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Notes -
Gladly.
Your argument is fundamentally utilitarian, and utilitarianism leads to insanity or tyranny.
On the side of the suffering, utilitarianism quickly devolves into making things up. I'm pretty sure animals experience pain, but that's vague. At the decision-making level, you must assign some number of qualia to their pain, if you want to trade it off against a human action. The problem is this number is totally made up. Make up a number in one direction, and it's OK to torture animals for sport (bullfighting), make up a number in another direction, and you're a Jain. Both numbers are of course completely made up with no reference to reality.
The second order effects get stranger. If you're in the business of making up qualia, you could find yourself morally obligated to kill predators, worrying about the suffering of subatomic particles, etc. That way leads insanity and SBF.
On the side of the morally responsible, utilitarianism quickly devolves into tyranny. If you've appointed yourself the arbiter of the moral balance of the universe, you might find yourself starting out by murdering ranchers, and end up with the Repugnant Conclusion, murdering unhappy children, and ending up at Stalin.
Utilitarianism is fundamentally unbounded.
I choose reciprocity. I will act with honor towards those who act with honor towards me. I'm entirely OK with raising those who act without reciprocity towards me in cages. In the case of animals, for meat. In the case of people, those cages are called prison. In the case of people, I'm against killing them (the death penalty), because I believe the system for judging them is fallible, and I want the convicted and accused to have the chance to prove their innocence. Since I am against killing them, I can't kill them for food.
Would I eat a murderer, if it was 100% certainty that he was guilty? That's an interesting question that I hadn't gotten to until now.
For now, I find the arguments for vegetarianism unconvincing, and I'm going to leave the Chesterton's Fence of meat eating up - but I'm not sufficiently convinced to stop thinking about it.
Just to follow up in case you’re still interested: I just concluded a nice discussion with aquota where we both acknowledged it comes down to power and realpolitik rather than any higher ethical cause.
If you’re able to come up with a loftier rationale as to why the moral line should be drawn specifically at the species boundary, I would still love to hear it.
Thanks. I was interested. To me the moral line is drawn at reciprocity, because morality is between actors. I have no moral obligation to a rock or a plant. If an animal or an alien is capable of reasoning from principles to determine reciprocal actions to my actions, then they are moral actors. If they aren't moral actors, then morally they are no different than a rock or a plant.
Ah I see what you mean now. I haven’t encountered this specific line of reasoning before, so thanks for introducing it to me.
I’m curious about a couple of follow-up questions: if animals aren’t moral actors, are animals entitled to any amount of ethical treatment? Or is it moral to torture animals for any or no reason at all?
And are only the humans that are moral actors deserving of moral rights? Would it be fine to kill an orphaned infant before it has developed enough moral understanding to be a moral agent of its own?
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Please correct me if I’ve misunderstood you, but it sounds like you only care about reciprocity if the entity you’re interacting with can and does behave with honor towards you, and you believe animals are incapable of honor.
Doesn’t this just push the delineation down to where you draw the line with “honor”? How do you define honor in such a way as to exclude animals from being capable of it, while including all humans in the mix? Is it fine to kill a human infant (or any human with sufficiently low agency) because they are incapable of honoring you any more than a dog can?
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