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Which is the better : before or after? What is the consideration for your judgement?
What makes killing for fun generally bad?
Do you think that killing millions of chicken for food is morally different than preventing them from existence by not farming them in the first place?
Time does not go backwards. It is the difference between "before" and "after". Not making babies (of any species) is qualitatively different from killing those you have made.
It would be decidedly perverse to take any action intended to make "after" worse than "before" for whoever is intended to be the beneficiary of that action. The moral problem is to choose the beneficiary (me or the squirrels?) and the requirement to choose negates the possibility of a universal moral standard.
The moral problem is to choose the beneficiary (me or the squirrels?) and the requirement to choose negates the possibility of a universal moral standard.
It contravenes the principle of "do unto others as you would wish them to do to you". You can generalise that to "behave as you would wish others to behave", which is a universally applicable moral principle even though it may not produce the same result when applied by different people.
The rule has nothing to say about non-reciprocal actions/decisions, such as using resource for space exploration,
GMO
cloning,
stem cell research
abortion,
clean/renewable energy sources
suicide,
veganism.
In whose point of view that killing chickens is better than preventing them from existence?
In whose point of view that it's worse?
Will you eat synthetic chicken meat which has exactly the same physical and chemical structure as the natural one, but never became part of a living animal?
moral/ˈmɒr(ə)l/Learn to pronounceadjectiveadjective: moral1.concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour.2.holding or manifesting high principles for proper conduct.
I disagree. Point by point I have shown that the golden rule is applicable where a moral judgement must be made, and where it cannot be applied the judgement is not a moral one anyway. I have a hypothetical tin of Universal White Paint that will stick to anything, but the label says "cannot be used to make things black". It would be ridiculously pedantic to claim that it is therefore not Universal.
There being nothing else that matters in the universe but me and them, if I always do unto others as I would wish them to do to me, I have applied a universal principle which I have define as leading to good decisions.
Everyone who isn't me.
There is a serious moral problem here. Nonhuman organisms are covered by statute law that, inter alia, demands that you must not torture a sick pet, trapped or shot vermin, laboratory rat, or any animal that you want to eat, by prolonging its suffering, but it is an offence to end the suffering of another human, however much he asks you to. Given the authority, I would extend the "clean kill" requirement to any human who asks for mercy killing or assisted suicide, and I want the same consideration extended to me.Nonbiological entities don't generally "do unto" me. Active NBEs like wind and waves can harm me, but there's damn all I can do about it apart from studying and avoiding them.
You haven't defined intelligence or consciousness, nor explained why I should give a damn about a machine I can switch off. As for organisations, the only things that have any moral consequence are the people in them.
Whilst a corporation is a legal artefact that can be prosecuted as though it were an individual and is expected to behave as a moral individual, it has no inherent right of survival. I have formed and dissolved corporations for my own convenience - it is simply a vehicle for identifying a transient group of people with the intention to work and trade as one entity.
It is illegal in civilised countries to own a human or to mistreat any other animal, but you can buy, sell, mutilate or starve a corporation precisely because it is inanimate and insensate and exists only as a legal fiction.
Most of my work is done by a car, a plane, and a whole bunch of electronic instruments. I generally look after them (the instruments don't like being left out in the rain, but the car and plane are less likely to get damaged if I leave them in a field) and they look after me, but as a sane adult I don't have any moral duty to them.
Do you want me to apologise to the rock I just tripped over? Or to the EU that I despised so much that I voted against feeding it? Actually, that last one meets the criterion of "doing unto me", which is why it was so despicable, but it is a legal construct that employs human parasites. Like the Communist Party and the Catholic Church, when parasites are employed by an evil organisation they tend to behave immorally - an inversion of the natural order where parasites change the behavior of the host. Hence the clear distinction between corporations and their members.