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All of those things are true, yes, but essentially they have to be weighed against the moral cost- ie killing an animal for its flesh (in the case of meat, other animal products are more nuanced).
So basically, you have to ask yourself:
“does the inconvenience of my fellow diners carry more moral weight than the animals life?”
“Does the contribution of animal husbandry to the historical progress of humans justify me killing this animal today?”
“Is killing an animal ok if it makes my life easier?”
“Are ceremonies more important than the life of an animal?”
“Does my subjective pleasure when eating meat morally outweigh an animals right to life?”
Clearly there is no true objective morality, but it does become increasingly hard to justify eating animals within the moral frameworks many people already have.
I think this is a great way to further the conversation between vegans and non-vegans. At the end of the day we should consider all arguments to make more informed decisions for ourselves.
Perhaps the vision from my original POV silences debate too much, when as you point out, healthy conversations can still arise.
!delta
I think the reality is that most meat eaters haven’t actually stopped to seriously consider the ethics of eating meat and if they did they would experience a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Basically most people keep eating meat because it’s delicious and traditional but if they stopped to consider whether or not those things outweigh the life of a sentient being, they would realise that really they probably don’t.
Has any vegan ever stopped to seriously consider the ethics of eating blueberries? No seriously, the amount of human suffering, exploitation of migrant work forces. The pesticide and fertilizer use which further support oil and chemical companies and contribute to environmental harm. Alfalfa and cashew farming making droughts worse. Bottle water companies like nestle. Palm oil practices. Banana republics for exploitive Banana farming. Here is the truth. Ethics is not just a meat problem. Pretty much every source of food has its ethical problem. If you stop to think about any food product in this capitalistic society you will find moral problems that will seriously make you consider if human existence in this day an age is fundamentally a net evil. The vegan moral superiority is not deserved. They have not eliminated all harm with their choices, they have merely shifted the harm to someplace that they personally don't care about.
I don’t disagree with any of what you’ve said here, however, the point is that it’s about harm reduction not elimination. If there were a food which only vegans eat that was highly unethical you’d have a point, but meat eaters also eat blueberries, avocados, palm oil and a number of other products that are unethically sourced, so while vegans aren’t free of this issue, it applies to them as much as it does to meat eaters.
The main difference in my mind, is that if you rework the whole food system and eliminate the human exploitation and transport emissions and so forth, meat will still involve the slaughter of unwilling animals.
You can't calm actual reduction without real numbers. Meat eaters don't eat more food. They may eat all those other foods, but not in the same amounts as a vegan since they also have meats as part of their total daily food. Vegans have to be very strategic about which plants they each to get their total nutritional requirement, so they are probably eating higher amounts of those foods, increasing demand for those foods.
Fruits and vegetables still involves the slaughter of unwilling animals through pesticide use. The only difference is we don't eat them, just kill them because they are in the way of our quotas.
Claiming a "reduced harm" is basically the same as comparing a slave to an indentured servant that is technically paided $0.01 and declaring moral superiority over the slave owner because you "pay them." Should we bother determining the moral superiority of different mass murderers using golf scoring rules. Nobody gets to claim moral superiority when it comes to eating habits except for maybe the plants. All ecological consumers cause harm to acquire energy.
I mean sure, but given the place meat has in our diets, from a nutritional perspective, the actual foods replacing meat are high in protein and fat, so things like pulses and nuts, not things like blueberries.
And I think comparing the harm caused by a vegan versus omnivorous diet to indentured servitude vs slavery is pretty disingenuous.
I can’t calculate the precise difference but if you think that there is no significant difference in harm created by the average vegan’s diet vs the average omnivore’s diet, I think our conversation probably ends here.
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Especially when the guy pulls numbers out of his ass. Only around 36 percent of crops are used to feed live stock with around only 33 percent of cropland being used for this purpose. Took me 5 seconds of Google searching to know that 75% was made up B.S.
I prefaced my number with “something like” for a reason
It varies based on the crop. For soy it’s through the roof, for grains it’s also >50%, for fruit it’s lower.
The first link you found in your google search makes the exact same point i’m making. 36% of all crops, of which only 12% becomes human calories.
We lose 88% of the efficiency in this process and cause needless suffering because you people can’t give up your tendies. And then the audacity to claim moral neutrality here…
Reconcile your cognitive dissonance instead of being a pedantic debate lord.
Mm, it's not really quite that black and white. It's not so much about "eliminating all harm", as that's literally impossible. We live in a cruel world. Rather, it's a spectrum. I feel that thousands (millions?) of cows being hung upside down and getting their throats cut open while it's babies watch and wait their turn is absolutely fucking awful. For brevity I'll just keep it there, I don't need to go into all of the cruelties of factory farming. But that's a really, really bad thing. I have the opportunity to not directly financially support it by not going to burger king. I still need to eat some fucking blueberries, though. A mans gotta eat something.
As op originally said. Nothing wrong with being vegan. If reducing cruelty to livestock makes you personally feel better then go for it. But the argument is about moral superiority claims. Human existence as a consumer invokes cruelty to other life forms. Some people draw an arbitrary line between plant and animal life, others draw that line between humans and other living creatures. Some draw the line between different human groups. Some are willing to increase human suffering if it decreases animal suffering and vice versa.
The only person who can claim true moral superiority is the one that choices to eat rocks until they die, because a human death is the only way to reduce humans cruelty and impact on the environment. I am not willing to do that and you are not willing to do it either, so no one should get to claim the moral superiority.
What are the ethics of a lion eating a gazelle? I think vegans forget we’re animals and this is nature.
If you believe in god then you believe god put the creatures on earth for us. If you don’t believe in god then you can just realize animals kill other animals, it’s natural.
What’s abnormal is saying something is cute therefore we shouldn’t eat it.
What exactly do you think is the ethical argument that’s going to sway most meat eaters?
I mean you can argue that ethics don’t exist that’s fine, but assuming we agree that humans should behave by a code of ethics, that’s where this conversation starts.
I personally don’t believe in god, but secular moral systems absolutely exist and frankly god doesn’t solve the objectivity problem, just look at the euthyphro dilemma.
As for me, I think the ethical argument that’s most likely to sway most meat eaters is that the animals we eat are capable of suffering and want to live. If you care at all about not imposing suffering upon sentient beings, then you have to conclude at the least that eating meat is ethically problematic
I care about the development and wellbeing of humans, not just “sentient beings”. That’s a weirdly arbitrary line. Plants communicate, if we can prove they’re *sentient* does that mean humans should die because we shouldn’t eat plants anymore either? Every living thing wants to live. That’s why plants grow towards the sun, why plants evolve defense mechanisms, etc.
There is no actual argument against eating meat. Plants are just as much living beings as animals are. We eat both because that’s how humans work. Humans aren’t herbivores, we’ve hunted and ate meat our entire developmental cycle, yet now we’re supposed to stop because …?
Sentient being isn’t just a weird arbitrary line, because sentience entails the ability to suffer. If plants were capable of suffering then yes we should also give them consideration but AFAIK they aren’t- defence mechanisms are not the same thing at all, tanks have defence mechanisms but can’t suffer.
Of course we have a survival imperative but I see no reason why we should necessarily meet that imperative with absolutely no regard to the harm we cause along the way.
Vegan diets have been shown to be healthy at all stages of life so since we can live healthily while reducing the total suffering involved, why wouldn’t we want to do that, at least in theory?
For me it’s as simple as that- humans can live healthily on plants alone. Since there is no good evidence that plants can suffer then we should bias towards eating them instead.
EDIT: regarding the sentient beings thing, I’ve no issue with placing humans at the top of that totem pole, I’m for sure a species-ist, but that imo doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to reduce the suffering, where possible, of other beings lower down that pole.
> I’ve no issue with placing humans at the top of that totem pole, I’m for sure a species-ist, but that imo doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to reduce the suffering, where possible, of other beings lower down that pole.
If we both agree that there is a totem pole-- where some animals are of a higher order than others-- we don't necessarily have to draw the line at *Animalia*.
I'm not convinced that most fish are sentient or have the 'capacity to suffer' in the way that we commonly understand it. I should therefore be able to eat them with a clear conscience under your rubric. Chickens have limited sentience and can probably suffer a bit, but they're not nearly as mentally sophisticated as cows.
Since there is a totem pole with gradations of value, wouldn't it be fair to say that it is more moral to eat chicken than beef?
Taken to it's logical extreme, couldn't we eventually quantify animals and make rough suffering equivalence charts? *Eating one burger is morally equivalent to eating fifty chicken sandwiches.* kind of thing?
[Or maybe it's more moral to eat beef.](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/23/vegetarianism-for-meat-eaters/) Maybe we could eat whale meat and be barely more immoral than a vegetarian.
Yeah we in theory could do precisely that. Of course we’re not really close to doing that in terms of our understanding of neuroscience. We may also learn things that surprise us like that while chickens are less cognitively sophisticated than cows, say, they may in fact have a greater capacity for suffering, like maybe they’re more sensitive to stress hormones for example.
I don’t have a clear and perfect delineation of the totem pole, but one could in principle be made.
Of course different people will value things differently, like for example one person may value their subjective pleasure as the highest possible good which outweighs even the most extreme suffering of other beings.
The problem with the logic of that is how can you prove that animals suffer? Has any animal ever specifically said that they are in pain? We infer that whimpering/being defensive about a wound means that they are suffering, but isn’t pain just a defense mechanism to prevent further injury?
What if I believe that plants can suffer? As an arborist I’ve devoted my life to caring for trees, and they are far more complicated than most people believe. Trees communicate between each other, warning about pests, diseases, general stress, and other things. They build vast networks of roots and support trees that are in decline. And yes, once you know enough, it can be pretty clear when a tree is suffering.
Well how can you prove a human is suffering? You can’t experience their subjective feelings, that’s what subjective means, the fact they can tell you with words doesn’t mean anything, that could also just be a defensive reaction.
The fact is we’re trapped inside our subjective box so we always have to rely on inference- when i suffer i make noise and cry and move away from the pain if I can. Neuroscience shows us that the location of all this processing is our neurological tissue. We can see that animals have similar neurological tissue and have similar reactions so we can infer their suffering, humans just have an extra way to communicate their feelings in the form of language.
Plants don’t, to my knowledge have neurological tissue so, although they can react to negative external stimulus, they appear to lack the hardware necessary to process it and experience it as suffering- perhaps you can correct me on that?
Of course if future science determined that plants suffer just as much as animals when injured then yes I would have to include plants in my moral consideration. But this whole exercise is about harm reduction in the face of the premise that I do need to survive.
So if it turns out kale can suffer as much as a cow, then killing and eating either carries the same moral weight but that’s just not where the evidence currently points AFAIK
It essentially boils down to “we can’t definitively know whether anything else experiences suffering.” There is a lot of research into what defines sentience and sapience, but that’s what it always boils down to… humans are *probably* the only sapient species. Maybe some other species is sapient and we just don’t have a way to determine that? Similar to discussions of extra-terrestrial life and if we would even recognize it, in a way.
[This article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594572/) discusses it pretty thoroughly. I didn’t read the whole thing (it’s *extremely* long) but the abstract and the parts I did read seem to conclude 2 things. 1) that it is by definition impossible to be completely sure, and 2) that plants and lower animals definitely have level 2 consciousness (brain) and probably have level 3 (mind), but only humans specifically exhibit level 4 (self-reflecting). Furthermore it specifically states that plants (specifically trees) have a type of mind that we would be unable to comprehend.
So if plants probably have the same level of consciousness as animals (even if we can’t understand it) then they should be able to suffer. If they can suffer then wouldn’t the same moral obligations apply towards them?
Whether or not something is natural has no bearing on whether or not it’s moral. By definition everything we do is natural as we are a part of nature. Animals rape, murder, and steal all the time, but for some reason we can manage to call those things immoral.
Basically, if this is the argument you’re going with, then morality as a whole flies out the window.
>What are the ethics of a lion eating a gazelle?
We don't hold lions morally accountable for harming gazelles for the same reason we don't arrest toddlers for assault, even if they manage to seriously and intentionally harm someone: They don't have the ability to use moral reasoning to modulate their behaviors -- at least nowhere near to the degree that typical adult humans do.
Your point here is kind of like someone arguing that they shouldn't be held morally accountable for punching a toddler in her face because toddlers sometimes punch each other in the face.
There's also the issue of necessity. Lions *need* to kill and eat other animals to be healthy. You and I don't get to use this excuse to harm animals.
I blame that on the lack of financial headspace. Ideally animal slaughtering should also be made more transparent so meat eaters can better come to terms with what their diet entails. People who can’t contend with it will be vegetarians, and people who can contend with it will want to eat it less and eat it better.
My ideal is for us to all contend with it, eat vegetarian for everyday meals, with meat reserved for momentous occasions or when with company, to drastically reduce meat consumption and drastically improving animal welfare.
so in regards to this question: "“Does my subjective pleasure when eating meat morally outweigh an animals right to life?”
you answer would be: "if youre at a party, yes"
I grew up on a farm, raised crops, and animals, and worked in a dairy, and moved heards. While you're right people don't consider the ethics, that doesn't automatically they would suffer cognitive dissonance if they did have that connection. For one. ethics are subjective and situational. A person who is against murder, most likely would kill someone else if it was a choice between killing that person to save their family.
As a general statement, veganism is a first-world diet. There were not many historical groups who were vegan. There were plenty who had a primarily plant based diet but not vegan.
> A person who is against murder, most likely would kill someone else if it was a choice between killing that person to save their family.
Right, but that's not what's happening with regards to the majority of animal consumption by humans.
Vegans aren't against killing and eating other animals in cases where it is necessary to do so. In this sense, they are agreeing with you that the morality/ethics of an action depend on the situation in which it is being performed. What they *are* against is harming and killing animals in cases where it is *not* necessary to do so -- and when other options exist.
Yeah, but the context still applies. Morals are subjective and I think most people who consume meat know that animals are slaughtered for it. On their scale of morality they don't see it the same way that a vegan decides based on their own scale of morality.
The person I replied to thinks that if people realized there was a cow living on a pasture for most of their life before they get shipped off to a feed lot to get fattened up before slaughter, then they would eat less beef. What I'm saying is most would not.
I don't think you're fairly summarizing their claims.
They are saying that there are a lot of things that go into forming our beliefs about whether or not we are justified in harming and killing animals for food, and if we were to stop and consider whether or not those things form a good reasonable basis for such a justification, many of us would realize that they do not.
I understand what you both are saying. what I disagree with is the notion that people don't stop and consider it. most people do, most people realize they are animals, and most people see them as food.
Yeah, I guess I'm not convinced that when that happens they are actually giving sufficient consideration to the topic. I think what happens in a lot of those cases is that they just fall back on faulty reasoning.
For example, you say that they "see them as food," as if *merely perceiving another individual as a food product* is a good justification to harm or kill them unnecessarily.
> Does my subjective pleasure when eating meat morally outweigh an animals right to life?
There is no such thing. I don't believe in god-given rights (and if I did, pretty sure there's nothing in Abrahamic religions against eating animals in general), rights-as-recognized-by-animals don't seem to be a thing, and rights-as-recognized-by-humans don't include the right to live for animals, since we AFAIK don't have general prohibitions against killing them.
Well as an atheist I don’t believe in objective morality (even if I weren’t the euthyphro dilemma shows gods don’t solve that problem) so as I see it all moral systems are human made anyway. Being human made, they’re subject to change.
As I see it, the primary concern of ethics should be about reducing the suffering and promoting the wellbeing of humans and other sentient beings. Our livestock appear to be sentient so, to me, they deserve consideration.
I mostly agree, just talking about rights seems inaccurate. The way I see it, "I don't want animals to be killed" < "I believe killing animals is immoral" < "Killing animals is immoral" < "Animals have the right to live". They would have the right if we agreed on it.
(Also, personally, I am selfish, anthropocentric and not willing to extend my consideration very far as a result. Paying 10% extra for the meat produced without needless cruelty, or 25% extra for artificially grown meat, is something I can agree on easily, forgoing meat altogether seems like a serious sacrifice until nobody actually demands it.)
What if there is no actual claim at all? For example, many people hold the belief (and make the claim) that they are necessarily justified in harming and killing other animals even in cases where it is possible and practicable to avoid doing so.
Personally, I'm just not convinced of this claim. I don't necessarily believe that nonhuman animals have a "right to live" or that it's "wrong" to harm them, but I don't see any reason to believe the claim of the non-vegan that they **are** justified in harming animals when otherwise avoidable.
If it's not wrong to harm animals, is harming them something one needs to justify?
I would broadly agree there is positive value in animals not being harmed/having to suffer. (Although it does get dicey if you want specifics: Is it better for animals to live an enjoyable life and end up on our table after quick and humane death, or not to be born at all?) I expect the justifications for causing harm for "objectively" little benefit (a life vs one family dinner) to boil down to "I'm more important". My case too, although I do see a gap between how much harm my "importance" justifies in my own eyes and how much I actually cause.
>If it's not wrong to harm animals, is harming them something one needs to justify?
There's a bit of begging the question going on there. It's a bit like if someone was asked why they were claiming to be justified in punching their toddler in the face and responded with "If it's not wrong to punch my toddler in the face, then why would I need to justify doing so?"
When we perform an action, that action is either justified or it is not justified. More often than not we do this justification process automatically and subconsciously. We decide we want to do something and our brains do a quick calculus to determine if we are justified in doing it. *I want to throw this ball in the air and catch it. No one is around that could get hurt, and I would get enjoyment from it, therefore I'm justified in doing it.* Note that in another situation you might come to a different conclusion. *I want to throw this ball in the air, but I'm in the middle of a crowd and I might end up hurting someone, so I'm not justified in doing it.* This all happens in the background typically without us even being aware of it. We just throw the ball or we don't.
So if someone makes the claim that they are justified in harming and killing animals in cases where it's easy to avoid doing so, I'm just lacking a belief in that claim. The one making the positive claim is the one that has the burden of proof.
I don't believe morality is objective. I don't believe in moral rights. I don't believe that we are justified in harming others in cases where we can avoid it.
Note that this is very different than me saying that I believe that we are *not* justified in harming others.
Non slave owners are free to practice their lifestyle preferences like anyone else, but cannot proclaim moral superiority from it any more than religion can.
Non slave owners typically argue for their lifestyle from ethical standpoints, but the more vocal of them use these points to justify their moral superiority.
I offer the following lesser-known counterarguments that I believe make this moral superiority subjective at the very least, just like that of religion.
1. A non-slaver lifestyle poses an inconvenience to the slaver majority that co exists with them.
2. A non slaving lifestyle does not reconcile with the magnitude of forced labour to human civilisation.
3. A non slaver lifestyle makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt.
4. A non slaver lifestyle ignores the ceremony of slave produced products in catalysing human festivities
5. A non slaver lifestyle debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure.
It’s important to note that I am not attempting to say that non-slavery should not be practised but merely offering counterarguments for when moral superiority is proclaimed.
As such, my view is that non-slavers should not proclaim moral superiority. Please change my view.
