Philosophical Vegan Forum

It's normal to see veganism as a kind of deprivation, but it's exactly the opposite. Let's face it, people only eat a tiny fraction of the possible things they could eat. People tend to rotate between the same 7-9 dishes. Even if you're a foodie I think that's still the case. When I went vegan my mind was opened to so many new foods and cooking techniques that I would never in a million years have tried if I was still a meat-eater. Nut cheeses, seitan bacon, almond milk, etc.. The good vegan substitutes taste exactly as good or even better than the stuff they're trying to imitate

It also spends its entire life guided almost exclusively by instinct, following its school around and not contemplating life. Call me arrogant, but I would argue that my sensory, social and intellectual pleasure is more important than temporary, physical-only, pain caused to the sardine. If you actually do consider sardines to be non-sentient, then go up to the next level of species that you do consider sentient, and my point is the same, that it’s still relative, even amongst sentient beings.

Why do you care whether the creature can contemplate life? I fail to see the moral significance of that. As long as the creature gains a evolutionary benefit from feeling strong sensations of pain, It's going to be suffering, and therefore should be something empathetic people worry about. For all we know, the fact they can't mitigate that pain with coping mechanisms may make their suffering more intense than a human. I don't see how complex thought makes a moral difference that we would be able to detect here.

yes, in some sense morality is relative. Your values are your values. The core argument from an atheist standpoint is logical consistency in my opinion, and If you are ok with destroying the environment and torturing animals to keep eating food you are comfortable with, there isn't necessarily a knockdown argument against it. For that matter, you could say the same for torturing humans to keep eating your prefered foods that you want. It's just a matter of how much you want empathetic people to hate and distrust you I guess.

I'm hoping those aren't actually your values though. If you do actually care about animal suffering, you should stop acting like relativity is a excuse to just do nothing about it. If you care, it should be manifested in some way, and I would argue a readjustment of your comfortable food choices to stop a brutal and systematic torture of animals is a fair trade off.

Mr Purple, thanks for your reply.

I won’t address everything you said, as you’ve made some good points, as have others, and I do have a lot to think about. I just wanted to talk about one thing you wrote, because it really surprised me.

Why do you care whether the creature can contemplate life? I fail to see the moral significance of that.

To me the idea that complex thought makes a difference was a self-evident truth, I hadn’t even considered that others may disagree.

As an example of why I believe this, I have a medical condition which used to cause me episodes of acute pain. I can’t stress enough that the physical pain was severe, but I actually feel that the fear was the worst part. Fear of the life I would miss out on if I died, fear for my friends and family if I died, fear that the pain would get worse before it got better – all a result of the fact that I was aware of the cause of the pain and the specific risks that I faced.

Another example – what’s worse, a medical injection or a spider bite? They might hurt equally on a purely physical level, but I think most would agree that a spider bite was worse, if say, you didn’t know if the spider was venomous, or perhaps if you didn’t even see what bit you and didn’t know what it was.

For all we know, the fact they can't mitigate that pain with coping mechanisms may make their suffering more intense than a human.

That’s a good point, and a good counter argument to what I’ve just said. I guess the point is that we just don’t know.

I don’t want to give up something so important to me (and I’m not going to explain again that it’s not simply about the taste of meat compared to the taste of vegan food – something vegans just don’t seem to get) without knowing for sure that it’s morally necessary. But I don’t think it’s possible to know for sure until science can tell us more about what animals are thinking and feeling. That’s not going to happen immediately, and so until then the decision I face is between potentially giving up/significantly changing my life’s passion unnecessarily, and living with the possibility that I am responsible for incalculable pain and suffering.

As an example of why I believe this, I have a medical condition which used to cause me episodes of acute pain. I can’t stress enough that the physical pain was severe, but I actually feel that the fear was the worst part. Fear of the life I would miss out on if I died, fear for my friends and family if I died, fear that the pain would get worse before it got better – all a result of the fact that I was aware of the cause of the pain and the specific risks that I faced.

I get that anticipating pain and fear of future events is a source of suffering, but there are many ways where intelligence is a major source for mitigating that suffering. I recently posted a thread about this very topic. https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... =22&t=1285

But honestly, I don't think the edge cases should be the core of your concern right now. You keep bringing up the grey areas around sentience and suffering and then use those to dismiss the whole spectrum. There are grey areas at the edge of science(dark matter\dark energy) too, but that doesn't allow us to throw all of scientific discovery out the window. Let's address the clear cases first, then work back from there. Do you think dogs, pigs, cows can suffer? Those are pretty scientifically clear cases, and if what you are waiting for is science, then you can at least take steak and pork out of your diet right? If not, then scientific clarity probably isn't what is stopping you. These animals would even meet your high requirement of anticipating future pain.

I love all cuisines, including vegetarian and vegan. But only ever having vegan food again would be like only ever having Italian food again. The problem is not that I don’t like Italian. Imagine someone who’s passionate about classical music being told they can only ever listen to the violin again.

Like knot said, you are probably underestimating how many meals spanning every culture can be made as a vegan. It's not like restricting yourself to only italian food, because italian food can be made with vegan ingredients along with many other cultural dishes. Sure, it wont be EXACTLY the same, but if 90-95% identical is still too much of a culture shock for you to handle, then i don't know what to tell you. I feel like you can listen to all the same music and composers, and even the best violin music, but because playing actual violins cause animals to be tortured, you choose to only listen to recordings(which may or may not lose some quality depending on the person).