Philosophical Vegan Forum

Posted: **Sat Jun 20, 2015 9:47 am**

//It simply is: I don't care. I don't care enough about the lives of the animals I eat//

I guess individuals in the past may have used a similar line when it came to women's rights, slavery, homophobia etc especially during the initial phases, they recognized how irrational and horrible they were being but just chose doing those things because there wasn't anything stopping them and they profited by the bigotry. "I just don't care" doesn't work because by that logic people could do just about anything terrible when in a position of power over someone else as long as they could get away with it. Is that the sort of person you like to choose to be? Lots of things were once socially acceptable as part of the status quo. Would you have gone along with all the bigotry just like everyone else?

//Now I know WHY this innate feeling exists: it's not exactly evolutionarily advantageous to care more about the lives of the animals you can eat than about your desire to eat them.//
It would be evolutionarily advantageous in the past to not care. But I don't think it's an innate feeling in the sense that one feels nothing when actually witnessing the horrendous treatment and slaughter. IMO most people do feel something, they may choose to numb the feeling or just look away.

//Making yourself emotionally numb to killing other animals so you can eat their flesh // exactly, one chooses to do this, its not innate, its the learned attitude of not caring, if anything the converse is true for most people. most people innately react/empathise to an animal suffering, eg even if its the same animal viewed as food but if one had them as a pet one would empathise if they were in pain. Many individuals as kids have experiences like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIMJ648qgg

/I've never been to a slaughter house physically; I've watched the documentaries about how they work//
Which ones did you watch? Have you watched earthlings?
Ita can be better if you could choose to personify if the gravity of the situation isn't getting through. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kr-xkM0RruA
http://poemsbyheather.tripod.com/index1.htm

//But can anybody actually be completely rational? I mean, you'd have to either have no emotions, or never let your emotions override your logical faculties.//
That's a false dichotomy, just because you may not be perfectly rational doesn't mean you now have a license to cherrypick which things you can be irrational about. You could try to be as consistently rational as possible especially when it's a nontrivial non neutral issue involving suffering of another.

//When asking "Is it right to eat animals?", you're asking whether humans should consider it morally right to do so. The objective response to that question would be "The universe has no morality, so it doesn't matter."//
How is that the objective response? No more than we could use that line for any other form of bigotry like discriminating against women, lgbt, different races. "The universe is amoral, so anything goes" one could use it for any form of bigotry. It's sort of an appeal to nature fallacy, morality isn't about what goes on in nature evolutionarily (eg survival of the fittest) nor the universe (the sun could incinerate us doesn't mean it's OK if we do that). And it's merely cherry picking it for this specific example for animal cruelty but not for other cruelties. An objective response would be when in a position of avoiding pain when there are other alternatives one could choose the one that minimises pain.

Posted: **Sat Jun 20, 2015 11:40 am**

OneQuestion wrote:But can anybody actually be completely rational? I mean, you'd have to either have no emotions, or never let your emotions override your logical faculties.

People can aspire to be as rational as possible by not letting their emotions control their reasoning skills and actions, and many do. It's not an impossible task. You don't need to stop having emotions, you just shouldn't base your actions and beliefs off of irrational ones (emotions).

If someone is irrational without realizing it, and changes or would change when confronted with that, then fine. But to know one is not rational, and to continuously not give a shit, and to be conscious of that as well but to not try to change it, would be evidence somebody isn't a rational person. It's not like it's an isolated incident where you were irrational; it's like you know you are consistently being irrational, and you just don't care.

OneQuestion wrote:Plus, would an irrational person even acknowledge he has no necessity to do what he does?

Being rational about one particular thing doesn't necessarily make you a rational person.

OneQuestion wrote:I know vegans love to harp on about how eating animals is bad for your health - it isn't true.

Not really the case at all.

Posted: **Sat Jun 20, 2015 10:40 pm**

garrethdsouza wrote://It simply is: I don't care. I don't care enough about the lives of the animals I eat//

I guess individuals in the past may have used a similar line when it came to women's rights, slavery, homophobia etc especially during the initial phases, they recognized how irrational and horrible they were being but just chose doing those things because there wasn't anything stopping them and they profited by the bigotry. "I just don't care" doesn't work because by that logic people could do just about anything terrible when in a position of power over someone else as long as they could get away with it. Is that the sort of person you like to choose to be? Lots of things were once socially acceptable as part of the status quo. Would you have gone along with all the bigotry just like everyone else?

No. Because those issues apply to people.

