For example, medical insights provided by Nazi scientists, and to a lesser extent Japanese ones, were provided by tests on human subjects with often fatal results.
I haven't met a person for which this isn't true.
From my conversations with other people, the hierarchy of care is roughly:
Humans > large mammals > small mammals / cephlopods > birds / large reptiles > small reptiles / fish > large insects / trees > small insects / spiders / plants > yeast / fungi / bacteria
Humans > tool-and-reason-using animals (certain primates, corvids, cephalopods, cetaceans, etc.) > other animals in descending order of perceived capacity to suffer > bivalves > non-animal kingdoms.
That classification also made me stop eating octopus even though it's one of my favorite dish.
Pigs and cattle were domesticated for food.
I think most people's feelings toward these animals have deep evolutionary roots.
This seems the result of socialisation in to that behaviour.
In the UK, outside food chain fraud, we don't eat horse, but plenty of other countries do - I don't think that's because we evolved differently.
Totally legal though:
http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summ...
I think there are moral implications of dogs and cats having been bred as domestic animals; probably also there are tertiary implications through the differences in resources and methods needed to farm them (though these would presumably reduce as the animals were adapted to be cattle).
Meta: I know self-deprecation is a common pastime for us Brits but standing by your moral convictions to preserve all life is a noble endeavour, not soppy, and probably the greater for the wisdom that usually follows age.
I say this as a staunch carnivore. I just don't see how it's morally sustainable. What if we develop methods of chemically induced greater intelligence, and a Peta activist goes to a farm and injects it into all the cows? Shit like that are what I think will eventually drive the world to vegetarianism. That or species extinction...
There's a simple moral justification for atheists - morality is a human construct, we can ignore it when we find that useful.
2. Cooking is my primary hobby. I am fascinated by the history and culture of it, much of which is based around meat
3. I lift a lot and can't hit my macros at reasonable calorie to protein to dollar ratio without chicken and eggs
4. I have worked on a farm and as a result, as long as I'm buying properly sourced meat (pasture raised, not factory shit) I don't feel much guilt as I have confidence the animal had a comfortable life by the normal metrics of animal life, and was killed quickly and with little pain.
1. Do you love the taste of meat or is it the texture of the meat + the taste of the (plant) seasonings?
2. If it is your primary hobby, you should dive more into cuisines that don't focus heavily on meat as a personal challenge (as well as trying to make plant-based versions of things), I think you'd find it a lot of fun.
3. You can, that is a common misconception but there are a lot of resources on the internet about this–on phone and precaffeinated but I can look later if you'd like.
4. This is a classic reasoning I hear, I think it is honorable that you try to eat humanely killed animals, but there are other issues (factory farming is more environmentally friendly, selective breeding causes health issues, can't be sure all farms are as ethical as the one you worked on, eating meat at basically any restaurant goes against your defense, etc.)
Need to walk my dog, make breakfast, and go to work but I am down to continue this discourse at both of our leisures–hope you have a lovely day :)
In any case, hierarchies like that are almost totally arbitrary, like anything about a culture.
I'm just poking the bear here and seeing what comes out. Let's play with this more.
Why are you trying to seek out a hypocrisy angle in my arguments? I feel like that's a somewhat boring way to go about this.
There are a lot of drugs that pass animal testing only to fail human testing. Ethics review boards are a pretty good, but imperfect way to moderate the harm of human experimentation.
> hierarchies like that are almost totally arbitrary
This hierarchy corresponds roughly to some mix of genetic, morphological and behavioral similarity. It's obviously not arbitrary.
> like anything about a culture
lol
Anthropologists that argue against universal morality are used to being derised and mocked, but I don't mind being a punching bag - please, feel free to present your evidence that the hierarchy of care is the result of perceived similarities, and how this must apply rigidly and universally across all cultures. That, for example, there was never a culture in all of human history that placed a less-human-appearing animal's value over a more-human-appearing animal... or even over other humans.
In addition, humans can consent to things.
Japanese and Nazi human experiments were hardly scientific. Torture disguised as science does not produce reliable results.
E.g. most of what we know about reactions of human body to extreme cold was found by Nazi scientists in quite unethical, but reasonably scientific ways, for entirely practical military purposes.
Triggers: pretty much all of them.
I'm sure we, the public, don't know the half of it.
Modern ethics requirements were established for reasons.
But because these are my favorite too-drunk-at-a-bar conversations I wanna give it a crack. Here's a couple things I think require human experimentation
1. Creative a definitive best-practice guide to child rearing. I.e., hitting yes/no? Shouting at yes/no?
2. Fully understanding primitive/baseline human psychology absent of culture, which could help us understand if there is for example biological morality, how to teach language, how languages form. Can't see how to do this without abandoning a child in the wilderness.
3. Determining best-case formula for human tribal organization. I.e. what's the most effective leadership traits, organizational schemes, rule enforcement mechanisms... Could be figured out with Vaults ;)
4. Is post-death ressurection possible and at what point? I suppose you can get consent before death, but does that count when that individual terminates?
Can you think of any more? What are your thoughts on what would be "worth it?"
How do we scientifically demonstrate effective means of raising children without experimentation on children?
In what dimension do you measure hight of thought? I guess on the one hand this could be linked to the architecture of the brain, directly translating to some topological notion. On the other hand, you might simply argue that others and self are on two different planes of existence and that higher consciousness is not concerned with just self and emotions, but with thoughts of thoughts ... per se, on very high levels of abstractions. And as those thought models are, if the bayesian crowd is to be any judge, highly probabilistic, those thoughts are just hypothetical. So, you are just saying they harbour wrong thoughts. They (we) are painfully aware of the possibility, but not very precisely. Then, in absence of other viable theories, they run with it.
In effect, I guess, if they have a low opinion of other creatures, they might not have a high opinion of themselves.
Thankfully researchers have learned to "forget describing" the painful effects or use "over-technical description of procedures avoiding the perceived pain by animal subjects", so they can actually not be noticed by people like you, and carry on working on things like curing cancer and other important stuff. Also, the "is it really worth" question is the dumbest thing to do in science - most scientific discoveries are valuable because of their unforseen and unintended consequence, so saving cures can come from a 10th level consequence of "pointless research" (that could have gone unfounded because someone like you might've said "but is it really worth the cost [in animal suffering]?").
Better wake up and see the cruelty that is all around us first, including abundant human-to-human cruelty everywhere, and adjust your cruelty-tolerance threshold accordingly!
This can help a lot of people for a long time.