Students are becoming more aware of where their food comes from, and the cruelty animals face when raised and killed for meat. Philosophically, you'd have to be an absolute moron to believe there's any moral consequence to eating an animal. You may as well assign moral worth to trees and shrubs (Oh wait, the environmentalist Left already does that). If animals are the same as humans (morally), that means humans are no better than animals. Rank falsehood (or nihilistic wonderland, depending on your state of clinical insanity). Therefore the initial assumption is wrong. QED.

[QUOTE id="0f62ca54-927c-42ee-9c16-3a6dcdab56ed"]"Students are becoming more aware of where their food comes from, and the cruelty animals face when raised and killed for meat." Philosophically, you'd have to be an absolute moron to believe there's any moral consequence to eating an animal. You may as well assign moral worth to trees and shrubs (Oh wait, the environmentalist Left already does that). If animals are the same as humans (morally), that means humans are no better than animals. Rank falsehood (or nihilistic wonderland, depending on your state of clinical insanity). Therefore the initial assumption is wrong. QED.[/QUOTE] I think it goes without saying that plants and animals are on completely different levels. When you consider that plants have no central nervous system (which all animals clearly do), the comparison seems a little silly. Surely you can tell the difference between mowing your yard and slicing a cat's throat, right? They are miles apart. If any of the routine abuses inflicted upon animals killed for food were done to dogs or cats, these people would be in jail, and rightfully so. For more information, visit http://www.Meat.org

Sorry pal. A central nervous system does not a soul make. When you can demonstrate to me that cats and dogs have souls, are capable of abstract thought, and have human self-awareness, then, maybe (just maybe) I'd say you're right. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that you might be on to something when you say that if we did to cats and dogs what we do to chickens, we should be jailed. Here's where your argument falls apart. The given philosophical reason for jailing people for cruelty to animals is that animals can feel pain the same way as we can and therefore it is morally abhorent to inflict it. Assuming that animals can feel anything the same way that we can (a big if), it would stand to reason that it is immoral to do them harm for precisely the same reason it is immoral for us to do one another harm (stop me if I'm off track). Following this reason to its initial assumption, we come to the claim that because animals have a central nervous system, because they feel pain (or so you claim), etc, etc, they are morally equivalent to us and therefore should have the same legal protections as we do (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness). Well, here's where that reasoning falls apart: Say you and your best friend are out camping, and you run out of hippie feed in the middle of snowstorm (or a plane crash, or you're on a deserted island, or whatever), and the only way for you to survive is to kill your friend and eat his flesh until rescue arrives. This is clearly immoral, and you certainly wouldn't walk scott-free upon your return to civilization, even though that was clearly the only way for you to survive. Here's the question: if instead of your best friend, you had your dog with you. Would you have the same qualms about killing and eating your dog that you do about a fellow human? If the answer is that you would kill your dog, then the point is proven that deep inside, when your core beliefs are tested, you do not consider animal life to be morally equal with human life. If, however, the answer is that you would not kill your dog out of moral considerations, then ask yourself, would you kill a cat? A mouse? How far down the evolutionary ladder would you go before you no longer consider the animal morally equivalent to you? Whatever you answer, your basis will be arbitrary, and thus philosophically unsound. Since we are developing a moral philosophy in this discussion, we must speak in absolutes. Since you can't provide an absolute that any other rational being (ie Human) would readily accept, your philosophy is itself arbitrary and capricious, and therefore, invalid. Once again, QED. Or you could just get your head out of your ass and realize that God made man to have dominion over the animals, or some such, and if He thought it was wrong to kill them, he would have said so explicitly, as He did with about 600+ specific prohibitions on things as profound as murder to mundane as gay sex. But hey, this is Penn, right. We ignore God on a regular basis around here.

[QUOTE id="0f62ca54-927c-42ee-9c16-3a6dcdab56ed"]"Students are becoming more aware of where their food comes from, and the cruelty animals face when raised and killed for meat." Philosophically, you'd have to be an absolute moron to believe there's any moral consequence to eating an animal. You may as well assign moral worth to trees and shrubs (Oh wait, the environmentalist Left already does that). If animals are the same as humans (morally), that means humans are no better than animals. Rank falsehood (or nihilistic wonderland, depending on your state of clinical insanity). Therefore the initial assumption is wrong. QED.[/QUOTE] If someone ate another person on a deserted island, would this be considered as equally immoral as if someone ate another person who had died in someone's living room? How about killing someone/something for the sake of survival (human, animal, whatever) as opposed to purely for the sake of pleasure? If not, then there's a slipping away of one's moral clarity even within one species with regards to what is right under which circumstances. Your argument is simply composed of your repeating philosophical sounding jargon enough that you feel as though you've thought through your opinions more than the average person. Coating your ideas with Kantian, 18th-century-laden, or human-rights-oriented terminology does not make you more ethically aware. And ending on the note: "God said I'm right, mwahahahaha!!!!" doesn't help much. If that's your underlying point, why pretend you have philosophical ponderings that defend your beliefs? PS: I'm not a liberal so don't respond with a bunch of "You're a lib, I hate you, so you're wrong" garbage.

