Comment on Why is the consumption of Meat considered bad
NeuralNerd@lemmy.world 1 year agowhat creates a duty to NOT HARM something?
About all ethics is about reducing harm. If you don’t know that harming is bad I don’t think we can have a discussion.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
deontological ethics are explicitly not about that. divine command theory is unconcerned with that. can you name an ethical system that does concern itself with that?
NeuralNerd@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I guess it depends on the philosopher, but at least one includes “doing no harm” in the obligations[1]:
Probably all consequentialism and at least utilitarianism (harm decreases the global well being). Negative consequentialism is more specifically focused on reducing suffering/harm.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I’m not a consequentialist at all, and Ross is not using harm in the same sense as we are. even if he were, his is not a very common strain of ethics.
your ethical theory seems to be on dubious footing to me.
NeuralNerd@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So in your ethical theory, harm doesn’t matter at all?
You seem to follow some kind of deontology. There’s no obligation in your system to not cause unnecessary harm? I guess you have some obligation not to hurt your dog even if you like doing that. Isn’t that obligation related to the fact the dog would be harmed if you did?
Maybe it’s just a difference between consequentialism and deontologism, but I was convinced deontologists generally had some rules that prevent unnecessary harm. They don’t?
There’s at least Tom Regan who was a deontologist (at least in his book The Case for Animal Rights) and talks about harm: