Real philosophy is the pragmatism of philosophical naturalism. Science is the applied arm of that these days.

Then you have that sound middle road flanked by the unrestricted objectivism/realism of AP, and the unrestricted subjectivism/relativism of PoMo.

It is a luxury that modern academia can enjoy I guess. A cultural entertainment. The tab is being picked up by the science dudes anyway.

The past constrains the future. And then what isn’t constrained will happen freely.

So yeah. There is no absolute determinism. But also, no absolute spontaneity. Given how much past has already accumulated, the world is highly organised and very restricted in the accidents that can occur.

You say there are futures where the laws can break down. You would have to be more clear about where physics might think this.

For a start, as the Universe gets ever more cold and dispersed, the chance of any spontaneous fluctuations dwindle accordingly. At infinite time, they would also be infinitely unlikely.

You could argue we are in a false vacuum state and so may plunge through to a lower true bottom level for some reason. But even that would only mean we didn’t understand the background story when we were describing the physical constraints producing a stable universe when writing down its “laws”.

In all cases, a modal realist is not going to allow the existence of non-real possibilities: all possbilities for a modal realist are equally real, although they might not all be equally likely. — MetaphysicsNow

Modal realists who subscribe to either intuitionist or classical logic will both fall back on the law of non-contradiction. Modal realists who subscribe to paraconsistent logics might not (it depends how expansive they take the idea of a true contradiction to be). — MetaphysicsNow

You made nice points. Possibilities are real to the degree that some logic, some principle of intelligibility, constrains an unformed potency. And logics suggest increasingly restrictive constraints, reaching their strongest form in possibilities that obey the LEM.

But my issue with modal realism is that it does reduce the real to the accidental. Every option that could be taken, does get taken. Probability - as some certain propensity or likelihood - is now some kind of illusion. In the infinite multiverse, we have no grounds for treating different outcomes as reflecting different propensities.

So there is a problem. Logic provides a formal structuring. It constrains an unbounded potential, a vagueness, so that it has to be - in the strongest logical form - a bivalent case of either/or. But modal realism then wants to make all accidents real. They each have their own world, or world branch.

Likelihood seems preserved in that many more of some outcomes are found than others. But that then raises the question of who actually knows this to be the case so that the events of any one world can rightfully be seen as probabilistic - actually a play of possibilities? A God’s eye view from nowhere is being smuggled in to secure this further metaphysical fact.

So while logic - as intelligible structure - does lie over events as an ultimate formal cause, we need to go a step further and throw in a finality as well. Some even higher kind of constraint must be real to complete the modal job.

And this is routinely suggested in physics. There is the principle of least action, or sum over histories, which collapses the many logically possible worlds back towards the one. Propensity becomes real because while all alternatives are real, they add or subtract in ways that further constrain the actualised outcome. We wind up back in just the one world because finality closes things. By necessity, the accidental winds up actually being restricted in its open, and even infinite, variety.

LOL. What’s not recent? The surge in numbers due to a generational shift?

Are you claiming that it is all the Baby Boomers who are suddenly turning vegan for moral reasons? The fact that you would deny something so factual is frankly weird.

Do those things count as a recent mass movement based on a moral argument? Do you want to claim that?

So when a cause becomes widely adopted by a generation, that doesn’t make it generational.

Sounds legit.

[Furious muffled scrapping noises resume down the deep hole.]

Keeping digging that hole you’re in. Others are celebrating the fact.

According to City A.M., research by Barclays reveals that those born between 1995 and 2005 (Generation Z) are way more into plant-based foods than previous generations, even millennials.

Yes, you read that right. Researchers find that Gen Z is buying loads of kale, tofu, avocados, quinoa, and dairy-free milk. How much more? They purchase 80 percent more kale, 57 percent more tofu, and a whopping 266 percent more avocados! And Generation Z consumes 550 percent more plant-based milk than Generation X.

As members of this generation grow older and start their careers and families, we can expect to really see a boom.

While significant, this increase is an extension of the consistent growth in veganism, especially over the past decade or so as millennials—the world’s largest generation—purchase their own food.

http://www.mercyforanimals.org/thought-millennials-were-vegan-af-meet-generatio

It’s a generational thing.

In 1971, 1 percent of U.S. citizens described themselves as vegetarians.[119] In 2008 Harris Interactive found that 3.2% are vegetarian and 0.5% vegan,[120] while a 2013 Public Policy Polling survey of 500 respondents found that 13% of Americans are either vegetarian or vegan

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country

One reason is that I’m interested in how every generation finds its passionate social causes. — apokrisis

Veganism is annoying to the older generation. What is the source of that?

A prime principle of earlier generations was not to be fussy at the dinner table. Finish everything on your plate. Don’t be faddy. Eat what everyone else eats.

So there is a context of what was socially functional in an earlier era.

Then came the era of processed junk food, factory farming, instant meals and self indulgent diets as a socialised right. The effects of that have been generally disasterous for both individual health and the environment.

The next turn of the wheel would have to be better adapted to the realities. So veganism might be a large part of that. It might be a practical necessity. Or cloned meat could deliver the same general health and environmental outcomes. That is what would be up for moral debate. And philosophy would aim to be ahead of the curve on that score.

But what I objected to in the OP was the narrow focus on sentience and sufferering. That in itself is a symptom of a social dysfunction. It speaks to an egocentrism that isn’t in fact willing to see the self as a product of society. And this leads to moral arguments that lack that pragmatic balance at their heart.

