PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Then that means my plan is working.
The questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread IX
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Harvin87
The Youth
Where's the Español 101 thread???
Harvin87
The Youth
damn... you are 
No, this is a myth. What builds them is when you make them tired, forcing them to work harder, which releases growth signals.
Said far better than I did, this is what happens.
Not good ones. 16 is a good age. Just make sure you exercise correctly, an basically anything after puberty is a good age.
Of course. The pain will go away very quickly, probably by tomorrow. Try not to strain your arm, and a shower or a bath would be good.
Cows aren't sapient. That is, they aren't intelligent, self-aware life-forms like humans. This is an argument against eating chimps, orang-utans, and possibly whales, dolphins and some cephalopods.
I find it sad that you resort to "you won't understand the answer" when you can't provide the answer.
Sapience isn't per se very good answer, because it allows to eat new born babies or coma patients.
You'd have to also be able to tell why sapience is the criterion. Usually people think that ability to suffer is what makes the difference, and this is what Derek will say too.
Yared
That Guy
Ask him whether or not he'd choose the life of a cow over the life of a human.
That isn't sufficient reason either: if it were, it would be right to eat people you don't know, because you would choose eating them rather than your mother for example. Also, we don't have to make that kind of choice.
Cows are incapable of giving consent to the rights and responsibilities of society. They therefore do not get the same rights as those who do.
Longer answer:
Firstly, no, there are some humans who cannot give consent. Typically, they already have or might in the future (disabled people and babies respectively). You could build an argument about that.
If he queries why consent is important, you can similarly ask why the ability to suffer is important, that probably being the basis of his views. Both are arbitrarily chosen. He can use the argument to query your opinions, but his opinions are just as vulnerable. The conclusion therefore is certainly not to avoid eating cows.
Next up, he'll ask why rights and responsibilities go together: why a cow must consent to the responsibilities of society before it can have rights. At this stage we have to admit that it could be granted legal protections by society without consenting to them, but we will also point out that there is no over-riding moral justification for such protections.
Rights and responsibilities go together because they are the inverse of one another. The right not to be murdered is simply everyone else having a responsibility not to murder you.
At this stage we are getting into quite fundamental ideas about whether rights are fundamental and universal, which they quite clearly are not.
You could say that it is incredible that he can imagine an obligation governing a person who has not consented to it. That's a perfect description of a fundamental right: if a cow has a fundamental right not to be eaten, then this is the same as an obligation on me not to eat it, despite me never agreeing to such a thing.
You could also ask him whether predators in the wild are criminals. He will probably come up with some foolish notion that 'they know no better'. We can ignore his assumption of superiority, and bring up an interesting point of established law:
ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking it.
We can also wonder why being able to think suddenly gives us obligations, without even consenting.
Let us quote a wise old man (Albus Dumbledore): 'it is the choices we make that truly determine who we are'.
Thinking is not a choice. Consent is the choice. Consent is the action. If I am a criminal simply by virtue of my ability to think then I have been condemned for something that I cannot control.
That is the morality of fundamental rights. They grant rights on the basis of characteristics that are beyond the control of the being that is being given those rights, and are also beyond the control of the beings that must respect those rights. Fundamental rights therefore impose responsibilities, based solely on the belief of the person ascribing those fundamental rights. If we're going to choose arbitrary characteristics, we could just as easily choose humanity as the characteristic that determines whether a being gets rights or not.
On the other hand, if we believe that such an imposition is impossible to justify, the only way that responsibilities can govern a being is if that being has consented to them. This makes much more sense, since the consequences (being wrong or right in a moral sense) are now dependent on our actions, not on arbitrary characteristics such as being able to think, and we typically view moral judgement as being a way of judging actions.
Yared
That Guy
Yeah, I would most likely choose a stranger over my mother. But that's a Human VS Human example.
This is about Cow VS Human. If you're hungry and you want some freaking meat, would you prefer eating Cow or Human?
You don't need to eat meat even if you're hungry. Your desire to eat meat doesn't make it right. Am I allowed to kill human if I want to?
The question wasn't about rights but about morality. Things can be wrong even if you have right to them. You'll have to specify whether you mean right in the legal or moral sense.
Societies grant rights to even those humans that do not give consent. I don't remember giving one myself.
The choice of suffering over sapience isn't arbitrary, the reason people usually choose it is because it is better description of our moral intuition than sapience. If the two are equally arbitrary, it doesn't make eating cows more preferable than not eating them. If someone's going to appeal to the arbitrariness, he'll have to notice soon that it refutes every principle of morals.
If you think that animals have no rights at all, then you'll have to accept for axample cruel and sadistic torture of them.
But then again, doesn't that make the possible future ability to consent to them arbitrary?
brb, eating the sandwich I always wanted
I've eaten cow thousands of times in my life, and I've never known what human tastes like, so I'd try that.yared94 said:
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Do scientists / astronomers know the age of the Delta Trianguli star system? If so, what is it?
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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How do you clean up the mess from a fire extinguisher?
Godwynn
March to the Sea
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You can burn it away.
Virote_Considon
The Great Dictator
Dead GOD, who let you near one of those?
Ulyaoth
Emperor
Is your life some kind of sitcom Aimee? It seems like you get into some kind of zany misadventure everyday.
aimeeandbeatles
watermelon
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There were flames shooting out of the toaster. I unplugged it and it was still on fire, and I didn't know if I should throw water on electrical components. So I used the fire extinguisher and it left all sorts of foam behind.
My mom came back from the neighbor's and cleaned it up.
My mom came back from the neighbor's and cleaned it up.
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Will nukes EVER again be used in war? Why or why not?
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