In many productive vegan debates I have had, both sides often agree on empirical facts, animals feel pain, industrial farming causes suffering, humans can survive on plant based diets (with proper planning), etc. and yet disagreement persists. The disagreement is not primarily about facts, but about commitments which are background certainties that are not proven or argued for, but presupposed as correct without evidence. These are rarely stated as arguments; they are taken for granted to be the correct way one must think if they are to be moral. Some of these are
“Causing unnecessary suffering is always morally wrong.”
“All animals must be morally considerable in themselves.”
“If an action is avoidably harmful, it requires justification.”
“Diet is a moral domain.”
“Only moral status based on traits is a valid and sound consideration.”
”What’s good for the goose must also be good for the human or justified why it is not.”
These function as commitments which are certain yet no independent evidence of the certainty of the empirical evidence given can be offered to justify such claims to certainty. These commitments are not inferred from evidence and are presupposed in vegan reasoning. This evidence is then smuggled within the vegan ethical framework.
The issue is that facts only matter after these presupposed commitments which cannot be challenged of invalidated are put in place with vegans. Showing slaughterhouse footage only persuades someone if they already accept that animal suffering morally counts in this domain. If they do not, then nothing immoral is happening. Nutritional studies only matter if diet is already seen as ethically constrained. Thus, showing evidence of animal suffering or nutritional adequacy only ethically persuades those who already accept the underlying moral commitments vegans have.
Vegans are treating their presupposed commitments as if they were conclusions that other people must accept if they are to consider themselves ethical. Importantly, what I am communicating here is emphatically NOT moral relativism. I don’t believe these commitments are arbitrary from vegans (or omnivores as most tend to have this same issue). They are anchored in biology, culture, and shared practices.This is NOT “everyone is equally right” And is an explanation why disagreement persists. It does not endorse all positions or say that all positions are equally correct and valid.
Tl;dr
Vegan ethical frames rest on unarguable moral certainties about suffering, normality, and obligation which cannot be justified; until those commitments are anccepted and shared, evidence cannot decide the issue of if veganism is universally ethical or not.
Challenge
If I am wrong, make a pro vegan ethical argument showing cause for why I ought to be vegan to be ethical free from using any presupposed commitment.
My Position Formally for Debate
P1. Presupposed commitments vary between forms of life.
P2. Vegan presupposed commitments are not universal.
P3. Evidence alone cannot compel acceptance of vegan presupposed commitments.
C. Therefore, universal vegan obligations fail outside shared presupposed commitments and cannot be objectively extended to others who do not adopt those commitments, because moral practice is exhibited in action, not concluded from argument.
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Yes, you're right. The presupposed commitments you refer to are entirely subjective and, whilst I believe they can be argued about logically they can't usually be grounded in evidence and made objective.
But this is all ethical debate more or less isn't it? It's people with different opinions about relevant presupposed commitments to discuss and attempt to persuade one another of the logic of one set over another. Doesn't seem to me that veganism is special in this regard.
One big piece I think you're overlooking is the ability to argue using logic that people have inconsistencies in their application of their own declared presupposed commitments.
Inconsistency arguments can derive vegan conclusions within a shared moral framework, but they cannot justify that framework itself, and therefore cannot ground veganism as a universal ethical obligation. I agree with you on several important points, and I think that agreement actually sharpens, not weakens, the critique. You’re right that ethical debate generally involves presupposed commitments that are not grounded in empirical evidence. You’re also right that veganism is not unique in this respect. Most moral frameworks rely on background certainties that function as hinges rather than conclusions. Where we differ is in what follows from that fact.
The key issue is not whether veganism relies on presupposed commitments, it clearly does, but whether those commitments can be universally binding on agents who do not already share them. My claim is that they cannot. I agree that exposing inconsistencies within someone’s stated commitments is a legitimate and often productive form of ethical argument. If a person claims both that “causing unnecessary suffering is always morally wrong” and that “dietary choices are morally irrelevant,” then pointing out the tension is fair. In that limited sense, inconsistency arguments can show that vegan conclusions follow conditionally, given certain premises.
But if someone says that they do NOT take all unnecessary suffering as morally wrong to all forms of life that can suffer and that they don’t build their moral presuppositions on trait based ethics, then the vegan conclusion is not something which follows conditionally and is not an ethical end for that person or that community.
Agreed, that's what I'm saying.
Of course.
Indeed. I'm not trying to suggest otherwise.
As I said, ethics are subjective. All we can try to do is try to persuade one another, not objectively prove anything.
So, I agree.
I don't think vegans debating here, or anywhere, think otherwise. Instead, they're trying to convince others to their way of thinking, to persuade others to change their presupposed commitments. Because they're not immutable, right?
Veganism arises from a certain set of presupposed commitments (axioms). Those axioms are subjective and therefore (unlike objective mathematical axioms for example) subject to change through debate.
Of course. Which is why in a case like that the vegan attempts to challenge the axiom that "all unnecessary suffering [is not] morally wrong". Because that's not an axiom which is somehow immune from challenge.
This is critically failing to reconcile the following:
Most people do have a shared moral framework in at least some regards. The evidential argument is basically saying "hey, you and I already have more or less the same framework, but you're unfamiliar with the facts or have relied on a type of lower order and flawed argumentation to colour your actions and beliefs that we need reasses."
Someone could have a non-shared different moral framework and the wrong facts/irrational arguments that if broken away should lead that person to be vegan to be in alignment with their moral framework however different.
For example, as a vegan, I was a non vegan, my framework never really changed, I always cared about animals, I was ignorant of the state of the industry and critically I had incorporated arguments at a younger age which I had never gone back and reassessed. For example I would have thought "yeah I like animals, and don't wanna see them hurt but I do it because humans are omnivores and we need to eat animals" or "yeah I like animals and don't want see them hurt but vegans are just moral grandstanding and obviously the world can't all go vegan because we wouldn't have enough food
Your example actually proves my point. You describe a case where your moral framework didn’t change, you always “cared about animals”, but your actions did, only after learning facts about the industry. That doesn’t show universal moral obligation; it shows conditional compliance, you acted differently because new empirical knowledge aligned with commitments you already held. There was no automatic, universal imperative forcing you to veganism; it depended entirely on the conjunction of your pre existing commitments and factual knowledge.
Crucially, this is not a refutation of my position; it’s a confirmation. The evidential argument only works within the context of someone who already shares, even partially, the relevant moral commitments. For someone without those commitments, someone who doesn’t see animal suffering as morally significant to stop eating them for example, no amount of evidence alone compels vegan behavior. Your personal story doesn’t show universal bindingness; it shows persuasion within a shared framework. Veganism’s normative force is therefore inherently non universal outside pre existing presuppositions, the point of my OP. Facts alone do not generate obligation; they only influence those already inclined to care.
Nope, the two interlocutors could have different moral frameworks, yet veganism logically extends from the non vegans ethical commitments but for evidential misunderstandings.
This is a counterexample to the conclusion of your argument.
Yeah, you're not wrong but luckily I can still refute your conclusion without refuting this part lol.
I would say as an aside, it's not really failure for an ethical argument to not succeed where it isn't intended to. It's like saying the argument of evil falls flat if a Christian doesn't believe God is all powerful, and it's like okay, well the argument isn't for you, it's intended for the majority of people in society who have empathy for animals.
