Well specifically, my question was regarding cases where necessity is not a factor. So I think we may still be talking past each other.

Your hypothetical insists that it's either a or b; the truth of the matter is that you're not selling the antlers for a TV, it's for currency. Currency could be used for any number of things, and even then, you're implying you have to sell them. They can be used for medicine, handles, whistles, replacement buttons, fire-starters, pressure flakers, et cetera. The antlers have far more practical uses beyond wall-hanging. Add into the fact that using as much as possible entails more than that (including the skull, eyes, the fur, and meat that isn't traditionally eaten by humans) you get more from "hunting for food" than you do "hunting for sport".

A trophy is worth less do to it being less useful, and what's more useful is more ethical.

As Verb said, I was illustrating how the difference between hunting for food (because you like the taste) and hunting for sport (because you like the trophy) is next to zero, because both are done for ultimately selfish and unnecessary reasons.

The thought experiment was purposefully specific to help make the connection.

Thanks, I love it when people bullet-point their arguments. Keeps us from talking past each other.

A) Animals grown commercially live under worse living conditions than those that live their lives naturally. [Reasons provided previously]

+1

B) To purchase the meat of commercially grown animals is tantamount to supporting commercially growing animals.

+1

C) Provided Points A and B, to consume wild game is more ethical than to consume commercially grown animals.

+1
 

D) Define "useful" as "able to be used for a practical purpose or in several ways".

+1

E) The option which is more useful ("honoring" the death) is more ethical.

I have to diverge here, and I'd prefer that you read my response to Verb above for a thorough refutation. But I don't think you can say killing an animal just because you like how they taste(no necessity involved) is more ethical, or useful, than killing it for a trophy.

Actually, quick thought experiment: which (if either) is worse?
a) killing a deer because you really love deer burgers, or
b) killing a deer so you can sell their antlers and buy a new TV.

I would argue that the TV is more 'useful' than having a few burgers, but I don't think that makes option b more ethical, do you? Both are done for very selfish reasons.

^This addresses your remaining points as well, so I won't quote them.

Ummm, let's put it this way... Personally, if the situation called for it, I'd rather feed a family with my body than have someone stuff me and hang me on their wall. But that's just me.

Yeah, but that's assuming the animal actually shares that preference, which I highly doubt. It's also assuming it matters that your preference is fulfilled even if the person killing you did not care one way or the other. And, as you said, 'if the situation called for it'; I'm strictly talking about unnecessary food-hunting.

My point being, though you are apparently having trouble making the distinction between those two "uses", she's just making the simple argument that some uses are more noble than others, and I agree.

Well sure, I agree with her there, but I'm not convinced that there is any difference in 'nobility' between unnecessarily killing an animal for a trophy or a hamburger. (A lot of people hunt deer simply because they like deer meat more than beef.) So with necessity out of the equation, all that's left is killing for pleasure in both cases. At least, I can't see anything else.

To the people who try to piss off vegans by saying that these types of threads make them hungry for meat, I always say, you know, good. Awesome. I'm glad you're gonna go eat some meat. That way, the suffering of the animals that went into creating that product will not have gone to waste.

And I agree, but is the animal really put to better use as luxury foodstuffs vs being mounted on a wall (or, perhaps, even selling their fur and antlers and buying other luxuries)? Again necessity is not a factor in this, as it is not a factor in a lot of first-world hunting.

Without getting roped into 9+ pages of argument, regardless of how you feel on eating meat, hunting for food is more ethical by whatever degree than hunting for sport. Just by making use of the remains to the fullest extent you're doing more to "honor" (parenthesized because I realize that this can easily be contorted, it's just a turn-of-phrase) the animal than killing it to mount a head on your wall.

Also mounting heads is gross and tacky, so there's that.

I'm asking about hunting for food in developed society, where there is easy access to supermarkets.

Whether you eat the animal or mount it on your wall, you are still "making use" of its body. So I don't see any valuable difference between them on this basis  -- and merely finding one "gross and tacky" isn't really good enough.

rationality went outt the window back when you decided that eveyone should ignore their natural goal of self preservation in favor of your own pessimistic oppinion of life.

You just said that rationality went out the window when you read an argument you didn't want to think rationally about. Please, reread it. Because that's what you just said.

