I am a meat-eater looking to change my view.

[AlexanderVeganTheist]

In my opinion Jason, the focus on the specifics of moral culpability is a red herring, a distraction of the relevant topic.

The truth is that if everyone would stop consuming animal products, the animal industries would cease to exist. The truth is that any decrease in animal consumption, directly causes a decrease in demand, creating a decrease in animal suffering (and environmental degradation)... While it may be interesting to debate the intricacies of the culpability of the butchers, it is ultimately irrelevant. Every person should contribute what they can! Yes possibly all butchers could go on strike and demand higher wages, thereby increasing the price of meat, decreasing demand, or whatever, or that could backfire and they could get replaced by robots... Right now you are using what other people are doing as an excuse for what you are doing. Just because butchers do what they do, doesn't excuse you. Whether you are a 100% the cause or 90% is irrelevant. You're just looking for someone to blame for your choices.
Nobodies deeds excuse yours!

The semantics of whether your deeds are 'evil' or just 'irresponsible' or whatever are also kind of uninteresting to me.

You need to see that you are the person that pulls the causal strings in the industry. Your dollar is the motivator for the butcher. Do what you can.

[jasonk]

You seem to think that any vegan automatically think they are 'saints' and cannot do any wrong. Now a few select vegans may actual think that. If I have purchased a laptop that was made with sweat and tears; Then now I know. I personally was arrogant towards that sort of thing. I looked into HP and found articles talking about sweat shops in China. However, the newest one I found was 2012. The way I understand what you are saying is that only those who are one hundred percent good can only decide on your level of morality. Well I would say that vegans are good in the sense of animal cruelty. Labor Watchers are good in the sense of worker cruelty. Eco scientists are good in the sense of climate friendly power sources. Can someone be all of these things, Yes. Does everyone have to be all these things, No. Because there is someone who already is and can give us that are arrogant an answer.

Well, I am not saying that one's integrity is compromised by living in an imperfect system that needs reformed. I am saying that being an imperfect person does not make one an evil person. It is good to be perfect, but it is not evil to be imperfect. My idea says that one's integrity is not compromised by eating meat, but one's integrity would be compromised if one actually killed animals.

[_Doc]

You seem to think that any vegan automatically think they are 'saints' and cannot do any wrong. Now a few select vegans may actual think that. If I have purchased a laptop that was made with sweat and tears; Then now I know. I personally was arrogant towards that sort of thing. I looked into HP and found articles talking about sweat shops in China. However, the newest one I found was 2012. The way I understand what you are saying is that only those who are one hundred percent good can only decide on your level of morality. Well I would say that vegans are good in the sense of animal cruelty. Labor Watchers are good in the sense of worker cruelty. Eco scientists are good in the sense of climate friendly power sources. Can someone be all of these things, Yes. Does everyone have to be all these things, No. Because there is someone who already is and can give us that are arrogant an answer.

Well, I am not saying that one's integrity is compromised by living in an imperfect system that needs reformed. I am saying that being an imperfect person does not make one an evil person. It is good to be perfect, but it is not evil to be imperfect. My idea says that one's integrity is not compromised by eating meat, but one's integrity would be compromised if one actually killed animals.

So you don't want to be the one to take the ownership of the evil action of killing animals. Yes you are not the one right next to the pig and press the button to crush the pig to death or the ones you have seen 'Zap'. However, it is more like you pressed it with a 20 foot poll. You putting that meat into your basket, swipe it on the scanner and then pay for the meat. You just told the company to kill another pig because there one less on the shelf. So is that '20 foot poll' a valid reason for you to say that you have no blood on your hands.

[jasonk]

That they are just cogs in a machine devoid of moral autonomy, while funnily enough I have full moral autonomy as if we are two different breeds of human.

That's closer to the reality than the other way around. The consumer is the master, the company is the servant.

The only way companies control YOU is through advertising and propaganda -- that's how the cycle completes. But you're only innocent to the degree you're ignorant and mindlessly obey advertising.
An advertising exec who creates an ad saying that you as the consumer have to eat meat or otherwise you'll die of malnutrition IS doing a great evil for those consumers who fall for the lie and believe it.
You don't believe that lie of the propaganda; you have reclaimed your moral authority and woken up as a consumer.

To further the facilitation of our conversation, I believe I understand what you are saying.

