Justified action or being an asshole? Which is it?

[InnerBrat]

What you appear to be saying here is that white Europeans, for the majority of human history, have been insane? Is that your intent?

You are missing the point.

I thought the point was that "anyone who considers any biological human to be less than human is insane." If that isn't the point, what did you mean by insane? And do you mean to apply it so broadly?

White Europeans, for example, practiced slavery. One of the major justifications for slavery was that Africans/Indians/whoever were somehow "subhuman," or at least "less civilized." According to Straha's logic, this is an indictment of any moral system in which slavery is considered wrong, as opposed to an indictment of the Europeans themselves.

What I am saying is that you can't judge the value of a moral system by the way it is subverted. Certainly, it is important to take that into consideration, but you can't throw out an anti-slavery ethical code because the Europeans decided that slavery is fine if it is of non-Europeans. It isn't a commentary on the code in and of itself.

But this isn't about an anti-slavery moral code, but about a moral code that draws a line between 'humans' and 'animals.' As I understood Straha's reasoning (because I think I agree) that line is just an extension of 'us' and 'them' justifications for - pretty much anything. The point is not whether Slavery is right, but whether anything can be justified using "us" and "them" boundaries. Slavery of humans has long been considered wrong, which is why people adopt a different definitions of humans in order to get away with slavery and other atrocities.

Now, you can argue that redrawing the line to between Homo and Pan, if you like, but that keeps the same moral code as before, just applied to a different group. I would say that "it's OK if it's them," isn't a moral code to go by at all.

[Junghalli]

You're oversimplifying and conflating the argument that Wolfe is making.

His first point is that oppression is intersectional. That is to say the systems of thought that support sexism also support racism, nationalism, etc. Carol Adams' Sexual Politics of Meat is an excellent book on this point. His second point is that speciesism undergirds all these other oppressions and is ubiquitous and easilly applied culturally. Thus, he argues, to oppose sexism without trying to tackle speciesism as well can only lead to a phantom victory at best. Meat-eating isn't the cause of sexism, but the two are linked.

I have on occassion had the thought that there is a deep philosophical commonality between the various great 'isms' of our culture.

They all seem to boil down to the idea that group X is somehow inherently superior to group Y, and therefore deserves to be treated better, or at least when the interests of group X and group Y collide those of group X should trump group Y. It is often acknowledged that group Y merit some place on the moral consideration scale (hurting one isn't equivalent to destroying a rock), but because of their supposed inherently inferior nature it is OK if they are treated worse.

Attitudes toward animals is one of the last places where this kind of thinking remains fully socially accepted and mainstream in our culture (and indeed, people might look at you funny if you don't subscribe to it, e.g. if you say you don't think there's any moral reason a human life is inherently worth more than a pig life and the fact we value the former more is just in-group/out-group dynamics).

So yeah, I find the idea that there's a link reasonable.

[Straha]

Actually I am trying to somehow explain to you what I mean by using your words and methods since you completely misunderstand what I want and drive this thread off on a tangent. So I tried to steer you back and failed.

Because the tangent you're trying to drive it into is silly and inane, and I'll have no part of it.

And here is your problem. You assume that the system should care about the particular condition of a particular individual. And that is because you keep wanting to push this down, miniaturize it, focus it on the individual. The system only needs to care about the broadest possible group that can be expected to fallow it based on the broadest possible set of criteria. It's the same like how the rules of football apply even to players with only one leg. When looking at a group, we should look at it not as a collection of differently able individuals but as a collection of identical drones of average ability. Those physically or mentally unfit, too old or too young are all just statistical out layers whose existence should have no bearing on our decision making process when forming a theory.

I see a whole lot of claims there without any warrants to make them up.
Three points:
A. You haven't responded to my argument that this enables groups to be kicked out of moral consideration through societal shifts/pressures at all. You've merely restated your original argument without adding anything new. You also haven't given a reason why your system would lead to the inclusion of the groups I mentioned before, instead merely asserting that they'd be covered under the broadest possible casting of the net... just because. This sort of otherization and exclusion has happened universally throughout Western history (and most of the rest of the world, with a few exceptions), if you want to have a truly moral system you need to come up with a way to stop it.

B. The individual will always be the locus of ethics. Even if we adopt the broad-based util system you seem to be advocating for it still requires an individual somewhere to assign ethical worth and consideration amongst peoples, and then make calculations from there. You're never going to be able to change this, you're just going to lie to yourself until you believe otherwise.

C. Your system is clunky, obtuse, and falls apart under close examination. The system I propose, where the individual looks onto the world and tries to interfere with other beings the least is simple, easy to understand, easy to apply, and doesn't fall apart at the seams.

It's not about sentience but as you said about capability. The question to ask is the fallowing:
Assuming that through a magical force of Q we somehow gain the ability to communicate with said target group in such a way that our ability matches that of the average member of said group. Would in that case members of said group be able to comprehend said system of morality.

No, learn to read. It's not capability, it's intelligibility. When we judge an animal we have no way of ascertaining their capability in the empiric way you seem to be hunting for, instead we base our judgments off of whether or not they meet our pre-determined standards of what marks human intelligence. In other words, we're not basing our judgment off of any inherent traits they might have, but whether they can make those traits intelligible to us. I think it's the extreme of hubris to say we have the right to condemn other creatures based off of our own ignorance, and means that any other group we encounter is always already damned because they're not like us. Instead we have to come up with an ethical system that embraces the unintelligible nature of the other (see Judith Butler for some exploration of that), and uses that as a starting point of ethics.

After all meat eating is hardly bad.

I'm going to stop you right there, meat eating is pretty atrocious especially in any 'farmed' scenario because it relies on the systemic enslavement, rape, and murder of other beings. There can be no ethical justification for someone to eat meat if they have any other alternative available.

It spills over too. Think about the number of times someone has objected because they were "being treated like an animal". Allowing things like this in through the door is morally problematic and needs to be stopped at all costs, wherever possible.

(Even if we go by your util goals we shouldn't eat meat because it uses massive amounts of land and water for limited comparative production compared to a plant-based diet, produces a truly unhealthy populace, and is the number one factor in global climate change [by a huge margin if you include the transportation done solely to support animal agriculture]. There is, quite literally, no defense of meat.)

Here's my challenge to you, watch this video:



And then come up with a reason why this is ethically and morally good and deserves to be protected. Otherwise that last statement of yours is pretty indefensible.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I thought the point was that "anyone who considers any biological human to be less than human is insane." If that isn't the point, what did you mean by insane? And do you mean to apply it so broadly?

How dense are you? Did you read my post? This isn't even close to the point I was trying to make. You are taking one sentence of one of my posts, taking it completely out of context, and then pouncing on the way it is phrased. Seriously, read it the fuck again.