You are assuming that any moral framework that cares about animals will automatically lead to veganism once factual misunderstandings are corrected. But this is false because the extension from concern to action is not logically necessary, it depends on the specific commitments embedded in that framework. For example, someone might care deeply about animal suffering but also hold that human dietary needs, wants, or cultural traditions outweigh animal interests; correcting misunderstandings about industrial farming doesn’t compel them to go vegan.
Put differently, their claim treats moral frameworks as if they are purely fact sensitive machines, once facts are known, the “right” action follows. But moral frameworks include weighting, prioritization, and context. Evidence alone cannot dictate the choice unless the agent already shares the presupposed moral valuation that gives animals independent moral weight. Knowledge of facts is insufficient to generate universal vegan obligations; your argument conflates agreement on suffering with agreement on moral duty, which is exactly the point of my OP you keep trying to smuggle in.
Knowing that pigs suffer does not tell you what to do any more than knowing the weather tells you how to make meaning of your life. Evidence only persuades within a form of life that already cares about the suffering in question. Outside that shared grammar of value, facts are just facts, they do not carry obligation.
You’re wrong because you’re conflating audience scope with the logical structure of the argument. You can’t justify an argument’s universal ethical claim simply by saying “it works for some subset of people who already agree with part of it.” That is exactly the point of my critique in my OP, the argument’s force depends entirely on shared pre existing commitments. Saying “well, most people already care about animals” dodges the problem, it does not make the argument universally compelling, nor does it show that veganism can be justified independently of presupposed commitments. It’s like claiming a bridge reaches the other side because 70% of cars happen to drive straight; the structural flaw remains. Your defense is a rhetorical sleight of hand, not a logical rebuttal. An argument that only convinces those who already agree isn’t an argument, it’s a mirror. Ethics isn’t shown by nods, it’s shown by the grammar of our practices.
Youre mistaken. I do incidentally beliece that, but my argument doesnt rely on it. I'm claiming there exists two possible destinct meta ethical frameworks with at least one shared ethical conclusion. Do you agree?
No, you're just misrepresenting the scope of the argument.
It's not dodging the problem, I'm saying yes, if your moral commitments don't logically extend to veganism, then the evidential argument doesn't work. That's not a problem with the argument. It's a limitation sure but it's not a problem. Critically, you're wrong about needing to share that framework though, and I can't tell if you're actually unable to understand this point or just refusing to respond to it.
No, I don’t agree because the mere existence of two frameworks that occasionally overlap on a single conclusion tells us nothing about why anyone should act on that conclusion. You’re treating abstract agreement as practical obligation. In real life, ethical behavior emerges from the commitments and practices people actually share, not from hypothetical coincidences between isolated frameworks. You point to two frameworks that sometimes nod at the same thing. But nodding is not doing. Ethics is in the gestures we share, not in abstract overlaps we create.
Because you say so?
You cannot stretch a net where it does not reach. If your argument only catches those who already stand on the same moral plank, it says nothing about the sea beyond. Convincing some is not the same as proving universal. You’re missing the distinction between a limitation and a justification. Yes, the argument only convinces those whose pre existing commitments align, that’s exactly my point in my OP you keep denying free of justification, evidence, or rationality. You’re claiming this isn’t a problem, but an argument that depends entirely on prior agreement cannot claim universal ethical force. Limitation ≠ justification; your insistence that it ‘works anyway’ is hand-waving, not reasoning.”
could you clear up for me why it is necessary for an argument to have universal relevance? what about historical contingencies that shape the context of any argument? why just disregard that?
I am not demanding universal relevance, they are. When they claim that me and my moral community are immoral for consuming meat based on their ethics (as well as everyone else in all other communities) they are universalizing their morals and ethics. As for historical contingencies, they are normatively significant because they determine what counts as an argument at all. I don’t disregard them in the least. I value historical contingencies as the source of meaning, normativity, and argumentative force. They are not something to be overcome in pursuit of universal relevance; they are what make relevance possible in the first place.
This means how each community sees history and different communities’ interpretations of historical contingencies specifically are not peripheral, they are what make arguments meaningful at all. Meaning, normativity, and what counts as a good reason depend on the shared practices and network of language use of a community. So when communities interpret history differently, they aren’t “wrong”; they are operating within different forms of life, each with its own internal standards. Demanding universal relevance ignores this fact; arguments gain their force precisely from the historically and socially situated contexts in which they are used.
This is what I am attempting to show through my OP.
> No, I don’t agree because the mere existence of two frameworks that occasionally overlap on a single conclusion tells us nothing about why anyone should act on that conclusion. You’re treating abstract agreement as practical obligation. In real life, ethical behavior emerges from the commitments and practices people actually share, not from hypothetical coincidences between isolated frameworks. You point to two frameworks that sometimes nod at the same thing. But nodding is not doing. Ethics is in the gestures we share, not in abstract overlaps we create.
The hypothetical but coherent counterexample where your premises are true but your conclusion is false is proof that your argument is invalid. Even though it isnt fully hypothetical, it wouldnt matter if it were
Since you like formal logic (as I really do, too) I show you formally why you are wrong.
Your counterexample claims
My reply, in logical terms, is
Your countermodel formally is
⟹ ¬[(F₁ ⊨ C ∧ F₂ ⊨ C) → R(a)]
Which is consistent with, and in fact entailed by, my view. So your objection does not show invalidity, it shows they attacked a claim you never made. A countermodel only refutes a claimed entailment. I’m rejecting the idea that ethical reasons arise from entailment at all, so your objection targets a position I don’t hold And is thus moot. Let’s show formally why it fails.
Let
F₁, F₂ = ethical frameworks
C = a shared conclusion (“X is permissible / required”)
R(a) = agent a has a reason to act on C
P(a) = agent a participates in the practices/commitments that give C normative force
What you assume I’m claiming (but I am not)
This is a deductively invalid argument, and my counterexample targets exactly this form. What I am actually claiming is assertion of the negation of the inference rule you are using (really and continually attempting to smuggle in without validating)
And replacing it with a different grounding condition
In words
This is not a deductive argument from premises to conclusion. It is a theory of normativity.
Now, this is all irony as my entire position is that we don’t live in practice through theories of normativity. I just wanted to show you formally in logic how you are not even correctly representing my position Properly. If you want to actually debate my position, you have to engage on the level I have presented it, in a practice based way. You are moving the goalpost to a formal analytic / model theoretic way I suspect in an attempt to communicate about ethics in an abstract way, which is the entire premise of my OP. If you continue down the abstract / theoretical path we’ll have nothing to talk about, so that choice is yours…
For starters, I don’t think most people behave in accordance with their stated values all the time.
I think behavior change is always challenging. Consider quitting smoking or adopting an exercise routine. Consider how many people start boycotts but don’t stick with them. Look at how many people appreciate monogamy yet cheat. There are so many examples of how habits are hard to change and of how people think one thing but do another.
I think generally speaking veganism is “winning.” if you look at the way people talk and think about animal agriculture and animal rights. There’ve been tremendous changes in people’s concepts of what is right and wrong. Their behavior just hasn’t kept up with the pace of their thoughts.