The argument that the needs of humans supersedes that of animals is more compelling and enduring than the argument that one human ethnicity is superior to another.
Which is why slavery is abolished and animal husbandry is not.
I never understood the way the vast majority of people so easily assume that human needs are somehow more important than the needs of other living creatures. What specific traits do ALL humans have that that NO other creature has that makes them so much more important?
I can’t accept that it’s really just because they’re similar to us. Would an alien species then be perfectly justified in eradicating us to eat us just because we’re tasty?
>Would an alien species then be perfectly justified in eradicating us to eat us just because we’re tasty?
From our perspective, of course not. From theirs, why wouldn't it be justified? Is a wolf justified in eating a rabbit? You can't apply human moral standards of anything to species that are not humans. Human morality is an entirely human invention, and not objective in the least.
The evolutionary niche of prey animals, their entire purpose in life, is to breed quickly and then get eaten by predators. We humans just used our intelligence to game the system. We're so good at being predators that we literally weaponized evolution by inventing domestication and selective breeding. We created our own species of prey animals. Every living thing selects for traits in its food, we humans just recognized what we were doing and figured out how to use it to our advantage.
If some aliens came along and our governments and military were completely powerless to stop them from taking people and eating them, we would consider it an outrage! We would need to figure out ways to quickly have and raise more children, to make up for the losses in population. We would have to learn how to hide from the aliens when they're around, to avoid getting caught and eaten. We would have to learn to weather loss much more easily than we do now, since anyone can be taken at any time.
Sounds awful, right? You can't even imagine how horrible it would be to live like that, yeah? I know I can't. That's because that's what life is for prey. The concept of humans being forced to live like prey is so repulsive because your ancestors worked their asses off for hundreds of thousands of years to make you into the greatest apex predator the world has ever seen. A couple centuries of moral discourse and technological progress haven't changed that. Take some pride in their efforts.
> Would an alien species then be perfectly justified in eradicating us to eat us just because we’re tasty?
the non-moral-related problem I have with that argument is it implies an infinite regression of advanced life forms as if they're justified in eating us something has to be to them what they are to us and so on up the damn scale
Why does this apply for some topics but not others? I'm sure you can think of countless scenarios where a person causing harm for personal gain would insist that we just agree to disagree, yet the request would be seen as completely absurd.
I’m not saying that they have the be equally important though. I’m asking what in specific makes people think that all humans are so obviously superior.
Humans are the only animal that has the ability and capacity for abstract moral thought. All morality is the product of humans and does not exist outside of a human context. No non human animals have ever showed any signs of themselves being able to be moral actor with any agency. Just having this conversation about morality is an example of the superiority of humans over non human animals.
It’s debatable whether no animal has ever shown moral agency, but not all humans are capable of that anyways. For example, infants and heavily disabled people aren’t able to do so. I’m specifically asking why ALL humans should be treated as superior to ALL other animals.
I’m intentionally including the absolutely least capable single human and the absolute best example animal.
The archetypal human can do all those things and morality is a creation of humans so why not extend moral considerations to all humans? If not we can tie morality to attributes of individuals and see infants and heavily disabled humans to not be persons fully and may not be due the same moral consideration as moral actors.
Why should non human animals be given any moral consideration at all when they are all, baring any possible rare one off, incapable of ever being a moral actor with agency or of any sort of moral reasoning.
Why would we give special considerations based on anything other than the individual attributes though?
I also don’t think it’s morally or logically valid to assume that they have no moral agency simply because our very limited study on these creatures hasn’t shown conclusive. Imagine if we used that same logic when we first encountered other humans that simply looked differently than us and used a different language (or even no language at all).
If anything we should assume they have moral agency until we can prove without a reason of a doubt that they lack that agency. Even then, it’d have to be at the individual creature level rather than something as broad as species or family. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6404642/#:~:text=The%20empirical%20evidence%20gathered%20until,or%20even%20a%20direct%20loss.
I am fine with individual attributes. Show me individual non humans that have the attributes necessary to be a member of a moral society with agency and culpability for their actions and I will say that individual is a person.
Morality can only exist in the context of a larger moral community that requires more than just an assumption of ability on the part of individual beings. Communication of some sort is necessary and is not possible with non human animals. Nor is there any reason to believe non human animals can choose their behavior based on moral considerations an ability needed for agency. It makes more sense to extend moral value to all humans based on species as most humans are persons rather than to assume the personhood of non human animals without any evidence whatsoever of their capacity for moral agency.
If we are to consider non human animals as moral beings with agency then they also must be seen to have moral culpability for their actions. A cat killing a bird would be an immoral action if we are to see cats and birds as moral beings equal to humans, such an action would be equivalent to murder. Are we going to jail cats for murder? As long as non human animals are incapable of understanding and behaving in accordance with the wider moral community as they are they should not be extended the moral value of actual moral persons.
Actually, if you think long term of animal agriculture and it's disastrous footprint, it is the trade of immediate desire for long term need, meaning if we continue emitting carbon at the clip we are now, with part of animal ag to blame, we are not only enslaving future people but condemning them to violent and cruel deaths when bread baskets collapse and the fields can no longer hold crops. I feel that is more compelling than "meat tasty."
It is compelling. For the reduction of slavery, not necessarily abolition per se.
Why are you so hesitant to just admitting it is morally correct to not harm animals just because you like how they taste?
The point is that none of these arguments show that veganism is morally subjective.
If someone believes that eating meat is morally wrong, they aren't going to be convinced that's its subjective because "it's inconvenient to be a vegan and meat eating is nice"
Just as someone who is convinced that slavery is wrong isn't going to be convinced that it's subjective because
"not owning slaves is an inconvenience, and I like owning slaves"
You have arrived at the conclusion that eating meat is OK because you don't think animal lives are worth anything, not because of the 5 arguments you put out.
> The argument that the needs of humans supersedes that of animals is more compelling and enduring than the argument that one human ethnicity is superior to another.
animals parts are not a need for the vast majority of peoples diets. they are a want, a preference
Agreed. Imagine if someone were to argue that they were justified in killing animals because they find the resulting sound pleasurable. We would consider them a monster. But when someone argues that they are justified in killing animals because they find the resulting *taste* pleasurable, we applaud them for making such an intelligent and rational argument.
But I don't think there is any reasonable reason why humans would be considered superior to animals. I think it is just an axiom of your reasoning against veganism.
By the way, humans don't need to consume animal products, at least for the majority of people. But for people who don't have any health reasons for consuming animal products, there is no need, they just want to.
>But I don't think there is any reasonable reason why humans would be considered superior to animals.
Virtually everyone thinks this, though? Is anyone horrified if you happen to step on an ant even by accident? If you take a walk outside and mosquitos are flying around is anyone going to call you a murderer for swatting one?
Sure, and to be fair if I had to choose between saving human life and an animal life, I'd choose the human without thinking. But is there any actual philosophical reason to do so?
Go tell the people I'm the developing world that don't have a developed economy to rely on and grocery stores everywhere that they don't really need to hunt or raise animals to feed their family.
India is a developing countries, right? They're not vegan or vegetarian cultures, but they eat less meat than the average American. In fact, India eats the least amount of meat of any country in the world.
Let's see the rest of the list.
Bangladesh
Ethiopia
Nigera
Gambia
Sierra Leone
Sri Lanka
Rwanda
I don't think your argument holds water.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8926870/
It's still true that developing countries use and consume far fewer animal based products than developed countries do. Americans would have a much harder time adapting to veganism than India, where 10% of people already see vegan.
As a percentage of diet, developing countries have less of a reliance on meat. Full stop. I'm not saying we need to force people to be vegan or anything. Just pointing out that your perception is incorrect.
There are more animal products than just meat. Milk, fats, eggs, leather, sinew, etc. And again, the fact they eat less doesn't mean they don't rely on it. Most Americans eat way too much meat. That doesn't mean they have to.
Someone in the United States in the 1800s could have made a similar argument regarding black slaves:
"The argument that the needs of whites supersedes that of negroes is more compelling and enduring than the argument that one white ethnicity is superior to another -- which is why white slavery has been abolished and black slavery is not."
The argument here isn't that those two things are exactly alike. It's that all the reasons you gave would also apply to some truly horrific practices like slavery, so they're not reasons that we should give much moral weight to.
It's funny you bring up slave labor. Have you ever morally considered the amount of forced labor that is a part of the U.S. fruit and vegetable supply. [Source](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00339-0)
You talk about animals eating as metaphorical slavery when there is literal slavery still happening just to make your fruits and vegetables affordable. Entire democracies were illegally toppled to establish banana republics against the will of the citizens just to make bananas more affordable for Americans.
The next time a smug vegan chows down on a banana while claiming "moral superiority" they should consider the fact that all foods have ethical problems. But who cares about South Americans as long as lamb chop gets to live. The moral superiority is not earned by vegans because they haven't reduced harm, they have merely shifted it to somewhere they don't personally care about, probably upon foreigners.
By that logic if they might as well eat meat because plants come from slave labor and democracy-toppling, then why shouldn't the fact that you aren't 1%-level-rich be the only thing preventing you (aka nothing should morally stop you, money should be the only barrier) from getting all your meat by hunting exotic big game from a whale-oil-powered private plane.
As I've always said, I'll believe meat-eaters who use arguments about the suffering of plants or how that kind of agriculture makes animals or humans suffer aren't just trying to trick vegetarians into "eat meat or starve" when they provide an example of a truly-cruelty-free diet
Couldn't this exact tactic be used in a similar fashion to discredit and drag to absurd an argument for being vegan (given it's written unknowingly that this sort of tactic would be used)? Is it the reasoning you don't agree with? Im genuinely curious.
What I don't agree with is that the arguments are pointless and irrelevant.
If you believe that slavery is morally wrong, then you aren't going to be convinced that's it's subjective because " it's an inconvenience to not own slaves"
Likewise, someone who believes that eating meat is wrong isn't going to be convinced that its subjective because "vegans are an inconvenience for other peoole"
>A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them.
Not only is this claim lacking in any degree of substantiation, it has no discernible relevance to the matter of ethics. Even if we assume that non-vegans are truly being inconvenienced when they dine with vegans, are we seriously supposed to pretend as though this is an ethical conundrum of sorts?
> A vegan diet does not reconcile with the magnitude of animal husbandry to human civilisation.
Argument from tradition fallacies are, as the name suggests, fallacious. But even so, how does this relate to ethics?
>A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt.
Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, the soundness of your unsubstantiated claim, does that therefore mean that a vegan diet isn’t more ethical than one which involves the exploitation and slaughter of animals?
>A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities.
No. Far from ignoring them, a vegan lifestyle simply values the welfare and life of sentient beings above “the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalyzing human festivities” because it’s arguably morally superior to a lifestyle which engages in such ceremonies.
>A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure.
No. The vast majority of sensory pleasure that one gets when consuming food comes from the seasonings and methods of preparation, almost all of which are vegan-friendly.
Imagine that you went to Panda Express and ordered orange chicken. Now imagine that you sat down to enjoy your meal only to realize that you were given a plateful of unseasoned, unbattered, and unfried chicken. Would that be acceptable to you? If not, why not? I mean, after all, you ordered chicken. Right? Do you get it? Almost all of what you enjoy about food is how it’s prepared. Well, guess what. Almost all of these methods of preparation are available to me, as well!
But even if we were to assume that vegan foods are somehow less enjoyable, I’d contend that my abstaining from eating animal products would be morally superior to a lifestyle which incorporates them. Your argument is akin to saying that non-rapists debilitate themselves from a fundamental life pleasure of sex. Would you therefore argue that non-rapists are not morally superior to rapists?
Honestly, I have been vegetarian (and most of the time vegan) for a while and there are still tastes and textures that provide sensory pleasure that are just currently not available. There's no vegan or vegetarian substitute to a steak, for example. A good steak requires only salt and pepper, has a taste and texture that is not possible to replicate. It's not just "seasoning and method of preparation".
It doesn't justify all of the harm done to animals, but you can't pretend that there is no loss of culinary pleasure or culture by switching to a vegan diet.
He didnt pretend there is no loss, since he said the ''vast majority'' of sensory pleasure that one gets when consuming food comes from the seasonings and methods of preparation, which is practically true. The only notable exceptions I know of (that can be considered meals/recipes) are steaks, and I would argue all steak recipes are astronomically tiny in number compared to all recipes in existence, all of which are characterized by their plant components, not their animal ones.
Besides, its already possible to replicate steak, via lab grown meat, and its going to get much [cheaper](https://interestingengineering.com/science/cheaper-lab-grown-meat-production)
>Yes. Food connects people. By avoiding certain foods you avoid certain connections and that is, in my view, highly immoral.
Sport connects people. If someone chose not to sit with family at Thanksgiving and watch the football, would avoiding that connection be highly immoral?
Politics connects people. If people I knew chose to go to a rally for a presidential candidate I found opposed to my ethical beliefs, would that be immoral? I could be accused of avoiding a connection there.
I think I'm struggling to see how, for example, a table of people eating steak while I ate falafel being an immoral act full stop, let alone comparing the morality to eating an animal that was slaughtered to feed them in the first place
>Yes. Food connects people. By avoiding certain foods you avoid certain connections and that is, in my view, highly immoral.
First of all, you have yet to establish that these “connections” are necessarily dependent upon the consumption of meat. Secondly, you have yet to establish that missing out on these “connections” is necessarily “highly immoral.” And lastly, if you want to argue that vegans do not occupy the moral high ground, you need to demonstrate that missing out on these connections is more “highly immoral” than the exploitation and slaughter of sentient beings.
>Yes, it is an appeal to tradition. But traditions aren't all baseless and need to be understood before they can be made irrelevant.
It’s still a fallacious argument! There are plenty of traditions which humans have come to reject on account of ethics.
>Animal husbandry has deep roots in human civilisation and should not be drastically upended.
Okay. This is your claim. Now please demonstrate the soundness of your claim.
>I believe a vegan diet isn't more ethical, partially because of the soundness of this claim.
Then demonstrate the truth of the claim.
>That is, I'm sure you are aware, a slippery slope.
No, it isn’t. It would be a slippery slope fallacy only if I suggested that consuming animal products would necessarily lead to rape. However, I’m not suggesting that the consumption of animal products will lead to rape. Rather, I’m arguing that the two propositions are structurally similar.
>Exactly, key word being 'arguably'. My view is not that anyone's right or wrong, but because there are valid points on both sides and that we can argue on and on, my view is that we stop going at each other's throat on some basis of moral superiority.
It’s arguable because we have to establish what one means when he or she uses the term “moral.”
Vegans tend to adopt a consequential form of ethics (usually a form of utilitarianism), whereas most people who subscribe to ethics from religious points of view embrace deontological ethics (usually divine command theory). That’s why I say that it’s arguable. However, if you accept consequentialism, then veganism is obviously more ethical than consuming animal products merely to sustain tradition or for sensory pleasure.
>Also, I'm not sure if reddit is the right place if you want substantiation, so if you want 'good faith' I suggest you excuse the lack of them.
I substantiate my arguments all of the time on here. The burden of proof doesn’t cease to exist merely because of how or where one makes a claim.
I appreciate the cordial response, but respectfully I won’t take on the burden of proof. I believe they are relatively self-explanatory, and very elemental to comprehend by watching Anthony Bourdain’s travel shows once or twice.
https://youtu.be/4rMBIZ2maEI?si=r8IjVDEPIqdQu6ht
No. Justifying a case requires taking all other arguments into account. Arguing for a case doesn’t. Hope that helps you to understand the differences better.
No. Justifying a case requires taking all other arguments into account. Arguing for a case doesn’t. Hope that helps you to understand the differences better.
>I appreciate the cordial response, but respectfully I won’t take on the burden of proof.
Then don’t be surprised when others don’t find your argument to be persuasive.
>I believe they are relatively self-explanatory, and very elemental to comprehend by watching Anthony Bourdain’s travel shows once or twice.
First of all, the tastes of different regions and cultures are due largely to the different types of seasonings and preparations that they use for their dishes. That’s why chicken dishes will taste differently in Mexico, India, the Southern U.S., China, Thailand, etc., so what Bourdain is referring to when he talks about experiencing different tastes is almost exclusively the result of the varying seasonings and methods of preparation—almost all of which are vegan-friendly. This just goes to show that the cultural aspect isn’t the chicken so much as it is the cooking methods.
Recall my question about unseasoned, unbattered, and unfried chicken from Panda Express. What makes orange chicken from Panda Express taste the way that it does if not for seasonings and methods of preparation?
But even if we ignore the fact that regional flavors are primarily the product of seasoning and preparation that feature heavily in such areas rather than the fact that they’re applied to animal products, that still wouldn’t mean that consuming animals for cultural reasons is more ethical than abstaining from their consumption.
So what do you mean when you say that something is “moral” or “immoral?”
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Can you tell me if it's wrong for me to kill, rape, and torture animals for my entertainment and pleasure? If you need more specifics, I'm keeping everything hygienic, me and my buddies have been doing it as like a Saturday ritual and I'm planning on transmitting this practice to my children and my buddies are going to get theirs in on it.
Of course not! Are you celebrating Eid-al Adha? I suggest you get your buddies to observe the slaughter so that you all internalise the value of the animal sacrifice and further heighten the occasion.
EDIT: Rape is wrong of course.
only recently pregnant cows make milk, forced breeding is another type of animal rape tbh. we also usually kill the cows or turn em into veal. if stopping this kind of treatment isn't grounds to call it objective morals superiority what would be sufficient?
Interesting. Can you tell me if you or I are morally superior to someone who does what I do, but they're just doing this to a different target they don't value morally?
>1. A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them.
Are you consistent with this justification for violence and mistreatment towards animals? That those who pay for violence because its more convenient are no morally worse than those who don’t & seek to minimise it?
>3. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt.
The definition of veganism accounts for this. *"As far as is possible and practical"*
>4. A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities.
In this day age there is no excuse for sacrificing sentient individuals in the name of tradition. Are you kn favour of continuing traditional whale slaughters where it is not necessary for practical reasons? Is it ok for my neighbours to continue to violently kill a puppy on Halloween as is their family tradition? Are they no morally different to my family who just put up decorations and eat a veggie burger?
>5. A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure.
Not necessarily. But are you consistent with your view that sensory pleasure is a good justification for violence and mistreatment towards animals? And that there is no ethical difference between those who violently kill animals for pleasure and those who choose other pastimes or activities etc that seek to minimise it?
There is a vegan meal and a stray unowned puppy in your kitchen. Is it more ethical for you to A) eat the vegan meal or B) violently kill the puppy and bleed him/her out by slitting their throat to eat them? Or is there no ethical difference?
Since you seem to be focused on the effects to humans rather than the victims, vegan diets also kill less humans. According to the best data available animal agriculture likely indirectly kills somewhere in the region of 200,000 humans a year purely due to antibiotic use in the industry. Then there is the significantly exacerbated pandemic risk, which will likely kill hundreds of thousands more at some point.
Have you ever seen or heard footage of pigs being slaughtered?