I am not persuaded that I am being controlled through advertisement propaganda. Advertisements give incentive to go buy something, but they don't force me to go buy it. Spending money on meat and creating a market demand for it does not force people, human beings, to imprison and kill animals as if the human beings themselves are slaves with no say in how to live their lives, as if they are machines devoid of dignity. During the eras of slavery, people couldn't imagine a world where labor could be created without slaves. Today many can't imagine creating meat without killing animals, but I think it is possible. And just like buying products made from slavery in 1700 didn't make one evil, buying meat to eat doesn't make one evil today.

Purchasing meat from a company which has killed that animal to fill the demand of the consumer.

I don't think that this is evil though. Consider my point about the restaurant. If the owner of a restaurant is an evil racist, me eating at the restaurant does not make me racist or evil. The actual evil being done is the racism. Likewise the actual evil being done is the killing of animals.

A vegan working in a slaughter house is innocent; these people are just employees. I know you find it strange because it violates your intuition, but your intuition is wrong.

http://hubpages.com/education/Counterin ... Statistics

Intuition is VERY often wrong. Read that page.

As long as somebody else was willing to take that job for the same wage right behind you if you quit, then you're not doing any wrong, because the animal would die anyway: you are not in any way changing the demand for meat, so the same number of animals will die.

As a vegan at a slaughter house, the best you can do is be careful to be kinder to the animals than another employee would be, and work as slowly as you can to cost the company money without getting fired.

Think Schindler's factory.

If you're working for the meat industry, just do the worst job (be the slowest and kindest) you can without being fired.
Going above and beyond the job requirements would be unethical, unless you were doing it with some plan to work your way up and sabotage the industry at a higher level.

It doesn't violate my intuition. If it is wrong to kill animals, then clearly killing animals is wrong. It doesn't matter if you are getting paid to do it. It doesn't matter if there is someone else who will do it. A murderer is still a murderer even if they are getting paid and even if there would have been someone else willing to do it.

No one is holding a gun to the vegan's head saying, 'kill these animals.' The vegan is not a slave. The vegan is killing the animals of his own free will. Clearly this wrong.

Go look at a slaughter house worker and tell me they have dignity. Go look at the unemployed in Mexico, who will scramble for that job to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. They are slaves to no other man, but they are slaves to the love for their families and their duty to provide for them. There are MANY people who have no choice in the matter. And as long as somebody is scrambling to get the job after you quit, your quitting means nothing: it does not reduce the number of animals killed.

Clearly killing animals is not dignified, so I agree with you when you say that they are undignified.

I suppose you could say that one is a slave to one's family, though one could put up one's children for adoption. However this does not mean that one who works in a slaughterhouse is a slave to the owner of the slaughterhouse.

This argument makes no sense when compared to the hitman analogy given earlier. The hitman is getting paid to do a job, therefore he is innocent? Think about the hitman's children and family? These are not good arguments.

But I think you do the cause harm by portraying anyone who eats meat as evil.

I am doing no such thing. I am explaining that certain actions that cause harm are evil.
I have not said that anybody who eats meat is an evil person.

I wouldn't even say that a rapist is an evil person: it's a person who has made a mistake and done an evil action.
It's the balance of our actions in the world that make us good or evil.

Also, it's easy to eat meat without buying any meat (or having anybody buy it for you). There are many freegans in the world, and they don't contribute to the problem.

I'm not persuaded by this idea. What do you call a person who repairs your plumbing? A plumber. What do you call a person who does your accounting? An accountant. What do you call a person who drives a bus? A bus driver. What do you call a person who does evil? An evil doer. This is what I mean when I say a person is evil. The person is an evil doer. People who eat meat are evil doers. People who buy products from sweatshops are evil doers. People who contribute to global warming are evil doers.

I'm saying that maybe eating meat does not make one an evil doer, just like contributing to global warming does not make one an evil doer. I think you do harm to the cause by portraying anyone who eats meat as a worker of evil.

You know you do wrong, and you continue to do it. This is an evil action.

Well I'm not entirely persuaded that what I'm doing is evil, so I wouldn't say that I know I do wrong.

Does that make you evil overall? I don't know. What else do you do? Do you do enough good in the world to make up for it?
Or does the torture and killing of possibly hundreds of animals a year undermine any trivial goods you do in your life, now that you know you are the cause of it and responsible for it?

Hundreds?? ◉_◉ Have you ever had a pig or cow butchered for your own personal consumption? An animal contains a lot of meat. Most people would probably go through one pig and/or cow per year in meat consumption (mayyyybe two if they eat A LOT!), but definitely not hundreds.

There's no reason it needs to be multi-generational. You're seriously going to wait for your grandchildren to go vegan, but you won't bother?

People go from meat eating to vegan all of the time.

