I realise you argue that animals should not be killed for food, when we could eat other food. But while animal treatment is an issue for consumers and public policy, I see the sanctity of human life cause as pre-dominant for some time yet, as to moral right and wrong (thus ending meat-eating as public policy, following on from this, or when land use imperatives come into play - which also speaks to the issue of affordable food sustaining the lives of humans).

Public law, is not simply the morality of the majority. As you note, we allow (”minorities”) human rights. We also tolerate choice, we allow tobacco smoking as choice, even though we try and discourage it. There is nothing “patronising” about this regard for right of personal choice. It is acceptance that we no longer have a ruling divine right throne declaring a revealed truth to mankind which is then imposed on the world.

The case against tobacco smoking is made, the case against meat eating can be made - to ensure informed choice.

kiore But mouthing platitudes about “choice� allows them to feel good, while not really being foced to think about issues at all.

You want a right thing to do/wrong thing to do, dynamic to apply on this issue. So that your choice (what is important to you) becomes an issue of right or wrong for others. Thus arguing for using public law to impose this right/truth/world view on others. Your line of action is better focused on animal rights (public policy regulation of treatment) and informed choice of consumers.

kiore I would far prefer it if everyone would simply tell me I am wrong (and why) instead of being patronising. I don’t accept that I know all truth. I may be wrong. If I am then it is up to you to give me reasons why I am, not to evade the question with waffle about everyone being right and morality simply being a matter of choice. I have changed my mind in the past on a number of moral issues. But I have changed it after being confronted with evidence and cogent argument, not patronising nonsense.

There is nothing wrong with concern about animal rights, but also nothing necessarily right about what particular public policy you would apply to resolve this. Arguement is made against some of your supporting arguements. This is not a position of our truth vs your error on the wider issue. How is eating meat wrong, how is eating meat right? How is not eating meat right, how is eating meat wrong?

The way forward on the issue, is making consumers informed about animal treatment issues. And also trying to make regulation a public policy issue. I don’t see any public policy on meat-eating until either - land use becomes an issue, or until the sanctity of human life results in humanity focusing on ending death sentence law, abortion, war, third world famine and disease.

The fact that an idea or theory is not universally disagreed on does not make it any less false either. The question however, is the basis on which you determine the truth value and truth values are not binary.

Aristotelian logic is a seductive but erroneous approximation of reality. It is easy to program, and easy to reason with, but it gives only black and white answers, and the world is painted in living colour, approximated by shades of gray, and desperately difficult to render in mere black and white.

Animal rights (or duties) activists hang on a black and white rendition of a very neutral shade of gray. It is a mistake to do this… but the error is not in your logic, or the facts, but the form of the logic you are applying to the issue. Use the logic of the world, not the logic of Aristotle.

Not saying you’re wrong, just saying that the absolutism in which the arguments seem to be framed is wrong.

respectfully
BJ

Obviously most of us agree that the law should be used to back up something they genuinely believe is wrong, until it comes to something they disagree with. Who does not support a law imposing the majority opinion that paedophilia is wrong? Who does not support the full force of the law backing up the protection of all humans from assault? But when you come acrosss something you don’t agree with, you start being patronising and mentioning choice. Or else you beg the question by simply assuming without discussion that imposition of law should apply only to violations of _human_ rights.

And as I have mentioned before, the fact that an idea is not universally agreed upon does not make it any less true. All truths (ethical, scientific and epistemological) that are now considered self evident started as theories.

I have been accused of preventing freedom of choice when conducting quite legal protests against factory farming, vivisection and other activities that I consider quite wrong (though not by anyone on this blog I must add). What about the choice for the hens, pigs, laboratory animals et al.? Why does their choice not count?

But I can see why people use the choice idea. If they had to tell me I am simply wrong, misguided or insane they would have to produce arguments to back up their views. But mouthing platitudes about “choice” allows them to feel good, while not really being foced to think about issues at all.