As someone who’s been vegetarian or vegan for over four decades I can tell you that the objections to veganism I heard people say when I was younger are different from the things I hear people say now. Nowadays, most people understand the factory farming exists and that it’s a major problem for animals, the environment, and public health. There is a lot of agreement that factory farming needs to stop. This change in public sentiment has been driven almost entirely by vegans. https://sentientmedia.org/americans-oppose-factory-farming-practices/
There has also been change in which animals people consume. People today eat a lot more chicken and fish and less red meat. I believe this is occurring for two reasons: 1- health 2- ethics. https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us/
I think it is very common for people to have a circle of compassion for people and animals they care most about and then leave other people and animals out of that circle. But as that circle of compassion, widen and grows, it’s most likely to start including those most similar to the people and animals already in the circle. For this reason it would make sense that a societal shift towards veganism would begin with mammals and then extend to birds and fishes. In fact, if you ask many vegans (who didn’t go vegan “cold turkey”) they cut back on mammals and then went vegetarian and then went vegan. This trajectory is probably “natural.”
This is (another) non responsive comment to my debate position. It changes the topic from normative justification to sociological and psychological explanation and grandstands. I ask that you debate on topic per Rule two of the of the sub. Thank you for your cooperation.
An example of this is that I am asking to be shown why people ought to act vegan on non-presupposed grounding and you are responding with your opinion on why people do not act vegan yet. You implicitly move from “Many people now believe X” to “X is the correct moral framework” I could accept everything you said as 100% correct and still maintain the conclusion of my argument as correct which highlights the lack of engagement with my position; yes, veganism has shifted norms, yes, compassion circles expand, yes, people increasingly disapprove of factory farming; none of that establishes universal obligation. It only shows cultural momentum. In five years the exact opposite can be true and what would that validate in terms of ethical correctness? How does that apply to my position?
You are committing category errors annd asking categorically different questions then answering those questions. It is as if you are solipsistically debating yourself here and not engaging my position in the least.
You're right and I'm sorry. I was not treating it like the Debate sub because I truthfully didn't think that's what you really wanted.
I grant your position. I take part in this sub to refute arguments against veganism not to argue for veganism.
ETA: I went vegan (for the 2nd and final time) when I ran out of excuses not to be.
My argument is
Why Evidence Fails in Vegan Moral Disputes
Estimated Time of Arrival: I literally had a Christian in r/DebateChristianifty say the exact same thing. “I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and savior when I ran out of excuses…” I find both of you to metaphysically be in the same dogmatic, absolutist, universal boat…
For what it’s worth I could never be convinced to believe in a higher being on the basis of a lack of excuses not to. Christianity is about adopting a belief. I can’t force a belief to just come out of thin air if it’s not there.
But I could be convinced to adopt a lifestyle/ habit/ behavior that I was emotionally and logically inclined towards, but had simply been using lots of excuses not to. I was vegetarian for decades before going vegan.
Veganism is about a good faith attempt to avoid animal exploitation. It’s more about our personal identity and specific behaviors (eating plant based, avoiding zoos, not wearing leather or fur etc) than one unified belief in some thing beyond scientific explanation. Reasons and beliefs about why people are vegan vary but generally include some basic animal rights or welfare ideas.
Again, this isn’t an argument for veganism. These are just statements I’m making in a conversation we’re having.
My community does not find exploiting animals for food, clothes, tools, etc. immoral. We don’t find it based on an appeal to emotion, either. We do base some protections based on emotions but not to the extent you do. We are logically sound in our reasoning, rational, and coherent.
I don’t want or need you to not be vegan. I am happy having a diversity of moral experiences in the world.
Right, but you reason from the assumption that there are no moral facts, something I don't think you seriously question yourself on.
You write that it's unarguable, you write that it's unjustifiable. Have you read the arguments? Have you seen the attempts at justification? Or is your gut feeling enough to settle the matter?
And so, why bother coming here? If you aren't receptive to moral reasons, must we appeal to your self-interest? If you truly take a look into the conditions of the factory farms and say, well, I am OK with this, then what do you want from us?
Even if you are a moral non-realist, you surely have a way you want the world to be. Maybe you want your family to be happy, and for your country to remain peaceful. Do you want there to be less suffering as well? If you don't, then again, why come here?
Do you reason from the position that there are moral facts? If so, can you please share them with me and how you found out what they are?
We can argue that veganism can be defined as ethically eating meat while other options are available? That’s in flux?
Yep.
This is a debate sub and not a proselytizing sub. I’m not here to be converted.
I don’t generally eat meat from factory farms. I might in a restaurant or a friends house, etc. but I don’t at home. Does that even matter? What if I never ate meat from a factory farms, only small boutique “one bad day” farms or hunting/fishing? would that be vegan? If not, your appeal to factory farms is moot.
Wanting the world to be a certain way is not a claim about reality that could be true or false, justified or refuted. I treat it as an expression of a stance, revealed in how a person speaks, reacts, and acts within a form of life. Such wanting is not a theory about how the world is, but part of how a person orients themselves toward the world. When someone says “the world ought to be this way,” they are not reporting a fact or discovering a value; they are showing what they care about, what they demand, what they refuse to accept. The meaning of the “ought” lies in the practices that surround it, approval, blame, education, praise, punishment, not in any metaphysical property called “oughtness.”
Refer to what I said in my last comment. Plus, I would rather there be infinite suffering for pigs (etc.) if it meant no parent had to see their child die of cancer for humans ever again. Suffering is not some finite thing that can be measured and I am not a Utilitarian.
To debate vegans. Read the mission statement of this sub.
A place for open discussion about veganism and vegan issues, focusing on intellectual debate about animal rights and welfare, health, the environment, nutrition, philosophy or any topic related to veganism. Please be warned that while we forbid hate speech as well as rude and toxic behavior, DebateAVegan cannot be considered a safe space and regardless of perspective you may run into ideas that you find offensive or appalling. Please take care of your mental well being
Thank you for your response.
You have seen the arguments and justifications for moral realism? May I ask which arguments you have looked at, and why you decided they failed?
I was simply trying to find a shred of common ground. You treat this like a game to be won.
This paragraph tilts at windmills.
Mostly I am interested in how seriously you have considered that there might really be moral facts. Please tell me which/whose arguments, you have considered.
We agree surely that if one has not properly considered the existence of moral facts, then they are in no position to rule them out, correct? Do you think you have properly considered them?
Note: Made late edits because sometimes I come across as more rude than I intend to, and I don't like that.
Nope. This is shifting the burden. If you want to exert a positive claim that moral realism exist then it is incumbent on you to prove it not me to disprove it. Imagine saying that a Bigfoot skeptic had to disprove all the arguments for Bigfoots existence to say that they doubted Bigfoot existed and acted accordingly.
We do what we should do.
It’s a debate, remember, you are not trying to proselytize and convert me.
Sorry you don’t understand it but it is coherent.
Nope. Someone can reasonably reject the existence of moral facts based on skepticism, critical reasoning, or examination of evidence, even without having “properly considered” every possible argument. Dismissing a position solely because one hasn’t explored it exhaustively is a fallacy of argument from ignorance.
I’ll give you some examples
Someone can reasonably reject the existence of phlogiston before knowing all of modern chemistry. They didn’t have to study every theory ever proposed to conclude it doesn’t exist. Rejecting moral facts could work the same way—skepticism is possible without exhaustive consideration.
A person doesn’t need to have proved Fermat’s Last Theorem themselves to reasonably doubt the truth of some highly speculative claim in number theory. They can rely on critical reasoning and existing knowledge. Similarly, one can question moral facts without “fully considering” every metaethical argument.
