Your Positions

• We should use animals however we like, including hurting them for no reason. There is no objective morality. (Start over)

Things to Consider

Alright then, send me your home address, and I’ll be sure to write a nice letter to your family explaining that there is no objective morality, and that’s why they shouldn’t be upset that I locked you in a tiny cage, beat you, and then dismembered your body and sold its parts to hungry consumers.

Lots of people are willing to believe “there is no objective morality” until they are the one being treated unfairly by others. People use this as an excuse to do shitty things when they can get away with it. But the entire purpose of morality is stop people from doing things that hurt others even when they can get away with it.

But just from a practical perspective, even if you are not a moral realist, there are significant practical advantages to a world in which ethics is taken seriously. Laws are often unfair. Imagine getting a parking ticket because of a malfunctioning parking meter, or a jaywalking fine for crossing a empty road. If you cannot appeal to higher principles of justice and fairness, how can you advocate for these laws which harm you to be changed? While you may be in the powerful majority when it comes to how animals are treated under the law, there’s no saying whether in the future you might find yourself on the less powerful side, a victim of an unjust law. By agreeing that laws should be subject to moral criticism, you are not only protecting those that you might harm, but also yourself and the people you care about. While it may be tempting to carve out protections in the law just for yourself and the people you care about, if you abandon morality, you lose the protection that morality affords you if you ever fall subject to brutal oppression. We should be advocating for universal moral principles so that when worst comes to worst, you have one last chance at appeal to those who want to harm you.

What Happened

You died! An extra-terrestrial, seeing your philosophy, came down, scanned your brain, and took your statement “we should use animals however we like” as permission to eat you as a scrumptious snack! Humans are animals, after all, and you looked tasty! Mmm… human bacon.