Can people with mental disabilities be eaten ethically?
Follow up question since I can guess your answer: what about mentally disabled chimpanzees? What about mentally disabled octopuswhiches[0]? I'm talking to the point where they would not survive outside of human intervention. Or maybe not. Where is the line?
[0] as defined as the plural of octopus elsewhere in the comments
There are many lines. Some lines are drawn by the law, other lines are drawn by the society we live in and/or our individual ethical norms.
If we have collectively decided that intelligence is a factor when deciding whether an animal can be eaten by humans, then it's a perfectly logical conclusion for many people that eating octopuses is disgraceful.
These are of course some of the hardest questions we have to answer for ourselves and they don't have clear cut answers. I don't know where exactly the line should be, but IMO octopi are over that line. That's a large part of the reason why I don't east any meat at home. Even worse, I also am very open to arguments for panpsychism which is a almost paralyzing thought.
Follow up question since I can guess your answer: what about mentally disabled chimpanzees? What about mentally disabled octopuswhiches[0]? I'm talking to the point where they would not survive outside of human intervention. Or maybe not. Where is the line?
[0] as defined as the plural of octopus elsewhere in the comments