The two things are much closer than simply there being a worse crime out there. Both are examples of what you might call the basic problem: the suffering and abuse of animals. Our society accepts, condones and has no intention of banning the killing of animals in abattoirs.
I was saying that bullfighting is altogether lesser suffering, both in quantity and quite possibly in quality.
If you think that's irrelevant, it doesn't say much for your insight.
Yet it is irrelevent, because it is not logically possible to justify one immoral act by pointing to another, socially accepted one. You may condem them both, fine, but that is not what is under debate here.
Furthermore, it's simplistic to assume that the suffering of the bull is the only issue here. Clearly, the public nature of bullfighting is a factor. You may debate the relevence of such a factor to the underlying morality of the event, but that is not what you are you doing. All this argument does is gesture vaguely another questionable activity and say "Well, it's bad too".
Perhaps this is relevent as an observation of the treatment of animals within our society, but that was not the issue which you were debating, and so the entire point is rendered, as I said, irrelevent.
Initially people were claiming that spectators enjoy specifically the torture of bullfighting. I pointed out that just because an event involves something unpleasant it doesn't mean that the spectators are enjoying the unpleasant part. Hence my comparison with football, which causes the players muscle pain.
You could easily say that people ought to consider more carefully what they enjoy and not contribute to something that involves such immorality, but that's not what people were saying. They were suggesting that the spectators enjoy the torture specifically, simply because pain happens to be involved.
My example aptly shows how this supposition is not necessarily true.
Perhaps, but your analogy is overly simplistic, and so serves no functional purpose. At least compare it to boxing or martial arts, something in which the violence is a key part of the entertainment. Pain sustained through exertion is hardly the same as being intentionally wounded by another creature, after all.
And, even then, we encounter fundamental distinctions. I cannot justify murder by pointing out that some people approve of euthenasia; the two are fundamentally distinct! Similarly, that athletes voluntarily subject themselves to some degree of pain as part of the sport is irrelevent, as it bears no reasonable comparison to the fact that bullfighting is a sport centred around the the torture and killing of an unwilling, uncomprehending animal. I'll grant you, those who enjoy the sport may not be sadists, but they derive enjoyment, at least partially, from the violence inflicted upon the bull, a creature which neither wants nor deserves to be there. That, I would argue, is pretty screwed up.
Morality is a societal construct. Saying that it comes from empathy and that there are universal rules is another form of absolutism, which, as you say, has no place in sensible debate.
Morality comes from consent.
Well, the nature of morality is getting a bit off-topic, so we should probably set that aside for now, but I would be interested to know, exactly, why you enter into a moral debate and yet claim that morality is a social construct? Why attempt to justify something when you yourself profess a belief that moral justification is inherently arbitrary?