[QUOTE id="0f62ca54-927c-42ee-9c16-3a6dcdab56ed"]Sorry pal. A central nervous system does not a soul make. When you can demonstrate to me that cats and dogs have souls, are capable of abstract thought, and have human self-awareness, then, maybe (just maybe) I'd say you're right. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that you might be on to something when you say that if we did to cats and dogs what we do to chickens, we should be jailed. Here's where your argument falls apart. The given philosophical reason for jailing people for cruelty to animals is that animals can feel pain the same way as we can and therefore it is morally abhorent to inflict it. Assuming that animals can feel anything the same way that we can (a big if), it would stand to reason that it is immoral to do them harm for precisely the same reason it is immoral for us to do one another harm (stop me if I'm off track). Following this reason to its initial assumption, we come to the claim that because animals have a central nervous system, because they feel pain (or so you claim), etc, etc, they are morally equivalent to us and therefore should have the same legal protections as we do (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness). Well, here's where that reasoning falls apart: Say you and your best friend are out camping, and you run out of hippie feed in the middle of snowstorm (or a plane crash, or you're on a deserted island, or whatever), and the only way for you to survive is to kill your friend and eat his flesh until rescue arrives. This is clearly immoral, and you certainly wouldn't walk scott-free upon your return to civilization, even though that was clearly the only way for you to survive. Here's the question: if instead of your best friend, you had your dog with you. Would you have the same qualms about killing and eating your dog that you do about a fellow human? If the answer is that you would kill your dog, then the point is proven that deep inside, when your core beliefs are tested, you do not consider animal life to be morally equal with human life. If, however, the answer is that you would not kill your dog out of moral considerations, then ask yourself, would you kill a cat? A mouse? How far down the evolutionary ladder would you go before you no longer consider the animal morally equivalent to you? Whatever you answer, your basis will be arbitrary, and thus philosophically unsound. Since we are developing a moral philosophy in this discussion, we must speak in absolutes. Since you can't provide an absolute that any other rational being (ie Human) would readily accept, your philosophy is itself arbitrary and capricious, and therefore, invalid. Once again, QED. Or you could just get your head out of your ass and realize that God made man to have dominion over the animals, or some such, and if He thought it was wrong to kill them, he would have said so explicitly, as He did with about 600+ specific prohibitions on things as profound as murder to mundane as gay sex. But hey, this is Penn, right. We ignore God on a regular basis around here.[/QUOTE] If someone ate another person on a deserted island, would this be considered as equally immoral as if someone ate another person who had died in someone's living room? How about killing someone/something for the sake of survival (human, animal, whatever) as opposed to purely for the sake of pleasure? If not, then there's a slipping away of one's moral clarity even within one species with regards to what is right under which circumstances. Your argument is simply composed of your repeating philosophical sounding jargon enough that you feel as though you've thought through your opinions more than the average person. Coating your ideas with Kantian, 18th-century-laden, or human-rights-oriented terminology does not make you more ethically aware. And ending on the note: "God said I'm right, mwahahahaha!!!!" doesn't help much. If that's your underlying point, why pretend you have philosophical ponderings that defend your beliefs? PS: I'm not a liberal so don't respond with a bunch of "You're a lib, I hate you, so you're wrong" garbage. Addendum2: Sorry for the repost, I just wanted to make it clear I was responding to your second message and not just the first.