If someone tells you there’s a giant invisible dragon in your garage, you don’t need to exhaustively consider every hypothetical before reasonably rejecting it. Moral facts can be approached in the same way, you can doubt their existence without having surveyed every philosophical treatise. You really don’t have to search any of them; the burden is on the person lodging the positive claim to existence to furnish evidence.
Not sure what constitutes your community, but here's a bit about what American voters believe:
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2019/survey-majority-of-voters-surveyed-support-greater-oversight-of-industrial-animal-farms
Important to note that more than 90 percent of all livestock raised in the U.S. are confined to CAFOs. So.... what they're saying applies to the majority of animal products they consume.
What % of Americans believe it is moral and should be legal to consume animal products even if other options are available? That is the question of merit to the conversation around veganism. Everything else is moot.
If you had to choose between CAFO meat consumption and a vegan diet, which would you choose?
You can find the same number of people concerned that child African slave labor is used in Africa for all cellphone batteries as well as Asian adult slavery in Asia for manufacturing yet no one is giving up their smartphone and, as we all know, actions speak louder than words. I remember how Hilary Clinton held a double digit lead over Trump in polls the week before the election because so many people lied. People will say what they believe other people want them to hear and then do what they believe is correct. This is why a practice based system of ethics is better than an abstract, theory based one. You can tell the people of a community that x, y, z, is the “right” thing to do and they can echo it back as loud as a stadium full of Taylor Swift fans singing, but, it’s their actions which show what their true ethics are. In the US, 97% of people consume animal products. Everyone (adult) knows that it takes death and confinement and exploitation to make animal products.
Also, your argument of CAFO meat is moot if you still find “one bad day” meat to be unethical.
In your original post you said "moral practice is exhibited in action, not concluded from argument." I responded " I don’t think most people behave in accordance with their stated values all the time."
This is the the point we are disagreeing on.
Yes and I showed that you are appealing to popularity and you said that you were not debating. Idk what you are trying to do here, debate or not. I am following you where you take the “not debate” and whenever I present you with an inconsistency, incoherent train of thought, or irrational position you seem to derail the “not debate“ and try to assert control over what it is we are talking about.
Let me ask you; do you believe you know what the only ethical position is or can someone disagree with you and take a stance that stands counter to your own and you would still find them ethical? I find vegans in their community to be ethical by their given language use and believe there’s nothing else abstract that can be factually said about them. You?
I don't think there needs to be presupposed commitments about any normative claim for people to be convinced that what they see is wrong. It is possible for them to have had no commitment about it at all, or perhaps to the contrary, but seeing pigs being gassed to death change their mind.
Similarly, people might discover that they find deepfakes wrong after hearing about it without having a prior commitment about deepfakes. I had hedonistic commitments in the past, but were convinced by a series of counter-examples. So it seems possible that both: (a) lack presuppositions; and (b) have contradictory presuppositions; yet come to the conclusion that something is wrong. I think your argument overreaches.
Still, is your point simply that we need normative premises to justify normative conclusions and won't automatically be convinced? This applies to every normative debate. Some people think that "contradicting the Bible" is a reason to reject evidence. Some such people could not be convinced otherwise. Yet, these kinds of debate is still valid for people that are open to debate (once again, goes for any normative topic). It seems to be a strange topic to discuss here when it is basically seems to collapse into a view that is nihilist of all debate (including this debate). So how is this relevant for veganism?
Your examples confuse emotional persuasion with normative justification. Seeing pigs gassed might convince someone they feel it’s wrong, but that only works if they already accept that causing suffering to pigs matters. If a person holds a presupposition that animal suffering is irrelevant or acceptable within specific parameters, no evidence will logically compel them to adopt vegan ethics. My point isn’t that moral debate is impossible, only that universal vegan obligations rely on shared normative commitments. Persuasion through shock or empathy doesn’t establish objective moral justification; it only affects those already receptive to the underlying presuppositions. Vegan ethical claims cannot be separated from these commitments any more than any normative argument can, but that doesn’t make them automatically universal.
Well, you invoked persuasion yourself with for example:
This is what I was disputing. You are now shifting to a far more trivial claim than your original case relied on. You claimed that the evidence vegans use cannot persuade someone that does not already have prior commitments like "animals suffering matters". That view is false. That view is different from what you claim now about "logical compulsion."
Making your view about "logical compulsion" is seemingly just restating something akin to the is-ought gap, which goes for all normativity, including instrumental, prudential and epistemic normativity.
Why believe this is true? People can hold presuppositions about all kinds of subjects and change their minds when faced with evidence. For instance, some KKK members may genuinely hold that non-whites should not be their friends, but by evidence of talking with such people change their commitments rather than let the prior commitments dictate. Your OP seems to be making the strong claim that this is impossible. Yet, commitments have to come from somewhere, right? Why can't they change or come to be given one having certain experiences?
And once again, how does this work with cases like deepfakes? Did people already have commitments about deepfakes before deepfakes were a thing so that when they encounter them for the first time, they judge it so?
All moral frameworks presuppose commitments, including yours. Your appeal to “forms of life,” the claim that universal obligations require universal premises, and the idea that moral practice overrides moral reasoning are not empirically derived facts; they are normative assumptions.
What you’re doing is subjecting vegan moral commitments to radical skepticism while treating your own commitments as exempt from that same scrutiny. That’s an asymmetrical standard.
Functionally, this is moral relativism, even if you deny the label. You’re claiming that moral obligations only bind within shared presuppositions, that those presuppositions cannot be rationally challenged, and therefore that no one can be obligated to revise core practices they already endorse. That amounts to a general immunity against moral criticism.
“Forms of life” does all the work here, but you never justify why particular forms of life deserve moral deference rather than moral evaluation. Without that justification, your position doesn’t explain why disagreement persists- it explains why moral reform is impossible.
You demand that veganism justify its premises, while your own premises are treated as beyond justification. Why should anyone accept that standard? If presuppositions invalidate moral argument, then your critique invalidates itself.
But what if I understand that my morality is arrived at arbitrarily and my refutation of your morality is that it claims to be objective but has no objective basis and is also equally as arbitrary?
Calling morality “arbitrary” only follows if moral conclusions are unconstrained by reasons. Mine aren’t.
Yes, moral reasoning begins with commitments- but from those commitments, some conclusions follow and others don’t. Given that suffering is bad, causing avoidable suffering is worse than not causing it. That’s not arbitrary, even if it isn’t premise-free.
Your position treats your commitments as immune from revision while dismissing any critique as “equally arbitrary.” But then you have no grounds to criticize veganism at all, including for allegedly overreaching.
Moral "objectivity" doesn’t require certainty; it requires corrigibility (needs to be correctable). You might not realize something you're doing causes harm, but when you do realize it, you need the ability to change your behavior accordingly (rather than just rationalize it). The fact that we can be wrong about harm is exactly why identities that block moral revision are the problem, not an argument that all moral reasoning is arbitrary.
Being alive causes harm, so it is a moral imperative for the vegan to end all life so that the sum total of harm is reduced to 0 otherwise you are immoral regardless of if you intend to be or not, or you are forced to limit the scope of harm you think you are causing to an arbitrary group.