I'm just trying to be realistic. The transition away from slavery was a multi-generational change. If precedent serves, then we can probably expect the same with this change.

Going vegan is not doing a good thing, it's abstaining from doing a bad thing.
Just being vegan doesn't make a person good; you could be a rapist and a vegan -- there are other ways to harm the world too.

Veganism is a step in the right direction of doing less harm to the world.

So a step in the right direction is not a good thing?

If I feel undeniable urges to commit evil acts, wouldn't you say it would be good for me to get some therapy?

No, you don't sound like a broken record, you sound like a very delusional person who not only does evil, but is dogmatically insistent on blaming his evil deeds upon others -- adding insult to injury, to these people who already have one of the worst jobs in the world making meat because YOU demanded it.

These people are innocent, and you are arrogant and pretentious, sitting on your moral high horse and condemning them for doing the only work they can find to provide for their families -- working FOR you at YOUR demand to kill animals because you wanted them to, because you're buying meat.

Stop doing that, and stop judging others and forcing them to carry all of moral burden for your evil deeds for doing what you told them to do when they don't really have many other options.

Go off on the advertising executives and propagandists if you want. These people actually do increase demand for meat, and scare and trick people thus denying the masses of a significant amount of moral autonomy through creating ignorance.

DO NOT blame the workers.
You have been informed. If you do it again (blame these poor workers), I can only consider you to be privileged, delusional, arrogant, pretentious scum.

Ok, so I am actually working class as well. I drive a forklift on the night-shift for a company. I'm not academically educated or anything like that. I drive through a light industrial zoned area every day, and I see so many businesses hiring for truck drivers, forklift drivers, machine operators, landscapers, security, janitors, and so on. It seems to me that these people could transition out of those jobs into new ones relatively easily, at least where I live. I live in the midwest, where farming is at its peak. Would it be inconvenient to find new jobs? Sure, but so would shifting the huge economic force of animal production to plant only farming. At the end of the day we are both in the same boat as it were.

You are. You're the part of the chain with the most choice, and the only link that actually causes anything that can't be replaced. If any other link refuses to do what it's paid for, it gets replaced instantly. How? With the money you pay to replace them.

With a chain, the strength is determined by the weakest link, and in moral accountability, it's determined by the most irreplaceable link with the most choice.

The only case where you could be anything approaching innocent is if you were ignorant and controlled by the advertisers, and the chain created a complete circle.

I, myself, am definitely not the ultimate cause as there are billions of people who eat meat.

I'll bring up this analogy again because I think it's poignant. Slavery didn't end because people refused to buy products made by slaves. Slavery ended in the British Empire with the government buying all the slaves and then making slavery illegal, and slavery ended in the USA with a civil war.

Suppose we were living in the year 1700 and I bought some clothes at the store. Would you say that I am an evil doer because the cotton was picked by a slave? I think not. I'm just a person buying some clothes at the store.

And you should not, if that person is ignorant. Ignorant as most meat eaters are, and likely as your family is -- unaware of how this is all connected. Here it may be the advertisers and propagandists who are to blame.

My family is actually very aware as my mother and father both grew up farmers.

You are talking to me on the internet, likely using a computer made in a sweatshop, likely using electricity powered via fossil fuels causing global warming, likely shipped over on a transport ship powered by oil ∴ global warming, the oil likely bought from middle-eastern countries which enables them to oppress women and non-muslims, likely doing all sorts of things like this, yet I don't count these as strikes against your moral character.

If these things are bad things, and I am aware of them, and I have the choice not to do them (like you have the choice to select a veggie burger instead of a meat burger) then you SHOULD consider them strikes against me in terms of my net harm footprint -- just as if I were a rapist and chose to rape knowing it was harmful.
As I said earlier, though, one can not consider a person on the whole a bad person because that person does a few bad things. We also do some good things.

There are many questions we can ask about character and how to judge that character relative to others, and net impact.
You're oversimplifying things here.

Knowledge: Does a person have the necessary knowledge to do right, or is the person ignorant?
Ability: How much effort is the person putting in, and what is the person able to do? A person in a developing country may want to go vegan, but may be genuinely unable because he or she can not access nutritious vegan foods like you can.
Progress: How is a person changing? It has been said before and I'll say it again: A more meaningful judge of actual character (this is apart from whether a person is on net more harmful or good in the world) is how a person is changing. Somebody from Texas who become a pescetarian may be more ethical than somebody from California who becomes a vegetarian -- because one of them had changed more, and made more effort at moral progress.