//Now I know WHY this innate feeling exists: it's not exactly evolutionarily advantageous to care more about the lives of the animals you can eat than about your desire to eat them.//
It would be evolutionarily advantageous in the past to not care. But I don't think it's an innate feeling in the sense that one feels nothing when actually witnessing the horrendous treatment and slaughter. IMO most people do feel something, they may choose to numb the feeling or just look away.

//Making yourself emotionally numb to killing other animals so you can eat their flesh // exactly, one chooses to do this, its not innate, its the learned attitude of not caring, if anything the converse is true for most people. most people innately react/empathise to an animal suffering, eg even if its the same animal viewed as food but if one had them as a pet one would empathise if they were in pain. Many individuals as kids have experiences like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIMJ648qgg

/I've never been to a slaughter house physically; I've watched the documentaries about how they work//
Which ones did you watch? Have you watched earthlings?
Ita can be better if you could choose to personify if the gravity of the situation isn't getting through. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kr-xkM0RruA
http://poemsbyheather.tripod.com/index1.htm

Well I do too. I would empathize with my pets if they were in pain. And torturing livestock doesn't strike me as necessary, because I can empathize on that level because I know what pain is. I still don't care enough to spare their lives if I want to eat them though. I was in fact thinking about this when I was cooking dinner today and as I sliced up some chicken I reflected and concluded that no, I don't feel bad about eating it at all.

//But can anybody actually be completely rational? I mean, you'd have to either have no emotions, or never let your emotions override your logical faculties.//
That's a false dichotomy, just because you may not be perfectly rational doesn't mean you now have a license to cherrypick which things you can be irrational about. You could try to be as consistently rational as possible especially when it's a nontrivial non neutral issue involving suffering of another.

Rational thought and rational action are two different things. I know it makes no health sense to drink alcohol, for example, but I do it anyway.

//When asking "Is it right to eat animals?", you're asking whether humans should consider it morally right to do so. The objective response to that question would be "The universe has no morality, so it doesn't matter."//
How is that the objective response? No more than we could use that line for any other form of bigotry like discriminating against women, lgbt, different races. "The universe is amoral, so anything goes" one could use it for any form of bigotry. It's sort of an appeal to nature fallacy, morality isn't about what goes on in nature evolutionarily (eg survival of the fittest) nor the universe (the sun could incinerate us doesn't mean it's OK if we do that). And it's merely cherry picking it for this specific example for animal cruelty but not for other cruelties. An objective response would be when in a position of avoiding pain when there are other alternatives one could choose the one that minimises pain.

My point was that the questions are about two different things. The question of God is a question about the existence or non existence of God, a true-false statement, which has an objective answer. To insist God exists when objectively speaking there's no evidence that is true is a denial of reality.

There's no facet of reality I'm denying when I eat meat, I simply don't feel it morally wrong to do so. There is no objective question being asked or answer given, it's a value judgement that can only be made inside a human mind. The objective response is not "minimize pain" because the question isn't about something objective in the first place. The question "Do I think eating meat is wrong?" is a question about an objective truth - the answer is either yes or no, and describes an aspect of reality. The question "Is eating meat wrong?" requires the assignment of "good" or "bad" to such an action - those are concepts that only exist in our minds. It's subjective.

Posted: **Sat Jun 20, 2015 10:47 pm**

EquALLity wrote:
OneQuestion wrote:But can anybody actually be completely rational? I mean, you'd have to either have no emotions, or never let your emotions override your logical faculties.
People can aspire to be as rational as possible by not letting their emotions control their reasoning skills and actions, and many do. It's not an impossible task. You don't need to stop having emotions, you just shouldn't base your actions and beliefs off of irrational ones (emotions).

If someone is irrational without realizing it, and changes or would change when confronted with that, then fine. But to know one is not rational, and to continuously not give a shit, and to be conscious of that as well but to not try to change it, would be evidence somebody isn't a rational person. It's not like it's an isolated incident where you were irrational; it's like you know you are consistently being irrational, and you just don't care.
I am rational in thought, not necessarily in action. If I know what the rational course of action is, but choose not to take it, the action is irrational, but mentally I am still rational. I know what makes sense and what doesn't. I simply don't always care.

Posted: **Sun Jun 21, 2015 2:51 am**

OneQuestion wrote:
garrethdsouza wrote://It simply is: I don't care. I don't care enough about the lives of the animals I eat//

I guess individuals in the past may have used a similar line when it came to women's rights, slavery, homophobia etc especially during the initial phases, they recognized how irrational and horrible they were being but just chose doing those things because there wasn't anything stopping them and they profited by the bigotry. "I just don't care" doesn't work because by that logic people could do just about anything terrible when in a position of power over someone else as long as they could get away with it. Is that the sort of person you like to choose to be? Lots of things were once socially acceptable as part of the status quo. Would you have gone along with all the bigotry just like everyone else?
No. Because those issues apply to people.