If your standard is that all harm is equivalent and that “any harm at all is immoral,” then moral reasoning collapses entirely (including your ability to criticize veganism) because existence itself becomes the crime. Killing one bacterium becomes equivalent to eradicating all life on the planet.
That’s not a critique of veganism; it’s a rejection of ethics.
Eating animals when you don’t need to is a voluntary harm. Existing is not. Living ethically doesn’t mean refusing to exist- it means refusing to cause avoidable suffering when you know alternatives are available.
It's a critique of the idea that the harm itself is the bad thing. We've removed that harm is itself bad, so what do your morals and ethics actually hang on?
The argument seems to confuse justified harm with harm not being bad. Harm is still bad even when it’s necessary; necessity explains why we accept it, not why it ceases to be morally negative.
Pulling your hand away from a hot stove is painful but necessary. That doesn’t mean the pain suddenly isn’t bad; it means it’s justified. By contrast, causing suffering without necessity (say, gratuitous violence) lacks that justification.
If you strip harm of its badness, ethics loses its grounding altogether. At that point, you’re not critiquing moral frameworks, you’re arguing that nothing ultimately matters. That’s a coherent position in the abstract, but it’s one that collapses the moment you expect others to live alongside it.
So something is justified only if it's necessary, but being alive isn't necessary, so it isn't justified, and causing harm to be alive isn't justified because that isn't itself necessary either. We are back at the same place we started where the maximum good is extinction of life.
Treating existence as optional collapses ethics entirely. If that’s your position, then this discussion is also pointless- a conclusion I can agree with (albeit for different reasons).
I specifically addressed that it is not moral relativism. My position is constrained by social norms, proportionality, moral role differentiation, and institutional accountability. This literally means it cannot justify ‘just anything.’ It is not functionally moral relativism. Also, your objection misrepresents my argument. I’m not claiming that some forms of life deserve moral deference as an absolute rule, I’m showing that moral reasoning relies on presuppositions, which vary between people and frameworks. The critique of vegan ethics isn’t that moral reform is impossible, but that universal obligations cannot be imposed on those who do not share the same presuppositions. Accusing me of double standards or self refutation misunderstands the distinction between methodology and content as I’m analyzing how moral arguments work, not asserting which beings inherently have rights. Evidence alone cannot compel acceptance of vegan moral commitments across differing frameworks, and that is why disagreement persists, not because moral reasoning itself is invalid.
It sounds like this is equally true for basic human rights.
Animal rights follows logically from basic human rights.
Any attack on animal rights is an attack on basic human rights.
You are conflating extension with entailment and equivocating on what grounds human rights in the first place. Animal rights do not logically follow from human rights unless one assumes a particular theory of what grounds rights, namely, that sentience alone is sufficient. That assumption is precisely what is under dispute in my post. My community practices status and practice based ethics which rejects traits as assuming what identifies ethical grounding of patients and agents. Furthermore, human rights have historically and philosophically been grounded in social practices, moral agency, and reciprocal obligation, something my community further endorses. Rejecting animal rights therefore does not undermine human rights; it rejects a specific extension of them. Treating disagreement as an “attack” is rhetorical, not logical.
Extending rights requires justification and extending rights universally requires a universal justification; refusing an extension does not invalidate the original right just as denying voting rights to non citizens does not attack democracy.
Yes. Sentience alone is sufficient. It’s all we have.
We have more than that to go off. Sentience is a spectrum which refers to life having any one or more of three traits (consciousness, metacognition and theory of mind). Sapience is the top of the spectrum and means having all 3. Humans are sapient, to extend human rights to other species would logically require that species also be sapient so they can also act morally towards us.
I don’t care about sapience. I only care about being able to experience. If you can experience what I do to you, then I should take that into account.
I don’t believe in free will. I only believe in experience. As I said. It’s all I have. Everything I experience is just being shown to me. Feelings, thoughts etc.
Saying that someone only deserves basic rights because they are shown a deeper or better “movie” makes no sense.
So we shouldn't cause them fear or pain, please explain how death is part of the experience for something incapable of understanding the concepts of life or death?
If you don't believe in free will then people eating meat are doing so out of determinism not choice.
People lose rights if they fail to meet the responsibilities that come with them. It's not illogical to withhold rights from life incapable of understanding and following responsibilities.
You are asking me why taking away the only thing something has should be avoided.
The experience doesn’t control the body. The way we judge actions currently should be reevaluated. But that is a long conversation.
It’s not the same to take action based on behavior as non-understanding. You are arguing that a cow, who we forcefully breed, should rightfully be sentenced to death because it did nothing towards us. I find that abhorrent and that only someone indoctrinated can argue such a point.
So it is moral to rape a woman in an irreversible comatose state with no brain activity or a corpse since neither are sentient? That’s what it means if sentience alone is sufficient.
I don’t know what moral mean in this context.
No brain activity = dead. So you ask the same question twice.
In either case there is no experience of what you do towards the body. The family and friends will probably be affected by your actions. It’s also possible to be affected by things that will happen to you after you die. There is a reason why ask for permission for donating organs and that people plan how their remains should be handled. It can cause me stress now to know that you will use my organs as spareparts.
I hope that answered your question.
It doesn’t answer the question. Would kale be immoral to eat if two people were devastated that you took the life of that kale plant? If not, why would it matter that two people were devastated that you desecrated their daughter’s corpse?
Saying, “I don’t know what moral means in that context” is nonsense itself. Is it immoral for someone to rape a corpse or a woman in an irreversible vegetative state? If you found out a man had a woman with no family or friends in his basement, she’s in a irreversible vegetative state and he’s been raping her for a decade and just started eating her, too, is that immoral? He didn’t put her in that state, BTW, he found her in that state and she was there from being in an accident, there was no knowledge she would end up in this position. Why is that moral or immoral?
If a man finds a dead deer corpse in the woods and starts raping it, is that immoral? Why or why not? The deer family long has moved on and left the area. Just the dude and the deer in the woods until you walk up and see him doing the deed.
No I'm asking why sentience means a life has value to be preserved. I see death as perfectly justifiable for non-sapient life if the benefits to one's self are sufficient. Would I kill an animal for no reason? No, but I also wouldn't do that to a plant (and food is a valid reason before you try to use that argument).
That cow only exists because we bred it into existence for food. That is it's purpose, it is not a naturally evolved species. And the death of the cow should be weighted against the benefits of being raised in human captivity (consistent food and water, shelter, medical care and protection from predators), it's not hard to argue that is in their overall benefit even if they don't live to their theoretical full lifespan (which is not something the vast majority of wild animals get to do either).
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Why? Because I disagree with an opinion you hold which you believe to be an absolute truth?
So animals get the right to vote? To own property? To have bank accounts?
Yes. That’s clearly what I mentioned by basic rights. Kudos for big IQ.
Maybe I don't understand. Can you explain what you mean by basic human rights?
Right to your own life and to chose for yourself.
Counter point: evidence does matter. However, often hearsay is passed as evidence.
Often carnists feel uncomfortable when presented with actual evidence of treatment of animals, such as video footage. Many who were not open to consider the points you mentioned will be open to them when directly presented with evidence of the consequences of their opposition to the points.
This goes to the extent that carnists will directly oppose any presentation of evidence. Like, I made people cry when I presented videos on treatment of pigs in a Christmas dinner table (where pork is the main dish). If evidence didn't matter, nobody would've cried.
