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kess3r comments on Unspeakable Morality - Less Wrong
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I have no idea where you got those suggestions. Neither one is accurate about my beliefs: I don't go around using the concept of virtue when I talk about ethics, and I only think bad things can be also unethical when they are the result of deliberate or negligent actions/inactions by a person. I think ethics is about the behavior of persons, not the behavior of lions or the edibility of antelopes.
I get my opinions about who should be a vegetarian by the following logic:
I would not up and kill a cow/chicken/guinea pig/cat/whatever for no reason. It seems to me that it would be wrong to go around killing animals (or, for that matter, smashing vases or setting books on fire or committing any act of destruction) for no reason.
It seems that there are some reasons where it would be quite okay to kill an animal (or smash a vase or set a book on fire). If I were starving (if I needed a shard of ceramic to cut some wrongly convicted-of-witchcraft person free from a stake/if I were otherwise going to freeze to death) then I would kill and eat a cow (smash a vase/set a book on fire).
So somewhere in the space of reason-having, between "no reason" and "otherwise a person will die", there must be a threshold of adequacy sufficient to kill an animal (or do any other destructive thing). For the death-for-food of non-personhood-having animals, I draw that line at the excellent quality of life of whoever might eat them. I can have an excellent quality of life and eat only occasional fish. My friend who gets sick when she doesn't eat enough meat can't. So she needn't be a vegetarian, but I should.
So if I understand you correctly, you say that the reward 'quality of life of whoever might eat cows' does not justify the cost of taking the life of said cows.
Well, why not? Not only are cows delicious, cows need humans to survive. Many humans enjoy the deliciousness of cows. It is a symbiotic relationship, cows evolved deliciousness and passivity to be easily handled while humans use their technology to protect and provide for cows in return.
Interrupting this relationship will result in the extinction or near extinction of cows. If said cow is not eaten by a human, it does not go on living happily ever after. Said cow would find it very difficult if not impossible to survive on it's own in the wild. Over thousands of years cows lost their ability to fight of predators and instead became good at growing meat, milk and being passive so that farmers could handle it easily. Removing they cow from it's ecosystem(the farm) is not like freeing it.
Do you see what I'm getting at? The vegetarian agenda is would hurt the cow species.
I'm not sure a 'species' is the sort of thing that is could be hurt.
You don't.
This is the opposite of what I said.
Yes. I have already said I don't care if cows go extinct, except inasmuch as they are useful. If they stop being useful (if people stop eating them and using their byproducts) then they can go extinct and this will not bother me.
It doesn't bother you if cows go extinct but it bothers you if humans kill cows for food? I don't understand. Going extinct is worse than individuals periodically dying. Going extinct means the ALL die.
The cows that already exist are the only cows I wish to spare suffering. They will die anyway; no one is planning to make any cows immortal. If they simply don't have calves, the cow species will go extinct without doing any harm to any cows that already exist.
Thou know’st ’tis common; all that live must die, passing through nature to eternity. This way, though, they don't leave descendents to toil in cages.
As I said before, the worst part of a factory farm cow's existence isn't death, but life.
[quote]the worst part of a factory farm cow's existence isn't death, but life[/quote] I disagree on multiple levels.
-Dying is worse than living no matter how bad of a place you live in -cows don't think like humans. the biggest factor in their happiness is food. cows might be quite happy in farms, or at the very least I think their life is not a permanent state of torture.
"Dying is worse than living no matter how bad of a place you live in"
Would you rather die and disappear, or die and burn in hell? Or burn in hell while alive? Never say never.
"cows don't think like humans"
Yes. They don't anticipate death. They don't stay up all night fearing it. It comes as one sharp blow, and then oblivion.