well it's somewhat hard to agree with all your precepts Sloth7d cos you make an appeal to emotion regarding our increased cognition. we understand that things have feelings so therefore we shouldn't eat them isn't as strong an argument as you'd think.
Well, first I'd like to say, when discussing what's right and what's wrong to do, it's unavoidable to mention emotions in some sense (why should wife-beating be against the law? Because women don't like it, and hitting them against their will hurts them. ), but I wasn't making a logical fallacy (neither is that argument). For one, pain is not an emotion. Feelings of the touch sensation are not emotions though they lead to emotions. For another, neither is the will, and I've mentioned that before, too, and not
just pain and emotions. But even if it was, if I was making an appeal to emotions fallacy, I would say, if eating animals makes me sad, and people can live without eating animals, then I should try to convince people not to eat animals. Or, conversely, I would say, if eating animals makes me feel happy, and I don't care about the lives of animals, then I have no reason to convince others to quit eating meat. But what I did do, pointing out that, all circumstances being neutral, if we can find relevant reasons for people not to harm humans against their will, and those relevant reasons can be found in non-humans, then we have relevant reasons not to harm non-humans. This is a valid formal argument; if p is true, and p implies q, then q is true. To defeat this argument, you have to find relevant reason for us not to harm other humans as nonexistant, or you have to make the case that we can't find those relevant reasons in non-humans. I've taken the former as a given for this discussion so far,but I've addressed the latter in detail.
I am also not appealing to our emotions through increased cognition. You misunderstood. When I point out that our increased cognition gives us the ability to make rational decisions, that was to answer your claim about "who's to say which death will be better? By your hands or their mouth?" This tu quoque reply is answered by my response that since we can choose to avoid doing harm, while X cannot, for us to do harm anyway makes our actions worse than X's own. And you can substitute "X" for animals, babies, the mentally ill, and the mentally handicapped.
Now one thing I find odd about your logic is you suggest that our understanding of something having emotions is not a convincing reason not to eat it. If this is truly what you believe, I'm curious as to what something about something could we understand to be convincing to act upon it, particularly, to act upon not eating it?
your somewhat arguing your conclusion with circular reasoning.
If I were using circular reasoning I would argue, "if animals should not be harmed then animals should not be harmed because animals should not be harmed", without providing a reason for why animals should not be harmed. I've given reasons and plenty of reasons to refute objections without using my conclusion as a premise to assert itself. If it seems like I'm being circular or repeating myself, to be frank, this might be because I already addressed most of the objections you brought up pre-emptively in my first response to you. I think the only new objections you raised are about the effects of releasing domesticaed animals into the wild, and how likely it will be to convince other people not to eat meat. But you even seem to be misunderstanding my arguments and what I'm responding to in some instances. Which caused the confusion I addressed above.
i'm aware that the industries doing fine right now but perhaps people would be more likely to reduce meat consumption rather than eliminate it.
If we're talking about negotiating with people, this is something to consider. However, I thought I was being asked the moral nature of the situation. You asked me, "as for morality, what's the life of prey?" This I gave reasons to. If we're talking about what's right and wrong, negotiating is, at best, only something to consider for now, but by no means suggests that people shouldn't be continued to be reasoned into a vegetarian lifestyle.
