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Comment by ahelwer | Hacker News Reader

We usually divide the world into moral agents (pretty much just humans) and non-moral-agents.

The default is not eating meat because the default is not eating anything. Humans must take a positive action to eat something.

Generally perfect duties in the Kantian sense take the form of "thou shalt-nots", so a positive action you shouldn't take, like killing a random stranger or some such. This is contrasted with imperfect duties, which are things that are merely virtuous to do - like using your time & resources to help the less-fortunate, for example.

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>The default is not eating meat because the default is not eating anything.

That's default for rocks and such, but not living things, whose existence requires by default the death of other living things

I'm a solitarian. I use photosynthesis.

> Humans must take a positive action to eat something.

If you're going to talk about morality and agency, it is not a positive choice to eat anything. It's acting out of necessity to survive. Choosing not to eat is self-destruction and there is absolutely nothing about that that's a moral choice. In fact, it's generally accepted to be immoral[1]. This is why we force feed people on hunger strikes and why suicide is illegal. Modern/western written law is based on natural law.

"Breatharianism" is pure stupidity/insanity and anyone who undertakes such practice can (and will) literally go die.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI25easQs2k

Yes, per Sartre killing oneself is a course of action available to us at (almost) any moment, which must be justified against by any supposed moral system. This is pretty standard.

We aren't talking about what the law dictates, we're talking about how some moral system might inform our actions. Two very different things, although of course the relationship between them is fascinating in its own right.

Eating isn't a choice. Please don't deflect from the criticism of your claim.

Downvote me all you like Andrew, but I'm going to call you out for espousing ideas that can literally kill people.

I can't downvote you, HN doesn't allow you to downvote people who reply to you.

I'll leave you with this quote of yours to consider:

> Choosing not to eat is self-destruction and there is absolutely nothing about that that's a moral choice. In fact, it's generally accepted to be immoral.

If something is immoral, there must have been a moral choice made to engage in the immoral activity. "Moral choice" here is a technical term which means the choice itself has moral weight, not that the choice is moral.

Couldn't this be extended to plant life as well?

It could, and indeed there are people who hold this belief. They are called "Fruititarians" and only eat things which can be taken from the plant without killing or harming it, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism

I don't personally subscribe to this.

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