5 ms·

I don't understand your comment. Can you explain further?

DoreenMichele 8y ago
In the west, the generally accepted public narrative is that only humans have souls, not other organisms. And whether or not it is acceptable to eat something is frequently more or less tied to intelligence. I really enjoyed your above comment. I sometimes give push back to the vegan moral superiority stance where they act like eating animals is evil, but eating plants is totally fine. I tend to view all organisms as "having a soul" so to speak and I don't think there is anything inherently morally superior from that perspective in eating only plants, not animals. (I think there are some other bases for arguing that it is morally superior wrt to preventing war, etc.) But when you see these arguments in public (among "westerners," for lack of a better word), they are almost always based on the idea that plants don't have brains, thus they don't have awareness, so this somehow makes it not a problem to kill them that we might live, where killing animals is posited to be a bad thing. If you take that argument to its logical conclusion, than perhaps it is morally acceptable to eat other people if they are in a vegetative state. It is one of my objections to such framing.
- coginawheel 8y ago
  Yes, I've had similar viewpoints. I personally think tying of the soul to intelligence seems a weird distinction. Does that mean that if person goes into a vegetative state, they have lost their soul? Do animals that are less intelligent have a less likelihood of a soul? If you can breed animals without mental faculties are they soul-less? Does the fact that we can't understand if plants are intelligent meant they lack souls? These seem like petty distinctions. To me there is a notion that life has some intrinsic value to it. In parallel there is a notion that to exist as life, humans have to rely on destroying life. To me these are equally important, recognizing that life has worth but also to exist you must end life. I find this paradoxical duality to be beautiful. Now from a practical point of view there are social rules for how you end life. So some cultures thought it was ok to eat all forms of life as long as that life wasn't part of your tribe (societies with cannibalism), other societies thought it was ok to eat all forms of life except for your pets (most Americans), some exclude animals based on religious beliefs (pork in Islam and judaism, meat and beef in Hinduism), and some think it is ok to eat all forms of life that are non-animals (vegetarians). I think its hard for any of these groups to claim moral superiority. The truth is in order to exist we need to destroy life, but at the same time, most can see that life is precious.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    My feeling is that the practice of saying grace before a meal is rooted in the awareness that "something died that I might live -- and there but for the grace of god go I." When we die, unless we are intentionally preserved, we also get consumed, even if only by microorganisms and plants growing in the soil where our body decomposed. As far as I know, other animals don't give pause over that detail. We seem to be the only animal who has this uncomfortable awareness and wrestles with it in various forms.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  There is no reason to believe anything that would be described as a soul exists. Logically everything is an emergent property of complex systems including plants, animals, and us. Not being able to distinguish eating an orange, a chicken, a human, a human in a vegetative state etc is just a failure of analysis. There is no moral dimension to eating an orange and we don't eat people even when their brain is irretrievably ruined out of inherent disgust,desire not to catch a disease, and moral respect for those they may have left behind. Eating animals is legitimately complicated. We probably shouldn't do it any more
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    " Logically everything is an emergent property of complex systems including plants, animals, and us." I'm sorry, but I fully disagree, please see my note above. This is a materialist view that presupposes that there is only matter/energy and laws that govern it - and only with that (unproven) presupposition first in place, can anything such as you have described be 'logically inferred'. For example - you mention 'morality' - from the purely physical perspective, you are merely a random wave form, there can be no intelligence, experience, consciousness - let alone morality from that perspective. It is considerably logical that our current version of materialism is a very helpful tool for understanding some material aspects of the universe, but that by it's own definition is not very useful in terms of understanding life itself. Materialism is like a ruler we can use to measure stuff. But it gives us little information on 'who is using the ruler'. 'Soul' or 'spirit' or whatever - are the words that we use to crudely describe that which seems to otherwise differentiate life from other stuff, beyond merely 'complexity'.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Although we have been thinking about the matter for at least 12000 years we have no reasonable theory for things that aren't matter or energy that isn't hand waving and nonsense. The most prevalent current theories are extrapolations from what goat herds who believed illnesses and earthquakes were caused by evil spirits. As an example most people would agree that chemistry is just applied physics but most people don't do substantial chemistry by simulating all the particles involved not because they believe that chemicals are somehow magical in a way that isn't capturable by physics but because its challenging and intractable. Further if we did arrive at some theory that described qualities and entities not presently qualified by physics those things including souls would become part of the universe because the term universe grows to encompass everything we presently understand. The logical conclusion is that a soul if it did exist would be made of matter/energy/information like everything else that can possibly exist. It would of course be truly shocking if a heretofore incompressible aspect of the universe just happened to mirror thousands of years of superstition. It would be like if we travelled to another star system and found its denizens were the cast of Harry Potter complete with billions of years of history culminating with a multipart war against Voldemorte. If you want to posit things out of scope of present understanding you ought to provide some support for them which is notably absent from the above hand waving. I await an interesting reply but fear it will merely be a critique of my small minded instance that debates consist of facts and arguments.