Sexists could say the same about men, cisgendered homophobes that it applies only to cisgendered heterosexual people, racist whites to whites.
No it depends on who we choose to apply it to. You're arbitrarily choosing to apply it only to people, just like other bigots do it for only their group.

//Now I know WHY this innate feeling exists: it's not exactly evolutionarily advantageous to care more about the lives of the animals you can eat than about your desire to eat them.//
It would be evolutionarily advantageous in the past to not care. But I don't think it's an innate feeling in the sense that one feels nothing when actually witnessing the horrendous treatment and slaughter. IMO most people do feel something, they may choose to numb the feeling or just look away.

//Making yourself emotionally numb to killing other animals so you can eat their flesh // exactly, one chooses to do this, its not innate, its the learned attitude of not caring, if anything the converse is true for most people. most people innately react/empathise to an animal suffering, eg even if its the same animal viewed as food but if one had them as a pet one would empathise if they were in pain. Many individuals as kids have experiences like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIMJ648qgg

/I've never been to a slaughter house physically; I've watched the documentaries about how they work//
Which ones did you watch? Have you watched earthlings?
Ita can be better if you could choose to personify if the gravity of the situation isn't getting through. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kr-xkM0RruA
http://poemsbyheather.tripod.com/index1.htm
Well I do too. I would empathize with my pets if they were in pain. And torturing livestock doesn't strike me as necessary, because I can empathize on that level because I know what pain is. I still don't care enough to spare their lives if I want to eat them though. I was in fact thinking about this when I was cooking dinner today and as I sliced up some chicken I reflected and concluded that no, I don't feel bad about eating it at all.

You're choosing to empathise about your pets but choosing not to do so for others and then basing your decision on your "feelings" which is already previously decided as willful ignorance of their plight. You dont feel because you dont choose to feel and are perfectly capable of feeling empathy for animals under other circumstances.
Even if you were incapable of "feeling" or empathising with nonhuman animal pain one shouldn't be deciding about whether or not to inflict pain on others based on your "gut feelings" of empathy because one must be concerned of not inflicting pain on others irrespective of whether or not it triggers any emotions for yourself.

//But can anybody actually be completely rational? I mean, you'd have to either have no emotions, or never let your emotions override your logical faculties.//
That's a false dichotomy, just because you may not be perfectly rational doesn't mean you now have a license to cherrypick which things you can be irrational about. You could try to be as consistently rational as possible especially when it's a nontrivial non neutral issue involving suffering of another.
Rational thought and rational action are two different things. I know it makes no health sense to drink alcohol, for example, but I do it anyway.

Drinking alcohol is a choice that you undertake of your own accord and has consequences to yourself. If you limit your intake the consequences you will face aren't that exceedingly large and even if it were, its your call with your life. This is about excruciating pain others have to go through at no cost to yourself.

//When asking "Is it right to eat animals?", you're asking whether humans should consider it morally right to do so. The objective response to that question would be "The universe has no morality, so it doesn't matter."//
How is that the objective response? No more than we could use that line for any other form of bigotry like discriminating against women, lgbt, different races. "The universe is amoral, so anything goes" one could use it for any form of bigotry. It's sort of an appeal to nature fallacy, morality isn't about what goes on in nature evolutionarily (eg survival of the fittest) nor the universe (the sun could incinerate us doesn't mean it's OK if we do that). And it's merely cherry picking it for this specific example for animal cruelty but not for other cruelties. An objective response would be when in a position of avoiding pain when there are other alternatives one could choose the one that minimises pain.
My point was that the questions are about two different things. The question of God is a question about the existence or non existence of God, a true-false statement, which has an objective answer. To insist God exists when objectively speaking there's no evidence that is true is a denial of reality.

There's no facet of reality I'm denying when I eat meat, I simply don't feel it morally wrong to do so. There is no objective question being asked or answer given, it's a value judgement that can only be made inside a human mind. The objective response is not "minimize pain" because the question isn't about something objective in the first place. The question "Do I think eating meat is wrong?" is a question about an objective truth - the answer is either yes or no, and describes an aspect of reality. The question "Is eating meat wrong?" requires the assignment of "good" or "bad" to such an action - those are concepts that only exist in our minds. It's subjective.

