Sometimes I am alarmed that so few people are “species ethicists.” In a Darwinian sense, the chicken had won a genetic lottery by being tasty, horse by being fast, dog by being friendly. Discontinuing meat is ethically equivalent to species extinction.
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Replying to @Locus_of_Ctrl
In other words, the individual suffering of animal is given ethical priority over perpetuation of species. And yet, wild animals typically die much more painful deaths than domesticated ones (being disemboveled by hyenas when you’re old or infirm is no fun).
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Replying to @Locus_of_Ctrl
I think the typical animal-welfare moralist argument against eating meat has more to do with the conditions of the animals' lives rather than the circumstances of their deaths.
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Replying to @danlistensto
So "quality of life" is being prioritized over suffering? And how is quality of life defined? Closer to natural habitat = good? By that argument, it is highly immoral that humans live in cities and not in mud huts by the river.
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Replying to @Locus_of_Ctrl
I think that is the argument, yes. There's some kind of moral calculus that has an equation of the form: Suffering = Pain * Time How is quality of life defined? That's the part where it goes off the rails, and is largely why I'm not persuaded by animal-welfare arguments.
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Replying to @danlistensto @Locus_of_Ctrl
the vat-grown scenario is meant to address the issue of animal suffering. I'd rather take on the issue of ecological damage and misallocation of scarce resources associated with factory-farming though, but that's off topic from what Ort was trying to discuss.
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but, if we're probing into thought experiment hypotheticals, I would insist that the vat-grown meat also be more energy efficient to produce than live animal meat or else it's pointless to begin with, at least according to where my priorities are.
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