Found my recharger.

Does anyone know if the animals in the EU are off any better than those in the US?

Nope; they all die, too.

:^)

New rule:

permaban all gimmick posters

That's just because you've never had a whale burger.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on July 10, 2015, 11:22:59 AM

Quote from: Mad Max on July 10, 2015, 11:15:13 AM

Nice to know I'm not a hypocrite since I don't care what happens to my food before it is food.

I'd still say that's immoral.

"I don't care" is a pretty neutral stance on morality.

It isn't, though. Being apathetic--allowing evil to happen--is evil.

hey man that's pretty shaman of you to respond to a week old post about some trivial nonsense that i'm pretty much over

After reading Pendulate's post, and watching that documentary he mentioned.

I think I have no choice, morally, but to make the transition to a vegan lifestyle.

ayyyy

Good luck.

My three favorite games of all time are all very popular, mainstream games.

This upsets me.

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 06:44:21 PM

A non-vegan is trying to talk to me about animal rights.

How is THAT allowed?

First Amendment.

I'm just saying, it's very hypocritical.

moral reason puts me at a monetary disadvantage here.
Fuck that.

what do you mean

that it's expensive to be a vegan?
i mean, it's not, if you know where to go and what to buy

i'm not gonna try and tell you it's not a gigantic hassle being a vegan--because it totally is, especially for me--but i don't care

Assume that:

1. Pleasure can be measured on a linear scale, i.e. in units
2. The greater the units of pleasure, the more ethical the action

So there's you, a stranger, and a slice of cake. You can either choose to give the cake to the stranger or eat yourself. (You can't split it.) You will get 100 units of pleasure from eating the cake; the stranger will get 75.

Now on this basis alone (not accounting for other variables such as how the person will feel if you deny the cake to them etc) the answer clearly looks to be that eating the cake yourself is the most ethical option -- as long as you make the decision for that reason. I really don't see how it could be any other way.

I don't accept your second premise there. Frankly, I don't care about pleasure--there is no ethical imperative to pleasure people; there is only an ethical imperative to eliminate suffering. Because while the presence of pleasure is good, the absence of pleasure isn't bad.

Either way, the bit in parentheses there really bothers me. The bit where you say that you wouldn't be accounting for any other variables, like how they'd feel if you offered it, or how they'd feel if you didn't offer it.

...You must include these variables. Otherwise, it just looks like you're setting up the experiment in such a way that would conveniently help your argument.

If you're aiming for an empirically verifiable system of ethics, then presupposing that you have to exclude yourself directly conflicts with that aim:

1. Ethical propositions are reducible to facts about experience.
2. If certain experiences are good, and other experiences are bad, it follows logically that it is better to increase the good than increase the bad, and better to minimize the bad than minimize the good
3. It is only ethical to increase the good in others; to increase your own good has no place in ethics.

#3 is the only one that can't be empirically verified. Rather it's an arbitrary ruling suited to a categorical conception of ethics.

For whatever reason, I decided to tackle each of these paragraphs from the bottom up, rather than top-to-bottom. So, I already covered this, on the paragraph beginning with "because you are not worth..."

Well, that's where I think you've got a problem, because if all acts are inherently selfish, there's no clear distinction to make between altruistic/ethical and selfish/unethical.

Some things are only selfish because you gain personal gratification from them. Donating money might make you feel good inside, for example. This is selfish--it's good that we have these psychological mechanisms that give us the incentive to do good deeds, but the fact that we need incentives to do good deeds in the first place is flawed psychology. We shouldn't need incentives to do good deeds--we should just do that which is intrinsically good.

I'm not just saying "everything we do is selfish"--I'm saying that everything we do is selfish to a certain degree. Even my veganism, to a certain extent, is selfish--I achieve personal gratification from being up on this ethical high ground, and I like to make people feel bad about their addictive meat-eating personalities. That's not a good thing, but it makes me feel good to grandstand. I like knowing that I'm doing a better job at being ethical than another guy. I probably shouldn't be like that.

However, it's possible for the selfishness to be outweighed, so as to make the selfishness nearly invisible. Even though it's selfish to do good deeds because they make you feel good, you're still doing good deeds, and that's what matters.

Why do consequences that affect others matter more than the consequences that affect yourself?

Because you are not worth others' welfare. Now, if you instead worded the question like, "do consequences that affect an other matter more than the consequences that affect you?" that would've worked better to illustrate your point.

If we're dealing with only one other person, then neither one matters more than the other, assuming they're both Joe Sixpack. Whether one has his leg broken, or the other has his leg broken, there's no distinction. These are not the types of scenarios that I'm referring to, however.

Two Joe Sixpacks are more valuable than one Joe Sixpack.

it's entirely contingent on circumstance

Clearly, I'm referring only to scenarios where giving someone $101 instead of $100 would actually make a difference. The numbers are arbitrary.

Compare the emotive responses you'll receive when giving someone a dollar, and giving someone a thousand dollars. It's academic.

That's assuming that $100 was your absolute limit and anything over would make sustaining yourself difficult. Which isn't what I meant.

I'm not assuming anything about any sum of money. $100 is, again, arbitrary.

However much money you think you need to get yourself by is the amount you would keep, quite obviously. That's the point.

Which is defined by human well-being.

Not really. If you're not suffering, then my job is done, I'd argue. Now, just because you're not suffering, doesn't necessarily mean that you're "well"--while the absence of pain is good, the absence of pleasure isn't bad.

From an ethical standpoint, if all suffering is removed in the universe, I don't care if the universe is happy or not. Assuming that's part of the "wellbeing" package.

If there are better and worse ways to increase the wellbeing of others, there are better and worse ways to increase your own wellbeing.

This has nothing to do with ethics. It's not about "increasing wellbeing", whatever that even means. It's about doing the right thing.

I'm not saying that, I'm saying that selfishness isn't necessarily unethical.

I'm saying it absolutely is.

If your conception of ethics is based on some divide between altruism and self-interest then I'm not sure how tenable it is, because there's the argument that all seemingly selfless acts are done for selfish reasons

This is my argument, though. There ARE no selfless deeds. That's what I've been saying from the beginning. That's why I think it nullifies the thread, because even though it's physically impossible to be selfless, you can still try your best. That's our cause.

And it doesn't address my problem of how we define moral obligations, much less distinguish them from things that are moral yet not obligatory. That seems really wobbly to me.

My point was that trying to define it is futile. I wouldn't even worry about it.

I don't see how. It's an interesting question; and it's all well and good to say that we should strive to be more ethical, but it's rather meaningless if we don't discuss how we can go about it.

I discuss how we can go about it all the time--that's why I argue veganism and anti-natalism so often here, because I believe they represent the most ethically salient truths in the universe. I'm sure you have some ideas of your own--you're a vegan, and you've discussed veganism on two or three occasions here already.

No

i seem to have misplaced my 3DS charger

so, you guys take your time while i find it