This is an interesting argument here. I had to think about this for a while. I am not trying to persuade you that eating meat is acceptable. I am looking to be persuaded. There may be an argument here that will persuade me. I'll just take you through my thought process and ask a couple questions along the way.

As I said earlier, though, one can not consider a person on the whole a bad person because that person does a few bad things. We also do some good things.

So a person's integrity is not compromised by doing a few bad things. Ok.

There are many questions we can ask about character and how to judge that character relative to others, and net impact.

Ok, so we're talking some sort of utilitarian framework I presume?

Knowledge: Does a person have the necessary knowledge to do right, or is the person ignorant?

Right, as Kant said, ought implies can. So it can only be said one ought to do something if one is able to do something. If knowledge of evil is lacking then clearly one's ought not to do evil doesn't exist.

So it seems we are borrowing from two moral systems, utilitarianism and deontology. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I, myself, am more of a moral realist as well.

Ability: How much effort is the person putting in, and what is the person able to do? A person in a developing country may want to go vegan, but may be genuinely unable because he or she can not access nutritious vegan foods like you can.

I would actually be interested in learning which countries you are referring to as many developing countries such as India and China have religions which are vegan such as Jainism and Ch'an Buddhism.

Progress: How is a person changing? It has been said before and I'll say it again: A more meaningful judge of actual character (this is apart from whether a person is on net more harmful or good in the world) is how a person is changing. Somebody from Texas who become a pescetarian may be more ethical than somebody from California who becomes a vegetarian -- because one of them had changed more, and made more effort at moral progress.

Now this is the most interesting bit. I'm struggling with this concept. So someone who doesn't eat meat can be more evil or less good than someone who only eats fish? And this is because of their breadth of transition? Is it because the one who eats fish has the main goal of eventually eating no meat? Why would one just simply not eat meat?

If one were to go from raping children to only viewing child porn, would that person be less evil or more good than one who goes from watching child porn to deleting and not watching all their child porn? The gap from raping children to child porn seems to be one quite larger than the gap between watching child porn and deleting all their child porn.

I apologize for the crudeness of this last analogy but I couldn't think of any others much more quickly.

[brimstoneSalad]

I am not persuaded that I am being controlled through advertisement propaganda.

Then it's your choice to eat meat instead of vegetables, and it's the wrong choice because it's causing more harm.

You can't control other people, you can only control you.

If you can choose between A and B, where action B results in more harm (regardless of who else is doing what), and you choose B, then you are doing wrong.

And just like buying products made from slavery in 1700 didn't make one evil, buying meat to eat doesn't make one evil today.

Bullshit, of course it did.

A. The coat on your left is made from cotton picked by free men. It costs $5
B. The coat on your right is made from cotton picked by slaves. It costs $5

The coats are of equal quality; they will both keep you warm.

If you choose B instead of A, you are making an immoral choice.
Regardless of what anybody else does, you are supporting slavery over freedom.

The reason the government had to step in and end slavery is because consumers were not responsible enough to do it themselves -- because too many consumers were selfish, and like you, imagined their hands clean. They were not as well educated in ethics and economics as modern people, and didn't have the internet to learn from each other like you have.

One of the many results of this was the civil war, and all of that blood was on the hands of those complacent consumers too.

IF and ONLY IF there was no choice (there was only B, no A available), then could you excuse yourself, because morality is an artifact of choice -- your choice -- stop blaming other people.
As long as your choice has an effect on the world, the positive or negative value of that effect defines the morality of that choice.

I don't think that this is evil though. Consider my point about the restaurant. If the owner of a restaurant is an evil racist, me eating at the restaurant does not make me racist or evil. The actual evil being done is the racism. Likewise the actual evil being done is the killing of animals.

You completely fail to understand consequentialism.

The consequences of an act make it good or evil.

Racism in itself is not evil unless the person is doing harmful deeds (because racism tends to cause harmful deeds we see it as evil, but in itself, if it does nothing, it is impotent).

IF that restaurant owner was going to do the same amount of evil whether you patronized the restaurant or not (maybe he has another income source, or is just wealthy), then it wouldn't matter if you went to the restaurant.

BUT if that restaurant owner relied on the income from the restaurant to fund his evil deeds, and you knew this, then of course you would be morally wrong to patronize the restaurant and provide him income.
UNLESS there was no other restaurant available (and no other source of food).

A choice that results in more harm in the world is that choice which is morally wrong.

Patronizing that restaurant, thus giving the evil manager more money to do evil with, would be wrong if you could patronize another non-evil restaurant, thus depriving the evil person of resources to do evil with. The goal is that the consequences of your action reduce the amount of harm in the world, not increase it.

