Why Do You Eat Animals?

[TheVeganAtheist]

great response brimstonesalad. Well said.

There are some animals which may not be able to: Oysters, Jellyfish, Sponges.
You are welcome to eat these animals- you will find few people can construct a sound argument against it.

- what I could think of is the potential interference and damage to the environment and local sentient animals that may be harmed in the process of acquiring these non-sentient animals.

[brimstoneSalad]

- what I could think of is the potential interference and damage to the environment and local sentient animals that may be harmed in the process of acquiring these non-sentient animals.

Good point. There are definitely issues of sustainability, and possibly harm to other animals (like through fishing practices).

[GPC100s]

Here's just one example of chickens being empirically shown to demonstrate foresight, planning, deception, and even Machiavellian intelligence. http://www.thedarwinpapers.com/oldsite/ ... hought.htm

That paper doesn't say anything about foresight, only alarm calls. Make a noise and get rewarded, or your peers get rewarded, either way it's immediate satisfaction. I don't see any way to link that behavior to a recognition of moral respect.

It's factually incorrect to claim that nonhuman animals aren't sentient, don't possess significant intelligence, are incapable of anticipating the future, don't have emotions or personalities, etc. What's more, it shouldn't surprise anyone that they do; evolution predicts nothing less.

The burden of proof properly lies with those who deny animal sentience, not those who accept it. Perhaps ironically to some, vegans are defenders of the scientific consensus on this one.

I didn't claim they weren't sentient or any of those things. I claimed not to know. The burden of proof is on those who claim they have it.

[Humane Hominid]

That paper doesn't say anything about foresight, only alarm calls. Make a noise and get rewarded, or your peers get rewarded, either way it's immediate satisfaction. I don't see any way to link that behavior to a recognition of moral respect.

But it's not immediate satisfaction. Mating in chickens often occurs days after the ritual itself, which means they remember who they chose. And roosters who lie too much end up shunned by the hens, developing a bad reputation. And the roosters learn from this mistake, figuring out how to tell better lies as they get older. This kind of behavior requires long-term planning and long-term individual recognition, social memory, timing, and Machiavellian intelligence. In humans, all of this is taken as evidence of cognition and consciousness; why shouldn't it be in birds, as well?

I didn't claim they weren't sentient or any of those things. I claimed not to know. The burden of proof is on those who claim they have it.

Nope. No more than it's on physicists to demonstrate that gravity is caused by the warping of spacetime, or on biologists to demonstrate that evolution is true. It's a subject for which there is so much evidence that no relevant expert seriously questions its veracity. Research has moved on to other questions.

Vegan Atheist, myself, and others here have posted about the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness, and the 2012 Francis Crick Memorial Conference On Consciousness In Human and Non-human Animals, which codified the consensus of the relevant experts into one resource. It was nothing revolutionary within its own field, but simply the culmination of decades of research.

The rational position is to assume the scientific consensus is true, and demand evidence from those who contradict it. Hence, the burden lies with those who claim animals aren't conscious.

[brimstoneSalad]

I didn't claim they weren't sentient or any of those things. I claimed not to know. The burden of proof is on those who claim they have it.

If you had claimed that we do not know whether it could be morally acceptable to kill/eat animals, that might be the case (ignoring the fact that there's already evidence that the animals in question are morally relevant).

But this was not your claim.

The argument you made was claiming that it is morally acceptable to kill/eat animals.
In that context, it is you who is making the implicit claim that they are not sentient in some respect (part of your premises).

This is the burden of proof fallacy: that is, similar to the argument from ignorance.
You make an assertion. If the opposition can not prove that your assertion is wrong, you claim you win by default because the "burden of proof" lies with the other party.

I suggest you read my post (rather than ignoring it). I addressed your argument thoroughly already, as well as humoring your assumption on the issue of ignorance and explaining why that's not how morality works.

[GPC100s]

This is one of a few possible things:

1. It's probably a coincidence. Have you tried quitting meat again since then?

If you do, and you experience the pain again, then it's less likely a coincidence.
How severe was the pain, and how long did it take to come about?

You may need to visit a doctor for a better diagnosis of the condition itself. Can you describe it more fully?
It could be due to inflammation, or hypersensitivity of nerves.