- mike00632 8y ago
  " they are almost always based on the idea that plants don't have brains..." I'm afraid this is a strawman argument. Most vegans/vegetarians choose to spare other animals based on their capacity to suffer.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    So they claim. But: A. I'm an environmental studies major and anytime I present evidence that plants are aware of suffering, it is ignored and dismissed. B. I was homeless for nearly 6 years. A so-called ethical vegan I knew (who wasn't actually a full-time vegan and ate vegetarian, not vegan, as convenience suited them) happily and enthusiastically added to my suffering during that time. Given how often ethical vegans gleefully psychologically torture their non vegan fellow humans over their failure to be vegan, I have zero reason to believe this individual's cruelty towards me was some wild aberration in the veg- community. Please note the other comment here by someone using terms like no reason to believe, logically and a failure of analysis. The subtext of the framing celebrates this western idea that intelligence is everything. So we can presumably agree to disagree at this point.
    - mike00632 8y ago
      "I'm an environmental studies major and anytime I present evidence that plants are aware of suffering, it is ignored and dismissed." As it should be. When you say "pain" and "suffering" you mean in in no similar way to your own pain and suffering whereas vegans do. You're co-opting the language of ethics to try and point out hypocrisy. Also, let's apply some logic here and acknowledge that far more plants are "harmed" to make animal food products than plant food products, thus it's still consistent for ethical people to eat a plant based diet. "I have zero reason to believe this individual's cruelty towards me was some wild aberration in the veg- community." Vegans are defined by caring for the well being of others. That gives us every reason to think that a vegan would care more than anyone else about the well being of others. Your anecdote about a vegan who was mean to you once is something you shouldn't use to draw conclusions about an entire group of people.
      - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

In the west, the generally accepted public narrative is that only humans have souls, not other organisms. And whether or not it is acceptable to eat something is frequently more or less tied to intelligence. I really enjoyed your above comment. I sometimes give push back to the vegan moral superiority stance where they act like eating animals is evil, but eating plants is totally fine. I tend to view all organisms as "having a soul" so to speak and I don't think there is anything inherently morally superior from that perspective in eating only plants, not animals. (I think there are some other bases for arguing that it is morally superior wrt to preventing war, etc.) But when you see these arguments in public (among "westerners," for lack of a better word), they are almost always based on the idea that plants don't have brains, thus they don't have awareness, so this somehow makes it not a problem to kill them that we might live, where killing animals is posited to be a bad thing. If you take that argument to its logical conclusion, than perhaps it is morally acceptable to eat other people if they are in a vegetative state. It is one of my objections to such framing.

coginawheel 8y ago
Yes, I've had similar viewpoints. I personally think tying of the soul to intelligence seems a weird distinction. Does that mean that if person goes into a vegetative state, they have lost their soul? Do animals that are less intelligent have a less likelihood of a soul? If you can breed animals without mental faculties are they soul-less? Does the fact that we can't understand if plants are intelligent meant they lack souls? These seem like petty distinctions. To me there is a notion that life has some intrinsic value to it. In parallel there is a notion that to exist as life, humans have to rely on destroying life. To me these are equally important, recognizing that life has worth but also to exist you must end life. I find this paradoxical duality to be beautiful. Now from a practical point of view there are social rules for how you end life. So some cultures thought it was ok to eat all forms of life as long as that life wasn't part of your tribe (societies with cannibalism), other societies thought it was ok to eat all forms of life except for your pets (most Americans), some exclude animals based on religious beliefs (pork in Islam and judaism, meat and beef in Hinduism), and some think it is ok to eat all forms of life that are non-animals (vegetarians). I think its hard for any of these groups to claim moral superiority. The truth is in order to exist we need to destroy life, but at the same time, most can see that life is precious.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  My feeling is that the practice of saying grace before a meal is rooted in the awareness that "something died that I might live -- and there but for the grace of god go I." When we die, unless we are intentionally preserved, we also get consumed, even if only by microorganisms and plants growing in the soil where our body decomposed. As far as I know, other animals don't give pause over that detail. We seem to be the only animal who has this uncomfortable awareness and wrestles with it in various forms.
