Animals require pain (and/or some form of stimuli), it is an evolved survival mechanism, an integral part of physiology. Suffering - has an emotion component humans have and relate to - can be evoke by physical pain (a mechanistic response to stimuli). Suffering in reference to conscientious/being emotional distrait is a different category.

Is good when people who can actually speak english explain stuff.

Because the more rules you have a duty over, the more predictable your responses to situations becomes. You adopt numerous heuristics and make yourself into a robot. Note: I am not arguing against the moral quality of those rules. They could be the best rules. I am arguing against the sheer frequency of rules and implications of following as many of them as possible. Indeed, once you freely accept that moral rules come with an imperative, how is there ever going back? The snowball doesn't stop. The freedom is but illusory at that point.

Picture a future where we've successfully deduced a list of all the morally beneficial behaviors and our freedom to do otherwise is restricted to the point that we feel immense guilt for doing the opposite. A future where nearly all our behavior is predictable. A hive-colony, if you wish. I have no desire for this way of life, now or ever.

My argument is for balance. Do the wrong thing sometimes, for the new experience it provides. Take some risks. Be selfish. Don't be a robot. Or do the opposite of this. Do what you want. I have no "should be's" for you. I just have information. Your decision. I value freedom above all else. Even morality, if and when it gets in the way. You don't have to. Value what you want. Have your constraints. If continuous experimentation is too much of a burden then take the rules. There's only about an infinite amount of them, suggested to you on a nearly daily basis. Or don't. Do what works for you. Importantly, have the good sense to criticize me about how vague a concept - balance - is

Or don't.
So you agree then, that we're free to experience the world in any way we choose?

As for constraints, I've said it before. Do what works for you. I have no "should be's" for you.
I will. Once im seated infront of a computer instead of on my phone. Either tomorrow or on the weekend. Thanks for asking

I'm on the band wagon which states that the moral tenor of this activity, eating animals, is judged by the individual man with respect to himself and only to himself.

This does not deny the culture's ability to prescribe laws and norms to which its people do accord with and attempt in some form to follow. If a man decides to not eat meat due to compulsion (within a law) then he is not acting freely whereas while still living within that culture he thinks and comprehends, in some manner, the idea of the law and does follow suit then as a "knowing doer" he acts within "freedom or better yet as in knighthood he acts as being in "freehood".

The animal certainly can suffer and has a sensate ability but not so the vegetable or mineral. In ancient India the priestly class were vegetarian while the warrior class were flesh eaters. To make it clear this in no way denies the fact that the participants could occasionally break their vows or dietetic.

If one eats meat there are subtle changes of the meat eaters character such that the eating of sensate beings precipitates a subtle inner agitation not much noted by the meat eater but nonetheless can be observed within one's self. this is not so with the ingestion of plants.

When the human being takes in food he, via the digestive system has to completely destroy or annihilate the food to a level beyond the mineral . there is no external food or substance allowed entry to the human constitution which can carry its own nature, i.e. sensibility and life which includes the plant.

I will skip steps here for brevity but understand the words "annihilate" and "beyond physicality" are not hyperbole but physiological reality.

When a man eats food he gains "strength" through his ability to overcome all foreign entities of any sort . This "power" can be appreciated by a sense of well being but also can turn to the negative by improper nourishment. Its not an all or nothing process.

The meat eater, as thought of on the street corner, beats his chest and relishes the beef steak as a powerful feeling of self worth,exaggeration but to the point . The truth of the matter is that the vegetarian eats that which is created through the earth and in effect gains more power than the meat eater as the animal has already "pre digested" the earthly fauna for the meat eater. The meat eater doesn't have to work as hard and in essence , all things considered, is marginally weak and somewhat more agitated due to his dietetic relative to the vegetarian.

And so, if one leads a busy life with day long activities the vegetarian dietetic will help with strength but of course this does not mean that the veggie can bench press more weight, not so simple.

Back to the physiology; its not so apparent but telling that those who have lived or brought up in a vegetarian culture will have a longer digestive system than a culture of meat eaters. The culture of ancestral vegetarians will perforce have a longer digestive system than its corresponding meat eating culture.

Within the human being there are powers or activities to which digestion is accomplished and if one is a meat eater these powers, which lie fallow, rise to the surface and precipitate the aforementioned uneasiness; not so much the vegetarian .

An Indian of the vegetarian culture may indeed speak to the eating of animals with moral import as can the meat eating culture. The difficulty is that the meat eating culture, through evolution will , by and large, have a shorter digestive system. It could very well be that the Northern European , a continent of meat eaters, will have a very difficult time becoming a vegetarian due to the inability to thrive only on vegetables.

This physiological capability or lack thereof stands strong against those who would condemn , in this respect the meat eaters. Its tantamount to condemning all the green eyed people of the world, lol.

I'm loathe to use the animal kingdom as example but it is clear that the cow has four (4) stomachs and has digestive length of approximately 40 meters. He can be and is totally vegetarian and his physiology stands proof to this. this doesn't mean that a cow wont eat animal flesh put in his feed or eat a dead bird but that's a story of illness or disease.