How about killing someone/something for the sake of survival (human, animal, whatever) as opposed to purely for the sake of pleasure? If not, then there's a slipping away of one's moral clarity even within one species with regards to what is right under which circumstances. I don't get what you mean. Are you saying that it is impossible to hold (human) life sacred on the one hand, kill (other humans) for survival on the other, and still claim to have moral clarity? If so, I disagree. Moral clarity is NOT the conceit that there are no dilemmas, no conflicts, and no gray areas if you just follow the Holy Decision Tree in evaluating your possible actions. Moral clarity (at least my attempt to reconcile it with a nonideal and factually uncertain world) is the conceit that there is Right, there is Wrong, and given enough information it is possible to determine which course of action is more Right than another. Applying my philosophy to the example I gave of killing humans vs killing animals for survival. When it's you and your human friend, your options are 1) Die 2) Take the life of a human who is not a present or future threat to you (if your friends starts looking at you and seeing a roast turkey, then it's obviously a different matter). I would claim that while neither of these is a particularly optimal outcome, option 2 is notably more Wrong than option 1). If it's you and your dog, you can 1) Die (ie, take your own life) 2) Take the life of an animal who is not a present or future threat to you I would claim that option 2) is certainly less Wrong than 1. Moral clarity allows me to make those two determinations. My original point was that a lack of moral clarity does not allow you to make that determination, and my suspicion was that the writer of the letter suffered from precisely that affliction. "your argument is simply composed of your repeating philosophical sounding jargon enough that you feel as though you've thought through your opinions more than the average person. Coating your ideas with Kantian, 18th-century-laden, or human-rights-oriented terminology does not make you more ethically aware. And ending on the note: "God said I'm right, mwahahahaha!!!!" doesn't help much. If that's your underlying point, why pretend you have philosophical ponderings that defend your beliefs? " Neat thing about Kant, is that one way of reading his work is: "The only things that can be Right are the things that are always right (and self-evidently Right)". Sounds like circular reasoning piled up with a healthy bit of dogma. I just don't happen to think that's a bad thing (if it's Right, that is :). "PS: I'm not a liberal so don't respond with a bunch of "You're a lib, I hate you, so you're wrong" garbage." If you were a liberal, it would be more like "you're wrong, so I hate you", or something along those lines. But this is neat. Your move.

