Rats free each other from cages (2011)

I can detect wind (including its strength and direction) outside my house even if I can't feel it.

For example:

> We're keeping the "weak" a live, prolonging life, disturbing the natural order of things. In our society, we consider it pretty immoral to leave someone to die of a curable disease, and we work to cure more. Clearly we're more interested in keeping those around alive and happy than having them die so the next generation will become "stronger". That's very contrary to evolution's preference for everyone just being disposable fodder to make better and better organisms.

Keeping their own alive, even the weaker members, is something many social animals do. The 'naturalism' position might be that we should engage in some kind of eugenics. The biological reality is that evolution doesn't care how strong individual members of the herd are. There's nothing "anti-evolution" about protecting the weak.

> Rights of the disenfranchised has nothing to do with it? It's related the same way diseases are - the disenfranchised should be mistreated and thrown out according to evolution. We seem to continually decide otherwise.

This is, again, nothing to do with 'biological reality' but with the straw-man of naturalism. And it couldn't be any other way. Everything we do is 'according to evolution', ergo the disenfranchised being accorded rights is 'according to evolution,' not somehow contra to it. We are animals, not gods.

> Surely there's a difference between someone undergoing a painful medical treatment that they believe will help them in the long run vs someone being tortured for another's enjoyment?

Maybe, but we have moved the goalposts from 'suffering is evil' to 'suffering for another's enjoyment is evil.' And yet there are people who allow themselves to be subjected to physical pain gladly for the enjoyment of others, and in older times, even tortured and killed.

I think the vast majority of people are actually in the opposite situation. Animals have been humanized by cartoons. So when birds start pushing each other from nests, when Eagles start feeding cats to their eaglets, when Kangaroos attempt to mate on dead corpses...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/14/photos-griev...

People don't really believe it. Animals are vicious.

OK. Sounds great. Tell me more about this 'higher understanding of good and evil.' What is good? What is evil? Why? Where do they come from?

We don't have any 'higher understanding of good and evil', we simply have language and (most likely) a higher capacity for abstract thought which allow us to argue about our social instincts, which are not objective truths.

There's a reason why, for all of human history, 'morality' has differed wildly among cultures. The only real constant is some level of in-group altruism, because that is a biological necessity for social animals. The rest is all gravy. Some humans thought human sacrifice was good, and a moral obligation. Others, torture. Others, slavery. Others, rape. Others, pacifism.

There is no rationale, there is no higher truth, there is no higher power, that you could appeal to to convince the most enlightened and rational Aztec that human sacrifice was evil. That's because it doesn't exist.

That's why your whole moral argument is entirely unpersuasive to people who eat meat. You're like an Aztec come to tell us that we need to be committing human sacrifice; it's all nonsense without the cultural context and socialization and inoculation. You, based on a moral belief you did not come to through reason, are trying to convince people secure in their own moral beliefs that they are commiting evil. A simple check-in with their conscience confirms that you are wrong.

So you need something other than a moral argument.

Any cat owner has observed this behavior.