2. As TheVeganAtheist suggested, it may be due to something else in your diet.
As you said you were eating all of the same thing before, you were probably not eating all of the same amounts of those things.
You may have issues with one or more of the things you are eating (such as allergy issues), which only shows up when you eat quite a bit more of it than you usually do.

You need to control for those variables to determine what it might be.

If you give us more details about your diet, including all of the things you eat, and approximate amounts, we can help you figure out a better test to determine what the problem may be.

3. It's very unlikely, but it could be that your body has an inability to synthesize something which is in meat, but not in vegetables or dairy.
That list is very small, and would make you something of a medical anomaly. This is probably not the case.

1) I do continue to get the pains whenever I run out of meat and fail to make a special trip to the store to replenish (meat is expensive lol). The pain can be felt by you right now, just bash the tip of your finger straight down on a desk and keep pressing down until it hurts. That's how it feels, except I can't escape it when it gets unbearable due to gravity. Gel inserts for my feet helped, but not perfectly; but now I don't need them ever since eating meat regularly.

2) No, the allergy explanation doesn't makes sense because it still occurs when I don't eat any of those vegan foods either... Ever since doing my tests, I've been eating the same thing every day for 3 years (with minor tweaks along the way), excluding meat makes it happen while including meat makes it stop... Maybe it's a placebo, but during my tests I REALLY wanted to find vegan sources of protein so that's why I don't think it's all in my head.

Diet details: I eat 1 cup of raisin bran with approximately 1 cup of soy milk; 1 spoonful of peanut butter; 2 slices of deli turkey (yes, nitrates, but that's not immoral lol); and 8 oz of tang (used to be orange juice back when I did my tests)
I eat all of this usually 4 times a day.

3) Idk if I'm a medical anomoly. Sometimes I wonder if there are more people like me but don't know it because they never tried to go vegan. *shrug*

Thank you for your other suggestions, especially about the specific supplements. I've been avoiding supplements but I guess it could be good as a short term identifier of my problem.

We derive moral consideration from the ability of a being to want. If something can not want, then it's not possible to consider that lack of a want.
Want derives from rudimentary intelligence and sensory interactivity with the world- crudely, yes, perception.

Yes, that is a fine word to identify what I'm referring to: wants. You need perception to want, but wants are what's important.

There is no such being that can perceive pain, but does not have any sense of future. Pain perception only has use because of a primitive sense of causality - "I did this, and that happens". THAT, by nature, is in the future.
Without being able to tie cause and effect together, and anticipate effects that follow causes, intelligence doesn't work, and fundamental aspects of expressed intelligence, like operant conditioning, are impossible.

Realizing that pushing a button makes you hurt and deciding not to push that button is a thought about the past and present, not the future. If I press a button and realize it causes me pain, I remember it, that is the past. When I encounter the button again, I remember the pain, then decide not to push it now; that's the present. Where are the thoughts of the future? I can think "I will never push that button again!" but that doesn't influence my behavior unless I forget the pain but remember the vow... That looks indistinguishable from remembering the pain to an outside perspective; that's why we need to test for an animal's ability to sacrifice it's present pleasures to supplement it's future well being.

A being wants to fulfill its wants, and if it would be able to do so (or might have been able to do so) had you not killed it, there is a loss there.

How does this differ from the unborn? My sperms can become a living being when given the proper environment, does that mean I'm robbing wants from those potential children? Shall I impregnate my gf every chance I get? Their wants may interfere with ours, but should we all save our gametes just in case we decide to want them? Every drop of sperm that doesn't get saved is gone forever.... My point is that potential wants mean nothing, if I want an apple now then you shouldn't take my apple now, but If I decided I wanted to throw the apple away 2 minutes from now, then taking my apple 2 minutes from now isn't wrong (I'd appreciate you asking first to make sure but you get the point lol).

This is a statistical matter. In no large scale farming operation do all of the animals die painlessly- I would argue that none of them die painlessly with current practices.
Even with perfect methodology, though, you will screw up sometimes.

Death can not reliably occur without pain, no matter your precautions. There's always a chance of pain, and because moral action is statistical in nature, it is immoral to risk subjecting another to pain (whether or not it actually happens)- the same reason it's immoral to drive drunk even if you got lucky and didn't kill anybody that time, or shoot a gun into a crowd even if you got lucky and didn't hit anybody that time.

