Ethics of Eating Animals

Animals don't have the mental capacity reason about moral philosophy, so we can't really judge them for not behaving in another way. But we humans have, and yes, we can judge other humans for causing unnecessary suffering towards others.

Just because other animals don’t consider the suffering of their prey isn’t an excuse for humans to do the same. Animals do what is instinctive. Humans (should) have empathy for others, including animals, and are able to make choices about their behaviour. Just because “in nature” animals are eaten alive doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to do better.

With conscious stuff I’m assuming you mean conscious beings.It is against the law to murder another human. In many countries it is also against the law to kill or torture your pet. Are you not living your life according to those agreed upon ‘reasoning’?As humanity evolves, the circle of compassion and common sense will expand to also include those conscious beings that we currently don’t deem worthy of compassion, since having a factory farmed burger on our plate is currently more importan

I feel like you have to believe at least one of these 3:1) Life is just a chemical reaction, human sadness / happiness don't matter2) Humans are fundamentally different than other animals - our pain is somehow more real than animal pain3) Animal pain does matter.Personally I favor 3)

One could, but with that argument it equates all life as being equal. If that is the case, why is it wrong to murder?Personally, I can very clearly see that a cow or a dog is concious whereas a plant (if concious at all) is very much further towards unconcious than a human understanding of conciousness. Therefore I opt to reduce the suffering as much as possible.I would hope if an alien species that was much more concious than we could comprehend were to stumble across earth, they would no

It is normal for animals who don't think the same way that we do. They don't understand the concepts of "killing" or "life" and don't value life in the same manner as humans.It's always struck me as odd when unethical treatment of animals is justified by saying "animals eat/kill/hurt other animals too!". We're different from animals. Our standards should be higher.

Sentience is what matters. Comparing animals (like cows) with plants is absurd.

Yes, but Lions lack - for want of a better term - options, whereas we humans have plenty of options. We decide to boil living creatures alive, their feelings be damned because we like their taste better that way. But that's a very conscious choice to inflict harm. In the court of ethics the Lion was just eating, the human being was inflicting unnecessary pain.

Naive arguments aside, humans can't suffer in the same way a steak can't suffer.

This sounds very close to the “It’s ok to abuse and kill animals (for meat), they’re not sentient”