Posted on 07/02/2025 11:49:31 AM PDT by DallasBiff
Abstract: Here are two commonly held moral views. First, we must save strangers’ lives, at least if we can do so easily: you would be required to rescue a child drowning in a pond even if it will ruin your expensive suit. Second, it is wrong to eat meat because of the suffering caused to animals in factory farms. Many accept both simultaneously—Peter Singer is the pre-eminent example. I point out that these two beliefs are in a sharp and seemingly unrecognised tension and may even be incompatible. It seems universally accepted that doing or allowing a harm is permissible—and may even be required—when it is the lesser evil. I argue that, if meat eating is wrong on animal suffering grounds then, once we consider how much suffering might occur, it starts to seem plausible that saving strangers would be the greater evil than not rescuing them and is, therefore, not required after all. Given the uncertainties and subjective assessments here, reasonable people could substantially disagree. The surprising result is that a moral principle widely considered to be obviously true—we must rescue others—is not, on further reflection, obviously true and would be defensibly rejected by some. Some potential implications are discussed.
(Excerpt) Read more at journalofcontroversialideas.org ...
I am on high doses of warfarin. No greens for me.
Blithering idiocy.
Are we not to allow anything higher up the food chain than bacteria to live, so as to minimize the killing from “food” consumption?
Or draw the line at carnivores that should now be starved so as not to consume any animal-based food?
Yes, of course, we should be as humane as possible in our growing and killing of animals for food.
They are in species denial
Omnivores survive.
He’s a moral philosopher. They navel gaze a lot...
If you believe that it's wrong to eat animals because they're sentient beings, and you also believe it's right to abort babies because they're "just clumps of cells" ... you might be leftist indoctrinated num skull full of mush.
There is no viable moral argument against killing animals, in the normal manner, for consumption.
The only substantive reasoning against it is reducible to the aesthetic sense.
From what I’ve seen from Peter Singer over the years, he’s not an honest philosopher.
I think I see the problem.
Is this advisory connected to the same Peter Singer, he, a hard core vegetarian, formerly of Princeton, who now promotes euthanasia? Pete says if a person does not have a desire to live, then KILLING THEM DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A WRONG!
Peter Singer is about to become a Birthday Boy;
July 6, 1946.
being a vegan or a carnivore is not a good way to go
omnivore is the best choice
Who was the first one on record to kill an animal?
God (Genesis 3:21).
Why?
Because Adam’s fall ushered in death and, whereas in the beginning food was available on trees for meat, now because of Adam’s fallen state, animals had to be killed and were good for food (& in this case clothing) because God put Adam ahead of animals who were needed for Adam’s wellbeing (1 Timothy 4:3-4).
Howzabout minding your own business?
God’s sacrifice for us. A foreshadowing of the sacrifice of His Son for us.
On a more frivolous (and nonbiblical viewpoint) - “If God didn’t want us to eat animals He wouldn’t have made them out of meat!”
Yes. Blood had to be shed for sin.
Thank God for his unspeakable redemption.
I stopped reading at “Peter Singer”. I wonder how this writer on one hand can talk about saving a drowning child, but then references an “ethicist” who thinks children less than 30 days old aren’t human, and can be killed if deemed undesirable.
I think the author makes some valid, albeit verbose points. Most importantly he exposes the conflict between utilitarianism (most leftist will state their core philosophy as some form of minimizing suffering) and the glut of other moral positions a leftist will take.
Read the first part, just to hear the argument against eating meat. Short version is, they start with a false premise that the value of a “chicken’s life” is equivalent to the value of a human’s life. In other words, they create a moral equivalence between chickens and humans. Therefore, killing a chicken to save a human is immoral, because a human cannot survive on just one chicken, therefore we have to kill a lot of chickens to support a human. Their “duty of easy rescue” towards humans then falls apart because we are creating greater harm to the chickens than good for the human.
It is humanism (i.e, man is god), with a weird bent that although they are humanists, they do not believe in human exceptionalism.
My wife and I are in our mid 80’s and so are our siblings.
We all eat real meat with real veggies and fruit. Nobody is labeled as fat.
Our basic diet would be labeled as a Med Type diet.
Our adult children are in their late 50’s to mid 60’s, and everyone eats like we do with a balanced diet, aka Med Diet.
None are overweight.
Two adopted children, raised in/with our families, died in their early to mid-late 50’s.
Maybe our DNA is responsible for our life spans not food.
Probably 75% of it
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.