I don't think it's immoral to drive drunk. I don't do it because it raises my chances of doing bad things, it's not bad itself. Shooting in a crowd scares people so that's different... But all human action is statistical in nature; we can't do anything if we aim for 0% risk of others. Even if we do the best we can, the speed limit would have to be 1mph or whatever velocity is the highest while still avoiding pain on impact.

What tests are you talking about?

Here is one study I can find right now on the subject: http://www.cs.arizona.edu/projects/wona ... yton-2.pdf

It's about scrub jays. I haven't found anything on pigs but from other unrelated reports on pig behavior, it seems they're smarter or equally as capable to the scrub jay so I think it's reasonable to assume they are capable.

Further, there is no doubt that they plan for the near future. The ability to simply walk and veer around obstacles proves this conclusively.
They see something they want across the yard. They plan to walk over and get it. They look at the yard, and note any obstacles. They plan out the route they will take to reach the destination.

I'm aware of the portia's intelligence... But bravo, I think you've convinced me that cows and chickens plan for the future. I may not have seen them planning a route but I believe they can.

Look, there's a stroller in the road. I don't *see* a baby in it... well, it's in the way and I can't be bothered to stop and check, so I'll go ahead and run it over with my truck. There's no evidence of a baby in it from here (a position from which it's hard to tell), so that's evidence that there's not a baby in it! If there's a chance of something being sentient, a moral person gives it the benefit of the doubt.

Your problem here lies with "I can't be bothered to stop and check". If it's reasonable to stop and check, then you gotta stop and check, but if it's not reasonable to stop and check, then you don't have to. We can argue if it's reasonable for me to kill an animal without doing the tests myself but that's it. I don't think it's reasonable to have to do that, but I do think it's reasonable to look it up on the internet.

And there's always a chance something's sentient, dude. Even a rock. But we reject it because of a lack of evidence.

And to answer your more recent post:

The argument you made was claiming that it is morally acceptable to kill/eat animals.
In that context, it is you who is making the implicit claim that they are not sentient in some respect (part of your premises).

No, that was my conclusion, not my premise. Humane Hominid made the same mistake in his most recent reply too.

[GPC100s]

Why would it be silly to say? When did I ever say I was tired of your moral argument? That does not sound like something I would say.

It's silly to say that it's an allergy after I told you it only occurs when I OMIT a food. Maybe you didn't believe how precise I was... I don't remember the comment exactly and maybe you didn't say "tired", so that could be my bad, but you did say you could defeat my argument for days. That's either a sign of exhaustion from hearing my argument many times before, or it's poisoning the well.... You're usually very nice in your videos and comments so I suspected the former.

I'm ignoring everything else you said because it's similar to things brimestonesalad said and he essentially defeated my argument... Making many faults along the way which I addressed lol.

[thebestofenergy]

I didn't claim they weren't sentient or any of those things. I claimed not to know. The burden of proof is on those who claim they have it.

That's absurd to say. As absurd as saying that a triangle might have less than 3 angles, in geometry, and that you claim not to know.
It's proven (number of angles = number of sides) and it's self-evident (you can see it).
Same for the sentience of those animals. It's proven (neurological activity and nervous system) and it's self-evident (hurt a chicken, she'll feel pain).
There's not a single doubt that those animals are fully sentient beings.

Realizing that pushing a button makes you hurt and deciding not to push that button is a thought about the past and present, not the future. If I press a button and realize it causes me pain, I remember it, that is the past. When I encounter the button again, I remember the pain, then decide not to push it now; that's the present.

That's incorrect. If you remember you pressed a button and felt pain, you need to have an understanding of the future to know that if you'll press it again you'd feel pain.
You remember the past, but you also have to imagine a situation in the future where you're going to press the button again.

How does this differ from the unborn? My sperms can become a living being when given the proper environment, does that mean I'm robbing wants from those potential children? Shall I impregnate my gf every chance I get? Their wants may interfere with ours, but should we all save our gametes just in case we decide to want them? Every drop of sperm that doesn't get saved is gone forever....

Your sperm doesn't have wants, it's not sentient. Your unborn child doesn't have wants, it's not even born. If you don't impregnate your girlfriend, the baby is never going to have wants, because he doesn't even exist. There's no loss there.
Animals have wants.

