@ora
ok, I'll follow your example and only respond to the things we're having disagreement over.
"This seems like one i can field. Do vegans get some kind of pass? Lets assume there is some spectrum of behaviour. Some people only kill anyone outside of their own immediate family, some only kill the people their govt tell them to, some people will not kill another human - thus only 'lesser' animals (i appear to have skipped the ones who consider foreigners 'lesser'), some kill only those outside of the mammal family (still eat fish, and maybe chicken, but not beef or dog), some kill only plants which provide fruit specifically for the purpose of being eaten by animals (to spread their seeds as part of their reproductive cycle), some don't kill anything.
That last group may not exist for very long as they die of starvation and that first group may not survive very long due to society imprisoning them or them being so isolated from society that they contract diseases from us if we ever do meet...
But i guess everything exists somewhere along this spectrum. I personally chose to minimise the suffering i cause by not eating meat and avoid dairy most of the time. It isn't necessarily about killing your food, it is about ability to suffer, and so far as i understand, suffering requires a highly developed neural infrastructure - at least that is what my neural infrastructure tells me.
It is really human centred to look on other animals as 'lesser', just as it is racist to look on other people as 'lesser'.
Is there some universal right to life? Does it apply to bacteria? Where do you draw the line? Where do our rights derive their authority?
I'd argue that my experience tells me causing me suffering is wrong, it isn't a particularly self-less position to start with; but i hope it is fairly universal. If by empathy i can generalise that to all suffering is wrong. Then is can say, killing animals in a way that makes them suffer is wrong, and apply this logic to bacteria, by asking whether they can suffer.
And it is true that you can stress a bacteria adding acid to its environment. But does it suffer, or does it just react chemically to the environment? I think it is closer to the latter..."
it can't only be suffering though, there are ways to kill creatures with almost no pain, or even sensation at all. this is still considered wrong though. but what I was getting at it not WHY do we do this, but what consistent standard can we hold and apply to ourselves here?
"@"this is a problem. the development of consciousness is still a topic many greatly debate. sure, we're lass than a 1% off in terms of DNA structure, but temporally we're hundreds of thousands of years ahead in the evolutionary curve."
I didn't mention consciousness. I was talking about the ability to make abstractions (to abstract, which i clearly think is a verb)."
holy shit it is a verb, my bad!
"Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution is right. But evolution isn't directed. Fish in really dark caves have evolved to lose their sight completely, having eyes wasn't useful and was costly, so they stopped producing them."
also true
I guess this is a bit off topic, my point with that line of thought was linking consciousness to specific moral behavior: set consideration of one's actions, something which most animals do not do.
"@"you think we're not better than sheep or ants... so on a moral level, which would you find it worse if a man and sheep were in a room together: if the sheep killed the person, or if the person killed the sheep?"
Sorry, i should have been more specific, on an objective scale, we're no better or worse than a sheep or an ant. On a subjective scale of human morality, we can conclude a different answer.
Subjectively, if the sheep killed the man in self-defence (like kicked the man after he attacked it and broke a limb, which later became infected and killed him) versus the man slit the sheep's throat cause he works in a factory that produces mutton...
Well obviously i can't fault the sheep. It was just defending itself. Whereas i can take the same kind of logic to the man, he was just working to make some money, which he needed to feed his family...
But maybe i could hold the man to a higher standard. Was he capable of a deeper level of moral thinking, did he just do his job because of habit, or it was the easy way or making some money and thinking about the morality of his actions would actually make him worse off? That's a hard question."
well if we're truly just saying "it's subjective" then the answer is: there is no single answer. "sorry bud, it depends on your point of view" kind of thing
"@"do other animals even consider things as morally "bad" or "good" outside of the most basic rules of survival?"
I would say yes. There are studies which show an understanding of fairness in monkeys. All about trading a token for food... But they understand on some level."
cooperation within a system perhaps... but this is a more academic question than philosophical one I suppose.
"@"there are mother chimps (as close to us as it comes) who kill newly born infants if a new male ousts the old one. humans are prone to things we consider evil, but this is the basic root of my question: is it only bad, because we say it is?"
I've never heard of these chimps, but it may be good for their chances of genes spreading."
it's a widespread and well recorded phenomena, some do it while they're pregnant, some do it to newborns. it's some kind of conceptualization about not wanting to give up too much energy helping a bad genetic offspring, compared to the new male.
"And yes, i believe i is only bad because we say it is. I've even gone further and based a simple philosophy (my reasoning for not eating meat above) on a simple selfish idea of not causing me suffering. I don't claim any higher power makes my moral judgements special or universal. I merely claim i'd prefer to live in a nice world, where people don't stab me in the street.
@"is the only reason why Pol Pot, or Stalin, or Hitler are considered evil, because we say they are? is the difference between me and some Neo nazis really just a basic difference of opinion? no overarching right or wrong, a veritable "he said, she said" situation? Each of us believing we're right because "We have more people" or "my ideas are just better""
Yep.
@"is that IT? Why is debate even a thing then? it's all so nonsensical, everything arbitrary and intrinsically meaningless."
No, the only meaning anything has is that which we ascribe to it. Things are holy because we say they are. Rights are worth protecting because we believe they are.
And society is merely a combination of the collected memes and ideas about how we think society should and does function.
If you think you should be able to drive your car without a license, then you will be arrested. If everyone does it then nobody will be. Licensing is meaningless until we give it power.
@"resorting to purely arbitrary morals can justify a lot of evil shit, stuff which is evil, regardless of whether or not I happen to say it is."
Yes, unfortunately this is true (well not the bit about it being objectively bad). But likewise subscribing to one over-riding principle can result in some really bad shit - again Communism. The subscribers believed the greater good for the majority justified gulags and political prisoners. I do not. But under their conviction that the pure ideology was objectively more good than any alternative, they justified terrible actions."
this scares me. this... disarms me. if I meet a Neonazi this logic is telling me, I have no way of discrediting his ideology. I call him evil and sick, he calls me evil and sick. it's equivocating everything to subjective tribalism. nobody is correct. the nazis did nothing objectively wrong, and subjectively you can see their actions equally as either wrong or good.
Webdip Chess Challenge
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