• DarthFrodo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Morally inferior would be “they have a differing belief structure that is lesser than mine”.

    Oh, that’s the misunderstanding. I meant morally inferior in terms of their moral value (how much their lives are worth to us).

    To speak broadly, animals do not have morals because they do not have beliefs unless you broaden the word heavily.

    I agree that they don’t have moral systems. When we save people from burning buildings or oppose murder, thats because we see them as having moral value, their beliefs have nothing to do with that.

    To look at your examples, you may be meaning post-industrialization.

    Yes, our farming practices changed a lot after the industrialization, and current practices are what’s relevant now. In the past people just scrambled not to starve or be malnourished in the winter, which fortunately isn’t a concern in most societies anymore. Almost everyone has access to supermarkets and can live a healthy life without meat, which wasn’t possible in the past.

    If some people have to steal food to survive, that doesn’t justify stealing when it’s not a necessity anymore. So talking about historic situations is besides the point here.

    Although after industrialization, I could argue they were both both pragmatic and utilitarian. Suffering does not factor into either of those things.

    That literally goes against the definition of utilitarianism:

    In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.

    If you take the negative effects on affected individuals out of the equation, that’s not utilitarianism, that’s egoism. Putting animals on miserable factory farms for their whole life to get a few minutes of taste pleasure doesn’t maximize utility, it minimizes utility. Not to speak of the resource cost and environmental destruction which is a huge negative for human society.

    • Ace T'Ken
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      1 year ago

      utilitarianism

      It’s odd to me that definition is the primary one on Wikipedia as it doesn’t match with the definition I knew of. I have never seen the word “happiness” used in conjunction with the definition of that word in my entire literary history, but it seems to be a viable definition.

      The definitions I knew of are: “Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that asserts that right and wrong are best determined by focusing on outcomes of actions and choices.”

      Or to use the dictionary definition, “the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority.”

      To use the primary definition for the moment - for the farmer, raising the animals, slaughtering them in an efficient manner, and getting them to market is utilitarian. Doubly so if you don’t consider animals on the same level as the humans (which many, including the animals themselves due to a lack of broad thought, do not).

      If you factor in that plants can also feel pain, you’re left with a real moral quandary if your primary reason to be vegan is to not harm living things.

      Not understanding the pain or finding a way to measure the pain does not mean there is no pain.