If the animal in question has portrayed Ethan Hunt in all the Mission: Impossible movies, my answer would be a strong 'yes'.

 

It comes back to is my life more important than someone else life / the life of another specie.

It is a question for wich there is still debate.

It is today widely reconised that a man should give his life to save a woman or a child, the application being of course another problem lol,

but the sole idea of applying ethics to animals is kinda new, well not really new but at least new on this scale.

If you wanna read on the subject, there should be books in your bookshop, at least they are in the big ones and in the specialised ones like those on ethics, the university ones, and the alternatives ones like anarchists. You can also order.

It is also a problem of intrinsic value.

You can read Peter Singer and Gary Francione among others, from there there should be references to find easelly more books.

Personally i say no top the first because i don t think that my life has nore value than that of a chicken, and since i ve been in such situation and survived in extremis, i can safely say that i know what i m saying. I wouldn t kill a human in this situation neither btw. The Ethics being what they are, i would say that i comes down to a personal choice and personal beliefs, with some will to it and consciousness to it.

To the second question again i say no, just because in the abscence of need it is clearly against ethics to kill intentionally without need or without accident.

 

Very interesting. I was hoping someone would say no to the second question, so I could ask another question. Is it justifiable to kill an animal to keep it from killing other animals?

 

Everything is food.
When you say "starving do you mean "will starve unless you eat an animal?" If so, then yes, I would eat an animal if my life were at stake.
Humans have had the wonderful opportunity of being omnivorous. When certain foods were unobtainable they could survive by eating others. The ability to choose to be vegan really has a lot to do with transportation, storage, and modern farming and preparation techniques.

Animals do not choose what they eat. Predators and prey have a very symbiotic relationship in nature. Prey animals have opiates released when they're caught, so the argument that in nature they suffer such a worse death than cattle in slaughterhouses is wrong.

Carnivours don't have the ability to formulate all the nutrients they need, hence the need to get them preformulated in meat.

For humans to interfere with animals instincts is distinctly un-vegan.

 

You could say it's a human's instinct to eat meat. I'm trying to avoid any position that depends on the axiom "humans and animals are different."

 

It is not human instinct to eat meat, else we would salivate and want to jump on our cats and dogs and cows.

 

If you were starving you might.

Regardless, what I should have just said outright is that that's an appeal to nature fallacy.

 

Asking this of people with full stomachs is a bit unrealistic.
When hard pressed people will usually be perfectly willing to eat their own molding boots, someone elses feces, or a 4 day dead human corpse. Journals of settlers, explorers, migrants, and war refugees make that quite clear.
As for the question of if its ethical for other species to eat animals, is it our place to force ethics on others? Would it still be 'ethics'?

 

We seem okay with forcing our ethics on other humans, what with the whole "don't kill people" rule most countries have.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobilis of Wind

Here are some questions the answers to which I'm interested in reading.

Is it okay to kill animals for food if you're starving, and if so, why?

No. Morality isn't circumstantial. It is always wrong for humans to kill animals for food. You may find yourself in a circumstance where you must do it anyway, but you are still wrong. Excusable, possibly, but wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobilis of Wind

Is it okay for animals to kill animals for food, and if so, why?

Most animals are amoral, and obligate carnivores must have flesh. While it is our obligation to treat them as moral patients, we cannot expect them to act as moral agents.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobilis of Wind

Is it justifiable to kill an animal to keep it from killing other animals? \t\t

No. In cases where you kill an animal you don't have an emotional bond with to preserve the life of an animal you do have an emotional bond with, you are behaving emotionally, not according to ethics. Plenty of people will want to debate the excusability of this, but ethics are not what drive us to prefer the lives of those we love over the lives of those who are strangers to us.

 

Where did I say it was to save the life of an animal I have an emotional bond with?

 

Why else would anyone want to kill one animal to save the life of another? There is no rational or ethical reason to.

 

Not that he agrees with me on this point, but I'll use this quote:
Quote:

Originally Posted by vegan cyberpunk

Personally i say no top the first because i don t think that my life has nore value than that of a chicken, and since i ve been in such situation and survived in extremis, i can safely say that i know what i m saying. I wouldn t kill a human in this situation neither btw.

