Meat Morality and Human/Animal/Alien Rights

The problem here is that you seem to be conflating intellectual superiority and sentience. Those are two different things. Cattle are not sentient, and I am confident that we would be able to detect sentience in cattle if they had it. I am also confident that an alien species would be able to detect sentience in us if we ever made contact despite any differences in intellectual or technological capacity.

I would assume you are talking about experiments that we currently perform with mice but not humans because of ethical guidelines. Let's not forget that humans are already experimented on.And my answer is yes, ethically it is ok. If we travel far enough down the slippery slope we already are doing this. Many of the human primary cell lines used in research are derived from aborted fetuses. However, this would require consent from the guardian of the subject. Also, you would need to show that such research couldn't also be done effectively in other mammal models. This same requirement is used for primate research. I agree. We are, at the end of the day, emotional creatures. We can't avoid it or completely repress it. We will always be biased towards our own species. We are even biased towards our own communities to the detriment of other human beings.

Psychokinetic levitation is not sentience, either. We are able to determine that animals communicate, and the depth to which that communication occurs. It doesn't even need to be sound based speech. We understand how ants and bees communicate through chemistry, as one example. Perhaps I am being too optimistic, but like I said I am pretty confident that we can sense sentience even if we are not able to direclty communicate.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

That is not my assumption. It is the assumption in the OP."Put it this way - If a highly intelligent, highly advanced far intellectually superior alien race came to Earth and started treating humans in much the same way that we treat animals (intense meat farming, milk extraction, slave labour, conducting experiments, testing cosmetics etc. etc.) on what rational and consistent basis could we tell them that what they are doing is morally wrong whilst simultaneously justifying our own treatment of intellectually inferior creatures?"Our rational is that we use sentience as a metric. Us, and presumably the aliens, are sentient. The animals which we domesticate and eat are not sentient. That is the difference. That is our justifiable rationale. Their criteria may very well be different as would their views on morality. Aliens may very well view those who are unable to defend themselves, sentient or not, as morally justifiable sources of food. In this case, wouldn't we be the enlightened ones?

Whether aliens find our argument persuasive or not has nothing to do with the fact that we can justify the difference between us and animals in a way that puts humans and the aliens in the same group. Identifying ourselves as an individual is one. My dog has serious issues with this. She barks at her own reflection. She has no idea that the dog she is looking at is herself. Interestingly enough, dolphins do appear to see themselves as individuals. Perhaps this is why we never see cans of tuna-safe dolphin in the grocery store. The very fact that we are making a reasoned argument to aliens would seem to put us well above any marker for sentience.

If you are going to change the hypothetical metric until we do fail then yes, we will fail. However, there is a metric that both us and the aliens would pass and animals we eat would not. It's been a while since I read the book, but if memory serves there was not the threat of being eaten if they didn't build they machine.

As of right now, we do treat chimps differently than we do other mammals. At the same time, human history does include canabalism. There are human cultures where it was considered ethical to eat humans that had been defeated in battle.So we are also running into the is/ought problem. What we consider moral or reason to be moral is not always reflected in what we actually do. What we ought to do is not always what we end up doing. However, one can not justify immorality by pointing to other acts of immorality. Perhaps it is like obscenity. We know it when we see it.Perhaps self expression should be a part of it. A sentient species should be able to communicate abstractly in a way that describes their sentience. Humans are able to do this even across language barriers. Other primates are not capable of doing this.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Good point. It would be impossible to argue morality with a species that has no concept of morality. It would be like teaching a shark that it is immoral to eat humans. Would it be equally impossible to teach a chimp that it is immoral to kill a fellow chimp out of anger?Perhaps we don't even need to leave our planet (or have another species pay a visit) to put these ideas to the test.

Yes and no. Many countries have banned "bush meat", and it largely considered to be immoral in the population at large. Also, primates are given more consideration than mice or rabbits in biomedical research. Even with "lower" mammals we still give them some moral consideration. We try not to inflict more pain than is necessary, be it in research or in slaughter. We also punish people who inflict pain on other animals for no other reason than entertainment or callousness (e.g. Michael Vick). The "sliding scale" of sentience does appear to be reflected in how we treat other animals in some ways. However, our insistence that eating cats and dogs is bad while cattle are just asking for it is hard to justify.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

That is true for the majority of people, but not so for me. I grew up on a ranch, and the locals would drop off animals at our place to be butchered. As a kid I must have watched hundreds of animals being butchered and when I was older the butcher even let me be the triggerman. From my own experience, you quickly overcome the shock of seeing animals killed and slowly become more curious as to how they are put together.I don't know if this is true or not, but one butcher told me that he was not allowed to be on juries. It was thought that butchers were desenstized to killing. This might make it easier for them to find someone guilty if the death penalty was in play.