Right now, you complacently indulge in actions that increase harm, and then you just blame others.

If it is wrong to kill animals, then clearly killing animals is wrong. It doesn't matter if you are getting paid to do it. It doesn't matter if there is someone else who will do it. A murderer is still a murderer even if they are getting paid and even if there would have been someone else willing to do it.

No one is holding a gun to the vegan's head saying, 'kill these animals.' The vegan is not a slave. The vegan is killing the animals of his own free will. Clearly this wrong.

Your intuition is wrong, or you have no coherent concept of rational ethics. You seem to be stuck in a religious concept of sinful acts that impart uncleanliness upon doing them. That's not how morality works.

It is NOT wrong to kill as an action. Nothing in itself as an action is inherently wrong, only comparative consequences. It is wrong through your choices to cause an increase in harm compared to not taking it (crudely).

You are presented with the choice: A. Eat meat B. Don't eat meat
You choose A, and this causes an increase in harm in the world compared to B.

A vegan at a slaughterhouse is presented with A. Work at the slaughterhouse B. Work somewhere else (if lucky enough to have a choice)
If he or she chooses A, it will NOT increase the harm in the world. This action is morally neutral.

For the slaughterhouse worker, the animal would still be bred and killed whether he or she was there or not.
For you, the animal will only be bred and killed if you purchased his or her predecessor.

Your choice is increasing the harm in the world. The worker's choice is not.

The belief that is it a particular brand of behavior which is inherently magically immoral regardless of consequence is not a rational one: it's essentially a religious mentality.

For a freegan, it is morally fine to eat meat from a dumpster, because it will not cause an increase in harm to the world.

This argument makes no sense when compared to the hitman analogy given earlier. The hitman is getting paid to do a job, therefore he is innocent? Think about the hitman's children and family? These are not good arguments.

I already explained the differences to the hitman analogy in another post.
Hitmen are very few and far between. If one hitman will not take the hit, there is no guarantee the person ordering the hit will find another. More hitmen also meaningfully drive the price of a hit down, and market their services (getting people who may not have ordered a hit to do so).
Animal agriculture is legal, and there will always be people who have no choice but to perform in the industry, and if there aren't it can be fully automated and done with machines instead.

I'm not persuaded by this idea. What do you call a person who repairs your plumbing? A plumber. What do you call a person who does your accounting? An accountant. What do you call a person who drives a bus? A bus driver. What do you call a person who does evil? An evil doer.

What a load of twisted rhetoric. You may not realize how disgusting that is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVco8t-R8KU

You sound just like Kirk Cameron.

No, a person who has told one lie ever is not just a liar, full stop.
A person who stole something once is not just a thief, period.

A person who repairs plumbing is not just a plumber -- this is a human being, who may be a father, a brother, a son, a birdhouse builder in his spare time. We are not our professions, and we are not defined by any single act or behavior.

People are complicated. We all do good and bad things. We're not all "evil doers", but we all do evil sometimes -- that doesn't innately make us bad people. We're also all doers of good. We are not irrevocably damned by the Christian god for doing a single bad action. In any sensible, rational morality we are a sum of our actions, and with a consideration for our circumstances.

This is what I mean when I say a person is evil. The person is an evil doer. People who eat meat are evil doers. People who buy products from sweatshops are evil doers. People who contribute to global warming are evil doers.

You're constructing deceptive rhetoric, and it's disgusting. Stop defining people in extremes by one action.

I'm saying that maybe eating meat does not make one an evil doer, just like contributing to global warming does not make one an evil doer. I think you do harm to the cause by portraying anyone who eats meat as a worker of evil.

I didn't say they are evildoers, but they are people who do some evil things. They probably also do good things. You can not judge a whole by a part. All you're doing here is insulting all of us by creating a straw man.

Just because we correctly identify certain choices as unethical does not mean we are condemning everybody who makes those choices as pure evil.

Well I'm not entirely persuaded that what I'm doing is evil, so I wouldn't say that I know I do wrong.

This is because you're trying very hard to rationalize it. But you know what? If you even thought it might be wrong, you would stop doing it until you were sure.

Let's say you see an old shoe box in the road, it says "kittens" on the side. It might be empty, or it might have kittens in it.
Assuming this small box poses no threat to your car, do you swerve to avoid it, or do you run over it?
You don't know for sure if has kittens in it; maybe it's empty.