[/quote]
Morality/Ethics of an action isnt regarding whether or not one simply "feels/doesnt feel" is wrong based on whether or not it causes any feeling to you. Its concerned with the suffering of others even IF you are completely neutral and when witnessing their suffering dont even flinch. Even if you were incapable of empathising with animals/humans and didnt "feel" anything when inflicting pain on them, the moral imperative is still not to do those things. All of morality and ethics are merely concepts that exist in our minds, that doesnt mean its ok to do other things that cause suffering to others, why bring up this card only in this case and not for example when it comes to being sexist/racist/LGBTphobic.

Making yourself emotionally numb to killing other animals so you can eat their flesh without qualms makes sense in a survival situation. But it's still not rational to hold at this point in time. And yet, I still don't care..... I mean, since this is inherently irrational, there isn't really anything you could say to convince me to change my position is there?

Initially you admitted that it was truly an irrational behavior yet later on you start trying to rationalize your behavior coming up with excuses like cherrypicking arbitrary instances where you can use "morality is subjective" and "lets arbitrarily apply this rule only to people". Youre attempting to provide a rationalization for it. If you're admitting that it isnt rational and you'll still stick to it theres little basis for you to stick to any other code of ethics either, as theres now no real reason for you to not mistreat women/lgbt/people of colour apart from your own preferences irrespective of the suffering they would go through. If you're admitting its irrational yet youre still going to adhere to it, theres no reason to provide any other irrationalizations. Just admit you're unnecessarily extremely cruel to animals and are when in a position of power are totally ok with completely abusing it despite having many existing alternatives rather than having to go through mental gymnastics to delude yourself that there is some actual justification for what you're opting for - when there isnt any.
If youre going to cherrypick your ethics just like a creationist cherry picks your facts, and are yourself admitting youre going to be irrational, what rational method is anyone supposed to use thats going to convince you, since the latter depends on you subscribing to the rational method? In that sense youre approach is fairly similar to that of a creationist.

As Sam Harris puts it, “]If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?” If your method is admittedly irrational, what rational method can anyone use to convince you?

so to answer your OneQuestion, NO.
An individual who does not subscribe to a rational basis of deciding their actions/beliefs can (obviously) NOT be convinced out of them by any rational means.
One could try irrational means to convince them but then again you could come up with another irrationalization that makes the others irrational argument void. That's how irrational arguments work by definition, there is no logic.

Posted: **Sun Jun 21, 2015 3:37 pm**

garrethdsouza wrote:
Sexists could say the same about men, cisgendered homophobes that it applies only to cisgendered heterosexual people, racist whites to whites.
No it depends on who we choose to apply it to. You're arbitrarily choosing to apply it only to people, just like other bigots do it for only their group.

No argument here.

You're choosing to empathise about your pets but choosing not to do so for others and then basing your decision on your "feelings" which is already previously decided as willful ignorance of their plight. You dont feel because you dont choose to feel and are perfectly capable of feeling empathy for animals under other circumstances.
Even if you were incapable of "feeling" or empathising with nonhuman animal pain one shouldn't be deciding about whether or not to inflict pain on others based on your "gut feelings" of empathy because one must be concerned of not inflicting pain on others irrespective of whether or not it triggers any emotions for yourself.

That's a fallacy. I'm not suppressing any empathy, I'm not telling myself "No, don't feel bad about this", it simply conjures no empathy from me at all. So I don't have a drive to act like I care. And the later isn't true, else sociopaths would act concerned about other people even though they aren't.

Morality/Ethics of an action isnt regarding whether or not one simply "feels/doesnt feel" is wrong based on whether or not it causes any feeling to you. Its concerned with the suffering of others even IF you are completely neutral and when witnessing their suffering dont even flinch. Even if you were incapable of empathising with animals/humans and didnt "feel" anything when inflicting pain on them, the moral imperative is still not to do those things. All of morality and ethics are merely concepts that exist in our minds, that doesnt mean its ok to do other things that cause suffering to others, why bring up this card only in this case and not for example when it comes to being sexist/racist/LGBTphobic.

Technically, it does, since whether something is considered "ok" is subjective to each person. If I don't think something is wrong, then I personally feel no moral imperative to not do it. Your morality is different from mine, so you disagree - and thus to you, my actions are immoral.