Semiotics is not a replacement for the question of Being, although it certainly is relevant. — darthbarracuda

But Peircean semiotics gave a credible model of being as pure naked spontaneity. It supplies a mathematical, hence scientific, image. That gives a better purchase on the issue than a poetic description. The poetic view already presumes an experiencer as part of the equation - the story of this vague nothingness that is beyond any determinate somethingness.

The Il y a fails to de-subjectise the issue. So I agree about the direction it might signal for our metaphysical thoughts, but to cash that direction out, I find semiotics goes the furthest in striving for a mathematical level of abstraction.

At dusk, we may experience what Levinas calls the il y a - the "there is" without anything being. We are bewildered that a world exists that transcends our experience, with unfathomable depths where no understanding can penetrate. The il y a refutes idealism. — darthbarracuda

To address this bit, what are you actually experiencing but some counter-image, some umwelt, of your own imagining? It doesn’t escape the charge of being idealistic.

Consider what science says is the actual material story. There was a Big Bang. Now it is trailing away into a generalised Heat Death. That is a truer image. At least in terms of mathematical concepts cashed out in controlled acts of measurement.

So that more concrete story now gives us complementary forms of states of nothing. One is so hot that nothing material has stable form. The other is so cold that all material differences are statically frozen.

So how accurate is your il y a in the light of the scientific facts? (Talk of decay may be a nod to them.)

But then do those facts transcend our experience? No. They are also just the construction of another umwelt, another interpretation, another idea that has meaning for us ... an idea that actually is constructing “us” also, as that kind of observer of those kinds of observables.

The point is that idealism can’t be refuted by some sudden transcendent access to the thing-in-itself. But then idealism itself loses its troublesome aspect - the claim of mind being primal being - when the situation is understood semiotically. The very act of trying to grasp that which is beyond in a usefully meaningful way results also in their being some particular “us” existing in that particular unwelt, or state of interpretance.

That is why existence has to be understood semiotically as a recursive and irreducible complex thing. No simple metaphysics can free us from that. We have to see ourselves as part of the creative equation.

The difficult next step is to work towards an umwelt that is the most objectively minimal kind of idealism. Which is what science should be doing.

Beat me to it this time!

. The only way out of this is to see mind as ontologically primary and matter as derivative (idealism), or re-configure our understanding of what "matter" is (so that we get something like neutral monism, or Aristotelian hylomorphism, etc). — darthbarracuda

There is yet another way. And that is to talk about complexity. Mind arises due to the complexity of a sign relation that organises matter into a form. Consciousness is then just what it is like to be doing that at a massively complex level of development and evolution - one in which a self is modelled in contrast to a world to result in an embedded sense of autonomy or agency.

That semiotic view would also reconfigure our understanding of matter.

Our ordinary physics is constructed as a story of observables. The observer is not part of the model. Leaving out the observer is how we get really simple models of material reality.

So a semiotic view of matter would have to put the observer back into the system being modelled. Even at its simplest possible level, existence would have the logically irreducible complexity of a sign relation.

People think this a really esoteric metaphysics for some reason. :)

Not only is it fallacious, it's also just a cheap ploy so as not to have to seriously consider their arguments. — NKBJ

But I have even presented reasonable arguments for veganism. So it can’t be that.

A cult is an extremist social script that isolates its members from more general society. And I was talking about the philosophy limiting script that CB was using. To the degree it said focus on a feeling, it was trying to limit rounded debate on the issue. It was simply an attempt to convert.

I’m not against veganism or animal rights. Clearly I keep closely informed on these issues. One reason is that I’m interested in how every generation finds its passionate social causes. Society does keep evolving with a certain pattern.

Thanks.

Appeal to authority much? — Noble Dust

Have you looked up the definition of that yet?

We have the entire universe for our living space.

For the human race to survive extinction, we need to move off the planet. — Harry Hindu

Shit and move on, heh? Sounds like a plan. :)

I'll pull these relevant bits out of a previous thread - https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/133433

Veganism can be a healthy diet. But overall, we are evolved to eat like hunter/gatherers. Consuming wheat, or drinking animal milk, are more unnatural than boiling a squirrel so far as our digestive system is concerned.

However if we were actually talking about an objectively nature-honouring human diet, then every modern supermarket is the grossest abuse of that. There are immoral levels of sugar, bad fats, preservatives, colourings, etc, in what gets sold.

So which is the bigger social crime - factory farmed chicken or sponsorship of kid's soccer by "sports drink" manufacturers?

I'd admire any true vegan. So not one who lives on pasta and noodles. But really, given the way the food industry is set up, you would also have to have a crank's level of intensity to overcome all the obstacles put in the way of achieving that "perfect diet".

But to get back to the high level view, I think it is amazing just how much we have already changed the ecology of earth. When it comes to terrestrial mammalian ecosystems, it is now mostly a planet dominated by domestic animals.

Vaclav Smil has written great stuff on this like Harvesting the Biosphere....

If the domestication of the world's ecosystems is a moral dilemma, then vegans are ultimately just as caught up in that as meat eaters.

Smil says the human population has grown 20-fold in the last 1000 years and nearly quadruppled in just the past century. The numbers are still swelling by 230,000 every day.

So by his calculations, between 1900 and 2000 – allowing for the fact that humans have got on average somewhat taller and rather fatter – the global anthropomass has grown from 13 to 55 million tonnes of carbon (Mt C) by weight, or from 74Mt to 300Mt if you include the water and the body’s other mineral elements.

That is a lot of flesh to feed obviously. But Smil says bottom-line is what scientists call HANPP, or the human appropriation of net primary production – the amount of the planet’s total harvestable plant growth that this many humans now take as their share.

And Smil says it is about a quarter. That is, 25 per cent of the annual terrestrial phytomass production, the conversion of sunlight to plant material, winds up one way or another supporting the 55Mt of human carbon.

