I find vegan intellect fascinating. I love hearing their responses to my epistomology. They all make it up as they go along. It’s very similar to religious beliefs in the way it is personal. Each has their own set beliefs on where to draw the line of what is vegan and what is not.
My personal understanding of the world is that plants aren’t so different from animals that they can be classified separately from other food sources. For example, how much different is r-selected reproduction from a fruiting plant. Plants react differently to different colors of light and so do we.
It helps to understand the goal of a vegan. The extent to which we are tied to every living thing on Earth means that many vegans have set impossible goals.
Just fascinating.
I’ve always wondered if vegetables from a farm that uses horse-drawn tills instead of tractors would be vegan… It’s a real question, but everyone I ask thinks that I’m trolling.
Here’s my weird question: if faux leather is plastic and someone is vegan for environmental reasons, would leather be preferable? What if it’s a byproduct and would otherwise be trashed? These are things I think about as someone who tries to reduce my impact on the environment as much as I feasibly can in a capitalist society.
Depends on the faux leather. There absolutely are alternatives to leather that are less environmentally taxing than leather. Leather needs to be cured, for example, and the entire leather production process is very water-intensive and involves a lot of nasty chemicals. So apart from using a dead animal’s skin to wear, it’s also abysmal for the environment.
I mean I think it can be boiled down pretty simply: cause the least harm to living things that you can personally manage, according to your definition of harm. Having impossible goals isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If your impossible goal is to make a billion dollars ethically, and you get to 50 million being 95% ethical, you could still consider that a win, even though you didn’t reach your impossible goal.
Even the simple goal of “always being a good person 100% of the time” is probably impossible to achieve over an entire lifetime while meeting every person’s definition of it. That doesn’t mean it’s useless for someone to strive for that within their definition of “good person”.
In fact I’d say the vast majority of meaningful, non trivial goals could be considered “impossible”.
ethical vegans (and not people who eat plant-based for nutritional reasons, and often get conflated with people doing it for ethics reasons) generally agree on one very simple rule:
To reduce, as much as possible, the suffering inflicted upon animals.
That’s it.
Where that line is drawn of course depends on your personal circumstances. Some people require life-saving medicine that includes animal products, and are generally still considered vegan.
I’d like to see what about this confuses you and your epistomology [sic, and that word doesn’t mean what you think it means]
I am not confused. I am curious and fascinated on how people come to their conclusions. I know exactly what epistomology means. I have used it for conversations with many vegans about their choices as well as on other personally held beliefs. I could be a lot better at it but it has helped me show that I am curious and respectful.
I’m curious, how do you use a branch of philosophy, that’s concerned with the abstract theory of knowledge and the limits of human reasoning, in conversations?
it’s epistemology, btw
It’s easy to judge down from that high horse of i-dont-care.
I’m no vegan (nor vegetarian), but the mission of an animal-rights-activist (that is also logically vegan in consequence) is surely to minimize any harm (s)he knows of. It’s very simple. The limits of a dietary or fashin-trendy vegan is not so clear. As they usually don’t really have spent a lot of time reflecting about it, but just follow some basic idea they’ve found somewhere. And maybe try to “adapt” it a lil.
Also your plant-argument was had like 30yrs ago already. Makes you sound super-intelligent, having figured out their major flaw all on your own :-)
The goal is not impossible. The goal is (or probably just should be) to minimize suffering if its existence is not unbeknownst to us. That’s really a very basic logic that doesn’t require much computing power.
There was no tone of judgement in my response. I hope that’s not what you got from it. I said I find it fascinating the way they think. This is not limited to vegans but it is easier to get someone to talk about this than other beliefs.
I have no doubt that minimizing suffering is the higher goal. I meant that if their goal is to to use no food or product that involves using animals (within their personal definition) that they will find nothing in this world that is without impact from or to animals. That’s what makes it impossible.
True to that. Easier to talk with people about veganism than their religion :-)
I get your sense of logic, but it’s inherently flawed. So you’re saying, if there’s no way to 100% an ethic, it’s better to just totally skip it? Of course you can’t 100% live in this world without somehow touching an animals life by some degree. But it’s about what one CAN do. The more one knows about this world, the more one could avoid. Ignorance is bliss, the evil I don’t know is the evil I must not fight. But the moment I get knowledge of unjust X, I can do my best do avoid unjust X to the best of my abilities. Not even judgin in, us just being flawed humans. If I do 99% of everything I know right, and just fucked up the 1%. Am I still a bad person and suck at my ethics?
It’s an all well and good philosophy, but i think it’s just attempts to feel better about oneself. There’s no reason you can’t be satisfied with not eating meat and at least feel like you’re doing your part, but NOO the dogma must be pushed onto everyone else.
The truth is a lot of meat eaters simply don’t care about farm animal suffering, so arguments don’t even matter because if every single argument from a meat eater were to be undeniably refuted, many would still not be converts. So many of these vegans want to go the communist route and revolt. Does this seem like a healthy philosophy to you?