But this isn't about an anti-slavery moral code, but about a moral code that draws a line between 'humans' and 'animals.'

As I understood Straha's reasoning (because I think I agree) that line is just an extension of 'us' and 'them' justifications for - pretty much anything. The point is not whether Slavery is right, but whether anything can be justified using "us" and "them" boundaries. Slavery of humans has long been considered wrong, which is why people adopt a different definitions of humans in order to get away with slavery and other atrocities.

Yes, that is exactly what Straha was saying. Seriously, DID YOU EVEN READ MY POST? It really sounds like you only read the one sentence, utterly misinterpreted in, and ignored everything else.

My entire point is that adopting different definitions of humanity to get away with things is not necessarily a referendum on the moral code in question. Is this really such a difficult point for you to grasp?

Now, you can argue that redrawing the line to between Homo and Pan, if you like, but that keeps the same moral code as before, just applied to a different group. I would say that "it's OK if it's them," isn't a moral code to go by at all.

What the fuck are you even blathering on about? Seriously, read my fucking posts before responding to them.

Here, I will give you ANOTHER example, and make it as clear as possible:

There is a theoretical moral system where "humans" are given rights, and "animals" are not. So killing a person is wrong, killing an animal is fine.
Now, there is a theoretical group of people that starts treating some subset of humans like animals. By enslaving them or killing them or whatever.
According to Straha, this means the original moral system is flawed.

But why is this situation an indictment of the original moral system? The moral system IS indeed flawed, but you have to explain why.

As I said, this group of people who think that, say, Belgians, are actually ducks is WRONG. This isn't exploiting a loophole, it is moving the goalposts entirely. Belgians are demonstrably human, and not ducks. So treating them like ducks isn't appropriate in this moral system, no matter how much they complain that Belgians are just ducks. It is still wrong by the standards of the moral code. These people are just wrong. For the same reason that people who are insane, like the shooter in Aurora, and their actions are not indictments of our moral code, because no matter how they self-justify their actions, they are still wrong within the confines of our moral code. Understand?

[Straha]

There is a theoretical moral system where "humans" are given rights, and "animals" are not. So killing a person is wrong, killing an animal is fine.
Now, there is a theoretical group of people that starts treating some subset of humans like animals. By enslaving them or killing them or whatever.
According to Straha, this means the original moral system is flawed.

But why is this situation an indictment of the original moral system? The moral system IS indeed flawed, but you have to explain why.

As I said, this group of people who think that, say, Belgians, are actually ducks is WRONG. This isn't exploiting a loophole, it is moving the goalposts entirely. Belgians are demonstrably human, and not ducks. So treating them like ducks isn't appropriate in this moral system, no matter how much they complain that Belgians are just ducks. It is still wrong by the standards of the moral code. These people are just wrong. For the same reason that people who are insane, like the shooter in Aurora, and their actions are not indictments of our moral code, because no matter how they self-justify their actions, they are still wrong within the confines of our moral code. Understand?

You're engaging in a binary logic that doesn't actually apply in the real world. In fact, it can be both the people being wrong for acting in a reprehensible way, and the moral system being wrong for allowing the possibility for those actions to happen. What I'm advocating for is a world wherein the moral system is completely straight forward, and it becomes clear for anyone following it when they've transgressed or might be transgressing.

In other words, if you take away the animal category in the hypothetical system you offer as an example you are also taking away the clutch for someone to say "But the Belgians are animals" which leads us into a better world over all.

[Purple]

Actually I am trying to somehow explain to you what I mean by using your words and methods since you completely misunderstand what I want and drive this thread off on a tangent. So I tried to steer you back and failed.

Because the tangent you're trying to drive it into is silly and inane, and I'll have no part of it.

Well than I have nothing more to discuss with you now have I?

But I shall humor you newer the less for the sake of keeping a relatively entertaining argument going.

A. You haven't responded to my argument that this enables groups to be kicked out of moral consideration through societal shifts/pressures at all. You've merely restated your original argument without adding anything new. You also haven't given a reason why your system would lead to the inclusion of the groups I mentioned before, instead merely asserting that they'd be covered under the broadest possible casting of the net... just because. This sort of otherization and exclusion has happened universally throughout Western history (and most of the rest of the world, with a few exceptions), if you want to have a truly moral system you need to come up with a way to stop it.

That job was handled well enough by Ziggy Stardust. There was no need to repeat the obvious.

B. The individual will always be the locus of ethics. Even if we adopt the broad-based util system you seem to be advocating for it still requires an individual somewhere to assign ethical worth and consideration amongst peoples, and then make calculations from there. You're never going to be able to change this, you're just going to lie to yourself until you believe otherwise.

Why? After all, as long as your ethics are based on having to cover every individual example of a group you will as others have already said end up with something that is clunky at best. But to not reiterate. Ziggy made quite a well post about this particular issue just above. And thus I shall only provide the simplest of all answers.

Any system of morality is first and foremost based upon rules. Rules that the expected end user, or he who you would call "the individual" can expect to accept. However these rules must newer be such that the end user does not have to accept them as axiomatic. If the end user asks "why" and the response he gets is not satisfactory or is based on some sort of logically self consistent but ultimately completely pointless philosophical argument than the rule and the moral system supporting it are bad. And so far it seems to me that what you are describing and indeed most theoretical morality systems fall squarely in the later category.

C. Your system is clunky, obtuse, and falls apart under close examination. The system I propose, where the individual looks onto the world and tries to interfere with other beings the least is simple, easy to understand, easy to apply, and doesn't fall apart at the seams.

And yours seems almost single handedly obsessed with what you perceive as the end goal that it seems to have taken up a life of it's own. Morality for the sake of morality, consistency for the sake of consistency... Sort of sounds like math for the sake of math.

No, learn to read. It's not capability, it's intelligibility. When we judge an animal we have no way of ascertaining their capability in the empiric way you seem to be hunting for, instead we base our judgments off of whether or not they meet our pre-determined standards of what marks human intelligence. In other words, we're not basing our judgment off of any inherent traits they might have, but whether they can make those traits intelligible to us. I think it's the extreme of hubris to say we have the right to condemn other creatures based off of our own ignorance, and means that any other group we encounter is always already damned because they're not like us. Instead we have to come up with an ethical system that embraces the unintelligible nature of the other (see Judith Butler for some exploration of that), and uses that as a starting point of ethics.

If we have no way of ascertaining the capability of a target group to communicate and understand our morality in the empiric way and if such a state is due to limitations that are none of our failing (as in something we could correct with time and effort) than we have no choice but to conclude that we can not communicate with said target group or make them understand our moral code.

