Last but not least, I started it out of curiosity, in order to obtain answers to specific questions about vegetarians’ decision procedures; that’s what I’m still interested in learning about
If you’re really still interested in this...
I started my vegetarian diet shortly after I decided to adopt some definite policy in terms of which kinds of meat were ok to eat and which were not, because the common policy of excluding all meat from domesticated animals such as cats and dogs was too fuzzy for me. I experimented with different schelling points for a while, but it all seemed very arbitrary, even the schelling point right between humans and non-human animals, so I decided I had to either taboo all kinds of meat, or none.
Then it occured to me that there were some people around me I quite liked and really wouldn’t want to eat or seen eaten, so I’d have needed a schelling point anyway to determine which humans were fair game and which were not, and a very subjective one at that, and that was when I settled on vegetarianism.
A year or so thereafter I was considering veganism for a while, but it restricted my options too much and I was actually quite happy with the schelling point I had established, so that experiment was abandoned quickly.
Perhaps the whole thing becomes more understandable if I say that at the time I was generally aiming for more intrinsic consistency, and I was also regarding religious people who were actually living their lives according to their beliefs much more highly than lukewarm atheists who read horoscopes. In a way, my switch to vegetarianism was a side effect of my effort to develop a unified personal system of ethics.
None of this is related to human or animal suffering in any way, I’m afraid.
I think the word you’re looking for is pet—the standard meaning of domesticated also includes livestock, whose meat, if anything, I guess is seen as less ethically problematic than game by many people. (From your username, I’m guessing you’re not a native speaker. FWIW, neither am I.)
I decided I had to either taboo all kinds of meat, or none
You know, you could decide not to eat certain kinds of meat for reasons other than “taboo”; for example, that it’s too expensive (either in terms of money or of energy) or that you don’t like the way it tastes or for signalling reasons or for health reasons or because you’d be uncomfortable with the idea of eating it for purely emotional reasons or whatever. Just because oysters don’t feel pain doesn’t mean I’m obligated to eat them, if I know better ways to spend my money or if I prefer the taste of different food.
I think the word you’re looking for is pet—the standard meaning of domesticated also includes livestock, whose meat, if anything, I guess is seen as less ethically problematic than game by many people. (From your username, I’m guessing you’re not a native speaker. FWIW, neither am I.)
You’re right, it’s not exactly a matter of domestication, but it’s not only pets, either; horses fall into that category just as well. As I said, it’s too fuzzy and arbitrary.
You know, you could decide not to eat certain kinds of meat for reasons other than “taboo”; for example, that it’s too expensive (either in terms of money or of energy) or that you don’t like the way it tastes or for signalling reasons or for health reasons or because you’d be uncomfortable with the idea of eating it for purely emotional reasons or whatever. Just because oysters don’t feel pain doesn’t mean I’m obligated to eat them, if I know better ways to spend my money or if I prefer the taste of different food.
But that’s exactly the point, I was deliberately looking to find some general system that would allow me to classify food into two categories. Of course I don’t eat something I don’t like or that’s otherwise undesirable if it can be avoided, that’s not the issue here. This is purely about the moral part, and the problem is that there’s some meat I have moral obejctions to eating, and other meat I don’t, and there’s a very slippery slope in between. If I object to eating human meat, where’s the watershed? How about the homo sapiens species in general, such as the extinct subspecies h. sapiens idaltu? How about other species of the homo genus? Apes? Monkeys? Aliens?
A collection of ad-hoc rules isn’t a system of ethics.
If you’re really still interested in this...
I started my vegetarian diet shortly after I decided to adopt some definite policy in terms of which kinds of meat were ok to eat and which were not, because the common policy of excluding all meat from domesticated animals such as cats and dogs was too fuzzy for me. I experimented with different schelling points for a while, but it all seemed very arbitrary, even the schelling point right between humans and non-human animals, so I decided I had to either taboo all kinds of meat, or none.
Then it occured to me that there were some people around me I quite liked and really wouldn’t want to eat or seen eaten, so I’d have needed a schelling point anyway to determine which humans were fair game and which were not, and a very subjective one at that, and that was when I settled on vegetarianism.
A year or so thereafter I was considering veganism for a while, but it restricted my options too much and I was actually quite happy with the schelling point I had established, so that experiment was abandoned quickly.
Perhaps the whole thing becomes more understandable if I say that at the time I was generally aiming for more intrinsic consistency, and I was also regarding religious people who were actually living their lives according to their beliefs much more highly than lukewarm atheists who read horoscopes. In a way, my switch to vegetarianism was a side effect of my effort to develop a unified personal system of ethics.
None of this is related to human or animal suffering in any way, I’m afraid.
You know, you could decide not to eat certain kinds of meat for reasons other than “taboo”; for example, that it’s too expensive (either in terms of money or of energy) or that you don’t like the way it tastes or for signalling reasons or for health reasons or because you’d be uncomfortable with the idea of eating it for purely emotional reasons or whatever. Just because oysters don’t feel pain doesn’t mean I’m obligated to eat them, if I know better ways to spend my money or if I prefer the taste of different food.
You’re right, it’s not exactly a matter of domestication, but it’s not only pets, either; horses fall into that category just as well. As I said, it’s too fuzzy and arbitrary.
But that’s exactly the point, I was deliberately looking to find some general system that would allow me to classify food into two categories. Of course I don’t eat something I don’t like or that’s otherwise undesirable if it can be avoided, that’s not the issue here. This is purely about the moral part, and the problem is that there’s some meat I have moral obejctions to eating, and other meat I don’t, and there’s a very slippery slope in between. If I object to eating human meat, where’s the watershed? How about the homo sapiens species in general, such as the extinct subspecies h. sapiens idaltu? How about other species of the homo genus? Apes? Monkeys? Aliens?
A collection of ad-hoc rules isn’t a system of ethics.