> pain and suffering
As far as you know.
As far as you know.
If I am about to demolish a house, it is my moral duty to ensure that the house contains no occupants. It is not sufficient to claim "as far as I know the house is empty, therefore I needn't check".
Similarly, if you make any moral claim predicated on the assumption that animals do not experience pain (or experience it to a lesser degree than humans), the burden is on you to demonstrate as much.
If you do not take religion or the supernatural as an axiom, you face a very difficult proof due to the physiological and evolutionary similarities between humans and other animals.
Anyway, you're going to have a problem proving that plants feel pain since they lack all of the elements that cause the experience of pain in animals, such as nerves and brains.
colanderman was that you had to prove they don't before eating them, so I pointed out that until recently, we didn't even know of such elements.
I claimed that if you make a distinction in your morality between animals and plants based on their ability to feel pain, you have that duty. (Note that this is a claim about the consistency of a morality, not about one particular moral system.)
If on the other hand your morality does predicate your moral right to eat something based on its ability to feel pain (as our ancestors did), then there is no such duty.
(Of course there is also a grey area between these -- a morality based on a creature's ability to express an experience of pain is more broadly accessible.)
(i.e. My comment is a critique of the consistency of the moral system the GP set up; it is not an absolute moral judgement.)
Instead of defending our current habits with theoreticals, shouldn't we determine our actions based on the information we have available to us, with respect to the alternatives?
Personally, I take the position that everything I do probably has a negative impact somewhere. Taking the car, bus, train, or staying at home all have consequences for the environment. While I don't lock myself in my apartment, I do regularly review my lifestyle choices and see if they align with my values.
The same is true of the food I eat, both from an environmental point of view as well as how much suffering is involved.
and tell me that it's "as far as you know" then.
WARNING: graphic. extremely graphic. i honestly don't understand how anyone could treat another living creature like that.
Clearly some forms of pain and suffering are easily observed!
But what about the pain and suffering you can't observe? Insects? Plants? Microbes?
My point is, by placing the moral threshold at "observable pain and suffering", you are taking the easy way out.
if it's
>Physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury
it has to be communicated to you, which in the case of animals is quite hard.
On the other hand, if you define "suffering" as
>an unpleasant situation causing signs of distress that is avoided by the sufferer,
then you can make better predictions, because "avoidance" or "distress" are easier to measure.