After all meat eating is hardly bad.

I'm going to stop you right there, meat eating is pretty atrocious especially in any 'farmed' scenario because it relies on the systemic enslavement, rape, and murder of other beings. There can be no ethical justification for someone to eat meat if they have any other alternative available.

I won't even grace that with an answer. Well ok, I will. But that was necessary as a put down for what you said. Seriously. Meat eating is good because our species is an omnivorous one and meat is part of a healthy human died. And last time I checked biology does not give a damn for morality.

Althou it should be noted that due to being from Europe I take disgust in the way Americans breed their farm animals, especially chickens. If nothing else, such forms of high stress and bad nutrition breeding have as far as I am aware been proven to produce shitty levels of meat quality in terms of both nutritional value and flavor. And that sort of undermines the whole point of eating meat.

There is a theoretical moral system where "humans" are given rights, and "animals" are not. So killing a person is wrong, killing an animal is fine.
Now, there is a theoretical group of people that starts treating some subset of humans like animals. By enslaving them or killing them or whatever.
According to Straha, this means the original moral system is flawed.

But why is this situation an indictment of the original moral system? The moral system IS indeed flawed, but you have to explain why.

As I said, this group of people who think that, say, Belgians, are actually ducks is WRONG. This isn't exploiting a loophole, it is moving the goalposts entirely. Belgians are demonstrably human, and not ducks. So treating them like ducks isn't appropriate in this moral system, no matter how much they complain that Belgians are just ducks. It is still wrong by the standards of the moral code. These people are just wrong. For the same reason that people who are insane, like the shooter in Aurora, and their actions are not indictments of our moral code, because no matter how they self-justify their actions, they are still wrong within the confines of our moral code. Understand?

You're engaging in a binary logic that doesn't actually apply in the real world. In fact, it can be both the people being wrong for acting in a reprehensible way, and the moral system being wrong for allowing the possibility for those actions to happen. What I'm advocating for is a world wherein the moral system is completely straight forward, and it becomes clear for anyone following it when they've transgressed or might be transgressing.

In other words, if you take away the animal category in the hypothetical system you offer as an example you are also taking away the clutch for someone to say "But the Belgians are animals" which leads us into a better world over all.

You sort of missed one big point. The moral system that Ziggy described does NOT allow for the possibility of such an action to happen. Such an act happening is by his very definition a perversion of the system that is by its very definition immoral. In other words evil. And what more can be done by a system of morality than to declare something evil? The difference between your two systems is that his actually sounds like something that could be implemented in the real world.

Worse yet, your system seems to be designed to be so broad, so all encompassing that it can absolutely not be perverted in any way shape or form. Well there are two issues with that. First, as I said above any perversion of a moral code is by definition wrong. So there is no need to secure against it. And second, such a system would be so broad and all encompassing that it would be functionally too restrictive to anything short of photosynthetic bacteria.

[Straha]

That job was handled well enough by Ziggy Stardust. There was no need to repeat the obvious.

No, Ziggy does not explore this point at any real length, and certainly not from the aspect I'm criticizing your moral system on. So try again.

Why? After all, as long as your ethics are based on having to cover every individual example of a group you will as others have already said end up with something that is clunky at best. But to not reiterate. Ziggy made quite a well post about this particular issue just above. And thus I shall only provide the simplest of all answers.

I'm genuinely curious here, is English a second or third language for you? Because a lot of that above was drivel, and if what's driving this thread is a matter of semantic difficulty I'm willing to tone down the academese in my posts and spend more time explaining my argument bit-by-bit, but you have to be willing to work with me here because otherwise this thread literally cannot be productive.

Any system of morality is first and foremost based upon rules. Rules that the expected end user, or he who you would call "the individual" can expect to accept. However these rules must newer be such that the end user does not have to accept them as axiomatic. If the end user asks "why" and the response he gets is not satisfactory or is based on some sort of logically self consistent but ultimately completely pointless philosophical argument than the rule and the moral system supporting it are bad. And so far it seems to me that what you are describing and indeed most theoretical morality systems fall squarely in the later category.

Either you've inadvertently stumbled onto the beginnings of post-structuralism or you've misunderstood my argument and spouted gibberish as a response (these two things, I should add, are not mutually exclusive.)

I think what you're misunderstanding is this:
You're saying that we need to base morality on creating the largest possible category of people who can understand ethics.
What I am saying is that those categories will always be subject to interpretation by any individual actor, and that this means that pre-existing biases (for instance, that animals don't count) will always sway the interpretation of these categories. Instead we have to deal with morality on the level of the individual actor and make it as broad as possible.

Put another way, you're reading this like I'm talking about the moral patient (recipient of moral action), whereas I'm talking about the moral actor, the person going out there and doing stuff that needs to be judged.

And yours seems almost single handedly obsessed with what you perceive as the end goal that it seems to have taken up a life of it's own. Morality for the sake of morality, consistency for the sake of consistency... Sort of sounds like math for the sake of math.

We can come back to this, I think if we're actually going to have a conversation about this we need to clear up what I'm actually advocating for you, and what your objections are in that light, before we get back to this.

If we have no way of ascertaining the capability of a target group to communicate and understand our morality in the empiric way and if such a state is due to limitations that are none of our failing (as in something we could correct with time and effort) than we have no choice but to conclude that we can not communicate with said target group or make them understand our moral code.

Yes, and I'm saying that that view of determining who is protected under any system of ethics is flawed because it leads to any group we don't like being thrown out. (Case in point, despite attempts to communicate to each other we've both failed at it due to linguistic barriers. Ergo, your system would make it possible for either one of us to be ejected from the moral community and be made a legitimate target for ethically acceptable violence. This, I argue, is probably a bad thing.)

I won't even grace that with an answer. Well ok, I will. But that was necessary as a put down for what you said. Seriously. Meat eating is good because our species is an omnivorous one and meat is part of a healthy human died. And last time I checked biology does not give a damn for morality.

Meat is not a healthy part of a human diet, meat is tied with cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia, and just about everything else known to man. People who eat a vegetarian (or vegan) diet have statistically healthier lives, longer life expectancy, lower rates of dementia, lower rates of depression, and are on average happier.

You've also flat out ignored the treatment of animals as a factor here, instead trying to handwave it away as 'biology'. Which is not how ethics works. Try again. Watch that video (which, btw, also represents what's been spreading into Europe more and more over the past thirty years) and defend that as a moral good.

You sort of missed one big point. The moral system that Ziggy described does NOT allow for the possibility of such an action to happen. Such an act happening is by his very definition a perversion of the system that is by its very definition immoral. In other words evil. And what more can be done by a system of morality than to declare something evil? The difference between your two systems is that his actually sounds like something that could be implemented in the real world.