Hey yes, we rule!

The calculation is complicated of course. It includes not just the plant growth directly for food but also our take in fuel, fibre and timber.

And nearly half the HANPP figure represents the global loss of photosynthetic potential due to erosion, desertification, human created forest fires and the building over of good land – all the ways we have taken away from the Earth’s usual productivity.

Smil notes the world’s big cities now cover nearly 5 million square kilometers. In the last 2000 years, he says, with deforesting and other deprecations, humans have cut the total phytomass stocks from 1000 billion tonnes (Gt) of carbon to 550Gt.

But there is good news in the HANPP. At least farming efficiency has been keeping it somewhat under control.

Smil says it is estimated that a third of the Earth's ice-free surface has been taken over by human agriculture, some 12 per cent for crops and 22 per cent for pasture.

However because of the green revolution of the mid-20th Century – the switch to industrialised farming with diesel machinery, petroleum-based fertiliser, irrigation schemes and new crop strains – the figures have not blown out quite like they could have.

Over the past century, the global HANPP has only doubled from the 13 per cent supporting 1.7b people in 1900 to the 25 per cent supporting 7.2b people now.

And looking ahead, even with the global population expected to hit 9b by 2050, the human share of the Earth’s photosynthetic bounty may only hit 30 per cent.

Well, that is unless biofuels are needed as an alternative energy source and the resulting agricultural expansion balloons HANPP out to 44 per cent, as some studies suggest.

... then where Smil’s book gets especially thought-provoking ...

As well as the anthropomass and the phytomass, there is also the story of the zoomass – the drastic shift from wild to domestic animals in terms of the planet’s mammal population.

Smil calculates that the agricultural revolution of the past century has seen a seven-fold increase in plant production. In 1900, humans grew 400Mt of dry matter a year. Now it is 2.7Gt. But because humans like meat on their plate, half this phytomass goes to feed our farm animals.

We know the equation of course. It takes about 10kg of grain to produce 1kg of burger meat. And Smil says the consumption of meat in developed countries has shot up from just a few kilos per person per year to over 100kg.

In 1900, the world had 1.6b large domestic animals including 450m head of cattle and water buffalo. Today, that number is 4.3b, with 1.7b cattle and buffalo, and nearly 1b pigs.

In terms of biomass, the increase is from 35Mt of carbon to 120Mt. So about double the 55Mt of humans treading the planet in fact.

Wild zoomass has naturally gone skidding in the other direction, halving from 10mt to 5Mt during the 20th Century. With large grazing animals, the drop has been especially severe says Smil. Elephants have gone from 3Mt to 0.3Mt, the American bison is right off the radar at 0.04Mt.

Tot it up and the numbers are a little bonkers. The combined weight of humanity is today ten times the weight of everything else running around wild – all the world’s different mammal species from wombats to wildebeest, marmosets to rhinos.

And then our livestock, the tame four legged meals soon to end up on our dinner table, outweigh that true wildlife by 24 to 1 all over again. Talk about transforming a planet within living memory. The world is now mostly constituted of people, cows, sheep, goats and pigs.

As Smil says, the balance has gone from 0.1 per cent 10,000 years ago, to about 10 per cent at the start of the industrial revolution, to 97 per cent today. There may still be tens of thousands of wild mammal species sharing our Earth, but really they don’t add up to much of any consequence.

Again, just think about it. We harvest a quarter of the biosphere now. Ourselves and our four legged meals outweigh other terrestrial mammals by a combined 34 to 1.

So Huston, we indeed have a moral dilemma. Veganism starts to look like shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Your survival depends upon existing within a community that to a large degree fuels/feeds itself on the use of animals. — Inyenzi

Speaking up for pragmatic veganism now, it might be worth checking this on the future of animal-less meat and dairy ... https://vimeo.com/229663434

Rapid technological advance is coming that will transform our food production models. Or at least we need it to, otherwise the planet is screwed.

So meat-eating is not a sane general practice for the human race if it wants both a population peaking at 10 billion and to survive that in reasonable shape.

Could you not say the same for the prohibition on slavery? — chatterbears

Yes. To the degree that the argument might have been based on subjective feeling rather than rational debate.

A fanatic argues from the basis of emotions. A cult relies on scripts designed to elicit feelings by limiting the scope for reason and evidence.

Is slavery worse than having to work for a living as some corporation's paid employee? Probably yes on the whole. But it is still relative. There are still pros and cons to balance.

Apparently not wanting to cause harm to another living being when it is not necessary is an absolutist moral prescription? — chatterbears

Hmm. Again it is the "not necessary" bit which is at stake. My argument has been that imperatives come in pairs. Morality exists to resolve these foundational conflicts. That's how it works.

So sure, if there is no other point of view in play, it really doesn't matter. But if there is, it does.

Think about compassion/empathy a little more carefully. As I said, they are about being selfish from another point of view. And that is a good thing right? Being selfish ... but now standing in someone else's shoes.

So really we are talking about the ability to see two conflicting points of view and arrive at some pragmatic balance.

Well I'm talking about the pragmatism there. You are saying that an animal that lacks the sentience to reciprocate the good deed should be treated exactly like a sentient being that could.

So already your position is falling apart there.

The irony of most meat eaters is, they look at dog or cat abuse as immoral. But when you point out that cows/chickens/pigs should ALSO be included in that same fair treatment as the dog/cat, "WHOA YOU HAVE AN EXTREME POSITION!!" — chatterbears

It might be because dogs and cats are fellow meat eaters. The others are just plant eaters and so fair game. :razz:

You claim to have accepted my 3 pillars while somehow still eating animals and holding a reasonable position? — chatterbears

Read what I wrote. I accepted ethical consistency and challenged empathy/compassion (as monotonic foundations).

