I think at the core of the debate is a misunderstanding of what life is, the example you use of the broken chain of ancestors is a good illustration of this. Life is struggle for perpetuation of self, the whole point of evolution and why there is a chain and not only one species is because we each fight as groups to survive amongst or against each other. this philosophy of life where violence and struggle could disappear is utter non-sense to me. life is death, without it, without constant struggle at all levels, there is no evolution and no life.
so yes it’s a blur boundary that each group has to define, it doesn’t have to be absolute and is moving, so we can take care of that mutated pig and still eat all the others, so what?
and yes we can not be racist but still find reasons to fight and kill other humans or whatever will stand in the way of the group’s survival...
this naive, to me, view of what life is or should be is the most ridiculous.
now if you really want/need a selection criteria, leaving aside babies as it’s a fallacy to split people’s life into chunks of arbitraty time (by that token you can kill any life-form while they are sleeping!), I’ll give you one.
you have the right to be recognized or considered as part of humans if you fight for it. there you have it.
women and people from all “races” fought for their rights, when pigs and cattle will stand and let us know they’ve had enough, it’ll be time to consider the question.
All that being said it has nothing to do really with the moral or utilitarian argument to stop factory farming, if we can do it in ways that don’t shock ourselves and will make us feel better, we should. but certainly not based on some flawed utilitarian argument.
women and people from all “races” fought for their rights, when pigs and cattle will stand and let us know they’ve had enough, it’ll be time to consider the question.
To generalize the principle you have described, should we never give a group moral consideration unless they can advocate for themselves? If we adopted this principle, then young children would immediately lose moral consideration, as would profoundly mentally disabled people.
I think at the core of the debate is a misunderstanding of what life is, the example you use of the broken chain of ancestors is a good illustration of this. Life is struggle for perpetuation of self, the whole point of evolution and why there is a chain and not only one species is because we each fight as groups to survive amongst or against each other. this philosophy of life where violence and struggle could disappear is utter non-sense to me. life is death, without it, without constant struggle at all levels, there is no evolution and no life.
so yes it’s a blur boundary that each group has to define, it doesn’t have to be absolute and is moving, so we can take care of that mutated pig and still eat all the others, so what?
and yes we can not be racist but still find reasons to fight and kill other humans or whatever will stand in the way of the group’s survival...
this naive, to me, view of what life is or should be is the most ridiculous.
now if you really want/need a selection criteria, leaving aside babies as it’s a fallacy to split people’s life into chunks of arbitraty time (by that token you can kill any life-form while they are sleeping!), I’ll give you one.
you have the right to be recognized or considered as part of humans if you fight for it. there you have it.
women and people from all “races” fought for their rights, when pigs and cattle will stand and let us know they’ve had enough, it’ll be time to consider the question.
All that being said it has nothing to do really with the moral or utilitarian argument to stop factory farming, if we can do it in ways that don’t shock ourselves and will make us feel better, we should. but certainly not based on some flawed utilitarian argument.
my 2 cents.
To generalize the principle you have described, should we never give a group moral consideration unless they can advocate for themselves? If we adopted this principle, then young children would immediately lose moral consideration, as would profoundly mentally disabled people.