No, the problem is that his system does allow for the possibility of such actions to happen, but tries to constrain those actions. I'm saying that the limits placed on these actions are subject to individual interpretation and that this means those actions can, in effect, be committed against anyone.

Worse yet, your system seems to be designed to be so broad, so all encompassing that it can absolutely not be perverted in any way shape or form. Well there are two issues with that. First, as I said above any perversion of a moral code is by definition wrong. So there is no need to secure against it. And second, such a system would be so broad and all encompassing that it would be functionally too restrictive to anything short of photosynthetic bacteria.

Again, you seem to have missed what I'm saying. Both you and the Belgian killers would definitely agree on point one. The difference between the two of you would be on what defines an 'animal', which leads to a completely different set of concerns. I'm arguing that this difficulty means that the entire moral system becomes loose, and slipshod, and that we should look elsewhere for moral guidance.

As to point two, I don't see a problem therein, as I've made clear on this board at least a dozen times before.

[Purple]

No, Ziggy does not explore this point at any real length, and certainly not from the aspect I'm criticizing your moral system on. So try again.

Actually he does. Just not from the same angle I am. But his posts before mine actually cover what I was about to say here quite well.

I'm genuinely curious here, is English a second or third language for you? Because a lot of that above was drivel, and if what's driving this thread is a matter of semantic difficulty I'm willing to tone down the academese in my posts and spend more time explaining my argument bit-by-bit, but you have to be willing to work with me here because otherwise this thread literally cannot be productive.

I understand what you are saying. I just don't understand why you are saying it.

I think what you're misunderstanding is this:
You're saying that we need to base morality on creating the largest possible category of people who can understand ethics.
What I am saying is that those categories will always be subject to interpretation by any individual actor, and that this means that pre-existing biases (for instance, that animals don't count) will always sway the interpretation of these categories. Instead we have to deal with morality on the level of the individual actor and make it as broad as possible.

The actor is not the one that should interpret the rules. He is the one that should fallow them blindly. Or rather, any system of morality that is judging him must assume he is. That is why it is important for the rules to be defined in such a way as I described so that the actor can actually evaluate the rule it self, determine it is right and act upon it without thinking up his own interpretation. Allowing the actor to "interpret" the rules would be like allowing colorblind people to cross on a red light.

Put another way, you're reading this like I'm talking about the moral patient (recipient of moral action), whereas I'm talking about the moral actor, the person going out there and doing stuff that needs to be judged.

Actually you are speaking about the actor whose actions are judged where as I am speaking of the system that judges them.

We can come back to this, I think if we're actually going to have a conversation about this we need to clear up what I'm actually advocating for you, and what your objections are in that light, before we get back to this.

My objections have been outlined so far quite well. What is the issue?

Still, I will explain that one bit you quoted if that will help. You desire a system that is incorruptible and internally consistent. However to me it seems that these ends have become a goal onto them self to the point where nothing else matters. To make a very, very extreme exaggeration. It seems that you would prefer a system where any harm to any form of life is bad even if said harm is euthanasia or just eating to stay alive.

Yes, and I'm saying that that view of determining who is protected under any system of ethics is flawed because it leads to any group we don't like being thrown out. (Case in point, despite attempts to communicate to each other we've both failed at it due to linguistic barriers. Ergo, your system would make it possible for either one of us to be ejected from the moral community and be made a legitimate target for ethically acceptable violence. This, I argue, is probably a bad thing.)

That I believe is fundamentally wrong because biology requires one species to murder another for survival (unless you are photosynthetic). Furthermore, you seem to completely fail to understand or likely reject outright the concept I am talking about. This is even shown by the way you ignore the most important part of the quoted text, the words "if such a state is due to limitations that are none of our failing (as in something we could correct with time and effort)". Not a small chunk of text either. A linguistic barrier is something that can be corrected with time and effort. Hell even chimps can be taught sign language and communicated with. However even if you could communicate with an earthworm as good as they can among one another, or even better. An earthworm will just newer be able to grasp the concept of morality. There is a clear and obvious way to make that distinction. It's not based on like and dislike. And manipulating the system in the way you describe it would be by it self morally wrong.

So the outcome in both cases remains similar:
Your
Kill another human = wrong
thus Designate human as animal to kill them = wrong

Ours
Kill another human = wrong
Kill animal = right
Designate human as animal = wrong
thus Designate human as animal to kill them = wrong

My system simply allows the added flexibility required for a species to actually keep on living among other things.

Meat is not a healthy part of a human diet, meat is tied with cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia, and just about everything else known to man. People who eat a vegetarian (or vegan) diet have statistically healthier lives, longer life expectancy, lower rates of dementia, lower rates of depression, and are on average happier.

Except that not. And I will seriously ask you to provide any conclusive unbiased peer reviewed evidence for your claims here. Emphasis on making sure the studies take into account that people who are obsessed with the vegetarian fad tend to be more health conscious on the side and eliminate that as a factor.

You've also flat out ignored the treatment of animals as a factor here, instead trying to handwave it away as 'biology'. Which is not how ethics works. Try again. Watch that video (which, btw, also represents what's been spreading into Europe more and more over the past thirty years) and defend that as a moral good.

As I have said, there is the right way to keep animals and the wrong way to keep them. I am not ignoring anything, just pointing out that reguardless of morality there is a wrong way to keep animals due to a simple biological

No, the problem is that his system does allow for the possibility of such actions to happen, but tries to constrain those actions. I'm saying that the limits placed on these actions are subject to individual interpretation and that this means those actions can, in effect, be committed against anyone.

That sort of reminds you of how actual laws are made right? You know, the rules designed to work in the real world. Maximize freedom and specifically single out and ban cases of abuse. After all, the goal here is to create something that maximizes the welfare of the as you call him "actor". Otherwise once the "actor" asks him self if the system is good the answer would be "no, there are better ones for me".

As to point two, I don't see a problem therein, as I've made clear on this board at least a dozen times before.

That is the key problem thou. You focus so much on expelling abuse that your system becomes useless in practice and in fact repugnant to the intended "actor" that is supposed to act upon it both from a personal and from a biological perspective. Unless you are as I have said photosynthetic and can subside on light and non organic material.

Furthermore there is a reason after all why laws are made such as they are, maximizing achieved freedom and only baning abuse as opposed to something like what you describe. Any human being would reject them if they were different.

And these two things make your system of morality at least in my opinion impossible to apply, fallow or sustain on any level in the real world. And a system of morality that can only exist in the mind of the philosopher no mater how perfect and internally consistent is quite pointless.


