If he has not convinced you, why is Law wrong?
Which of his arguments fail, or what other opposing argument has be overlooked?
If he has persuaded you, which argument did you find the strongest?
And how will you respond to your still unconvinced classmates' arguments?
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References
Yes, he did convince me
ReplyDeleteI found out that The social bond and mentally impaired are the strongest because
social bond- It is not only human that has social bond but also animals. For instant, elephant family, they have the bond of family, too. Elephant mom will take care of its baby and also member in the pack will take caer of it. By the time, if one of its pack is died, it will have the rite for the death body and also memorial celebration just like human. Moreover, mentally impaired, baboon pack, they have a status system to show respect to higher position baboon(in eating time); the lower position will wait until those higher position finish eating then it will go and eat left over food from the higher. In case that the lower did something wrong it would be punished or drove out of the pack. this shows that animals and human are alike in social bond and mentally impaired.
He is not convinced me at all!!!
ReplyDeleteI love to eat meat, so thank you Law but no thanks.
I am speciesism, and I am prejudiced.
Law doesn't clear that if it isn't going to be a food, it haven't had a lovely life, it haven't had humans feed it; moreover it might not been born.
In mentally impaired and potential topic, I will talk about it later.
In social bond problem, I think I'm sure that humans have more deeply bond between ourselves than we bond to animals, so we don't eat humans but we eat animals.
About the religious, us Buddhist doesn't have any canon(s) that prohibit us from eat animals, and our Tripitaka is always up-to-date.
In health and design heading, I have to say I will die if I not eat meat, this is my case, and many of our medicines and goods are made from animals.
At last, this is my opinion, in this world, there is no place for the weaker, if you want to survive or not be eaten please be stronger. I don't eat humans that has mental illness because they have someone; their parents, the laws, that stronger protect them. If the animals have any potential to be stronger than me, neither you develop yourselves quickly, nor you will be my foods till you extinct.
I think I write something weird in this sentence "I don't eat humans that has mental illness because they have someone; their parents, the laws, that stronger protect them."
ReplyDeleteOK, in reality, I don't eat humans, but the mentally disorder humans survive in this because they have someone strong enough to protect them.
Aim (August 25, 2010 4:56 PM),
Your example about baboon is good to show that this world is the place for the stronger. However, our humans' social bond is more complex than the baboon bond, and than the bond between we and the baboon too.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletemath, how do you know that in baboon pack has no complexity in its pack? in the studies found out, baboon pack has a bond to each other just like human. it takes care of each other, respect the elderly , learn to use tools, and improve itself just like us. About the bond between us and baboon, it is different because the way of life it has the way by itself. in human complexed societies, the way that they treat people it also different. In thailand, even though they are human being. However, they are many levels of people, and hundred groups of people that they don't even have a bond to others. For example, the rich and the poor they don't even care what others are doing, or you think they care? Now, you might see what i was saying.
ReplyDeleteis the world the place for strong people?
the world is not place for the strong but also for the weak because the strong must help, protect, and care of the weak help them to be strong , and then they can help others, too for instant, just like you and me when we were young,in the wearer state, our parents helped, protected, care of us. Therefore, we must help other to be stronger, right? Animals can not speak, in order to help them, we must speak up instead of them, right?
don't you think that every creatures have a right to live in its way, doesn't it?
Actually, i agree with Law. Morally, i feel bad when i eat meat, sometime;;
ReplyDeleteBut I don't understand about why we can't eat meat even though the animal eat each other. The reason he give us is not so enough to persuade even if i'm in his side.
This universe is a place for the stronger since the big bang.
ReplyDeleteWho is the one say something morally right or wrong?
==>The strongest people in that time.
If the Nazism win the world war II, being Jew is morally wrong.
If the Communist win the cold war, the capitalism, the free world, McDonald, and religious are morally wrong.
So if the vegetarians win this food war, eating meat is morally wrong.
I think that Math's view is fairly common, and also wrong. What do others think? Do you agree with Math that there are no such things as good and bad, right and wrong, justice and injustice, but that all such ideas are merely false notions made up by the strong to control the weak?
