Edit: Surprised at all the vegans in this thread. I didn’t think there were so many of you. I’m glad you care so much about animal rights, that you’re willing to forego eating them and using products made from them. If you’re not vegan and have moral objections for this, maybe you should look at yourself first and all the animal abuse you sanction by eating animals and using animal products. Did you know dairy cows have to be pregnant to produce milk? They’re artificially inseminated throughout most of their lives. I hope everyone complaining about this also complains about ice cream and cheese. Or else they would be hypocrites who just want to blame others but never look at themselves.
That’s not a perspective though, it’s a bald assertion. “It’s fine because we’re important” is like saying “it’s fine because it’s fine,” or more to the point “it’s fine because I say so.”
What makes us important?
A lot of people don’t seem to understand that their logic is circular. Ask someone why they chose the car they did, and half of them will say “well it’s the one I wanted.”
All morality ultimately comes down to assertions like that though. Ethics aren’t properties inherit in the universe that can be objectively measured like the laws of physics. One can construct ethical frameworks, like utilitarianism or deontology or such, as useful tools to help one decide what one should do in an unclear situation, but ultimately, the choice of what framework to use or the rules of that framework comes down to certain things just not feeling right to a given person, and other things feeling okay.
That ethics can’t be objectively measured is wrong, though. That’s like saying math is not logical because we made it up and you can’t observe it in nature.
It’s very difficult and it’s not possible to do it in practice since we can not look at every variable of every sentient being at all times. But in theory it would be possible to find the most ethical solution to every problem every time and therefore it is measurable.
You could freeze the entire universe, measure the state of every last particle, and you still wouldn’t be presented with the answer to a moral question because morality is fundamentally something people made up, but don’t collectively agree on. From a truly objective point of view, there is no actual difference between genocide and ending world hunger except the amount of people.
it would be possible to find the most ethical solution to a problem given all the variables only if you have already selected a system to determine which combinations of values for each variable are more or less ethical. That is to say, if one goes with ultilitarianism, one could hypothetically objectively measure how much happiness or suffering results from a given situation and pick the one that maximized or minimized it, or do the equivalent for a different ethical system, but you cannot objectively decide if utilitarianism, or deontology, or whatever other ethical system one may wish to use, is even the right system to use in the first place. Before your hypothetical measurements of every variable can actually be used to determine what solution to an ethical problem is best, one has to decide what a solution even looks like, and that decision is ultimately arbitrary.
Animals are things and humans are people.
You’re allowed to devalue your own existence all you want but anyone entertaining the idea that all life is equal is fundamentally stupid in my opinion
You’ve graduated from bald assertions and circular logic to ad hominems.
It’s ironic what a shit job you’re doing of demonstrating our higher functions and supposed superiority.
“HUMAN GOOD! NOT HUMAN BAD.”
Have a great day there, Socrates.
