Comment on Fish have heart too.

• oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Sentience is what I base my ethics on (i’m a sentientist or sentiocentrist), which has implications on diet when considering whether to exploit sentient beings to get food. I don’t think it’s arbitrary, if someone is sentient, they are a part of the moral landscape because they can experience positive and negative valence (pleasure/pain, to put it more plainly but lose some nuance). If something is not sentient, I don’t see how it can be ethically relevant except in cases where the nonsentient thing matters to a sentient being

  if you’re looking for arbitrary, the anthropocentrists are that way

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  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    if someone is sentient, they are morally relevant because they can experience positive and negative valence

    this is a moral virtue only to utilitarians.

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    • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      there are other approaches to sentientism that aren’t based on valence. I don’t feel like writing a book on the different ones, but to give an example of a rights based one that I think is strong is that every sentient being has, at the very least, a right to their body, since that’s the one thing they’re born with and that is (almost certainly) what gives rise to their sentience in the first place. And to violate another sentient beings bodily autonomy is to forfeit your own (a sort of low level social contract), which allows for self defense and defending others

      but to go back to utilitarianism, I think there’s a strong argument that most ethical frameworks can be defined in terms of a sufficiently creative definition of utility. I don’t really feel like getting into the weeds of that discussion though, and I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to the conversation anyways

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      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        to give an example of a rights based one

        I have to admit, I skipped the rest of this sentence on I don’t foresee myself attempting to read it: I don’t believe in rights as an objective phenomenon, either.

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      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I don’t really feel like getting into the weeds of that discussion though, and I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to the conversation anyways

        it is. your ethical position is highly relevant to any ethical argument you present.

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      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        but to go back to utilitarianism, I think there’s a strong argument that most ethical frameworks can be defined in terms of a sufficiently creative definition of utility.

        this is a good reason to doubt the validity of the theory: it is constructed in a way that it is not disprovable.

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  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    if you’re looking for arbitrary, the anthropocentrists are that way

    this is just a tu quoque

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    • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I explained why it’s not arbitrary, then pointed to a group that does draw arbitrary distinctions. That’s not tu quoque because I’m not saying “you also”

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      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        you’re saying it’s not arbitrary. “no, you” is still a form of tu quoque. you haven’t actually made a case that sentience isnt an arbitrary standard, and there isn’t a case to be made: sentience isn’t a natural phenomenon outside of human subjectivity classification. without people, there would be no concept of green or warm or sentient, and any of those attributes is an arbitrary standard to use to judge the ethics of a diet.

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