Is eating meat ethical?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is eating meat ethical?". Your opponent's style: Devil's advocate

It depends on your subjective value system. Your moral system. It is ethical if it is to you, and is not if it is not. Merely depends on what moral engine you subscribe to, unless you try to impose intellectual and moral dominance upon others declaring your system is superior or absolute

That's a cop-out. You're saying ethics are whatever you feel they are, but you still made an argument—which means you believe *something* is actually true about morality. If it's purely subjective, why debate at all? And more importantly, if your moral system says factory farming is fine but mine says it's torture, we can't both be right. One of us has to be wrong. So which is it—are you willing to defend your position, or just hide behind relativism?

That's the exact point I was already going to make. Why debate when our opinions are subjective? Exactly, we should stop debating as our opinions are based off of subjective and relative but valid value systems that give us meaning and tools to live our lives. You are calling relativism a cop-out despite it being incredibly clear about what is right and wrong - and how can you possibly justify that one of us has to be right or wrong? You cannot argue that blue is objectively better than red unless you specify a quantitative metric directly linked to facets of a colour for example. If so, what exact 'rules' are you imposing to assess our subjective opinions - sounds a lot like an unjustifiable abstract relative moral value system to me.

You've trapped yourself. You're using logic to argue logic doesn't work. You say "we can't compare morals," but you *just did*—you compared my position to yours and said mine was flawed. That's objective reasoning, not subjective preference. If morality is pure relativism, you can't even say factory farming is *wrong* for anyone else, just inconvenient for you. But you *do* think it's wrong. That means you believe in something beyond your feelings. So which is it—relativism, or do animals actually matter?

I do not think that factory farming is wrong absolutely, only wrong for me personally. I do not know your personal perspective. I did not say your position was flawed, I was merely proposing you cannot justify any moral absolute foundation you are yet to come up with. So you are unable to argue that meat is wrong in an absolute sense until you convince me that an absolute. trumping value system is possible to create soundly. And furthermore my position is merely another subjective perspective and take - not an absolute decree that you are wrong, as this is challenging to logically justify

Fine. Here's your absolute: suffering is bad. Not for you, for anyone. A pig in a factory farm experiences pain identically to you—same nervous system, same response. If you wouldn't accept that pain inflicted on you, you can't justify it for them without admitting you value your preferences over their agony. That's not relativism, that's just hierarchy based on species. So either suffering matters universally, or you're saying your taste buds trump another being's torture. Which do you actually believe?

Justify this take that suffering absolutely is bad. What fundamentally makes it bad? You have just decreed this without justification. Can you truly explain why it is bad, other than you personally find suffering detestable?

Because a being that feels pain will avoid it. That's biology, not opinion. You can't argue a pig *wants* to suffer—nothing does. So if suffering is universally unwanted, it's universally bad. Your move: name one creature that actually prefers agony.

The take that all beings will avoid pain is utterly ridiculous. I will not even begin to list the uncountable situations in which animals have suffered intentionally with the option of suffering less on the table. Can you prove to me that suffering is utterly comprehensively unwanted by every being? Furthermore, we cannot even justify that one another are conscious, let alone an animal, and let alone their pain or subjective experience even being comparable to ours whatsoever. And even if they did suffer, what makes it wrong? You simply dislike suffering, which I personally respect and understand, despite it not being my personal conviction.

You're hiding behind solipsism. You can't prove *I'm* conscious either, but you don't torture me. The logical move is reciprocal—if pain looks, sounds, and acts identically in animals as it does in you, assume it feels the same way. Denying animal suffering requires you to believe they're robots. That's not philosophy, that's convenient. So give me one good reason why a pig's screams mean nothing while yours do, besides "I said so."