| Immortal said: You're half right. As I said, my moral reality is that I like dogs (and some other animals). Can't do anything about it. My moral ideal, though, is probably that killing animals is alright on the whole. They're definitely equally consistent, I'll concede you. Holding the belief that animal lives are valuable is very problematic for me, though. Firstly, I'm not sure where to draw the line. Is killing an insect morally wrong, too? Should we be disallowed to kill spiders and ants and all these disturbing pests that could seriously reduce our standard of living if they weren't controlled as much as they are? Another point is that can't we extend this argument of not killing animals to plants, then? We can't actually survive without killing plants, but they are also living. What right have we to take away and abuse their lives as we need to in order to survive? More precisely, what makes them more "killable" than animals? If you resort to their lack of intelligence or level of consciousness, we're sort of rounding back to the original argument. I also have some other issues, but I'd be very interested in hearing how you respond to these two points. |
Ultimately, it's subjective there's no objective line that everyone will agree on. People are going to have their own opinions on how intelligent/conscious a creature must be in order to be valuable. Some people say that only mammals are smart enough to be valuable. Some people say only humans are truly valuable. While others say every creature with any sense of consciousness (certain insects and rodents) is too valuable to be used as food. As for me, I'm not sure what to think. I think I'm learning toward holding certain intelligent mammals as being too valuable for mere food.
Plants have no brain/CNS and thus have no consciousness whatsoever, so I really give them no value other than for food, oxygen, etc.
Also, I wouldn't have a problem with killing meat if they were are only choice for a quality life. However, we have plants as a perfectly effective alternative. So even if animals have much lower consciousness than humans, we could still choose to only eat plants with no consciousness at all.
