I Feel This Is Wrong

In response to Brian - full post [here]

I think intuition is certainly a relevant tool for investigating morality. I think that, in general, our intuitions are decently in line with morality. However, I think that placing a value on things that you intuit is a bad idea. That is, it is a bad idea to say thus: since I intuit that killing parrots is wrong, it must be so that killing parrots is wrong. I think that we ought to defend our ideas with reasons almost regardless of our intuitions, and we especially ought to do so if our intuition differ from those of anyone else.

Our intuition sometimes lead us to think questionable things. For example, many people intuit that killing is worse than letting someone die if you have the full capacity to stop that death. This intuition is wrong; all things being equal, killing and letting die are equally immoral.

Also, even if intuitions happen to be correct, I am not sure what we gain from expressing intuitions as feelings. Expressing thoughts as feelings tends to give a sense that those thoughts are less important because they are subjective and really only what a person feels. It's the difference between "I feel like murder is wrong" and "I think murder is wrong." The voice of the former is saying "I feel like it's wrong, but it's just my feeling so.... I mean, I guess, maybe, if you want, you could, if you could, feel the same way." The voice of the latter is saying "I think this is wrong. I have reasons to think so. If you think differently, we should talk this out."

Ideally, when someone challenges a thought, the other person is pressed to give reasons, or at least to try giving reasons. Often, when someone challenges intuitions, the other person simply claims that it's just a feeling and people can feel what feel, people should leave others alone.

This, I think, is the basis for stylistic checklist item number 20 on the Philosophy department's Writing Checklist - they explain it pretty well there. [click here for checklist]

Sliding Scale and Animals

I think we can place the moral status of an animal on a sliding scale. Factors for placement on the scale would include, among other things, the level of sentience, the ability to process/experience pain, and self-value.

Full grown humans, for instance, would be rather high in this scale, as they very sentient, they can process and experience pain, and, in general, they highly value their own lives. Adult parrots would also rank rather highly, as they have mental capacities similar to many three to five year olds; it is, I think, just as wrong to kill an adult parrot, as it is to kill an infant human. Many other animals have capacities similar to infant children. Some animals, like chickens, have very limited mental capacities, that is, they are not terribly intelligent. They do however, have capacities for pain, as such, I think that they do have a value significant enough to warrant not hurting them, if we can avoid doing so.

Meanwhile, shellfish and plants have no brain or central nervous system of which to speak; they are no sentient, and they cannot experience or process pain. As such, I think it is ethical to kill them so long as you don't severely limit the food source of other more intelligent animals who survive on shellfish heavy diets. 

We can use this sliding scale to determine the ethics of vegetarianism. A human, in order to be ethical, should eat things with the lowest moral value. Many humans can survive on vegetables, fruits, and shellfish. As such, they should refrain from eating animals with the sentience and capacity to process and experience pain. If a human finds that they are unable to survive without other animal proteins, they should eat the animals with the lowest moral value that would suffice to give them the necessary protein; if a human needs animal meat for protein, and chicken would suffice, they ought not to eat anything of a higher moral value than chicken.