PS. Forget that insane cost-benefit system I DA proposed. At this point I am just arguing against what you are proposing.

[Straha]

Purple, your latest post is mind-bendingly disturbing. It speaks not only of the massive and inherent difficulties of trying to reach across the language barrier on deeper philosophical and ethical issues, but stands as a towering monolith in testament of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and of the sheer lengths that someone can stretch an understanding of ethical-philosophy seemingly garnered by sitting outside the door of the contract theory lecture of Philosophy 101. What's worse, or perhaps much more interesting, is the way that these two things have combined into each other, spiraling out of control like some sort of whirlpool of grandiose hubris and inadvertent ignorance until it brings down everything around it in a morbid display .

I was going to try and go super slow about this and break everything down to its simplest component parts, but then I caught this:

The actor is not the one that should interpret the rules. He is the one that should fallow them blindly. Or rather, any system of morality that is judging him must assume he is. That is why it is important for the rules to be defined in such a way as I described so that the actor can actually evaluate the rule it self, determine it is right and act upon it without thinking up his own interpretation. Allowing the actor to "interpret" the rules would be like allowing colorblind people to cross on a red light.

I'll get back to the impossibility of what you call for later (which is the point I was making before), to discuss the most important problem thereof:

Your ethics are the ethics of Eichmann. They are the ethics of "I was just following orders and doing what I was told, as I was told." These are the ethics of an authoritarian absolutism, the ethics that say that people ought not question why they should act a certain way, or how the world ought be organized, but should instead accept the rules as handed down to them from above. This makes you despicable in my book because your stance openly protects the slave-holder, the concentration camp guard, or Pol Pot's goon squads from ethical condemnation because they were following the rules as given to them and understood their job was not to try to question them, or interpret them in any other way. Any system of thought that does that should be rejected out of hand without so much as a second thought.

Also, you keep misspelling 'follow' as 'fallow'. Fallow generally refers to uncultivated farmland. This is the third or fourth time you've done that this thread, it makes you look idiotic, and it's really annoying me.

On to the rest of this trainwreck.

Actually he does. Just not from the same angle I am. But his posts before mine actually cover what I was about to say here quite well.

No. Ziggy is approaching two questions. He posits a system wherein we have established it is wrong to kill humans but acceptable to kill animals, and where a group of people have decided that Belgians are animalian and thus are legitimate targets for violence. He then asks first, ought the slaughter of Belgians be blamed on the people committing the act or the weakness of the moral code which could be manipulated to make such an act seem acceptable, and then asks is it possible to overcome semantic shifts like this action through alternative systems of morality.

These are valid questions, and ones I have answered above at moderate length, and in other threads at extreme length. The cliffnotes answers are: it can be blamed on both of them, and that semantic shifts are inevitable in any utilitarian or category based system but we can hope to overcome them by making our code as simple as possible and making it based off of simple demands in a Jainist vein. Capisce?

What I was talking about with regards to your post above was something far different. You made the claim "The system only needs to care about the broadest possible group that can be expected to fallow [sic] it based on the broadest possible set of criteria." My challenge to this was multifold but a simplified point A is that your system leaves groups like infants, the elderly, and the mentally handicapped out in the cold. The infant and young child cannot understand, much less agree to, the system of morality you propose so why should it be considered protected? Ditto the elderly and mentally handicapped. Ethics happens at the periphery, so these are all important questions to answer.

So what do you do to make sure there isn't a rash of infanticide/patricide? The most common response is to say that we should way potential understanding as well, but that's hardly satisfying. First, because it still condones the slaughter of the mentally handicapped and elderly who (by all odds) absolutely lack any possible understanding of the ethical system you're slinging their way. Second, because if potential is the question where do we draw the line? The infant is in, but what about the fetus? The fetus has the same potential to understand ethics as the infant, just separated by nine-months (or less). How about the Spermatozoa? The potential exists in every Sperm to become a different being who can understand and comprehend these rules. So should it be counted? Here's where it gets tricky, how about the great apes? You already said that certain primates can understand human created language. So can they understand these ethical systems? This begs a much more important question, could we understand their understanding? That is to say, will their understanding be intelligible to us?

I keep harping on this because it throws any chance of 'objectivity' out the window. A being's inclusion in the ethical community, under your system, depends on the subjective and cultural possibilities of whether or not we can understand them. Which calls into question whether the Sentinelese people who have lived the past thousand plus years away from the rest of humanity and lack the signifiers needed to understand what we are discussing (much like we would lack the signifiers to understand their culture/society). Ditto with other primate species, or parrots for that matter.

Put bluntly, your ethical system either excuses infanticide or cannot deal with the possibility of encountering 'alien' cultures. Either way, your system sucks and probably deserves to be left by the roadside.

I understand what you are saying. I just don't understand why you are saying it.

I changed my Sig in part because of this. More bluntly, I think that failure to understand lies with you, because there are plenty of other people in this thread who seem to grok what I'm saying.

The actor is not the one that should interpret the rules. He is the one that should fallow them blindly. Or rather, any system of morality that is judging him must assume he is. That is why it is important for the rules to be defined in such a way as I described so that the actor can actually evaluate the rule it self, determine it is right and act upon it without thinking up his own interpretation. Allowing the actor to "interpret" the rules would be like allowing colorblind people to cross on a red light.

See above for why the moral conclusion here is so horrific. Now on to the impracticality of what you call for.

The most basic starting point is that language is fluid, and has multiple independent meanings. I could point you to the entire corpus of Derrida here (though I would do so, of course, with a proper ironic twist), but it's not difficult to grasp the basics of this. The way I define words comes from a cultural background, and understanding is always predicated on the way that an individual learned about and approached these ideas. Put bluntly, this means that interpretation is always already a part of trying to understand the rules you're trying to propose, and that it is impossible for the 'objective' morality you're trying to strive for to exist. I know people whose families include members who grew up in the segregation south of the 1930s-50s, and for them a Black persons inherent animality is truly beyond question. Or see the Nazi approach to the Jew during the holocaust.

You also beg the question of who sets the rules? Surely someone somewhere is engaging in interpretation, defining, and calculation? How do you escape all the problems I've laid out when it comes to that person's decision making? (I'll give you a hint to the answer: You can't.)

Actually you are speaking about the actor whose actions are judged where as I am speaking of the system that judges them.

And who creates the system? You're trying to hide behind a fiction.

My objections have been outlined so far quite well. What is the issue?

The fact that your objections aren't responsive to what I've laid out?

Still, I will explain that one bit you quoted if that will help. You desire a system that is incorruptible and internally consistent. However to me it seems that these ends have become a goal onto them self to the point where nothing else matters.