ReplyDeleteWas being a Jew truly "immoral" when the Nazis were in power?
Was using slaves truly "just" when Chulalongkorn began his reign in Thailand?
If we all decided to eat the babies of the poor to solve population problems, would that make it morally right to eat babies?
And if men decided to go back to keeping women in their place, would that be morally right because men have the power to do that?
I think Math has raised an important issue that needs to be addressed. What is that issue? And how would you address it, or do you agree with him?
(Although I've asked questions giving examples that I hope will help to clarify the issue, I've also tried not to state it or answer it. I would prefer to let you do that.)
In which section of his essay does Law most directly answer Yun Il's concern in her comment at August 26, 2010 3:09 PM?
ReplyDeleteIn which other section does he say something that might be relevant?
Peter (August 26, 2010 7:26 PM),
ReplyDeleteThank for saying I am wrong, but I insist on my view.
What is right or wrong? In Bible, Tripitaka, and al-Qur'an have difference laws that depended on who write them. So I think something right and wrong is depend on what people decide, sometime it just one person that is strong enough decision, and sometime the right or wrong is judge by the vote (and the vote is the way to making some sentences stronger by use many men power).
Peter (August 26, 2010 9:30 PM) and Yu nil (August 26, 2010 3:09 PM ),
The answer is in "They eat us; why shouldn't we eat them?"
But his reason is, I think, very weak.
Law is not convinced me because his base of thinking is weak. First,I don't sure what is his "moral" base on? He say that eatting meat is moral is immoral because we need to kill animal befor eating ,so it immoral because animal have life? so why vegetarian is not immoral act because plant have a life too.And if you don't eat animal and plant, what will we eat? or we will be evolute to be can photosynthesis. and I search a difinition of moral on Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and it have 4 definition. A difinition that I think is almost near moral that Law use is "based on your own sense of what is right and fair, not on legal rights or duties" ,but if it is base on your own sense, it will be individual .He has not a right to make other people to use your own moral. And this essay is on book about X'mas so I think moral in this essay will be base on Christian religion.However,I don't think that bible is say killing animal for eat is immoral because in bible, it have many time that people kill animal for sacrifice to god and god is happy.
ReplyDeleteMath(August 25, 2010 7:17 PM )
you opion is no place for weaker. I think this is true because I think this thinking is in instinct of every animal but if human use only this thinking human isn't good more than wild animal.I think social make moral because they want a peaceful in their social. Math, with your opion, you will can accept or not if when you become older and weaker and your son or your grand son is look over you because they are stronger than you. I think everyone have a talent that is can support together so I think social that have area only strong people it isn't a strong social
Math (August 26, 2010 10:00 PM),
ReplyDeleteNone of the ancient texts you cited are reliable moral guides. I agree with you completely that they were all written by human beings. They were made up for various reasons, and all contain teachings that are morally good as well as morally bad - religion is not about morality, it's about strengthening the power of one group and controlling people, which is why religions all love to use the law to force people to follow their teachings, which are often immoral. As Law notes, for example, there is much in the Christian bible that is positively evil, such as its endorsement of slavery (Law, 2003, p. 137).
It is good thing that religions are generally losing power and influence in the world today.
Golf sensibly asks us what Law means when he uses the words moral and immoral (@ August 27, 2010 4:56 PM).
ReplyDeleteBut I think it's pretty clear that Law does not think that moral means "based on your own sense of what is right and fair, not on legal rights or duties" (OALD, def. 2). He does think that his ideas are true for everyone, not merely an expression of his own opinion; that's why he's giving supporting arguments.
I think the common idea that there are no such things as moral right and wrong, which is the idea in the OALD's definition 2, is much closer to Math's idea, which is a serious challenge to Law because it argues that there is no such thing as moral right or wrong at all, merely more or less powerful people doing whatever they want, with no moral difference at all between feeding hungry children hot-dogs and feeding the children to your pet dog.
