I'm getting fed up with people using false arguments against simple facts, and for the time bein I stick to one.

1. On this moment, producing meat = spoiling food.

You can come up with a million little exceptions (like some grounds are only suitable for animals.. ) It's all the same 'smoking is not bad because my aunt smokes and is over a 100 years old.

What I mean is : all those exceptions are probably true, but of such a small scale in comparing what we are doing...

(other accepted FACT : producing meat is more harmfull than all the transport in the world)

Please do your homework yourself, or stay comfortably numb, starve some people, and explain your kids later on why you ate meat when all the evidence was out there.

(yes indeed : because your aunt was 100y old...)

I liked meat a lot. I wanted to have reasons to keep on eat it, but HELAS I'm rational!

It's eating meat that is emotional I'm afraid.

Is that better?

Frankly, yes. Much better. A rather good summary of our discussion this far, that is both quite perceptive and, dare I say, articulate. You got one or two of my points ever-so slightly off, but (as my Dad would say) close enough for jazz.

You have also, importantly, directly addressed my question - that the distinguishing characteristic of humans which justifies our special treatment of ourselves (at least in your opinion) is to be found in our developed brains and our ability to perceive and manipulate the world around us. This, though we're wrapping up, would be a more solid foundation on which we could build a debate - discussing whether the brain or the central nervous system, and thus intelligence or suffering was more relevant for deserving the status as one of 'us'. But my enthusiasm is winding down, so perhaps that can be left as a discussion for another day.

I'll happily admit I think I've learned a few things here too. The issue of culling is a good one, for example. If it is necessary to curb the population of certain animals (and a case could certainly be made that it is not, but that isn't MY case), then I don't suppose I can class the act of disposing of the bodies by eating them wrong. I don't consider then morally praiseworthy either - it would hardly be a waste of meat if we did not eat them, as the bodies would inevitably by eaten, decompose and return all their nutrients to the eco-system eventually. But I suppose in this case eating meat would indeed be morally neutral for me.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts. And that goes for everyone I've spoken with here.

I suspect you’re a very detail-oriented person, Ritchie, which is why you seem to have a little trouble seeing the forest for the trees. You’re asking very good questions about the trees, you’re just in the wrong forest.

Ok, here goes. I’m only repeating this exercise because one thing I am never accused of is being inarticulate, and I’m assuming you’re being sincere. BTW, in case you’re thinking you’ve had no impact here, I must say that as a result of these cogitations I really have to reconsider how careless I’ve been lately in evaluating the sources of my meat, eggs and dairy products. (I blame the economy!)

First of all, the core issue/question I am addressing is this: where do we draw the line between us/them in terms of food supply? You (quite rightly) state that once the arguments of “humans have a soul” and “God gave us dominion over the earth” are taken off the table, a thoughtful, ethical person has to sit down and come up with an answer to this question, and a justification for their answer.

Ok. We both agree that we gotta eat. In lieu of a soul, you’re drawing the line at us/them at “does the animal have a nervous system?” You’re drawing the line here because having a nervous system indicates the ability to feel pain and pleasure. You extrapolate feeling pain/pleasure as the equivalence of experiencing suffering/enjoyment. I posit that the experiencing suffering/enjoyment assumes a level of self-awareness that feeling pain/pleasure do not.

I draw the line at the brain rather than the nervous system. Not just the fact of having a brain, but the type of brain we have. We have a developed forebrain unlike any other creature. Our frontal lobes and cerebral cortex are unique. This uniqueness is evidenced by our seemingly unique ability to communicate about, predict and control our environment.

We can both consider the other’s “bright line” arbitrary. Many of the comments (which I will not repeat) address other places in the hierarchy where this bright line could be drawn. I consider your line to be arbitrary because nervous system complexity varies so much along the continuum from insects to humans. You could say “a nervous system is a nervous system, a brain is a brain.” You prefer to take the conservative approach that since we don’t know to if animals (especially mammals) experience suffering/enjoyment (NOT the same as feeling pain/pleasure) or if they feel it to the same extent as humans, it is more ethical to lump them in the “us” category.

I think we both agree that it is unethical to raise/kill for food anything that falls in the “us” category. I think you often conflate the answers to “what is the ethical way to treat ‘us’” with “why am I not including animals in the ‘us’?”

Once you meet the first step of being “us” (in mine and some other commenters’ case “the human species”) you get “us” treatment. You can be a baby, have brain damage, be a color or gender variation, and you have a right not to be murdered by other humans. (Actually, we are very strict with animals about this, too; we just tend give them sentencing without a trial.) You especially won’t be killed for food. Respect for “us” is probably what keeps “us” from eating “us” once we’re dead. Cannibals traditionally ate their enemies, not their young or old or handicapped. Conversely, we often make special exceptions for who gets to be “us” – pets are a good example. I couldn’t kill and eat my dogs because I have elevated them to members of my family. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t eat dog meat. (Urban legend has it that I already have!)

If something falls into the category of “them”, then there are other ethical decisions to make. This can generally fall under the category of reducing harm. People have discussed the harm caused by mono-crop plantations and factory farming, and the ethics of raising an animal humanely for food. I think this is where the discussion goes to cross-purposes, because you respond to these comments still working under your assumption of animals as “us”, when the points being made have moved to the next step of putting animals under the category of “them”.

Is that better?

Yes, that's pretty much the size of it.

