comfortable placing them.  Ethics are nothing more than a security blanket in my eyes. 

I do believe in an objective right and wrong but we have no ability to know what that is.  I'm sure Hitlers parents thought they were doing the world a favor by raising their son.  But if they knew he'd be a real bastard maybe they would have thought twice.  A perceived negative action can have positive results, and a positive action can have negative results.  Things we do affect the whole world, and the effects last for years and years.  The action itself is really insignificant.  Its the consequences that hold the weight of what we do. 

We can't even predict tomorrows weather.  How do we know if we're causing good or harm in the long term?

 

Indeed, I'm not sure that we can. The words I type today may be the byproduct of my mother's indigestion 25 years ago, which in turn may indirectly result from some long-dead Irishman's decision to eat hare rather than lamb on Sundays because his grandmother told him lamb was the devil's food, which could itself stem from the way light touched a certain rock on a certain day in the Jurassic era. And all this may be very much of a muchness to the man with cerebral palsy sitting opposite me in the library, and very, very much of a muchness once my synapses go black, this domain space is retired and everything I've ever thought or done disintegrates.

And yet somehow I fail to give a fuck for such speculations when confronted with the idea that something living might die in considerable pain so that I can gratify my own tastebuds... :) - much, it seems, as you're prepared to let your scepticism lapse when it comes to the "ideal" of minimised suffering. As I wrote earlier, I don't think human beings are configured to be "subjectivists" -what you call a "security blanket" is fundamental to the way we perceive and reflect on reality. We can't "remove" it any more than we can see out the back of our own heads.

emo:

Have you tried dog on your travels? I hear dolphin's very good too. And you obviously didn't pay much attention to your grandmother's chickens.

I doubt you feel that much when your head is lopped off.  Maybe some very brief dizziness as everything begins to fade, and even that only takes a few seconds at most.  Have you ever gotten cut or hit really bad?  It takes at least a few seconds if not more before you start to feel the pain.  Sometimes you don't really feel the pain until you know you've been cut.  My point is that I doubt those delicious animals feel or even realize anything as they are being slaughtered.  And boy are they delicious!