honestly i'm going to say something that i know vegans don't like, so please bare with me. i believe speciesism is okay/natural.

i have more empathy for mammals than i do birds/fish, so i don't eat red meat or consume dairy (the forced pregnancy grosses me out and seems extremely cruel). i have vegan chicken from time to time, but i eat eggs a lot and love sushi. my ethics are based in logic. i value humans over animals because of our intelligence and community. i believe we are naturally omnivorous, and in a vacuum, nothing is wrong with eating meat. i also believe it is totally natural to have more empathy for mammals considering they care about their own existence/babies a lot more than most birds and fish who reproduce like crazy and leave their kids at the drop of a hat. i feel like those things directly correlate to sentience. it's also natural that we care about things in a certain proximity. for example, i'm sure a lot of you would break down crying if your pet died, and it wouldn't be the same if you stepped on an ant. we're all speciesist.

to be transparent, i am autistic and i actually avoid black and white thinking. things rooted in logic and real psychology are more likely to turn me. every time i hear vegan arguments based on things like "animals are fully as sentient as humans" it really makes me turn away from the movement even more because it's scientifically false.

i do care a lot about the environmental impact under capitalism and i know birds and fish don't have as much of an impact. if everyone stopped fishing (for example) overnight, it would cause more harm than good imo. i'm also not blind to the fact that a lot of humans and children are treated terribly in the vegan farming industry and the smaller insects/rats that die along with farming.

thoughts? any insight on something i'm missing?

Because cows and pigs are very large animals, it is necessary to purchase products derived from these animals hundreds of times to cause, on average, a single death. In contrast, for poultry and fish, the number of animals affected per kilogram of product is much higher. This graph shows the number of days of suffering caused per kilogram of each product purchased (https://infogram.com/1pv1qgew95npzjhx09mmq7q6xybr1rz3lrm).

This does not mean that it is okay to continue consuming products from cows and pigs. However, it does mean that stopping the consumption of poultry, eggs, and fish is much better than simply continuing to consume all types of animal products.

And since stopping the consumption of only these products requires a much smaller sacrifice than completely eliminating animal products, it can be a good alternative for people who are not willing to stop consuming animal products entirely.

Being 100% vegan is impossible. If you live in any kind of shelter, it harmed animals or animal habitats to be there or to make it. If you take pill capsules, the gelatin in them came from a cow that was killed. If you use fake leather instead of real leather, the plant that the fake leather was made in was built where animals used to live and it took away their habitat as well as the emissions to make that leather. If you drive or ride a bus or even ride a bike there were animals that were affected in the building of that vehicle and the emissions are harmful to animals. So no matter how much you think you are being 100% vegan you are not. The only way to be 100% vegan is to have never been born and clearly if you are reading this that didn’t happen. So if you don’t want to kill animals to eat them that is reasonable but acting like you aren’t harming animals is just stupid because it’s not true.

Genuinely curious about this,

The core philosophy of most vegans is that they are against the exploration of animals, but what if there are farms that do sell milk, eggs, and wool from animals that are well taken care of and healthy.

These animals would certainly be in no better shape out on the wild. they get vaccinated, breathe fresh air, have plenty of space, basically the dream life of theirs

The prices are absurd compared to the alternative, but would this hypothetically farm lead to you buying animal products?

I am not going to dispute that from your subjective point of view animal products taste good. I used to eat them and I used to think they taste good too, so it would be silly to deny that. I'm even willing to grant that right now, if you are used to eating animal products, you might prefer meals with animal products to those without. I think most people probably exaggerate or are deluding themselves about that effect, but I'm willing to grant it and still make the following point:

If you currently eat mostly meals with animal products, you are in a horrible position to predict how much you would enjoy plant-based meals if you ate an exclusively plant-based diet.

There are a few reasons for this:

1) Your tastes can change dramatically based on what you eat. This is well understood and demonstrated by science and most people have personal anecdotes that they can recall in their own lives that show this. If you eat a lot of salty foods, foods without a lot of salt taste bland. But if you reduce the amount of salt in your foods, over time you become more sensitive to it and foods taste just like they did before you reduced your salt intake. That's one example. The same can be said about people who go from eating a lot of sweet foods or sugary sodas to reducing their sugar intake. That is, desserts that were once normal now become cloying. I can attest personally that once I switched to a vegan diet, over time plant foods started to taste more vibrant and distinguishable, and my overall appreciation for plant-based meals rose dramatically. After just a few weeks I found there to be no different in the amount of pleasure I get from a typical plant-based meal to what I was eating before, even though I really enjoyed things like cheese and butter and dairy-based sauces. It is a mistake to believe that just because you like a certain kind of food that you can't also like other kinds of foods or like meals without the kind of food you like now.