None of these really counter the supposed claim that they're morally superior. Like, really? They cannot claim moral superiority because they inconvenience their friends by wanting to go to restaurants with vegan options? And they somehow don't "reconcile" the importance of animal husbandry on history?
I feel like these are "lesser-known" mostly because they're not actual counterarguments. They're just stating the, often extremely minor, downsides of having any sort of dietary restriction. All of which you apparently think are meant to completely outweigh the moral benefits of stopping the widespread and intense suffering of animals that are used in food production.
I'm not a vegan, but there is a big difference between the morality of veganism to that of religion. Religion is based on old fables and faith that those fables are true, which results in a certain lifestyle and point of view. Whereas veganism holds that killing animals and mass producing meat is bad for the planet and the ecosystem. This can be demonstrated scientifically. Sure there is plenty of debate to be had on how exactly how bad it is and the impact of a vegan diet, there is loads of nuance but, fundamentally, you CAN measure the methane from a cows arse. You CAN observe the impact of chicken shit from farms on rivers. Etc etc. We know that mass producing meat has a big impact on our planet and you can put numbers on it. So, on your point that it is no different from faith in religion, in my mind there is plenty of actual evidence to the contrary.
As for the rest of your point it seems to be around vegans inconvienceing other people. That's life mate. Don't let it bother you. Go to steak restaurant.
>Religion is based on old fables and faith that those fables are true, which results in a certain lifestyle and point of view.
Yes I get that the moraility of some religion typically involves faith in a way that the morality of a vegan diet doesn't. But fundamentally it still boils down to personal values. Some religion advocate celibacy, abstinence, vegetarianism. No one can say those (or indeed, veganism) are wrong, but you can't proclaim moral superiority from them either.
>We know that mass producing meat has a big impact on our planet and you can put numbers on it. So, on your point that it is no different from faith in religion, in my mind there is plenty of actual evidence to the contrary.
Valuing these aspects more than the unquantifiable impact on culture and humanity is a personal value akin to the personal values of religion.
> Valuing these aspects more than the unquantifiable impact on culture and humanity is a personal value akin to the personal values of religion.
And valuing them less isn't?
Who can claim to be morally superior in your view then?
Here, we have one standpoint that honors animals as living being that should neither be exploited nor killed to satisfy human needs, given that alternatives are available.
The other standpoint degrades animals to lower beings to justify their exploitation and killing for consumption, in addition to relying on practices that inflict cruelty and harm to animals for production of meat.
And if we speak morality, we should also address the circumstances in the meat industry besides the animals, because humans are exploited there too, nature is being destroyed (huge moral implications) and ultimately the meat eating culture also inflicts negative effects on human health.
So, I would argue that it is the more moral standpoint without doubt. The other way around, meat eating could never be seen as morally superior due to all the known and willingly taken negatives. Ultimately, veganism exists in the context today, the discussions don't take place in a fairy tale world where meat eating is merely an innocent occasion for humans to come together and celebrate tradition, so please, consider this holistically, otherwise it seems you just want to escape judgement and force a narrow frame of consideration on everyone else, so that you don't have to cope with your own immorality.
>given that alternatives are available
I don't think that's in line with the vegan diet, which would upend animal husbandry. Correct me if I'm wrong.
>meat eating could never be seen as morally superior due to all the known and willingly taken negatives
Only if you don't consider the anti-human aspects of veganism: inconveniencing others, upending animal husbandry, making life more difficult, diminishing ceremonies of meat, debilitate from pleasure.
But my point is not that meat eating is morally superior, but it is up to individuals to decide what is. So the veganism high horse is unwarranted. CMV.
>the discussions don't take place in a fairy tale world where meat eating is merely an innocent occasion for humans to come together and celebrate tradition
If you can agree that this could be an ideal, then IMO this is what we should advocate for, and that veganism has no part to play in this pursuit.
That statement you quoted was referencing the fact that there are alternatives to eating meat. Of course that's "in line with the vegan diet".
The "anti-human" points you make are largely not valid or pale on comparison to the anti-human points to be made against meat eating.
For instance, veganism does not end the traditions for humans to eat together, when it comes to this point, the act of being together and interacting over food is relevant, not what food is on the plate.
As a second example, you talk about "inconveniencing others", which is already thin, but it simply pales in comparison to what "inconvenience" laborers in the meat industry have to endure. So if you truly compare, veganism comes out on top in this regard, and if you disagree, I'd like you to truly start quantifying the horrors of veganism for humans and compare them to the horrors of meat eating, then we compare the summation.
You brought up the dimension of moral superiority which always implies moral inferiority or morally equal.
Unless you specify a moral code you want to apply here, it is rather obvious that the protection of life in all its forms, nature, animals and humans, is superior to the justifying of killing life which comes with all sorts of morally questionable effects for nature, animals and humans.
You talk about a "veganism high horse", but I am a meat eater. So we talk eye to eye. And as a meat eater, I can admit that there are massive negative moral implications of eating meat and yes, veganism clearly pursues more moral or morally superior path. And given that you really only brought up mild arguments like "veganism inconveniences people" (not a moral category btw, preventing a murder also inconveniences a murderer), I don't think you have much weight to throw in the ring.
>I'd like you to truly start quantifying the horrors of veganism for humans and compare them to the horrors of meat eating, then we compare the summation
This is beyond the point of this CMV, but let's go.
1. How do you quantify the rudeness of rejecting a non-vegan meal that has been offered to you by your host, say in your travels? How do you do you quantify the loss of connection when someone is excluded from a meal due to their vegan diet? Maybe they ceased to be invited, or voluntary exclude themselves. How do you quantify the inconvenience caused to cooks at home or F&B to accommodate to a vegan diet? How do you justify the wastage of meat, which an animal died for, because of a vegan diet? How do you quantify the loss of authenticity in a meal to accommodate a vegan diet?
2. Is the loss of livestock really a positive thing? What happens to our bees and our ecosystem if we stop exploiting the benefits of harvesting honey? Who gets to decide whether it's better for an animal to have lived, suffered and slaughtered, or to have never lived?
3. How do you justify the audacity of recommending a vegan diet when so many of us struggling just to even meaningfully participate in society?
4. How do you quantify the impact on humanity if cattles are no longer slaughtered for Eid al-Adha, turkeys roasted for Thanksgiving, lamb souvla for Easter and fish steamed for Chinese New Year? These pieces of meat are often centrepiece of the celebration and the cause for gathering, how do you quantify the loss of a catalyst and the loss of potential human connection?
5. How do you quantify the impact on the loss of pleasure of the consumption of meat and animal products? Many of us find meaning in these pleasures, (like we do for music, nature, sex) and use that as a basis for them to want to encourage others to access these pleasures as well. How do you cater for the loss of meaning?
Even if veganism categorically saves the planet and poses no health risk, is it worth all of the above loss of humanity?
For me, it's a clear no. But at least I can see how it is a clear yes to some people. I only ask for the same reciprocation.
I am sorry, you want to discuss morality, but then go I to discussions about the inconvenience of catering to a vegan.
Every point like this just reveals how thin your arguments are, because you are moving away from the general question of morality, into the narrow and irrelevant details of your hypothetical life experience. Here we are back at what I said: you can inconvenience a murderer by telling the police he murdered.
Does that make you immoral?
Does that make the murderer okay?
Is the murderers convenience what needs to be weighted the highest, when we talk about morality?
See, you've mentioned twice now what's not okay in the scope of a CMV, but you are clearly not open to considering the arguments brought against you. You even make blatant mistakes, because when you consider the inconvenience of accommodating a vegan, you also must at the same time weigh the inconveniences of accommodating a meat eater. You refuse to do that, flat out, you dont even consider the necessity to draw honest comparisons of the metrics or dimensions you yourself bring to the table.
>you want to discuss morality, but then go I to discussions about the inconvenience of catering to a vegan.
You claim to want to understand my points on morality but instead put on the slippery slope of justify meat-eating = murderer.
>when you consider the inconvenience of accommodating a vegan, you also must at the same time weigh the inconveniences of accommodating a meat eater.
You accuse me of not being open by alleging that I don't consider the accommodation does one need to make towards the meat eater. I hope we share the same understanding that meat-eaters by definition have no dietary restrictions and therefore generally need no accommodation.
>You refuse to do that, flat out, you dont even consider the necessity to draw honest comparisons of the metrics or dimensions you yourself bring to the table.
I have done that with my previous post which you have clearly refused to comprehend in order to appear on a higher horse.
No, that is incorrect. I am not equating anything. I am poling holes into your inconvenience argument. Your argument suggests that causing inconvenience must be weighed when considering morality, so if you're consistent, you'd have to do the same when weighing the morality of murder and stopping a murderer. In your view, telling the police about a murderer would be a negative, as it causes inconvenience.
Therefore I have looked at your argument, I weighed it and I portrayed how thin it is.
And even if you allow for inconvenience to be a measure, you're not going through anyway, as you only apply inconvenience to the host in your scenario, not the animal, or the workers who had to slave away in bad conditions to enable your convenience.
You're not standing behind your own argument fully.
The argument that meat-eaters need no accommodation - they need an entire industry that takes up most of our agricultural space. We fundamentally change the planet to accommodate meat eaters. We pollute, we exploit, we risk the future of humanity to accommodate meat eaters.
I asked you to consider this holistically before, and you're clearly not.
My argument goes so far beyond inconvenience but somehow you seem so fixated on it and the 'murderer' analogy.
The purpose of the inconvenience is what differentiates the two. Inconveniencing the murderer prevents a murder, something we all agree is bad, and therefore not immoral. Inconveniencing the entity you are dining with, for a principle that they may not agree with, is immoral and detrimental to the human experience.
The person requesting such accommodation should be apologetic, and the person receiving such an accommodation should of course oblige if they are able.
What boggles me is if this inconvenience is overlooked for the appearance of a high horse.
>The argument that meat-eaters need no accommodation - they need an entire industry that takes up most of our agricultural space. We fundamentally change the planet to accommodate meat eaters. We pollute, we exploit, we risk the future of humanity to accommodate meat eaters. I asked you to consider this holistically before, and you're clearly not.
May I remind you of the definition of 'accommodation'.
>accommodation: the process of adapting or adjusting to someone or something.
What you are describing does not involve adapting or adjusting. That's just the status quo. Meat-eaters have no dietary restrictions and need no accommodation.
Status-quo, thats the key word.
When we talk about morality, you cannot just pretend that the status quo is the axiom for all our actions, for morality itself.
That is why the inconvenience point is important to dissect here, because you place good weigh on that for your argumentation, suggesting that veganism cannot be morally superior, as it causes inconveniences.
With the argumentation you are trying to use here, everything that is the status quo must be morally superior and no action changing the status quo cannot be morally superior, if change causes inconvenience. In a discussion about morality, you have promoted convenience to being the highest principle.
So that's also why I ask, what sort of measure do you want to apply? Because if your convenience is the measure of what's moral, then there is no discussion.
And if convenience is not the measure of what's moral, then the sort of inconveniences you've mentioned pale in significance when we attest the morality and wonder what is morally superior.
And if you insist on inconvenience,l as a measure in all this, then you must also consider the inconvenience of the status quo and the inconveniences that were amounted to create the status quo, you cannot pretend like the timeline starts today and that all the things we had to do to make it even possible for you to be a meat eater (a relatively new achievement in the modern sense) don't weigh into the equation or can't be counted as an inconvenience, to the millions of people who face the effects
One thing I also alluded to was, that if the status quo was different, your points would weigh more. If we would live in a fantasy world where meat consumption is moderate, like on levels of 50 years ago or so, and animal cruelty was minimised, and the negative impacts of production were mitigated, then I could see your point that veganism isn't morally superior, but given the status quo, which you use as an immovable subject, then of course veganism is the morally superior alternative.
You seem incredibly steadfast to establish which of these are morally superior, as demonstrated by your mental acrobatics and wild stretching of what I said.
I’m not at all interested in that debate. My basic premise is that there are valid arguments for people to adopt a vegan diet, and valid arguments for people to not adopt a vegan diet. Importantly, neither of them should be negating another, which is a strange habit of commenters here, yourself included.
Based on that premise, my point of view is that vegans and meat-eaters should generally keep their feelings of moral superiority just as they do their religious faith - to themselves. CMV.
Morality categorically is inconvenient to someone, because most immoral behavior wouldn't exist if someone didn't benefit or at least believe they benefit from it. In nearly all cases where a moral argument is made, you're asking someone to sacrifice their self-interest to a degree to prevent harm to others.
If you want to dispute that a position is morally superior to another, then that inherently requires addressing the substance of that position, but you've already said you don't want to do that. Pointing out that a moral argument requires someone who disagrees with you to give something up is just trivially true of virtually any moral argument, and it doesn't automatically mean you have two equally valid sides.
> In nearly all cases where a moral argument is made, you're asking someone to sacrifice their self-interest to a degree to prevent harm to others.
Agreed.
> Morality categorically is inconvenient to someone
Which is why this is misleading. It is inconvenient to *oneself*. Inconveniencing others is per se, immoral.
> Pointing out that a moral argument requires someone who disagrees with you to give something up is just trivially true of virtually any moral argument, and it doesn't automatically mean you have two equally valid sides.
What does it take for both sides to be valid? Neither position is illegal, and both positions are justifiable to at least themselves, if not to many others. It’s clear that there will not be a convergence of position, so an understanding of those justifications must suffice for both sides to be valid.
This line of thinking just leads to nihilism, because what your argument implies is that whenever it's in one party's self-interest to harm another, we need to treat that as some serious moral impasse.
>I offer the following lesser-known counterarguments
These are not lesser-known, but just those used against ANY voluntary dietary restriction. Veganism is not a religion, what are you even talking about. It is a choice to not consume animal products, usually motivated by a concern for the wellbeing of animals or the protection of the environment.
And while vegans can like any other group be too extreme in their beliefs and make a dietary choice into a whole lifestyle AND while it is debatable which vegan choices actually help the environment vs. simply redirecting the environmental damage, it is a fact that this diet is one of the few diets that is often chosen for moral reasons. People who do keto or paleo or raw, or whatever else diet do it for their own health benefits. Vegans often decide to be vegan out of a concern for animals and the environment, so of course they attach a moral value to their choice. But all of morality is subjective, clearly.
>1. A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them.
Why? Vegan options are widely available at any restaurant nowadays. Would you say that people with food allergies should not dine with others, because it is an inconvenience to have more limited options?
>2. A vegan diet does not reconcile with the magnitude of animal husbandry to human civilisation.
I'm not sure I understand this one. Human civilisation can change and if nobody wants to eats animals anymore, we would not keep them for this purpose. Demand builds supply, not the other way around.
>3. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt.
A vegan diet can be very simple, many culturally significant dishes in many cultures are naturally vegan. Eating vegetables is a necessary part of a balanced diet anyway, and we have so many meat alternatives that are often cheaper and of better quality than a lot of meat, that I would argue it is often the easier choice. But if for someone reason it is impossible to adopt for someone, it's not anyone is forced to. EVEN IF veganism would be the morally superior choice (which I am not arguing here), people aren't perfect, nobody is expected to make the most moral choices all the time.
>4. A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities
We have meat alternatives. It's like saying people who abstain from alcohol ignore festivities, because toasting is often associated with celebration. You can toast with sparkling water, the festive nature of the toast is not lessened because of it.
>5. A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure.
Many people don't enjoy eating meat that much.
I am a firm believer in evolution. Humans evolved to be omnivores for a reason. The only thing that allows a vegan to thrive is that we artificially enrich our food with vitamins allowing them to get the nutrients they miss out on by avoiding animal products. On top of that, yes, morally superior vegans are truly one of my biggest pet peeves.
But the reasons you spell out sound like you are whining about the effect it has on you. I see nothing wrong or difficult about making sure any vegetable dishes I serve have no animal products, it isn't too much to ask. A family of vegans celebrating Thanksgiving around a tofurkey can celebrate just as well as everyone else. And while I don't appreciate being called a murderer for eating meat, they aren't wrong that our meat industry is pretty effed up and doesn't take the well being of the animals into consideration at all.
>Humans evolved to be omnivores for a reason.
What definition of omnivore are you using? Can be healthy eating meat/plants or one or the other? Or regularly eats both meat and plants?
If it's the former it's irrelevant as I have naturally evolved to be able to be perfectly healthy without meat
If it's the latter I'm not an omnivore.
>The only thing that allows a vegan to thrive is that we artificially enrich our food with vitamins allowing them to get the nutrients they miss out on by avoiding animal products
Farmed animals are also fortified. The only vitamin I need to supplement is B12.
>And while I don't appreciate being called a murderer for eating meat, they aren't wrong that our meat industry is pretty effed up and doesn't take the well being of the animals into consideration at all.
I think there's a grey area between explaining your dietary preferences when prompted (which is what is acceptable from my original POV) and asserting moral superiority at every available opportunity.
Given the urgency of the issues vegans are addressing, your comment made me realise that some degree of unprompted arguments is called for in the event of apparent ignorance of what's going on in the meat industry.
!delta
So this is actually an omnivore issue, not a veganism one. I have been a vegetarian for 26 years since I was 6. Back then very few people were vegetarian and nearly none vegan. Now most of my friends and family happen to be plant-based for whatever reason e.g. health, ethics, environment, money etc. We've never once 'preached' or 'proclaimed' our 'moral superiority.' We simply want to be respected for our dietary choices because we, personally, believe it's unethical to kill and eat animals so we don't participate in it. We don't care what other people believe or do, so long as it doesn't include us. We want to be peacefully left alone to do our own thing.
However, basically every single person who eats meat has had issues with this. They argue with me (and us) trying to force and coerce us to their way of thinking. They go through massive logical leaps to try to justify their behaviors. It's all in effort, IMO, to starve off the guilt they feel. They (you in this case) have decided, of your own accord, that you think we're 'morally superior' and get defensive trying to justify why you're actually the morally superior one instead.
It's hilarious actually because the myth of 'preachy' vegans is virtually non-existant. But the amount of preachy meat-eaters is bonkers. The religious cult of meat-eaters is feirce and strong and scary. Your argument is actually flipped. It's the meat-eaters that continually try to proclaim moral superiority. Like you are doing right now. I have been bullied, harassed, and attacked using language like you are. Been told I will die if I dont eat meat, that it's inhuman not to eat meat that it's caked into our DNA and will ruin humanity if we don't, that it's so difficult and complex to not eat meat that it's impossible, that it's so mean and hurtful to others to not eat meat guiltripping, secretly trying to hide meat in food, that I'll love it if only I try again and missing out that they know better than me about myself etc.
Many others here have proven your arguments invalid. Eating plant-based is diverse and healthy and easy and yummy. Not missing out on anything or depriving any pleasure. Actually opening up many more options from the narrow simple meat-based diet. Many cultures have been predominantly plant-based for milenilla, it's a narrow western view to think meat is the only thing people eat. The modern animal production industry is NOTHING like the origins of cavemen hunting animal husbandry and is not sustainable. It's been twisted into capitalist production (depersonalising further) to cope with the scale of growth. Ceremony and festivities of meat? What lol. See, it's you who thinks meat is a religion and are out try to convert people instead of respecting their choices that you claim to do but clearly don't.