Initially you admitted that it was truly an irrational behavior yet later on you start trying to rationalize your behavior coming up with excuses like cherrypicking arbitrary instances where you can use "morality is subjective" and "lets arbitrarily apply this rule only to people". Youre attempting to provide a rationalization for it. If you're admitting that it isnt rational and you'll still stick to it theres little basis for you to stick to any other code of ethics either, as theres now no real reason for you to not mistreat women/lgbt/people of colour apart from your own preferences irrespective of the suffering they would go through. If you're admitting its irrational yet youre still going to adhere to it, theres no reason to provide any other irrationalizations. Just admit you're unnecessarily extremely cruel to animals and are when in a position of power are totally ok with completely abusing it despite having many existing alternatives rather than having to go through mental gymnastics to delude yourself that there is some actual justification for what you're opting for - when there isnt any.
If youre going to cherrypick your ethics just like a creationist cherry picks your facts, and are yourself admitting youre going to be irrational, what rational method is anyone supposed to use thats going to convince you, since the latter depends on you subscribing to the rational method? In that sense youre approach is fairly similar to that of a creationist.

I think I should have structured my OP better, because the moral subjectivity thing actually changes my argument. Whether I'm rational depends on what we perceive to be good or bad - that in and of itself is subjective. So what I SHOULD have said, is that I'm being irrational if we accept as "good" the minimizing of the suffering of sentient life, and there's no denying that. It doesn't make any sense for me to do something like that, IF that's what I believe. But 'minimizing sentient suffering' is itself a subjective moral axiom - and I don't abide by it. Mine would be 'minimizing human suffering'. Someone else's might be 'bringing myself the most pleasure from life'. Again,subjective. But all morality is ultimately subjective. So in fact I should actually change my initial statement: it IS rational for me to eat meat, since I get pleasure from doing so and, to me, there is no negative action occurring. It wouldn't be rational for YOU to eat meat, since you see the death of something sentient as negative, and killing and eating one contradicts that very stance.

Maybe I should have just stuck with admitting irrationality after all, takes way less effort. Plus, I could have just ended the argument right here. But now I've realized I was wrong, because I wasn't thinking about the subjectivity of morality.[/quote]

Posted: **Mon Jun 22, 2015 3:41 am**

Whether I'm rational depends on what we perceive to be good or bad - that in and of itself is subjective. So what I SHOULD have said, is that I'm being irrational if we accept as "good" the minimizing of the suffering of sentient life, and there's no denying that. It doesn't make any sense for me to do something like that, IF that's what I believe. But 'minimizing sentient suffering' is itself a subjective moral axiom - and I don't abide by it. Mine would be 'minimizing human suffering'. Someone else's might be 'bringing myself the most pleasure from life'. Again,subjective. But all morality is ultimately subjective.

You're using the subjective morality cop out, merely redefining what morality means, in essence shifting the goalpost. There's a thread on it here:
https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... rals#p5059

Morality is objective. Morality is concerned with determining which action is the correct one and which is the polar opposite, it could be a continuous spectrum in between. this is dependent upon objective criteria which can include metrics in some cases (eg total amount of suffering, environmental damage, human impact etc) Accordingly an action may either be or may not be moral in a given condition, they are mutually exclusive, there are no two ways about that. One could even use metrics for how moral/amoral/immoral an action is according to the objective criteria and estimate values for an action.

By introducing subjectivity what one is essentially saying is that now one has given oneself a licensde/loophole that allows one to choose to ignore all the objective criteria completely, arbitrarily cherry pick any option and now assign it the status of "moral".
But if morality is concerned with which action is moral and should be performed, this framework is essentially useless, since any option could be arbitrarily assigned a moral status based on ones whims so there is no basis for choosing between actions which defeats the very purpose of morality.
since everything can be assigned as moral based on ones whims, everything is permitted, this is no different from nihilism and isn't morality in any sense. Anything and everything now becomes permitted so the whole premise becomes essentially useless.

A parallel is authoritarian morality such as divine command morality which is also a variation on subjective morality where it depends on the whims of the commander ie the supernatural deity. If he commands do not kill your son that would be the moral imperative, if he said the converse that would be the moral imperative. There's no real objective criteria, either is just as moral depending which one the autority commands. Adherents of subjective morality or in this special case of dcm are irrational by definition. In the former case they could be open to anything based on their whim, in the latter based on if the deity/religion commanded it.

//

But 'minimizing sentient suffering' is itself a subjective moral axiom - and I don't abide by it.

// exactly, cherry picking
One could say this for anything. "Treating women/lgbt/other races as equals" is a subjective moral axiom and I don't abide by it. After all according to you,

all morality is ultimately subjective.

