• Is splitting or disabling certain parts of a living animal more moral, or killing them ("All or Nothing!") is? We don't consider brain yet here.
  
• Is removing the thinking ability of an animal moral? Should brain be treated differently?
  
• What is more important for an animal? To be alive, or to be able to think? Is killing an animal moral, or killing his brain moral?
  
• Which one is better, death (from overgrowth), living painfully with thinking ability, or living without the thinking ability?
  
• Even if we think to live without thinking ability is better, do humans have the right to decide which choice is better for an animal who has the ability to think itself, when there's no way could we learn how it feels?
  
• Could an animal be considered "died" or transformed to "plant" if its brain is removed or disabled? Does the state of the brain decide an animal's identity?
  
• Is torturing an animal who cannot perceive moral? This is closed tied to the previous question of the animal's "identity".
  
• Where is the border between a human and another kind animal, when they both have thinking ability? Are animal's "thinking" and human's "reasoning" really different?
  
• What is different between different kinds of animals? We eat chickens, but why not dogs? If we could remove brains from chickens, could we do the same on dogs?
  
• If someday our population grow too much that to keep humans alive we must remove/disable brain of the chickens, does it become moral?
  

(03-09-2012, 12:27 PM)RichardGv Wrote: Firstly, the link is broken. :)

(03-09-2012, 12:27 PM)RichardGv Wrote: Ethical problems have no fixed answers. Everybody could give a different one based on the environment and education.

(03-09-2012, 12:27 PM)RichardGv Wrote: [*]Is splitting or disabling certain parts of a living animal more moral, or killing them ("All or Nothing!") is? We don't consider brain yet here.
[*]Is removing the thinking ability of an animal moral? Should brain be treated differently?
[*]What is more important for an animal? To be alive, or to be able to think? Is killing an animal moral, or killing his brain moral?
[*]Which one is better, death (from overgrowth), living painfully with thinking ability, or living without the thinking ability?
[*]Even if we think to live without thinking ability is better, do humans have the right to decide which choice is better for an animal who has the ability to think itself, when there's no way could we learn how it feels?
[*]Could an animal be considered "died" or transformed to "plant" if its brain is removed or disabled? Does the state of the brain decide an animal's identity?
[*]Is torturing an animal who cannot perceive moral? This is closed tied to the previous question of the animal's "identity".
[*]Where is the border between a human and another kind animal, when they both have thinking ability? Are animal's "thinking" and human's "reasoning" really different?
[*]What is different between different kinds of animals? We eat chickens, but why not dogs? If we could remove brains from chickens, could we do the same on dogs?
[*]If someday our population grow too much that to keep humans alive we must remove/disable brain of the chickens, does it become moral?
[/list]
Note, many questions are not limited to other kinds of animals, but humans could be considered, too. Like, is torturing a human moral if he cannot feel it at all? Could we decide on whether we could cut off the brain of another human? Is a human still different from other kinds of animals if he loses his brain?

We could keep arguing for each issue for a whole year, without getting any results, because they truly depends on what you have seen, what you have done, what you have learned, in your life. And even worse, since we answer these questions mostly based on our feelings instead of logic, it's quite possible we could eventually get contradicting answers from the same person's mouth.

(03-09-2012, 12:27 PM)RichardGv Wrote: Oh, well, and my personal opinion about the ethical problem is, I don't know. I made the question way too complicated and I am lost. :D

(03-09-2012, 12:27 PM)RichardGv Wrote: The economical problem is left for the scientists and businessmen. Not something we should care about.

(03-09-2012, 12:27 PM)RichardGv Wrote: For the "rationally" part, if it exists, it is reasonable.