If one were to decide that it is always wrong to kill animals(except perhaps in self-defense, which in this case would not include needing to eat them to survive), then it could be considered self-defense to kill an animal who is about to kill another animal in the same way it is to kill a human about to kill another human.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobilis of Wind

Not that he agrees with me on this point, but I'll use this quote:

If one were to decide that it is always wrong to kill animals(except perhaps in self-defense, which in this case would not include needing to eat them to survive), then it could be considered self-defense to kill an animal who is about to kill another animal in the same way it is to kill a human about to kill another human.

Self defense in what way? You are suggesting that you would consider intervening to save one animal who was about to be killed by another, and you call this self defense? Or defense of the animal being threatened? Again, why would you do this, unless you have an emotional investment in the animal who is about to be killed, or you are a speciesist who thinks all predators should be killed in order to defend their prey from them?

 

In the same way that saving other humans is covered by law as self-defense. It's really defense of the other animal, but these concepts are usually combined in things like the nonaggression principle. Why do I have to have an emotional investment in an animal, or even a person, to not want them to get killed?

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobilis of Wind

In the same way that saving other humans is covered by law as self-defense. It's really defense of the other animal, but these concepts are usually combined in things like the nonaggression principle. Why do I have to have an emotional investment in an animal, or even a person, to not want them to get killed?

What is your motivation then? To save a human being from being murdered by another is motivated by an interest in preventing the wrongful taking of life. Animals who kill other animals for food are not committing a wrongful act.

 

According to you they're not. You wanted an explanation for why I would even be asking these questions, and I've laid out an ethical framework to explain it. If you don't have a problem with nonhuman animals killing other nonhuman animals, then obviously nothing I said in my last post applies to you.

 

Would I eat another animal to stay alive if i were starving? Yep. Is that the case? Nope. So, who cares?

Live in the now!

 

I care. Maybe I would have better luck having a serious discussion at a philosophy forum.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobilis of Wind

According to you they're not.

According to most of the AR philosophers I am familiar with they are not. This isn't just a personal whim I made up out of thin air.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobilis of Wind

You wanted an explanation for why I would even be asking these questions, and I've laid out an ethical framework to explain it.

Not one I can understand. Do you mean you think it is morally correct to apply this non-aggression principle to all of nature, just because it wounds your personal sensibilities when animals get killed by other animals? I don't mean to sound insensitive to it. I ****ing hate it. But there are no moral or ethical grounds for humans trying to prevent some animals from killing other animals. That's how our finely balanced ecosystems work, whether we like it or not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobilis of Wind

If you don't have a problem with nonhuman animals killing other nonhuman animals, then obviously nothing I said in my last post applies to you.

I am just having trouble understanding what you are suggesting.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobilis of Wind

I care. Maybe I would have better luck having a serious discussion at a philosophy forum.

Whatever. *shrug*

 

Are you saying the position is objectively morally wrong?

I also don't care how many people agree with you; that's appeal to the masses.

 

Just saying: are you? then eat plants. I don't see the conundrum; as a purely hypothetical question, it has no reality. I do what makes sense to me to do, within my current actual reality. Didn't mean to parade-rain; just doesn't seem important to me, personally. I can easily meet my nutritional needs without eating animals; so, I do. I don't feel like I need to go further, or like it would matter if I did: no one can realistically say what they would or wouldn't do in extreme physical distress, unless they've already been there and done it. In my opinion.

 

I didn't ask what you would do. I asked whether or not it's wrong. I'm kind of baffled that someone who subscribes to an ethical system like veganism has no interest in discussing ethics outside of morals of convenience.

 

Do you see personal ethics as being outside our conception of 'what we would do'? I think that's always the backdrop, whether we admit it or not. Do you believe in a big overseeing force, like Jehovah, dictating ultimate right and wrong? I don't, so maybe that's at the center of our differing viewpoints? I think we make it up as we go, and just do the best we can; I see it as a continuum: more harm vs less harm, weighed against need. How do you see right and wrong?