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Comment by boston_clone | Hacker News Reader

> Why is there an ethical problem in slaughtering

In short, I think killing another living being that experiences suffering is wrong.

There needs to be at least a base agreement on some ethics before diving into an ethical debate, and if you don't see a problem with needlessly killing animals, then this exchange will be worthless.

Extend the reasoning of how we know it's wrong to raise and kill a human for our own consumption to animals, and we arrive at veganism. Please see my second citation in the parent comment for a better overview.

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The Wikipedia article describes the various psychological mechanisms people use to avoid thinking about the fact that something they are doing involves something else getting killed. It does not provide arguments for why killing an animal for it's meat (or hide or other resource) is wrong.

A counterpoint to your 'raising humans for consumption' point which is equally extreme but in the opposite direction. How do you know plants do not feel suffering? After all studies show plants can sense surroundings and communicate with other plants even of other species.

Even if plants feel suffering, fewer plants die from eating them directly than would if we had to pass their calories through an intermediary animal. It's closer to equivalent for chickens, but it's about an order of magnitude for cows.

If you grant that eating a plant causes suffering to that plant I don't see why the order of magnitude of the suffering or number of entities made to suffer matters.

Is it acceptable to inflict suffering on other beings to alleviate your own suffering or hunger?

> I don't see why the order of magnitude of the suffering or number of entities made to suffer matters

I absolutely disagree. Minimizing suffering is good. Less suffering is better than more suffering. The specifics of implementing it are obviously complicated, but if you don't agree that minimizing suffering is a good thing, at least in theory, then I don't know if we have any moral common ground.

> Is it acceptable to inflict suffering on other beings to alleviate your own suffering or hunger?

I assert that I have a right to attempt to continue my existence. Given that, and the above, I think it follows necessarily that it's better to cause less suffering in that pursuit, if possible (and it is).

Also, all of this is only entertaining the possibility that plants can suffer for the purpose of discussion. I think it's entirely obvious that they cannot experience suffering.

It is commonly understood that plants do not have the same mechanisms to experience a range of emotions (pain, happiness, sadness, etc.) as fish, birds, and other animals do.

Further, if we want to abstract away from a mechanistic understanding and focus purely on a reduction of suffering, then veganism should be your goal. Most crop production is simply for animal feed. Eliminating animals from our diets would dramatically decrease the amount of plants we destroy.

>It is commonly understood that plants do not have the same mechanisms to experience a range of emotions (pain, happiness, sadness, etc.) as fish, birds, and other animals do.

Isn't this another form of the Meat Paradox, though? Plants have been shown to have moment to moment awareness of their surroundings, can communicate with each other and will turn away from unfavourable conditions. How can you definitively say that plants don't feel pain?

> In short, I think killing another living being that experiences suffering is wrong.

It fails Kant's categorical imperative. Animals aren't going to believe that eating meat is wrong - and if we tried to prevent animals from eating meat, we'd kill a lot of them - not to mention it'd just be ridiculous. There's simply no way to include animals in universal law and maintain reciprocity. It's an internally inconsistent ethical philosophy, and obviously so.

That's to say - people make fun of ethical vegans for the same reason they make fun of libertarians - clear gaps in the philosophy they refuse to acknowledge.

I don't agree that morals need to be reciprocated to be valid. It's not internally inconsistent to say I think it's immoral to kill things beings even if they wouldn't grant me or others the same.

Libertarians don't agree that the inability to protect the environment makes their philosophy invalid either. The fact is though, most people look for reciprocatity in their moral philosophy.

It's not that every individual has to agree not to kill you. It's that we have to agree that punishment is appropriate for killers. Getting specific - it's incoherent to say it's immoral for humans to kill rabbits but moral for foxes to kill rabbits. To have a consistent moral philosophy, you have to either punish the foxes and try to prevent them from killing the rabbits, or you have to admit that killing rabbits isn't _really_ a problem.

I'm not arguing that it's moral for foxes to kill rabbits. I'm arguing that the presence of immoral actors does not negate the arguments in favor of morality. Foxes aren't immoral, they're amoral. It's wrong for me to kill people even if natural disasters do. I can't have a moral discussion with a fox.

If foxes are amoral agents, why is it immoral to kill them?

It still doesn't follow. It's wrong to kill because of the harm killing causes. Whether the killing is done my an immoral or amoral agent doesn't change the effect. If you really believe dead rabbits is a bad result, you ought be spending your time preventing the amoral agents from causing that bad result.

Consider an infant - an infant is basically an amoral agent - it doesn't understand killing. If a infant kills somebody with a gun, we don't say "oh well, he doesn't understand killing" - we say "why the heck did that baby have a gun? Where are his parents?" We expect moral agents to prevent amoral agents from causing harm. So why aren't you trying to prevent the foxes from killing the rabbits?

Am I obligated to personally intervene in every bad thing that happens in the world as a prerequisite for pointing out they're bad? Your argument seems to boil down to "you aren't trying to stop all instances of a category of bad thing, so your opposition to that category of bad thing is invalid", which is a pretty weird argument. I also think murder is wrong, but aside from personally not murdering, I don't do anything about murders happening in the world.

I don't think that's an accurate representation of Kant's viewpoints; please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#Cruelty...

It's been many years since my collegiate philosophy course that focused on ethics in society - largely using Peter Singer's works as focal points of discussion - but could you try and reframe your idea? It doesn't seem like reciprocity has much bearing on this topic.

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