The morality behind veganism

[Syne]

Well, it’s not rocket science.  You’ve been preaching ethical consistency.  According to you, ethics requires consistency across the board.  Therefore, you’d oppose legal abortion in all cases, including rape and incest for adults and minors.

It's not rocket science, yet you seem to need these things explained to you in excruciating detail. If you want to make up strawmen in order to avoid my questions, it just demonstrates how little good faith you bring to intellectual discussions.

Do you support the death penalty?

[Syne]

So...after she derailed this thread into a discussion of abortion, SS seems to have silently slunk away again. I guess it's only fun if you think you're scoring points, huh? Sure seems that it was one too many difficult questions to arduously avoid. Go have yourself a spa day and recover, SS.

[Syne]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/i_BcYSTYErE

[confused2]

beef $4.7/kg
https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=beef

corn $0.249/kg
https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=corn

So feeding 20 tons of corn to cattle to get 1 ton of beef only makes sense when you see that a ton of beef is worth 20 times more than a ton of corn.

The reality of meat production is just capitalism red in tooth and claw.

It has nothing to do with hunting - pigs, buffalo or any other animal. Nothing to do with squirrels or grasshoppers or monkeys eating monkeys. Just capitalism.

[Syne]

Apparently someone completely missed the entire point of the video. It's not a comparison. It's taking a vegan's "ethical" stance, alone, and showing that it is hypocritical on its face. Just using simple objective facts. Now if vegans want to start saying "some killing is fine," taking a utilitarian ethical stance, they could avoid this hypocrisy. But this "all killing of animals is wrong" just doesn't jive with their own behavior.

Then if we're taking a utilitarian ethical stance, we'd also have to factor in the total benefit/harm to humans as well, in the form of poorer countries not being able to produce enough plant protein to survive and the health implications of having no complex animal proteins in our diets.

[confused2]

To quote the vegan society.. ( https://www.vegansociety.com/about-us/fu...%20animals ).

What is veganism? A lifestyle that avoids all animal foods such as meat, dairy, eggs and honey; animal derived products like leather; and, as far as possible, products tested on animals.

I'm not sugggesting for a moment that the vid was produced by ignorant or stupid people - they are 'influencers' sponsored to address issues with the intention of convincing people like yourself of things that aren't true.

Edit .. Maybe not sponsored .. Sheridan (your goto source for information about vegans) is the owner of 6666 Ranch and Four Sixes Ranch Brand Beef.

[Syne]

Again, morons always avoid the actual point to attack strawmen.

Ethical veganism is based on opposition to speciesism, the assignment of value to individuals based on (animal) species membership alone.
...
Donald Watson, co-founder of The Vegan Society, asked why he was an ethical vegan, replied, "If an open-minded, honest person pursues a course long enough, and listens to all the criticisms, and in one's own mind can satisfactorily meet all the criticisms against that idea, sooner or later one's resistance against what one sees as evil tradition has to be discarded."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism#Ethical_veganism

If you devalue the lives of ground squirrels, grasshoppers, etc., in order to grow more crops, you are literally violating your own ethical stance against speciesism... e.g. hypocrisy. You do not live up to your own espoused ethics, and thus have zero authority to preach it to anyone else.


Personally, I just like meat and see zero ethical problems with it. I don't actually need anyone, influencer or otherwise, to convince me of what I already believe. I believe speciesism is correct. But maybe vegetarians or vegans do need that sort of external validation.... that conveniently avoids these ethical contradictions.

[confused2]

As before ..

The Vegan Society currently defines veganism as "a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vegan_Society

If you don't agree with the vegan society about what a vegan is .. that's all.

[Syne]

Again...again, the video is talking exclusively about the ethics of veganism.

"...as far as is possible and practical," objectively means as far as convenient. Because it obviously and objectively is possible to allow animals and pests to feed on some percentage of your crops to avoid killing them with pesticides, avoid exploiting pollinators, and plant in smaller concentrations to avoid displacing species from their natural habitats. So that's just a cop-out that illustrates the hypocrisy. But vegan crops are just as much an industry as any meat production. Again, unless they are expressly espousing a utilitarian ethic, they are simply hypocrites.

Ethical veganism is based on opposition to speciesism, the assignment of value to individuals based on (animal) species membership alone. Divisions within animal rights theory include the utilitarian, protectionist approach, which pursues improved conditions for animals. It also pertains to the rights-based abolitionism, which seeks to end human ownership of non-humans. Abolitionists argue that protectionism serves only to make the public feel that animal use can be morally unproblematic (the "happy meat" position).
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism#Ethical_veganism

So not only do they fail to "exclude...all forms of exploitation," even direct exploitation of pollinators, they are obviously not utilitarians, as the conditions of animal exploitation are not included in their definition.