This conversation has taken an interesting tack. If we assume, for the moment, that it is immoral to eat meat when we could eat plant matter without suffering any nutritional diseases then how does this relate to the OP?I see three different situtations.1. If we also assume that the visiting alien race is more enlightened than us AND is much more technologically advanced then we would not have to worry about them eating us. In fact, they may have already figured out a way to produce their food abiotically negating the use of even plant derived food.OR . . .2. If we are going to argue that this enlightened, advanced race still does eat meat then perhaps eating meat is not immoral afterall?OR. . .3. Eating meat is immoral. If these aliens want to eat us, and we consider carnivory to be a moral dilemma at worst and wrong at best, this would make us into the more enlightened race, would it not?So perhaps we should be asking how we would justify our carnivory to a race of aliens who is not as enlightened as we are.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

I agree. This would seem to breakdown into a debate over moral relativism vs. objective morality. If we are going to extend this to alien races then we would also need to figure out how much of our morality is influenced by biology and how much is influenced by objectivity and reason.I don't want to call this a semantic argument, but it is unavoidable. When we say that someone is enlightened it is always in reference to our own sense of morality and reasoning. Can we extend such a description to an alien race that does not share our morality and reasoning? Can we call a race "enlightened" if they are incapable of empathy?

Then it kind of shoots a hole in the idea that they are more technologically advanced than us. Our species is capable of genetically modifying plant species to better fit our dietary needs. Surely an alien species light years more advanced than us would be capable of this. But, assuming they have not for the sake of argument . . . Then the question comes back to: Would humans be their moral equivalent? In human philosophy a moral agent is not defined by their biology. Modern philosophers have often posed questions dealing with the possibility of self-aware computer program, as one example. I don't see why unicellular organisms (something like algae or yeast) could not be genetically modified to supply the needed nutrients. There are many options short of modifying your own species to eat something other than meat from an animal with a well developed CNS. I don't think it is about plant v. animal. We would would consider eating sponges (if they were edible) the same as eating corn even though sponges are animals. Our ethical consideration seems to be centered around a well developed nervous system.At the same time, we are biased towards species that feel pain like we do. One could argue that plants experience "pain", but in a way that is so foreign to us that we discount it. I don't think they are wholly subjective. We have become "enlightened" enough that we are able to separate morality from biology. We are still greatly influenced by biology, but I do believe we have begun to separate our morality from our instincts. This has often been the subject of science fiction, and had overtones in the recent film Avatar. Asimov's Foundation series is focused on self-aware robots as moral agents.I also see another possibility, one that can be seen in our own species. As our technology advances it allows us to separate our decisions from the outcome of those decisions. Bill Maher was publically chastised a few years ago for bringing this to light. He said that the hijackers on 9/11 were braver than a kid who launches cruise missle on a Navy destroyer by pushing a button. While this is certainly a tasteless comment it does hold a kernel of truth. As others have mentioned above our methods for bringing meat to market allow people to go their whole lives without ever seeing an animal slaughtered, or even partially processed for that matter.Is this a path that other species would follow? Quite possibly. Perhaps our greatest concern should be autonomous alien technology landing on our planet. This technology would terraform our planet to meet the needs of the alien species even if it meant the extinction of our species. This technology would also allow the alien species to distant themselves from ethical considerations in the same way that pushing a button to launch a cruise missle distances the Navy ensign from seeing people blown apart.

The whole argument seems to be centered around whether or not a well developed central nervous system is subjective or arbitrary. The difference being that they, unlike "animals", make these choices based on their own morality. Does a shark stop to think about the pain it causes? Do sharks have a moral code? Are they moral agents? Are basking sharks a result of morally conflicted sharks opting for a more vegetarian lifestyle? Wouldn't you need to ask their permission first?

Sounds like a Catch-22. It is ok to eat someone who gives their consent as long as they are not insane being that it is immoral to take advantage of the mentally ill. However, anyone who consents to being eaten must be insane.