[QUOTE id="0f62ca54-927c-42ee-9c16-3a6dcdab56ed"] "How about killing someone/something for the sake of survival (human, animal, whatever) as opposed to purely for the sake of pleasure? If not, then there's a slipping away of one's moral clarity even within one species with regards to what is right under which circumstances. " I don't get what you mean. Are you saying that it is impossible to hold (human) life sacred on the one hand, kill (other humans) for survival on the other, and still claim to have moral clarity? If so, I disagree. Moral clarity is NOT the conceit that there are no dilemmas, no conflicts, and no gray areas if you just follow the Holy Decision Tree in evaluating your possible actions. Moral clarity (at least my attempt to reconcile it with a nonideal and factually uncertain world) is the conceit that there is Right, there is Wrong, and given enough information it is possible to determine which course of action is more Right than another. Applying my philosophy to the example I gave of killing humans vs killing animals for survival. When it's you and your human friend, your options are 1) Die 2) Take the life of a human who is not a present or future threat to you (if your friends starts looking at you and seeing a roast turkey, then it's obviously a different matter). I would claim that while neither of these is a particularly optimal outcome, option 2 is notably more Wrong than option 1). If it's you and your dog, you can 1) Die (ie, take your own life) 2) Take the life of an animal who is not a present or future threat to you I would claim that option 2) is certainly less Wrong than 1. Moral clarity allows me to make those two determinations. My original point was that a lack of moral clarity does not allow you to make that determination, and my suspicion was that the writer of the letter suffered from precisely that affliction. "your argument is simply composed of your repeating philosophical sounding jargon enough that you feel as though you've thought through your opinions more than the average person. Coating your ideas with Kantian, 18th-century-laden, or human-rights-oriented terminology does not make you more ethically aware. And ending on the note: "God said I'm right, mwahahahaha!!!!" doesn't help much. If that's your underlying point, why pretend you have philosophical ponderings that defend your beliefs? " Neat thing about Kant, is that one way of reading his work is: "The only things that can be Right are the things that are always right (and self-evidently Right)". Sounds like circular reasoning piled up with a healthy bit of dogma. I just don't happen to think that's a bad thing (if it's Right, that is :). "PS: I'm not a liberal so don't respond with a bunch of "You're a lib, I hate you, so you're wrong" garbage." If you were a liberal, it would be more like "you're wrong, so I hate you", or something along those lines. But this is neat. Your move. [/QUOTE] The main point of the first comments was that you'd recognize the implications of your own train of thought. And you did, in admitting "Moral clarity...that there is Right, there is Wrong, and given enough information it is possible to determine which course of action is more Right than another." I'm not saying moral distinctions are utterly pointless and we should therefore just behave like animals, but if we want to truly be thinking animals, so as to make better decisions, we must admit when we have reached the limits of rational explanation (or, recognized the limitations of pure and practical reason in human arbitration, as Kant might say) I interpreted from the tone and arguments you used against the other poster that you were absolutely certain of your distinctions, which made me think you perhaps didn't realize how arbitrary they really are (formed regarding phenomenal, not noumenal objects, as Kant might say) Also, the reason I objected so much to the way you frame your arguments is that it seems you're just building chimeras, absorbing aspects of philosophical reasoning when they suit you and discarding the rest. In other words, your schema of decisionmaking seems very utilitarian, yet you present it as if your ethics were deontoligcally founded. (humans have souls, so they deserve respect animals cannot receive, yet on the other hand eating even humans is okay IF it's the only option) To put it quite simply, if humans have souls and inherently deserve respect, there is no way one can say, "it's BAD, but LESS BAD, to eat another human for survival than for pure pleasure." You're admitting that there's a gradient in what is wrong or not to inflict on men as well as animals, and the "island scenario" shows that this has NOTHING to do with the INNATE character of the man or animal but the CONTEXT under which said man/animal is consumed. And the comment about your invocation of God as a supporting structure for your arguments juxtaposed with philosophical ponderings again is meant to prove how much your ethical "reasoning" isn't so much reasoning as much as a jumble of thoughts and associations that are convenient for you. When Kant speaks about what is "right all the time" he means more or less the first or third formulation of his moral philosophy, ie. what you could will as a maxim capable of becoming a universal law without contradicting itself somewhere along the process of the willing of it. It's not really circular reasoning, any more than his depiction of "apodictic truths" is (all unmarried men are bachelors). I guess my main point is that your using philosophical, in this case heavily Kantian, ethical reasoning but in such a way that you're just sticking it in there to justify ethical considerations you would have made even if coated in some other form. One of the things I find neat but also potentially annoying about Kant is that he builds his arguments up in such a disconnected but potentially interactive way (the architectonic structure, as he says) that you can pretty much use Kant to justify anything, like a person selectively quoting the Bible. In Manfred Kuehn's biography of Kant, he writes that Kant admitted in his private life he didn't really believe in God anyway, but that placing God as one of the three things (immortality, God, free will) that cannot be proven but must be presupposed makes his arguments more palatable to a typical rational being trying to find an incentive for which he might act morally and believe his acts can have value beyond his own life. Because no matter how much you try to get around it, even that use of God, and especially the way you yourself use God to preface your beliefs on this or any other post, reveals that you're more or less following just another hypothetical imperative. I realize that my own post has dissolved into jargon and that's a symptom of the main point I wanted to illustrate. Coating one's ponderings in pedantic philosophical, especially Kantian, terminology doesn't necessarily make for a more interesting or justified rationale of one's moral thoughts. It really just fills up the conversation with pointless jargon that gets in the way of things that could be said more simply. Essentially, when you recognize that what is exactly "immoral" is not a static distinction, but one that depends on time and circumstance, it makes for a discussion of the value of humans and animals that is more honest than pretending one has a perfect system, but then renigging and admitting it's really built on a basis of sand when another investigates further. But of course, this doesn't mean "anything goes." It just means that intellectual honesty consists of admitting that one is "finagling" when he arbitrates between what is right and wrong, even if he may be doing so for just cause. Sorry for the littany of incoherent words and I look forward to your response.

