usenet/Plant_rights.html

ITMFA

It's long past time - impeach Bush and Cheney

This just in...

Navigation

Active forum topics

What's up. Doc?

From our archives of Tom's USENET posts. Some of these posts are over a decade old. The author may have mellowed with age since these were written, but the basic views remain. (Please note that web links inside this document may be broken.)

From tms Sun Jul 18 17:22:09 EDT 1993 Newsgroups: rec.food.veg Subject: Re: Plant rights Summary: Expires: References: <CA9D00.Eu@newsserver.pixel.kodak.com> <CA9LyM.6wJ@ psych.toronto.edu> <CABLC5.EH3@newsserver.pixel.kodak.com> Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: The Reality Liberation Front (pixels to the people!) Keywords: young@serum.kodak.com writes: > > When it comes to my food, you're absolutely correct, but why the > tone of condemnation? You're approaching this whole discussion > with attitudes colored (and suffocated) by your dogma. So far > you have argued that YOU CONSIDER such an action to be unethical, > but you have not yet shown that it IS unethical. Just as one cannot describe the velocity of a body without a reference frame, one cannot show an action to be unethical without an ethical system. If, for example, your only ethical rule is "Anything that gets me money is good," I'm not going to be able to prove to you, under that system, that mugging little old ladies is wrong. Similarly, if your ethical rules do not lead to the conclusion that it is wrong to kill animals neddlessly, we cannot provide you with such a proof. _However_, it is my contention that any such ethical system is either inconsistent or arbitrary (for reasons I have discussed previously). Now, if you don't care about being inconsistent or arbitrary, there's not much I can do about it; faulty reasoning is too common to be made a crime. =============================================================================== Tom Swiss/tms@cs.umd.edu | "Born to die" | Keep your laws off my brain! "What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?" - Nick Lowe This .sig contains no animal products and was not tested on animals. Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. From tms Wed Jul 21 14:17:45 EDT 1993 Newsgroups: rec.food.veg Subject: Re: Plant rights Summary: Expires: References: <CABLC5.EH3@newsserver.pixel.kodak.com> <69401@mimsy. umd.edu> <CAFnx0.D9F@newsserver.pixel.kodak.com> Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: The Reality Liberation Front (pixels to the people!) Keywords: young@serum.kodak.com writes: > > Ignoring your snide remarks and assumptions about faulty reasoning, > you have provided us with an example of exactly that about which > I've been writing. You say: > > "...if your ethical rules do not lead to the conclusion that it > is wrong to kill animals needlessly, we cannot provide you with > such a proof." > > If this is the case, then how can you judge my ethical rules to be > "wrong"...except by the standard of your own personal opinion, which, > I'm reluctant to say because of the flak I'll get, is hardly univer- > sally accepted around the world as a standard by which collected > humanity should live? How, indeed, can we judge _anyone's_ ethical rules to be wrong? If John Q. Murderer's ethical rules say only "It's good to kill," how can we judge him to be wrong, except by our own personal opinion? If we want rigorous proofs, the best we can do is look for inconsistencies. > If either of us wants to judge the other "wrong", then one of us > must come up with an absolute standard, an "impartial agent" by > which we shall both be judged. Since I have yet to see evidence > of such a thing, our respective rules remain based on opinion, > nothing more, and you are no "better" than I, except in your own > mind. Is this the holy standard by which you judge me to be > "inconsistent or arbitrary"? Forgive my mirth. No. Inconsistency is an absolute, logical concept; when both P and not-P can be demonstated to be true under a system, the system is inconsistent. For example, Kantian rationalism is an inconsistent ethical system. It holds that an act is ethically correct if only if you can consistently will that all others act the same way. One problem with this is that is does not distinguish which acts are ethically relavant. I can consistently will that everyone puts their right shoe on first, and I can consistently will that everyone puts the left shoe on first - P and not-P, an inconsistency in the system. Another form of inconsitency is when a system leads to a result that conflicts with basic expectations. A physicist working with a set of equations knows that, when solving for |v| in E=1/2 m|v|^2 to get |v|=+/- sqrt(2E/m), the negative root is meaningless; negative speeds don't have a meaning in the real world. Similarly, we have real-world expections about ethical systems. An ethical system like that of John Q. Murderer is inconsistent with these basic assumptions. To take Kant's categorical imperitive again, it might be that someone who thinks the earth would be better off without humans could pick up a weapon and kill everyone within reach, and consistently will that everyone else do the same. It's a quite consistent conclusion, within the system; but it is inconsitent with our basic expectations. When I counter a pro-meat-eating argument by showing that it leads to the conclusion that it's ok to kill and eat small children, I'm assuming that the person making the original argument shares the belief that killing and eating small children is wrong. Of course, some people may not. I seem to recall a discussion with you in which I made such an argument, and you claimed not to see anything ethically wrong with such behavior. Let's see if I can find it...ah! Here we go... Me: > Following your argument, it would be completely ethical for a man >and a woman to have a genetically-engineered child with the express >intent of eating her when she turned five. After all, their creation >of her gives her precisely the same status as an ear of domestic corn; >there is no special status simply because she talks. They INVENTED >her to be killed and eaten...not unlike an ear of corn. Rich: > It would be an incredible waste of energy from Nature's standpoint, > which is why I can't think of a single "morals-free" species which > does this, but, barring Societal proscriptions against cannibalism, > there is nothing __inherently__ "unethical" about it. The "prime > directive" for all species is survival of the existing being, even > at the expense of other, even immature, members of the same species. > Birds will abandon chicks in huge numbers if an expected food supply > fails: chicks can be regenerated, parents can't. The general > proscription against cannibalism would make your specific example > moot, however: it's not genetically profitable to invest time, energy, > and health in creating offspring for food rather than replacement. > The complexity of the human mind translates "not genetically > profitable" into "morally reprehensible". Me again: > The "prime directive" of all species is survival of the _species_. >And many human actions that are "not genetically profitable" are generally >regarded as "morally _heroic_". So, if you don't see anything inherently unethical about killing and eating a five year old, there's not much left to argue. Honestly, however, I think the problem is (or was; this discussion was a while ago) an ignorance of the nature of ethics. Your statement "The complexity of the human mind translates `not genetically profitable' into `morally reprehensible'," shows this. Arbitrariness is also a concrete concept. Claiming that "Only humans deserve ethical consideration" is quite consistent; but - unless supported by further argumentation - completely arbitrary. If we're going to allow arbitrary distinctions, it would be just as consistent for me to claim that only whites, or only males, or only white males with brown eyes and brown hair and computer science degrees from the University of Maryland, deserve ethical consideration. To be satisfactory and meaningful, such claims have to be supported by appeal to some relavent property of the group under discussion. =============================================================================== Tom Swiss/tms@cs.umd.edu | "Born to die" | Keep your laws off my brain! "What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?" - Nick Lowe This .sig contains no animal products and was not tested on animals. "It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable." -- David Brin, _The Postman_