If you claim you have arrived at your conclusions objectively, then I supoose I'll just have to take your word for it, despite your inability to articulate your reasoning. I think I have amply demonstrated that an ethical case for vegetarianism can, in fact, be made, and indeed holds water. I do not expect everyone to agree with my reasoning on the topic, and I hope that is a sentiment you share about yours.

I too can feel my enthusiasm for this thread losing momentum, so let's both quit while only thus far behind.

Let's see if we can agree on the following:

I have objectively thought through why I think it is ethical to kill animals for food (and not humans), my thoughts on this have been enhanced and clarified by comments on this thread, and I have concluded that I am behaving in an ethical fashion by eating meat that is humanely raised and killed.

You accept in theory that there could be ethical reasons for eating meat and yet not be a cannibal, but none of the arguments presented in this thread have convinced you.

Conversely, you accept that your reasoning that it is unethical to kill animals because they can enjoy life is not a convincing one for everybody.

Cool. I might have to read up on that. Though in my head's it's also ringing a bell in relation to The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten - a thought experiment based on a brief but morally fascinating scene from Douglas Adams' Restaurant At The End Of The Universe.

I suppose it touches on whether your brother would consider it disrespectful to be eaten, and whether it would even make a moral difference then. Of course, humans have the upper hand in this respect, since they can make us aware of their wishes.

Firstly, apologies for referring to you as 'he' not 'she'. How sexist of me. My bad.

I assumed you realized that I was agreeing with the comments of many posters here; that my opinion that humans have made an evolutionary quantum leap as a species is what makes us different from other animals/plants/bacteria, etc.

I was not asking what makes us different from other life forms. I was asking for the morally relevant difference between eating animal meat and cannibalism.

As for the quotes which you seem to think answer the question:

If you think that eating a plant means no animals died for your food, you're deluding yourself.

does not answer my question. It is pointing out that animals die in the process of farming vegetable foods. Which is true, but does not point out a morally relevant distinction between eating animal meat and cannibalism. Why not eat humans and point out that a non-cannibalistic diet would still involve the death of other creatures?

I have seen animals slaughtered and I have also seen "natural" death and the latter is incredible painful, horrible and completely inhumane.

again does not answer my question. It is making the point that humane slaughter by humans may often be faster and more painless than a 'natural' death. Which again is true, but does not point to a morally relevant distinction between eating meat and cannibalism. Why not kill a person to 'save' them from a potential 'natural' death?

I would subscribe to the view that if there is no soul, there is nothing to distinguish us from other animals. But there is one thing that naturally gives us a human-centred outlook, and that is simply that we are human. We are not other animals. Therefore, we cannot guess at how they would like us to treat them, apart from projecting our own desires and fears upon them. I do believe that we owe them, as we owe others of our own species, every possible effort to minimise their real and potential suffering and maximise their real and potential pleasure (see I was listening at other posts) insofar as we can guess what that consists in, and qualified by the knowledge that whatever we decide, it will be a guess. I believe the same goes for insects, plants and bacteria. None of this, in my view, contradicts ethical animal husbandry and meat-eating, if the animals are allowed to live lives that approximate to happy animal lives and their deaths are as quick and as painless as can be arranged

is pointing out that we cannot know for absolute certain to what extent or even whether animals really suffer. This is a reasonable point, but this overlooks the point that animals do try to avoid pain and death. It would be a very surreal argument that animals don't mind dying, or don't really feel suffering. They have central nervous systems and pain receptors, so it is reasonable tto assume they can suffer. What's more, if the point is that we can't be CERTAIN that animals suffer, it also needs pointing out that we can't be certain other people suffer. I can't get inside anyone else's head. I can't feel what they feel. The only being I can be sure feels and suffers is myself. If I ate a person, I could be no more certain whether or not they suffered before death than whether the pig I eat suffered.

Plants may react more slowly than animals, but they also have ways to fight for their survival and against their destruction. They lack an animal nervous system, but do have a circulation system which includes the circulation of hormone-like signalling chemicals, and they share with animals a physiologically generated DC electrical field, separate to the nervous system, whose biological properties for generating whole body awareness and integrity is currently under study.

is pointing out that plants react to outside stimuli. However, such reactions do not necessarily imply sentience, which is required to feel suffering. A human body in a coma will still react like a living organism - a cut will clot and scab, for example. So this also is not drawing a distinction between eating animal meat and cannibalism.

I think we should extend ethical consideration to all things. What I said was if a humanely raised animal has no expectation of life beyond "now", and it is slaughtered painlessly I do not see it as an un-ethical act.

This does actually come pretty close to answering my question. The answer being that humans have an 'expectation of life beyond now' which should be respected. This is at least a reason to draw a line with humans on one side and animals on the other. But noticce not all humans would be on the 'human' side of the line. Babies and severely mentally impaired people might well fit into the 'animal' group in that they do not have expectations of life beyond now. And if they can be granted ethical consideration by other people having expectations for them, why can't we grant expectations to animals?

Fancy going back to your 3 page list and trying again?

is just not true, sweetie. You are claiming that no ethical case can be made for eating meat.

Thanks for telling me what case I am making, sweetheart. I really made no such claim. I have always assumed meat-eaters may have had reasons which were just as ethical for their dietry choices as I do for mine. I was just curious to know what they were.

Here's a tip - if you're going to twist peoples' words, don't do it right back at them. They'll generally know that they're being misrepresented.

Barnetto:

But there is a certain ick factor associated with eating either my brother or my dog

Wasn't there a recent sociological experiment that examined the "ick factor" (for lack of a better technical term) and how it affected people's moral judgments? I seem to remember reading this somewhere.