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Eating "sentient" beings.

thaiboxerken

Penultimate Amazing
thaiboxerken
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Sep 17, 2001
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"The capacity for feeling both good and bad things - the scholarly term is "sentience" - is central to the ethics of how we treat animals. If you're sentient, you have some quality of life at stake, and you deserve moral consideration... What are the implications for humankind's relationship to animals when we acknowledge and embrace the richness of their sensory experiences? It is sometimes convenient to exclude animals from our sphere of moral concern - as we do, for example, in the making of foie gras or lobster salad or in the meat industry in general. But is it right? Because animals can enjoy life, our moral obligations to them are greater. We may not have an obligation to provide pleasure to animals, but actively depriving them of the opportunity to fulfill natural pleasures - as we do when we cage or kill them - is another matter."

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_4117619
 
I think the point the author is trying to make is that other animal species are sentient too, so we shouldn't eat them either.
 
thaiboxerken said:
I think the point the author is trying to make is that other animal species are sentient too, so we shouldn't eat them either.
Click to expand...

He's making it rather badly, then. He gets the definition of "sentience" wrong, for a start.
 
If plants had little emotive faces like in a Disney cartoon, would there be a subset of people who would starve themselves to death?
 
Well, it's not the right word. But the message he's trying to convey is that because animals have feelings, we shouldn't eat them.
 
Intelligent legumes?


...Oh, I thought it said sentient beans.

My bad
 
Who knows? Maybe the author thinks they shouldn't. However, how would we stop all animals from eating each other? We can't reason with them, really.
 
thaiboxerken said:
I think the point the author is trying to make is that other animal species are sentient too, so we shouldn't eat them either.
Click to expand...

Well, when those other animals get sentient enough to pass around a petition and march on washington mall, I'll consider not grilling them. Seriously though, I think the sentient issue is mainly a strawman. We don't eat non-humans because they are non-sentient (though that might influence many), we eat non-humans because 1) they are non-human and 2) they are tasty.

For some (most I dare say) both 1 and 2 would fall by they wayside for the very hungry.
 
Apollyon said:
If plants had little emotive faces like in a Disney cartoon, would there be a subset of people who would starve themselves to death?
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Uh, personally speaking, I'd probably have a hard time swallowing a plant with a little emotive Disney face.

Creepy.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Who knows? Maybe the author thinks they shouldn't. However, how would we stop all animals from eating each other? We can't reason with them, really.
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So, when we release all the cows, pigs, chickens, etc... across the world wouldn't they be eaten by predators, hit by cars, starve to death, and so on? Why not just treat them well, feed them, keep them safe for most of their life and just eat them? Wouldn't that actually be more humane?
 
If we are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?

Daredelvis
 
thaiboxerken said:
Who knows? Maybe the author thinks they shouldn't. However, how would we stop all animals from eating each other? We can't reason with them, really.
Click to expand...

So, er, "don't kill and eat anything you can reason with"?

I can live with that. Although I have a few students in my 10 o'clock that need to be worried.
 
drkitten said:
So, er, "don't kill and eat anything you can reason with"?

I can live with that. Although I have a few students in my 10 o'clock that need to be worried.
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And I've got three teenage boys. I'm sure there's an official word for that but I dontwanna know it.
 
I got lost in the drawing of a comparison between foire gras and lobster. Lobsters are bugs. Ducks are dumb, but substantially smarter than bugs. If you have no qualms about squishing a roach in your pantry, and roaches are much more closely related to lobsters than ducks are to us, you should no qualms about eating a lobster.
 
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