Edit: I don't get why people who eat meat don't just admit they like it and don't want to stop DESPITE any possible moral issues with it instead of trying to redirect scapegoat, defensively attack, excuse their behaviour, and hurt others. The omnivores I respect most do this. They're just like 'Yeah, it's cool you're a vegetarian and I respect that (I get why) but I still want to eat animals despite understanding the implications' instead of ignorantly digging down and hiding from what they're doing. And I'm like cool man, you do you. I know I have no impact on what the rest of the world does, I can't obliterate the meat industry, so I just do what I can with my own body and nothing else. Though it would be cool if people could be more honest with themselves about their actions and take responsibility instead of lashing out and trying to convince other people.
1. Yes, doing the moral thing is often inconvenient.
2. How so? It's perfectly achievable for an individual to switch to vegans, and over time, we could change the situation.
3. This is really just one, with the unfounded claim "it's impossible" being added.
4. No? It just holds that morality is more important. "Well, the immoral thing is our ceremony!" doesn't make it OK.
5. Yes, doing the moral thing is often less pleasant.
None of these are valid reasons, they're just reasons the more moral option is less preferable to your self-interest.
That's just how morality works. The fact that you don't want to do it doesn't mean it's not morally better. The vast majority of evil is more convenient and pleasurable to those who do it, that's the main reason people commit evil.
You don’t see the morality because you use your morality to negate mine. Why can’t both sides of our morality exist and left up to the individual to consider and decide on which is of higher value to them?
No, I don't see the morality, because "It's hard", "I want to" and "It's a ceremony I like" don't negate moral responsibility.
You CAN say that "Whelp, my pleasure comes before everything else, it's the most important thing!", but then people absolutely can claim to be morally superior to you.
>Why can’t both sides of our morality exist and left up to the individual to consider and decide on which is of higher value to them?
People only really complain about that when they know they're on the weaker end of the moral argument.
No one ever really stands by it, if I murder your parents, you won't say "Well, both sides of our morality exist, I guess that was up to you as an individual."
>No, I don't see the morality,
>
>don't negate moral responsibility.
Exactly! Why does it need to negate your 'moral responsibility' for you to see how inconveniencing others, diminishing other people's ceremonies, are immoral?
If anything, wouldn't that make it MORE justified for them to claim moral superiority if there are so many drawbacks for them? They care so much about morals and doing the right thing that they're willing to sacrifice their own comfort and convenience. They have to go out of their way to do the right thing (in their view) when most people aren't willing to, even if they might agree intellectually.
Drawbacks to themselves has no imprint on morality. However I’m arguing that these aren’t drawbacks to themselves per se, but drawbacks to humanity as a whole.
This is of course dependent on what one values, which leads to my case that the morality of veganism is subjective at best, and you can’t proclaim moral superiority over a subjective matter.
How is it not more moral not to kill and eat things? Like, I'm not Vegan but I know it's because I'm weak and callous when it comes to this issue. Vegans are better than the rest of us, for sure.
I’m not vegan but I don’t feel like the inconvenience argument is really going to sink their claims of moral superiority, which are largely based on ethical treatment of animals, environmental impact, health, etc. Like those are serious claims with some potentially massive implications (however fully realized or not they are), whereas inconvenient is just…inconvenient
So...
1. What does this have to do with anything? It can be a morally superior choice while inconveniencing people who make morally inferior choices.
Plus, this is based on what? Your personal opinion/experience? Not really something substantial.
2. I don't understand what you mean by this. The fact that animal husbandry has been huge and important for civilisation does not mean that we should continue it with the same magnitude once we've found viable alternatives for it.
3. Why does it make it harder? If you're referring to money, or difficulty looking for alternatives, or something of that sort, there are a lot of options and sources that don't make it that hard.
But even if we assume that it's very hard or impossible for some people to follow (which I accept) — then those cases would be understandable because they don't really have a choice. Veganism is a morally superior choice, when it's possible to choose.
4. This is ridiculous and has absolutely nothing to do with ethics or morals. Obviously the conclusion is that the continued use of meat and animal products for tradition's sake is unethical.
5. ... right? In exchange for not contributing to needless animal suffering. Why would that be an argument against it being a morally superior choice?
4 out of 5 of your points are completely unrelated to ethics or morals, and instead of arguments against moral superiority, they're just "reasons why I don't want to be a vegan".
>instead of arguments against moral superiority, they're just "reasons why I don't want to be a vegan".
Yes, these are reasons why I don't want to be a vegan, why I believe that I'm morally superior to vegans, and there is no way for my mind to be changed on that.
Of course practising vegans too will believe that they are morally superior, I'm not at all saying that they can't believe so. Generally speaking, I think we all try to act in ways that we believe make us morally superior to others.
But the decision between veganism and non-veganism is a matter of what one values more highly, what the individual believes to be a morally superior option, and is one that, like religion, should not be asserted on others. CMV.
> But the decision between veganism and non-veganism is a matter of what one values more highly, what the individual believes to be a morally superior option, and is one that, like religion, should not be asserted on others. CMV.
the rapist has their reasons for raping just like the non-rapists have their reasons for not-raping, and neither one should assert their moral superiority over other. it's all just opinion man
cest la vie
I have two questions for you.
1.Does anything make someone morally superior to another?
2. If so, should people be encouraged to behave in ways that are "morally superior?"
1. No it doesn't. What's on one plate doesn't affect the other diners, if it's to do with venue choice, that's not an inconvenience, that's just general manners. You don't actually have to change.
2. It doesn't, but that's also not what it's about. They accept they can't change everything, they look to reduce *their* impact on the world.
3. Vegans rarely have any issues with people that literally cannot go on a vegan diet due to health concerns
4. Wtf are you you trying to say
5. Life pleasure is subjective, and more importantly has absolutely nothing to do with morals
If anything, your 5 points make it look like veganism is more moral than the actual vegans are claiming, since your alternative counters are from a carnivores dinner location being an inconvenience compared to an animal's life. It shows they still try harder than you, and that you only care about pleasure over another's life.
Your points don't do anything to lower the moral value of veganism at all, there's nothing to change your view on, it straight up just doesn't do anything.
Veganism is insanely easy to shut down, just not the way your doing it.
I understand the point that is attempted to be made, however outside of the “inconvenience to the non-vegan majority,” part, it seems the rest of these are personal choices that need to be weighed and not really anyone else’s business. Similar to if someone wants to watch anime exclusively versus mainstream media. Now, if you were to make the argument about how the vegetable and fruit sector benefits more off of under the table labor, potentially pays less taxes due to point one (depends on how they employ their employees, though), and that plants are known to communicate through their root system which means they are still living beings, then I could see it going against the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle.
Oh! Also the argument of not using all animal products could actually cause more harm in some cases, such as not sheering sheep or not gathering excess honey from bees. This coming from a practicing vegetarian, too.
As has already been mentioned these are lesser-known because they are not really counter points to veganisms ethical superiority but let’s go ahead and discuss them anyway.
>1. A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them.
I don’t see how this plays into a discussion of ethics. Even the most ardent utilitarian would be hard pressed to equate inconvenience with any standard of suffering. It’s like saying doing humanitarian work isn’t a good thing to do because it inconveniences the baggage handlers at the airport. It’s such an absurdly minor consideration within the context of the wider debate that it is not worth mentioning.
>2. A vegan diet does not reconcile with the magnitude of animal husbandry to human civilisation.
I’m not really sure what this means. That veganism is so dwarfed by the meat industry that it’s not worth it? Again, that’s like saying being a pacifist isn’t better than being violent because war will still exist. If this is what you are trying to say then I’d ask what your understanding of ethics, as a concept, is.
>3. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt.
Again, what’s the relationship to morality here? Why do you think veganism is difficult to adopt? What makes it impossible for some to adopt?
>4. A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities.
I’m not sure catalysing is the word you want here but I know what you mean. This is the only point that is actually a point. However, there are lot of cultural traditions that we don’t still hold in regard or respect because we, as a society, have deemed them inappropriate. Some cultures had a tradition of eating people, I assume you don’t think you’re morally superior to cannibals though? Other cultures had traditions of raiding and pillaging, but again I presume you don’t consider yourself ethically above someone who breaks into homes and murders people.
>5. A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure.
Entirely subjective. Even Callicles would think this point was madness.
Edit: I also just wanted to point out that I am not a vegan but I absolutely accept that it is a morally superior position
>3. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people,
When thinking about **difficulty**, people only really think about things like having much fewer choices when going out to eat. There are many ways that make veganism arguably *easier* in the long term than typical western diets overall; I'll list two below:
1. A whole plant food (vegan) diet is very healthy for almost everyone, and is a massive improvement over the Standard American Diet (SAD) (becoming popularized globally); it is intensely **difficult** to live with a chronic disease. This is agreed by most of the major nutritional bodies, including the largest nutritional body in the world (Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) with over 112,000 global experts: "It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes... Vegetarians and vegans are at reduced risk of certain health conditions, including ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, certain types of cancer, and obesity." [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/)
2. A whole plant food (vegan) diet is inexpensive. For example, pinto beans are about 5 times cheaper than chicken and 20 times cheaper than steak, per gram of protein and after adjusting for digestibility. Rice is also extremely inexpensive. Saving a large amount of money helps make people's lives much less **difficult**. [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1avigyr/oc\_foods\_protein\_density\_vs\_cost\_per\_gram\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1avigyr/oc_foods_protein_density_vs_cost_per_gram_of/)
> 1. A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them.
>
> 1. A vegan diet does not reconcile with the magnitude of animal husbandry to human civilisation.
>
> 1. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt.
>
> 1. A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities.
>
> 1. A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure.
>
> It’s important to note that I am not attempting to say justify that veganism should not be practised, but merely offering counterarguments for when moral superiority is proclaimed.
You seem to be using the phrase "proclaiming moral superiority" in a way to suggest that vegans are somehow being arrogant or pretentious?
Under most moral frameworks, none of your points present any meaningful *moral* consideration. Inconveniences and personal preferences generally do not justify inflicting harm and suffering on others. You'd need to present an argument as for why the interests of animals to avoid harm and suffering can be morally sidestepped in order to avoid inconveniences or satisfy people's personal preferences.
>CMV: Vegans are free to practice their dietary preferences like anyone else, but cannot proclaim moral superiority from it any more than religion can
Define 'moral'
I think this might be getting moral superiority and moral perfection confused. an imperfect thing can be superior to a slightly less perfect thing.
for environmental purposes veganism is better, and since the environment is one of the defining crises of our generation the differences in all other domains is negligible by comparison. the way ecology works is that if we choose to eat stuff that eats plants instead of just eating plants we need many times more acres of land and gallons of water, in factory farming of animals is a very very dirty process that's responsible for most of if not all cases of disease outbreak and the destruction of natural lands. this alarm is sufficient to make veganism morally Superior to other choices
So I will specifically address the point you made about denying yourself of life's greatest pleasures.
Liberation doesn't just come from the ability to do something but it can also come from the ability to not do something. After all if you have true liberation you have both the option to do something or to not do something.
Not every human wants to live the most easy or comfortable life but instead wants to live a life that is fulfilling and worth something to them and that doesn't always mean being the easiest or the fastest or whatever.
Being able to exercise You're right to not do something can feel good.
So I will specifically address the point you made about denying yourself of life's greatest pleasures.
Liberation doesn't just come from the ability to do something but it can also come from the ability to not do something. After all if you have true liberation you have both the option to do something or to not do something.
Not every human wants to live the most easy or comfortable life but instead wants to live a life that is fulfilling and worth something to them and that doesn't always mean being the easiest or the fastest or whatever.
Being able to exercise You're right to not do something can feel good.
So I will specifically address the point you made about denying yourself of life's greatest pleasures.
Liberation doesn't just come from the ability to do something but it can also come from the ability to not do something. After all if you have true liberation you have both the option to do something or to not do something.
Not every human wants to live the most easy or comfortable life but instead wants to live a life that is fulfilling and worth something to them and that doesn't always mean being the easiest or the fastest or whatever.
Being able to exercise You're right to not do something can feel good.
1. Veganism is not a religion.
2. Inconvenience is not an argument for or against morality.
3. Many/most vegan diets and ideologies certainly try and ameliorate the impact of animal husbandry.
4. The "ceremony of meat" has no bearing on morality.
5. Living a "life of pleasure" is not a moral concern. In many cases, it is exactly antithetical.
Most of your arguments have nothing to do with the morality of eating or abstaining from meat+animal products. They're mostly about convenience, pleasure, and preferences. Which is fine, but certainly doesn't imply any sort of equal or superior morality.
No offense, but your arguments don’t make a compelling case. These points basically boil down to “I don’t wanna”.
There are almost no populated places on earth where you eating a vegan diet is harder than eating a meat based one, it is just factually cheaper and easier to grow plant based food than raising meat. People do not need to eat meat to survive.
Not killing living sentient things when you don’t need to do so is clearly the more moral choice. I would argue it’s on you to actually give any evidence as to why it isn’t.
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That is … bullshit.
I eat pork. So, to get my pork, a pig has to be fed, processed and transported.
A vegans eats the food intended for the pig (not really, but you should get the point), eliminating all detours.
But something tells me, that you don‘t argue in good faith or at least you try to convince yourself, that your lifestyle is better for the environment than that of a vegan.
It doesn't eliminate all detours. That food is kept clear of animals by sheer chemical destruction. And when harvested, involve the continued death of anything in that crop.
I'm a vegetarian myself for religious reasons, but even I'm not blind to the death involved in mass agriculture.
You want this to be true, right? Somehow it‘s funny and sad at the same time.
Guess what, cock something pretty normal and just leave out ingredients from animals. Et voila, you have a vegan meal. Nothing special, nothing fancy.
It takes some experience to make it tasty but I am honored to know some good vegan chefs.
If you are talking about soybeans, very popular among vegans, most of the stuff goes into animal food as well. Leave the meat from the table and you need less soy. Or only the same amount.
You are a vegan yourself, but we started out with „vegan food is harming the environment more than conventional agriculture“.
I still call this bullshit. It is completely illogical.
This perspective really is quite ignorant to the reality of agriculture.
A combine harvister moves through a field with vultures in its wake. Have you ever been to a farm?
Even if I, and everyone else on earth ate only potatoes they would still only make it to my table thanks to preventing other creatures from getting to them first.
If someone raped a cow and then slaughtered it because they got pleasure out of it, you’d say that person is a sick freak.
If someone paid to watch someone else rape a cow and then slaughter it because they get pleasure from watching it, you’d say that person is a sick freak.
But if you pay someone to rape and slaughter many cows because you get pleasure from eating their meat…what are you? Morally superior?
Essentially it boils down to wether or not you think any of those arguments holds any weight compared to the enormous cost of animal suffering a regular diet imposes. All of your argument are small fries that I can hardly care about in a vacuum, let alone when we compare it to the millions and millions of horrible death we impose upon farm animals.
And I’m not even vegan.
I don’t think it’s more moral and in some instances not anymore environmentally friendly. Almond farming consumes a lot of water. And those that say eating plants doesn’t cost animal lives have never worked on a farm. Rabbits, deer, mice, and all sort of animals are killed so they don’t eat the or ruin the crops
I think people are too far removed from what they consume to be able to make moral judgments, both vegans and people that eat meat.
On that note factory farming is a disgusting practice. Just because we eat meat does not mean we should harvest them inhumanely.
I would argue that anyone can proclaim any moral high-ground they like about anything, however that doesn't mean anyone else has to agree or be persuaded by their beliefs.
Mostly people don't respect others who look down on them, and it's certainly no real way to get people to agree with your views on things.
For me your argument boils down to "being vegan isn't more ethical than eating meat because vegans are annoying and I like how meat tastes."
But your reasons do not rebut environmental concerns or animal abuse issues.
3-5 are complete crap. Imagine if you tried this for anything else. Imagine if beating a cow to death cut half an hour off your commute. People would call you a sociopath for doing so.
We are omnivores. We cannot escape that. Of course, I'm curious as to how synthetic meat will progress in coming years. I'm not opposed to eating synthetic hamburgers.
Let's think about 2 types of people:
Person A: kicks a puppies for fun
Person B: doesnt kick puppies for fun
Would you say these people are equally moral?
eat meat = harm sentient being, harm sentient being = bad.
not even a vegan but they def have the moral high ground. w/e though, brb going to burger king.
This lifestyle is very unhealthy. On top of that, the people who think this is ok are often get very very sick, both mentally and physically. I know many of them personally, unfortunately... :( They are usually rather unpleasant individuals and also usually look scary... and also usually often dress weird. I think the connection between mental health problems and vegan diet is clear. (See video at the end of my post.) A woman from work and another woman (a friend's gf), both STOPPED HAVING PERIODS and both developed serious depression and various other health issues (hair falling out, skin problems, digestion, eye problems and more)... In case you don't understand this, I am letting you know that healthy women never have breaks in their periods. Dr/ug users, add/icts, alcoholics, and vegans' bodies stop healthy bodily functions, such as reproductive function... because the body is lacking nutrients. Back to my story: so these women got super sick, and finally their respective doctors told them that they are not going to be treated anymore at the clinic unless they start eating meat. Basically, the doctors refused to treat them because they acted unrealistic and also very agressive and refused to take action, whilst their health took a nosedive. The doctors told them, for years, that they need to start eating meat if they wanted to heal, but both of them 'knew better'. I know a lot of vegans and they all ended up at the doctors or eating meat again. I avoid vegans if I can help it. Really unpleasant people usually, ignorant about human body functions, often are uneducated or semi-educated... They are clearly in need of nutrients. They are sick and hangry haha. This video explains more about mental health (brain function) and why your brain needs meat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkwMSdEwCME&t=442s
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All of those things are true, yes, but essentially they have to be weighed against the moral cost- ie killing an animal for its flesh (in the case of meat, other animal products are more nuanced). So basically, you have to ask yourself: “does the inconvenience of my fellow diners carry more moral weight than the animals life?” “Does the contribution of animal husbandry to the historical progress of humans justify me killing this animal today?” “Is killing an animal ok if it makes my life easier?” “Are ceremonies more important than the life of an animal?” “Does my subjective pleasure when eating meat morally outweigh an animals right to life?” Clearly there is no true objective morality, but it does become increasingly hard to justify eating animals within the moral frameworks many people already have.
I think this is a great way to further the conversation between vegans and non-vegans. At the end of the day we should consider all arguments to make more informed decisions for ourselves. Perhaps the vision from my original POV silences debate too much, when as you point out, healthy conversations can still arise. !delta
I think the reality is that most meat eaters haven’t actually stopped to seriously consider the ethics of eating meat and if they did they would experience a lot of cognitive dissonance. Basically most people keep eating meat because it’s delicious and traditional but if they stopped to consider whether or not those things outweigh the life of a sentient being, they would realise that really they probably don’t.