Half the time you were arguing from a position you didn't even say you held. — chatterbears

Well yeah. This is a philosophy site. It is one of the skills of critical thinking to be able to present positions you don't have some passionate belief in. It would be quite hard to set out a reductio ad absurdum otherwise.

And the other half you were arguing that animals don't feel pain in a way you find reasonable enough to stop contributing to. That is a clear violation of empathy. Unless you are stating you only have empathy for humans? In which I would push your position into a consistency test. The reason you eat animals is probably not a reason you'd accept for yourself to be eaten, which makes your position contradictory/inconsistent/hypocritical. And if you would accept being eaten based on the same justification you have used to eat animals, I would say your position is absurd and/or unreasonable. — chatterbears

LOL.

How do you come to that conclusion? — NKBJ

Long story. :)

But veganism IS cult-like. It is one thing to talk about the pragmatic health or environmental benefits. It is another to want to take over the world with an absolutist moral prescription.

Empathy, compassion and consistency are ALL SEPARATE thing. — chatterbears

I agree consistency is a different kind of thing here. It is a principle of constraint we are applying to the general discussion. But aren't compassion and empathy pretty tightly connected as the "what" and the "how"?

Empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another living being. Compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help. — chatterbears

So empathy is how we can actually imagine ourselves in another's shoes (and it is only imagining, with all that then entails in terms of veracity.)

And compassion is what we would then do as a result of imagining ourselves in those other shoes and viewing the situation in a now self-centred light from that different place.

So the goal of health is to improve the body's condition. From there we can make objective assessments, based on this goal, such as "Drinking 20 sodas per day is bad for you." — chatterbears

Yes. Pragmatism makes for good and balanced ethics. You ought to apply it consistently to the whole of your argument.

If we agree on a goal first, we can make objective assessments. We can say, for the sake of argument, that the goal of morality (being moral) is to improve (not diminish) the well-being of sentient beings. — chatterbears

Yes. That is how a pragmatic approach would work. Except that your notion of "we" is again tinged with absoluteness. I would suggest it would have to be balanced by that other natural tendency towards individuality. The collective "we" becomes some effective average. It represents an acceptable diversity of views as well.

So taking this probabilistic story as foundational - which is what pragmatism does - we already accept "exceptions to the rule" to the degree that they are just "accidents", or differences that don't make a difference on the whole.

This underlying anti-absolutism point becomes relevant later in the argument.

Based on that goal, we can say "Killing someone because of their hair color, is immoral" - Killing someone [based on an unreasonable justification] will diminish the well-being of that living being. That's just a fact, and it coincides with the goal we have set. — chatterbears

That's a red herring. If you've already permitted killing under some circumstances, you will have to have identified some conflict of interests that do indeed strike a reasonable balance. So it is that part of the argument that remains in play, as I argued. I didn't argue that you could bring in other "reasons" that are patently spurious.

If you want to talk about moral positions based on hair colour, go for it. But that isn't this discussion.

But even without me and you agreeing on a goal, I can still lead you [within your own subjective moral perspective] to Veganism. — chatterbears

Here we go.

If you don't care to be consistent in your beliefs, then that is a big problem. — chatterbears

How many times do I have to repeat that logical consistency is exactly what I am focused on and what I am discussing about your position.

Where you veer into pragmatism, I can agree. But where you try to start in monotonic foundationalism, I point out the logical flaw.

I've mainly seen him defending beliefs with reason and evidence and therefore arriving at sound moral conclusions. — NKBJ

To remind you...

But I'd also say it is impossible to accept these 3 moral pillars while simultaneously eating animals. And these 3 pillars are: Empathy, compassion and ethical consistency. — chatterbears

...so I have accepted ethical consistency as a constraint and challenged the monotonic absolutism of empathy/compassion as "pillars" - the solitary foundations of any moral position.

My argument has been that - pragmatically - all foundations are dichotomous. Any complex system is founded on a dialectical balance. So you need complementary "pillars" here so that you can build your moral position on an actually balanced ground - the view that takes into account both sides of the coin in explicit fashion.

Apo is clearly trolling you. He likes to disguise the vapidity and trollishness of his replies in an endless word-jumble that he'll inevitably say you don't understand anyways. — Akanthinos

Why so bitter and trollish today?

When the argument requires you to consider the cannibalism of autistic human as a limit-case, then you know you are fighting a battle that can only be won by not participating. — Akanthinos

Are you so easily confused by words that you don't see I asked Chatterbears to address the issue of how limits ought to be imposed on unrestricted moral imperatives?

He suggests a cut-off at the level of animals. So plant life is alright to eat. And he also accepts that the sentience of animals is not exactly at the level of humans. So the issue becomes why should compassion and empathy extend past the species boundary?

Perhaps it should. But his argument has become arbitrary to the degree it rests on treating "sentience" as both something black and white (plants don't have it?) and also admitting that humans and animals are significantly different, if in ways he fails to specify.

So he is conflating an absolutist position with a degree of pragmatism. Maybe that is why you are confused by his posts?

He does throw in the fact we can survive on a vegan diet, the environmental damage of trying to feed 10 billion people on steak, and other quite reasonable points. However I was addressing his initial argument that subjectively we feel compassion and empathy for sentient creatures, so as soon as we recognise sentience in a creature, ethical consistency demands a compassionate and empathetic response.

That is fine as far as it goes. But my reply is that compassion and empathy are pragmatic response that evolved for self-evident reason in us as social creatures. And there is then a balance to be struck, given the fundamentally evolutionary nature of the equation.