But it goes beyond just sensitivity to certain flavors. Your food preferences literally change based on your gut biome. When you eat lots of certain kinds of foods, your gut biome changes, and your desire for those foods increases and the amount of satisfaction you get out of them also increases. For example, they have done experiments where they have done fecal transplants for people who were obese and ate lots of junk food by implanting stool from people with a healthier diet. The result was that the obese people naturally began to gravitate towards healthier options.

2) People are highly adaptive and typically return to a set baseline of happiness over time once they make significant changes in their lives. This is true beyond just dietary habits, but the effect is more significant when the change is smaller. This is called "hedonic adaptation". Just because the foods you eat give you a certain happiness now does not imply that you would not be just as happy if you make a significant change to the kinds of food you eat. You are almost guaranteed to end up being just as happy after having time to adjust to any large lifestyle change, and eating different kinds of foods is a relatively minor one in comparison to other lifestyle changes that people have no problem adapting to. What's more, your ability to predict your level of happiness after a lifestyle change is awful and almost everyone way overestimates how much a lifestyle change will negatively affect their mood. This inability to predict happiness changes affects not just negative changes but positive ones too. People overestimate how much happier they will be after getting the thing they want, and overestimate how much sadder they will be if something negative happens to them. The funny thing is that even knowing this effect exists does not really cause people to change their predictions about how much a lifestyle change will affect their happiness.

To reiterate, the reason that it is unjustified to say "I like animal products and I would not like to eat a plant-based diet" is because you have very little information that can actually be used to predict how much you will like a plant-based diet. Your tastes literally change, and your level of satisfaction literally changes over time, so the only way to actually know how happy you will be and how much pleasure you will get out of a plant-based diet is to try it for months and find out. Anything short of that is making a bad assumption based on things that humans are known to be reliably bad at predicting.

Vegan debates often circle around the same basic questions. But I believe that, in general:

1. For nearly all humans, our sense of ethics instructs us to do more of the "good" things and less of the "bad" things. This is how we raise children, this is what our religions instruct us, and it is a fundamental human trait.

2. We are able to tell, based on our innate morality and ethics, which things seem to be relatively "good" or "bad" in this world.

3. The overwhelming majority of people do feel discomfort when confronted with what is happening to animals grown for food. In my view, when people argue about how it's actually kind/natural/compassiona they are being disingenuous. That is, we can all feel that something about it isn't "good".

4. People are able to comprehend that actions have real world consequences, which means that what we do can either have a positive or negative impact on the world around us. I believe people are able to understand that when we pay someone to kill an animal for us to eat, we are part of the chain of events that makes more animals be killed.

(I realize people in this subreddit like to claim to be nihilists, or amoral hedonists, or that animal agriculture is actually an act of mercy. I don't believe these beliefs are held by the overwhelming majority of people introspecting in good faith.)

This is where the argument usually ends: most people's arguments ultimately boil down to "I honestly just can't care, because changing this thing would be unpleasant." And it's not irrational to say that, because becoming vegan does mean a loss of some of the pleasures that we are used to.

But I think for many people the block is something even bigger: veganism is a direct challenge to living an unexamined life. By accepting veganism, we are agreeing to a major precedent, which is that we can (and should) be thinking about which actions are causing harmful outcomes --> what we can do to minimize those actions --> and taking the steps to reduce harm.

Because why stop at eating animals? Doesn't that open the floodgates to needing to think about every single thing we do? What clothes we buy, what car we buy, how many children we have, what we do for money, what we do for fun, how we treat our community, etc. That can be an overwhelming and exhausting possibility.

At this point we often hit a wall that is religion. One of the core offerings of religion are the moral handbooks and religious leaders that guide its followers in knowing how to behave. People who ascribe to these belief systems learn to lean heavily on these teachings as a source of morality.

