"Tonight, we're discussing the moral rights of bacon". "Of bacon?" "Yes, of bacon".

Hi again, everyone. As promised a couple weeks ago, this entry will focus on one of the silliest and most trivial philosophical discussions I can recall from last year--but, before you get too eager about hearing of the moral standing of strips of fat, I'll dissipate some questions that may come to mind. Can bacon think? Well, no. Is bacon alive? Uh....no,no, bacon is an inanimate, lifeless object that we consume (and, frankly, if you think bacon can understand you when you tell it it's "yummy", in the morning, perhaps you shouldn't be reading my blog and should be talking to your psychiatrist--or your strips of bacon, whichever you prefer). However, are pigs living, sentient beings? Ah! Now we are getting somewhere. As you've probably already guessed, my friends and I were not discussing whether we should treat food morally or not, but were arguing about the moral standing of animals.

Compliments of "EveryStockPhoto"

It was around one a.m. when we decided to have our usual nocturnal discussion, this past February. My friends and I were exhausted that evening, but were able to muster enough energy to discuss a topic we'd recently been lectured on in Ethics class. First, I set out my argument: Animals should not be treated morally (should not be treated as equals to humans) because they are not sentient beings--by "sentient" I am referring to the belief that animals cannot engage in meta-cognition; they cannot think of their own thoughts. My suite-mates agreed with this, but proposed that if animals are not sentient, then how are they able to decide when to eat?  I suggested that the answer was obvious: animals are driven purely by instinct and by the need for immediate gratification of primordial needs. Hence, an animal will not "decide" when to eat, but will simply eat when it feels hungry; it was at this point that the conversation got a bit out of hand, so to speak, and I began to think my friends never gave much thought to what they posited. Without making the slightest effort to oppose my position, they asked if farm pigs could acknowledge the purpose of their existence: to be consumed by a jolly diner.They obviously were not considering my argument, since this implies pigs can think--don't worry, your trip into the world of philosophy gets better, and our conversation got worse. Thereafter, one of my friends thought it'd be "worth considering" if bacon-fed-pigs could understand they were being cannibals...So on, and so forth, "we" came to the conclusion that pigs were savages for eating their own "people" and that the Trinity cats talked students into forming the "Cat Alliance" on campus.

My loving compadres are not insane, I promise, just a tad bit goofy, that's all.

Next time, on "The Thinkers who Should not be Thinking, but Should Rather be Sleeping, or at Least Forming Sensible Opinions on Topics We're Actually Talking Time to Discuss" I'll fill you folks in on a more recent discussion. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Until then!

Porker by Foshie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.everystockphoto.com.

So it begins.....began?.....If I think, therefore I am.....What is the meaning of "blog"?

Well, last night was another “though-invigorating” evening. As it’s typical, it was one a.m. and I was sitting on my balcony with my two roommates at TU—who, by the way, think of 1:45 a.m. as the proper time to discuss why Descartes thought he was a chair, instead of resting for their 8:30 morning classes …But, before I dwell into the moral, metaphysical, and palpably silly discourse my buddies spurt out endlessly, I’ll give a short introduction to this blog and a bit of background on what to expect in following entries.

Courtesy of "Flickr.com".

My name’s John Gallegos and I am a sophomore at TU. I’m a psychology and philosophy double-major, and consequently, I’ve ended up rooming with two other philosophy-majors. I’d mention their names, but the two “elders” would prefer to remain anonymous. My two friends were my suitemates fresh-man year, and towards the end of last semester it became custom for the three of us to sit on their balcony, late at night, and talk about “the world”—in philosophical (well, so called “philosophical”) terms, of course; we would sit out there, fish out a white-board, and try to convince one another that trees actually saw us as plants…Ok, ok, perhaps our debates weren’t that outrageous, but they did get pretty darn ridiculous. Nonetheless, with time came wisdom, and now-a-days our conversation our much more sensical—we used to make assertions based on the knowledge we gained from our “intro. to philosophy” courses; I suppose you could say we have grown to be something like philosophers this year (but we’re not quite there yet).

Our arguments have endured the mind-easing and cool ways of summer, and got under-way during our first night back at TU; I’ve decided to let you guys into our erudite circle, and I will update all of you on the eccentric and “mind blasting” conversations the three of us will have in upcoming weeks. In my next post I’ll start you guys off with one of the sillier ones I can recall from last year, and will include a bit of the ones that occur in upcoming weeks. See you guys then.