Should it be illegal to kill animals for food?

[Alcon]

I'm not trying to be a dick -- maybe I am a little -- but do you guys really most of these arguments as compelling as you're letting on?

"Animals" would try to kill you if they could?  Some animals would.  Why does a bear entitle you to kill a cow, when it doesn't entitle you to kill a human?

Would you be OK with killing a mentally retarded human with no relatives, if you're using an intelligence test?  Maybe intelligence is your litmus test between "murder" and "Thursday night's dinner."  That seems rather black-and-white to me, but whatever.  Most people arbitrarily extend this at a species level, and this doesn't make much sense to me.

afleitch, you do realize that feeding animals requires many much more agricultural product than vegetarianism/veganism?  Trophic levels. It's not even close.

Antonio, why do you observe that humans have moral intelligence, and then use that to justify slaughtering other animals?  I'm not saying that argument is logically untenable.  However, considering that it's the opposite of the "intelligence -> moral responsibility" connection usually works the other way in our society.  Intelligence holds us culpable for what we do to less capable entities.

I often feel that people are trying to rationalize conventional behavior in this debate instead of seriously considering whether their practices are sound.  I'm inclined to vote Immoral/irrelevant.  At minimum, I think it justifies some pretty thoughtful consideration that I don't think happens often.

[Alcon]

Antonio, why do you observe that humans have moral intelligence, and then use that to justify slaughtering other animals?  I'm not saying that argument is logically untenable.  However, considering that it's the opposite of the "intelligence -> moral responsibility" connection usually works the other way in our society.  Intelligence holds us culpable for what we do to less capable entities.

I said the unalienable right to life is reserved to self-aware beings. This isn't the same as saying intelligent beings, which, as you pointed out, would have pretty dreadful implications. Moral responsibility is what compels us not to do what we think should not be done (in a Kantian view, I'd say). An idea of what should be done, and of what I should do, naturally comes only when one first and foremost acknowledges his existence and of the existence of what surrounds it. So yes, if you replace intelligence with self-awareness, I agree with the connection you draw. How, however, does that constitute an argument against killing animals ?

Fair enough.  Are you OK with the slaughter and consumption of humans who lack the current or potential future capacity for self-awareness?  And why is the "inalienable right to life" reserved to self-aware beings, so much so that the punishment for killing a self-aware being is years of imprisonment, while we culturally celebrate the killing of non-self-aware beings?

I'm not saying this distinction is logically indefensible.  It comes down to a fairly arbitrary decision about what life is valuable and what creatures are rights-bearing.  That's fine.  What irritates me is people who pretend these answers are obviously true, completely compelling, or even particularly intuitive.  They're not, and it totally befuddles me why so many people think they are.

[Alcon]

I'm not sure what kind of humans would be concerned by such definition. Even the most mentally ill person usually has some degree of self-awareness. The only thing which could fit your definition would be people in vegetative coma (and even then, only those with absolutely no possibility of recovery). Regarding these people, you can call me a monster, but I don't really mind them being killed or not. As for why we don't consume their flesh... I guess that "because it creeps us out" is a sufficient reason.

A profoundly autistic person doesn't have much more self-awareness than domestic animals.  In any case, what kind of "self-awareness" triggers the flip over from "transcendent moral evil" to "Wednesday night's dinner"?  "Self-awareness" is a pretty abstract concept, and probably operates on a spectrum.  We send people to jail for life for killing another human...and yet just down the spectrum, it isn't even socially taboo to eat some fairly intelligent animals.  The kind of "logarithmic" pattern to valuing "self-awareness" seems pretty bizarre to me, more like a rationalization than anything.

Not sure what you mean that you don't know why humans should be concerned with "such a definition."  Because it doesn't affect us, or for some other reason?

I don't know why you are bringing this up. I don't think the distinction is obvious or that everybody should agree with me. But it still strikes me as a viewpoint significantly more, say, down-to-earth than that of vegetarian crusaders. I find giving the same worth to any form of life without distinction to be an extremely misguided and potentially dangerous idea.

I'm bringing it up because it's my reaction to many of the posts in this topic.  I'm not seeing the confusion.

I don't think most "vegetarian crusades" think that all life is exactly equal, and I'm not really interested in defending arguments I think are bad, anyway.  Your position may be more "down-to-earth" than the most militant vegan out there.  However, I don't see why you find your argument "down-to-earth."  You've said that self-awareness is such an important characteristic as to make murder unacceptable.  You've also conceded this is morally ambiguous.  Yet you're not willing to slightly limit our immensely broad food choice to err on the side of caution, and on not slaughtering creatures that are -- to some degree -- "self-aware."

There's nothing to objectively prove that your distinction is unreasonable.  However, that's true of any distinction like this.  This stuff's subjective.  Imagine if society drew this distinction within the human population.  Would you not argue then that there is a moral responsibility to be cautious in the face of these grave, arbitrary decisions, when the only sacrifice is some food selection?  If so, why there, and not here?

I think you probably get my basic argument by now.

[Alcon]

And why should living beings be privileged over inanimate objects?  Did the atoms in this computer ask to be made into a computer?  Have I not enslaved them?

It always sort of confuses me when people use a caricature of a very unpopular position to attack that position, and don't do the same with the similarly thoughtless justifications used to justify the mainstream position.  This is especially bizarre considering this argument hasn't been presented in this thread, but plenty of comparably terrible ones on the other side have.

No one is arguing -- nor would anyone intelligent likely argue -- that it is wrong to eat anything that could theoretically be arbitrarily ascribed rights.

[Alcon]

A couple of you want to make it illegal for me to eat meat?  Really? How is that even enforceable?  Are we going to hire a bunch of meat police?

Pretty minimal enforcement (e.g., licensing) would probably be enough to drastically cut down on meat consumption.

[Alcon]

A couple of you want to make it illegal for me to eat meat?  Really? How is that even enforceable?  Are we going to hire a bunch of meat police?

Pretty minimal enforcement (e.g., licensing) would probably be enough to drastically cut down on meat consumption.

Did you rip off the licensing thing from me in chatting with Badger about the penalty for abortionists?   Can you imagine what will happen to the value of my Iowa corn fields if folks all stopped eating meat?  Oh the horror! 

This is true.  The massive amounts of superfluous agricultural product needed to maintain livestock certainly helps Iowa, and if they can keep methanol afloat...my idyllic enforcement regime is pretty screwed.  Damn, and we were so close to hitting 1% popular support in the polls!

[Alcon]

Why does this question even exist? Do some people actually want our species to go extinct?

You're definitely going to have to explain this one

[Alcon]

Meat is a massive food source for our species that is easily producible. We don't have enough resources to feed our entire planet as it is.

Remember trophic levels from high school biology?  If we get x energy from beef, we need to feed that beef far more than x energy level in agricultural product.  Meat consumption, on the macro level, is actually a pretty massive waste of resources.

I don't give a damn what people eat (putting aside the "fats" thing), just let me have my meat (which beyond the satiation aspect, also helps one buff up).  By the way, are we just talking about mammals, or any animal?  How about insects?  

I think most people make some sort of distinction between the rights or rights-bearing creatures.  I mean, carnivorous humans do -- the question is if it's the most logically defensible one...