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Whether a wolf would kill a cow before its 25 years old doesn’t affect our moral duty to not kill animals unnecessarily and prematurely.
by sweetheart 5y ago
Whether a wolf would kill a cow before its 25 years old doesn’t affect our moral duty to not kill animals unnecessarily and prematurely.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoPerhaps not under your preferred moral system. But yours is not the only moral system. It should be obvious that there are plenty of moral systems where counterfactuals do indeed affect the morality of actions (e.g. any utilitarian system or compound system with a utilitarian component).
- sweetheart 5y agoWhat moral belief system posits that it is moral to do something simply because someone else would do it? Does anyone actual subscribe to such a belief? Do you?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoI think you're reading me more broadly than I meant you to. As I mentioned in my comment, at a minimum, any utilitarian system would consider an action's morality in light of what would happen in the absence of that action. Yes, people absolutely do subscribe to utilitarian systems, at least as a component of their overall moral stance. There are also of course many moral systems that do not value the welfare of other species as highly as that of humans.
- cheese_goddess 5y agoWe generally don't kill animals "unnecessarily". We kill them to eat them. If we could eat them without killing them, we wouldn't kill them. We also don't kill them "prematurely". We kill them when it's time to eat them, or else to relieve them of pain. Also, since we're onto wolves, wolves will kill animals and not eat them (see "surplus killing" article on wikipedia). Conversely, wolves will often eat animals without killing them first. Humans at the very least kill our food before we eat it most of the time.
- Azek 5y agoIs eating them 'necessary' if we can sustain ourselves without killing them?
- cheese_goddess 5y agoI don't know. Is it necessary to shower if you can sustain yourself without it? I'm asking because your comment is about the meaning of the word "necessary" but the same meaning should apply to every other human activity, not just food. But the discussion about necessity crops up about food, in particular. Also, I understand that the comparison to showers might sound irrelevant to the discussion about the ethics of eating meat, but it turns out it is anything but. I don't want to preempt your opinion, so I'll leave it at that, but I'm not just making a glib riposte to your comment. Despite appearances, this is an important question: how necessary is it to shower?
- sweetheart 5y agoWhen we say that it is unnecessary to eat animals, we mean it is unnecessary in order to survive and be healthy. So then using that same metric to answer your question about showers, I think it’s fair to say that showers are absolutely not necessary. Nice, sure. Perhaps necessary according to social norms, probably. Required for a normal life span with average levels of health? Nah. cheese_goddess, if I ever get you to see the validity of veganism, or at least cede a point, I’ll die a happy person. I don’t see that ever happening though. You are my HN veganism white whale.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago> cheese_goddess, if I ever get you to see the validity of veganism, or at least cede a point, I’ll die a happy person. I don’t see that ever happening though. You are my HN veganism white whale. That's creepy stalker behavior - again.
- sweetheart 5y ago