Isis is moral for throwing gays off buildings and boko haram is moral for kidnapping girls (they refuse to accept other moral axioms, they also have a license to merely not see it as a negative) since because of the subjective card, one can dismiss any valid objective criteria based moral option, choose the stark opposite and still maintain one is moral and rational in this framework. In reality, adhering to this useless framework and repeatedly insisting that it is moral/rational essentially makes one irrational by definition. It's a flight from knowledge of what the correct choice is to self delusion that your stance is acceptable and not immoral.

not very much unlike that of a creationist who ignores the facts and persists in self delusion that their belief system is rational and fact based and keeps asserting their creation science is a true science despite it not conforming to the basic scientific method. simply because they appended science at the end doesn't make it so, similarly appending morality at the end of subjective doesn't make it so since what sort of a moral framework is everything permitted and moral based on ones subjective whims? Just as a creationist has a supernatural loophole where nothing needs to make sense logically or require evidence and still assert they are rational fact based beliefs, you use "subjective" as a loophole/license to cherry pick issues and overrule the correct option while simultaneously maintaining youre choices are rational and moral. Both are self delusional, the former to maintain faith based belief, the latter to dampen ones conscience with obscurantism so that one has rationalizations (excuses) for not doing what one should be doing.

Even if you're concerned with human suffering, an omnivorous diet is exceedingly wasteful because of the poor conversion ratios of animals, it effectively reduces the net amount of food available for humans thereby contributing to world hunger. Small data clip from the documentary cowspiracy:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NLt9s8Z36ZY
And that's not taking into account the massive effects on global warming of which animal agriculture is the largest contributing source of green house gases so when millions of refugees have to leave their habitable land which is inundated as a result of excessive greenhouse gases, omnivores are complicit in this because they choose the much worse option when an alternative is easily available.

Posted: **Tue Jun 23, 2015 12:51 am**

garrethdsouza wrote: Morality is objective.

The rest of your post is irrelevant because this is the fundamental issue. The assertion that morality is objective, that good and bad are, fundamentally, a quality of something that is unaffected by human thought, that the universe assigns moral values to the various events that happen within it and thus these are objectively the moral value of each action.

The only way this can happen is if God exists, who, as master of the universe, can do so, because it can do whatever it wants.

Otherwise, the universe only possesses true-false, physical law, and quantitative qualities. Things that exist outside the human mind, that are not determined by it. Moral values are arbitrary - sure, there are basic ones most humans share, but there are always exceptions, and that doesn't make them any less arbitrary. The universe doesn't assign you being alive as a good thing, for example. You simply exist, and you perceive this living state as good. YOU created the moral value of your life. The universe doesn't care if you die, or how you die. Whether of old age or murder or suicide, these are simply events in an objective sense; statements of fact about things that have happened. Whether they are good or bad cannot be determined objectively, because no such thing exists outside our minds.

The reason you don't like this, and the reason a great many people don't like it, is because it does, to some extent, 'validate' the views of those we perceive to be evil. It seems like an excuse. And while you may not LIKE that fact, it is nevertheless true. ISIS is morally villainous to most people, but they see nothing wrong with what they're doing. Neither do anti-gay or racist bigots - they don't see treating those people the same as themselves as "good".

Again - you don't have to LIKE this. I don't, and I hate having to admit it because I don't want to give those people any legitimacy at all. But reality is not about what we like - it's about what is. That's why we tell theists God doesn't exist - doesn't matter how much they like the idea, it doesn't reflect reality.

If you want to make any progress then, you have to start with a basic arbitrary axiom that almost everyone will agree to. "Maximizing human well-being", though vague, is one most people can agree to because of the survival instinct and shared empathy with other people. Group dynamics, other moral values and differing definitions of well-being can cloud this, but it's a good enough starting point. You can have rational discussions once everyone, or almost everyone, is on the same page in terms of what we're looking for out of life and a base level. But the initial axiom is still subjective - because no matter how many people like it, its 'goodness' only exists in their minds. It is not an objective, inherent value.

Vegans are such a small group because your fundamental moral axiom includes all sentient life, not just people. And most humans don't share that sentiment.

Posted: **Tue Jun 23, 2015 2:49 am**

OneQuestion wrote:
Vegans are such a small group because your fundamental moral axiom includes all sentient life, not just people. And most humans don't share that sentiment.

Your particular use of subjective morality is just a fancy term, a banal sophistry which means little other than a loophole/license to cherry pick issues, the way you are using it.

Now you're trying to justify it by suggesting that it's validity is demonstrated from its majoritarian acceptance, so you have invented yet another excuse to justify the excuse.