Likewise look at the cat, your little kitty at home and note how he devours his food and you will see the consequence of a shortened digestive system.

The contented cow and the voracious lion, its almost as if their characters , in some manner, are in keeping with their physiology, as one might expect. finis.

No.

An artificial heart is a mimic of a heart. It appears like a heart and reproduces the function of heart, but it's still a machine, discernible from that which it mimics.

To clarify first, I am not a historian, nor do I intend to present the ideas of Sartre and Dostoyevsky (my favourite) in a historical fashion. My own interpretation, instead, will be part and parcel of the description below.

Authenticity is considered a virtue, in the Aristotelian sense. In the sense that one may be in excess of or in deficiency of authenticity; with the virtue residing in-between the excess and deficiency. Already here, we begin with a notion of balance. It is a virtue also in the sense that you can become better at it.

A lot of existentialist theory is based on the supposition that within contemporary society, the vast majority of people are deficient of authenticity. In other words, inauthentic. Even non-existentialists like Schopenhauer have acknowledged this to some extent...

"We sacrifice two thirds of ourselves to be like others" - Schopenhauer.

Some interpret that to 'define oneself' through existentialism can mean that anyone can wish to be anything; even if that is not what they are. This is not what is meant by existentialism.

Rather, you are defined by your actions and your responsibility over those actions. If you act unjustly toward other people, you are defined as being unjust. Through your unjust actions you are responsible for your new identity (unjust person). This is in opposition to your 'genes' or human nature bearing the blame.

.. man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards" - Sartre. A person can choose to act differently, and to be a just person. Since people can choose to be just or unjust, they are, in fact, neither of these things essentially.

Now returning back to authenticity, the virtue. It has no meaning alone, as separate from the concept of 'facticity'. Facticity refers to the temporal dimension of existence. Simply, it is your past. Your past co-constitutes who you are. Many attribute - who they are - solely to their past, although this ignores the present and the future. We'll return to that later however.

Facticity is a limitation of freedom, in that it comprises many of the things you could not have chosen, such as your parents, your country of birth, your genes, and so on. Facticity is also a condition of freedom, in that your values will, in some part, depend on your facticity.

The value ascribed to one's facticity is ascribed to it freely by the individual. Excuse me here for referring to Wiki for an example, but it is a good one: "consider two men, one of whom has no memory of his past and the other who remembers everything. They both have committed many crimes, but the first man, knowing nothing about this, leads a rather normal life while the second man, feeling trapped by his own past, continues a life of crime, blaming his own past for "trapping" him in this life. There is nothing essential about his committing crimes, but he ascribes this meaning to his past."

To live authentically, a person must allow their values to come into play when they make a choice, so that they take responsibility for that act instead of choosing either or without allowing the options to have different values.

The inauthentic person rejects living in accordance with their freedom. This can take many forms, from pretending choices are meaningless or random, through convincing oneself that some form of determinism is true, to a kind of "mimicry" where one acts as "one should".

Now returning back to the fact that the majority of people define themselves by their past - we can now introduce another new concept. Transcendence. One can transcend their past and develop new values, in the hope of a better or different future. Here another temporal dimension is introduced to the process of defining oneself - the future. Consideration of what you may wish to be or what you may wish to experience in the future ALSO form a part of who you are. Lastly, the present comes into play, insofar as you see your capabilities in the present moment and acknowledge your freedom to be otherwise. Balancing these three more evenly, is essential.

Anyway, I am drifting a little off-course now. There is just so much to talk about. I will conclude here by mentioning that Sartre saw problems with rationality, referring to it as a form of 'bad faith'. An attempt by the self to impose structure on a world of 'the Other' which is fundamentally irrational and random. I think you acutely acknowledged this in one of your previous posts. To understand this fully, however, we would next need to go into the concept of the absurd. Best avoided for now.

In conclusion, authenticity is not some alignment between your choices and desires. You can desire to be famous AND make all the choices to take you there. If you fail to take responsibility for your choices, however, you are still inauthentic. If you fail to base those choices on your values, rather than your desires, you are still inauthentic.

Rather, living authentically is consciously determining and acknowledging your values and putting them in the drivers seat when making choices, as well as living in accordance with freedom - taking full responsibility for how you [/your conscience] see yourself/define yourself. As such, one can live authentically, WHILE being unjust, so long as they take responsibility for who they are, and so long as they determine and consciously utilise their values in decision-making. Many cannot take responsibility. Many cower from it, focus on their facticity, and live in 'bad faith'.

Nietzsche is often described as an existentialist because Nietzsche's Übermensch is representative of people who exhibit Freedom, in that they define the nature of their own existence. Nietzsche's idealized individual invents his own values and creates the very terms they excel under. Nietzsche's idea of freedom is similar to Sartre's in that it concerns the creation and utility of subjective values. People are free to create their own values. People are free to define themselves.
I just had a thought.

Moralists are image-obsessed, attention seekers, in disguise.

