How should a Vegetarian get along with a Meat eater?

[gothicusmaximus]

Originally Posted by blackwater1110

OK, I get it. It's immoral, but you do it anyway because it's pleasurable. Also, guilt doesn't necessarily tie into it. The traditional japanese moral code is based around shame, for example, doing immoral acts that no-one else sees is not immoral; it becomes immoral if other people find out about it. Given that guilt isn't a universal phenomenon, there would be no negative attributes and greater positive attributes to keeping the money, tipping the scale in favor of the immoral action. I guess what I was trying to argue for, badly, is the existence of a moral code that is objective from these sort of aesthetic considerations (hence the mention of Kantianism).

I'm not an expert on traditional Japanese values, but I do believe that the notion of morality for the sake of morality rather than that of pride was a component of samurai codes. Either way, to be guilty is merely to feel bad when one has done something immoral- if your committing certain acts is only wrong when others find out you've committed them, you have no reason to feel guilt until your deeds are exposed. I, after all, don't subscribe to the idea of an objective morality, so I have no trouble acknowledging that different things will inspire guilt in different people.

Wait a minute, so you're saying that even though you recognize the immorality of it, you do it anyway?

Yep, said that way back:

Originally Posted by GothicusMaximus

Actually, our morality is probably the same, as I too view the infliction of suffering upon any living being to be, with few exceptions, unethical.

Without the moral code, we'd be pretty much rule by our desires; but even with it, they override the moral code on rare occasions, when in the presence of the carrot and the absence of the stick (as in the case of KFC).

Yes and no. This seems to go back to the whole idea that human beings behave justly only in the hope of avoiding punishment, while I feel the central dynamic involved is the slightly more complex, nearly homeostatic impulsion to balance moral sin with pure gratification. For instance, the sheer joy I derive from KFC is sufficient to counteract whatever grief might proceed from the knowledge that I've violated my moral code in endorsing the slaughter of chickens. Conversely, the satisfaction of killing someone I can't stand, even in the absence of extrinsic punishment, is not enough to compensate for my guilt in having ended another human life- this is true of most people, I feel.

This would also explain a lot of things: morbidly obese people, or smokers for example, know that it's a bad idea to go on eating/smoking, but the punishment comes later, while the satisfaction of their craving is immediate. So they go on overeating or smoking.

Yeah, basically. The trade off, to those people, is worth it.

Yes, but my argument was to concentrate on animals besides humans. For example, if a fly annoys me, I don't swat it. I really don't value flies at all. My point was that not everything is boiled down to considerations of value, because then we'd be sociopaths, and thus the existence of moral systems beyond psychological gratification.

Sociopaths have no morality at all- any restraint they demonstrate results from fear of punishment. Those who don't value flies simply have a different morality than that of those who do.
I'm not sure I understand your example, as I don't get don't you swat the fly if it doesn't mean anything to you, assuming your peace of mind does?

Or, perhaps, the vast majority of people just value the "right" things because they've been socialized properly, so they don't really ever have to worry about how they would do if put in a moral crucible. But I'd still say that thinking a moral system through as opposed to relying on conditioning would give one a greater safeguard against immoral actions than conditioning alone.

I agree.

what if this situation came up a lot, and we were left with nothing but intelligent people? How do you think that society would pan out?

Probably very well. For one, it'd probably be smaller and thereby more easily manageable, perhaps the sort of idyllic commune that only really works on such a scale. Even if the culling left us with a large enough population that distinct classes could still form and the least fit were condemned to shitty jobs, it'd still mean a nice boost to the mean intellect.