If someone looks inside and discovers that besides empathy/compassion they experience desire/self-concern - or indeed just that when faced with a steak - then what becomes the ethically consistent outcome in that light?

I agree we would still want to arrive at a consistent story. Seems reasonable anyway. But Chatterbears's approach doesn't look to be delivering that.

You can believe you are a pink unicorn too if you want. Doesn't make it true. — NKBJ

Thanks for agreeing. Chatterbears's position asks us to just accept our subjectively revealed beliefs as if they were objective moral absolutes. So like me, you would prefer our beliefs to be founded on reason and evidence. You take the pragmatist position on these things.

You cannot claim that eating meat is a form of self-defense, when it is not necessary for your survival (we have plant-based alternatives). — chatterbears

I'm employing the same slippery slope logic that you are employing here. Why can't I believe that eating meat is just part of who I am as a sentient being. So you are threatening my survival in that regard.

The grounds of the exception are imposed diminished well-being, — chatterbears

Right. So you accept that this is a legitimate counter-interest. And now your problem is how to prevent sliding down the same slippery slope you employ to argue your own preferred ethical priority.

Let's be logically consistent here. Either two opposed interests are legitimate and so need to be balanced. Or your argument is that one interest rules in absolute fashion, meaning that you haven't actually accepted that the other interest has any ground to be an exception to the preference you've expressed.

And the slave owner continues, as you have, and says, "I only feel my own pain or suffering. I don't actually experience that of any slave involved. So the primary duty of care remains the servicing of my own selfish wishes here." — chatterbears

What exactly is illegitimate about that counter-argument - when your argument relies on the abhorrence of suffering?

In the end - unless you define sentience in a more socially-constructed fashion - the only suffering any sentient being could feel would be their own. So any empathy or compassion becomes a logical puzzle - why would you choose to feel the pain of others if you could as easily avoid it?

That is why my own position is focused on why we actually would - as socially evolved creatures - feel empathy and compassion for good pragmatic reason. It is in fact basic to our nature for self-evident evolutionary advantage.

So there is an evolved basis, a pragmatic basis. But not then some objective transcendent basis. If we are talking about extending our habits of empathy and compassion beyond the bounds of our own species, that is something new that we would have to justify on the same grounds of offering an evolutionary advantage. That is what ethical consistency would look like here.

I'd like you to tell me why you believe that eating animals is justified, without pointing to what you think my view is. — chatterbears

But I did and have done so again. However I was focused on addressing your argument and so did try to keep my own views on the back-burner. I'm compassionate and empathetic that way.

It would be nice if you answered specifically on my argument against your argument: how is it that the same slippery slope thinking can't be employed against you? If suffering is what counts in some absolute and subjective fashion, then why wouldn't I cite the absolute right to self-defence to put my own suffering first in any ethical situation?

You eat meat because you don't have a strong enough reason not to? How about causing needless suffering and pain to animals? Or global warming concerns? Or the fact that plant based foods are actually healthier than animal products? It seems that you just haven't done the research, or are being willfully ignorant on this topic, if you haven't found a good reason to stop eating animals. — chatterbears

Actually I've written plenty on these kinds of issues. And I said I accept that there are pragmatic arguments for why we may collectively head towards veganism of some form for these kinds of reasons.

But pragmatic ethics is about the balancing of opposing interests. And it is about accepting that often the situation is grey as what is at stake doesn't matter enough. Someone's personal choice counts as an accident so far as the general case is concerned.

So the black and white stance you want to take is alien to that considered approach to moral issues. Nothing is "just wrong". If behaviour is to be constrained, it only needs to be limited to some reasonable degree. So compassion and empathy may be great qualities in a creature that depends on social living. But selfishness and hard-heartedness are also qualities that provide a necessary balance. They are part of the mix too.

Morality based on social norms is flawed, as we have had terrible norms in the past, such as slavery. So I am not sure of your point here? — chatterbears

Who are you to determine what is terrible? Are slavery and cannibalism bad in some abstract and transcendent way, or just not very functional as a social formula?

My point would be that you start by assuming your conclusion - x is morally unacceptable, therefore...

And that way of moral thinking in fact has a pretty chequered past. As I have mentioned - the counter-argument you have dodged - once folk start arguing like that, then the same slippery slope logic can be applied the other way.

Eating autistics is similar to eating animals. There is no NEED for the consumption of either of these living beings. — chatterbears

Pragmatically, we can eat plants. I agree. But where is the need to do that exclusively?

Your argument rested on the pain and suffering experienced by sentient beings. And I'm waiting for you to address the counter-argument.

Given you accepted self-defence as a proper ground to justify harming other sentient beings, what stops that self-defence argument being used to justify a right not to be troubled by feelings of compassion and empathy for other creatures ... when you literally cannot experience their experience anyway.

Again, this is not my own ethical position. I think there are good pragmatic arguments for there being empathy and compassion in our moral conduct. We are primarily social creatures and it goes with the territory.

But your way of arguing is seeking an objective and absolute need. And that is fundamentally unreasonable - as is shown when that same way of arguing is used to justify its complete opposite moral stance.

Do you regard the efficient use of environmental resources as an urgent issue? I — MetaphysicsNow

Yep. Lab meat should use 10% of the land and water, produce 10% of the emissions. So there are huge environmental and economic arguments in its favour.

An effective general veganism will almost surely happen for ordinary pragmatic reasons.

Exceptions of the situation are justification, not the justification itself. When deploying a justification to use as a basis for committing a moral action, that justification has no exceptions. — chatterbears

How can an exception be justified if it has no grounds?

