Dutch wrote:
> "Martin Willett" > wrote
>
>>ant and dec wrote:
>
>
>>>But not much respect for the pig?
>>
>>If we didn't eat the pigs they would never exist at all. As long as most
>>of their life is happy and content it must surely better to live and die
>>than not to.
>>
>>Of course I know there's a qualifier in that statement. I put it there, so
>>don't bother pointing it out.
>
>
> I really like your posts Martin, I agree with everything you have said up to
> now, but that is a fallacy. You cannot compare living and dying to *not*
> living, since never being born, never existing is not a real state. This is
> called "The Logic of the Larder" and there is one fruitcake here who has
> already replied to you who makes it his life's work to promote this idea.
>
> http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/salt02.pdf
> There, in brief, is the key to the whole matter.
> The fallacy lies in the confusion of thought which attempts to
> compare existence with non-existence. A person who is already in existence
> may feel that he
> would rather have lived than not, but he must first have the terra firma of
> existence to argue
> from; the moment he begins to argue as if from the abyss of the
> non-existent, he talks
> nonsense, by predicating good or evil, happiness or unhappiness, of that of
> which we can
> predicate nothing.
>
> When, therefore, we talk of "bringing a being," as we vaguely express it,
> "into the world," we
> cannot claim from that being any gratitude for our action, or drive a
> bargain with him, and a
> very shabby one, on that account; nor can our duties to him be evaded by any
> such quibble, in
> which the wish is so obviously father to the thought. Nor, in this
> connection, is it necessary to
> enter on the question of ante-natal existence, because, if such existence
> there be, we have no
> reason for assuming that it is less happy than the present existence; and
> thus equally the
> argument falls to the ground. It is absurd to compare a supposed
> preexistence, or non-
> existence, with actual individual life as known to us here. All reasoning
> based on such
> comparison must necessarily be false, and will lead to grotesque
> conclusions.
>
>

Do you start your reasoning from first principles and work upwards to
conclusions and lifestyle choices that might come as a surprise you or
do you work backwards from the practical policy stances you are most
comfortable with and in the process discover what your principles "must
have been"?

Do you regard lying to yourself as a form of sin?

--
Martin Willett


http://mwillett.org