It's impossible to morally justify eating meat...
 

... Without deviating into a type of morality that won't be compatible with what most of us think is right.

Prove me wrong.

Ftr I do eat meat but I'm also a fairly immoral person.

Meat good

Remind me again of the One True Morality, I don't have my notes on me.

I dont think someone's morality should fall on whether or not they eat meat.

But, I also eat meat and idgaf so what do I know.

Yes.

Yes!

The Promised Neverland

Little Timmy got an F on his test so Mrs. Henderson gave him a Home Ec lesson.

I leave it open for you to use whatever moral system you abide by

My contention is that in order to actually justify it your moral system will not be satisfactory to most people in general

If you actually believe so then that's fine (I don't actually believe you do tbh)

I'd chalk this up under a moral system that doesn't come close to representing the values most of us would accept

Which implies a universal morality that you already seem to have a strong concept of, and that One True Morality would be...?

That doesn't imply any sort of objective morality. It implies there are multiple possibly workable moralities that conform roughly to the general popular consensus of what is right. There are also a infinite number of possible moral systems that don't do so.

For example you can easily construct a moral system where child rape is perfectly acceptable but not without deviating strongly from the norms we abide by to the point that invoking "morality" in such a case is virtually useless.

If I issued the same challenge to provide a coherent case that child rape is wrong, it would be easy to do so from multiple angles. You could easily make utilitarian or consequentialist arguments or deontological arguments along those lines.

I only add this constraint that the moral system you will have to construct to justify meat eating will necessarily be less compelling to most of us and more at odds with the values we generally hold because without this constraint it's pointless to talk about morality at all and you can literally justify any and everything.

And what would that be?

I mean it's not any one thing it's just that you can make general statements about which moral systems or rules will be more or less compelling to most people based on general trends

I believe morality is ultimately subjective and relative so you can justify eating meat just like you can justify child rape or anything else, theoretically, depending on the moral system. The challenge is how compelling of a case can you make for said moral system to the rest of us. That's a subjective question by its very nature.

Since you seem hung up on this though I can modify the question to can you justify eating meat based on the actual moral system you believe in / abide by rather than some hypothetical system you construct to justify it post hoc.

yes

Give us an example, Frown.

no

If I might interject my own answer to that question, I think I would turn to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - the One True Morality being, "Don't infringe on another person's human rights." The UDHR was signed by the UN in 1948:

I think a vote like that meets the bar of jwb's "...generally accepted.... popular consensus.." even if some countries/communities haven't followed it since. I suppose that like any moral system, it's there as an ideal and is not necessarily invalidated even when broken.

Unfortunately for this thread, the UDHR doesn't specifically mention eating meat or raping babies; those items must fall into some morally grey area that the UN were reluctant to tackle.

I've already accepted the fact that I'm a horrible person.

*takes a bite of steak*

*spits out the gristle*

Bring me another cow.

Having buffalo chicken burgers tonight :o:

lol

Dont back down, I'm curious to hear what you'd come up with

As for me, according to my morals eating meat is bad but I'm a big hypocrite

I say we resurrect the bestiality debate.

Nah, permitting meat eating under one's moral system is self-justifying.

I eat meat. I'm trying to ween myself off of it. But I do think 100 years from now the woke kids will think we were barbarians.

Or they’ll think we lived like kings or they might think it’s just a myth that people ever lived like this at all. Predictions are tough because they’re always about the future.

That depends on how much information goes into the guess. Given the climate issues facing the country, it's almost certainly going to be a major black-eye on the moral position of today's society.

Technically even human rights are not part of any demonstrably objective morality

Justifying genocide is just as easy as justifying meat consumption when your only argument is to point to moral relativity. That's why Frownlands responses so far are just as uncompelling as I predicted any attempts to defend meat eating would be in my original post. I don't know for a fact there are no compelling arguments but I can't think of any so that is my guess and that's why it's an open question.

I would make an exception for people who literally need to hunt to survive FTR. I'm talking more about meat consumption as a common commodity by people who can afford to do otherwise.

Is that all the thanks I get, jwb ? ;)

I thought I was doing you a favour by suggesting a moral code that was "generally accepted by most people", but even Frownland, asking for One True Morality didn't say it should be demonstrably objective.

I don't think morality can be demonstrably objective, any more than concepts like "nice" or "pleasing" can be. Expecting a demonstrably objective morality may well be a futile as expecting to find an electron that's visible to the naked eye.

Sorry if I seem ungrateful but I'm not looking for favors. If you agree with me then cool. If you disagree with me then cool. Honestly, the way this thread is going, I certainly wouldn't mind some actually engaging and challenging disagreements.

But yeah... I interpret one true morality and objective morality as the same thing and I think that was exactly the implication Frownland was making. If it can't be substantiated objectively then what exactly makes it the " one true morality?"

Only Sam Harris can answer such profundities.

Instead of talking about objective morality you need to be talkinf about internally consistent morality.

Not necessarily.

You can easily construct an internally consistent morality to justify just about anything. It needs some connection to the popular consensus and culture cause that's the easiest constraint to ground this discussion in terms of moral arguments that are actually viable in the society in which we live. Arguably, the Nazis had a fairly internally consistent moral framework.

Pretty sure Sam Harris handwaved Kant away in his arguments. He basically rephrases consequentialism but stresses that it's also extra based on science.

I still listen to his podcast and I do enjoy them but there’s something very idiosyncratic about how he thinks. He often goes on about how everything is just luck of the draw and if you understand that you could be a master of compassion like he obviously considers himself. Then he’ll go into a diatribe about how people should simply follow orders when they’re being arrested like he’s completely oblivious to the fact that an arrest is absolutely financially devastating for most of the people you see being arrested on youtube. Or he’s wildly perplexed at how anyone could defend looting or arson. I’m not saying he’s just expressing his opposition to these things but it’s that he’s seemingly entirely incapable of seeing it from the perspective of someone who’s just ****ing furious because they’ve been poor and disenfranchised their entire life. Even like Tucker Carlson has some awareness of how the other side thinks even if he thinks it’s stupid and abhorrent he’s not entirely oblivious to that which he disagrees. But Sam Harris thinks he’s deeply empathetic, or at least compassionate, but in fact he’s completely isolated in an intellectual bubble of extreme privilege. And again I’m not calling him out on being privileged or even enjoying it but the contrast between what he thinks he can see and what he actually sees is something to behold.

to be fair I don't think that was the argument, if you're referring to the chomsky exchange

It was that intent matters, because it's a good predictor of further behavior in the future, which ultimately is a consequentialist argument in favor of weighing in intent as a relevant variable.

That’s a more succinct way of saying it.

He grew up super rich with a famous television producer for a mother and it shows. Mom and Pop scholarship to Stanford with lots of international travel thrown in.