Right now, we have access to plant-based foods. Nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, beans, rice, pasta, etc... And changing your diet is not that difficult, as it just takes a small amount of research. And in doing so, you would be avoiding contributing to the pain and suffering caused by animal agriculture. — chatterbears

Sure fine. But your dependence on subjectivity and absolutism leaves you open to the counter-position that veganism is all too much effort for me, I really like the taste of meat. And I only feel my own pain or suffering. I don't actually experience that of any animal involved. So the primary duty of care remains the servicing of my own selfish wishes here.

I'm not saying I would take that unbalanced view personally. I'm saying it is equally valid given your subjectivity and absolutism.

I don't actually feel any of the suffering of the pig in the crate or the chicken pumped up on hormones and antibiotics. If feelings of suffering are what count in absolute fashion, I have an absolute right of self-defence here, following your logic. If empathy and compassion are proving troublesome, the proper ethical course should be to look the other way, think of something else, do whatever it takes to prevent any suffering I may otherwise experience as a sentient being.

My own actual position is founded on a quite different psychological model. I don't believe in this glib thing of a "sentient being" as if consciousness were something so simple. So empathy and selfishness are naturally two sides of a coin - a way that a sense of self is even constructed in us as social creatures.

But that is by the by. I am pointing out how you are relying on simplicities that are then going to have their troublesome mirror image. Your argument is not in fact securely founded. It's negation is also "undeniable".

There is a moral situation #1 (wrong to kill). And a moral justification #2 (wrong to kill because of hair color). These are two separate things. — chatterbears

Yeah. I am absolutely not following your logic now. :)

If something is accidental, like hair colour, then it is hardly grounds for any kind of necessity, like assault or self-defence. So yes. But so what?

You claim I am using logic tricks, similar to that of cults and religions, yet you aren't pointing to anything tangible. And to prove my point to you, we could start from the beginning. — chatterbears

I think you prove my point quite well just there. Let's go back to the beginning and follow the whole script more carefully this time.

If you use a reason to justify your action of eating meat, you would need to deploy that same justification in another context for you to be consistent in your ethics. — chatterbears

I eat meat because I don't have a strong enough reason not to. I believe that lot of ethical choices do frankly fall into a gray area where there is nothing terribly significant at stake. I see ethics as a pragmatic work in progress and there are many cultural habits to be working on.

Animal welfare matters, but it would be ethically dubious to pick just that one cause and go to the extreme on it when each of us should contribute to moral progress in a rounded fashion. It is OK for things to evolve at a general cultural level because there is no absolute and objective morality involved. So I can imagine not eating meat as a result of that being a general cultural shift over time. But I'm not sure it is one of the most urgent matters facing humankind.

So I think this is a consistent application of pragmatism, a consistent understanding of the very basis of human moral behaviour. I might or might not change my ways. And I only even need some strong opinion to the degree that something high priority is at stake for the collective human condition which is the evolving system in question.

So to be consistent, would you then say it is OK to eat a severely autistic human, because they are less intelligent? — chatterbears

If that were customary in my society, then I'm sure I'd be quite use to the practice and wouldn't have a strong objection.

Abortions are normalised for most of us. Cannibalism has had its morally approved place in human history. So I wouldn't start with the unrealistic presumption that there is nothing that couldn't be a moral norm. I would instead start with a focus on the functionality of any such behaviour.

Does eating autistics achieve some reasonable goal? What are the actual pros and cons. Any ideas?

So there is no final cause, or intention behind the general feeling of hunger? — Metaphysician Undercover

Keep on inventing things I never said. I'll sit back and watch you win arguments that are just against yourself.

Empathy, compassion and consistency are not necessary. But if you do care about those three things, and hold true to them, Veganism logically follows. — chatterbears

So they are not necessary. But the only way to "care about them" is to "hold true" in a fashion that is idealistically one note and not pragmatically balanced?

Obvioiusly I can care about them quite consistently as being part of a balance. And indeed, a necessary part for there to be that balance. So already your argument is off track.

But even without empathy or compassion for other animals, consistency would STILL lead to Veganism. Because you cannot justify your actions in one context, while rejecting them in another. — chatterbears

Blinded by your absolutism then. It all boils down to black and white.

Otherwise you'd be contradicting yourself and hold two opposing views simultaneously. — chatterbears

Alternatively, I would recognise ambiguity as a fundamental part of the equation. Ethically, I think that is a good thing. Reality is often just ambiguous. Moral reasoning needs to get that.

I never claimed that I hold to the position of moral absolutes, nor do I think this is the case. Because there are cases, such as self-defense, where killing something is justified. Therefore, this is an obvious case where "killing is always wrong" does not apply. — chatterbears

Correct. Well, at least it is arguable and illustrates the general point that moral boundaries always ought to be drawn up as the result of striking a reasonable balance between two relative notions of the good.

So we have ambiguity as a basic possibility anyway. Grey is an actual shade between black and white. But also - as a matter of intelligible principle - we want to draw lines that are as definite as they need to be to guide behaviour. And that is where the ethical debate must discover the opposing principles in play. You can't have a balance of interests unless those competing interests are clearly identified.

That is my complaint about your process of thought. You only identified compassion/empathy. You need to bring to the table the other complementary notion of what would be a good here.

Why would self-defence ever be morally justified? What is the general idea you were after there? How is eating meat not a legitimate form of "self-defence" against the perils of being a starving meat-eater?

Of course, in the modern world we have alternatives. We can culture meat stem cells in the lab now. We probably will as it is going to be far cheaper. No central nervous system need ever be involved in this franken-meat.