The way you claim things would be without life (or anything else self aware, since you are atheists)  to experience it would be the very dfinition of nihlism. There is nothing to give meaning to anything.

Then you are not familiar with the philosophy of nihilism, at all. And I get the distinct impression that you don't want to be familiar with it; rather you have your views, and you're sticking with them, no matter what. Period.

Am I wrong about that? I hope so, but so far you're not convincing me otherwise.

Quote from: Pendulate on May 31, 2015, 09:28:57 PM

Quote from: Majestic Star Dragon on May 31, 2015, 09:23:47 PM

Quote from: Pendulate on May 31, 2015, 09:18:19 PM

Verb, I think you're going about this wrong. You don't need to prove that existence itself is a harm; you just need to prove that nonexistence is better.

^which probably sounds absurd at face value to most people, but philosophically it is perfectly valid.

Nonexistance is worse than anything

Nonexistence cannot be a bad thing, because there is nothing to experience it as a bad thing. I understand this is counter-intuitive, but it is nonetheless true.

Anyway, I don't really want to pick up where Verb left off, so I may make a few more posts but then you'll need to chew over this yourself.

and yet you two think nilism is wrong, and since niether of you believe in God then to you that would be the same as nilism....
Hey who left a crate of hippos here?

Please read your post again and ask yourself if that is how a reasonable, intellectually honest person would respond.

I was hoping you'd approach this with some degree of rationality.

Quote from: Pendulate on May 31, 2015, 09:18:19 PM

Verb, I think you're going about this wrong. You don't need to prove that existence itself is a harm; you just need to prove that nonexistence is better.

^which probably sounds absurd at face value to most people, but philosophically it is perfectly valid.

Nonexistance is worse than anything

Nonexistence cannot be a bad thing, because there is nothing to experience it as a bad thing. I understand this is counter-intuitive, but it is nonetheless true.

Anyway, I don't really want to pick up where Verb left off, so I may make a few more posts but then you'll need to chew over this yourself.

Verb, I think you're going about this wrong. You don't need to prove that existence itself is a harm; you just need to prove that nonexistence is better.

^which probably sounds absurd at face value to most people, but philosophically it is perfectly valid.

Oh, this is an anti-natalism thread now? How did that happen?

Quote from: Pendulate on May 31, 2015, 05:10:33 PM

Quote from: Madman Mordo on May 31, 2015, 05:05:28 PM

Quote from: Pendulate on May 31, 2015, 05:02:08 PM

Quote from: Madman Mordo on May 31, 2015, 11:02:19 AM

Hunting for sustenance is less morally reprehensible because there is a meaningful purpose besides just perverse entertainment. It's a necessary facet of the animal kingdom as well as maintaining ecosystems. I thought this was obvious.

Protein is also an essential part of our diet, and meat is a direct source for that. (And yeah I'm aware you can obtain protein from nuts etc but it's hardly as viable as meat is).

Did you read the OP?

The idea that hunting for food has a "meaningful purpose" breaks down outside of extreme survival situations.
Hunting for sport can maintain ecosystems, too.

Exactly how does it? Like I said, meat and protein is an essential component of our diet, so your " extreme survival situation" analogy doesn't really hold up.

I'd also appreciate you dropping the sanctimonious tone, thanks.

Sorry if it came across like that, it just appears that many people did not read it.

The protein argument is really so trivial considering you can get all the protein you need from plant foods without even trying. So no, "hunting for protein" is in no way a meaningful purpose any more than hunting for a trophy is.

But, perhaps you're trolling again.

Yeah no, plant foods such as nuts and seeds are a horribly inefficient source of protein. They're not complete proteins, and lack essential amino acids necessary for dietary needs.

You can go through all kinds of mental gymnastics and accuse me of trolling all you want, but it doesn't make you any more correct.

Getting a complete amino profile through grains, legumes, greens and fruit is remarkably easy. To claim otherwise demonstrates a lack of nutritional knowledge. I recommend reading the following article:

http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/protein

I dont see Deers building rockets capable of intercepting world ending astroids, or atempting to cure desease.

I don't see you doing those things either...

They are not peooppleand they only act on instinct. They eat shit and die.

