Veganism and Morality

It makes a lot of sense.

For a start, the 'objectivly enforced moral'  (the morality most people claim is thiers) in our society at least is that it is wrong to hurt/kill/torture another.... therefore according to THEIR morality it is wrong to not be vegan.



The other point is Scott, and I really wonder what your answer to this willl be... Is that say I genuinely believed it ok for me to molest and rape and torture an 8 girl called Molly.... are you saying we should accept that as 'ethical' simply because we ought to have respect for 'others' ethics'?

This group is not about conformity indeed, it is about animals. It is an indisputable fact that you cause immense suffering to animals when farming them for eggs or dairy, regardless of levels of 'comfort' i.e. free range.

I assume you are vegetarian because you don't like killing/torturing animals right? Well, I'm sorry to say, but you are still very much a part of doing so when consuming products other than meat.

I agree that a lot of vegans do take up the 'holier than thou' sort of stance but I think in more cases than not of that it's the non-vegan putting that tag on a perfectly helpful, kind person so as they can dismiss the content/argument of his/her speech.

And this is a very good point.

Unfortunately a lot of philosophers lose touch with practicallity.

In response to the rape scenario, yes we should respect your moralistic opinion. However, this does not stop us taking LEGAL action to stop the person from permitting such acts. That is, while we have no moral claims to make on this person we can make legal claims, i.e. gaol time or theorapy to remove said problems.

Your first point is mute, if you agree with me that the person's moral is subjective then it MUST follow that using subjectivity in an objective fashion makes no sense. For instance if i was to demonstrate why one product is better than another and i just said "well i like it", it doest mean anything. It has no bearing on the respondant to my demonstration.

And you must realise that eating plants is also killing.

Also, even if someone has this general moral your talking about that its "wrong to kill/tortue/hurt" other living beings, it doesnt follow that killing something to eat it is wrong. For instance, if this was the case that morals could never be broken, what would this person do in life/death situation? Obviously this moral has to be broken in order to survive, and noone can claim this person acted morally wrong. Im not claiming that this suggests people can be opposed to creul treatment and still eat animals, im merely suggesting it is no where near as black and white as you claim and that your argument is indeed invalid.

Read peter singer's animal liberation (parts of it at least) back in first year philosophy, its from those readings that i realised just how subjective and biased these opinions are.

Ok, it is no more black and white than whether rape/muder/child molestation/torture to humans.

And legality? pfft.

I'll reply later

You clearly misunderstand me, it also sounds as if your letting your emotions cloud your judgement. If you stand back and have a good hard think about what i said you will see what i mean.

It's hard to disassociate ourselves from our emotions when we are human.
And when it comes to discussions about morality and ethics I really don't want to disassociate my feelings, I think that they count, I think that they indicate some wrongs with things or with me and should be taken note of.
But that is my opinion.
I just can't imagine a world revolving its ideas and results around reasoning that doesn't take emotion or emotional consequence into account.

I don't see that emotion clouds judgement in this case, rather it provides clarity. Causing needless suffering is wrong. Try to rationally say otherwise. A moral non-vegan is the same as a moral rapist or moral murderer. You can squirm and rationalise all you want, we see what you and we disagree.

So, we have to respect the rapists moral stance because we can take other routes to dish out punishment..? But animals don't HAVE legal protection, so all we can do is advocate veganism. The people who participate in the morally schizophrenic act of eating them or eating other products which harm them equally, we cannot RESPECT their decision or throw them in jail (haha), so we can only try to make them aware of their dilemma (or what should be a dilemma) through activism. The animals CANNOT speak for themselves.  
Moral people are against cruelty to animals and also cruelty to humans, as indisputable as I would say that is, I would have to rest it on the level of "my opinion".
You can try and find fallacies and keep throwing them back, but at the end of the day, this isn't about language, this is about common sense.

And once again, vegans are not pro-lifers (well, atleast not all). It's not about the fact that we're taking a "life". It's the meaning of the life. And no you cannot argue me on this one because you don't know what I mean when I say "meaning". Ugh...please don't get me started on plants......