Potatoes v. Dogs

In response to Jake's response to me on Andrew Nelson's post - full post found here

The ethics of vegetarianism are not accurately described as "not killing a living thing." The ethics of vegetarianism is more accurately described as "not causing other things to suffer." Plants, unlike animals, lack a nervous system, so they are unable to experience pain, to our knowledge.

While I understand the feelings behind not wanting or liking the sliding scale, it is very useful and practical. For instance, would you rather, if you were forced to, stab either a potato or a dog? If you had to choose one, would you rather stab a cow or a chimpanzee? Again, if forced to choose, would you rather kill a 80 year old man with brain damage or a highly intelligent 16 year old? If you made a choice between any of those, then you agree about the value of one living thing over another. If you did not distinguished between the options, then would you kill humans and eat them, since they have the same worth as a cow or potato.

We must kill living things to eat, I agree. I think, however, that we may as well only eat the things which we think cannot experience pain. Even if all life is equal in worth, wouldn't it be best to not cause pain to things which we know have the capacity to suffer?

Why the Sun Really Shines (Really This Time)

In class today we mentioned Karl Marx's view that science serves to replace nonsense with less absurd nonsense. I do agree with his view on the matter; science is indeed very fallible. There are many people who treat science as though it were a similar dogmatic force as the religion that they oppose. When asked certain things about how they believe the universe is governed they suggest that they know certain things. This song is a catchy cover of the education song written in 1959. Maybe scientists were less dogmatic about their studies in the past, but this is still a good example of how science is fallible.

This song (Why the Sun Shines) is sort of juxtaposed with the song (Why the Sun Really Shines) found after this block of text. In the second song the artist clarifies that the scientific thesis of the sun being a mass of gas has been rendered invalid. This does not however mean that there is no way that this song could also be wrong; maybe the sun is not made of plasma either. We are more confident, however, that the sun is not composed of what we recognize as gas.

None of this is to say that we should disbelieve any conclusion that scientists reach, only that it could very well be wrong but, given our technology it is the best answer we have. We should not blindly accept any scientific solution as a fact of the universe because it is very likely to change. The story of the Big Bang, for instance, should not be accepted as the definite truth of the universe, it is simply one of the best hypotheses that we have at the time, as technology improves the answers will get better.

As a final note, the unchanging thesis are not automatically better or correct because they have not changed. The view that God created the universe has been around for a much longer time, and has remained relatively unchanged aside from minor variations. That unchanging nature of that belief does not mean that it is more stable and therefore more probably true.

Burden of Proof

The burden of proof is the idea that a person who is making a claim is responsible for finding sufficient evidence to warrant their position on the issue. In the case regarding our class, the person who says "I believe such and such about the unconscious mind" has the responsibility of providing sufficient evidence. The individual cannot place the burden of proof on the opposition as in "you cannot prove that such and such is not the case," this would be committing the logical fallacy called Appeal to Ignorance. Even if you know for certain that no evidence can be found contrary to your position, it is a bad philosophy to imply that lack of contrary evidence equates to a reason for believing something , because evidence could always surface later and the person whom you are pressing for opposition is not likely an expert in that field.

This situation does not apply only to affirmative assertions. If, for instance, I said that there is not a perfectly visible pink unicorn in the bowman, it would be up to me to prove that there is not a pink unicorn there. Though you could prove me wrong by surveying the entirety of Bowman and finding a pink unicorn, you don't have to so long as you do not assert that there are pink unicorns. Not believing A does not automatically equate to believing not A, you can simply refuse to believe of disbelieve a claim until proven If, for whatever reason, you were unable to prove that there is a unicorn, that doesn't meant that my assertion is right. What this is neither evidence of presence or evidence of absence, you can take a stance on either side so long as it doesn't harm others and so long as you recognize that the other side has an equally valid view.

Vain Efforts and Better Solutions

Second part of my response to Andrew's post found here

Finally, most people in first world countries would likely be more opposed to eating insects than they would be opposed to giving up meat. If we are going to make an effort to get rid of the consumption of (non-insect) animals, we may as well work to get rid of the consumption of insects. Converting everyone to practice entomophagy would require more work for a less desirable result.

I suggest then, that we should make an effort to become entirely vegetarian. If we do so, the demand to find a decent substitute, founded largely in the meat-taste loving community, would likely speed up the technology necessary for cloned meat. Meat substitutes will only get better for meat-taste lovers, if more meat-taste lovers give up meat and search for/seek to create new meat substitutes. Necessity and desire are the parents of invention.

Why Entomophagy Is Not The Best Idea

First part of my response to Andrew's Post found here

I agree that these could potentially be solutions, or at least better alternatives to eating animals. There are a few problems however, namely with the first one. Entomophagy, the consumption of insects, is not exactly a healthy choice to make.

Insects have health risks that aren't as prevalent in other animals; they have different kinds of parasites which are more difficult to get rid of compared to the bacteria and parasites in meat; due to the nature of their size, the preparation is less effective at killing parasites; their bodies cannot, at the expense of retaining a decent taste, bear the temperatures necessary to kill the bacteria and parasites. In California there were a number of cases of lead poisoning caused by the consumption of grasshoppers. Additionally, in order to make entomophagy more reasonable, we would have to cease using insecticides or herbicides, given that those are unsuitable for human consumption.

While I agree that eating insects is better, in terms of ethics, than eating other animals, I am not inclined to agree that because people care less about insects than other animals it is acceptable to go out of our way to kill insects. The ethics of vegetarianism is as follows: If you can sustain yourself without causing other living things to suffer, you ought to do so; this is also negotiable in that if you must cause suffering it is best to cause as little of it as possible. So, it would be perfectly ethical to eat the likes of shellfish, meal-worms, larvae, and other grub given that their capacity for pain is very low. Thus, farming insects like grasshoppers to eat would be more ethically appropriate, but not as appropriate as not doing so.