Morality is doing what is right regardless of what everyone else is doing, thats conformity. Most humans at some point didn't share sentiments on other issues. If we use your majoritarian view of morality then no social change could ever have been brought about because at some point most people didn't care about women's/lgbt/slaves rights, and could dismiss any of it by merely suggesting its popular to be indifferent.

majoritarian values doesn't imply morality or ethics. If the whole world was once again not concerned with other groups it wouldn't make it moral to do that. And conversely if most people were concerned with sentient life suffering would you then be concerned with it? morality isn't dependent on popularity, else religion would be intellectually honest and atheism wrong.

Sure morality is a human construct but you're suggesting that because this is the case, your interpreting it to mean one can cherry pick which issues one wishes to be concerned with and now are saying its OK in this specific case because everyone else is doing it.
When youre faced with a moral conundrum in your actions, you either change your actions which is diificult or your beliefs through self delusion. The way cognitive dissonance, a kind of voluntary self delusion works is that you have to make irrational excuses to justify not changing the irrational behaviour and that's what you keep doing because you don't want to give up meat. Tasty vegan alternatives are available so there's really no reason to do that if that's your concern. The rest of us aren't living a tasteless lifestyle, all it requires is a bit of effort.

And carnism affects humans as well as I pointed out, you're decreasing the net amount of available food for people by feeding it to animals which have poor conversion ratios thereby contributinf to global hunger and have huge effects on deforestation since it requires much more land use to feed the same amount of people (vegans require 18 times less land by some metrics) and global warming, animal agriculture's the world's major source of greenhouse gases rivaling all of transport combined.

I guess we're more of a small group because its only recently possible to be vegan with the advent of scientific inventions like supplements (for vitb12) that obviate any need for dependency on animal products and large scale mechanised agriculture. Humans have been using animals for food for the overwhelmingly major time we've been around and more deeply rooted habits take a longer time to wean off. Similar case for lgbt rights, only recently is it being more widely recognized. Slavery was also deeply rooted majoritarian accepted which is why it took 400y to eradicate, same could be said of religion today why atheists are fewer, because intellectual dishonesty and indoctrination is the norm for the longest time, itll take some time to get out of it.

What exactly did you watch regarding abbatoir footage. Have you watched earthlings specifically?

could anyone else also add to the subjective vs objective morality issues?

Posted: **Tue Jun 23, 2015 8:13 am**

OneQuestion wrote:There's a difference in the question though.

When asking "Does God exist?" you're asking about an objective fact about reality. Does this thing exist or not?

It's asking, "do you believe in god?"
Many people say it can not be known, but they believe it in their hearts.

Furthermore, they consider the question of god NOT a question of physical empirical reality, but a philosophical or theological question which is beyond the bounds of logic, and one of faith. Much like your assertions about ethics being subjective.

OneQuestion wrote:When asking "Is it right to eat animals?", you're asking whether humans should consider it morally right to do so. The objective response to that question would be "The universe has no morality, so it doesn't matter."

And there's your ignorance talking.

That's like saying Pi doesn't exist, because the universe has no circles, or because numbers aren't real things, or you don't believe in irrational numbers.

Morality is a concept, which deals with the relationships of things -- like pi. As such, it exists as a concept, not as some physical thing floating around out there somewhere.

It deals with the relationships between action and consequence, and the ratios of benefit or detriment to sentient will: something that very much does exist and can be empirically proven so.

Although there may be no perfect will (theists would claim that there must be a perfect will as a reference point in order for morality to mean anything), just as there may be no perfect circles, that no more invalidates the existence and usefulness of the concept of morality than it does of Pi.

You're just like a theist to me, taking a position of faith on a matter of ignorance created by faulty logic.

Yours is one of nihilism, while a theist's is one of arbitrary assertion of infinite being -- both very similar positions that are equally and identically wrong on the same topic (but with faith in opposite directions, one for, and one against). Equally irrational.

OneQuestion wrote:3. Of course I feel empathy for humans.

And yet you conveniently ignored all other points, just like theists enjoy ignoring the evidence for evolution.

Not all vegans are vegans because they care about non-human animals. Some just care about the state of the world and other humans enough not to be destructive to it.

Would I be correct in guessing that you are a climate change denier, in addition to your rejecting outright scientific consensus on human health?

These are all more irrational beliefs on your part, held, along with your irrational belief that morality is entirely a matter of whim and has and can have no consistent rational basis, to support your core irrational belief of Carnism.

OneQuestion wrote:But can anybody actually be completely rational? I mean, you'd have to either have no emotions, or never let your emotions override your logical faculties.

