To eat or not eat meat

[Mandle]

Not a step too far, no. That's the future. 20 years from now this will be so normal nobody will even be thinking about it is my guess.

Yup! And the worldwide population of cows, pigs, and chickens will shrink to about 2% maybe. Some people will still raise the animals for meat for the curious people willing to pay through the nose to taste what real animal meat was like.

[Honza]

All I'm projecting is the idea that it is something like to be another entity and that some of it's experiences are more positive and some more negative in nature. Meaning that such experiences matter in a moral sense. This is as abstract as I can be, I really don't know how else to explain it. Based on the knowledge I have, the reasons to think that, if all other functioning humans have this intrinsic property, no other species has it, are less than trivial. And I don't know about good enough reason to be more than agnostic about small invertebrates lacking this property.

Consciousness is weird thing, as Ali said, maybe hive of insects could generate it, maybe your brain stem has its own consciousness, maybe each cell has one, maybe freakin cpus generate it for all i know 
There are theories describing consciousness as property arising from low entropy systems, there are theories claiming it to be property of elementary particles. Bunch of those theories are trying to explain the 'Hard problem' away, I was alluding to it when I said consciousness doesn't make scientific sense. I can't imagine how they could explain it to some satisfactory degree though.
We are nowhere near concluding with confidence where it makes sense to contemplate the presence of it.

I can accept, in a very abstract impossible-to-really-imagine kind of way, that it could be like something to be an insect, or a cell, or a universe... or evolution itself, apparently? I gravitate towards physicalism and epiphenomenalism when it comes to consciousness (so I'd take Carroll's position here for instance), but lately I've been feeling that there's something I wasn't getting before, so who knows what I'll be saying in a month or a year from now .

But I think consciousness is a red herring here. The problem we keep circling back to is that for your notions of morality to apply – even for the words ,,positive" and ,,negative" the way you use them to carry any meaning – it isn't enough for it to be like something to be another entity, it needs to be something like being you. I believe that human moral values can ultimately be traced to avoiding suffering, including the deeply rooted taboo against taking a life. And it seems to me both you and Ali are taking this taboo and misapplying it to consciousness.

And don't get me wrong – I think a taboo against taking a life is generally a great thing to have (although in my personal opinion it tends to misfire with issues like abortion and euthanasia) and I can relate to the ,,better safe than sorry" intuition when it comes to eating other beings. But it's just that – a human intuition, and one extremely prone to anthropomorphic bias at that. Once I try to disentangle where this intuition comes from and whether I should apply it differently to rocks/plants/insects/pigs/humans/CPUs, I always end up with ,,it's really about suffering". And then centering human experience is not only reasonable (because more neurons = more ways and opportunities to suffer), but in fact absolutely unavoidable (because our experience is the only way we have to even define what ,,suffering" is).

If we can agree on the above, we can talk about more practical matters. Like if neurobiology is a good tool for assessing suffering (as I suggested), or if other ways are better (like the argument by analogy which you seem to favor). I might have been wrong in this regard.

I think what LameNick and I are getting at is that - yes - we are projecting our experience onto animals. Or, at least, interpreting their behaviour though the lens of our experience. But (and I think David Hume got to this point first) we have exactly the same knowledge of other humans' internal states as we do animals - that is, absolutely none.

Doesn't this mean that it's equally reasonable to assume a rock has the same internal states as you as it is that another human does? Wouldn't it render statements like ,,I'd be prepared to accept that insects are incapable of thought or feeling, but there does seem to be some kind of emergent intelligence in swarms of insects" completely irrelevant? Could you make a case for eating plants with this notion in mind?

By the way, the idea that evolution could be a conscious process might be an example of what I meant by ,,schmoozling". It would be a consciousness to which I am like my cells are to me, and it could be ,,exploiting" me in ways I can't even begin to conceptualize. Guess what – I don't mind .

[Ali]

I think what LameNick and I are getting at is that - yes - we are projecting our experience onto animals. Or, at least, interpreting their behaviour though the lens of our experience. But (and I think David Hume got to this point first) we have exactly the same knowledge of other humans' internal states as we do animals - that is, absolutely none.

Doesn’t this mean that it’s equally reasonable to assume a rock has the same internal states as you as it is that another human does? Wouldn’t it render statements like „I'd be prepared to accept that insects are incapable of thought or feeling, but there does seem to be some kind of emergent intelligence in swarms of insects“ completely irrelevant? Could you make a case for eating plants with this notion in mind?