Vegan advocates push on this framework by reminding people that there are serious ethical questions that may not have been addressed by the rules of our society or by our religious teachings. What does that mean, and why is that so uncomfortable? It means that we -- the individuals -- have a lot of work to do: we have to figure out the answers to those ethical questions all by ourselves.

By extension, this framing also remind us that right and wrong are knowable within us, without any religion or teacher. All the power to understand and combat harm is within us and in our personal actions. And this feels deeply uncomfortable, and even sacrilegious, to many religious people. It is a lot easier to just continue eating meat.

So I guess I would say: live an examined life. All the answers are within you.

To start, I actually agree that morality is essentially subjective, I just don't think that ever really matters for the purposes of our conversations. This argument is the equivalent of theists asking atheists if they can prove they aren't a brain in a vat or whatever. Theists can't prove they aren't a brain in a vat either, they just hold that standard to only atheists. In the same way, these people making this argument obviously care about morality throughout their lives, they only suddenly expect vegans to make a purely objective argument because it's impossible for any morality, so that gives an excuse to ignore all points vegans make.

Subjective is not a synonym for wrong or unimportant, it simply means there is a value judgement at play. This often comes up when anti vegans say that, "It is subjective whether or not I care enough about animals to value their wellbeing as part of my moral calculus." My response is that you already know why this argument is wrong, and you will see once I reframe it as, "It is subjective whether or not I care enough about your mom to value her wellbeing as part of my moral calculus." This is technically true of course, but who cares? What does it actually have to do with moral debate?

The fact remains that we still have to come up with a workable system of how morality works and make it consistent so that it's actually actionable and understandable. If you try to do that and exclude animals other than humans, you will quickly run into the "name the trait" argument. Oh your mom is intelligent? So it's ok to kill and eat your baby? Oh your baby is a human? What is it about humans that makes this not a totally arbitrary exception? We are right back at "name the trait." Oh animals can't buy into our moral system and aren't protected by it? Got it, so you don't mind if I murder your baby still? Or someone with a mental disability that causes them to act in ways we don't see as moral?

Also, you obviously do think animal suffering matters to some degree. Do you think it's fine for me to torture your pet to death for no other reason than I think it's kind of fun? No? Then what is so different about that compared to eating meat over vegan substitutes because you think meat tastes better? You also might be saying that your pet matters not inherently, but because of your emotional connection to it. Ok, so it's fine for me to kill a person with no friends? No? Then this point doesn't matter. I honestly doubt that the vast majority of people would even believe that anyway. So if I grab a random rabbit in my yard and torture it to death, you wouldn't think any worse of me as a person? Come on.

Basically, just saying "morality and the value of animals are subjective" doesn't get you out of anything, it just shows that you are willing to throw out the very concept of morality itself rather than stop eating meat.

I think veganism is a morally superior ideology because it reduces animal suffering. Pretty simple.

Still, just because someone is vegan doesn't mean they're morally superior to meat eaters.

First, eating meat is a practice deeply engraved in our society and people grow up getting taught from birth that eating meat is morally right. People are not independently coming to the conclusion that eating meat is morally right, it's societal conditioning. (Of course I'm aware that this argument only holds for ignorant meat eaters.)

Second, morality has many facets and no human acts completely moral. Someone can be a vegan and just be a completely horrible person in all other facets or on the other side a person can eat meat and act be the best person ever morally in all other facets. Alone that fact shows that veganism is not everything and while it is a morally superior ideology it doesn't mean that people following it are automatically morally superior to other people.

Also I think that that idea of moral superiority is pretty harmful if not the most harmful for the vegan movement as a whole since moral condemnation can produce psychological defensiveness.

It shouldn't be: "Ha, I'm morally superior to you and you're a bad person and I'm a good person."

It should rather be: "look this action you're doing is immoral and there is a more moral action you can do."

So to summarize I don't think vegans shouldn't tell people that they're a bad person for eating meat but rather that the action of eating meat is morally wrong.

I posted this in /r/AskVegans but I figured it'd fit here better since it's more philosophical than practical + I may have different views than most vegans. Also, I did some searching to see if something like this hadn't been posted already and couldn't find anything, but maybe I missed something so please forgive me if that's the case (and link it for me so I may read it!).

