Re: Video Response to Our Letter To Dillahunty
Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2017 3:37 am
Thanks for the transcript, that will make this much easier to respond to if it looks like he's open to discussion.
Philosophical Vegan Forum
https://philosophicalvegan.com/
No problemo, kindly grammer checked, segmented and donated by indy so I didn't have to clean up the auto transcript, as I saw they put the script in the video. It'd be nice if they joined up to discuss but might be they just make another response video to our responses, or we have to take it to their medium with a video to encourage them, could be good publicity for us anyways.brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Fri Sep 01, 2017 3:37 am Thanks for the transcript, that will make this much easier to respond to if it looks like he's open to discussion.
First off, you talk about rights, and this has to be gotten out of the way. Rights are a social convention, not a moral one. The notion of “moral rights” comes from deontology, not consequentialism, and it’s the dogmatic opposition to rational ethics that deals only in absolutes and which ignores the highly context sensitive nature of ethics. As an atheist and methodological naturalist, you should take more seriously the arguments of consequentialists like Peter Singer, and less deontologists like Gary Francione, who is a woo (all deontologists are woos, because absolute deontological authority is inherently an appeal to woo; look back to Kant on that one).Matt Dillahunty wrote:and what I am willing to do though is afford the same rights to eat me to the animals that I eat; when a shark decides to attack me because it’s hungry and wants some food im not going to say it’s immoral or unethical of the shark it’s the natural way that sharks are. I realize that to most ethical vegans think that is a lame cop out, but im fine with it actually.
The deontological view is absolute. No justification, no matter what. One mouse in a research lab to save billions of human lives is unacceptable to a deontological vegan.Gary Francione wrote:We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as a resource, as a thing that we [c]an use and kill for our purposes.
Have you read the infamous deontology thread?
Rights as we know them derive from social contracts. Basically the rules of the game as humans have established them; implicit or explicit duties and entitlements negotiated between people.indy wrote:Because T.VA's forum users are routinely unclear in their script, I'm not sure what they meant by "rights are a social convention and not a moral one."
Not non-arbitrary moral principles derived from logical deduction.indy wrote:Notice that what they say about "moral rights" can easily be said about any ethical concept. "Oh, this idea of 'universal moral principles' is merely a social convention."
If they are arbitrary, sure. Thus arbitrarity must be eliminated.indy wrote:"Oh, this idea of 'intrinsic value' is merely a social convention."
A complete accounting and debunking of deontology probably would have taken an extra hour, and would have been an unnecessary tangent to address Dillahunty. I think you were looking for something in the video that wouldn't have been practical.indy wrote:Much like most of the outlandish claims in T.VA's video, it's nothing substantive and more needs to be said. For starters, an argument would be nice.
Yo! That's me, much appreciated also
Dillahunty wasn't arguing against it, so it wasn't meant to be a full argument. It was a brief mention to show that there a vegans who understand those problems (as I presume Dillahunty does).
I took it that you disagreed with the position. Do you not?
You can use reason to come to objective moral principles.brimstoneSalad wrote:Kant made a noble effort with the categorical imperative, but he failed due to the lack of contradiction (according to his system) generated by many potential social systems causing chaos among each other (e.g. those without property clash with those that have it, so stealing becomes subjective). Or, rather, his system contradicts itself. Likewise it results in some bizarre moralization of essentially non-moral issues (Being fashionable is immoral). His attempt was too "high level" when it comes to actions, and ignoring the consequences meant those differences couldn't be ironed out with appeal to practical functionality.