But still, my point is that if exceptions are justified, then your argument has already shot itself in the foot. To achieve ethical consistency, the other side of the moral equation has to be presented properly. You can't just "care" about compassion and empathy in such a one sided and idealistic fashion, going to the extreme "logical" conclusion that then results. You must lay out a much fuller argument.

Humans believe eating animals is OK based on difference of intelligence level.
Humans believe eating mentally handicapped humans is OK based on difference of intelligence level.
Aliens believe eating humans is OK based on difference of intelligence level. — chatterbears

So you answer the charge that you employ the slippery slope fallacy by replying in terms of a slippery slope fallacy.

That is kinda funny.

I can lead people to Veganism from their OWN subjective personal ethics. — chatterbears

I bet you can. You are trying to use the same "save your soul" cheap logical tricks that cults and religions have employed for practically ever. It's how they sell cars or soap flakes. Buy it, you are worth it. It would be logically inconsistent for you to deny yourself these choices.

Slippery slope thinking is endemic. Have you ever thought how you are just surrounded by germs. Look at what this purple light reveals as we scan your hands and kitchen surfaces. My God, it's amazing you aren't dead already. Here, buy these germicidal wet wipes impregnated with nuke-power antibiotics. Please hurry. Save your soul.

But anyway, I see you are here to practice your sales pitch. You want converts. This isn't about a philosophical discussion.

I’d say the essential weakness here is that it would be inconsistent to claim that compassion and empathy are ever universally applied in exceptionless fashion in the first place.

Your logic holds if they are moral absolutes and there are no moral relativities. And yet isn't there the alternative - and ethically consistent - morality which recognises that compassion and empathy are never so universally right that they should always be carried to their logical extremes.

What is your position on laughing at YouTube compilations of skateboarders face-planting? Is this morally defensible given that it compromises the ideals of compassion and empathy? Is it a black and white situation where logic says we must ban people from finding the pain of others funny? Why would we stop at merely not eating meat. Why would we not have to follow through with equal rigour in every aspect of life?

So my counter-argument is that your position depends on black and white extremism. You are pushing an unwarranted idealism that unethically rejects the very possibility of a positive and relativistic balance.

There is of course good reason to debate where we would draw our limits. Compassion and empathy matter - but there is also reason to be found in their "others". But you are illegitimately refusing to consider this larger view.

Now perhaps we ought to stop eating meat as we come to appreciate animals as sentient beings. But the balanced reply demands that we show that compassion and empathy are the exclusive moral rule of sentience in the first place. The evidence of how humans treat each other is that we apply relativities more than absolutes in that sphere. Flexibility rather than rigidity is what is considered morally appropriate or actually functional.

And then much more work would have to be done to show that the sentience of animals is of the same order and so demand the same standard being applied - whatever that may be. It is pretty clear to most folk that animals feel pain, but also that it is not experienced in the same existential way. It is not a dread or an ever-present memory. It happens and it is gone.

So it is lesser in some ethically critical fashion. Is it wrong to raise stock in a paddock - keeping them happy and well-fed, as that is in the farmer's best interest - and then end their lives in unanticipated fashion with a sudden bolt through the head?

Factory farming involves more continuous suffering. But - unless you just don't accept relativity and you insist on absolutism - good ethical thought would be able to make these fine shades of distinction. It would be able to justify both empathy and compassion, but also their converse, when appropriate.

The morality would reflect the full balance of interests that exist, not pretend that only one side knows what is right.

This is a really good point that i did not explicitly state. A person can be incredibly intelligent about all kinds of things, and yet remain embedded in secondary (generalized) understanding, rather than being directly attentive to what is at hand.

I think it is also true that being intelligent in terms of generalized understanding can help you to "hit the mark", and is a necessary background to being intelligently attentive to what is at hand. — Janus

Yet this is what I did say. You can be clever without being wise. Sharp without being broad. Short-term without being long-term. Particular without being general.

So if we are talking about being "really smart", it is about being strongly divided in a way that is then functionally well-balanced.

Cleverness applied from a state of generalised skill, knowledge and mastery is going to be properly grounded. But for any individual, it is going to take time and experience to accumulate those background habits.

And then from a biological lifecycle point of view - one that recognises that habits can come to dominate eventually in an unbalanced fashion - it then becomes a familiar three stage life trajectory that winds up in the perils of senescence.

The immature mind is clever and hasty as it is busy taking risks learning. A mature mind has struck a balance between youth and experience. Then a senescent mind might be very wise, or optimally-adapted to a given way of life, but the dependence on accumulated habits becomes the new risk. If the world changes dramatically, the habits could become unwise. And a lack of learning capacity means the structure of thought can't be adapted.

So old fart syndrome is a thing. The old have the most experience and so are the best adapted. Yet fixing a structure in place is itself a further generalised risk.

All this falls directly out of a hierarchical/developmental understanding of nature as a system.

Yes I mentioned the golden rule as a specific example of how it would work.

...the golden rule focuses us on the general thing of a rule of reciprocality in our social relations. And then - creatively, particularly - we can apply that general rule in ways that best befit any of life's highly variable situations.

So why would we say that a maxim or principle like this might encode an essential wisdom of life? Obviously it aims to get you thinking about the general long-run outcomes of your behavioural choices versus the short-run benefits of more self-interested cleverness. Every social interaction offers the choice of competition or co-operation. And the quickest way of focusing attention on the fact that there is a dynamical balance worth striking is to remind that, over time, how you respond will be reflected back in the general response you will receive.

So the golden rule is a good example of practical holism. It recognises the organic and dichotomistic nature of a "reasonable" system - one that can organise itself via a dynamical balance.

