5 ms·

Well shit, the taste is slightly off so let's keep killing billions of sentient animals.

aqsalose 5y ago
I was introduced to the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" some 10 years ago in high school philosophy class, and have been mulling over it ever since. Today I am sympathetic to Dennett's argument in Consciousness Explained: there is no single Cartesian theater, there are several processes in the brain which are the same thing (up to the precision of definition of same) as we internally experience, and many properties we tend to attribute to that features of internal experience, consciousness and "qualia" are myths. My personal favorite hypothesis is that those myths arise from quirks of our ability to talk and think and have a narrative about our experience. So, if sentience is much less special and much more incoherent phenomenon than the Enlightenment thinkers who made it the crown of the human superiority would have thought, and consequently the whole concept is more akin to teleological physics of Aristotle than an apt name for what really happens ... then attributing moral value to sentience alone seems less compelling take than it initially would seem. Personally, I find Benjamin Franklin's reasoning to cease vegetarianism quite logical. Animals are allowed to eat animals.
- purephase 5y ago
  That's a lot of bullshit words to justify "meat taste's good". We're not animals. We can't have it both ways in the ideological spectrum of how we both perceive and interact with the world. Whatever the fuck Ben Franklin said is largely meaningless when you take a few minutes to compare it against the world and reality he inhabited to the one we live in today.
- toper-centage 5y ago
  People have always killed other people. Some people even eat other people. And we let them. Have you tried to convince a lion to eat a soy gazelle? I suppose not, because of the strong language barrier. They would probably not digest it very well, as they are real carnivores. My point is, we are capable of having this complex discussion with several points of view and your whole reasoning is "animals eat animals, why shouldnt I?".
cercatrova 5y ago
I never understand this argument. Yes, taste matters, over and above any other factor. If it didn't, we wouldn't continue to kill so many animals.
xdennis 5y ago
Don't mind if I do. Your emotional arguments only work on impressionable children.

I was introduced to the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" some 10 years ago in high school philosophy class, and have been mulling over it ever since. Today I am sympathetic to Dennett's argument in Consciousness Explained: there is no single Cartesian theater, there are several processes in the brain which are the same thing (up to the precision of definition of same) as we internally experience, and many properties we tend to attribute to that features of internal experience, consciousness and "qualia" are myths. My personal favorite hypothesis is that those myths arise from quirks of our ability to talk and think and have a narrative about our experience. So, if sentience is much less special and much more incoherent phenomenon than the Enlightenment thinkers who made it the crown of the human superiority would have thought, and consequently the whole concept is more akin to teleological physics of Aristotle than an apt name for what really happens ... then attributing moral value to sentience alone seems less compelling take than it initially would seem. Personally, I find Benjamin Franklin's reasoning to cease vegetarianism quite logical. Animals are allowed to eat animals.

purephase 5y ago
That's a lot of bullshit words to justify "meat taste's good". We're not animals. We can't have it both ways in the ideological spectrum of how we both perceive and interact with the world. Whatever the fuck Ben Franklin said is largely meaningless when you take a few minutes to compare it against the world and reality he inhabited to the one we live in today.
toper-centage 5y ago
People have always killed other people. Some people even eat other people. And we let them. Have you tried to convince a lion to eat a soy gazelle? I suppose not, because of the strong language barrier. They would probably not digest it very well, as they are real carnivores. My point is, we are capable of having this complex discussion with several points of view and your whole reasoning is "animals eat animals, why shouldnt I?".

cercatrova 5y ago

I never understand this argument. Yes, taste matters, over and above any other factor. If it didn't, we wouldn't continue to kill so many animals.

xdennis 5y ago

Don't mind if I do. Your emotional arguments only work on impressionable children.