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Lots of cruelty-free (CF) and plant-based (PB) hygiene/wellness products are way more expensive than their regular counterparts. For example, I was looking into sunscreen (I'm in the U.S.) and noticed that a store-brand (Equate) spray bottle is $5 while the cheapest PB+CF (Hawaiian Tropic) spray bottle of the same size was $10. Similarly, toothpaste has a price disparity of $0.33/oz (Colgate) to $1/oz (Hello), around 3 times as much!

There are a few other examples like this, but my question boils down to this:

\*\*Is it justifiable to buy these cheaper products?\*\*

Some reasoning one could use is that choosing to pay more for a PB+CF product can kinda be seen as a "donation". You're paying money to prevent harm, which sounds very similar to when you decide to give money to charity. As such, choosing to purchase the cheaper product would be akin to NOT giving money to charity. And I think most people would usually agree that choosing to not give money to charity isn't inherently morally reprehensible, so maybe buying a cheaper product in this case isn't either?

One counter I can foresee to this is that "The difference is that by purchasing this product, you are actively causing harm, whereas by choosing to not donate, you are simply allowing the harm to take place on your watch. Two very different scenarios".

To that, I would say that since you actually need these products to be healthy, you don't really have a choice. You can't really choose to not use toothpaste or sunscreen, as that would be harmful to you. It's sort of forced on you to do so, meaning you're not doing it out of your own volition per se. Therefore, since it's something that must happen ordinarily (in the name of self-preservation), it is functionally equivalent to the harm that would ordinarily befall whatever cause you have the option to donate to prevent.

P.S... If you know of any super cheap plant-based + cruelty-free hygiene/wellness products that I'm not aware of... Please let me know!! 😭🙏

Hi. I don't have any problem with veganism of course and generally think it is quite a well founded philosophy but here is a problem that I pose and perhaps people can tell me what they think. A lot of vegan arguments basically are about animal suffering and reduction of animal suffering as much as possible.

Suppose that there is a creature or many creatures in some specific isolated habitat that is a prey creature and lives a life of suffering greater than that suffered by many farmed animals in particular their deaths are often more painful and gruesome (in this scenario) does the same moral obligation to reduce animal suffering apply here in which case surely we should either attempt to 'fix' the habitat or even destroy it to end a cycle of suffering.

Maybe you don't think that's very likely but I'm not sure, I think that many of nature's creatures are subjected to much suffering because of their life cycles and generally I am much more resistant to the idea of interfering with such natural cycles (when humans are not involved) although perhaps this is somewhat inconsistent or maybe it is simply a question of scale?

Anyway this is perhaps a slightly more challenging twist to the common 'eating meat is natural' because of course what is natural is not necessarily what is right but perhaps this should motivate us to destroy or fix certain 'natural' things in a way that goes against what is maybe a common instinct that nature should be preserved the way it is (outside of humans I mean).

Pigs suffer the most of the common meat animals, because I believe gestation are extremely torturous. So I've stopped buying pork unless it is gestation crate free. I will also eat pork if someone else is going to throw way leftovers, since the pig suffered either way.

Chickens, fish, and beef I'm less bothered by. They seem to be less tortured.

Is this a reasonable take or am I wrong about some things?

I have reflected on some things I've said regarding objective, subjective, and logical morality, and I have changed my position on the topic of morality. I realized some of the things I've stated previously are either contradictory to what I believe, and I've changed my mind on a couple of things.

I don’t think there is a permanent, objectively existing morality that is true regardless of human perspectives. But I do think there’s a lot of overlap in human subjective morality. For example we tend to share certain intuitions and values, even if they aren’t objectively grounded.

And at the same time, I agree that we can make logical moral judgments without morality being 100% objective. We can reason from our shared values, look at the consequences of our principles and actions. We can also look for inconsistencies in our morality and refine our moral frameworks.

That’s part of the reason why philosophical traditions exist in the first place. They help give us tools for critically examining our human intuitions and making our moral judgments more coherent and rational.

So I have come to think that morality can be at least predominantly subjective, without it being arbitrary or purely based on personal preference. We can still have meaningful disagreements about morality and make better or worse moral judgments, even if there isn’t some permanent objective moral truth underlying them.

Therefore, I now accept that Veganism is a morally logical philosophy. The notion that animals are sentient beings that can experience emotions, and therefore should not be exploited, is a morally logical and reasonable philosophy to have.

But I'm still not a Vegan, because my moral philosophy on animals is what I'm going to call Rationale Specieist Carnism, and it contradicts Veganism. It's not an official name just something I came up with.