Plus, would an irrational person even acknowledge he has no necessity to do what he does?

Nobody is omniscient, so sometimes there are cases where we are not aware that something we are doing is irrational. Such a person may still be a rational person, and simply unaware.

We can only aspire to be as rational as possible, and resolve any conflicts we become aware of to rational ends. And no, that does not mean turning off your emotions -- emotions are not the opposite of rationality.

There's a little thing called cognitive dissonance. You can NOT choose to behave irrationally without holding certain irrational beliefs.

Irrational choices stem from irrational beliefs. Always.
This is important to understand.

In your case, your drinking alcohol may or may not actually be rational. You seem to completely misunderstand what rationality even means (it's not the same as necessity).
There are numerous reasons to drink, and numerous reasons not to drink. It could be that, in your case, the benefits of drinking outweigh the consequences of it. We could discuss that, but that's not the topic.
It's a poor comparison to your meat eating, because the ethical components are far less prominent.

As others mentioned, your eating meat is not just harmful to you.

Your waffling around and coming up with all kinds of rationalizations in this thread, as garrethdsouza pointed out, is evidence that you are NOT in fact comfortable with the irrationality of your behavior (people can not be comfortable with irrational behavior unless they have convinced themselves they have no choice in the matter), and you are compelled to make stuff up and deny scientific fact to justify it or make it seem less irrational so you can dismiss it.

It's basic psychology. You may think you're special, but you really aren't. Our brains are wired to find dissonance between belief and behavior very uncomfortable.

OneQuestion wrote: I think I should have structured my OP better, because the moral subjectivity thing actually changes my argument. Whether I'm rational depends on what we perceive to be good or bad - that in and of itself is subjective.

Cognitive dissonance in action. Because you are committed to behaving unethically, you declare ethics subjective, and now your beliefs and actions are aligned again.

The issue of subjectivity or moral relativism is central here to your irrationality.
It's one we can discuss more, but perhaps we should do so in another thread?

OneQuestion wrote: So what I SHOULD have said, is that I'm being irrational if we accept as "good" the minimizing of the suffering of sentient life, and there's no denying that. It doesn't make any sense for me to do something like that, IF that's what I believe

Right.

OneQuestion wrote: Mine would be 'minimizing human suffering'.

Again, I return to the point that your act of eating meat is not conducive to THOSE ends either. Meat eating is harmful to human beings. You are not consistent by your own standards.

Which is why you return to denying scientific facts, and making things up.

If you want, we can have a discussion solely based on the premise of minimizing human suffering. Carnism is not useful to those ends, and indeed is one of the most harmful things you do to those ends.

If you really and honestly want to minimize human suffering, you should go vegan.

OneQuestion wrote: Someone else's might be 'bringing myself the most pleasure from life'.

That person should also go vegan, or nearly vegan, to maximize lifespan and health.
It's very unpleasant to suffer from chronic disease, which a diet high in animal products promotes greater risk of, and reduces potential for pleasure.

AGAIN as I said in my first post (which you ignored most of), what you find pleasurable is not written on some indelible stone tablet.
We can change what we enjoy.
A person who once enjoyed meat and sitting around all day can lose a taste for it, and enjoy vegetables and exercise instead.
A person who wants to maximize personal pleasure, if rational, will alter his or her habits to find enjoyment in healthy activities and dietary choices instead.

Are you starting to understand why I mentioned all of these things in my post which you ignored?

OneQuestion wrote: Again,subjective. But all morality is ultimately subjective.

It isn't, in the way you think it is. But again, that's probably another topic.

OneQuestion wrote: it IS rational for me to eat meat, since I get pleasure from doing so and, to me, there is no negative action occurring.

There is negative action occurring, but like a delusional theist, you just live in elective ignorance of it, inventing your own "facts" in lieu of scientific consensus.

Irrational. No less so than any foaming at the mouth fundamentalist young Earth creationist. If you can realize this, you may have hope at changing it and accepting that, yes, even for you it is irrational based on your claimed values.

OneQuestion wrote: It wouldn't be rational for YOU to eat meat, since you see the death of something sentient as negative, and killing and eating one contradicts that very stance.

Plenty of vegans do not see that as negative (and neither do most of us). An action is good or bad based on the weight of its consequences; sometimes death is even mercy, other times it's to save another life, etc. You're really missing the point of ethics.

OneQuestion wrote: But now I've realized I was wrong, because I wasn't thinking about the subjectivity of morality.

Well, it's a step in the right direction: At least we have identified the problem.

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