I think that the OALD's first definition is probably closest in meaning to Law's idea when he uses that and related words: "concerned with principles of right and wrong behaviour" (OALD, def.1), and Law definitely thinks that ideas on that topic can be right or wrong, and are not merely a personal believe for everyone to make up as they wish.
I also like the other question the Golf asks: why the distinction between animal life and vegetable life? I think Law answers this right at teh start, on page 125, where he says that an animal is "a living thing capable of enjoying life," so since plants are excluded on that non-speciesist ground, we have plenty of other things to eat than meat.
Peter,
ReplyDeleteIf moral means "concerned with principles of right and wrong behaviour" (OALD, def.1).
Where is "principles" if "None of the ancient texts you cited are reliable moral guides" (Peter, August 28, 2010 6:22 AM) ? The USA's law, Thailand's law, England's law, Myanmar's law, or North Korea's law: which one of them is (are) the principles of right and wrong; which one of them are not writing by humans, the strongest animals in the world?
Golf (August 27, 2010 4:56 PM),
I agree with eating plant is also immoral session. I heard, and I think many of us heard, that the plants, tested with tomatoes, are growing faster when they hear classical music every morning. Therefore the plants maybe "capable of enjoying life".
But you may misunderstanding something I wrote. Stronger is not only mean more power, it is included more intelligent, more experienced, more diligent, more trustful, so when I am getting older I will not weaker anymore.
Math (@ August 28, 2010 3:58 PM),
ReplyDeleteBecause I think moral principles are not equivalent to being strongest, it is possible for the strongest to be morally wrong. For example, even before Lincoln changed US law to prohibit it, slavery was wrong. It was not morally right the day before and then wrong the next day because a human being, however strong, changed the law as Lincoln did when he signed his name on the piece of paper, nor do I believe, as you do, that the moral right and wrong of slavery depended on who won that the AMerican Civil War. Similarly, if the Thai government made being of Chinese descent illegal tomorrow because enough non-Chinese Thai citizens were envious of those whose ancestors were Chinese, like German's disliked Jews, it would mean the strongest were acting immorally. I think it's possible for the strong to act immorally, but you do not since anything at all that the strong can actually do is morally right.
Being written in an ancient text or written in a law is even more irrelevant. The bible and all other religious texts contain things that are morally wrong. It isn't easy to be clear about whether something is right or wrong, which is why we need to present supporting arguments for different sides of a question. If you were right, argument and discussion would be irrelevant - moral would simply be whatever someone could enforce on others at the time. I think that what is enforced is in fact often immoral - such as laws (anti-Jew laws in Germany, anti-drug laws in Australia, censorship laws in Thailand, and so on), religious teachings (slavery in the bible, terrorism in the bible and Koran), and common social customs and thinking (murdering gay men, killing girls accused of witchcraft, and so on). If strength meant right, such mistakes would be impossible, and it would always be wrong to push for change in laws and traditional social practices, since whatever already was believed and done would be moral, being the result of the strongest; so whatever you wanted to change to, being different, would not be moral. Every hero or leader who has tried to right a moral wrong must really have been committing a moral wrong!
There seem to me two problems in that: 1. the logical difficulty, and 2. the fact that it is highly counter-intuitive. We do normally think that the strong can be morally wrong, and even the strong change their minds. It also seems to me that many powerful figures want to do what is right, and seek advice and guidance on how to do what is right.
Of course, what is actually done might depend on convincing others, especially the strong, but I think that there is a difference between what is actually done and what is right: I think we can make moral mistakes, which should be corrected. Your theory of morality makes moral mistakes impossible. If someone successfully stole all your money and property by being smarter than you and the police, then you would think that was morally right (he has proved himself stronger), but I would think you had been treated unjustly and that moral wrongs had been committed against you.
I think your idea is a fairly common one, and in a slightly different form it is probably very common; it certainly successfully answers Law's ideas by completely demolishing the idea that there exists moral right and wrong as something independent of what people happen to think or believe.
