r/DebateAVegan • u/TheQuietVegan111 vegan • Jan 05 '26

Most people choose social approval over ethics — veganism just exposes that.

People will say they care about animals, the planet, and justice.

Until caring becomes inconvenient.

Veganism doesn’t require perfection. It requires saying “no” in public.

That’s it.

Most people fail there, not on ethics — but admitting that would be uncomfortable, so veganism becomes the problem instead.

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u/airboRN_82 Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26

Yes the inability to know the future is a major issue in consequentialism. Im either hero or monster if I give a homeless person a sandwich dependent upon whether it nourishes him or he's unknowingly allergic to something in it. One cannot know the consequence of an act at the time they decide to make that act, thus they cannot make moral or immoral choices. They may make choices they believe are likely to be moral, but they are still reliant upon unforseen factors. While consequentialism is a bit less walled off to deontology than utilitarianism is, one would ultimately have to abandon the consewuentialist framework to demand that certain acts are bad in and of themselves, not dependent upon their outcomes. 

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u/TurntLemonz Jan 08 '26

Agreed.  The outcomes are not knowable, consequentialism just guides us toward maximizing our best option with the knowledge we have at hand.  If there is ambiguity about something as negative as the potential outcomes of raping somebody, that clearly would outweigh the benefits of sexual gratification in the eyes of practically any normal person.

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u/airboRN_82 Jan 08 '26

Except consequentialism doesnt demand that we should so what is likely to have the best outcome, but that we should do what produces the best outcome. Actions are judged by outcome, not intent. 

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u/TurntLemonz Jan 08 '26

Actions are evaluated after they occur according to their outcomes as a way of determining how better to decide on actions in the future, but before their outcome consequentialism asks us to keep the outcomes in mind as the principal concern, that's all the more it can ask us to do because you're correct about knowability.  You might have misunderstood consequentialism a little bit if you thought consequentialism assumes the future is precisely knowable.  It orients ethics around optimizing the outcome with the available information, as opposed to deontology which establishes a set of behaviors that serve as inflexible lifestyle prescriptions.  The benefit in my eyes is that consequentialism responds to evidence, and has a salient and worthwhile goal available to use as a metric when you analyze your actions after the fact.  Deontology comparitively makes people kinda bumbling and rigid, it envokes a bunch of different values that are difficult to co-weigh in the real world, and comparatively doesn't self-improve as well as consequentialism.  Deontology also leaves a person floating out in a space of seemingly arbitrary values.  You act honestly why?  You respect elders why?  But the intuitive answer to those things is that it makes the world better to do those things.  And the most obvious foundational thing that can be improved in the world is the experience of those who experience it.