However, hearsay is not evidence. A vegan saying "but animals are treated like X" doesn't carry the weight to open someone to the points you mentioned, because it's not evidence.
If a person holds a presupposition that animal suffering is irrelevant or acceptable within specific parameters, no evidence will logically compel them to adopt vegan ethics. My point isn’t that moral debate is impossible or evidence does not matter, only that universal vegan obligations rely on shared normative commitments and are not grounded in facts. Persuasion through shock or empathy doesn’t establish objective moral justification; it only affects those already receptive to the underlying presuppositions. Vegan ethical claims cannot be separated from these commitments any more than any normative argument can, but that doesn’t make them automatically universal.
Evidence here you assume is facts when it is nothing more than appeals to emotions and presuppositions.
We'd have to show slaughterhouse footage to a number of carnists and observe their reactions to establish some facts here.
A most fascinating experiment and one I'd be very willing to perform.
You start with "If a person holds a presupposition.. they won't be logically compelled".
1) Not logically compelled. Yet, we are complex beings, with much more than logic going on in our decision making.
2) Often people think they hold that presupposition, yet they are somehow compelled by evidence. Showing they didn't fully and categorically hold the presupposition. Which is to say, there was intellectual dishonesty or ignorance at play.
What about showing “one bad day” cows and pigs who die quick easy and clean? That’s ethical meat in my moral community and what we eat. If you show that footage to the same people and they say, “That seems perfectly ethical and moral!” and their reactions are, “Meh, I have ZERO problems with this.” would you validate that practice as being ethical in your moral frames? If not, then the whole concept of showing industrial slaughterhouse footage to people is moot as you only care about that which leads to a preconceived outcome. This a fallacy commonly known as “cherry picking.”
Logic can show what follows from what, but it never compels a human being; our reasoning lives in practices, habits, and forms of life, not in abstract entailments. Said a bit more concretely And, importantly, HUMANLY, logic describes patterns, not human hearts; people follow practices, not abstract entailments.
Die before the devil knows you're dead? If you're asking someone to prove the scales balance over any possible finite lifetime such that one particular ethics or way of thinking always "wins" or comes out ahead I doubt that's possible. If someone could prove something like that I suppose anyone with the available mental faculties to execute on that way of thinking should think that way, for their own good? But there's not just one always best way of thinking or for example one best LLM given processing restrictions. If you've not much available resources you aren't able to entertain all existing substantial relevant distinctions effectively even if you somehow knew them all. That there's no one best way of thinking given processing limitations doesn't imply it's not objective that'd you'd be better off taking into consideration the good of all beings if you had infinite mental resources.
I honestly do not understand your interpretation of what I communicated. How about offering some quotes from me for context because your position seems to me that you posted to the wrong sub, much less the wrong post.
I took you as claiming in a long-winded way "Evidence won't universally persuade people of something when there's no evidence for it". That'd be veganism or anything else. My answer assumed you knew you were basically asking someone in this thread to prove objective ethics beyond all reasonable doubt/i.e. evidence veganism beyond all reasonable doubt.
Have you not put much thought into what it'd even mean were something like the Golden Rule objectively correct? If a way of thinking isn't the most effective way of thinking in all possible cases I don't know in what sense that way of thinking might be objectively best.
Nope since I have seen as much evidence for it as I have for Bigfoot objectively existing….
But that's what you were asking for, seems like. If you can't quantify/qualify ways of thinking sufficient to pit them against each other even in thought experiments in your head then your conceptions of whatever different ways of thinking aren't up to the necessary challenge of admitting to being compared and contrasted, from the start.
Do you need objective evidence to know that is wrong to kill and rape a human?
I think that at some point philosophies about morality don't need empirical facts to be discussed. It's pure reasoning.
If you need to do so many mental acrobatics to understand that animals shouldn't be killed, used and exploited then maybe veganism isn't for you at all.
You don’t need evidence to know harming humans, or animals,is wrong; moral force comes from the practices we live, the forms of life we have, and the network of shared language we use. And you are correct; veganism is not for me hence the reason I am on a debate sub taking the position antagonistic to veganism. This isn’t a sub for proselytizing and converting new vegans; I would recommend reading the section in the top right to better understand what this sub is about and then after, make an argument against my position.
Morality isn’t a math problem to be universalized by reason; it lives in the practices we share, not the chains of abstract logic we can construct.
Well, sure. It's well understood that "an ought cannot be derived from an is" (more precisely, a normative conclusion never follows from descriptive premises alone). But there's nothing special about veganism in this regard. All moral positions in our culture are like this. You need at least one general normative premise to conclude that it's wrong to abuse children, dump toxic waste into a water supply, or commit genocide.
Vegan advocacy is premised on enough people holding the right sorts of normative premise and either not drawing the connection to their own behavior or not knowing how to successfully implement the change. As with numerous other examples of moral progress on behalf of victims, early movers don't need to convince absolutely everyone; those in 2025 who are entirely without the normative premises that would lead to a conclusion like "don't lynch a black man who whistles at your sister" are ultimately deterred by the threat of punishment.
Your argument collapses because it assumes everyone already accepts the normative premises vegans rely on, then handwaves the rest as mere implementation or deterrence. Veganism isn’t like prohibitions on lynching or genocide, where nearly everyone recognizes the moral status of humans; here, the moral status of animals is precisely what is contested. Suggesting people are “ultimately deterred by punishment” avoids the ethical issue entirely, it’s coercion, not persuasion. In reality, the challenge of vegan advocacy is getting people to accept the foundational moral commitments about animal suffering, not just applying an already shared norm. Your comparison to other moral progress is therefore a false equivalence that dodges the core problem vegans face and the thrust of my OP
Not asking this from a place of condescension, but have you studied history at all? Attributing moral status to human life is not an axiom which most people always agreed upon. This is true for homogenous societies but significantly so for non-homogenous societies.
To highlight the constantly fluctuating moral presuppositions people have held throughout history is the purpose of drawing this analogy. The symmetry breaker you are attempting to use here is ahistorical and, therefore, does not work.
You are treating moral disagreement as if it were a failure of logic, when it is really a difference in form of life. Condemning lynching worked because “human life is inviolable” already belonged to our moral grammar; veganism tries to change the grammar itself. Where the practice is not there, the words do not yet have their use.
Your historical analogy misunderstands how moral language actually works. Moral agreement does not arise from abstract reasoning but from shared forms of life in which certain reactions and practices are already in place. The condemnation of lynching or genocide did not follow from discovering a new moral fact, but from a grammar in which human life already counted as inviolable. Veganism attempts to extend a different grammar, one in which animal suffering plays a constitutive role, but that extension is not forced by logic or history. Where the form of life does not already treat animals as morally significant in this way, no amount of analogy or coercion can make the language “fit.” What you call moral progress in human rights presupposed shared criteria for moral standing; veganism confronts a case where those criteria are precisely what is in dispute. The disagreement is not over application, but over what counts as sense in the first place.
You are free to apply emotional appeals to people in an attempt to persuade or coerce them into adopting your moral frames but that’s not logic.
The reason you have the luxury of living in a society in which "nearly everyone recognizes the moral status of humans" is that many brave people fought over centuries against the sort of status quo defense you're adopting here. And they didn't do it by making arguments from entirely empirical premises without any normative premises (which is impossible). They just had better normative premises than those they were fighting. You sit here, the beneficiary of their sacrifices, aligned against those who are carrying their torch.
