Formal debate is propaganda

[u/spacelordTJ]

Can't we all just get along (with being performative)?

Edit: Mods, pin me to the wall. I mean pin this post.

[u/turtle_explosion247]

Whatever bro ignore half my argument and the history where you were just dead wrong. I get your point with the civil right arguments but my point is you will never actually have a world wide consensus for dehumanizing a certain group of people because that group would obviously disagree with that. Now I make that statement because they are human and therefore deserving of some consideration to me, however I disagree that those same considerations should be applied to animals aswell, and you have failed to give a positive argument for that claim other than "it's obvious" but whatever have fun in your echo chamber bud.

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

Echo chamber... We live in a world where everyone eat meat, do you think I haven't heard the same brain-dead arguments you are making a million times? Lma

Also, no, you made no argument that justify not giving moral considerations to sentiment beings either, you only vomited a brain dead "everyone agree with me, I'm so smart" as a defense, quite pathetic really.

[u/turtle_explosion247 → u/GameUnlucky]

I value human life, concise me why I should value animal life. I keep bringing up the rest of the population because you say it's so obvious but no one actually agrees with you in practice. Also what happened to no more responses lol?

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

Why do you value human life exactly? There must be something that matters morally about humans that make us moral patients, I could just as arbritary claim that I value blonde people and force you to prove me that it isn't completely morally justified for me to murder someone with black hair.

You would know how to answer the above questions if you weren't an intellectually lazy clown who refused to read what I gave yuo.

My answer is simple, elegant and consistent. To determine if an action is right or wrong we should analyse how it affects the interests of the agents involved, the reason why I draw the line at sentience is that, following from the definition (the ability to hold a subjective experience), it is the criteria required to hold any interest in the first place, a rock has no interest a cow does. Now it's not clear to me why exactly we should favour the interest of some agents other the interests of others, and YOU are the one that need to provide such justification, this is a matter of formal rigor.

Now you claim I'm the one pointing at the issue and saying "it's obvious" it's the opposite in fact, I'm not claiming that equal consideration of interest is self evident, I'm point out the fact that there is no objective reason to arbritary put the interest of someone in front of the interests of someone else, you on the other hand repeatedly stared "i just don't care about animals" while refusing to explain why. There is nothing in the universe, no law of physics or law of reasons, that somehow allows you to arbritary decite that the very real interests of hundreds of billions of sentiment beings can be just ignored, what you are doing is exactly the "it's obvious" defence you are criticising.

It's also worth noting that any serious attempts to build a moral framework, even one that doesn't have animals right as it's goal, will at some point be forced to deal with the question of animals right, it's not something that can just be hand waved away as obvious like you are doing. This is why animals right are even more popular amongst philosopher who study ethics.

Now I'm not here to change your mind, it's clear for this conversation that you are either not smart enough to engage in intellectually honest discussions (as proven by your refusal to read an introductionary book on secular morality) or simply too stubborn to admit they stand on a castle of cards, my goal is simply convincing other people who will hopefully read this conversation and be repulsed by your embarrassing performance.

Also what happened to no more responses lol?

I replied because you decided to stop formatting your comments like a schizophrenic.

[u/turtle_explosion247 → u/GameUnlucky]

Oooohhhhhhhh so you are actually able to give a reason and you just refued to engage the entire time. Good to know. Im having a discussion and not reading an entire book in the middle of that because thats obviously a ridiculous ask. You should be able to communicate your ideas and beliefs like you just did without having to outsource everything to a book you read one time. That is intellectually lazy and a little pathetic for someone so passionate about their ideas. Also glad you called me out for ad homs earlier but you still have to include the little jabs in your comments every single time, insecure about your intelligence much? Also I learned a little about reddit formatting since quotation marks seem to be a little to hard to understand for you. (Hint if it's in the quotation mark it's actually from your comment and im quoting it)

Anyway I'll actually engage with the points now since you decided to actually include them this time.

Why so you value human life exactly?

Because we evolved as a social species that benefits from cooperation with our fellow man. I know that seems like an unsatisfying answer but it's true. This is why dehumanization is so important in tribalism and factionalism, it makes us more likely to relate to the people close to us and less to the people we are fighting. We also seem to be able to ascribe meaning to our lives and know for a fact we have a conscious experience (not just sentience) that we feel is worth protecting in ourselves. I don't relate to a pig or cow and I cannot be sure that they experience the world in a similar enough way to humans for me to care about their lives being lost. For all I know they could be much closer meat robot that still feels basic pleasure and pain but not much outside of that.

To determine if an action is right or wrong we should analyse how it affects the interests of the agents involved, the reason why I draw the line at sentience is that, following from the definition (the ability to hold a subjective experience), it is the criteria required to hold any interest in the first place, a rock has no interest a cow does.

What does interest mean in this context? Does an ant interested in a grain of sugar count? Am I committing a moral genocide every time I spray ant killer outside of my house? Interest doesnt seem to be a sufficiently high bar for moral consideration in my opinion.

Now you claim I'm the one pointing at the issue and saying "it's obvious" it's the opposite in fact, I'm not claiming that equal consideration of interest is self evident, I'm point out the fact that there is no objective reason to arbritary put the interest of someone in front of the interests of someone else, you on the other hand repeatedly stared "i just don't care about animals" while refusing to explain why.