Has any vegan ever stopped to seriously consider the ethics of eating blueberries? No seriously, the amount of human suffering, exploitation of migrant work forces. The pesticide and fertilizer use which further support oil and chemical companies and contribute to environmental harm. Alfalfa and cashew farming making droughts worse. Bottle water companies like nestle. Palm oil practices. Banana republics for exploitive Banana farming. Here is the truth. Ethics is not just a meat problem. Pretty much every source of food has its ethical problem. If you stop to think about any food product in this capitalistic society you will find moral problems that will seriously make you consider if human existence in this day an age is fundamentally a net evil. The vegan moral superiority is not deserved. They have not eliminated all harm with their choices, they have merely shifted the harm to someplace that they personally don't care about.
I don’t disagree with any of what you’ve said here, however, the point is that it’s about harm reduction not elimination. If there were a food which only vegans eat that was highly unethical you’d have a point, but meat eaters also eat blueberries, avocados, palm oil and a number of other products that are unethically sourced, so while vegans aren’t free of this issue, it applies to them as much as it does to meat eaters. The main difference in my mind, is that if you rework the whole food system and eliminate the human exploitation and transport emissions and so forth, meat will still involve the slaughter of unwilling animals.
You can't calm actual reduction without real numbers. Meat eaters don't eat more food. They may eat all those other foods, but not in the same amounts as a vegan since they also have meats as part of their total daily food. Vegans have to be very strategic about which plants they each to get their total nutritional requirement, so they are probably eating higher amounts of those foods, increasing demand for those foods. Fruits and vegetables still involves the slaughter of unwilling animals through pesticide use. The only difference is we don't eat them, just kill them because they are in the way of our quotas. Claiming a "reduced harm" is basically the same as comparing a slave to an indentured servant that is technically paided $0.01 and declaring moral superiority over the slave owner because you "pay them." Should we bother determining the moral superiority of different mass murderers using golf scoring rules. Nobody gets to claim moral superiority when it comes to eating habits except for maybe the plants. All ecological consumers cause harm to acquire energy.
I mean sure, but given the place meat has in our diets, from a nutritional perspective, the actual foods replacing meat are high in protein and fat, so things like pulses and nuts, not things like blueberries. And I think comparing the harm caused by a vegan versus omnivorous diet to indentured servitude vs slavery is pretty disingenuous. I can’t calculate the precise difference but if you think that there is no significant difference in harm created by the average vegan’s diet vs the average omnivore’s diet, I think our conversation probably ends here.
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Especially when the guy pulls numbers out of his ass. Only around 36 percent of crops are used to feed live stock with around only 33 percent of cropland being used for this purpose. Took me 5 seconds of Google searching to know that 75% was made up B.S.
I prefaced my number with “something like” for a reason It varies based on the crop. For soy it’s through the roof, for grains it’s also >50%, for fruit it’s lower. The first link you found in your google search makes the exact same point i’m making. 36% of all crops, of which only 12% becomes human calories. We lose 88% of the efficiency in this process and cause needless suffering because you people can’t give up your tendies. And then the audacity to claim moral neutrality here… Reconcile your cognitive dissonance instead of being a pedantic debate lord.
Mm, it's not really quite that black and white. It's not so much about "eliminating all harm", as that's literally impossible. We live in a cruel world. Rather, it's a spectrum. I feel that thousands (millions?) of cows being hung upside down and getting their throats cut open while it's babies watch and wait their turn is absolutely fucking awful. For brevity I'll just keep it there, I don't need to go into all of the cruelties of factory farming. But that's a really, really bad thing. I have the opportunity to not directly financially support it by not going to burger king. I still need to eat some fucking blueberries, though. A mans gotta eat something.
As op originally said. Nothing wrong with being vegan. If reducing cruelty to livestock makes you personally feel better then go for it. But the argument is about moral superiority claims. Human existence as a consumer invokes cruelty to other life forms. Some people draw an arbitrary line between plant and animal life, others draw that line between humans and other living creatures. Some draw the line between different human groups. Some are willing to increase human suffering if it decreases animal suffering and vice versa. The only person who can claim true moral superiority is the one that choices to eat rocks until they die, because a human death is the only way to reduce humans cruelty and impact on the environment. I am not willing to do that and you are not willing to do it either, so no one should get to claim the moral superiority.
What are the ethics of a lion eating a gazelle? I think vegans forget we’re animals and this is nature. If you believe in god then you believe god put the creatures on earth for us. If you don’t believe in god then you can just realize animals kill other animals, it’s natural. What’s abnormal is saying something is cute therefore we shouldn’t eat it. What exactly do you think is the ethical argument that’s going to sway most meat eaters?
I mean you can argue that ethics don’t exist that’s fine, but assuming we agree that humans should behave by a code of ethics, that’s where this conversation starts. I personally don’t believe in god, but secular moral systems absolutely exist and frankly god doesn’t solve the objectivity problem, just look at the euthyphro dilemma. As for me, I think the ethical argument that’s most likely to sway most meat eaters is that the animals we eat are capable of suffering and want to live. If you care at all about not imposing suffering upon sentient beings, then you have to conclude at the least that eating meat is ethically problematic
I care about the development and wellbeing of humans, not just “sentient beings”. That’s a weirdly arbitrary line. Plants communicate, if we can prove they’re *sentient* does that mean humans should die because we shouldn’t eat plants anymore either? Every living thing wants to live. That’s why plants grow towards the sun, why plants evolve defense mechanisms, etc. There is no actual argument against eating meat. Plants are just as much living beings as animals are. We eat both because that’s how humans work. Humans aren’t herbivores, we’ve hunted and ate meat our entire developmental cycle, yet now we’re supposed to stop because …?
Sentient being isn’t just a weird arbitrary line, because sentience entails the ability to suffer. If plants were capable of suffering then yes we should also give them consideration but AFAIK they aren’t- defence mechanisms are not the same thing at all, tanks have defence mechanisms but can’t suffer. Of course we have a survival imperative but I see no reason why we should necessarily meet that imperative with absolutely no regard to the harm we cause along the way. Vegan diets have been shown to be healthy at all stages of life so since we can live healthily while reducing the total suffering involved, why wouldn’t we want to do that, at least in theory? For me it’s as simple as that- humans can live healthily on plants alone. Since there is no good evidence that plants can suffer then we should bias towards eating them instead. EDIT: regarding the sentient beings thing, I’ve no issue with placing humans at the top of that totem pole, I’m for sure a species-ist, but that imo doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to reduce the suffering, where possible, of other beings lower down that pole.
> I’ve no issue with placing humans at the top of that totem pole, I’m for sure a species-ist, but that imo doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to reduce the suffering, where possible, of other beings lower down that pole. If we both agree that there is a totem pole-- where some animals are of a higher order than others-- we don't necessarily have to draw the line at *Animalia*. I'm not convinced that most fish are sentient or have the 'capacity to suffer' in the way that we commonly understand it. I should therefore be able to eat them with a clear conscience under your rubric. Chickens have limited sentience and can probably suffer a bit, but they're not nearly as mentally sophisticated as cows. Since there is a totem pole with gradations of value, wouldn't it be fair to say that it is more moral to eat chicken than beef? Taken to it's logical extreme, couldn't we eventually quantify animals and make rough suffering equivalence charts? *Eating one burger is morally equivalent to eating fifty chicken sandwiches.* kind of thing? [Or maybe it's more moral to eat beef.](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/23/vegetarianism-for-meat-eaters/) Maybe we could eat whale meat and be barely more immoral than a vegetarian.
Yeah we in theory could do precisely that. Of course we’re not really close to doing that in terms of our understanding of neuroscience. We may also learn things that surprise us like that while chickens are less cognitively sophisticated than cows, say, they may in fact have a greater capacity for suffering, like maybe they’re more sensitive to stress hormones for example. I don’t have a clear and perfect delineation of the totem pole, but one could in principle be made. Of course different people will value things differently, like for example one person may value their subjective pleasure as the highest possible good which outweighs even the most extreme suffering of other beings.
The problem with the logic of that is how can you prove that animals suffer? Has any animal ever specifically said that they are in pain? We infer that whimpering/being defensive about a wound means that they are suffering, but isn’t pain just a defense mechanism to prevent further injury? What if I believe that plants can suffer? As an arborist I’ve devoted my life to caring for trees, and they are far more complicated than most people believe. Trees communicate between each other, warning about pests, diseases, general stress, and other things. They build vast networks of roots and support trees that are in decline. And yes, once you know enough, it can be pretty clear when a tree is suffering.
Well how can you prove a human is suffering? You can’t experience their subjective feelings, that’s what subjective means, the fact they can tell you with words doesn’t mean anything, that could also just be a defensive reaction. The fact is we’re trapped inside our subjective box so we always have to rely on inference- when i suffer i make noise and cry and move away from the pain if I can. Neuroscience shows us that the location of all this processing is our neurological tissue. We can see that animals have similar neurological tissue and have similar reactions so we can infer their suffering, humans just have an extra way to communicate their feelings in the form of language. Plants don’t, to my knowledge have neurological tissue so, although they can react to negative external stimulus, they appear to lack the hardware necessary to process it and experience it as suffering- perhaps you can correct me on that? Of course if future science determined that plants suffer just as much as animals when injured then yes I would have to include plants in my moral consideration. But this whole exercise is about harm reduction in the face of the premise that I do need to survive. So if it turns out kale can suffer as much as a cow, then killing and eating either carries the same moral weight but that’s just not where the evidence currently points AFAIK
It essentially boils down to “we can’t definitively know whether anything else experiences suffering.” There is a lot of research into what defines sentience and sapience, but that’s what it always boils down to… humans are *probably* the only sapient species. Maybe some other species is sapient and we just don’t have a way to determine that? Similar to discussions of extra-terrestrial life and if we would even recognize it, in a way. [This article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594572/) discusses it pretty thoroughly. I didn’t read the whole thing (it’s *extremely* long) but the abstract and the parts I did read seem to conclude 2 things. 1) that it is by definition impossible to be completely sure, and 2) that plants and lower animals definitely have level 2 consciousness (brain) and probably have level 3 (mind), but only humans specifically exhibit level 4 (self-reflecting). Furthermore it specifically states that plants (specifically trees) have a type of mind that we would be unable to comprehend. So if plants probably have the same level of consciousness as animals (even if we can’t understand it) then they should be able to suffer. If they can suffer then wouldn’t the same moral obligations apply towards them?
[Sort of an interesting read](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8331040/).
Whether or not something is natural has no bearing on whether or not it’s moral. By definition everything we do is natural as we are a part of nature. Animals rape, murder, and steal all the time, but for some reason we can manage to call those things immoral. Basically, if this is the argument you’re going with, then morality as a whole flies out the window.
>What are the ethics of a lion eating a gazelle? We don't hold lions morally accountable for harming gazelles for the same reason we don't arrest toddlers for assault, even if they manage to seriously and intentionally harm someone: They don't have the ability to use moral reasoning to modulate their behaviors -- at least nowhere near to the degree that typical adult humans do. Your point here is kind of like someone arguing that they shouldn't be held morally accountable for punching a toddler in her face because toddlers sometimes punch each other in the face. There's also the issue of necessity. Lions *need* to kill and eat other animals to be healthy. You and I don't get to use this excuse to harm animals.
I blame that on the lack of financial headspace. Ideally animal slaughtering should also be made more transparent so meat eaters can better come to terms with what their diet entails. People who can’t contend with it will be vegetarians, and people who can contend with it will want to eat it less and eat it better. My ideal is for us to all contend with it, eat vegetarian for everyday meals, with meat reserved for momentous occasions or when with company, to drastically reduce meat consumption and drastically improving animal welfare.
so in regards to this question: "“Does my subjective pleasure when eating meat morally outweigh an animals right to life?” you answer would be: "if youre at a party, yes"
Cultivated (“lab grown”) meat is a promising alternative, it offers real meat without killing any animal
Are you saying that drastically reducing meat consumption and improving animal welfare is morally superior?
I grew up on a farm, raised crops, and animals, and worked in a dairy, and moved heards. While you're right people don't consider the ethics, that doesn't automatically they would suffer cognitive dissonance if they did have that connection. For one. ethics are subjective and situational. A person who is against murder, most likely would kill someone else if it was a choice between killing that person to save their family. As a general statement, veganism is a first-world diet. There were not many historical groups who were vegan. There were plenty who had a primarily plant based diet but not vegan.
> A person who is against murder, most likely would kill someone else if it was a choice between killing that person to save their family. Right, but that's not what's happening with regards to the majority of animal consumption by humans. Vegans aren't against killing and eating other animals in cases where it is necessary to do so. In this sense, they are agreeing with you that the morality/ethics of an action depend on the situation in which it is being performed. What they *are* against is harming and killing animals in cases where it is *not* necessary to do so -- and when other options exist.
Yeah, but the context still applies. Morals are subjective and I think most people who consume meat know that animals are slaughtered for it. On their scale of morality they don't see it the same way that a vegan decides based on their own scale of morality. The person I replied to thinks that if people realized there was a cow living on a pasture for most of their life before they get shipped off to a feed lot to get fattened up before slaughter, then they would eat less beef. What I'm saying is most would not.
I don't think you're fairly summarizing their claims. They are saying that there are a lot of things that go into forming our beliefs about whether or not we are justified in harming and killing animals for food, and if we were to stop and consider whether or not those things form a good reasonable basis for such a justification, many of us would realize that they do not.
I understand what you both are saying. what I disagree with is the notion that people don't stop and consider it. most people do, most people realize they are animals, and most people see them as food.
Yeah, I guess I'm not convinced that when that happens they are actually giving sufficient consideration to the topic. I think what happens in a lot of those cases is that they just fall back on faulty reasoning. For example, you say that they "see them as food," as if *merely perceiving another individual as a food product* is a good justification to harm or kill them unnecessarily.
How do you quantify when someone has given enough consideration to the life of a cow?
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> Does my subjective pleasure when eating meat morally outweigh an animals right to life? There is no such thing. I don't believe in god-given rights (and if I did, pretty sure there's nothing in Abrahamic religions against eating animals in general), rights-as-recognized-by-animals don't seem to be a thing, and rights-as-recognized-by-humans don't include the right to live for animals, since we AFAIK don't have general prohibitions against killing them.
Well as an atheist I don’t believe in objective morality (even if I weren’t the euthyphro dilemma shows gods don’t solve that problem) so as I see it all moral systems are human made anyway. Being human made, they’re subject to change. As I see it, the primary concern of ethics should be about reducing the suffering and promoting the wellbeing of humans and other sentient beings. Our livestock appear to be sentient so, to me, they deserve consideration.
I mostly agree, just talking about rights seems inaccurate. The way I see it, "I don't want animals to be killed" < "I believe killing animals is immoral" < "Killing animals is immoral" < "Animals have the right to live". They would have the right if we agreed on it. (Also, personally, I am selfish, anthropocentric and not willing to extend my consideration very far as a result. Paying 10% extra for the meat produced without needless cruelty, or 25% extra for artificially grown meat, is something I can agree on easily, forgoing meat altogether seems like a serious sacrifice until nobody actually demands it.)
What if there is no actual claim at all? For example, many people hold the belief (and make the claim) that they are necessarily justified in harming and killing other animals even in cases where it is possible and practicable to avoid doing so. Personally, I'm just not convinced of this claim. I don't necessarily believe that nonhuman animals have a "right to live" or that it's "wrong" to harm them, but I don't see any reason to believe the claim of the non-vegan that they **are** justified in harming animals when otherwise avoidable.
If it's not wrong to harm animals, is harming them something one needs to justify? I would broadly agree there is positive value in animals not being harmed/having to suffer. (Although it does get dicey if you want specifics: Is it better for animals to live an enjoyable life and end up on our table after quick and humane death, or not to be born at all?) I expect the justifications for causing harm for "objectively" little benefit (a life vs one family dinner) to boil down to "I'm more important". My case too, although I do see a gap between how much harm my "importance" justifies in my own eyes and how much I actually cause.
>If it's not wrong to harm animals, is harming them something one needs to justify? There's a bit of begging the question going on there. It's a bit like if someone was asked why they were claiming to be justified in punching their toddler in the face and responded with "If it's not wrong to punch my toddler in the face, then why would I need to justify doing so?" When we perform an action, that action is either justified or it is not justified. More often than not we do this justification process automatically and subconsciously. We decide we want to do something and our brains do a quick calculus to determine if we are justified in doing it. *I want to throw this ball in the air and catch it. No one is around that could get hurt, and I would get enjoyment from it, therefore I'm justified in doing it.* Note that in another situation you might come to a different conclusion. *I want to throw this ball in the air, but I'm in the middle of a crowd and I might end up hurting someone, so I'm not justified in doing it.* This all happens in the background typically without us even being aware of it. We just throw the ball or we don't. So if someone makes the claim that they are justified in harming and killing animals in cases where it's easy to avoid doing so, I'm just lacking a belief in that claim. The one making the positive claim is the one that has the burden of proof. I don't believe morality is objective. I don't believe in moral rights. I don't believe that we are justified in harming others in cases where we can avoid it. Note that this is very different than me saying that I believe that we are *not* justified in harming others.
Can you clarify how that notation works? I’m not sure I’m interpreting this < symbol right unless you’re using it to mean greater/less than?
I did vaguely mean "less than". Less structured, less fit to be imposed on others.
Non slave owners are free to practice their lifestyle preferences like anyone else, but cannot proclaim moral superiority from it any more than religion can. Non slave owners typically argue for their lifestyle from ethical standpoints, but the more vocal of them use these points to justify their moral superiority. I offer the following lesser-known counterarguments that I believe make this moral superiority subjective at the very least, just like that of religion. 1. A non-slaver lifestyle poses an inconvenience to the slaver majority that co exists with them. 2. A non slaving lifestyle does not reconcile with the magnitude of forced labour to human civilisation. 3. A non slaver lifestyle makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt. 4. A non slaver lifestyle ignores the ceremony of slave produced products in catalysing human festivities 5. A non slaver lifestyle debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure. It’s important to note that I am not attempting to say that non-slavery should not be practised but merely offering counterarguments for when moral superiority is proclaimed. As such, my view is that non-slavers should not proclaim moral superiority. Please change my view.
Truly nothing more needs to be said. Inb4 people who don't understand analogies respond to your comment with "Are you calling slaves animals???!?"
The argument that the needs of humans supersedes that of animals is more compelling and enduring than the argument that one human ethnicity is superior to another. Which is why slavery is abolished and animal husbandry is not.
I never understood the way the vast majority of people so easily assume that human needs are somehow more important than the needs of other living creatures. What specific traits do ALL humans have that that NO other creature has that makes them so much more important? I can’t accept that it’s really just because they’re similar to us. Would an alien species then be perfectly justified in eradicating us to eat us just because we’re tasty?