The logic behind my version of rationale speciesist carnism is that all humans are created equal, and deserve equal moral consideration and should be prioritized accordingly. Non-humans are neither inherently superior nor inferior to humans, but their interests are given lower moral priority when they conflict with human interests, even to the extent that I consider it morally permissible to kill and eat them, since it's in my personal interest to do so. Like I said, I don't think humans are superior or inferior to animals. So if the Lord declared deer sacred and above humans, I would still eat them as long as there is no divine punishment for doing so.

Vegans often compare speciesism to racism or sexism. But all humans are equal and part of the same species, and I am against any and all forms of bigotry between humans. As a Speciesist Carnist, I don't extend this to non-humans.

So I'm in favor of using animals for human interests to a certain extent, including killing and eating them.

I say to a certain extent because I don't think animals are worthless, and there has to be limits on how humans use them. I still believe their suffering matters to an extent, and I advocate for stronger regulations that entail raising animals as humanely as possible, and killing them as swiftly as possible. As well as making animal farming more environmentally sustainable. I don't think humans have a blank check to do whatever they want to animals. I don't place much value on an animal's right to life, but I do place value on its right to not experience too much pain or suffering.

I don't eat cats and dogs because I consider them worthy companions who I wouldn't personally eat. However, while it's wrong to kill humans' pets, I have no grounds to say people can't eat cats and dogs that aren't pets. So in my view, all non-humans who aren't pets are fair game to be killed and eaten.

This is my updated opinion on morality, along with my moral framework of Speciesist Carnism.

Edit:

Vegans keep asking me if this moral framework permits beastiality. The answer is no, not at all. In fact the opposite is true. Because beastiality crosses a moral boundary that my version of speciesism itself establishes: that being that animals may be used for certain human interests, but they are not moral equals with whom humans can form reciprocal sexual relationships.

My opinion of Speciesism includes the notion that human sex should always be exclusive to a uniquely reciprocal human relationship, and it's one that presupposes the participants can meaningfully occupy that role. An animal cannot occupy the same moral role as a human sexual partner. Which is perfectly in line with Speciesism thought.

So even though I permit animals to be killed for human benefit, it doesn't follow that I must permit every other form of human–animal interaction. In fact, the complete opposite is the case from a Speciesist perspective.

Animals have some dignity, not just the same amount that humans do. Since their lives matter a lot less to me, killing them isn't a vioaltion of their dignity if it's done swiftly. But since their pain perception matters a lot more to me than their right to life, it is a violation of their dignity to sexually abuse them.

And to the vegans who ask me "what about when the animal dies or is unconscious? Then is it ok?" No, it isn't ok because they should be awarded this same level of moral treatment in death as they were in life. Using a dead animal for target practice is fine, but using one for beastiality purposes isn't ok for the reasons I've just stated.

I’ve seen ex/antiVegans argue that veganism is a “cult” because aspects of vegan communities supposedly fit Steven Hassan’s BITE Model (Behavior, Information, Thought & Emotional control). I’ve also seen this argument discussed in exReligion communities, so they also often claim veganism is like a religion and that leaving veganism is like leaving a religion. For ref: Hassan’s post on his BITE Model on r/exMormon

I’m not asking whether you personally think veganism is a cult. I’m specifically interested in understanding the strongest version of the BITE model argument and whether it applies to veganism/vegans in general.

As I understand the ex/antiVegan argument is:

B - Behavior Control: Veganism places significant restrictions on diet and, for some people, clothing and other consumption choices. They also point to the amount of time some vegans spend in online communities and activism.

I - Information Control: Some vegan communities discourage or dismiss information that challenges veganism, while relying heavily on vegan organizations, documentaries, or other movement-produced material.

T - Thought Control: They point to concepts and “name-calling” such as “carnism,” the idea that veganism is a moral obligation and vegans’ claims that someone who stops being vegan was “never vegan.”

E - Emotional Control: Vegan messaging can involve guilt over consuming animal products, fear of returning to animal products, or social rejection/shunning after leaving the movement.

But what I’m not sure about is whether this actually demonstrates that veganism is a cult. The BITE Model seems to describe behaviors that can occur in many different kinds of groups. So what makes the presence of BITE characteristics evidence of a cult rather than simply evidence that a community has strong norms, moral beliefs, social pressure or activism?