(03-10-2012, 03:21 AM)Vanilla Wrote: As if questions to questions wasn't enough, I almost feel obliged to create even more questions (like how do you actually define an animal, considering a jellyfish is considered an animal, yet doesn't have a brain nor a central nervous system. On the other hand, some microbes/cells aren't usually considered animals, yet doesn't differ than much from jellyfishes). But to keep the topic from becoming too complex, I'll refrain from asking more questions :)

(03-10-2012, 03:21 AM)Vanilla Wrote: Anyway, I forgot to give my own opinion about this. I wouldn't really mind if these factories were put to function. Humans need meat (not biologically, since those nutrients can be found elsewhere), but because we are consumers. Humans have eaten meat since the dawn of time (just like other carnivorous animals), and functioning meat vats doesn't currently exist (AFAIK). This change of production pipeline not only makes the life less miserable for these animals, it also optimizes the productivity.

(03-11-2012, 12:49 AM)RichardGv Wrote:

(03-10-2012, 03:21 AM)Vanilla Wrote: As if questions to questions wasn't enough, I almost feel obliged to create even more questions (like how do you actually define an animal, considering a jellyfish is considered an animal, yet doesn't have a brain nor a central nervous system. On the other hand, some microbes/cells aren't usually considered animals, yet doesn't differ than much from jellyfishes). But to keep the topic from becoming too complex, I'll refrain from asking more questions :)

I didn't pose these questions randomly. They together provided a logical chain leading to the result "the chicken farms is moral" or "is immoral".

I drew a flowchart with Dia comparing the ideal (logical) process and the actual process to determine whether the chicken farm idea is good or not. It's not that perfect but it shows my thought.


But even the ideal thought process is not logical, as the answers of each question in the ideal thought process are not generated by a logical thought process, either. :) When it comes to ethical issues there's truly no logic anywhere.

(03-10-2012, 03:21 AM)Vanilla Wrote: Anyway, I forgot to give my own opinion about this. I wouldn't really mind if these factories were put to function. Humans need meat (not biologically, since those nutrients can be found elsewhere), but because we are consumers. Humans have eaten meat since the dawn of time (just like other carnivorous animals), and functioning meat vats doesn't currently exist (AFAIK). This change of production pipeline not only makes the life less miserable for these animals, it also optimizes the productivity.

It's the answer most people will give out after carefully considering the issue, and the ultimate answer a human could reach, standing on the interests and beliefs of humans. :)

When I'm talking about this issue, Vanilla, by the way, I always have the fear that human meat could someday be produced in a pipeline like how they produce chicken. In the past, if we need some chicken meat, we kill some chicken directly, and we could feel how a life passes away; then trade appeared, and only a small set of people, butchers, knew the feeling; now for us, every piece of meat seems appearing mysteriously in the supermarket, and most people never have the chance to ever see what the chicken you just ate looks like when it's alive. The lives are no longer lives, they are called "goods" (just like how industrialization turns workers to robots, that could talk), and eating these "goods" never raise a small piece of mourn, even though they used to be lives, as heavy and important as the the lives of ourselves. Every step we enhance our "productivity", we lose feelings about what a "life" means. Could you imagine, if someday in the future human meat appear on shelves of supermarkets, we would take it off from the shelf, bring it home, cook it, and eat it on our tables like eat chicken, not caring that it used to be a human that could think, run, play like us? Say, what is the difference of chicken and human meat when they are both put on the shelves? Should we remove a human's brain and cut his feet down to conserve space when producing human meat, too?

(03-26-2012, 08:04 PM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: Your diagram thingy doesn't really make a lot of sense.. Anyway, it was funny I was told that vegatarians aren't allowed while I really am a vegatarian. :)

I don't have a lot to say about this topic though, I am against these kind of things, I think the idea is sick, honestly.

(03-26-2012, 11:11 PM)RichardGv Wrote: Sick? Well, aren't we doing all sorts of sick things to animals all the time? So the chicken meat, beef, pork, and such just drop automatically from these animals, and your (non-vegaterian) friends just pick them up from the ground and cook them? It's a problem of "which one is sicker", not "is this sick or not". HK, have you ever killed an ant with your feet in your childhood? Do you kill mosquitoes and flies sometimes now? What's the difference between them and a chicken? If you live in a world when people eat each other (Aww!) you would now find cutting the brain of a chicken is not such a horrible thing. It's still, anyway, some sort of habit built into your mind with the education you received. Oh, and, you are apparently not as merciless as I am. :D

(03-27-2012, 12:12 AM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: ...but I think you should atleast let them live a proper life...