My original point was that the moral consequences of assigning animal life the same moral worth, or to reframe that statement in the terms of our ensuing discussion, having a moral system where the possibility exists that the answer to the question "is it categorically wrong to kill this animal" is Yes in all applicable situations (ie in situations where it would not be a crime against property or other humans), makes it very difficult, within the same moral system, to answer the question "are men better than animals" in the affirmative, where "better" connotes intrinsic worth, right to have dominion over, AND, a hint to the correct answer when the animal's life and a human's purposes come into conflict. My claim is that since morality is so fragile to begin with, it must be presupposed. You claim my philosophy is utilitarian, but I must disagree. My philosophy starts with the premise that Man is superior in the ways I have mentioned. That may have the effect of being utilitarian insofar as it benefits me, but if I really wanted a moral philosophy that could provide maximal utility to me, my philosophy would be more like "I am superior to everyone and everything". Even the most rigorous and agnostic scientific disciplines like pure mathematics must start with a set of axioms. You have to assume that there is such a thing as abstract structure. You have to assume that there is such a thing as reason and logic. One of the great developments in modern mathematical thinking is called the Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. It deals with the language of alphabets, expressibility, and axioms, but in layman's terms, it says: You can't derive the rational universe entirely from itself. You must have some hints along the way. (It actually says the inverse of this, that in a rational universe there can exist things that cannot be derived from that rational universe and must be assumed as fundamental primitives, the point is the same). In summary, I claim that the presupposition of man's superiority is a necessary condition of having a viable moral philosophy. To mix philosophies, I think, therefore I am, must be a universal starting point. Since we're talking about unprovable suppositions, I add on God to that initial premise for personal convenience. You might say that God is not necessary, but I say that any morality that makes the necessary assumption that man (or more precisely, the human mind) is superior is exactly isomorphic to believing in God. Furthermore, I claim that in a philosophy that takes the superiority of the human mind as its initial premise, there is no moral imperative to value animal life the way the hippie who wrote the letter to the editor would have us value it. In order to attribute that value to animal life, we must have another initial premise that not only is Man superior, but animals are also Superior. My claim is that you can't have both. If you believe that Man is superior, which as I say is functionally identical to believing that God created man, and so on and so forth, you must also believe that you must keep yourself alive, and that you have free reign to do so insofar as you don't commit a crime against your fellow man. That means you can eat an animal for food if you choose. If you now believe that animals are uniformly as sacred as your fellow man, you get into the weird situation of 1) not being able to eat animals to keep yourself alive (remember, I said cannibalism is immoral, even if your alternative is death by starvation, so it must be the same for animals), and 2) (forgive the crude scenario) if I'm a firefighter pulling people out of a burning building, I have no moral incentive to go for the humans before the dogs and cats. I claim that these two weirdnesses are an unavoidable consequence in believing that humans cannot be judged superior to animals. That is to say, the belief that animals are as sacred as humans reduces your ability to value human life through your actions. I don't like that morality. I believe it is wrongheaded for precisely the reasons I don't like it, and I therefore reject it. You call that utilitarian and arbitrary and capricious. My point is that all morality is arbitrary and capricious. It is an abstract construct in an abstract rational realm. It must have some initial assumption. That assumption almost has to be the primacy of the human mind. We may need to continue this discussion over email once this forum goes down.

I have absolutely no intention of interrupting this lovely conversation but I will say this: even Chimps, the closest species to humans, eat meat. Why? Not only is meat easier to digest, it also meat provides an unparalleled amount of protein and sugars, essential to the proper functioning of the brain and other organs. Many scientists believe that if it weren't for the meat in our ancestors' diet, we wouldn't have had enough nutrients to develop our brains, which are extremely costly in terms of energy. This would in turn lead to increased "intelligence" to put it simply. Sure, PETA can say that we have been eating the wrong thing for the last 4.7 million years (when humans and chimps split) but it is safe to say that if it weren't for meat, humans as we know them wouldn't be here today. Sure, you might say that eggs have lots of protein and fruit has sugar too. But in order to reach the same level, you would have to eat a lot more. Here in the US, where we have grocery stores full of fruits and vegetables, all we have to do to get these nutrients is to buy them. But in countries where their food supplies are dependent on the seasons, there is no other option. So please, before saying that meat should not an option, remember that this society that lets you survive on super vitamins and veggie burgers wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for those juicy red steaks we've been eating since our existence.

In Genesis 3:21 God killed the first animals to make clothes for Adam and Eve. Until then, they were vegetarians, as no animnals were killed. In Genesis 1:26-31, God gave man dominion over all of the plants and the animals. Since the first animals were killed, there has been predator and prey, man has eaten meat, and man has especially become in bondage to plants. Plants! Plants which do nothing but stand at attention in the ground. Whether it be caffein, cocaine, heroine, meth, or alcohol, the majoriy of our addictions come from plants. As most crime is drug related, the majority of our crime is from addiction to plants. God himself killed the first animals.

[QUOTE id="42514667-e3ca-4a8d-a325-22700b2488db"]In Genesis 3:21 God killed the first animals to make clothes for Adam and Eve. Until then, they were vegetarians, as no animnals were killed. In Genesis 1:26-31, God gave man dominion over all of the plants and the animals. Since the first animals were killed, there has been predator and prey, man has eaten meat, and man has especially become in bondage to plants. Plants! Plants which do nothing but stand at attention in the ground. Whether it be caffein, cocaine, heroine, meth, or alcohol, the majoriy of our addictions come from plants. As most crime is drug related, the majority of our crime is from addiction to plants. God himself killed the first animals.[/QUOTE] Interesting, but what is the conclusion we should take from this? That a biblical reading of the creation indicates we should distrust plants and invest more in meat/hide products? Or are you just trying to insert a theological spin into the argument just to get upset and act indignant when you discover most people alive in the 1st world today (including Christians - funny side-effect from the historical development from the Enlightenment all the way up to today) don't believe the Bible should be used to justify most policy and lifestyle decisions? Those damned heretics!