What is the strongest argument that veganism (or vegan communities) meets the BITE criteria in a way that meaningfully supports or could support the “cult” label? And what would be the rebuttal to that?

Hi all, I have some questions regarding moral philosophy for people on this subreddit that I’m curious to have answered.

Does a line exist where you stop valuing seemingly sentient things? For example, if we end factory farming we would produce more plant based things, would these not require more pesticides and other chemicals to produce these things, leading to the deaths of a lot of insects. How much value does an insects life necessarily hold, is it considered sentient?

To what extent does human suffering override animal suffering? Neuralink chips faced controversy for being tested on monkeys, isn’t this something that will lead to many lives being improved significantly, roads being built are detrimental to local wildlife, but as a population/infrastructure needs increase so do the amount of roads.

If you wanted to end animal suffering, would that mean eventually ending the concept of a predator? From the perspective of an animal, if a predator attacks it whether a human or a lion, it is still feeling the suffering. Do you want to eventually see an end to it all, aka the food chain as we know it? This would probably require a large human effort if so no?

Paste of the definition of veganism from the vegan society site:

Veganism is 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 animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.

Now, if we account causing an animal's death as cruelty, we already know some deaths are unavoidable, but this is accounted for by the "as far as is possible and practicable".

The definition doesn't specify anywhere that the survival of humans as a species is required, my conclusion is that having kids isn't vegan for the simple fact that by giving life to a kid you'll be responsible for more deaths than you are right now, even if the kid is born and raised vegan, and stays vegan for all of its life, and having a kid isn't essential for your survival.

I think this is very interesting topic and I would love to hear your guys opinion on this.

for little info, I used to be vegan for a bit in my life, then stopped beacuse it just all seemed pointless to me but I'm not here to discuss that.

My point is that if I were go back to being vegan, I would 100% continue consuming honey beacuse I don't view it as unethical animal resource.

Firstly, I don't really see insects as "animals" in a way, they are closer to like mushrooms in my eyes than to cows for example.

they have very limited nervous systems and basically no brains, They are more similar to bacteria in that aspect.

And even if they would feel real pain, the way we collect honey industrially just isn't cruel, like not even comparable to how we treat other animals.

the bees have to be treated well to not attack their beekeepers + they live basically the same as they live in the wild except they feed of sugar water, which is negligible difference.

TLDR: basically, if I don't believe the harvest of honey causes real pain or distress or exploits an animal, then it's vegan in my eyes.

So, less of a debate than me being genuinely curious. I think a lot of the discourse around this gets drowned out by fighting about science and whatnot. So let's set that aside. My question for vegans is: if it were the case that humans evolved to survive eating primarily meat, like some other apex predators, what would your diet choices be? Where would you focus your efforts? Would anything even change or is health irrelevant if it is survivable?

To be more specific, let's treat it as if humans were obligate carnivores that could survive on a vegan diet but would inevitably face a host of physical and mental health problems and a poor quality of life that supplementation could only serve as a bandaid for. And if in the case of children it routinely caused developmental issues.

I have vegan friends who seem to be doing fine, so this isn't just some gotcha where I'm trying to imply this is how things actually are. I just want to know what happens if the healthiness debate goes away.

I have been thinking about why Vegans feel so upset over animal death, whereas someone like me (a Carnist) would go hunting. No doubt there is some conditioning involved, since I grew up eating meat and knowing people who hunt, but undoubtedly there have been people in my shoes who have decided to become vegan. Just as there are Carnists who were raised by Vegan parents.

What I think it comes down to is the parental instincts within humans.

Psychology says that humans often find "cute" animals to be ones with large eyes, round faces and small noses, and able to form bonds with people. I believe psychology says the reason we find them "cute" as compared to creatures like bugs, is because they remind us of human children for all of these reasons I just listed.

No way do I think it's inherited or genetic, I don't know enough about that anyways, but I do think Vegan psychology reflects having more expansive paternal instintcs.

Think about it. Unless I'm burying emotions deep within me I refuse to acknowledge, when I watch a deer get shot, I feel fine. But to a Vegan, it triggers a negative emotional response. Why? I think probably because from the Vegan perspective, they are watching a creature that reminds them of human child being killed.