(03-09-2012, 12:27 PM)RichardGv Wrote:

• What is more important for an animal? To be alive, or to be able to think? Is killing an animal moral, or killing his brain moral?
  
• Which one is better, death (from overgrowth), living painfully with thinking ability, or living without the thinking ability?
  
• Even if we think to live without thinking ability is better, do humans have the right to decide which choice is better for an animal who has the ability to think itself, when there's no way could we learn how it feels?
  

(03-27-2012, 12:12 AM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: And no, I haven't killed a ant with my feet on purpose and I wouldn't kill a fly.

(03-27-2012, 12:12 AM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: I think you should look at animals the way you look at humans, after all, we are animals ourselves. You wouldn't cut the brains from a human, would you?

(03-27-2012, 02:18 PM)RichardGv Wrote: What is more important for an animal? To be alive, or to be able to think? Is killing an animal moral, or killing his brain moral?

I think neither are moral, but I would think killing the animal would be more moral to remove his brain and let him be in that state for a long time, only to make him more fat and such.

Which one is better, death (from overgrowth), living painfully with thinking ability, or living without the thinking ability?

I think neither are better for him, I think you should atleast attempt to give him the best possible living enviroment and fine people that don't do their best to do that. And in the end, you're making them 'die' from overgrowth anyway, right? Just because they don't feel it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Even if we think to live without thinking ability is better, do humans have the right to decide which choice is better for an animal who has the ability to think itself, when there's no way could we learn how it feels?

No, I don't think we should ever decide such a thing.

Also, I may cut the brains from humans if it's "proper", or at least I cannot guarantee I won't... During the thousands of years of history of China, there were numberous periods of time, during which because of continuous wars, corrupted government, or natural disasters, there was not enough food, and people ate and traded human meat, from people died from starvation, diseases, or just killed for food. Some people didn't feel like eating their children, so they exchange their children with others and ate the exchanged children. Humans were traded publicly as "Food-man". When Huang Chao's rebel force was besieged (about 880-882 A.D.), they caught civilians everywhere, and ate them. (They called humans "sheep with two legs", by the way.) Hmm, even in quite recent years, 1960s, when The Great Chinese Famine came (the shortage of food was mostly caused by some aggressive government policies), it was quite common that sons/daughters ate their parents, or parents ate their children, sometimes just killed them for food. For example, it was reported that parents throttled their 8-year-old son and cooked him, and in Yibing, Hubei, some children were murdered and with their meat sold on the street as "rabbit meat". Some statistics (which may not be reliable enough) shows that 63 human-eating cases appeared in a single county, within only 3 months (there are 1200+ counties in China...), and in 3 years 1278 human-eating cases were reported in a province. Surely, before people start getting short of food, almost everybody consider eating human meat a very sickening thing, and eventually they all did it!

I think it's different if you have no other choice, but you should still kill them/let them life in a proper way and see if there really is no other way.

Chickens aren't just 'food', they're living beings like us, so we should pay them some respect, by letting them life the way they want to life and atleast know that what you're eating. Some kids here don't even know where food comes from..

(03-27-2012, 07:27 PM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: Which one is better, death (from overgrowth), living painfully with thinking ability, or living without the thinking ability?

I think neither are better for him, I think you should atleast attempt to give him the best possible living enviroment and fine people that don't do their best to do that. And in the end, you're making them 'die' from overgrowth anyway, right? Just because they don't feel it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

(03-27-2012, 07:27 PM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: I think it's different if you have no other choice, but you should still kill them/let them life in a proper way and see if there really is no other way.

Chickens aren't just 'food', they're living beings like us, so we should pay them some respect, by letting them life the way they want to life and atleast know that what you're eating. Some kids here don't even know where food comes from..

(03-27-2012, 07:27 PM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: Even if we think to live without thinking ability is better, do humans have the right to decide which choice is better for an animal who has the ability to think itself, when there's no way could we learn how it feels?

No, I don't think we should ever decide such a thing.