= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Peterdjones comments on Most-Moral-Minority Morality - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (35)
I guessed such a strategy would hasten moral progress. I think of moral progress as the morality of a more sensitive minority impressing itself, over time, on the general population. Do you think of examples that don't fit this pattern? But -- for example -- most people I know aren't vegetarian but I think meat eaters could agree that vegetarians have the moral high ground if it were to be a moral issue. Meat eaters folding to become vegetarians would accelerate moral progress if this is what a future moral society would choose.
Imagine that there is some behavior called "snarf," which 10% of the population thinks is morally acceptable but 90% thinks is abhorrent. The desire of the 10% to perform snarf is going to be outweighed by the desire of the 90% to ban snarf. Thus, society will not move in the direction of legalizing snarf. If that's still too abstract, substitute "gay marriage" for "snarf."
Similarly, meat eaters would probably not agree that vegetarians hold the high ground.
I don't think that a good analogy. i've never heard of a carnivore who thought meat eating was morally better. Their argument is that meat eating is not so much worse that it becomes an ethical no-no, rather than a ethically neutral lifestyle choice. (Morally level ground).
People can even carry on doing something they think is morally wrong on the excuse of akrasia.
And gay marriage is becoming slowly accepted.
By sheerest coincidence, I just tabbed over from precisely that argument offsite. The arguments in favor of meat-eating struck me as rather confused (an odd quasi-Nietzschean will-to-power thing mixed with biological determinism, as best I can tell), but they were moral arguments and they were in favor of carnivory.
I'd expect that sort of thing to be rather rare, though. The mainstream position does seem to be that it simply isn't a moral issue.
I suspect that you either haven't looked very hard or very long.
If you have, perhaps you can give me a pointer.
Recently stumbled into this. It's probably incomplete, but it's something.
Meat eating is morally better because meat dishes are objectively more aesthetically and gastronomically pleasing, and pleasure is a moral good.
Meat eating is morally better because meat dishes are objectively more aesthetically and gastronomically pleasing, and pleasure is a moral good.
Meat eating is morally better because meat dishes are objectively more aesthetically and gastronomically pleasing, and pleasure is a moral good.
Meat eating is morally better because meat dishes are objectively more aesthetically and gastronomically pleasing, and pleasure is a moral good.
I have. The argument went something like this:
Presumably they hunt their own meat...going to the supermarket is pretty unnatural.
Katja Grace claimed to me that being a total utilitarian led her to prefer eating meat, since eating animals creates a reason for the animals to exist in the first place, and she imagines they'd prefer to exist for a while, and then be slaughtered, than not exist at all.
I tend to hang out in the average utilitarian camp, so that one didn't move me much. On the other hand:
I'm pretty sure that the maximally healthy diet for me contains meat, that I can be maximally effective in my chosen goals when maximally healthy, and that my likely moral impact on the world makes sacrifices on the order of a cow per year (note that cows are big and hamburgers are small) look like a rounding error.