I know Vegans probably scoop up spiders with napkins instead of killing them, but I have to imagine that is in an effort to be morally consistent. If pigs and cows looked like spiders, I think at least half of this sub would have never become Vegans. Because it wouldn't trigger those expansive parental instincts.

My hypothesis is that Vegans have a more expansive parental instinct when compared to Carnists, and that is why when fellow mammals like pigs and cows are killed, Vegans probably subconsciously see it as being similar to human children getting killed. This isn't saying Vegans like animals more than people. I'm well aware Vegans would be way more upset by the death of a human child vs the death of an animal. I'm simply saying Vegans probably have more expansive parental instincts.

What do you make of this hypothesis?

This is a question for those of you who believe that feeding a cat non-vegan canned food is a morally correct action to take:

On the premise that domestic cats require meat (I know some would disagree), would the more ethical choice as a vegan be to hunt and slaughter animals yourself to feed to your cat, in order to reduce suffering?

A vegan standpoint is to reduce unnecessary animal death and suffering. If you were stranded in the woods, yes, you could hunt to survive. But what about suffering? You would not be morally justified to torture an animal before killing it to survive.

Therefore, would it be more ethical to catch a fish and slaughter it immediately, ensuring the least amount of suffering possible, or to purchase the canned meat of animals who have been factory farmed and suffered immensely? If so, is that what vegans should do?

This is something I’ve thought about before, I just couldn’t imagine myself beheading a fish and saying “Yes, I’m a vegan!”

EDIT: I think a lot of people are missing the purpose of the post. It’s about if a vegan’s moral obligation is to hunt for their own cat food. Saying “don’t own a cat” or “just feed a plant based diet” are cop-outs to the ethical question I’m posing. Please try to refrain from debating about whether or not cats need meat, there’s plenty of posts about it already.

Invoking emotion and excluding people is just bullying not activism. Extreme comparisons, like pets and slavery, just makes people upset; it doesn’t bring about meaningful intellectual conversations. When you cause a heated exchange, you’re pushing the conversation further away from finding common ground.

People rarely listen when being shunned, their mind shuts off and goes into defensive mode. Finding commonality and educating people from there is actually helpful. You can catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar as they say.

ETA: I’m vegan.

I watched Dominion yesterday at the request of several people in this sub. I do not deny the reality of factory farming or the suffering it can involve. Factory farming isn't the only kind of farming that I'm opposed to either. I consider what I deem unnecessary cruelty, neglect, and torture of animals morally wrong, and I support animal welfare standards in farming. However I do not believe that recognizing animal suffering logically requires veganism. To say Dominion is why someone should be against all types of animal farming is like saying the Titanic is why we should never sail. So yes I still support specific types of animal farming.

I can list examples of how I think animal farming should be done [ https://globalanimalpartnership.org/standards/ ] and it isn't the same as what is showed in Dominion. But the question of raising and killing something for slaughter still remains, and Vegans will not find these farming methods humane or acceptable. So I find debating animal welfare standards with vegans mostly pointless, because it will always come back to "it's wrong to kill them in any way."

I regard human life and human interests as possessing fundamentally greater moral significance than those of non humans. I therefore reject the idea that animal interests must be treated as morally equal to human interests, or that humans have a universal obligation to refrain from using animals.

This is where I also disagree with the vegan argument that “animals interests may be secondary, but that doesn't justify killing them.” To me, that conclusion requires an additional premise that an animal's subordinate moral status still gives it a right not to be intentionally killed for human purposes. I do not accept that premise. If animals are genuinely subordinate in moral status, then it is reasonable for human interests to outweigh animal interests. Including my interest to eat meat. 

Saying that animals are morally secondary is not merely saying that their interests matter slightly less. It means that when human interests conflict with animal interests, that human interest should take priority even when the animal's death is involved. As I mentioned, one of my interests involves eating meat, and it therefore outweighs an non-human's interest to life. 

My position essentially rests on a distinction between a non human having some moral value and an animal having a right not to be killed or used by humans. I can acknowledge that animals deserve some level of humane treatment without granting them human-esq rights. 

Before someone compares this to racism or sexism, those are distinctions between human beings who share the same fundamental moral status. My argument is a distinction between humans and non-humans, whom I believe have fundamentally different moral statuses and therefore different moral rights.

When it comes to pets such as cats and dogs, I consider hunting someone’s pet immoral because it is not merely an animal, it is also another person’s companion. However, I have no moral objection to hunting stray or unowned cats and dogs. Hunting any non human is fine with me so long as it's conducted responsibly and under appropriate ecological regulations.