I don't think it's immoral to drive drunk. I don't do it because it raises my chances of doing bad things, it's not bad itself.

If you put it that way, then nothing is bad itself. Murdering is not bad itself, it's because you kill someone that doesn't want to die. Stealing is not bad itself, it's because you steal something from someone that doesn't want to be stolen. But those things are immoral, for the same reasons I gave.
You said that you don't do it because it raises your chances to do bad things, so it is both irresponsible and immoral. You might have an accident with someone else, or kill someone. That's immoral.

And there's always a chance something's sentient, dude. Even a rock. But we reject it because of a lack of evidence.

What? Do you know what sentience means? That's the most insane thing I've even heard about sentience.
There's 0 chance a rock is sentient. It doesn't even have neurons, it doesn't even have a life...

[brimstoneSalad]

It sounds like nerve pain, not anything mechanical. It's probably a neurological issue of some kind. Neuropathic hypersensitivity to pressure.

However, that also sounds pretty serious, so I would recommend visiting a doctor if you can afford to. You'll need a referral to a nerve specialist.

In the mean-time, maybe get a B-12 supplement. I also suggest DHA/EPA supplementation. Those are both things associated with nerve conditions.

Diet details: I eat 1 cup of raisin bran with approximately 1 cup of soy milk; 1 spoonful of peanut butter; 2 slices of deli turkey (yes, nitrates, but that's not immoral lol); and 8 oz of tang (used to be orange juice back when I did my tests)
I eat all of this usually 4 times a day.

Raisin bran with a cup of soymilk, a spoon of peanut butter, and 8 oz of tang 4x a day when you're not eating meat?

That's not enough food for a human being. And too many of your calories are coming from sugar. It's not the worst diet I've seen, but not very good.

I gather you're looking for cheap, right?

Forgive, me, I forgot if you mentioned where you lived, but try this:

Carrots (very cheap)
Frozen peas (also quite cheap)

Cut up the carrots, throw them in with the peas, and stick them in the microwave (quick and cheap). You need more vegetable matter.
Season with salt, or any kind of spices you like (some people like seasoned salt).

Unsweetened oats (from a big container of rolled oats)- microwave with a bit of water, or buy the quick oat variety and add hot or cold water.
Raisins are good- buy a big package/tub of them. Avoid the raisin bran (too much added sugar).
Bananas (are cheap, and will give you plenty of vitamin C).
A little cinnamon is good, or pumpkin pie spice if you like a mix.

Skip the soy milk, that's too expensive.
Cut out the Tang, that doesn't do many favors, and it's mostly sugar.
Drink water.

Only buy natural peanut butter- avoid peanut butter with sugar, palm oil, or hydrogenated oils.
Peanut butter is also good to dip carrots in.

Can of fat free vegetarian refried beans.
Buy some tortillas (corn, or wheat flour is fine).
Beans + tortilla + microwave + tobasco sauce (or sriracha). Salsa is good if you can afford it.

Also buy some canola oil. Mix it in with the beans to add fat (canola oil has a lot of good omega-3 fatty acids, it will balance out the Omega 6 in the peanut butter).

That stuff shouldn't cost more than $2 a day for 2,000 calories.

If you have trouble with gas at first, use beano, and then wean yourself off of it (your body will adjust, so you can take less every day until you take none).

Let me know if any of that doesn't work for you. I can also offer more alternatives for more variety. Please let me know what your level of cooking skill, and time is. There are other things that you can do that are even cheaper, but take more time and cooking.

Thank you for your other suggestions, especially about the specific supplements. I've been avoiding supplements but I guess it could be good as a short term identifier of my problem.

Definitely; controlling the variables is the only way to eliminate them for sure.

You could even be unknowingly self medicating some strange nerve condition with nitrates.

The only way to figure it out is to check each thing.

Realizing that pushing a button makes you hurt and deciding not to push that button is a thought about the past and present, not the future. If I press a button and realize it causes me pain, I remember it, that is the past. When I encounter the button again, I remember the pain, then decide not to push it now; that's the present. Where are the thoughts of the future?

You're confusing reflex and pain aversion with pleasure seeking behavior. Those kinds of studies (an event that causes pain) are less useful to cognitive research because it doesn't encourage the behavior you want to test- the situation you presented is not something that's really done anymore. Pain is broadly discouraged as a training mechanism.

