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Posted to alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian,alt.food.vegan
Leif Erikson
 
Posts: n/a
Default Would you like to be eaten?

Martin Willett wrote:

> 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"?


Your question doesn't seem a reasonable response to the
excerpt from The Logic of the Larder that Dutch posted.


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


How about you?