101–110 of 137 posts
I know she is divisive, but Ayn Rand lays out a pretty good model for universal morality.
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We're moving closer to it. Vegetarianism and veganism used to be much more fringe just a few decades ago than they are now. Animal right groups and laws didn't exist until relatively recently as well. Understanding and valuing ecology and every species role in it as well is relatively new (at least among non-indigenous people) and making a difference in how we treat animals as well. There's also a lot of research in…
After millennia, humans still hate each other on no other basis than skin pigmentation despite our brains being hard-wired to be socially cooperative with other members of our species to boost chances of survival. I have heard arguments against animal rights where the key argument was that humans are intellectually superior and thus it is our right to treat animals however it conveniences us. As smart as some people…
"Tellingly"? What does it tell? The scale of X (for almost all X) today absolutely dwarfs that of any bygone era. I wish when people say something is telling, they'd say what it tells them, but they usually don't. (It's like saying "Of course" or "Obviously". Rhetorically effective maybe, but doesn't help communication. They are a kind of bluff.)
> I see the modest gains in the population of vegetarians as a pyrrhic victory that would not have been possible with, perversely, the common knowledge of the current scale and scope of modern animal cruelty.
Sorry, I really tried, but can't work out what you are trying to say here. (It feels like at least a triple-layered negative.) Could you put it more simply? Seems like you're maybe saying "If more people knew the horrors of modern animal cruelty there would be less vegetarians", but that reading makes no sense to me. It's a very confusing, unclear sentence anyway.
Another mediocre article on morality. If you're interested, research universal morality in Buddhist sutras. By far the best analysis of morality, even compared to purely logical works. Modern-day stuff from what i've seen has been low quality. For this article, it fails to remember that for every unbiased observer there is an equally biased human at the root.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need to stick with tribalism, but make everyone part of the same tribe. How is that different than giving up tribalism?
Because you still have things you're for and against. But they shouldn't be aligned along trivial lines like sports, religion and politics. And yeah I know calling these "trivial" sounds odd, but they really are.
There is no universal morality. Morals are likely partial genetic and partially cultural. Natural selection selects for cultural values ("morals") that allow a culture to survive to destroy other cultures. Random morals are constantly being created - mutations. They sometimes are negative for cultural survival, sometimes neutral, and sometimes positive. Based on a changing environment morals needed for a culture to s…
Another mediocre article on morality. If you're interested, research universal morality in Buddhist sutras. By far the best analysis of morality, even compared to purely logical works. Modern-day stuff from what i've seen has been low quality. For this article, it fails to remember that for every unbiased observer there is an equally biased human at the root.
I challenge that claim. The best source of morality is certainly Islam.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I challenge that claim. The best source of morality is certainly Islam.
Love your enemy is truly revolutionary, versus enslaving them.
My personal view is that decisions that affect the individual should be left to the individual, decisions that affect groups should be made by those groups (in a democratic fashion). Of course the devil is in the details.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Utilitarianism is almost 300 years old and includes animals in its "circle of concern". Many people care about animal rights, and once people stop eating meat (because meat alternatives will eventually win out with price) there will be a major shift in perspective - meat eaters will be looked upon as we currently look on slave owners: doing something seriously morally wrong.
Utilitarianism is orthogonal to animal rights - it analyzes and describes behavior and action with respect to some utility function, but the utility function itself is essentially arbitrary and while utilitarianism can be used to model a balance between "human utility" and "animal utility", utilitarianism itself is just as suited for a "circle of concern" that explicitly includes only the utility of humans, or perhap…
It is true there are preference utilitarians and various other flavors, but I don't think cutting out animals outside of one's moral circle of concern can really be justified under utilitarianism.