If you're experiencing pain now, that is in the present, and any simple and immediate action you take to remove that pain (like winching away from the button) is more reflexive.

If you get a food pellet after you push a button (and it's always after, even if it's less than a second after), learning to push that button because you will receive a food pellet is operant conditioning- and it deals with a reward in the near future. Even very simple animals can be trained to perform complex tasks for reward upon completion of all of the tasks (the tasks just have to be added to over time).

There's extensive research with positive reinforcement (and negative reinforcement, which is the removal of a negative stimuli, not adding one).
We know, for example, that in all animals (including humans), the sooner the reward happens after the event, the stronger the effect. A second is better than ten seconds, is better than a minute, it better than an hour, is better than a day. More delayed rewards have to be larger to create the same motivational effect.

There's no point at which "present" suddenly becomes future. Any behavior that is not a reflex is behavior engaged for the sake of future (whether near or far) reward.

that's why we need to test for an animal's ability to sacrifice it's present pleasures to supplement it's future well being.

The mere act of walking over to and pushing a button does that. Animals would not engage in this action (which is effort) without the anticipation of reward in the future (even if it's just a second off) from when they decide to engage in the action.

My point is that potential wants mean nothing, if I want an apple now then you shouldn't take my apple now, but If I decided I wanted to throw the apple away 2 minutes from now, then taking my apple 2 minutes from now isn't wrong (I'd appreciate you asking first to make sure but you get the point lol).

You misunderstood me. Only the current existing "wants" matter. My point was with regards to opportunity cost.

For example, if I stole your apple because I knew it was rotten (which was unknown to you) and that you wouldn't have been able to eat it anyway, then in fact I am not denying you anything (although having your apple stolen would be a disappointment, so would have been the alternative of finding out it was rotten).
If I stole your apple, and it only might have been rotten, that's not an excuse because there was a chance it wouldn't have been.

It matters not only that you want it now (which is required), but also that it is a thing that can be had.

If somebody wants something impossible, denying them that thing is not a denial at all (although they may think it is).

If having something stolen causes you more stress than finding out it was rotten, of course, that would be wrong.
Though if finding out it was rotten would have caused you more stress than just losing it, then I did you a favor.

That's my meaning here:

A being wants to fulfill its wants, and if it would be able to do so (or might have been able to do so) had you not killed it, there is a loss there.

You want it now. BUT, it doesn't matter if you want it if it was an impossible desire (since an impossible desire can't be fulfilled, and so can't be denied to you by my actions).

If you don't want it, or don't even exist yet to want it, then of course that lack of a want (or hypothetical want) doesn't matter.

I don't think it's immoral to drive drunk. I don't do it because it raises my chances of doing bad things, it's not bad itself.

There in lies your fundamental misunderstanding of morality.

EVERYTHING we do is statistical in nature.

A thing is not right or wrong because the outcome you witnessed is good or bad. A thing is right or wrong based on the probability of good or bad outcomes.

You can never know for certain the actual future outcome- you can only know the probability- and it is within that context of possible knowledge that an action is moral or immoral.

If you donate a kidney to save a life, that is a moral thing to do because it has an overwhelmingly good chance of doing good compared to bad.

If it turns out, by dumb bad 'luck', that person died during surgery sooner than he or she would have died otherwise, the actual result from your actions that you witnessed were bad.
That doesn't make your actions immoral- that's just dumb bad luck.

You are responsible for being informed as to the dangers inherent in your actions, and to not act recklessly, but nobody can ever know the "actual" result of any action due to the chaos effect.

To use a more extreme example in the negative:
Let's say you're a pedophile, and you rape and kill a little kid. It turns out that kid would have grown up to be a new Hitler. Does that make what you did good? NO. At the time you did it, all reasonable understandings of the situation would call it bad- you didn't know the kid was growing up to become a new Hitler.

In moral action, you don't get credit for accidentally doing something good when the outcome was improbable. All credit is based on probability of outcome- whether good or bad- and it's a sliding scale which weighs against the alternative or default actions.

Shooting in a crowd scares people so that's different...

Not from a distance. But that's aside from the point. All they'd know is that there was a loud noise.

Do you think shooting a real bullet blindly into a crowd and by dumb luck missing everybody is the same as firing a blank? Nobody would know the difference. One had a high chance of hurting or killing somebody. One had very little chance.
That the actual outcomes you witnessed were the same is irrelevant. One is substantially more evil than the other.

