Should livestock be saved from slaughter?

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Steve Wagar
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Re: Should livestock be saved from slaughter?

Post by Steve Wagar »

brimstoneSalad, thanks again for putting all this time into reading/replying.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:15 am I'm just going to address a few things pretty broadly here because I want to clear some things up before I address everything and it ends up being based on a misconception of your position. I can address other points later if you want me to after we clear this up.
This is a good idea to get to the root of the problem; a point-by-point continuation would be too painful. Further, I think you have identified and extracted the key issues of contention, so thanks for that.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:15 am Descriptive/Prescriptive Morality:

It sounds like you're speaking primarily of a descriptive morality, but one with a strong focus on evolution and psychology.
That people believe X is moral because of millions of years of evolution of the mind and other assorted factors.

To jump from an evolutionary IS to an OUGHT (from descriptive with a focus on nature to prescriptive) would be to make an appeal to nature fallacy.

When we're talking about evolution of diet that carries some weight as to what's healthy, or it at least tells us what probably won't kill us before reproduction. That still isn't an "ought" though, because it doesn't tell us that we ought to eat healthfully.

In philosophy morality is not simply a morphological trait of the mind (that would be descriptive morality, just of the evolutionary psychology sort rather than the cultural anthropological sort); it is a conceptual system like mathematics based on reason and logic.
People intuitively (because of the way the brain evolves) believe a lot of things that are mathematically false and even logically contradictory (see counter intuitive statistics for examples).

Evolution has a lot to say about descriptive morality, but nothing to say (at least directly) about prescriptive morality.

So, I think that's where this disconnect is.
(Please correct me if I'm wrong about your views on that)
Yes, that comes pretty close to the disconnect. I didn't see it when you were only speaking of cultural anthropological descriptive, but if that extends to evolutionary psychology as well, then, yes, my perspective is descriptive. And while I think one could create any number of prescriptive moralities with mathematical precision, they are always going to be "possible worlds" cut off from the real world, in my estimation, because the real world is fundamentally a descriptive place.

And it only counts as an appeal to nature fallacy if I believed in good and bad, but, as noted, I don't. This doesn't mean "ought" doesn't mean anything to me; there is still practical value in characterizing the sorts of things one might do into should and should-not buckets. But it is not a true prescriptive "ought". Similarly with good and bad; people use the words, but their idealized meaning(s) are not meant to be taken as universally applicable (sorry, I am using the word universally here descriptively, not prescriptively; i.e. as in practice, not in theory(s)).
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:15 am I'm not sure to what extent you think moral evolutionary psychology is or can be prescriptive. I would argue pretty much any extent of prescriptivism on that basis is fallacious.
You use words like "justified", and "should" but I'm not sure if you're trying to use them in a prescriptive sense (they have that connotation).
Steve Wagar wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:28 pmWe are on the same page here; the disagreement is only a matter of focus. I should have said that "the justifiability of bubbles was everywhere hundreds of years ago, but globalization has nearly squeezed that out." So, yes, lots of people try to perpetuate their bubbles, and so succeed after a fashion, but it is no longer justifiable or excusable. This is not to say everyone can or should agree on everything, so of course local and personal differences can and should remain, but across broader issues knowledge has spread and people are aware of it.
See what I mean? I don't know what to make of that.
It's language I would use because I'm being prescriptive, but if you're just talking about the hows and whys of existing moral thought, it's hard to figure out what you mean by this if you don't think it's prescriptive.
Yes, I can see now why you would be confused by that. Since I don't think prescriptively the way you do, my use of prescriptive words is based on a different paradigm. To me, the existence of a descriptive basis of morality in evolutionary psychology can justify prescribing to people to follow that morality. Historically, we could only guess at what that morality might be, and we often misinterpreted our own drives. This could lead to things like practicing slavery and seeing nothing wrong with it. If it turns out to be the case that we have an innate morality based in evolutionary psychology that sees slavery as immoral, then it was "wrong" (from the perspective of human wiring) back then but people didn't realize it, and we can and should prescribe against it going forward. While we don't exactly know what our moral wiring is, to the extent scientific progress is possible we can assume we are getting a better picture all the time of how it works. So I would say that, in the case of slavery, we have come to globally recognize that humans are innately put off by slavery, and so this is an example of something that is no longer justifiable or excusable. But it is not "truly" prescriptive in kind of sense you refer to because I am not saying slavery actually is immoral, since morality is relative and not logical/mathematical (from my perspective), just that people are wired to think it is, and this should carry some weight in our policy considering we are, after all, people.

As a relativist I would say that if we were sharks, and if sharks kill all other creatures on sight, then it would be moral for us to kill. We could then devise a prescriptive morality that says this killing is wrong, and that is fine. What we shouldn't do is act in the real world based on that prescriptive morality, because it is only a simplified model that doesn't take into account everything that goes into making the real world work the way it does.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:15 am In terms of discussion on philosophical prescriptive morality:
Steve Wagar wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:28 pmI'll grant you that it is a scale and that it can be applied objectively because focusing on the interests of the acted upon simplifies the problem to the point where a fairly objective verdict can be rendered,
Which is most of my point.
Good, so to the extent are referring to that scale we are in agreement. We just have to iron out where and if that is appropriate.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:15 am
Steve Wagar wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:28 pm[...]but selecting that scale makes little sense as the actor matters too.
[...]Your objective scale of morality focuses only on the acted upon and ignores the actor.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:15 am There is disagreement on those points within philosophy.

