[lbo-talk] Vegetarianism

[ravi]

Miles Jackson wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Aug 2005, Chris Doss wrote:
> 
>> If you bite a living head of broccoli and you bite a
>> living chicken, don't you think you get different reactions?
> 
> I guess it's an epistemological problem: how do you know?  Perhaps
> plants are "sentient" in a way that we can't understand.  It just
> seems anthropomorphic: if the reactions are not like humans'
> reactions, then it's okay to kill things.  What is intrinsically
> better about animal life than plant life?  (Again, I'm not trying
> to be facetious, I just don't get it.)
> 

miles, you are indeed being facetious!! you could use a principle of 
least harm... while you may not know if the plant suffers, you *do* know 
that the animal does. when deciding what to kill so you might survive 
(your survival coming a bit above that of your victim, in your 
considerations) what you do know should be given higher precedence over 
what you do not, ceteris paribus...

	--ravi