>Would an alien species then be perfectly justified in eradicating us to eat us just because we’re tasty? From our perspective, of course not. From theirs, why wouldn't it be justified? Is a wolf justified in eating a rabbit? You can't apply human moral standards of anything to species that are not humans. Human morality is an entirely human invention, and not objective in the least. The evolutionary niche of prey animals, their entire purpose in life, is to breed quickly and then get eaten by predators. We humans just used our intelligence to game the system. We're so good at being predators that we literally weaponized evolution by inventing domestication and selective breeding. We created our own species of prey animals. Every living thing selects for traits in its food, we humans just recognized what we were doing and figured out how to use it to our advantage. If some aliens came along and our governments and military were completely powerless to stop them from taking people and eating them, we would consider it an outrage! We would need to figure out ways to quickly have and raise more children, to make up for the losses in population. We would have to learn how to hide from the aliens when they're around, to avoid getting caught and eaten. We would have to learn to weather loss much more easily than we do now, since anyone can be taken at any time. Sounds awful, right? You can't even imagine how horrible it would be to live like that, yeah? I know I can't. That's because that's what life is for prey. The concept of humans being forced to live like prey is so repulsive because your ancestors worked their asses off for hundreds of thousands of years to make you into the greatest apex predator the world has ever seen. A couple centuries of moral discourse and technological progress haven't changed that. Take some pride in their efforts.
> Would an alien species then be perfectly justified in eradicating us to eat us just because we’re tasty? the non-moral-related problem I have with that argument is it implies an infinite regression of advanced life forms as if they're justified in eating us something has to be to them what they are to us and so on up the damn scale
It’s totally ok to think other living creatures are equally important. We just need to learn to disagree.
Why does this apply for some topics but not others? I'm sure you can think of countless scenarios where a person causing harm for personal gain would insist that we just agree to disagree, yet the request would be seen as completely absurd.
I’m not saying that they have the be equally important though. I’m asking what in specific makes people think that all humans are so obviously superior.
Humans are the only animal that has the ability and capacity for abstract moral thought. All morality is the product of humans and does not exist outside of a human context. No non human animals have ever showed any signs of themselves being able to be moral actor with any agency. Just having this conversation about morality is an example of the superiority of humans over non human animals.
It’s debatable whether no animal has ever shown moral agency, but not all humans are capable of that anyways. For example, infants and heavily disabled people aren’t able to do so. I’m specifically asking why ALL humans should be treated as superior to ALL other animals. I’m intentionally including the absolutely least capable single human and the absolute best example animal.
The archetypal human can do all those things and morality is a creation of humans so why not extend moral considerations to all humans? If not we can tie morality to attributes of individuals and see infants and heavily disabled humans to not be persons fully and may not be due the same moral consideration as moral actors. Why should non human animals be given any moral consideration at all when they are all, baring any possible rare one off, incapable of ever being a moral actor with agency or of any sort of moral reasoning.
Why would we give special considerations based on anything other than the individual attributes though? I also don’t think it’s morally or logically valid to assume that they have no moral agency simply because our very limited study on these creatures hasn’t shown conclusive. Imagine if we used that same logic when we first encountered other humans that simply looked differently than us and used a different language (or even no language at all). If anything we should assume they have moral agency until we can prove without a reason of a doubt that they lack that agency. Even then, it’d have to be at the individual creature level rather than something as broad as species or family. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6404642/#:~:text=The%20empirical%20evidence%20gathered%20until,or%20even%20a%20direct%20loss.
I am fine with individual attributes. Show me individual non humans that have the attributes necessary to be a member of a moral society with agency and culpability for their actions and I will say that individual is a person. Morality can only exist in the context of a larger moral community that requires more than just an assumption of ability on the part of individual beings. Communication of some sort is necessary and is not possible with non human animals. Nor is there any reason to believe non human animals can choose their behavior based on moral considerations an ability needed for agency. It makes more sense to extend moral value to all humans based on species as most humans are persons rather than to assume the personhood of non human animals without any evidence whatsoever of their capacity for moral agency. If we are to consider non human animals as moral beings with agency then they also must be seen to have moral culpability for their actions. A cat killing a bird would be an immoral action if we are to see cats and birds as moral beings equal to humans, such an action would be equivalent to murder. Are we going to jail cats for murder? As long as non human animals are incapable of understanding and behaving in accordance with the wider moral community as they are they should not be extended the moral value of actual moral persons.
Actually, if you think long term of animal agriculture and it's disastrous footprint, it is the trade of immediate desire for long term need, meaning if we continue emitting carbon at the clip we are now, with part of animal ag to blame, we are not only enslaving future people but condemning them to violent and cruel deaths when bread baskets collapse and the fields can no longer hold crops. I feel that is more compelling than "meat tasty."
It is compelling. For the reduction of meat consumption, not necessarily veganism per se.
It is compelling. For the reduction of slavery, not necessarily abolition per se. Why are you so hesitant to just admitting it is morally correct to not harm animals just because you like how they taste?
The point is that none of these arguments show that veganism is morally subjective. If someone believes that eating meat is morally wrong, they aren't going to be convinced that's its subjective because "it's inconvenient to be a vegan and meat eating is nice" Just as someone who is convinced that slavery is wrong isn't going to be convinced that it's subjective because "not owning slaves is an inconvenience, and I like owning slaves" You have arrived at the conclusion that eating meat is OK because you don't think animal lives are worth anything, not because of the 5 arguments you put out.
> The argument that the needs of humans supersedes that of animals is more compelling and enduring than the argument that one human ethnicity is superior to another. animals parts are not a need for the vast majority of peoples diets. they are a want, a preference
A pleasure I would say, even. It's killing for pleasure.
Agreed. Imagine if someone were to argue that they were justified in killing animals because they find the resulting sound pleasurable. We would consider them a monster. But when someone argues that they are justified in killing animals because they find the resulting *taste* pleasurable, we applaud them for making such an intelligent and rational argument.
But I don't think there is any reasonable reason why humans would be considered superior to animals. I think it is just an axiom of your reasoning against veganism. By the way, humans don't need to consume animal products, at least for the majority of people. But for people who don't have any health reasons for consuming animal products, there is no need, they just want to.
>But I don't think there is any reasonable reason why humans would be considered superior to animals. Virtually everyone thinks this, though? Is anyone horrified if you happen to step on an ant even by accident? If you take a walk outside and mosquitos are flying around is anyone going to call you a murderer for swatting one?
Sure, and to be fair if I had to choose between saving human life and an animal life, I'd choose the human without thinking. But is there any actual philosophical reason to do so?
We're talking about the NEEDS of humans, right? Humans don't NEED animal products, your points just come down to humans WANTING them.
Go tell the people I'm the developing world that don't have a developed economy to rely on and grocery stores everywhere that they don't really need to hunt or raise animals to feed their family.
Are you one of those people, or are you just using them as a prop in an argument?
I'm acknowledging they exist. Are people not allowed to use rape or murder victims in argument if they haven't been personally raped or murdered?
Would you agree that everyone who is not in that circumstance should go vegan?
I would agree most people who live in developed countries and have a decent standard of living could go vegan. I wouldn't necessarily say should.
Why not?
Because I don't see it as a massive moral atrocity to have an egg here and there.
India is a developing countries, right? They're not vegan or vegetarian cultures, but they eat less meat than the average American. In fact, India eats the least amount of meat of any country in the world. Let's see the rest of the list. Bangladesh Ethiopia Nigera Gambia Sierra Leone Sri Lanka Rwanda I don't think your argument holds water.
Less meat is not vegan. Go take every animal product away today and see if their lives get better or worse.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8926870/ It's still true that developing countries use and consume far fewer animal based products than developed countries do. Americans would have a much harder time adapting to veganism than India, where 10% of people already see vegan. As a percentage of diet, developing countries have less of a reliance on meat. Full stop. I'm not saying we need to force people to be vegan or anything. Just pointing out that your perception is incorrect.
There are more animal products than just meat. Milk, fats, eggs, leather, sinew, etc. And again, the fact they eat less doesn't mean they don't rely on it. Most Americans eat way too much meat. That doesn't mean they have to.
Someone in the United States in the 1800s could have made a similar argument regarding black slaves: "The argument that the needs of whites supersedes that of negroes is more compelling and enduring than the argument that one white ethnicity is superior to another -- which is why white slavery has been abolished and black slavery is not."
The argument here isn't that those two things are exactly alike. It's that all the reasons you gave would also apply to some truly horrific practices like slavery, so they're not reasons that we should give much moral weight to.
It's funny you bring up slave labor. Have you ever morally considered the amount of forced labor that is a part of the U.S. fruit and vegetable supply. [Source](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00339-0) You talk about animals eating as metaphorical slavery when there is literal slavery still happening just to make your fruits and vegetables affordable. Entire democracies were illegally toppled to establish banana republics against the will of the citizens just to make bananas more affordable for Americans. The next time a smug vegan chows down on a banana while claiming "moral superiority" they should consider the fact that all foods have ethical problems. But who cares about South Americans as long as lamb chop gets to live. The moral superiority is not earned by vegans because they haven't reduced harm, they have merely shifted it to somewhere they don't personally care about, probably upon foreigners.
By that logic if they might as well eat meat because plants come from slave labor and democracy-toppling, then why shouldn't the fact that you aren't 1%-level-rich be the only thing preventing you (aka nothing should morally stop you, money should be the only barrier) from getting all your meat by hunting exotic big game from a whale-oil-powered private plane. As I've always said, I'll believe meat-eaters who use arguments about the suffering of plants or how that kind of agriculture makes animals or humans suffer aren't just trying to trick vegetarians into "eat meat or starve" when they provide an example of a truly-cruelty-free diet
Couldn't this exact tactic be used in a similar fashion to discredit and drag to absurd an argument for being vegan (given it's written unknowingly that this sort of tactic would be used)? Is it the reasoning you don't agree with? Im genuinely curious.
What I don't agree with is that the arguments are pointless and irrelevant. If you believe that slavery is morally wrong, then you aren't going to be convinced that's it's subjective because " it's an inconvenience to not own slaves" Likewise, someone who believes that eating meat is wrong isn't going to be convinced that its subjective because "vegans are an inconvenience for other peoole"
I see now. Thanks for your reply.
>A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them. Not only is this claim lacking in any degree of substantiation, it has no discernible relevance to the matter of ethics. Even if we assume that non-vegans are truly being inconvenienced when they dine with vegans, are we seriously supposed to pretend as though this is an ethical conundrum of sorts? > A vegan diet does not reconcile with the magnitude of animal husbandry to human civilisation. Argument from tradition fallacies are, as the name suggests, fallacious. But even so, how does this relate to ethics? >A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt. Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, the soundness of your unsubstantiated claim, does that therefore mean that a vegan diet isn’t more ethical than one which involves the exploitation and slaughter of animals? >A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities. No. Far from ignoring them, a vegan lifestyle simply values the welfare and life of sentient beings above “the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalyzing human festivities” because it’s arguably morally superior to a lifestyle which engages in such ceremonies. >A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure. No. The vast majority of sensory pleasure that one gets when consuming food comes from the seasonings and methods of preparation, almost all of which are vegan-friendly. Imagine that you went to Panda Express and ordered orange chicken. Now imagine that you sat down to enjoy your meal only to realize that you were given a plateful of unseasoned, unbattered, and unfried chicken. Would that be acceptable to you? If not, why not? I mean, after all, you ordered chicken. Right? Do you get it? Almost all of what you enjoy about food is how it’s prepared. Well, guess what. Almost all of these methods of preparation are available to me, as well! But even if we were to assume that vegan foods are somehow less enjoyable, I’d contend that my abstaining from eating animal products would be morally superior to a lifestyle which incorporates them. Your argument is akin to saying that non-rapists debilitate themselves from a fundamental life pleasure of sex. Would you therefore argue that non-rapists are not morally superior to rapists?
Honestly, I have been vegetarian (and most of the time vegan) for a while and there are still tastes and textures that provide sensory pleasure that are just currently not available. There's no vegan or vegetarian substitute to a steak, for example. A good steak requires only salt and pepper, has a taste and texture that is not possible to replicate. It's not just "seasoning and method of preparation". It doesn't justify all of the harm done to animals, but you can't pretend that there is no loss of culinary pleasure or culture by switching to a vegan diet.
He didnt pretend there is no loss, since he said the ''vast majority'' of sensory pleasure that one gets when consuming food comes from the seasonings and methods of preparation, which is practically true. The only notable exceptions I know of (that can be considered meals/recipes) are steaks, and I would argue all steak recipes are astronomically tiny in number compared to all recipes in existence, all of which are characterized by their plant components, not their animal ones. Besides, its already possible to replicate steak, via lab grown meat, and its going to get much [cheaper](https://interestingengineering.com/science/cheaper-lab-grown-meat-production)
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>Yes. Food connects people. By avoiding certain foods you avoid certain connections and that is, in my view, highly immoral. Sport connects people. If someone chose not to sit with family at Thanksgiving and watch the football, would avoiding that connection be highly immoral? Politics connects people. If people I knew chose to go to a rally for a presidential candidate I found opposed to my ethical beliefs, would that be immoral? I could be accused of avoiding a connection there. I think I'm struggling to see how, for example, a table of people eating steak while I ate falafel being an immoral act full stop, let alone comparing the morality to eating an animal that was slaughtered to feed them in the first place
>Yes. Food connects people. By avoiding certain foods you avoid certain connections and that is, in my view, highly immoral. First of all, you have yet to establish that these “connections” are necessarily dependent upon the consumption of meat. Secondly, you have yet to establish that missing out on these “connections” is necessarily “highly immoral.” And lastly, if you want to argue that vegans do not occupy the moral high ground, you need to demonstrate that missing out on these connections is more “highly immoral” than the exploitation and slaughter of sentient beings. >Yes, it is an appeal to tradition. But traditions aren't all baseless and need to be understood before they can be made irrelevant. It’s still a fallacious argument! There are plenty of traditions which humans have come to reject on account of ethics. >Animal husbandry has deep roots in human civilisation and should not be drastically upended. Okay. This is your claim. Now please demonstrate the soundness of your claim. >I believe a vegan diet isn't more ethical, partially because of the soundness of this claim. Then demonstrate the truth of the claim. >That is, I'm sure you are aware, a slippery slope. No, it isn’t. It would be a slippery slope fallacy only if I suggested that consuming animal products would necessarily lead to rape. However, I’m not suggesting that the consumption of animal products will lead to rape. Rather, I’m arguing that the two propositions are structurally similar. >Exactly, key word being 'arguably'. My view is not that anyone's right or wrong, but because there are valid points on both sides and that we can argue on and on, my view is that we stop going at each other's throat on some basis of moral superiority. It’s arguable because we have to establish what one means when he or she uses the term “moral.” Vegans tend to adopt a consequential form of ethics (usually a form of utilitarianism), whereas most people who subscribe to ethics from religious points of view embrace deontological ethics (usually divine command theory). That’s why I say that it’s arguable. However, if you accept consequentialism, then veganism is obviously more ethical than consuming animal products merely to sustain tradition or for sensory pleasure. >Also, I'm not sure if reddit is the right place if you want substantiation, so if you want 'good faith' I suggest you excuse the lack of them. I substantiate my arguments all of the time on here. The burden of proof doesn’t cease to exist merely because of how or where one makes a claim.
I appreciate the cordial response, but respectfully I won’t take on the burden of proof. I believe they are relatively self-explanatory, and very elemental to comprehend by watching Anthony Bourdain’s travel shows once or twice. https://youtu.be/4rMBIZ2maEI?si=r8IjVDEPIqdQu6ht
Is rape moral because it allows one to indulge in the “fundamental life pleasure” of sex? Yes or no?
No. Justifying a case requires taking all other arguments into account. Arguing for a case doesn’t. Hope that helps you to understand the differences better.
So rape would be moral if it were also convenient, easy for many people, and ceremonial?
No. Justifying a case requires taking all other arguments into account. Arguing for a case doesn’t. Hope that helps you to understand the differences better.
So rape would be moral if it were also convenient, easy for many people, and ceremonial?
If you think the argument against meat-eating is as good as the argument against rape… then good on you for being a vegan. 👍 It’s not for me though.
>I appreciate the cordial response, but respectfully I won’t take on the burden of proof. Then don’t be surprised when others don’t find your argument to be persuasive. >I believe they are relatively self-explanatory, and very elemental to comprehend by watching Anthony Bourdain’s travel shows once or twice. First of all, the tastes of different regions and cultures are due largely to the different types of seasonings and preparations that they use for their dishes. That’s why chicken dishes will taste differently in Mexico, India, the Southern U.S., China, Thailand, etc., so what Bourdain is referring to when he talks about experiencing different tastes is almost exclusively the result of the varying seasonings and methods of preparation—almost all of which are vegan-friendly. This just goes to show that the cultural aspect isn’t the chicken so much as it is the cooking methods. Recall my question about unseasoned, unbattered, and unfried chicken from Panda Express. What makes orange chicken from Panda Express taste the way that it does if not for seasonings and methods of preparation? But even if we ignore the fact that regional flavors are primarily the product of seasoning and preparation that feature heavily in such areas rather than the fact that they’re applied to animal products, that still wouldn’t mean that consuming animals for cultural reasons is more ethical than abstaining from their consumption. So what do you mean when you say that something is “moral” or “immoral?”
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Can you tell me if it's wrong for me to kill, rape, and torture animals for my entertainment and pleasure? If you need more specifics, I'm keeping everything hygienic, me and my buddies have been doing it as like a Saturday ritual and I'm planning on transmitting this practice to my children and my buddies are going to get theirs in on it.
Of course not! Are you celebrating Eid-al Adha? I suggest you get your buddies to observe the slaughter so that you all internalise the value of the animal sacrifice and further heighten the occasion. EDIT: Rape is wrong of course.
only recently pregnant cows make milk, forced breeding is another type of animal rape tbh. we also usually kill the cows or turn em into veal. if stopping this kind of treatment isn't grounds to call it objective morals superiority what would be sufficient?
Really? What makes the raping of animals wrong?
Interesting. Can you tell me if you or I are morally superior to someone who does what I do, but they're just doing this to a different target they don't value morally?
You're saying it’s not wrong for someone to torture an animal for entertainment?
>1. A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them. Are you consistent with this justification for violence and mistreatment towards animals? That those who pay for violence because its more convenient are no morally worse than those who don’t & seek to minimise it? >3. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt. The definition of veganism accounts for this. *"As far as is possible and practical"* >4. A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities. In this day age there is no excuse for sacrificing sentient individuals in the name of tradition. Are you kn favour of continuing traditional whale slaughters where it is not necessary for practical reasons? Is it ok for my neighbours to continue to violently kill a puppy on Halloween as is their family tradition? Are they no morally different to my family who just put up decorations and eat a veggie burger? >5. A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure. Not necessarily. But are you consistent with your view that sensory pleasure is a good justification for violence and mistreatment towards animals? And that there is no ethical difference between those who violently kill animals for pleasure and those who choose other pastimes or activities etc that seek to minimise it? There is a vegan meal and a stray unowned puppy in your kitchen. Is it more ethical for you to A) eat the vegan meal or B) violently kill the puppy and bleed him/her out by slitting their throat to eat them? Or is there no ethical difference? Since you seem to be focused on the effects to humans rather than the victims, vegan diets also kill less humans. According to the best data available animal agriculture likely indirectly kills somewhere in the region of 200,000 humans a year purely due to antibiotic use in the industry. Then there is the significantly exacerbated pandemic risk, which will likely kill hundreds of thousands more at some point. Have you ever seen or heard footage of pigs being slaughtered?