A. No, it's not that these are ends in and of themselves, it's that it offers a better ethical system than you do.
B. Is there a problem you have with a system being internally consistent?
C. Can you articulate one reason why my ethical system is bad?

To make a very, very extreme exaggeration. It seems that you would prefer a system where any harm to any form of life is bad even if said harm is euthanasia or just eating to stay alive.

How about you try again with something that isn't an extreme exaggeration, and isn't something I already dealt with earlier in the thread?

That I believe is fundamentally wrong because biology requires one species to murder another for survival (unless you are photosynthetic).

My existence, the two thousand year (plus) existence of the Jains, and the slew of doctors who support a plant based diet seems to prove you empirically wrong here.

Let's restate the question you've ignored again:
Considering that animal agriculture is unnecessary, why is it morally good that it continue?


I'll get to the rest of this later (including a ream of journal articles re: vegan/vegetarian diets). Even writing this much has irked me, and it's taken far too long to write.

[Simon_Jester]

You're engaging in a binary logic that doesn't actually apply in the real world. In fact, it can be both the people being wrong for acting in a reprehensible way, and the moral system being wrong for allowing the possibility for those actions to happen. What I'm advocating for is a world wherein the moral system is completely straight forward, and it becomes clear for anyone following it when they've transgressed or might be transgressing.

Straha, the only people for whom this makes anything simpler are the ones who can't tell a Belgian from a duck. And they won't listen to you anyway. They will happily stop comparing Belgians to animals, yes. And then they start comparing them to noxious weeds, or dangerous fungi, or inanimate stones perched to fall on people.

You are not even slightly addressing the way dehumanization really works here. You may have plenty of reasons to want to place Belgians and ducks on equal moral footing, but this is a really bad argument for doing it.

In other words, if you take away the animal category in the hypothetical system you offer as an example you are also taking away the clutch for someone to say "But the Belgians are animals" which leads us into a better world over all.

Can you demonstrate that this is a better world?

Remember, it's not just about vegetarianism. It's about all the ways we'd change our way of life if we considered killing a duck to be as big a deal as killing a Belgian (important in both cases). Imagine something that increased the quality of life of Belgium but led to, say, a few duck ponds getting bulldozed. Suddenly this is a serious moral dilemma.

Or imagine that elephant populations grow large on game preserves, until many elephants wander off the preserves and are eating African farmers' crops. Do the farmers have a right to shoot elephants that are eating their food? Are the rest of us responsible for feeding those farmers, if their crops are eaten? Are we responsible for feeding the elephants, if we stop the elephants from eating the crops?

We'd take steps to relieve a famine among humans; do we have to relieve one among elephants?

And how are we to do either of those, if we can't clear cropland for farming without displacing and killing wild animals?

I don't believe that removing the line between humans and nonhumans would make the world better for humans. It might make the world better for animals, if knocking humans out of the biosphere entirely can be said to do that. But the animals will mostly not be expressing their gratitude for our taking ourselves out of the picture on their behalf.

To me it seems most perverse that we'd say "the only way to be logically consistent and ethical is for nearly all of the only species on the planet that cares about those things to die off." And yet to me, that seems like a predictable conclusion.

[Terralthra]

J. M. Coatzee, in The Lives of Animals, makes a similar point.

"I too have the greatest respect for codes based on respect for life," says Dean Arendt, entering the debate for the first time. "I am prepared to accept that dietary taboos do not have to be mere customers. I will accept that underlying them are genuine moral concerns. But at the same time one must say that our whole superstructure of concern and belief is a closed book to animals themselves. You can't explain to a steer that its life is going to be spared, any more than you can explain to a bug that you are not going to step on it. In the lives of animals, things, good or bad, just happen. So vegetarianism is a very odd transaction, when you come to think of it, with the beneficiaries unaware that they are being benefited. And with no hope of ever becoming aware. Because they live in a vacuum of consciousness."
[...in response]
"That is a good point you raise. No consciousness that we would recognize as consciousness No awareness, as far as we can make out, of a self with a history. What I mind is what tends to come next. They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends? Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness we recognize that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpunished? There are moments-"
"To say nothing of babies," interjects Wunderlich. Everyone turns and looks at him. "Babies have no self-consciousness, yet we think it a more heinous crime to kill a baby than an adult."
"-therefore all this discussion of consciousness and whether animals have it is just a smoke screen. At bottom we protect our own kind. Thumbs up to human babies, thumbs down to veal calves..."

I'm really not sure where I personally stand. I do consume animal products, but far less of them than I did before I began college and intense reading on the subject, both on my own and academically.

[Straha]

Coetzee's book is amazing. Thee's a line in it I particularly like, the dean says to the author that she is obviously a very good person, and she responds "I'm wearing leather shoes, and carry a leather purse, I'm no better than you."

Also the moment at the side of the road at the end of book.

Simon, I'll get back to you tomorrow when I haven't been driving for three hours. The cliff ores answer is going to be focused on your framing around human life while I ardently advocate a framing around all life. Also, there's plenty written on how this is a part of dehumanization, but think more of the etymology of that term. It means, quite literally, to reduce someone from human status. Getting rid of the moral strata below human solves for that in the simplest possible way. Even if it means we now account for pond scum as something worth preserving in its own right.

[Simon_Jester]

Straha:

I'd argue that simplicity isn't the supreme virtue in a moral system. And freedom from absurdity is. A moral system that leads to the absurd will fail in tests of logic, and tests of practical application. Whether I want my ethics to be logical, practical, or both, I cannot afford to fall into absurdity.

My criticism of this particular argument of yours is simply that it leads to the absurd, in the name of simplicity.

It's the philosophical equivalent of declaring pi to be three, because wouldn't that make life so much easier? But try that, and the geometers will ignore you; everyone else will simply be misled.




Terralthra:

One thing I have to say about Wunderlich's quote- time is short for me right now...

Assuming for the sake of argument the "consciousness is special" point, which I'm going to have to talk about later, it's a question of whether our ethics takes into account the past and future. IF consciousness is special, then do the states of "was once conscious" or "may become conscious" get some of that aura of special-ness?

It's a matter of degree and debatable questions when we look to the details. But on balance I'd say "yes," because a sensible system of ethics must exist in the same four dimensions we do. Ethics that ignore the future are useless; ethics that ignore the past spend most of their time being ridiculous.

So yes, there can be something special about human infants that isn't special about veal calves, IF there's something special about consciousness. Which I don't have time to tackle right now, sorry.