I would far prefer it if everyone would simply tell me I am wrong (and why) instead of being patronising. I don’t accept that I know all truth. I may be wrong. If I am then it is up to you to give me reasons why I am, not to evade the question with waffle about everyone being right and morality simply being a matter of choice. I have changed my mind in the past on a number of moral issues. But I have changed it after being confronted with evidence and cogent argument, not patronising nonsense.

“What I object to is the patronising assumption that eating meat is wrong for me if I choose to make it wrong, and right for you if you choose to make it right. We can no more have a personal morality than a personal theory of evolution.”

Obviously you argue this line, because you support a
public morality established through the imposition of law. This supports the contention of some Catholics, that secular humanism is a rival religion, challenging it for the rule of peoples and nations. The current Pope, poses the revealed truth of the bible word as reason.

Where I disagree with you, is in your posing moral positions as related to a truth. This is the position of a theocrat, in that it poses that there is a knowledge of what is moral truth.

Acceptance of different individual moral choices is not patronising, it is of the co-existence of equal individuals - and speaks to the issue of freedom of religion (most of us don’t see our moral position choices, as reflecting a revealed to man truth).

“Perhaps I have misunderstood previous posters and they are not refering to choice in meaning morality is simply a matter of opinion, in which case it is not an issue. But anyone who really thinks that morality is just what you choose would not be comfortable in a political party. The Green Party (like all parties with integrity) exists to enforce its views on the general population. In spite of having only 5% of the vote it obtained significant policy concessions. It demanded these concessions because its members believed they were right, and I agree that they had a moral right (and indeed a moral duty) to do so.”

Well this also allows moral duty and moral right, to be claimed by all political parties. Which then disassociates moral right, from any one version of what is true. Thus reducing truth down to belief - which then speaks to why, we allow each other equality in determining our own moral choices (most of us don’t see our moral position choices, as reflecting a revealed to man truth).

Public law exists to regulate society behaviour - it no longer claims that moral truth of a divine right throne is involved in this.

Certainly the idea of, imposing a moral cause truth through public law, is not the most common way of describing party political activism.

Regarding changes in public law/morality (more a case of an emerging acceptance of human equality within a democracy), slavery could be more easily “condemned” when serfdom and the fuedal order ended. Much like much of our current depletion of non renewable energy and associated global warming, can be condemned when powerful commercial interests find the market conditions suit them to do so. The same may apply on meat-eating, if the land involved is required for another use (but note water availability and terrain may also limit the growing of food on this land). Then it would be necessary for us to pose a moral basis for our higher evolutionary development (call our loss of meat-eating a step forward for humanity). Till then animal rights - are covered by natural habitat protection movements and regulation of animal treatment laws.

This all speaks to the issue of moral position and its being imposed by “law”. But even this does not make the law - an enforced moral truth - but a way of regulating society behaviour (different nation states have different laws, regardless of what moral position “truth” held undermines them).

Until morality, is imposed as a revealed truth by a restored theocratic government, it is either of a “truth” known to the individual, or of an ethical choice of an individual.

There also appears to be some confusion about what is choice. Of course on a purely factual level one has a choice whether to eat meat. One also has a choice about whether to be a paedophile in that we are not hard wired so that it is impossible to commit an immoral act.

What I object to is the patronising assumption that eating meat is wrong for me if I choose to make it wrong, and right for you if you choose to make it right. We can no more have a personal morality than a personal theory of evolution. This does not of course mean that everyone agrees on the theory of evolution any more than everyone agrees on moral issues. Some moral issues are more widely accepted than others (slavery for example is almost universally condemned) but again this view has not always been self evident, but was only reached after centuries of argument by philosophers, scientists nad theologians.

Perhaps I have misunderstood previous posters and they are not refering to choice in meaning morality is simply a matter of opinion, in which case it is not an issue. But anyone who really thinks that morality is just what you choose would not be comfortable in a political party. The Green Party (like all parties with integrity) exists to enforce its views on the general population. In spite of having only 5% of the vote it obtained significant policy concessions. It demanded these concessions because its members believed they were right, and I agree that they had a moral right (and indeed a moral duty) to do so.

Similarly, when questioned about sticking to its drug policy in spite of it costing votes, a spokesperson said that we do what is right, not what is expedient. This is to me not just good ethics, it is sound epistemology. Everyone should act on what they believe to be right, even if later evidence shows them to be wrong.