But all human action is statistical in nature; we can't do anything if we aim for 0% risk of others.

Correct, but nobody is asking for 0% risk.

Driving drunk drastically increases the risk- that's why it's immoral.

We determine the morality of actions by comparing them to their alternatives, and examining the utility of those actions.
Driving provides a lot of good things too, along with the risks it creates. Driving drunk has little to no added value to society, and adds enormous amounts of risk.

Do you understand the difference, and why it's wrong to increase the risk of something without increasing the positive payout more?

This isn't "out there" speculation and wild theoretical philosophy - it's the basis of responsibility in common law.

It's about scrub jays. I haven't found anything on pigs but from other unrelated reports on pig behavior, it seems they're smarter or equally as capable to the scrub jay so I think it's reasonable to assume they are capable.

Yes, that is reasonable. But not just that- you can (and should rationally) go much further.
If you accept evolution, it's reasonable to assume all closely related animals are similarly capable.

Science on the matter only gives us a few reference points, because there are only a few animals who have been studied- the most reasonable thing is to make assumptions based on relation until proven otherwise.

The reasonable extrapolation from that doesn't require information from the species we are considering to make a reasonable assumption.

If we have information from other animals in the same genus, but not the species, then we apply that information as the default assumption.
If we have information from other animals in the family, but not the genus, then we apply that as the default assumption.
If we have information from others of the same order, but different family, then we apply that.

And so on, and so forth.

The reasonable default assumption, based on near relatives, is that all chordates are sentient.

That may not be the case- but if it isn't, we will need evidence that it isn't in order to deviate from the natural assumption. It is only reasonable to assume similarity until difference is proven.


There are also other metrics we can use, aside from genetic similarity, to draw more precise reasonable conclusions.

For example, brain to body weight ratio (which is information we have for almost all animals, and which crudely approximates intelligence).

However, genetic relation comes first- as we know that even in humans, brain to body ratio doesn't represent intelligence as well as parental IQ.

We also have learned some things specific to certain classes, like that bird brains are apparently more efficient than mammalian brains by weight- so while we can compare one bird to another based on brain:body mass, we have to adjust that to compare to mammals based on our knowledge of the difference in efficiency (we'd multiply that difference by some coefficient).

Given a new species of bird we have never seen or studied before, the reasonable assumption is not "it's not sentient because we don't have positive evidence that this specific animal is yet", the reasonable assumption is inductive, based on it being a bird. That may prove untrue based on closer observation, but in order to be rational, we have to assume those things based on its birdness until proven otherwise.

I'm aware of the portia's intelligence... But bravo, I think you've convinced me that cows and chickens plan for the future. I may not have seen them planning a route but I believe they can.

All things that are sentient plan for the future in the most primitive sense. It's more of a question of "how much" and "how far" they plan. It may just be a fraction of a second, it may be minutes, it may be hours, depending on the organism.

The important thing to remember is that there's no hard line that delineates "future" in that respect. It's a subtle gradation, from the simplest organisms, to the most intelligent (who may plan years ahead, or try to).

Broadly speaking, almost all things that move are sentient, because sentience it required to make practical use of movement. Things that don't move, or are sessile and barely move, are usually not sentient.

Jellyfish are one of the only large organisms that move around that probably aren't sentient- because their movement is simple and reactive, not active and intelligent. They don't plan or learn so much as just modulate the rate of pulsing their bodies based on stimuli (like light) in a reflexive way.

Anything more complicated than that, and the reasonable assumption is sentience until demonstrated otherwise, based only on behavioral induction (remember, science is inherently inductive).

Your problem here lies with "I can't be bothered to stop and check". If it's reasonable to stop and check, then you gotta stop and check, but if it's not reasonable to stop and check, then you don't have to. We can argue if it's reasonable for me to kill an animal without doing the tests myself but that's it. I don't think it's reasonable to have to do that, but I do think it's reasonable to look it up on the internet.

Looking it up is reasonable, but it's unreasonable to stop at species- because given an unknown, the null hypothesis defaults to the closest relatives.

If you can't find anything on that species, go up to Genus, then if you can't find anything there, go to Family, then Order, then Class, then Phylum.