You speak of bravery and sacrifice, but ethics is not justified by tales; it is justified by the grammar of our moral words. To ask for ‘better premises’ is to misunderstand how we already use ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in our forms of life. In other words, the moral weight of past struggles isn’t what grounds ethical claims, what matters is how moral concepts are practically used and recognized in everyday life. The “better premises” argument is dissolved because it assumes ethics functions as a debate over abstract truth rather than as a set of shared practices and forms of life.
Claiming that past moral heroism proves your ethical point is like saying a pawn’s earlier move justifies your current strategy, chess is about the rules and positions now, not the stories of past games. Ethics works the same, it is the grammar of our current play that counts, not historical victories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
Since you are not taking the time to actually articulate why my argument is ad populum I am not going to take the time to explain to you why it is not and will also offload my burden.
No, this argument is not an ad populum fallacy, even though it mentions “what nearly everyone recognizes.” Here’s why:
1. What an ad populum fallacy is
2. What your argument is actually doing
3. Why it’s not ad populum
✅ Summary
" These are rarely stated as arguments; they are taken for granted to be the correct way one must think if they are to be moral. Some of these are
“Causing unnecessary suffering is always morally wrong.”
“All animals must be morally considerable in themselves.”
“If an action is avoidably harmful, it requires justification.”
“Diet is a moral domain.”
“Only moral status based on traits is a valid and sound consideration.”
”What’s good for the goose must also be good for the human or justified why it is not.”
These function as commitments which are certain yet no independent evidence of the certainty of the empirical evidence given can be offered to justify such claims to certainty. These commitments are not inferred from evidence and are presupposed in vegan reasoning. This evidence is then smuggled within the vegan ethical framework."
You seem deeply confused about what is occurring. Firstly, vegans can hold a variety of meta-ethical positions regarding normative claims and whether or not they are truth-apt and continue to be vegan.
Secondly, most of the examples you gave are part of the arguments themselves, they are not considered enthymematic like you say. Some of them are just grammatically incorrect ("animals must be morally considerable in themselves"). Not sure what is trying to be stated here.
"The issue is that facts only matter after these presupposed commitments which cannot be challenged of invalidated are put in place with vegans"
You are conflating enthymematic propositions with axioms. A vegan may have an axiom that states that all sentient life ought to be respect, and this is due to beliefs regarding the consequences of not respecting sentient life, or the inherent value of sentient life itself, and so on.
You are confused about the propositions and the axioms here: the debate is often centered around the axioms themselves, so your portrayal of the dialogue is inaccurate.
Your argument fails on many fronts. Firstly, the term "objectively extended to others" in the conclusion not only does not appear in any way in the premises, it also doesn't mean anything. How can a normative proposition be stance-independently applied to moral agents?
Secondly, P3 seems to destroy the possibility for discourse entirely. It states that evidence cannot compel one to consider certain norms. This includes arguments (which are deductive or inductive inferences as evidence), empirical research, or ethical displays. All of these are evidence that demonstrates an ethical position. If P3 states that evidence cannot compel, then what can? Nothing is left. You also disentangle action from evidence in the conclusion as if a lifestyle choice/actions are not evidence of an ethical view.
Thirdly, P1 is P2 rephrased. Stating that a norm if non-universal and that it varies between forms of life (presumably, moral agents which are humans) is the same as saying it is relative. You just restated the first premise as the second premise.
Like I said before, your conclusion involves terms that do not appear in any of the premises, meaning the entire argument is just invalid. It reads "norms are non-universal, vegan norms are non-universal, evidence cannot compel one to follow vegan norms, therefore series of claims not supported by the premises".
You are still treating moral disagreement as if it were a dispute about propositions, axioms, and evidence, when that picture is precisely what is misleading you. My point is not that vegans cannot argue about axioms, nor that they all share the same metaethics; it is that argument only works within a shared moral grammar, not prior to it. When someone is moved by slaughterhouse footage, this is not evidence compelling a conclusion; it is a conversion of sensibility. The footage only “counts” as evidence because the concept suffering that matters here is already in place. Where that grammar is absent, the footage is noise. This is not nihilism about discourse; it is an observation about how discourse actually functions.
You accuse me of collapsing debate, but I am describing its limits. Normative language is not stance independent; it has use only where a form of life sustains it. Saying “evidence can compel norms” confuses causal persuasion with logical entailment. People change, yes, but not because an ought was derived from an is; they change because their ways of seeing were reshaped. And when you demand that veganism be “objectively extended,” you smuggle in the very picture I am rejecting, that moral obligation floats free of practice, waiting to be imposed by argument alone. That is a philosophical illusion. At some point reasons run out, and what remains is how we go on. Where that going on is not shared, obligation has no grip. That is not a flaw in my argument,it is the bedrock you are refusing to acknowledge.
The irony is that your claims that vegans rely on those presuppositions is a presupposition.
In fact I reject all of those presuppositions including yours.
I also reject the presupposition that my normative evaluations are based on suffering and obligation.
I can’t tell you that you’re obligated to not commit rights violations, but I can ask how you justify it, and reductio that when you attempt to lend one vacuous of logic, but that’s about it.
So, cool story I guess lol
How do we know what rights are?
Per your previous post
So what ever semantical definition you have been using to determine that animals have limited rights.
Or I can provide mine, but I’d prefer to operate within your own framework since I’m inquiring about your own actions and our previous interaction and the semantics used to justify exploitation.
If you want to reject the concept of rights completely we can do that, but your previous argument is then just incoherent since you’re arguing about concepts that you don’t even believe exist.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1pk2hxi/comment/nuw4dpy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Yeah we are in a new discussion discussing your presuppositions and justification.
Are you just here in bad faith?
As they say:
OK, we all reject each others pre-suppositions. You fail to convert people to veganism (which is your goal, presumably) and non-vegans fail to convert people away from veganism (which is not the goal of most non-vegans). I'm fine with that if you are.
Seriously, people are willing to go into obscure moral philosophy to justify killing others....
In all seriousness, these positions you made, could be used to justify pretty much ANYTHING.
Most sane people define morality, as a way to reduce suffering for others.
That's where the golden rule comes into play.
And since animals are sentient, it should apply to them too.
if it doesn't apply to them.... why should it apply to anyone?
You are doing excatly what my argument is exposing, validating it. Thank you! You are smuggling in a universal moral principle while denying presuppositions. Also, saying, “This could justify anything” is a category mistake. I specifically addressed that it is not moral relativism. My position is constrained by social norms, proportionality, moral role differentiation, and institutional accountability. This literally means it cannot justify anything.
The Golden Rule does not do the work you think it does. When you say
you act as though the Golden Rule is a universal foundational moral axiom. It is not as it presupposes symmetry of moral status, reciprocal agency, and mutual recognition. Animals do not participate in reciprocity, moral reasoning, or social norm formation with humans. To apply the Golden Rule to animals, one must already assume animals are morally comparable to humans in the relevant sense. This is precisely my disputed point. You prove my position my simply presupposing and asserting it as a fact free of grounding it. The Golden Rule does not justify animal moral inclusion, it assumes it, the same as you are assuming traits have to determine morality (like you are with sentience). My community uses a status and practice based morality which is not dependent on traits. Traits are a presupposition free of grounding you are universalizing, fortifying my argument.