Then you are dangerously uninformed on animal cognition. I suggest researching the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which describes how animals share very many of the neurological substrates that we do, and have conscious experiences similar to us.

Also, what happened to this thread -_-

It's not an -ism, it's a fact.

I probably could have handled this better than posting a link.

The point is that you can't say humans are more important than other animals just because you're a human. You're conflating a subjective opinion with an objective truth claim. It's akin to saying "The Wizard of Oz is my favorite movie, so it's objectively the best movie". Not a great analogy, but the point is valid.

The Wizard of Oz may very well be the best movie, but you'd then need to point to things that The Wizard of Oz has/does not have compared to other movies as evidence.

And, it's not really relevant to the topic anyway; when we say that A is more important than B, we aren't saying that there is consequently nothing wrong with harming B. It just means that we would choose A over B if we had to choose. So as for hunting, your argument kind of misses the mark.

Do you think that any other species puts other animals before its own welfare? No, only us self-hating humans would think of that.

I'd  replace "self-hating" with "rational and logical". (And I never said we should put other species before our own). There is no logic in saying humans are better than animals "just cause", and there is no logic in saying there is nothing wrong with harming them "just cause 2.0".

At the end of the day, preservation of humanity is all that matters.

And your logical basis for this belief would be?

Quote from: Pendulate on May 31, 2015, 05:18:44 PM

Quote from: Majestic Star Dragon on May 31, 2015, 05:12:37 PM

Quote from: Pendulate on May 31, 2015, 05:06:50 PM

Quote from: Majestic Star Dragon on May 31, 2015, 02:48:41 PM

Oh god not this shit again.
INB4 OP makes a wall of text responce to this trying to counterpoint every single letter with it's own wall of text like he/ she always doed, and then Verb threatens to blow up the universe again.

These PETA level threads make me want to go to an animal reserve with an LSAT just to piss off vegans

Wow. This is one topic where you really aren't willing to think rationally, huh?

I dont feel like arguing walls of text with two even bigger oppinionated brick walls. Espesialy when they literaly think blowing up the world is a good idea.

But I don't think that. That's called a straw-man-ad-hominem-generalization.

exept that is literaly exacly exact you do. Just Look at one of the first responses you made im this thread, and let's not forget what ended the last veganism thread. You wanna know why I never responed to you there? Because I cant stand reading a poorly layed out wall of text.  When I want to read for half an hour I will find a news article or a book or go on wikipedia i cant find anything, not have some vegan on a forum were I talk about games make up a wall of text by quoting half a scentene out of context and then moving onto the next half sentence before repeating, creating a chopped up abomination that hurts to look at in the process.

Arguing with you is pointles anyway. Youre not actuly concidering anything anyone says other than your "holyer than thou" two man circle-jerk.
Probably a fuck ton of grammar and pelling mistakes in this post.. not going to correct them. Typing on xbone is worse than being a vegan

You're just flinging baseless insults at me now. I'm actually very open to different viewpoints and open, honest discussion. But you seem more content with sticking to your beliefs instead of laying them on the table, even though they may be wrong.

If taking jabs at my character makes you feel better about those beliefs, then so be it.

Quote from: Pendulate on May 31, 2015, 05:02:08 PM

Quote from: Madman Mordo on May 31, 2015, 11:02:19 AM

Hunting for sustenance is less morally reprehensible because there is a meaningful purpose besides just perverse entertainment. It's a necessary facet of the animal kingdom as well as maintaining ecosystems. I thought this was obvious.

Protein is also an essential part of our diet, and meat is a direct source for that. (And yeah I'm aware you can obtain protein from nuts etc but it's hardly as viable as meat is).

Did you read the OP?

The idea that hunting for food has a "meaningful purpose" breaks down outside of extreme survival situations.
Hunting for sport can maintain ecosystems, too.

Exactly how does it? Like I said, meat and protein is an essential component of our diet, so your " extreme survival situation" analogy doesn't really hold up.

I'd also appreciate you dropping the sanctimonious tone, thanks.

Sorry if it came across like that, it just appears that many people did not read it.

The protein argument is really so trivial considering you can get all the protein you need from plant foods without even trying. So no, "hunting for protein" is in no way a meaningful purpose any more than hunting for a trophy is.

But, perhaps you're trolling again.