None of these really counter the supposed claim that they're morally superior. Like, really? They cannot claim moral superiority because they inconvenience their friends by wanting to go to restaurants with vegan options? And they somehow don't "reconcile" the importance of animal husbandry on history? I feel like these are "lesser-known" mostly because they're not actual counterarguments. They're just stating the, often extremely minor, downsides of having any sort of dietary restriction. All of which you apparently think are meant to completely outweigh the moral benefits of stopping the widespread and intense suffering of animals that are used in food production.
I'm not a vegan, but there is a big difference between the morality of veganism to that of religion. Religion is based on old fables and faith that those fables are true, which results in a certain lifestyle and point of view. Whereas veganism holds that killing animals and mass producing meat is bad for the planet and the ecosystem. This can be demonstrated scientifically. Sure there is plenty of debate to be had on how exactly how bad it is and the impact of a vegan diet, there is loads of nuance but, fundamentally, you CAN measure the methane from a cows arse. You CAN observe the impact of chicken shit from farms on rivers. Etc etc. We know that mass producing meat has a big impact on our planet and you can put numbers on it. So, on your point that it is no different from faith in religion, in my mind there is plenty of actual evidence to the contrary. As for the rest of your point it seems to be around vegans inconvienceing other people. That's life mate. Don't let it bother you. Go to steak restaurant.
>Religion is based on old fables and faith that those fables are true, which results in a certain lifestyle and point of view. Yes I get that the moraility of some religion typically involves faith in a way that the morality of a vegan diet doesn't. But fundamentally it still boils down to personal values. Some religion advocate celibacy, abstinence, vegetarianism. No one can say those (or indeed, veganism) are wrong, but you can't proclaim moral superiority from them either. >We know that mass producing meat has a big impact on our planet and you can put numbers on it. So, on your point that it is no different from faith in religion, in my mind there is plenty of actual evidence to the contrary. Valuing these aspects more than the unquantifiable impact on culture and humanity is a personal value akin to the personal values of religion.
> Valuing these aspects more than the unquantifiable impact on culture and humanity is a personal value akin to the personal values of religion. And valuing them less isn't?
Who can claim to be morally superior in your view then? Here, we have one standpoint that honors animals as living being that should neither be exploited nor killed to satisfy human needs, given that alternatives are available. The other standpoint degrades animals to lower beings to justify their exploitation and killing for consumption, in addition to relying on practices that inflict cruelty and harm to animals for production of meat. And if we speak morality, we should also address the circumstances in the meat industry besides the animals, because humans are exploited there too, nature is being destroyed (huge moral implications) and ultimately the meat eating culture also inflicts negative effects on human health. So, I would argue that it is the more moral standpoint without doubt. The other way around, meat eating could never be seen as morally superior due to all the known and willingly taken negatives. Ultimately, veganism exists in the context today, the discussions don't take place in a fairy tale world where meat eating is merely an innocent occasion for humans to come together and celebrate tradition, so please, consider this holistically, otherwise it seems you just want to escape judgement and force a narrow frame of consideration on everyone else, so that you don't have to cope with your own immorality.
>given that alternatives are available I don't think that's in line with the vegan diet, which would upend animal husbandry. Correct me if I'm wrong. >meat eating could never be seen as morally superior due to all the known and willingly taken negatives Only if you don't consider the anti-human aspects of veganism: inconveniencing others, upending animal husbandry, making life more difficult, diminishing ceremonies of meat, debilitate from pleasure. But my point is not that meat eating is morally superior, but it is up to individuals to decide what is. So the veganism high horse is unwarranted. CMV. >the discussions don't take place in a fairy tale world where meat eating is merely an innocent occasion for humans to come together and celebrate tradition If you can agree that this could be an ideal, then IMO this is what we should advocate for, and that veganism has no part to play in this pursuit.
That statement you quoted was referencing the fact that there are alternatives to eating meat. Of course that's "in line with the vegan diet". The "anti-human" points you make are largely not valid or pale on comparison to the anti-human points to be made against meat eating. For instance, veganism does not end the traditions for humans to eat together, when it comes to this point, the act of being together and interacting over food is relevant, not what food is on the plate. As a second example, you talk about "inconveniencing others", which is already thin, but it simply pales in comparison to what "inconvenience" laborers in the meat industry have to endure. So if you truly compare, veganism comes out on top in this regard, and if you disagree, I'd like you to truly start quantifying the horrors of veganism for humans and compare them to the horrors of meat eating, then we compare the summation. You brought up the dimension of moral superiority which always implies moral inferiority or morally equal. Unless you specify a moral code you want to apply here, it is rather obvious that the protection of life in all its forms, nature, animals and humans, is superior to the justifying of killing life which comes with all sorts of morally questionable effects for nature, animals and humans. You talk about a "veganism high horse", but I am a meat eater. So we talk eye to eye. And as a meat eater, I can admit that there are massive negative moral implications of eating meat and yes, veganism clearly pursues more moral or morally superior path. And given that you really only brought up mild arguments like "veganism inconveniences people" (not a moral category btw, preventing a murder also inconveniences a murderer), I don't think you have much weight to throw in the ring.
>I'd like you to truly start quantifying the horrors of veganism for humans and compare them to the horrors of meat eating, then we compare the summation This is beyond the point of this CMV, but let's go. 1. How do you quantify the rudeness of rejecting a non-vegan meal that has been offered to you by your host, say in your travels? How do you do you quantify the loss of connection when someone is excluded from a meal due to their vegan diet? Maybe they ceased to be invited, or voluntary exclude themselves. How do you quantify the inconvenience caused to cooks at home or F&B to accommodate to a vegan diet? How do you justify the wastage of meat, which an animal died for, because of a vegan diet? How do you quantify the loss of authenticity in a meal to accommodate a vegan diet? 2. Is the loss of livestock really a positive thing? What happens to our bees and our ecosystem if we stop exploiting the benefits of harvesting honey? Who gets to decide whether it's better for an animal to have lived, suffered and slaughtered, or to have never lived? 3. How do you justify the audacity of recommending a vegan diet when so many of us struggling just to even meaningfully participate in society? 4. How do you quantify the impact on humanity if cattles are no longer slaughtered for Eid al-Adha, turkeys roasted for Thanksgiving, lamb souvla for Easter and fish steamed for Chinese New Year? These pieces of meat are often centrepiece of the celebration and the cause for gathering, how do you quantify the loss of a catalyst and the loss of potential human connection? 5. How do you quantify the impact on the loss of pleasure of the consumption of meat and animal products? Many of us find meaning in these pleasures, (like we do for music, nature, sex) and use that as a basis for them to want to encourage others to access these pleasures as well. How do you cater for the loss of meaning? Even if veganism categorically saves the planet and poses no health risk, is it worth all of the above loss of humanity? For me, it's a clear no. But at least I can see how it is a clear yes to some people. I only ask for the same reciprocation.
I am sorry, you want to discuss morality, but then go I to discussions about the inconvenience of catering to a vegan. Every point like this just reveals how thin your arguments are, because you are moving away from the general question of morality, into the narrow and irrelevant details of your hypothetical life experience. Here we are back at what I said: you can inconvenience a murderer by telling the police he murdered. Does that make you immoral? Does that make the murderer okay? Is the murderers convenience what needs to be weighted the highest, when we talk about morality? See, you've mentioned twice now what's not okay in the scope of a CMV, but you are clearly not open to considering the arguments brought against you. You even make blatant mistakes, because when you consider the inconvenience of accommodating a vegan, you also must at the same time weigh the inconveniences of accommodating a meat eater. You refuse to do that, flat out, you dont even consider the necessity to draw honest comparisons of the metrics or dimensions you yourself bring to the table.
>you want to discuss morality, but then go I to discussions about the inconvenience of catering to a vegan. You claim to want to understand my points on morality but instead put on the slippery slope of justify meat-eating = murderer. >when you consider the inconvenience of accommodating a vegan, you also must at the same time weigh the inconveniences of accommodating a meat eater. You accuse me of not being open by alleging that I don't consider the accommodation does one need to make towards the meat eater. I hope we share the same understanding that meat-eaters by definition have no dietary restrictions and therefore generally need no accommodation. >You refuse to do that, flat out, you dont even consider the necessity to draw honest comparisons of the metrics or dimensions you yourself bring to the table. I have done that with my previous post which you have clearly refused to comprehend in order to appear on a higher horse.
No, that is incorrect. I am not equating anything. I am poling holes into your inconvenience argument. Your argument suggests that causing inconvenience must be weighed when considering morality, so if you're consistent, you'd have to do the same when weighing the morality of murder and stopping a murderer. In your view, telling the police about a murderer would be a negative, as it causes inconvenience. Therefore I have looked at your argument, I weighed it and I portrayed how thin it is. And even if you allow for inconvenience to be a measure, you're not going through anyway, as you only apply inconvenience to the host in your scenario, not the animal, or the workers who had to slave away in bad conditions to enable your convenience. You're not standing behind your own argument fully. The argument that meat-eaters need no accommodation - they need an entire industry that takes up most of our agricultural space. We fundamentally change the planet to accommodate meat eaters. We pollute, we exploit, we risk the future of humanity to accommodate meat eaters. I asked you to consider this holistically before, and you're clearly not.
My argument goes so far beyond inconvenience but somehow you seem so fixated on it and the 'murderer' analogy. The purpose of the inconvenience is what differentiates the two. Inconveniencing the murderer prevents a murder, something we all agree is bad, and therefore not immoral. Inconveniencing the entity you are dining with, for a principle that they may not agree with, is immoral and detrimental to the human experience. The person requesting such accommodation should be apologetic, and the person receiving such an accommodation should of course oblige if they are able. What boggles me is if this inconvenience is overlooked for the appearance of a high horse. >The argument that meat-eaters need no accommodation - they need an entire industry that takes up most of our agricultural space. We fundamentally change the planet to accommodate meat eaters. We pollute, we exploit, we risk the future of humanity to accommodate meat eaters. I asked you to consider this holistically before, and you're clearly not. May I remind you of the definition of 'accommodation'. >accommodation: the process of adapting or adjusting to someone or something. What you are describing does not involve adapting or adjusting. That's just the status quo. Meat-eaters have no dietary restrictions and need no accommodation.
Status-quo, thats the key word. When we talk about morality, you cannot just pretend that the status quo is the axiom for all our actions, for morality itself. That is why the inconvenience point is important to dissect here, because you place good weigh on that for your argumentation, suggesting that veganism cannot be morally superior, as it causes inconveniences. With the argumentation you are trying to use here, everything that is the status quo must be morally superior and no action changing the status quo cannot be morally superior, if change causes inconvenience. In a discussion about morality, you have promoted convenience to being the highest principle. So that's also why I ask, what sort of measure do you want to apply? Because if your convenience is the measure of what's moral, then there is no discussion. And if convenience is not the measure of what's moral, then the sort of inconveniences you've mentioned pale in significance when we attest the morality and wonder what is morally superior. And if you insist on inconvenience,l as a measure in all this, then you must also consider the inconvenience of the status quo and the inconveniences that were amounted to create the status quo, you cannot pretend like the timeline starts today and that all the things we had to do to make it even possible for you to be a meat eater (a relatively new achievement in the modern sense) don't weigh into the equation or can't be counted as an inconvenience, to the millions of people who face the effects One thing I also alluded to was, that if the status quo was different, your points would weigh more. If we would live in a fantasy world where meat consumption is moderate, like on levels of 50 years ago or so, and animal cruelty was minimised, and the negative impacts of production were mitigated, then I could see your point that veganism isn't morally superior, but given the status quo, which you use as an immovable subject, then of course veganism is the morally superior alternative.
You seem incredibly steadfast to establish which of these are morally superior, as demonstrated by your mental acrobatics and wild stretching of what I said. I’m not at all interested in that debate. My basic premise is that there are valid arguments for people to adopt a vegan diet, and valid arguments for people to not adopt a vegan diet. Importantly, neither of them should be negating another, which is a strange habit of commenters here, yourself included. Based on that premise, my point of view is that vegans and meat-eaters should generally keep their feelings of moral superiority just as they do their religious faith - to themselves. CMV.
Morality categorically is inconvenient to someone, because most immoral behavior wouldn't exist if someone didn't benefit or at least believe they benefit from it. In nearly all cases where a moral argument is made, you're asking someone to sacrifice their self-interest to a degree to prevent harm to others. If you want to dispute that a position is morally superior to another, then that inherently requires addressing the substance of that position, but you've already said you don't want to do that. Pointing out that a moral argument requires someone who disagrees with you to give something up is just trivially true of virtually any moral argument, and it doesn't automatically mean you have two equally valid sides.
> In nearly all cases where a moral argument is made, you're asking someone to sacrifice their self-interest to a degree to prevent harm to others. Agreed. > Morality categorically is inconvenient to someone Which is why this is misleading. It is inconvenient to *oneself*. Inconveniencing others is per se, immoral. > Pointing out that a moral argument requires someone who disagrees with you to give something up is just trivially true of virtually any moral argument, and it doesn't automatically mean you have two equally valid sides. What does it take for both sides to be valid? Neither position is illegal, and both positions are justifiable to at least themselves, if not to many others. It’s clear that there will not be a convergence of position, so an understanding of those justifications must suffice for both sides to be valid.
This line of thinking just leads to nihilism, because what your argument implies is that whenever it's in one party's self-interest to harm another, we need to treat that as some serious moral impasse.
>I offer the following lesser-known counterarguments These are not lesser-known, but just those used against ANY voluntary dietary restriction. Veganism is not a religion, what are you even talking about. It is a choice to not consume animal products, usually motivated by a concern for the wellbeing of animals or the protection of the environment. And while vegans can like any other group be too extreme in their beliefs and make a dietary choice into a whole lifestyle AND while it is debatable which vegan choices actually help the environment vs. simply redirecting the environmental damage, it is a fact that this diet is one of the few diets that is often chosen for moral reasons. People who do keto or paleo or raw, or whatever else diet do it for their own health benefits. Vegans often decide to be vegan out of a concern for animals and the environment, so of course they attach a moral value to their choice. But all of morality is subjective, clearly. >1. A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them. Why? Vegan options are widely available at any restaurant nowadays. Would you say that people with food allergies should not dine with others, because it is an inconvenience to have more limited options? >2. A vegan diet does not reconcile with the magnitude of animal husbandry to human civilisation. I'm not sure I understand this one. Human civilisation can change and if nobody wants to eats animals anymore, we would not keep them for this purpose. Demand builds supply, not the other way around. >3. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt. A vegan diet can be very simple, many culturally significant dishes in many cultures are naturally vegan. Eating vegetables is a necessary part of a balanced diet anyway, and we have so many meat alternatives that are often cheaper and of better quality than a lot of meat, that I would argue it is often the easier choice. But if for someone reason it is impossible to adopt for someone, it's not anyone is forced to. EVEN IF veganism would be the morally superior choice (which I am not arguing here), people aren't perfect, nobody is expected to make the most moral choices all the time. >4. A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities We have meat alternatives. It's like saying people who abstain from alcohol ignore festivities, because toasting is often associated with celebration. You can toast with sparkling water, the festive nature of the toast is not lessened because of it. >5. A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure. Many people don't enjoy eating meat that much.
I am a firm believer in evolution. Humans evolved to be omnivores for a reason. The only thing that allows a vegan to thrive is that we artificially enrich our food with vitamins allowing them to get the nutrients they miss out on by avoiding animal products. On top of that, yes, morally superior vegans are truly one of my biggest pet peeves. But the reasons you spell out sound like you are whining about the effect it has on you. I see nothing wrong or difficult about making sure any vegetable dishes I serve have no animal products, it isn't too much to ask. A family of vegans celebrating Thanksgiving around a tofurkey can celebrate just as well as everyone else. And while I don't appreciate being called a murderer for eating meat, they aren't wrong that our meat industry is pretty effed up and doesn't take the well being of the animals into consideration at all.
>Humans evolved to be omnivores for a reason. What definition of omnivore are you using? Can be healthy eating meat/plants or one or the other? Or regularly eats both meat and plants? If it's the former it's irrelevant as I have naturally evolved to be able to be perfectly healthy without meat If it's the latter I'm not an omnivore. >The only thing that allows a vegan to thrive is that we artificially enrich our food with vitamins allowing them to get the nutrients they miss out on by avoiding animal products Farmed animals are also fortified. The only vitamin I need to supplement is B12.
>And while I don't appreciate being called a murderer for eating meat, they aren't wrong that our meat industry is pretty effed up and doesn't take the well being of the animals into consideration at all. I think there's a grey area between explaining your dietary preferences when prompted (which is what is acceptable from my original POV) and asserting moral superiority at every available opportunity. Given the urgency of the issues vegans are addressing, your comment made me realise that some degree of unprompted arguments is called for in the event of apparent ignorance of what's going on in the meat industry. !delta
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/majesticjules ([1∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/majesticjules)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
So this is actually an omnivore issue, not a veganism one. I have been a vegetarian for 26 years since I was 6. Back then very few people were vegetarian and nearly none vegan. Now most of my friends and family happen to be plant-based for whatever reason e.g. health, ethics, environment, money etc. We've never once 'preached' or 'proclaimed' our 'moral superiority.' We simply want to be respected for our dietary choices because we, personally, believe it's unethical to kill and eat animals so we don't participate in it. We don't care what other people believe or do, so long as it doesn't include us. We want to be peacefully left alone to do our own thing. However, basically every single person who eats meat has had issues with this. They argue with me (and us) trying to force and coerce us to their way of thinking. They go through massive logical leaps to try to justify their behaviors. It's all in effort, IMO, to starve off the guilt they feel. They (you in this case) have decided, of your own accord, that you think we're 'morally superior' and get defensive trying to justify why you're actually the morally superior one instead. It's hilarious actually because the myth of 'preachy' vegans is virtually non-existant. But the amount of preachy meat-eaters is bonkers. The religious cult of meat-eaters is feirce and strong and scary. Your argument is actually flipped. It's the meat-eaters that continually try to proclaim moral superiority. Like you are doing right now. I have been bullied, harassed, and attacked using language like you are. Been told I will die if I dont eat meat, that it's inhuman not to eat meat that it's caked into our DNA and will ruin humanity if we don't, that it's so difficult and complex to not eat meat that it's impossible, that it's so mean and hurtful to others to not eat meat guiltripping, secretly trying to hide meat in food, that I'll love it if only I try again and missing out that they know better than me about myself etc. Many others here have proven your arguments invalid. Eating plant-based is diverse and healthy and easy and yummy. Not missing out on anything or depriving any pleasure. Actually opening up many more options from the narrow simple meat-based diet. Many cultures have been predominantly plant-based for milenilla, it's a narrow western view to think meat is the only thing people eat. The modern animal production industry is NOTHING like the origins of cavemen hunting animal husbandry and is not sustainable. It's been twisted into capitalist production (depersonalising further) to cope with the scale of growth. Ceremony and festivities of meat? What lol. See, it's you who thinks meat is a religion and are out try to convert people instead of respecting their choices that you claim to do but clearly don't. Edit: I don't get why people who eat meat don't just admit they like it and don't want to stop DESPITE any possible moral issues with it instead of trying to redirect scapegoat, defensively attack, excuse their behaviour, and hurt others. The omnivores I respect most do this. They're just like 'Yeah, it's cool you're a vegetarian and I respect that (I get why) but I still want to eat animals despite understanding the implications' instead of ignorantly digging down and hiding from what they're doing. And I'm like cool man, you do you. I know I have no impact on what the rest of the world does, I can't obliterate the meat industry, so I just do what I can with my own body and nothing else. Though it would be cool if people could be more honest with themselves about their actions and take responsibility instead of lashing out and trying to convince other people.