And in the case of animal rights, this means using all means possible to persuade others that I am right, and to prevent animal suffering. It does not mean just letting people torture animals in laboratories and slaughter houses because they think it is right, so it is right for them.

If I later change my mind in the light of new evidence or new ways of looking at old evidence, and become convinced that eating meat should be compulsory (not a ridiculous notion - some people called George Bernard Shaw a traitor for not eating meat), then equally I must concentrate all my efforts in doing so.

I suspect the food security concept is behind the arguement against food trade. A European way to justify their CAP policy - which the POW as spokesperson for hunting and farming Tory set now signs onto.

“SPC - Peak Food?”

At a certain population level, there comes the issue of how much land is used to feed meat to consumers - if there is too little growing other land capacity to supply other food to others on the planet. When there is no food reserve when famines occur. Not because we don’t provide the aid - when there is no more land food capability.

This may also be part of a wider land and water use issue.

The peak oil concept is not just about non renewable energy, its about a range of conservation/use issues.

I see the market as resolving the energy problem - though there are hard landing issues. We can mitigate against that with good planning now. We amy not - but when oil reaches higher price levels - alternatives will become commercially viable.

I have no great issue with food transport - exporting. Some areas will always import food - within nations or between them. This requires transport. Food aid is premised on it. The third world benefits from free trade in agriculture. It’s the rest of us who benefit under the current order - where for every $2 the rich make in trade with them - we give $2 in aid.

Kiore - Philosophers have argued themselves into their preferred corners for centuries and never really been able to understand why the rest of us won’t join them there. I have reasons for eating less meat, even NO meat, but none of them have to do with the right of the animals in question. Rights are not binary and they are, as others here have pointed out, strictly constructs OF our intelligence, not “natural”. How is it we have constructed the concept at all?

Rights are the basis of our civil society. They are the basis of our ability to cooperate and function as a group rather than as individuals. Primitive societies functioned on the basis that “might makes right” and in this regard one can see the USA as having regressed to a more primitive level of social justice. More civilized societies are a result of more sophisticated concepts of rights.

Against this background I can only conclude that the evolution of the idea of rights for animals is valid to the extent that it allows people to coexist with other species and with each other. In other words, show me the utility. There is SOME, as alluded to in the argument about eco-footprint and carrying capacity, and the concept has some gut level appeal even to me…. but it has no power to persuade me that the pepperoni pizza I am inhaling is fundamentally immoral.

As before, I respect an animal’s life in relation to its apparent intelligence. Dogs and Cats and Chimps and Dolphins are more important than chickens and salmon and sheep, and these are more important than mosquitoes and locusts and worms… all have SOME rights, and I won’t step on an ant if I notice and I have fished countless spiders from the sink, but rights aren’t what that’s about. More like a duty than a right to be honoured. A dolphin, or a dog or a cat or a chimp may well offer aid to a human in trouble. People have died trying to save wild animals. This is a social thing but the bonding is related to intelligence. It is not something that is a philosophically provable “right”. It is an evolutionary development of civilization.

And now, back to the pizza - ach! While I was typing it was eaten!

Hunger is a great test of philosophies.

respectfully
BJ

How would you define the difference between moral position and truth?

In practice, the problem in imposing moral positions in law, is that one has to convince the majority that it needs to be done. Freedom of choice applies, unless there is some higher value or need of the group involved.

Convincing people that meat is an addiction, is like convincing people that non procreative sex is an addiction. A hard sell.

Convincing people that non renewable resources need better use management on conservation grounds alone (the needs of future generations) and also global warming grounds, is hard (because of commercial market self interest and this generation’s consumer self interest), but doable. Convincing people that there would be better land use management, if “less” meat was eaten, is possible. But the “imperative” for it would only occur, if population grew to the point that there was a “peak oil type scenario” in the feeding of the humanity (any scientific truth on this?).

There are sure grounds in regard to “dominion” being consistent with responsibility for global habitat responsibility AND some code of behaviour in regard to animals.