As an image of a system, this is very different from the mechanical notion of organisation where outcomes are computed by algorithms, or deterministically assembled from component actions.

The golden rule is an example of something that is not actually "a rule" then. It is an optimising constraint to be applied to particular actions. It says consider the short-term in the light of the long-term. The choice still remains open - compete or co-operate, cleverly game or wisely reciprocate. The particular actions are never mandated. But the point is that accumulated experience can see the long-term balance in a way that immediate thinking might not.

Humans aren't machines. And that is a really important philosophical point. Especially when we seem pretty hell-bent at times on turning ourselves into machine-like thinkers living in machine-like societies.

That is the reason for my constant surprise that the faintest bit of organic analysis on this board is so often met with the hostility of those who both seem to hate the mechanical attitude to life, and yet then relentlessly employ mechanical reasoning to object to my naturalism.

What is wisdom? A mechanist would already be thinking of it as some kind of "thing" - monadic, absolute, stand-alone.

But an organicist or systems thinker would immediately seek out the dichotomy by which any "thingness" must develop.

So wisdom is not ignorance, naivety, dumbness or some other generalised lack of smartness or knowledge. And from an organicist perspective - a Peircean perspective - we can quickly see that that particular opposition is the developmental dichotomy. If wisdom reflects the productively organised final state, then its antithesis in that sense is the primality of vagueness or undetermined potential.

And then - because fully developed dichotomies arrive at their most definite or crisp expression in the trichotomy of a hierarchical form, a hierarchically-fixed balance - we would seek out the functional partner to this notion of wisdom. We would identify the "other" that stands in a reciprocal relation to it, thus forming the other boundary to a triadic state of hierarchical organisation.

Hierarchies express a local~global or particular~general relation. That is how a dichotomy - a symmetry breaking - achieves its fullest or crispest expression. A hierarchy is an asymmetry - broken all the way to its complementary extremes.

This is how organicism works - its metaphysical logic. In contrast to the confused picture of reality presented by mechanicalism - where either everything is bottom-up construction, or some kind of weird dualism is in place where "laws" mysteriously control "events" - the organic story connects everything with an Aristotelian four causes approach. You have the local limit - responsible for the bottom-up material and efficient cause. And you have the global limit - responsible for the top-down formal and final cause.

So take that holistic organicism and apply it to the question: what is wisdom? What do you know, the folk definition targets dichotomies that are already pretty familiar. Habit vs attention. Wisdom vs cleverness. Youth vs experience. Fluid thinking vs crystalised knowledge.

So we all sort of know what wisdom is - and why it would have the particular cultural image of a wizened old person who is calm-spoken and takes the broad view with accustomed ease. In every Hollywood flick, we are used to this opposition being personified - cleverness taking the form or the brash young hero, willing to take big risks on scanty information.

However, when asked to give a definition, suddenly there is a general confused murmur. Definitions demand some kind of mechanical act of thought. You are supposed to assemble a description by listing some set of predicates that define the monadic object in question. The thing has to be seen to stand alone in some absolute way. It is the sum of its parts. But then we are left with only that set of parts - all themselves still needed definition.

This happens all the time. And the problem is that people think that a mechanical logic is the basis of philosophical analysis. Yet philosophy got going by being dialectical. Meaning was found by analysing being in terms of its mutually formative relations. Mechanised logic - the laws of thought, predication, syllogistic reasoning - is a useful, but reductive, add-on. It is only given prominence because ... that is how you turn folk into people who think like machines and so will construct a machine-like society.

That is why wisdom is another example of how to reason differently. If wisdom is a thing, that can only be in relation to some kind of useful opposite - a partner in crime. And cleverness is that obvious partner. Then more generally, we ought to be able to see how neatly this maps to the actual structural organisation of our own brains, and eventually, to the actual structural organisation of the Comos itself - as a reasonable and intelligible organic enterprise.

[And note that while I oppose mechanicalism to organicism, reductionism to holism, I still say that they can function as complementary partners. My holism incorporates reductionism as its own useful "other". There is nothing wrong about a local/mechanical approach to logical analysis - so long as it knows its limits. Reductionism, by contrast, rather violently wants to reject holism as some kind of causal illusion. And I see that push-back on just about all my posts here.]

Is it wise to live by habit? Is it unwise to be clever? — Noble Dust

Is that what I said? Or did I say that we have this neurocognitive division, this complementary approach, that is then something that functions in an integrated way.

Your terms are clunky and don't reflect use — Noble Dust

Huh? I’m just giving you the psychological explanation - which also happens to be the general Peircean metaphysical story as well.

Another way of talking about it is the distinction between fluid and crystallised intelligence. You can look it all up any time you want.

You haven't produced any argument, just this assertion — Metaphysician Undercover

I argued that either further more particular constraints decide the matter, or it then becomes an accidental outcome.

Another way to put the same point is that the practically wise person is phenomenologically open to the unique situation, whereas the unique situation remains phenomenologically closed to the unwise person. It also seems important to practical wisdom that one is not only open to the unique situation, but that one acts 'appropriately'/'hits the mark' (I'm unsure of the right word) in their unique situation. — bloodninja

How is that not what I said? My point would be that wisdom would zero in on optimal solutions as a matter of established habit while cleverness would be working them out as novel possibilities.

It is a psychological fact that our brains are divided into habitual and attentional forms of cognition. You can draw a neuroanatomical map of how it works. And my claim is that the contrast between wisdom and cleverness picks out this particular difference.

For some reason, people find it an upsetting idea.

generally associate 'transhumanism' with the attempt to artificially augment human capacities with technology, medicine and genetic engineering. — Wayfarer

Yes. I meant transpersonal.