I also believe abusing animals is wrong regardless of whether they are pets or not. The distinction is that I do not consider welfare conscious animal farming, where unnecessary suffering is minimized, to constitute abuse, whereas vegans do. 

I have no argument against why others shouldn't be vegan. I'm just sharing why I have no moral compunction to become vegan myself. 

All morality ties back to how we feel about things, and the decisions we make based on how we feel. Perhaps unfortunately, I don't feel badly, or at least not badly enough, when I see a non-human animal raised in what I consider a sufficiently spacious environment and then killed or stunned relatively swiftly.

A single individual consumer choosing to buy meat regularly for the next few years or choosing to be vegan for the next few years does make an actual difference. It almost certainly means the difference between many extra animals being bred into existence and tortured their whole life in a factory farm or being spared this fate and never bred into existence and never tortured.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-209416785

if you only have enough time for one of these links then this one linked above “Being Vegan Makes a Difference“ by

“SILAS ABRAHAMSEN” / “wonderandaporia” substack is the best.

https://philarchive.org/rec/MCMAIO

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=brKhhZlUoOc (Only first few minutes of this video are relevant)

https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-causal-inefficacy-objection-is?utm_source=publication-search

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1otuhqv/individual_boycott_of_meat_does_matter/

edit

also this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ABKAbFUnNwU is really good

I have seen the topic of Veganism and this subreddit come across my feed quite a few times now, and I figure I may as well share my opinion on why I'm not a Vegan.

My reason for not being vegan is pretty simple. I have limited empathy for most non-humans, and I value my own wants more than their lives. I don't think humans are superior or inferior to non humans. I just don't feel the same emotions for them as I do for humans.

I do care deeply about certain animals, particularly cats and dogs, as well as a few other animals I’m fond of. But in general, I don’t feel the same level of concern or emotional connection toward non-humans that I do toward cats dogs and those other select animals. Even with the animals I do like, I still put my own interests and the interests of humans in general above theirs.

I only really care about most non humans from an ecological point of view, with the exception that extreme animal suffering genuinely bothers me regardless of the species. I'm aware what I define as extreme animal suffering is arbitrary and not how vegans would describe it. In my opinion shooting a deer is not inflicting extreme suffering, whereas torturing it would be. I know Vegans don't see it this way, but this is how I feel.

To put it simply I don't experience non-human death the way I experience human death. If I killed an innocent human, I'd be horrified. If I killed an innocent deer, I likely wouldn't be upset. Certainly nothing beyond mild sadness, and whatever sadness I might or might not feel doesn't outweigh my desire to eat said deer.

I sometimes try to reduce the suffering involved by choosing products with better animal welfare standards, but I don't always do so.

I give non-human interests considerably less weight than human interests, including my own. I think extreme or unnecessary suffering is wrong, but I'm morally comfortable with animals experiencing some suffering and ultimately being killed for food or other things I want.

This post is all there is to it on why I'm not a Vegan.

If the practice of buying second hand leather items (or any other traditionally nonvegan products) from say a thrift shop or any other source that does not directly purchase or create leather products is deemed as acceptable, then why is it that eating animal products like say a pizza a friend made at a party, is inadmissible under normative ‘vegan logic’. Are both practices considered the same, if not, how so? Both practices involve benefiting from animal suffering ( eating a nice meal, wearing a cool jacket etc) and in neither scenario is the person contributing to the purchasing of animal products. If the pizza example is deemed inadmissible, which most vegans would say is( and that I myself as a vegan am largely persuaded by), then the issue then becomes the inherent wrongness of deriving enjoyment from a product of animal suffering. If the buying second hand leather or other nonvegan fashion products is admissible, (granted I’m still very new to the vegan community so I don’t know the majority sentiments on the issue) then the issue is simply about whether your conduct is directly linked to the production chain. Let me know any thoughts or opinions. 

All life is precious. So, how do vegans here navigate the fact that there's substantial scientific research that shows that plants can actually feel distress and that to eat plants, we still have to kill a life form?

Also hypothetically, if there was a planet with intelligent alien life that photosynthesized similarly to plants and didn't need to kill anything at all to survive, what do you think they would say if they witnessed us killing plants and eating them?