That was my point about a shoe box vs. a stroller. A stroller- even if it's a brand you haven't seen a baby in before (or a new brand that nobody has seen a baby in before)- is categorically used to hold babies in the way shoe boxes are not. It is reasonable to stop and look, or assume it has a baby in it until demonstrated otherwise, because of the inductive probability.

And there's always a chance something's sentient, dude. Even a rock. But we reject it because of a lack of evidence.

That's not how science and reason work. Reasonable assumptions are based on inductive probability. And that's definitely not how morality works.

Look at hard solipsism- you could say there's a chance than nobody and nothing is sentient except for yourself, and you're a brain in a vat, all alone in the universe. Or everything around you is just a dream.
Given that criteria, there is a lack of evidence that anything is actually 'real'- should we all be solipsists?

We don't categorically reject anything due to lack of evidence, but due to reason, and prudence- and in the case of morality, due to potential consequences.

There are many reasons we reject the notion that rocks are sentient, and it's not due to lack of evidence- which is not grounds to reject something on its own.

Rocks are not sentient because they do not process information (thereby can not be intelligent, which is a fundamental requirement for sentience).
Rocks are not sentient because they can not manifest outward responses, which negates the functional utility of sentience (e.g. they don't need to be sentient, any preexisting sentience would degrade- this has been demonstrated).

Furthermore:

Rocks are probably not sentient because the simplest explanation for their behavior does not involve sentience (Occam's razor).
Rocks are probably not sentient because they are not closely related to anything that is sentient, and they are most closely related to other non-sentient things (Rational induction).

No, that was my conclusion, not my premise. Humane Hominid made the same mistake in his most recent reply too.

The premises in question may have been unstated (most premises usually are).
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assuming you stated the premise (reading the ones you did as charitably as I could). I may have misread you in the process, but I believe the implication is in there.

If you deny that was a premise (or that there aren't other unstated premises you needed), then you were making a non sequitur (that's not better than a burden of proof fallacy).

Here's the problem. In your conclusion:

it's not wrong to kill some animals.

Excepting some of the mistakes in your premises, your actual conclusion should have been:

"it's unknown whether it is harmful or not to kill some animals."

Which I would agree with completely, regarding some animals (the borderline cases, like some worms, small insects, etc.- not chickens and cows).

There are two problems with the conclusion you offered (which indicate unstated premises, from which I may have read more into your stated premises):

1. Saying it's not harmful, just because it's not known whether it's harmful or not (this is a serious one, which is where the burden of proof fallacy comes in). I thought this was represented here:

-And finally, much like god claims, I treat lack of evidence as a good indicator of no evidence until evidence can be found.

Combined with:

-Animals such as cows and chickens have never been shown to plan for the future, according to my knowledge, which I think is our only measure in determining their perception of their potential future.

I may have read that as evidence of absence, as your actual statement is tautological.

2. Using the word "Wrong" instead of "Harm"- because engaging in an unknown is wrong to the degree of its apparent probability of being harmful given existing knowledge (meaning rational induction).

This is just an another unstated premise (a false one, which I addressed).

It is wrong to do something that might reasonably be harmful- where morality is concerned, the name of the game is caution.

The unstated premise is something similar to the burden of proof fallacy, but with regards to morality.

In morality, it is in fact the person engaging in the action who must demonstrate the action is harmless in order for it to be considered genuinely not wrong (that's a claim). An unknown defaults to wrong, the magnitude measured in terms of the probability of it being harmful. The question is "how wrong is it, and are there mitigating good consequences that make up for it?".

Almost everything we do is a little bit wrong (in some component), but with actions that have a net good there's more right in the consequences than wrong, which makes them a net positive in the end.

[brimstoneSalad]

What? Do you know what sentience means? That's the most insane thing I've even heard about sentience.
There's 0 chance a rock is sentient. It doesn't even have neurons, it doesn't even have a life...

Life isn't required for sentience- e.g. synthetic intelligence, which is not technically alive.

Intelligence (some form of dynamic information processing that can genuinely learn and respond to operant conditioning) is a requirement. Neurons are the only known way to do this (biological, or software), but there may be other mechanisms.

Dynamic information processing, though, is inherently necessary, and chemically lacking in a rock (too much entropy, no system for doing work). Ability to respond is also lacking, which precludes enduring sentience.