michaelmrose 8y ago
There is no reason to believe anything that would be described as a soul exists. Logically everything is an emergent property of complex systems including plants, animals, and us. Not being able to distinguish eating an orange, a chicken, a human, a human in a vegetative state etc is just a failure of analysis. There is no moral dimension to eating an orange and we don't eat people even when their brain is irretrievably ruined out of inherent disgust,desire not to catch a disease, and moral respect for those they may have left behind. Eating animals is legitimately complicated. We probably shouldn't do it any more
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  " Logically everything is an emergent property of complex systems including plants, animals, and us." I'm sorry, but I fully disagree, please see my note above. This is a materialist view that presupposes that there is only matter/energy and laws that govern it - and only with that (unproven) presupposition first in place, can anything such as you have described be 'logically inferred'. For example - you mention 'morality' - from the purely physical perspective, you are merely a random wave form, there can be no intelligence, experience, consciousness - let alone morality from that perspective. It is considerably logical that our current version of materialism is a very helpful tool for understanding some material aspects of the universe, but that by it's own definition is not very useful in terms of understanding life itself. Materialism is like a ruler we can use to measure stuff. But it gives us little information on 'who is using the ruler'. 'Soul' or 'spirit' or whatever - are the words that we use to crudely describe that which seems to otherwise differentiate life from other stuff, beyond merely 'complexity'.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Although we have been thinking about the matter for at least 12000 years we have no reasonable theory for things that aren't matter or energy that isn't hand waving and nonsense. The most prevalent current theories are extrapolations from what goat herds who believed illnesses and earthquakes were caused by evil spirits. As an example most people would agree that chemistry is just applied physics but most people don't do substantial chemistry by simulating all the particles involved not because they believe that chemicals are somehow magical in a way that isn't capturable by physics but because its challenging and intractable. Further if we did arrive at some theory that described qualities and entities not presently qualified by physics those things including souls would become part of the universe because the term universe grows to encompass everything we presently understand. The logical conclusion is that a soul if it did exist would be made of matter/energy/information like everything else that can possibly exist. It would of course be truly shocking if a heretofore incompressible aspect of the universe just happened to mirror thousands of years of superstition. It would be like if we travelled to another star system and found its denizens were the cast of Harry Potter complete with billions of years of history culminating with a multipart war against Voldemorte. If you want to posit things out of scope of present understanding you ought to provide some support for them which is notably absent from the above hand waving. I await an interesting reply but fear it will merely be a critique of my small minded instance that debates consist of facts and arguments.
mike00632 8y ago
" they are almost always based on the idea that plants don't have brains..." I'm afraid this is a strawman argument. Most vegans/vegetarians choose to spare other animals based on their capacity to suffer.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  So they claim. But: A. I'm an environmental studies major and anytime I present evidence that plants are aware of suffering, it is ignored and dismissed. B. I was homeless for nearly 6 years. A so-called ethical vegan I knew (who wasn't actually a full-time vegan and ate vegetarian, not vegan, as convenience suited them) happily and enthusiastically added to my suffering during that time. Given how often ethical vegans gleefully psychologically torture their non vegan fellow humans over their failure to be vegan, I have zero reason to believe this individual's cruelty towards me was some wild aberration in the veg- community. Please note the other comment here by someone using terms like no reason to believe, logically and a failure of analysis. The subtext of the framing celebrates this western idea that intelligence is everything. So we can presumably agree to disagree at this point.
  - mike00632 8y ago
    "I'm an environmental studies major and anytime I present evidence that plants are aware of suffering, it is ignored and dismissed." As it should be. When you say "pain" and "suffering" you mean in in no similar way to your own pain and suffering whereas vegans do. You're co-opting the language of ethics to try and point out hypocrisy. Also, let's apply some logic here and acknowledge that far more plants are "harmed" to make animal food products than plant food products, thus it's still consistent for ethical people to eat a plant based diet. "I have zero reason to believe this individual's cruelty towards me was some wild aberration in the veg- community." Vegans are defined by caring for the well being of others. That gives us every reason to think that a vegan would care more than anyone else about the well being of others. Your anecdote about a vegan who was mean to you once is something you shouldn't use to draw conclusions about an entire group of people.
    - 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]