More On Vegetarianism

In response to Jake's response to me - full post here

Foremost, you never actually answered any of the questions that I asked. If you could do that, it my help us to better understand your position on the issue. Would you have chosen to kill one over the other, for any of those options?

Secondly, putting a creature to sleep with chloroform or otherwise does not prevent them from experiencing pain; it only prevents them from screaming in agony because they are rendered unable to do so. However, if we chose to accept the possibility that putting creatures to sleep made it more ethical to eat them, we would still have a problem with eating meat because even if it worked in theory, it would not work practically. The fact that we don't use chloroform on cows before we kill them makes that hypothesis invalid.

Thirdly, it's not in anyone's best interest to confuse the ethics of a term with the definition of the term. The philosophy is still a vegetarian one because it involves only eating non-animal foods. Even if it only slightly less barbaric, it is still vegetarianism. Because there is a large difference in the central nervous system and the intelligence of animals compared to plants, I think that vegetarianism is substantially less barbaric than meat-eating. Even if you do not agree that it is substantially different, you have already stated that you agree that it is slightly less barbaric, and thereby, presumably, better. Based on that, you ought to become vegetarian given that it is the best option; the lesser of two evils, if you view it such a light. Still I think people are hard-pressed to hold potatoes at the same moral worth, or even similar moral worth to humans, dolphins, parrots, chimpanzees, and so on.

This is just a note, I'm not really using it in defence of any of my points. Interestingly, there are plants that, despite lack of nervous system, have developed the ability to defend themselves by using semiochemicals to attract the higher trophic predators of the herbivores that are feeding on them. A fairly cool ability, I must say. Additionally, many plants have thorns or are poisonous.