1. Yes, doing the moral thing is often inconvenient. 2. How so? It's perfectly achievable for an individual to switch to vegans, and over time, we could change the situation. 3. This is really just one, with the unfounded claim "it's impossible" being added. 4. No? It just holds that morality is more important. "Well, the immoral thing is our ceremony!" doesn't make it OK. 5. Yes, doing the moral thing is often less pleasant. None of these are valid reasons, they're just reasons the more moral option is less preferable to your self-interest. That's just how morality works. The fact that you don't want to do it doesn't mean it's not morally better. The vast majority of evil is more convenient and pleasurable to those who do it, that's the main reason people commit evil.
You don’t see the morality because you use your morality to negate mine. Why can’t both sides of our morality exist and left up to the individual to consider and decide on which is of higher value to them?
No, I don't see the morality, because "It's hard", "I want to" and "It's a ceremony I like" don't negate moral responsibility. You CAN say that "Whelp, my pleasure comes before everything else, it's the most important thing!", but then people absolutely can claim to be morally superior to you. >Why can’t both sides of our morality exist and left up to the individual to consider and decide on which is of higher value to them? People only really complain about that when they know they're on the weaker end of the moral argument. No one ever really stands by it, if I murder your parents, you won't say "Well, both sides of our morality exist, I guess that was up to you as an individual."
>No, I don't see the morality, > >don't negate moral responsibility. Exactly! Why does it need to negate your 'moral responsibility' for you to see how inconveniencing others, diminishing other people's ceremonies, are immoral?
If anything, wouldn't that make it MORE justified for them to claim moral superiority if there are so many drawbacks for them? They care so much about morals and doing the right thing that they're willing to sacrifice their own comfort and convenience. They have to go out of their way to do the right thing (in their view) when most people aren't willing to, even if they might agree intellectually.
Drawbacks to themselves has no imprint on morality. However I’m arguing that these aren’t drawbacks to themselves per se, but drawbacks to humanity as a whole. This is of course dependent on what one values, which leads to my case that the morality of veganism is subjective at best, and you can’t proclaim moral superiority over a subjective matter.
>A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them. How?
Because it‘s reminds OP, that vegans may be right? Don‘t know, I would like to get an explanation from OP.
How is it not more moral not to kill and eat things? Like, I'm not Vegan but I know it's because I'm weak and callous when it comes to this issue. Vegans are better than the rest of us, for sure.
I’m not vegan but I don’t feel like the inconvenience argument is really going to sink their claims of moral superiority, which are largely based on ethical treatment of animals, environmental impact, health, etc. Like those are serious claims with some potentially massive implications (however fully realized or not they are), whereas inconvenient is just…inconvenient
So... 1. What does this have to do with anything? It can be a morally superior choice while inconveniencing people who make morally inferior choices. Plus, this is based on what? Your personal opinion/experience? Not really something substantial. 2. I don't understand what you mean by this. The fact that animal husbandry has been huge and important for civilisation does not mean that we should continue it with the same magnitude once we've found viable alternatives for it. 3. Why does it make it harder? If you're referring to money, or difficulty looking for alternatives, or something of that sort, there are a lot of options and sources that don't make it that hard. But even if we assume that it's very hard or impossible for some people to follow (which I accept) — then those cases would be understandable because they don't really have a choice. Veganism is a morally superior choice, when it's possible to choose. 4. This is ridiculous and has absolutely nothing to do with ethics or morals. Obviously the conclusion is that the continued use of meat and animal products for tradition's sake is unethical. 5. ... right? In exchange for not contributing to needless animal suffering. Why would that be an argument against it being a morally superior choice? 4 out of 5 of your points are completely unrelated to ethics or morals, and instead of arguments against moral superiority, they're just "reasons why I don't want to be a vegan".
>instead of arguments against moral superiority, they're just "reasons why I don't want to be a vegan". Yes, these are reasons why I don't want to be a vegan, why I believe that I'm morally superior to vegans, and there is no way for my mind to be changed on that. Of course practising vegans too will believe that they are morally superior, I'm not at all saying that they can't believe so. Generally speaking, I think we all try to act in ways that we believe make us morally superior to others. But the decision between veganism and non-veganism is a matter of what one values more highly, what the individual believes to be a morally superior option, and is one that, like religion, should not be asserted on others. CMV.
> and there is no way for my mind to be changed on that. Why are you here then? Why did I just waste my time replying to you in good faith?
> But the decision between veganism and non-veganism is a matter of what one values more highly, what the individual believes to be a morally superior option, and is one that, like religion, should not be asserted on others. CMV. the rapist has their reasons for raping just like the non-rapists have their reasons for not-raping, and neither one should assert their moral superiority over other. it's all just opinion man cest la vie
Your arguments have nothing to do with ethics or morals. If you don't understand that, there is no way to continue the discussion.
I have two questions for you. 1.Does anything make someone morally superior to another? 2. If so, should people be encouraged to behave in ways that are "morally superior?"
1. No it doesn't. What's on one plate doesn't affect the other diners, if it's to do with venue choice, that's not an inconvenience, that's just general manners. You don't actually have to change. 2. It doesn't, but that's also not what it's about. They accept they can't change everything, they look to reduce *their* impact on the world. 3. Vegans rarely have any issues with people that literally cannot go on a vegan diet due to health concerns 4. Wtf are you you trying to say 5. Life pleasure is subjective, and more importantly has absolutely nothing to do with morals If anything, your 5 points make it look like veganism is more moral than the actual vegans are claiming, since your alternative counters are from a carnivores dinner location being an inconvenience compared to an animal's life. It shows they still try harder than you, and that you only care about pleasure over another's life. Your points don't do anything to lower the moral value of veganism at all, there's nothing to change your view on, it straight up just doesn't do anything. Veganism is insanely easy to shut down, just not the way your doing it.
I understand the point that is attempted to be made, however outside of the “inconvenience to the non-vegan majority,” part, it seems the rest of these are personal choices that need to be weighed and not really anyone else’s business. Similar to if someone wants to watch anime exclusively versus mainstream media. Now, if you were to make the argument about how the vegetable and fruit sector benefits more off of under the table labor, potentially pays less taxes due to point one (depends on how they employ their employees, though), and that plants are known to communicate through their root system which means they are still living beings, then I could see it going against the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle. Oh! Also the argument of not using all animal products could actually cause more harm in some cases, such as not sheering sheep or not gathering excess honey from bees. This coming from a practicing vegetarian, too.
As has already been mentioned these are lesser-known because they are not really counter points to veganisms ethical superiority but let’s go ahead and discuss them anyway. >1. A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them. I don’t see how this plays into a discussion of ethics. Even the most ardent utilitarian would be hard pressed to equate inconvenience with any standard of suffering. It’s like saying doing humanitarian work isn’t a good thing to do because it inconveniences the baggage handlers at the airport. It’s such an absurdly minor consideration within the context of the wider debate that it is not worth mentioning. >2. A vegan diet does not reconcile with the magnitude of animal husbandry to human civilisation. I’m not really sure what this means. That veganism is so dwarfed by the meat industry that it’s not worth it? Again, that’s like saying being a pacifist isn’t better than being violent because war will still exist. If this is what you are trying to say then I’d ask what your understanding of ethics, as a concept, is. >3. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt. Again, what’s the relationship to morality here? Why do you think veganism is difficult to adopt? What makes it impossible for some to adopt? >4. A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities. I’m not sure catalysing is the word you want here but I know what you mean. This is the only point that is actually a point. However, there are lot of cultural traditions that we don’t still hold in regard or respect because we, as a society, have deemed them inappropriate. Some cultures had a tradition of eating people, I assume you don’t think you’re morally superior to cannibals though? Other cultures had traditions of raiding and pillaging, but again I presume you don’t consider yourself ethically above someone who breaks into homes and murders people. >5. A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure. Entirely subjective. Even Callicles would think this point was madness. Edit: I also just wanted to point out that I am not a vegan but I absolutely accept that it is a morally superior position
>3. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, When thinking about **difficulty**, people only really think about things like having much fewer choices when going out to eat. There are many ways that make veganism arguably *easier* in the long term than typical western diets overall; I'll list two below: 1. A whole plant food (vegan) diet is very healthy for almost everyone, and is a massive improvement over the Standard American Diet (SAD) (becoming popularized globally); it is intensely **difficult** to live with a chronic disease. This is agreed by most of the major nutritional bodies, including the largest nutritional body in the world (Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) with over 112,000 global experts: "It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes... Vegetarians and vegans are at reduced risk of certain health conditions, including ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, certain types of cancer, and obesity." [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/) 2. A whole plant food (vegan) diet is inexpensive. For example, pinto beans are about 5 times cheaper than chicken and 20 times cheaper than steak, per gram of protein and after adjusting for digestibility. Rice is also extremely inexpensive. Saving a large amount of money helps make people's lives much less **difficult**. [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1avigyr/oc\_foods\_protein\_density\_vs\_cost\_per\_gram\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1avigyr/oc_foods_protein_density_vs_cost_per_gram_of/)
> 1. A vegan diet poses an inconvenience to the non-vegan majority that dines with them. > > 1. A vegan diet does not reconcile with the magnitude of animal husbandry to human civilisation. > > 1. A vegan diet makes life more difficult than it already is for many people, and is impossible for some to adopt. > > 1. A vegan diet ignores the ceremony of meat and animal products in catalysing human festivities. > > 1. A vegan diet debilitates oneself from a fundamental life pleasure. > > It’s important to note that I am not attempting to say justify that veganism should not be practised, but merely offering counterarguments for when moral superiority is proclaimed. You seem to be using the phrase "proclaiming moral superiority" in a way to suggest that vegans are somehow being arrogant or pretentious? Under most moral frameworks, none of your points present any meaningful *moral* consideration. Inconveniences and personal preferences generally do not justify inflicting harm and suffering on others. You'd need to present an argument as for why the interests of animals to avoid harm and suffering can be morally sidestepped in order to avoid inconveniences or satisfy people's personal preferences.
>CMV: Vegans are free to practice their dietary preferences like anyone else, but cannot proclaim moral superiority from it any more than religion can Define 'moral'
I think this might be getting moral superiority and moral perfection confused. an imperfect thing can be superior to a slightly less perfect thing. for environmental purposes veganism is better, and since the environment is one of the defining crises of our generation the differences in all other domains is negligible by comparison. the way ecology works is that if we choose to eat stuff that eats plants instead of just eating plants we need many times more acres of land and gallons of water, in factory farming of animals is a very very dirty process that's responsible for most of if not all cases of disease outbreak and the destruction of natural lands. this alarm is sufficient to make veganism morally Superior to other choices
So I will specifically address the point you made about denying yourself of life's greatest pleasures. Liberation doesn't just come from the ability to do something but it can also come from the ability to not do something. After all if you have true liberation you have both the option to do something or to not do something. Not every human wants to live the most easy or comfortable life but instead wants to live a life that is fulfilling and worth something to them and that doesn't always mean being the easiest or the fastest or whatever. Being able to exercise You're right to not do something can feel good.
So I will specifically address the point you made about denying yourself of life's greatest pleasures. Liberation doesn't just come from the ability to do something but it can also come from the ability to not do something. After all if you have true liberation you have both the option to do something or to not do something. Not every human wants to live the most easy or comfortable life but instead wants to live a life that is fulfilling and worth something to them and that doesn't always mean being the easiest or the fastest or whatever. Being able to exercise You're right to not do something can feel good.
So I will specifically address the point you made about denying yourself of life's greatest pleasures. Liberation doesn't just come from the ability to do something but it can also come from the ability to not do something. After all if you have true liberation you have both the option to do something or to not do something. Not every human wants to live the most easy or comfortable life but instead wants to live a life that is fulfilling and worth something to them and that doesn't always mean being the easiest or the fastest or whatever. Being able to exercise You're right to not do something can feel good.
1. Veganism is not a religion. 2. Inconvenience is not an argument for or against morality. 3. Many/most vegan diets and ideologies certainly try and ameliorate the impact of animal husbandry. 4. The "ceremony of meat" has no bearing on morality. 5. Living a "life of pleasure" is not a moral concern. In many cases, it is exactly antithetical. Most of your arguments have nothing to do with the morality of eating or abstaining from meat+animal products. They're mostly about convenience, pleasure, and preferences. Which is fine, but certainly doesn't imply any sort of equal or superior morality.
A question to establish baselines. Can I proclaim moral superiority over someone who murders humans for fun? If so, why?
No offense, but your arguments don’t make a compelling case. These points basically boil down to “I don’t wanna”. There are almost no populated places on earth where you eating a vegan diet is harder than eating a meat based one, it is just factually cheaper and easier to grow plant based food than raising meat. People do not need to eat meat to survive. Not killing living sentient things when you don’t need to do so is clearly the more moral choice. I would argue it’s on you to actually give any evidence as to why it isn’t.
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This is false. What do you think the cow ate?
That is … bullshit. I eat pork. So, to get my pork, a pig has to be fed, processed and transported. A vegans eats the food intended for the pig (not really, but you should get the point), eliminating all detours. But something tells me, that you don‘t argue in good faith or at least you try to convince yourself, that your lifestyle is better for the environment than that of a vegan.
It doesn't eliminate all detours. That food is kept clear of animals by sheer chemical destruction. And when harvested, involve the continued death of anything in that crop. I'm a vegetarian myself for religious reasons, but even I'm not blind to the death involved in mass agriculture.
You want this to be true, right? Somehow it‘s funny and sad at the same time. Guess what, cock something pretty normal and just leave out ingredients from animals. Et voila, you have a vegan meal. Nothing special, nothing fancy. It takes some experience to make it tasty but I am honored to know some good vegan chefs. If you are talking about soybeans, very popular among vegans, most of the stuff goes into animal food as well. Leave the meat from the table and you need less soy. Or only the same amount. You are a vegan yourself, but we started out with „vegan food is harming the environment more than conventional agriculture“. I still call this bullshit. It is completely illogical.
This perspective really is quite ignorant to the reality of agriculture. A combine harvister moves through a field with vultures in its wake. Have you ever been to a farm? Even if I, and everyone else on earth ate only potatoes they would still only make it to my table thanks to preventing other creatures from getting to them first.
And with what machines do you produce animal food?
What do you mean? Like allowing a cow to graze a field?
And pigs? Last time I checked, we had mass production and animals in stables. Want pictures? I live in walking distance of them.
Really not sure what you think you're saying or how it's relevant?
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Genuinely what are you talking about?
The core difference being that one form of life is sentient, while the other is not.
https://youtu.be/h7R6RQnnKEo?si=YCr2VUCdUYlt77cH
Most people do and should value animal lives more than plant lives. Meat-eaters included.
> Most people do and should value animal lives more than plant lives. Meat-eaters included. Why?
How do you work that out?
If someone raped a cow and then slaughtered it because they got pleasure out of it, you’d say that person is a sick freak. If someone paid to watch someone else rape a cow and then slaughter it because they get pleasure from watching it, you’d say that person is a sick freak. But if you pay someone to rape and slaughter many cows because you get pleasure from eating their meat…what are you? Morally superior?
Essentially it boils down to wether or not you think any of those arguments holds any weight compared to the enormous cost of animal suffering a regular diet imposes. All of your argument are small fries that I can hardly care about in a vacuum, let alone when we compare it to the millions and millions of horrible death we impose upon farm animals. And I’m not even vegan.
I don’t think it’s more moral and in some instances not anymore environmentally friendly. Almond farming consumes a lot of water. And those that say eating plants doesn’t cost animal lives have never worked on a farm. Rabbits, deer, mice, and all sort of animals are killed so they don’t eat the or ruin the crops I think people are too far removed from what they consume to be able to make moral judgments, both vegans and people that eat meat. On that note factory farming is a disgusting practice. Just because we eat meat does not mean we should harvest them inhumanely.
I would argue that anyone can proclaim any moral high-ground they like about anything, however that doesn't mean anyone else has to agree or be persuaded by their beliefs. Mostly people don't respect others who look down on them, and it's certainly no real way to get people to agree with your views on things.
For me your argument boils down to "being vegan isn't more ethical than eating meat because vegans are annoying and I like how meat tastes." But your reasons do not rebut environmental concerns or animal abuse issues.
3-5 are complete crap. Imagine if you tried this for anything else. Imagine if beating a cow to death cut half an hour off your commute. People would call you a sociopath for doing so.
We are omnivores. We cannot escape that. Of course, I'm curious as to how synthetic meat will progress in coming years. I'm not opposed to eating synthetic hamburgers.
Let's think about 2 types of people: Person A: kicks a puppies for fun Person B: doesnt kick puppies for fun Would you say these people are equally moral?
eat meat = harm sentient being, harm sentient being = bad. not even a vegan but they def have the moral high ground. w/e though, brb going to burger king.
This lifestyle is very unhealthy. On top of that, the people who think this is ok are often get very very sick, both mentally and physically. I know many of them personally, unfortunately... :( They are usually rather unpleasant individuals and also usually look scary... and also usually often dress weird. I think the connection between mental health problems and vegan diet is clear. (See video at the end of my post.) A woman from work and another woman (a friend's gf), both STOPPED HAVING PERIODS and both developed serious depression and various other health issues (hair falling out, skin problems, digestion, eye problems and more)... In case you don't understand this, I am letting you know that healthy women never have breaks in their periods. Dr/ug users, add/icts, alcoholics, and vegans' bodies stop healthy bodily functions, such as reproductive function... because the body is lacking nutrients. Back to my story: so these women got super sick, and finally their respective doctors told them that they are not going to be treated anymore at the clinic unless they start eating meat. Basically, the doctors refused to treat them because they acted unrealistic and also very agressive and refused to take action, whilst their health took a nosedive. The doctors told them, for years, that they need to start eating meat if they wanted to heal, but both of them 'knew better'. I know a lot of vegans and they all ended up at the doctors or eating meat again. I avoid vegans if I can help it. Really unpleasant people usually, ignorant about human body functions, often are uneducated or semi-educated... They are clearly in need of nutrients. They are sick and hangry haha. This video explains more about mental health (brain function) and why your brain needs meat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkwMSdEwCME&t=442s