If you are unconvinced but AT LEAST open minded, and think it could be wrong, then stop eating meat for now, and continue this conversation. If you even might possibly be wrong, you should not be taking the needless risk of doing evil.

Eating vegetarian is healthier anyway: you have nothing to lose.


The numbers on animal deaths account for variously sized animals; chickens increase it significantly.
If people ate pigs and cows only, the numbers would be smaller.

I'm just trying to be realistic. The transition away from slavery was a multi-generational change. If precedent serves, then we can probably expect the same with this change.

People here went vegan in a single generation. It's pretty realistic for YOU to do it now. You don't have control over what the world does; it may take generations to transition entirely, but you can be part of that transition today.

If you had slaves, would you be one of the first on board to free them, or remembered by history as a stubborn slave owner whose grandchildren had to finally free the descendants of your slaves?

Again, you're excusing your inaction by appealing to what other people do. You can only control your own actions. Stop blaming others and take personal responsibility for the choices you make.

So a step in the right direction is not a good thing?

It's an improvement on consequence. The idea of getting "points" for something like not raping people is rather absurd, as is the idea of punishing somebody for not spending every waking moment doing charity.

If I feel undeniable urges to commit evil acts, wouldn't you say it would be good for me to get some therapy?

If so, then only because the urge was irresistible -- you did not have a choice but to do evil things. That became your default. Like somebody with a brain tumor who becomes uncontrollably violent because of it.

This is not the case for you now. You make the choice every day (or every shopping trip, and every time you go out to eat) to buy meat. It's not an uncontrollable urge. It's very possible for you to not do it.

Do you want somebody to give you a prize for not being a mass murderer or serial rapist?

Abstaining from the choice to do a BAD action (like buying meat) is distinct from making the choice to do a GOOD action (like donating to charity).
Neutral is more like you doing nothing at all, or not existing.

Right now, you are doing harm. You are doing a bad action. We are asking you to stop that.

Ok, so I am actually working class as well. I drive a forklift on the night-shift for a company.

Driving a forklift is a pretty skilled job. You speak English. You can read, you can write, you have the necessary certifications to operate heavy machinery. You are privileged in a field where you are in relatively high demand.
You don't realize how lucky you are.

Try being a migrant worker from Mexico.

It seems to me that these people could transition out of those jobs into new ones relatively easily, at least where I live. I live in the midwest, where farming is at its peak.

You live in a privileged area for your kind of work, and you have a privileged background. You also over-estimate the number of jobs available in these areas. You think a worker with little qualification and poor English could just get most of these jobs? There's a lot of competition for these. It can take months to find a new job, or longer. If you apply for a job and you're not the most qualified applicant, it doesn't matter how many jobs you apply to, you won't get it.

People aren't sticking around in slaughter houses for fun.

Sure, but so would shifting the huge economic force of animal production to plant only farming. At the end of the day we are both in the same boat as it were.

I don't know what that quip is supposed to mean.
We already grow plant foods to feed animals -- in fact, we grow MORE food to feed animals than it would take to feed humans.
The corn and soy fed to animals, fed directly to humans (after some processing) would feed far more people. This is basic thermodynamics.

I, myself, am definitely not the ultimate cause as there are billions of people who eat meat.

You share the responsibility with them. Claiming you're blameless because other people do it too, you might as well go out and gang rape somebody to death -- there are other people doing it too, so you're totally innocent, right?

You're all the ultimate end of that chain of supply and demand, who have the ultimate choice in action which really affects total harm outcome. You're the ones choosing meat over vegetable foods. You're the ones ultimately causing more suffering because of your choices.

If any one of them -- you, for instance -- stops doing it, it won't all end, but it will all be reduced slightly. The same is not the case for a slaughterhouse worker who quits.

I'll bring up this analogy again because I think it's poignant. Slavery didn't end because people refused to buy products made by slaves. Slavery ended in the British Empire with the government buying all the slaves and then making slavery illegal, and slavery ended in the USA with a civil war.

That didn't make it right for people to buy the products of slavery if they had viable alternatives, and it doesn't mean it should end by government intervention or war.

Do you want another civil war? Is that what you're aiming for here? Do you think that's a good thing?

Economic pressure is how slavery should have been ended; if the economic power of the plantation owners was decreased by those who were against slavery actually acting in accordance with their values, those owners would have switched over to free labor on their own, and then government could have followed peacefully, banning slavery once no serious economic interests supported it anymore.

We've seen pretty much this work with fur already, where the industry has been hampered by low demand.
Or do you think you can be anti-fur and buy and wear fur coats all of the time too?
Do you support the fur industry as well as eating meat?