It would start making sense to you, if you’d see the analogy in racism et al (unless of course you are one, then it won’t). An animal-rights-activist-vegan sees it that way and hence has a hard time to “shut up” about it. Like you would when you’d enter some nazi-meeting. Can’t just sit there, doing nothing, and thus invoking the feeling you’re part of it.
It’s not vegans per se, it’s those that are just vegans as a direcr consequence, not those that follow a dietary decision.
What a word salad. Your comment can be applied to anything because people are different lol. All my friends who are dads have different ideas on how to be a dad. Fascinating. It helps to understand the goal of a parent. All my friends with jobs define success in different ways. It’s like they’re all making it up as they go along. Fascinating. It helps to understand the goals of a worker.
It’s ok to set “impossible” goals if you view them as directions rather than destinations.
Fascinating huh?
Reacting to stimuli like the colour of light is irrelevant. My phone camera would fall into the same category, then. A light switch reacts to getting pressed and turns on a light, it’s reacting to a stimulus.
What matters is sentience, which plants cannot possess, since they don’t have a central nervous system. And even if they did, a diet that includes meat takes more plants, since those animals have to be fed plants in order to raise them.
They all make it up as they go along. It’s very similar to religious beliefs in the way it is personal. Each has their own set beliefs on where to draw the line of what is vegan and what is not
The extent to which we are tied to every living thing on Earth means that many vegans have set impossible goals.
Regarding these two, is this any different from human rights? Where people draw the line regarding slave labour, child labour, which type of humans they care about (considering racism, homophobia, trans phobia, ableism etc). I’m sure lots of people have impossible goals regarding human rights, but working to get as close to those as possible is still sensible.
The response to light color does not stand on its own. That is merely one parallel from many. It is true plants do not have a nervous system like animals, but they do have similar responses to stimuli. Parallels can be drawn to sight, sound/touch and smell/taste.
Sentience is another topic that is defined subjectively. From context it is clear you make a central nervous system a foundational requirement. I could also apply this to technology, so I would need clarification from you to understand what it means to you. I do not hold to a personal definition for sentience because I have found neither a universal nor scientific understanding of the idea.
As for the last paragraph: yup.
Again, all of these reactions to stimuli can be explained as direct, chemical reactions, not signals that get sent to a central unit, are processed, being “felt”, and then being reacted to. There is no one thing or being in plants like the central nervous system of animals that is capable of feeling something.
Regarding the topic of sentience, I propose looking at it like this:
There’s a range of definitions that is somewhere around it being the capacity to perceive, to be aware, to be/exist from ones own perspective. However you define it, a central nervous system or other type of similar central unit would have to be a requirement, because that is what would actually be sentient. You are your brain, your hand is just part of your body, if it was chopped off, it by itself is not sentient.
And whatever vague definition of it you go with, there’s two options: Either sentience is real, or it isn’t. If it isn’t real, literally nothing matters, gg. If it is real, non-human animals with central nervous systems, and therefore sentience and the capacity to suffer, deserve ethical consideration, and we should do what is reasonably possible to reduce their suffering and death.
Since we don’t know the answer to the existence of sentience, we should err on the side of caution. If we’re wrong, and we’re all as sentient as a rock, the inconvenience we’d have suffered in our efforts to protect fellow sentient-but-actually-not beings can’t be felt by us, no harm done. If we’re right, the suffering we’ll have prevented, in both scale and intensity, is indescribable.
I feel so kindred with the way you see things. You’re making an observation and you’re curious about the “why” of everything. I feel people often read my similar interest in a subculture as critical. Kind of like how bluntness can be perceived as rude, I guess. Do you ever have a similar response happen to you?
Just look at the other responses to my comments.
In real life it can be better or worse. Some of the closest people in my life get immediately defensive. It’s sometimes easier to talk with strangers. More often than not, I will find a passion point that is the limit of conversation. At those times I just listen as much as possible. How much I engage depends on how they rect to my questions.
Veganism has and always will be just dogma. I find it quite annoying how individuals can so freely push their moral philosophy onto others. Veganism should always be a personal philosophy.
Also, there are now many vegans (considered bottom-up vegans) taking the communist route and basically advocating for revolutions in order to cease animal food production.
I have conversed with quite a few vegans and none of them have pushed their morals on others. Some of them have been very upfront about their veganism. I am wondering where you are that you see vegans being so revolutionary.
When i speak of ones that push their moral philosophy on others (rather aggressively i might add), I’m talking about the vegans that walk into restaurants to cause a fuss. I’m talking about the ones that criticize and talk down on meat eaters for their habits. There are many who do practice veganism as a personal philosophy. I guess dogma always attracts “bad apples”
Also, i never claimed all vegans were revolutionary. I’m specifically referring to “bottom-up vegans” who advocate for more aggressive and hands-on methods in preventing animal farming rather than waiting for government reforms akin to a revolution.