Bejesus. Did you all have a word-quota to meet?

Moralists must be put in their place. Else, we have recurring Dark Ages.

Actually, this is not the reason. I couldn't care about recurring Dark Ages, whatever that is.

Simply, we enjoy the topic.

It would be cool if instead of just enjoying the topic, you'd enjoy both the topic and having something that at least somewhat resembles a discussion of the topic.

Also, we are all moralists. Some of us just don't realize that they are of the ilk.

Adhering to your strict standards may be the opposite of cool.

I have already discussed with the OP and others here, my view on the ethics of animal consumption. I would quote myself but that would be uncool.

I really like cheese.

lets assume you are proposing it is unethical (just to make my response easier):

This would take way too much time to unravel and would mostly revolve around the proposer's definition of ethical as well as unethical (the set of things that aren't defined as ethical doesn't have to be the same as set of things which are unethical, according to the proposer).

One way to trim the possible paths would be to ask about similar events in the wild such as ants farming aphids, and if the proposer would consider hypothetical variants of this as ethical or unethical (if the ants were decapitating aphids that wandered too far in order to teach the other aphids a lesson, for instance). this could be used to split the OP's position based on the actors actions as well as the actors knowledge (one variant being that the ants know what they are doing and that they are causing pain).

Another standard path to take would be the utilitarian one, asking the proposer if animal consumption would still be unethical if there was no other food source for humans. A hypothetical variant being if tortured baby cow meat was the only non-poisonous food source for humans, for example. If the only non-poisonous food source was pampered, happily-killed baby cow meat? etc.

This (i.e. someone examining different paths / hypotheticals with the op) would probably be enough to give some good insights to the OP's position and narrow the discussion to some key areas where some value might be had in further conversation. But the OP's question is so far off from being at a point like that that it is pretty difficult to have any meaningful discussion on the subject until someone walks him/her down some similar path, letting us get to the root causes of the claim or at least point out any inconsistencies or absurdities that arise by choosing different paths.

(i hope this makes sense)

No.

The common moral standard which the majority of humans believe we should adhere to. There seems to be a general shared acceptance of what this looks like. That’s likely due to both this “facticity” veedz talks about and cultural programming.

If we sat down with the ethics review board of a hospital and laid out the case, what would they rule?

I think most people just don’t want to think about it. It contradicts their morals. If they were to realize that: animals feel pain, are conscious, and thus suffer, they would be sent into a tailspin of cognitive dissonance.

Activate cognitive dissonance response units stat!

I think they do realize it, but are not sent into the tailspin.

I was a vegetarian for many years, have known the most hardcore animal rights activists out there, and spent eight months in prison as a consequence.

Now I eat meat. For the pure hell of it, that's the only way I can explain it.

Is the animal conscious and aware they taste good when cooked? Because that is one of the many elements of eating which factors into choice of ethics about what is available to eat.

Oh the other hand using morals to control other's diets revolves back to arguing about food. It's going to take lots of physical work to enforce a moral so closely intimate with individuals and bodies.

The ethics of interfering in relationships also harkens. I actually have relationships with many cows. I say hi to them and train the the dog not to charge at them and make them bolt when close to the fence. I love cows. How is some team of opinions about pain, consciousness, and awareness gonna unfactor love in the scenario. What about my conscious awareness and experiences of pain and suffering? And, who don't love lunch? What's really causing dissonance in the realm of cognitive in the scenario?

There are worse things in life to deal with than the occasional bout of cognitive dissonance.

Got 99 problems, dissonance ain't one.

Just had sushi for Lunch. Excellent. Also, a skewer of American Wagyu Beef, that was absolutely (modifier added just for you Lastcard) delicious.

All for the sole purpose to please my pleasure/taste centers scattered about my tongue that send signals up to certain receptors in my oversized and overinflated American Brain. The signals bypassed my moral center receptors by taking backroads, alleys, and dark passages, thus circumventing any possible remorse or moral turpitude principle.

I think the paragraph above can be simplified to this (thus reducing my word quota): **** Off.

Guilt/shame/regret may as well be ancient unchecked pseudo-behaviorism manufactured by authoritarians with captive audiences to impress and influence.

It goes back to relationships. You think I should feel what about food? About animals? About myself? How about I think about you?

Suddenly an ethic of non-interference or a non-dogmatic approach to influence feels much better than a struggle of guilt trips and responsive individuals who are not exactly captivated and not merely limited to being an audience.

I think that tuberculosis is not at all an ethical question, whether it affects humans or other animals.

I agree, ethics has nothing to do with it.

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease usually caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). These bacterium have been preprogrammed to Rape the Planet.

To keep this away from the Olympics thread I'm posting it here, and also because it fits the topic perfectly. I will add that the article is predictable to the end, and reeks of the self-righteous journalism so prevalent in this type of reporting.

dog-meat-farming-south-korea

Eat dog meat, it is good, it is healthy, and helps keeps dogs off the street.

I still can't tell if the "Le Misanthrope" is ironical