Suppose we were living in the year 1700 and I bought some clothes at the store. Would you say that I am an evil doer because the cotton was picked by a slave? I think not. I'm just a person buying some clothes at the store.

If you had the choice to buy slave picked cotton, and free man picked cotton, then yes: I would say that was an immoral choice. As I already explained, I would not call you an "evil doer" because you have made one evil choice.

So a person's integrity is not compromised by doing a few bad things. Ok.

If you can understand that, why do you persist in this claim that doing one bad thing makes somebody an "evil doer"?
You're obsessed with labeling people either good or bad, and then concluding that all actions a good person does must therefore be good. This is not remotely rational.

Ok, so we're talking some sort of utilitarian framework I presume?

No, consequentialism. Utilitarianism doesn't have a monopoly on consequentialism.

So it seems we are borrowing from two moral systems, utilitarianism and deontology.

Not even remotely.

See this thread: https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... ?f=7&t=785

You're confusing the evaluations of ACTIONS, which are good or bad based on consequences, and core CHARACTER or MOTIVATION, which must be put into the context of that person's abilities.

We can evaluate actions based on consequences, but we can only make claims about a person's intentions if that person was aware of what those consequences would be.

I would actually be interested in learning which countries you are referring to as many developing countries such as India and China have religions which are vegan such as Jainism and Ch'an Buddhism.

This is true in particular in some northern regions and at high elevations where agriculture is difficult. Or very dry or mountainous and rocky areas, where there's only tough grass or moss, and people rely on herding goats or other animals.

There are places where it's hard to find affordable nutritionally adequate non-animal foods.
This is not true of most of China or India, but these are large countries with various regions for which that is true to varying degrees.

Now this is the most interesting bit. I'm struggling with this concept. So someone who doesn't eat meat can be more evil or less good than someone who only eats fish? And this is because of their breadth of transition?

It's because it's not equally easy or culturally supported everywhere. A person who puts in more work to avoid the choices that cause harm is exhibiting a superior character to somebody who has put in very little work at all and would not put in so much work. It is the environment that has caused one to cause more harm in practice, but the intent and motivation to be better is stronger in one person than the other.

This is why it's important to judge actions and the harm they cause independently from personal character.

If one were to go from raping children to only viewing child porn, would that person be less evil or more good than one who goes from watching child porn to deleting and not watching all their child porn?

This really indicates the extreme misunderstanding you have of morality.

Watching child porn is a harmless action: it only becomes harmful if the person acts on it and harms a child, or if the person purchases child porn, which feeds money into the child porn industry and causes more child porn to be made, harming more children.

So, this analogy is really useless.

The gap from raping children to child porn seems to be one quite larger than the gap between watching child porn and deleting all their child porn.

Well, the latter gap is pretty much zero, since neither are harmful (unless the person is buying it, or acting to harm children).
But it's not about the gap, it's about the effort the person put in to change.

If you were a priest, and you had it easy molesting children and being protected by the church, and you decided to stop doing that on your own and move away from children (far away) to stop hurting people, then that would be more meaningful than somebody who was arrested for molesting children, and "decided" to stop doing it because he or she was medicated by court order and watched all of the time.
The effect is basically the same, but in one case you have a lot more encouragement to stop, and your drive to harm children was taken away (not that you willed it), and in the other case you have free reign to molest and get away with it, and have your full drive in tact that you resist by choice.

Getting away from the pedophilia comparison, and using one with different comparative outcomes:

Somebody who was raised vegetarian in a part of India where everybody is vegetarian who went out of his or her way to start eating fish sometimes is a much worse person than somebody who is working hard to change and eat less meat but was raised eating meat and lives somewhere everybody eats it and encourages it.

One put in effort to become a worse (more harmful) person compared to before, one put in effort to reduce harm and become a comparatively better (less harmful) person than before.

[AlexanderVeganTheist]

No, consequentialism. Utilitarianism doesn't have a monopoly on consequentialism.

By what measure are you judging the consequences then, if not by their creating happiness or prevent suffering?

Watching child porn is a harmless action: it only becomes harmful if the person acts on it and harms a child, or if the person purchases child porn, which feeds money into the child porn industry and causes more child porn to be made, harming more children.