If you prefer to focus on both, then the objective scale you would favor would be classical utilitarianism or preference utilitarianism. It would be great if you could look into those/read on them and tell me if that's something that appeals to you.
Yes, I read up on these. It is fair to say that I would not subscribe to any moral system based in logic, i.e. that idealizes reality into neat little models and concepts to which rules can be attached. I believe we are saying that all prescriptive moralities are logic-based and all descriptive moralities are empirically based. So, more broadly, I "subscribe" to logic to facilitate abstract thought about things, but I "subscribe" to empiricism for anything that connects back to the real world. While classical utilitarianism and preference utilitarianism make for some amusing thought experiments, their correlation to real world situations is fraught with problems, so one can't expect too much from them.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:15 am It's important to be able to look at and discuss descriptive and prescriptive morality.
When we look at descriptive morality, evolutionary psychology is a great tool, but I'm hoping we can put aside descriptive morality (just for a bit, at least) and delve a little deeper into the meta-ethics of objective/universal moral systems in philosophy and the logical arguments behind them.
I am willing to contemplate some prescriptive systems as an exercise.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:15 am As to comparisons:

In terms of whether humans and animals can be compared on those traits you mentioned, there are plenty of humans who can't or won't engage in high level abstract thought, and intelligent non-human animals can engage in some of it (like with numbers, the general concept of justice, and more). There is a gradient there with considerable overlap. Unless you're willing to write off humans who don't meet a certain benchmark of meta-cognitive ability (and even then, you may have to write off a lot of people if you're trying to beat elephants and cetaceans), you can't really argue that they can't be compared at all.
One difference doesn't make something incomparable. The difference has to be relevant to the comparison being made. We can compare the mileage of a bike and a bus, despite the bike running on human power (through food) and a bus running on diesel or something because the comparison is limited to mileage. It doesn't matter how many other things about these vehicles are incomparable. We can't compare the mileage of a bike and a desk, because a desk doesn't move.
My point is not to say that one can't compare things on a scale, my point is to say that if you label one thing an apple and another an orange then further comparison is impossible. Alternate comparison is possible, but not further comparison, given those buckets. So I am saying that in the the descriptive, evolutionary calculus of morality a logical leap is made that precludes further comparison; specifically, we will categorize something as being human-intelligent or not being human-intelligent. This assessment can be made on the spur of the moment or after considering a huge amount of data, but once made it seems to me that people will conduct further moral calculations (a largely subconscious process, though responsive to certain conscious feedback/control) using that categorization. So one could assess an idiot as not being human-intelligent and a whale as being human-intelligent in an off-the-cuff assessment. There is, as you say, a case that can be made. But, at the risk of generalizing and opening myself up to debate, people typically won't do that. They will recognize that the idiot is clearly weaker at communication that other people but may still be contemplating certain things with considerable abstract facility. At the extreme, we can verify that some living humans are essentially brain dead and will not recover, at which point most people will agree that the person is no longer in the human-intelligent category and we can justifiably euthanize them.

Similarly, most people will not see an ant as being human-intelligent. This is clearly based largely on an inability to communicate, but also on the behavior of the ant not demonstrating any aspects of human-intelligence. So ants go into the not human-intelligent category, which leads to different moral calculations. Of course, things get more interesting with elephants and whales. We know their mental experience is as rich as ours, and that complex thoughts form in their heads and that they communicate at least basic needs with each other, but at the same time we see little evidence of most of the things we associate with abstract thinking, most notably of the sort language makes possible. This leads to an assignment of whole species to categories. We recognize people have the genetic composition for it that animals do not. Most people will acknowledge that they don't think the smartest whale can really be put into the human-intelligent category, despite their admirable skills.

Since I am saying that our moral calculus depends on these categorizations, we can't feel the same way about animals as people. While I don't know what you have done from a prescriptive perspective, from a descriptive perspective I have to assume that you have categorized animals into the human-intelligent bucket for moral calculations. That's great, but my contention is that there is no evolutionary need to do that and consequently no actual need, and further that this is a subversion of our innate inclinations, and this is why most people won't do it even if they were better informed.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Should livestock be saved from slaughter?

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I'm really sorry, this may take a while to reply to, I had the tab open but have been busy and keep forgetting. Please remind me in a week if I forget.
I know I replied to that anarchist, but really shouldn't have (that was also easy to reply to, this will take some time).
Now I'm not going to get much sleep. My fault. :D
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Steve Wagar
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Re: Should livestock be saved from slaughter?

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No problem, I'm in no hurry. Why you even bother to converse with the anarchist escapes me; the conversation has deteriorated into gibberish and sniping. But even if it were coherent, it doesn't change the fact that his brand of anarchism, voluntaryism, would dissolve into chaos within three weeks with any group larger than about three people. His faith in people to uphold the bounds of universal morals is badly misplaced. He seems to have no concept of group dynamics at all. Let's see such a system working somewhere, anywhere, with any measure of success, before we start drawing conclusions about how would make things better. Sorry, no politics here, never mind this commentary, please! :lol:
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