So I’d ask the cow to give reasons for wanting to be eaten. It’s hard for me to see how those reasons could be convincing. Certainly “because I’m a cow” wouldn’t convince me.
“Why do you want to be eaten?”
“It seems nice. Why do you want to have sex with attractive members of your species?”
“Because it gives me pleasure.”
“But you’re not having that pleasure right now. You’re just anticipating it. Your anticipation is something happening in your brain now, irrespective of whether a particular sex act would actually turn out to be pleasurable. Similarly, my desire to be eaten is happening in my brain now, fully aware of the fact that I won’t be around to notice it if it happens. Not that different.”
“So? I know where my desire to have sex comes from — it comes from my evolutionary past; members of my ancestors’ generations who didn’t want sex are much less likely to have had kids. They died alone, or became monks or something.”
“And I know where my desire to be eaten comes from — it comes from my genetically-engineered past; members of my ancestors’ generations who didn’t want to be eaten were discarded. Their bodies ended up being destroyed without being eaten! (And, of course, without having their DNA cloned and propagated.)”
“But that’s artificial! You were manipulated!”
“No, I wasn’t. My ancestral environment and my ancestors’ genes were manipulated; just as yours were manipulated by sexual selection. I’ve personally never met a genetic engineer in my life! My experience of it is just that ever since puberty, I’ve really wanted someone to eat me. It’s just the sort of organism I am. Human gets horny; cow gets tasty.”
“So what you’re saying is, you want to be eaten because …”
“Why do you want to be eaten?”
“It seems nice. Why do you want to have sex with attractive members of your species?”
“Because it gives me pleasure.”
“But you’re not having that pleasure right now. You’re just anticipating it. Your anticipation is something happening in your brain now, irrespective of whether a particular sex act would actually turn out to be pleasurable. Similarly, my desire to be eaten is happening in my brain now, fully aware of the fact that I won’t be around to notice it if it happens. Not that different.”
“So? I know where my desire to have sex comes from — it comes from my evolutionary past; members of my ancestors’ generations who didn’t want sex are much less likely to have had kids. They died alone, or became monks or something.”
“And I know where my desire to be eaten comes from — it comes from my genetically-engineered past; members of my ancestors’ generations who didn’t want to be eaten were discarded. Their bodies ended up being destroyed without being eaten! (And, of course, without having their DNA cloned and propagated.)”
“But that’s artificial! You were manipulated!”
“No, I wasn’t. My ancestral environment and my ancestors’ genes were manipulated; just as yours were manipulated by sexual selection. I’ve personally never met a genetic engineer in my life! My experience of it is just that ever since puberty, I’ve really wanted someone to eat me. It’s just the sort of organism I am. Human gets horny; cow gets tasty.”
“So what you’re saying is, you want to be eaten because …”
″… because I’m a cow, pretty much. So … steak?”
This whole thread puts me in mind of this for some reason.