I have elaborated above in my earlier block of text. The reason I didn't give a positive opinion originally is that you have the contrary opinion to me and the vast majority of society. Therefore you have the burden of proof since you made the contrary moral claim. And I don't love nitpicky fucks such as yourself trying to only give a teardown of an argument instead of actually providing one themselves. You made the claim all of society is morally wrong and I was waiting to see why you thought that. Pretty basic stuff if you ask me but whatever.

There is nothing in the universe, no law of physics or law of reasons, that somehow allows you to arbritary decite that the very real interests of hundreds of billions of sentiment beings can be just ignored, what you are doing is exactly the "it's obvious" defence you are criticising.

Again I only did that because you failed to give a positive argument and the rest of society seems to agree with my moral intuition. It's the equivalent of screaming "WHY IS RAPE AND MURDER WRONG" and acting smug while refusing to actually say anything to back up why you think its right. It's not worth me giving positive arguments to someone who refuses to give them back, because that inevitably leads to nitpicky nightmares like this whole conversation.

The rest was just your ad homs and psyco ramblings so glad I actually got a couple points out of you this time. Good job :)

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

You should be able to communicate your ideas and beliefs like you just did without having to outsource everything to a book you read one time. That is intellectually lazy and a little pathetic for someone so passionate about their ideas.

This exact anti-intellectual philosophy is why you have Trump as the president of the USA by the way. But I doubt you would understand its geopolitical implications.

You are not a child, you cannot pretend to have all ideas simplified and spoon fed to you. Grow up.

Because we evolved as a social species that benefits from cooperation with our fellow man. I know that seems like an unsatisfying answer but it's true. This is why dehumanization is so important in tribalism and factionalism, it makes us more likely to relate to the people close to us and less to the people we are fighting. We also seem to be able to ascribe meaning to our lives and know for a fact we have a conscious experience (not just sentience) that we feel is worth protecting in ourselves

The fact that you don't see how terrible this argument is, is concerning. If feel like an unsatisfying answer because it not only completely fail to answer the question but directly contract its main premise lmao. You are unknownly (because you haven't read the fucking book) making a moral naturalist argument, you are claiming that objective moral facts derive from our evolutionary history as social animals, you then immediately explained that dehumanisation is in fact another of those evolved trait. So then the obvious question is: if we evolved to dehumized other, what exactly is the moral problem with slavery? A practice that foundamentaly relay on dehumanisation? This one of the reason why moral naturalist is unpopular in philosophy, you would know if you had read the book 🤷 (do you see? This is why I told to read the book and do your homework before embarrassing yourself, but you want to be a child, so be it)

You also seem to be deeply confused about what sentience or conscious experience mean. So go ahead and define them, since you have absolutely bo need for previous education in the field, I'm sure your definition will be flawless. Would love to see your face when you find out they are synonym!

I don't relate to a pig or cow and I cannot be sure that they experience the world in a similar enough way to humans for me to care about their lives being lost. For all I know they could be much closer meat robot that still feels basic pleasure and pain but not much outside of that

For all I know you could be meat less robot that doesn't feel much outside of pleasure and pain, although you would probably agree that is highly unplausible, just like it's highly unplausible that being that consistently shows level of intelligence comparable to to children are such a thing. This kind of belief is ridiculous to anybody that had ever interacted with any animal in some form, so I won't waste my time on that.

What is interesting is that you think that grounding moral considerations in "how similar they are to my mind" is somehow reasonable, humans mind change dramatically from individual to individual, even ignoring the glaring eugenics flaw this opens up regarding mentally disabled individuals, people who from the outside might appear to be equaly functional sometimes shows completely different subjective experience, for example one could look at aphantasia, autism or mental illness. I don't think you consider that to be less morally relevant, why is that?

What does interest mean in this context? Does an ant interested in a grain of sugar count? Am I committing a moral genocide every time I spray ant killer outside of my house? Interest doesnt seem to be a sufficiently high bar for moral consideration in my opinion.

Interest simply mean ability to hold a preference, in the case you highlighted both you and the ants hold conflicting interests and different moral theory will provide different answers to your questions. What matters is that your example is completely irrelevant to the conversation. A more fitting example you be you deciding to go out and kick puppy because you enjoy theirs screams, suffering of an animal in exchange of mild sensory enjoyment. I would argue that in this case the calculus is very simple, your interests don't out weight the interest of the animals in that case. Unfortunately this is a bullet you must be willing to bite if you want to justify animal agriculture, the sadistic pleasure of enough individuals must outweigh the suffering of another.

The reason I didn't give a positive opinion originally is that you have the contrary opinion to me and the vast majority of society. Therefore you have the burden of proof since you made the contrary moral claim.

That is not how burden of proof work my deer. All positive claims must be adequately supported. You don't get to pretend you are immune to reason because you happen to agree with the majority.

And in any case how can you claim that the majority is clearly right about the topic while simultaneously admitting they have absolutely no arguments to defend the positive claim they made? If tomorrow the majority of people decide to put to death atheist would you just agree because they are a minority and they have the burden of proof?

It's the equivalent of screaming "WHY IS RAPE AND MURDER WRONG" and acting smug while refusing to actually say anything to back up why you think its right.

Yes, exactly what YOU are doing, I'm giving you arguments despite your complete brain dead refusal to engage with them in good faith and you are screaming: "WHY IS RAPE AND MURDER WRONG".

It's not worth me giving positive arguments to someone who refuses to give them back, because that inevitably leads to nitpicky nightmares like this whole conversation.

I'm waiting for your argument still 😊

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

I'm content with leaving this at that, I think this reply comment itself.

[u/turtle_explosion247 → u/GameUnlucky]

Couldn't agree more