[Covenant]

Having a non-stratified opinion about something as simple as life is a fine way of skirting the issue by not having anything under 'alive' to debate about, and it can be a well enough personal ethical philosophy so long as one is comfortable worrying about the spark of life in a cow and not so much in their soybeans. But it seems more like a clever trick than a tenable debate at the extremes. I'm more willing to accept that if harm must be done, you draw the line of harm at somewhere that seems reasonable without reactionary. Some degree of desensitization may be involved, but systems of supreme moral highground seem to ignore the normal flow of life and death and just save us from ill-feelings by putting us above it. It's not a terrible first step, but it seems odd. If people really care all that much about the life of critters, letting them be torn to shreds by other animals makes me confused, and I don't like a system that starts off saying that all life is equal and that we're no "better" than the animals and not to put anything less than ourselves... but would then go on to explain in various contrived ways how predatory animals are not to be stopped in their tracks. That or it chooses to be agnostic or apathetic to the suffering of any creature not being harmed by the believer in question, or it must accept a fundamental inability to communicate or teach or change the nature of another creature (animals in this case) as a thing separate from the way people are. Or something.

Clearly not all life can be equal if we accept (even at the most forgiving and least involved) that we must allow some life to be sacrificed to other life to allow it to continue. That or all life is equal and harm is not relevant, and things should act according to their nature within the boundaries of their existence. Which then again imposes no impediment to meat eating.

You also gotta remember that not all acceptable moral/ethical standards will make sense. That seems a bit of a cop-out but it's true. Any concept of a guiding framework for right choice is going to include a grab bag of "Well, and not this either, because that's icky/unnecessary/unavoidable" just as par for the course. People obviously devalue the life of a plant over the life of an animal because a plant can feel no pain, even if it does respond to injury. So eating plants is fine enough that you can do it without moral confusion, generally, because you still gotta eat. If you respect life you have to respect your own as well, and that of your own kind, so you wouldn't want to starve yourself or others.

But continually driving around trying to determine exactly where the line is about the acceptable level of harm being done will drive everyone crazy. If you're not obligated to care about eating things that cannot perceive the pain of being harvested, then how about things that don't, or won't? Ethical slaughter of animals on the table if "can't or won't" are allowed. Or again is there going to be a metric saying that the life (under any circumstances) or a cow is worth more than the life of the same dietary amount of vegetable crop? That's easy to do, despite the fact that "life" is a far more difficult subject to quantify than self-awareness, but how about bugs? Not even talking about things like pesticides but like the eating of bugs--not a common thing in American culture, but outside of it there can be a lot of it as a protein source. They're clearly alive in an animate, easily noticed sense--unlike plants which grow and fight so slowly we can't tell. So because ants are fast life we care more about them than slow life? And so on and so on.

[Straha]

Straha, the only people for whom this makes anything simpler are the ones who can't tell a Belgian from a duck. And they won't listen to you anyway. They will happily stop comparing Belgians to animals, yes. And then they start comparing them to noxious weeds, or dangerous fungi, or inanimate stones perched to fall on people.

You are not even slightly addressing the way dehumanization really works here. You may have plenty of reasons to want to place Belgians and ducks on equal moral footing, but this is a really bad argument for doing it.

There's a lot written about how dehumanization (seriously, just think about the term) and the category of the animal go hand in hand, but just think about it, how many times have you heard the phrase "They're treating them/us like animals" or "They're acting like animals." Do a pop culture binge for a little while and keep your ear out, especially on talk radio and news programs, and you realize it's near ubiquitous.

This means people don't have problems with certain reprehensible actions, it's just a matter of making sure those actions are targeted only on certain categories of being, and that sits uncomfortably with me because those categories are always open to societal interpretation and change, and see my response to your next section to see how this works in action.

If you're really interested in stopping dehumanization the only answer that seems to fit the bill is to make the action literally impossible by removing humanity from its special moral classification.

Can you demonstrate that this is a better world?

Remember, it's not just about vegetarianism. It's about all the ways we'd change our way of life if we considered killing a duck to be as big a deal as killing a Belgian (important in both cases). Imagine something that increased the quality of life of Belgium but led to, say, a few duck ponds getting bulldozed. Suddenly this is a serious moral dilemma.

Or imagine that elephant populations grow large on game preserves, until many elephants wander off the preserves and are eating African farmers' crops. Do the farmers have a right to shoot elephants that are eating their food? Are the rest of us responsible for feeding those farmers, if their crops are eaten? Are we responsible for feeding the elephants, if we stop the elephants from eating the crops?

We'd take steps to relieve a famine among humans; do we have to relieve one among elephants?

And how are we to do either of those, if we can't clear cropland for farming without displacing and killing wild animals?

I don't believe that removing the line between humans and nonhumans would make the world better for humans. It might make the world better for animals, if knocking humans out of the biosphere entirely can be said to do that. But the animals will mostly not be expressing their gratitude for our taking ourselves out of the picture on their behalf.

You start and end this section with two completely different questions. The first one is "Will your ethics produce a better world?" but end with "Will your ethics produce a better view for humans?" Not only are these two completely different questions, but you haven't justified the leap in logic between the two. Why ought humans count for ethical purposes while other beings ought not? If the answer is 'because I/we are humans and we got to look to ourselves first' not only are you engaging in tautological reasoning but you're offering a really short-sighted view of ethics that justifies nationalism, sexism, racism, etc, and history (and places like HPCA and the World Church of the Creator) is empirically on my side that this isn't a slippery-slope fallacy. It happens every day, and is probably something to stop. (I'll flag here like I said before that a Solipsistic view of the world, in my book at any rate, is logically consistent but that's about the end of it.)

If you're drawing lines to include certain groups into ethical consideration while excluding others then you need to justify that framing. You don't, and it's this a priori question which I'm probing and which needs to be answered in full before we can get to the rest of the questions you offer.

Straha:
I'd argue that simplicity isn't the supreme virtue in a moral system. And freedom from absurdity is. A moral system that leads to the absurd will fail in tests of logic, and tests of practical application. Whether I want my ethics to be logical, practical, or both, I cannot afford to fall into absurdity.

My criticism of this particular argument of yours is simply that it leads to the absurd, in the name of simplicity.

You fall victim to the fact that absurdity is, like taste, in the eye of the beholder. For you my system that can potentially equate a mouse to human is absurd, for me your system which accepts without contest or challenge the mass rape, enslavement, and slaughter of animals for no better reason than "their flesh taste goods" when this process is detrimental to the world, to human health, and to the amount of food we can eat is absurd. The idea that we should ignore the lives of billions as if they are ephemeral and do not exist, taxes my credulity to its limits, much as the claim that there is a proper ('humane') way to rape, enslave, and slaughter beings because of the way they look and taste does.

