What were the moral arguments for vegetarianism that you found utterly unconvincing? Where did you hear or read these?
The ones that say we should care about what happens to animals and what animals experience, including arguments from suffering. I’ve heard them in lots of places; the OP has himself posted an example — his own essay “Why Eat Less Meat?”
Are you interested in reducing the suffering of humans?
Yeah.
If so, why?
I think if you unpacked this aspect of my values, you’d find something like “sapient / self-aware beings matter” or “conscious minds that are able to think and reason matter”. That’s more or less how I think about it, though converting that into something rigorous is nontrivial. “Matter” here is used in a broad sense; I care about sapient beings, think that their suffering is wrong, and also consider such beings the appropriate reference class for “veil of ignorance” type arguments, which I find relevant and at least partly convincing.
My caring about reducing human suffering has limits (in more than one dimension). It is not necessarily my highest value, and interacts with my other values in various ways, although I mostly use consequentialism in my moral reasoning and so those interactions are reasonably straightforward for the most part.
Or, what evolutionary difference do you think gives a difference in the ability to experience consciousness at all between humans and other animals with largely similar central nervous systems/brains?
The ones that say we should care about what happens to animals and what animals experience, including arguments from suffering. I’ve heard them in lots of places; the OP has himself posted an example — his own essay “Why Eat Less Meat?”
Yeah.
I think if you unpacked this aspect of my values, you’d find something like “sapient / self-aware beings matter” or “conscious minds that are able to think and reason matter”. That’s more or less how I think about it, though converting that into something rigorous is nontrivial. “Matter” here is used in a broad sense; I care about sapient beings, think that their suffering is wrong, and also consider such beings the appropriate reference class for “veil of ignorance” type arguments, which I find relevant and at least partly convincing.
My caring about reducing human suffering has limits (in more than one dimension). It is not necessarily my highest value, and interacts with my other values in various ways, although I mostly use consequentialism in my moral reasoning and so those interactions are reasonably straightforward for the most part.
Do you think that animals can suffer?
Or, what evolutionary difference do you think gives a difference in the ability to experience consciousness at all between humans and other animals with largely similar central nervous systems/brains?