1. Evolutionary disposition. We do have canine teeth and like underbluewaters said "Animals eating other animals is the basis of much of life on this planet.” This is also alluded to in oh_sigh's statement "we have all the equipment and desire to eat other animals”.
2. Social conditioning. Many humans have been eating meat for generations. They have been eating it some form since they were born. The society en masse around them does not see anything wrong with it. There is an inadequate opposing force in social conditioning to a balance positive bias towards eating meat. Social conditioning plays a huge role. For example. there is social conditioning and bias against eating dogs or horses. Pigs, cows and lamb.... not so much.
3. Intellectual choice. Unlike other animals, humans are intellectually evolved and we act guided by our moral compass. Furthermore, as the most intelligent species on this planet, we have a fiduciary responsibility to other species that we share this planet with. Not always but often enough, the right intellectual choice is against our evolutionary disposition and social conditioning.
If you take evolutionary disposition and social conditioning out of the picture and view killing and eating other sentient beings purely on the basis of intellectual merit, where does your moral compass point to? When framed that way, I feel that the signal-to-noise ratio is improved in framing the morality question.
I like your reasoning. I'm not ready to come over to the other side yet, but I agree with most of what you said. My opposition to vegetarianism mostly comes from some unusual experiences, but as far as eating "factory farmed" meat I think I probably just continue with that because of the social conditioning you mention.
Consider this:
1) I'm raising my own chickens right now. My wife coaxed a wild hen to start laying her clutch of eggs in a safe place that I defended from mongoose (an invasive species here), and we build a fenced area to protect them once hatched. Had we not done this, they almost certainly would have all been killed by mongoose. Some obviously do survive (there are wild chickens walking around), but the mortality rate is extremely high. I'm now in the process of butchering 6/7 of the roosters now that they are mature. In my opinion these roosters actually got the better end of the bargain. They had a good life outside, were fed well, and even got a chance to mate thanks to the huge amount of effort I put into keeping them safe and housing them. Even if I wanted to, I could not keep these 7 roosters as just pets as they would kill each other. What do you think of the morality of that?
2) I go out freediving and hunt and spear fish for food. It's very hard to learn, and involves empathizing and understanding the personality of each different species I target. I do remove invasive species from the reef when I get a chance, but it's not a mutualistic relationship like with the chickens. Still, it feels more "right" than eating meat out of a package because I'm experiencing a whole different aspect of life by joining part of the food chain. I have to look my prey in the eye, learn their habits and even take risks dealing with larger and stronger animals (sharks) that could eat me. The ethical relationship with those individual prey is maybe not positive, but I have a much better relationship with the environment around me that simply going out and observing via snorkeling doesn't seem to provide.
I guess the point I'm making is that as I get closer to a natural relationship to animals as food, and away from packaged bodies in a supermarket, the less unethical it appears to me personally.
There's an ethical argument that, using our brains to (cynically) raise meat animals, we've poisoned our motive morally. Never mind how 'naturally'; never mind how much better the lives of the animals. The knowledge that its all really for tasty sandwiches compromises the moral aspect.
Supermarket packaging certainly helps to make it seem clinical and a little ghastly; but avoiding that doesn't change the morals at all.
In this entire sentence, you could just fill in the opposite point about vegetarianism and talk about certain societies(certain indian jains, etc)
> there is social conditioning and bias against eating dogs or horses.
And there is also social conditioning towards eating horses in steppe culture, and dogs in some asian communities.
> Unlike other animals, humans are intellectually evolved and we act guided by our moral compass.
Sure. Until you're hungry. Then once you're hungry, I'm sure you'll kill whatever other creature you need to to survive.
> If you take evolutionary disposition and social conditioning out of the picture and view killing and eating other sentient beings purely on the basis of intellectual merit, where does your moral compass point to?
"If my grandmother had wheels, would she be a bicycle?"
If a being does something bad to another being that it did not need to do with the knowledge that it was bad and unnecessary, then morally that is not ok.
If a being does something that it needs to do in order to survive then that is morally ok, even when that thing is ultimately fatal to other beings.
There is a whole world of options between those positions, of course. We have the equipment to eat other animals because we evolved that way and in the past we needed to do that in order to survive. That we may no longer need to do so is where the moral quandry comes into play.
Let's take your assumption that eating animals is not moral. If humans needed to eat animals for some reason, would it still be not moral to eat them?