I don't mean to be accusatory here. I understand where you come from, and I sympathize greatly, I used to agree with you completely.
I have two questions though:
Why is your exclusion of animals from moral consideration ethically and morally good?
And
How does your drive from the freedom from absurdity account for the difference in the way you and I look in the world?

I think answers to those questions are necessary to enable a truly 'productive' conversation about the topic that this thread has turned to.

[Simon_Jester]

Straha, the only people for whom this makes anything simpler are the ones who can't tell a Belgian from a duck. And they won't listen to you anyway. They will happily stop comparing Belgians to animals, yes. And then they start comparing them to noxious weeds, or dangerous fungi, or inanimate stones perched to fall on people.

You are not even slightly addressing the way dehumanization really works here. You may have plenty of reasons to want to place Belgians and ducks on equal moral footing, but this is a really bad argument for doing it.

There's a lot written about how dehumanization (seriously, just think about the term) and the category of the animal go hand in hand, but just think about it, how many times have you heard the phrase "They're treating them/us like animals" or "They're acting like animals." Do a pop culture binge for a little while and keep your ear out, especially on talk radio and news programs, and you realize it's near ubiquitous.

But people also compare dehumanized groups to things that aren't animals. Like plague bacilli. Or fungus. Or inanimate objects.

The key to dehumanization is calling something not human. Removing the category of "animal" and promoting animals to be on par with humans won't help, unless we do the same with mold spores and cancer cells.

Are you going that far?

Can you demonstrate that this is a better world?

Remember, it's not just about vegetarianism. It's about all the ways we'd change our way of life if we considered killing a duck to be as big a deal as killing a Belgian (important in both cases). Imagine something that increased the quality of life of Belgium but led to, say, a few duck ponds getting bulldozed. Suddenly this is a serious moral dilemma.

Or imagine that elephant populations grow large on game preserves, until many elephants wander off the preserves and are eating African farmers' crops. Do the farmers have a right to shoot elephants that are eating their food? Are the rest of us responsible for feeding those farmers, if their crops are eaten? Are we responsible for feeding the elephants, if we stop the elephants from eating the crops?

We'd take steps to relieve a famine among humans; do we have to relieve one among elephants?

And how are we to do either of those, if we can't clear cropland for farming without displacing and killing wild animals?

I don't believe that removing the line between humans and nonhumans would make the world better for humans. It might make the world better for animals, if knocking humans out of the biosphere entirely can be said to do that. But the animals will mostly not be expressing their gratitude for our taking ourselves out of the picture on their behalf.

You start and end this section with two completely different questions. The first one is "Will your ethics produce a better world?" but end with "Will your ethics produce a better view for humans?"

Did you miss the underlined passage? I'm subdividing "better world" into "better world for humans" and "better world for non-h. sap animals." Which I'm going to call 'animals' just so my sentences don't look even more ridiculous than usual.

A world where humans basically write themselves out of the biosphere (because killing mice that eat our grain is a no-no, and so on) might be better for animals. But how are you defining "better for animals?" All those animals still die anyway, most of them painfully- being eaten alive by predators, or frozen by exposure to the elements, or slowly killed by infectious disease. Or succumbing to gradual starvation when they're too weak or toothless to eat properly.

Those things happen in nature. Are they our problem now? Are we as morally obliged to provide famine relief to save a million deer as we are to provide it to save a million people?

How would we even do that? We're too fucked up as a species to feed ourselves, and that's with a level of agricultural productivity we could never have if we weren't willing to kill wildlife that encroached on our food supply.

Not only are these two completely different questions, but you haven't justified the leap in logic between the two. Why ought humans count for ethical purposes while other beings ought not? If the answer is 'because I/we are humans and we got to look to ourselves first' not only are you engaging in tautological reasoning but you're offering a really short-sighted view of ethics that justifies nationalism, sexism, racism, etc, and history... is empirically on my side that this isn't a slippery-slope fallacy. It happens every day, and is probably something to stop. (I'll flag here like I said before that a Solipsistic view of the world, in my book at any rate, is logically consistent but that's about the end of it.)

Straha, you're trying to use a fully general counterargument against a specific criticism.

I'm not asking you to repeat your claim that making humans a special category is the root cause of all discrimination. I can tackle that later.

I'm asking you to explain how leaving elephants to starve or be devoured by wild beasts is better than keeping their population down with controlled culling so they don't start eating crops.

I'm asking a more general question than that, actually. But that's a useful starting point.

Straha:
I'd argue that simplicity isn't the supreme virtue in a moral system. And freedom from absurdity is. A moral system that leads to the absurd will fail in tests of logic, and tests of practical application. Whether I want my ethics to be logical, practical, or both, I cannot afford to fall into absurdity.

My criticism of this particular argument of yours is simply that it leads to the absurd, in the name of simplicity.

You fall victim to the fact that absurdity is, like taste, in the eye of the beholder. For you my system that can potentially equate a mouse to human is absurd, for me your system which accepts without contest or challenge... [insert list of horrible things] is absurd. The idea that we should ignore the lives of billions as if they are ephemeral and do not exist, taxes my credulity to its limits, much as the claim that there is a proper ('humane') way to rape, enslave, and slaughter beings because of the way they look and taste does.

Very well. Then what would the world look like, if we all did as you say?

Would African farmers preserve their crops at the expense of elephants' lives, or would the crops be eaten by elephants?

Do we need to keep up airborne patrols to stop wolves from killing deer? Isn't a deer's life as valuable as that of a wolf? How can we justify the existence of wolves that by nature kill countless deer during their lifespan, if a deer is as valuable as a wolf?

Are we allowed to trap mice that infiltrate granaries?

Are we allowed to do anything about rats carrying bubonic plague? Tsetse flies? Malarial mosquitoes? Tuberculosis germs? They're all indisputably alive. Do we draw a line? If so, where?

I have two questions though:
Why is your exclusion of animals from moral consideration ethically and morally good?
And
How does your drive from the freedom from absurdity account for the difference in the way you and I look in the world?

In answer to (1), I never said it was a positive good. It just seems to me that putting animals very low on my list of moral considerations is... less bad than the alternative. The alternative is total, universal folly.

In answer to (2), when I think about the way you view the world, I see a great mass of absurdity lurking just over the horizon. Therefore, I cannot believe as you do, unless you find a way to make the absurdity go away.

[Terralthra]

Bacteria are alive; are antibiotics genocide?

It's so much more complicated than "all living things deserve respect."

[Simon_Jester]

Yes; that's kind of my point.

Once we accept (embrace, if I have any say in the matter) the complexity of the real world... we're not really gaining simplicity by saying "treating all entities equally means an end to human discrimination."

It's not realistic, and it creates more problems than it solves.