One principle that I think matters in determining moral right and wrong is that there exist rights that must not be violated, for example the right to life, which is what makes it wrong for me to kill you or a stranger, even if it would be very convenient for me to do that, and even if I could get away with it because I was strong. Again, deciding what such rights might be and what they do and do not allow us to do is not easy, which is why there is so much discussion to try to get things right and to correct errors made in the past.
ReplyDeleteI think that we can and do make mistakes, and that critical reason is a powerful tool to help us get our moral ideas right, just as reason and argument also helps us get our knowledge ideas right, whereas ancient texts, religious or otherwise, are generally not reliable guides to knowledge about the nature of the world. When we want to know about the stars and moon, for example, modern astronomy and academic argument is more reliable than the Christian bible and Aristotle. (The bible and Aristotle are both well worth reading and studying, but nothing is true simply because it's in the bible or Aristotle.) The dictates of powerful people are even less useful as guides to knowledge about the way the world really is. The strong are as wrong about facts just as easily and often as they are morally wrong.
Peter,
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of your lastest comments. Thank you for calmly answer my annoying comments.
Math,
ReplyDeleteI don't think any comment that takes the question seriously is annoying. If someone disagrees with me, I have to listen to their arguments and respond to them, either by showing why they are wrong or by changing my mind. That's how we can make progress and improve our ideas, and it is exactly what happens in an academic setting. You also gave us your views strongly and with enough sophistication to answer obvious objections to them.
I was actually a little surprised: usually people accept that there is a moral principle at stake rather than demolishing the whole idea that there are moral principles of right and wrong that are independent of the way things are. You present your case well, and I like that, even though I don't agree. If we all agreed on questions about what should or should not be done in such situations, it would be extremely surprising because I think the issues are complex.
And you do have some very strong supporters on your side, such as the philosopher J. L. Mackie, who presents a non-objective view of morality in his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). More famously, Nietzsche argued persuasively, on grounds also influenced by the recent arrival of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection of the fittest (On the Origin of Species had been published when Nietzsche was 14), for the view that moral right and wrong should best and rightly be seen as expressions of a "will to power", which is subtly but significantly different to Mackie's view. I wasn't actually sure whether you favoured Mackie's ideas, Nietzsche's, or even the much more ancient, and radical, moral relativism of Protagoras, with whom Socrates strongly disagreed 2,400 years ago (Plato, Theaetetus, and who famously argued that "man is the measure of all things" (Plato, Theaet., 152a).
So thank you for the stimulating comments.
I'm going out now, and I hope you also have an enjoyable Saturday evening.
I should probably also add a note of explanation about why we are reading Law's essay.
ReplyDeleteAs you already know, I am not a vegetarian and I disagree with Law, so I'm not trying to convince anyone to stop eating meat. I chose this essay for a couple of reasons.
First, it's a well written essay by an academic. But it's also written for a general audience, not other academics, so while the language is not a big problem, it does discuss serious ideas in an academic way.
Second, Law's organization is relatively clear and easy to follow, and it is, again, a good example of how you might organize your ideas in an essay.
Another reason is that it's a clear and excellent example of the sorts of things that we need to be aware of when are writing our own persuasive paragraphs and essays, as we will be this week and next. This is why in my discussion questions I asked you focus on what Law does, and not on what his cast of characters say or do.
Finally, it's an easy issue to understand since it addresses a topic with which we are all familiar on a daily basis. Even better, most people strongly disagree with Law's main idea about that topic, so it forces you to think critically to show where Law is wrong. If you do not have a solid reason for saying that Law is wrong, then you are very likely acting immorally every time you eat meat!
And that should worry you; immoral behaviour is not a good thing.
I will chage my mind to think that eating meat is immoral ,but I found a weakness of Law's idea. That weakness is Law says that an animal is "a living thing capable of enjoying life," so brain dead patient is not animal because their brain can't capable of enjoying life anymore.If brain dead patient are not animal, we will have rigth to eat them with moral but I think this action is still immoral.
ReplyDelete