> I don't think it is an appeal to nature fallacy because I have no implicit axiom that "what is natural is good." The statement I made seems, to me, closer to "what is natural is." without a strong opinion on it's level of good.
I did take your first comment, and this one, to be implicit, if not explicit, arguments that because these things happen in nature, it is okay (good) for us to do it as well. Apologies if that's not what you're saying!
>Your argument is that we should re-write the the laws governing our reality, something we have only recently become able to accomplish, and something we can't necessarily predict the consequences of.
My argument is simply that we should have compassion for others, humans and all other sentient beings included, and work to relieve suffering as much as we can. I think this is not too far off from how most people feel about humanity, but that we are only (historically recently) beginning to apply this way of thinking on a larger scale to the rest of the living beings who share this world with us.
>In a discussion of ethics (and physics) our bodies desire amino acids that exist in animal flesh and will provide us with reproductive advantage for acquiring them, something we (up until recently) must have killed animals to acquire. If you want to have an ethical discussion (I do because they're interesting) the physics of the matter must be spoken to or accounted for.
Sure, but I think you are agreeing here that as of recently, we no longer must kill these animals to acquire these nutrients?
>Pain is a physical concept. Social relationships are a physical concept (there are physical forces governing these relationships in our brains). There's research that plants can communicate damage or danger, is that a pain analogue? Is the fundemental ethical issue suffereing, suffering of those left behind (in social creatures), "theft" of future?
Whether or not plants can react to stimuli and communicate amongst themselves is a different question from whether they are sentient. For example, we have billions of cells within our body, each reacting to their environments, communicating with one another, being born and dying in countless numbers as we sit here typing. Are we conscious of any of that?
Consciousness in my mind is much like sight, it's not a given that every living organism can see, you have to have the biological structures whose explicit purpose is to create that sensation of sight. Take away the eyes, sever the nerves, or take an organism who has never evolved those eyes or optic nerves (or their analogues), and there is no sight.
Consciousness beyond not being a given for all living things, also seems extremely fragile. Administering only a few mg of a drug to a person will eliminate their consciousness during e.g. general anesthesia. Only a relatively small amount of damage to the brain can similarly end it, even though we still have all those structures that consciousness requires and they're largely still functional!
So in short, I don't think we see any sort of way that plants could actually be conscious, as we understand consciousness, they just don't have the necessary parts. Further, even if each blade of grass were as fully conscious as a human being, it would still be more ethical to consume plants directly rather than animals, because for every 10 calories of plants we feed to a cow, we get roughly 1 calorie out. So we are killing roughly 10x as many plants by eating a steak, calorie for calorie, than we are by eating those plants directly.
This is without even accounting for all the plant, animal, and human life destroyed in the act of clearing rainforests to create more grazing area for cattle, and to grow more soy (of which over 80% of global production goes to animal feed) to feed those cattle.
And further without accounting for all the plant, animal, and human life that is being and will be destroyed by climate change, to which the raising of those cows is a major contributor.
The fundamental ethical issue is in causing unnecessary suffering. We do not have to torture others to survive, so why would we, just because it feels good? That seems like a clear ethical issue.
>Then there's the equally (to me) compelling question that an animal would eat me if it could, from an ethical point of view, I think that gives me a right to eat it. Why does that fail under your reasoning system?
I mean, if a rapist would rape you, does that give you the right to rape them?
> I am not clear on what you think we are responsible for
The consequences of our actions, especially as far as our actions cause other sentient beings, including humans and animals, to suffer and die.
> If we are responsible to minimize total suffering in a pragmatic way, why is it then not our responsibility to wipe out other creatures that cause torturous deaths?
This question is probably a good test of utilitarianism. The creatures that cause by far the most suffering and death on Earth are humans, but I would not be comfortable wiping out humans, any more so that I would be comfortable wiping out any other sentient species.
Would you flip the lever on a trolley to run over 10,000 people to save 100,000? In the abstract someone might easily say yes, that it's the reasonable course of action to minimize the amount of suffering and death, which must unavoidably happen in one way or another.
While I don't have a perfect answer to that, I can say with certainty that in the non-hypothetical we can dramatically reduce the amount of suffering that we cause to other people and animals, and in so doing not only not have to kill ourselves, but actually benefit our environment, and by extension all of humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom simultaneously. It's a win win for all, the only cost would be to our palate pleasure, a fleeting sensation that we enjoy for only a few minutes a day.