Whether watching child pornography creates harm or not is dependent on the motive. Policemen watch child pornography in order to catch perpetrators. With that case as the exception, if the motive is arousal, it will always cause harm. In the first place it will harm the persons ability to become aroused with a person of their own age, and therefor harm their ability to have a healthy partner relationship, which could lead to happiness. Also, the producers, even if you don't buy directly from them, might have advertisements that give them monetary income, or even just might be perversely motivated to get as much views as they can. Also watching child pornography creates an emotional environment in which children are less safe. A person might look at children in a sexual way, and the child may perceive this. The desire itself is already harmful. Someone who watches child pornography may, not knowing this in their awake state, meet up with the producers while in their sleep. It creates an earth on which this exists. Every person has the duty to take responsibility for their sexual desires, and deal with the emotions that cause the unloving ones, to create a world in which there exists only loving and safe sexuality.

[AlexanderVeganTheist]

What do you call a person who repairs your plumbing? A plumber. What do you call a person who does your accounting? An accountant. What do you call a person who drives a bus? A bus driver. What do you call a person who does evil? An evil doer. This is what I mean when I say a person is evil. The person is an evil doer. People who eat meat are evil doers. People who buy products from sweatshops are evil doers. People who contribute to global warming are evil doers.

I'm saying that maybe eating meat does not make one an evil doer, just like contributing to global warming does not make one an evil doer. I think you do harm to the cause by portraying anyone who eats meat as a worker of evil.

What you do doesn't define your identity, necessarily. You can change. You can do evil one day, and stop it the next. You're not permanently defined by your (evil) actions in the past, that is a very harmful idea, that indeed is quite pervasive in religion.

I'd define as evil someone who intentionally and knowingly causes harm. I guess it is up to you to decide whether you think you fall under that definition. It doesn't matter to me whether it's "evil" or just "harmful" - all that matters is that you could stop. It's not like you're sadistically torturing animals - that would certainly be evil. However, you do pay for animals to be killed and live torturous lives, and consume the products thereof. And you know of the consequences (If not, watch the movie Earthlings). So you do think it is acceptable animals suffer for your pleasure and convenience of buying them... Does that fall under the definition of "evil"? Who cares? Semantics.

A lot of your confusion comes from a disconnection between the killing act, and the "cleanliness" of the buying act. You don't see how one causes the other, because there is a distance between them and a difference in the outward appearance of the acts... You seem very unwilling to come to terms with the fact that money is the motivator in our society, and as such spending money comes with responsibility. The two acts are inextricably causally linked.

I do think that words such as "worker of evil" have strong connotations of judgement for many people... I don't want to judge, using these words don't entail judgement for me. If you think saying meat eaters commit evil damages the message and the movement - what else can we say? We can say that they do harm, which is the truth.

[brimstoneSalad]

No, consequentialism. Utilitarianism doesn't have a monopoly on consequentialism.

By what measure are you judging the consequences then, if not by their creating happiness or prevent suffering?

Utilitarianism is hedonistic, and it's not altruistic.
Causing somebody else pain to provide yourself with slightly more pleasure is not a moral thing to do.
And violating somebody will is a harm whether they know it or not.

You may want to read from this post in this thread: https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... =30#p17973

With that case as the exception, if the motive is arousal, it will always cause harm. In the first place it will harm the persons ability to become aroused with a person of their own age, and therefor harm their ability to have a healthy partner relationship, which could lead to happiness.

Do you have any studies on this? That sounds highly speculative. Given the lack of evidence so far from video game violence not being correlated to real world violence, it seems unlikely that watching things necessarily inhibits our ability to do otherwise.
It's also very likely the child porn could help them "get off" and prevent them from committing acts against children.

Without solid evidence, I don't think it's right to come down on one side or another on this.

Also, the producers, even if you don't buy directly from them, might have advertisements that give them monetary income, or even just might be perversely motivated to get as much views as they can.

I was assuming some kind of pirated download or file share. But you are right, if there's another means of income there, that could feed the behavior of making films.

Also watching child pornography creates an emotional environment in which children are less safe. A person might look at children in a sexual way, and the child may perceive this. The desire itself is already harmful.

This is all like the video games and violence thing. There's not a lot of evidence there.
It could have the opposite effect, to satiate the desire so they can be more normal the rest of the time.

Someone who watches child pornography may, not knowing this in their awake state, meet up with the producers while in their sleep. It creates an earth on which this exists. Every person has the duty to take responsibility for their sexual desires, and deal with the emotions that cause the unloving ones, to create a world in which there exists only loving and safe sexuality.

Or NOT watching it could cause them to abduct and rape children in their sleep because they weren't able to get off. You're not making a lot of sense here. Speculation could go either way.

[brimstoneSalad]

...

You may want to read this, too:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... om-breaks/

You really think anybody would choose to do that kind of work if other jobs were available?