No, it doesn't mean that we should assume rocks feel pleasure and pain. How do we know that a living human feels pain but a dead human doesn't? We have no access to their inner state. It's simply that living humans tend to act as if they experience pain. Just like animals, especially mammals do. Of course, that means we're likely to misinterpret the behaviour of living things that are dissimilar to us. But I think making a moral distinction between humans and species is completely arbitrary.

I can't make an argument that it is ethical to eat plants, only that it's more obviously unethical to eat animals.

[Honza]

No, it doesn't mean that we should assume rocks feel pleasure and pain. How do we know that a living human feels pain but a dead human doesn't? We have no access to their inner state. It's simply that living humans tend to act as if they experience pain. Just like animals, especially mammals do.

So you're saying that we can never be *certain* about the inner states of others? Sure, I agree. But that's very, very different from saying that our knowledge of their states is *exactly zero*, don't you think?

EDIT: Maybe this is too pedantic. If I get what you meant now, we don't have to fuss over semantics.

Of course, that means we're likely to misinterpret the behaviour of living things that are dissimilar to us. But I think making a moral distinction between humans and species is completely arbitrary.

I can't make an argument that it is ethical to eat plants, only that it's more obviously unethical to eat animals.

I feel like we're talking past each other. I'm not saying that humans are somehow objectively more valuable than other species. I'm saying that human moral values apply best to humans and species which are similar to humans in relevant ways, namely in what (if anything) makes them suffer. And once again, it seems to me you are thinking along very similar lines, you're just framing it differently and using behavior instead of neurobiology to gauge suffering.

[Ali]

No, it doesn't mean that we should assume rocks feel pleasure and pain. How do we know that a living human feels pain but a dead human doesn't? We have no access to their inner state. It's simply that living humans tend to act as if they experience pain. Just like animals, especially mammals do.

So you're saying that we can never be *certain* about the inner states of others? Sure, I agree. But that's very, very different from saying that our knowledge of their states is *exactly zero*, don't you think?

Perhaps my oblique reference to David Hume made things less clear than I thought! I am saying that we have no knowledge of people's internal states. We make inferences about how they feel based on a variety of impressions they make on our senses. We don't know that other humans feel pain in the way we know we feel pain. And exactly the same is true with animals. Maybe we are talking past each other, and I probably don't know enough about neurobiology to comment. But I suspect that our understanding of how pain works in the brain depends on our experience of how pain is expressed. How much can we learn from a brain that isn't attached to a living thing going 'ouch'?

[Behis1995]

Specifically, I always eat meat. I am a volunteer and indeed often participate in animal rights rallies, the closure of circuses, dolphinariums and baiting stations. I am a big opponent of hunting for fun. But eating meat is my choice, this is the kind of food that I do not want to refuse. I thought for a very long time what I can do in order not to discriminate against a particular species: I feel sorry for the cow, I don’t eat, but I don’t feel sorry for the pig. I decided to stick with poultry - chicken meat is perfect for me. I don't care if people think that it can be two-faced and hypocritical - I can eat chicken all my life. I am ready to give up any meat and leave only chicken. I think it's better than "today I eat a shark, tomorrow a bear, and then some other meat delicacy."

[Ali]

There are good pragmatic arguments for eating meat, especially in parts of the world where its easier to grow things like grass, that livestock eat but humans can't. And there are compelling environmental arguments for dramatically reducing, but not eliminating, the meat we eat. I haven't heard a strong moral argument for eating meat, though.

[Blondbraid]

There are good pragmatic arguments for eating meat, especially in parts of the world where its easier to grow things like grass, that livestock eat but humans can't. And there are compelling environmental arguments for dramatically reducing, but not eliminating, the meat we eat. I haven't heard a strong moral argument for eating meat, though.

Well, I'd say that for people like the Inuits and people living far up north, eating meat is both part of their native culture and traditions, and many preservation and hunting techniques would be lost forever if they stopped eating meat, but also, to them, hunting and fishing locally is far more environmentally friendly and sustainable than relying on imported crops.

Similarly, in my native Sweden, there are huge areas where you can't grow crops well, but they are ideal for grazing cattle and it's both more economic and eco-friendly to keep them as open areas for livestock to feed on. There are also many species of wild plants and animals that require open areas to thrive, and if the fields for livestock were instead turned into farm fields or forests, a lot of biodiversity would be lost. The cattle wouldn't necessarily have to be for meat, but it'd still require having many domestic animals.