Thanks!
For starters you are being ridiculously verbose. And it makes reading your arguments difficult.
Ok then please analyze why harming a human is immoral according to social norms, proportionality, moral role differentiation, and institutional accountability?
You then proceed to say that the golden rule should be reciprocated.
There are a few major flaws with this view
1).....why should it be reciprocated?
Is the golden rule stating "don't do to others, what you don't want to be done to you, but only if he also abides with that rule"?
2)You talking about traits, and how you don't follow them.
If it's dependent instead on status and practice bassed morality.... then what you are saying is "if my social group thinks and practices a certain way, then this is what i follow as well"
Pretty much dooming humanity to never change anything.
3)Even if we take reciprocation as needed..... there is the problem that the animals you kill have not harmed you in any way.
So nothing to give you the right to harm them in turn.
4)you speak of moral status... that IS a trait. What makes you think that humans have a different "moral status"?
I never said this.
This is 100% false and it is assumption. ethics change in all kinds of ways everyday.
You are assuming this. 100%. It is the very thrust of my OP.
No it’s a social designation.
Now please try to address the actual issues I made in my comment. Thanks!
Unless you think that reciprocity, means something completely different, then it's exactly what you said.
It is not assumption at all. Let's see what you said
"My community uses a status and practice based morality which is not dependent on traits"
Practice based morality, literally means that your morality is based on what is.... practiced.
So in other words, what others do.
And the status.... is essentially the same. Your community decides on who has the "status", and you follow it.
Let's see for example, if this reasoning was applied to feminism, women should never vote.
Because their "status" is lower, and because the "practice" is for them to stay in the kitchen.
You would need a different way of reasoning to see any change.
"No it’s a social designation." you say.
What does this even mean? In reality it means that the society (ie the majority) decided who is worthy of moral consideration.
So in essence "who is cool enough"
I’ve been nuanced and detailed with you and if all you care to do is reduce my positions to strawmen and ad hominem then there’s no point in debating. It’s not, “who’s cool enough” and it doesn’t “put women back in the kitchen.” It’s not moral relativism or nihilism in the least as I have shown in my OP and communicated multiple times. If you care to debate in good faith, I am here but I don’t have to repeatedly respond to bad faith fallacious rhetoric so I will simply be ignoring it moving forward. I’m looking for honest, good faith debate which means using only rational and logical discourse to discuss beliefs. If you wish to do this, you’ll learn what my criticism is that I have just shared with you, accept it as factual, and offer a retort free of fallacious rhetoric. IF not, the last word is yours. The choice, also, is yours. Peace.
i'm sorry but the only thing i did was break down the word salad you posted.
And your only retorts so far are "this isn't what i said"... and not clarifying what it was you said!
If reciprocity means something else to you, then explain what it means.
And yes, "status and practice based" morality, literally means that you perpetuate the moral reasoning you inherited from your "community"
This is what "practice based" means.
Is this wrong? if not, how do you imagine anything ever changing under this rationale?
Yes. Categorically.
Summarizing your argument and then addressing your question directing to follow
Questioning, criticizing, revising, objecting, refusing, reforming—these are all things we do within a form of life. They are not external to practice.
So the move “you’re just repeating what your community does” misunderstands what counts as a practice in the first place.
“Practice based” does not mean “blind repetition” or “mere inheritance.” It means that reasoning itself is a practice and only understood within a community. It does not exist outside of the community so what counts as evidence, value, and meaning is only created from within the community and not outside. Questioning, criticizing, revising, objecting, refusing, reforming, these are all things we do within a form of life. They are not external to practice. So the argument, “you’re just repeating what your community does” misunderstands what counts as a practice in the first place.
The argument fails because it equates “practice based” morality with passive conformity, which is a category mistake. Reasoning, critique, and moral disagreement are themselves practices within a form of life, not abstractions outside it. Saying morality is practice based does not mean we merely inherit norms uncritically; it means that justification, criticism, and reform happen through shared ways of acting, responding, and objecting. The demand for abstract principles misunderstands how moral reasoning actually functions and replaces lived critique with a philosophical picture that does no work.
You assume that unless moral critique comes from abstract principles, it can only be conformity. Criticism works like this; We appeal to shared reactions (“this is cruel,” “this doesn’t fit,” “this goes too far”). We point out inconsistencies between practices. We say “this no longer makes sense given what we already do. None of that requires abstract theory. It requires competence within a form of life. Critique happens from within practices, not by stepping outside them.
This demand assumes that meaning must be given by an abstract definition or theoretical principle. But many concepts, reciprocity included, get their sense from patterns of use, not theoretical explanation or abstraction. We learn reciprocity by returning favors, recognizing when someone “owes” something, someone shares with us and we’re expected to share back and punished if not or rewarded with praise when we do, someone helps us and we’re told “say thank you” or “you should help them too”, we’re corrected when we take without giving. No one teaches reciprocity by saying in our community by saying “Reciprocity is the abstract principle that benefits should be returned proportionally and in kind where applicable and demanded by the universal principle of… of… we don’t know nor have proof that it exist independantly but it does and respect that!” Never happens. Explaining it abstractly is not more fundamental than showing how it functions. Reciprocity is maintained by approval (“that was decent of you”), disapproval (“that’s unfair”), expectations about what “people like us” do. This reinforcement shapes judgment without invoking abstract rules. It is social reinforcement.
You’re treating moral reasoning as something that must either float above practice as abstract theory, or collapse into unthinking tradition. This is a false dichotomy. Moral reasoning is part of life, like arguing, persuading, protesting, refusing, reforming. It is not an algorithm and not a mere habit. Where these actions obtain their meaning, protesting, persuading, arguing, etc. are from within the given form of life of a community.
Imagine someone trying to protest climate change by standing silently in a grocery store and repeatedly writing complex differential equations about atmospheric carbon models on a whiteboard, then refusing to explain them, saying, “If you understand the math, you’ll see why you must change your lifestyle.” To most people, this would be baffling. Not because climate change isn’t real, but because the act doesn’t hook into any shared practice, norm, or way of responding. Grocery shopping is not a setting where abstract equations function as reasons, and the gesture doesn’t connect to familiar actions like voting, conserving energy, or protesting policy. The protest fails not because it’s false, but because it operates outside the form of life in which concern, responsibility, and response to climate change make sense.
Animals suffer and die to make my cheeseburger, that’s a. fact of life just like climate change. Where me and 97% of people alive stand though is that, unlike climate change, cow suffering is not that big of a deal in our shared form of life. They can be exploited for meat, butter, cheese, etc. morally. An abstract set of reasoning, with numbers or words as to why we should care does nothing. If you show us that the world as we know it is going to end, then we look at climate change and change our behavior and action when we are convinced, through our form of life, that action needs to be taken.
OK, let's use the golden rule.
You murder animals to protect your food. You lure them poisoned food which liquifies their organs until they slowly die in agony. You change the chemical properties of the plants to tear their insides apart when they try to eat your crops. You blame them for stealing from you, even though these animals are starving and they don't have the mental capacity to understand that they're stealing from you and that stealing is wrong. Is this acceptable?
You murder mentally disabled children to protect your food. You lure them in with poisoned candy which liquifies their organs until they slowly die in agony. You change the chemical properties of your crops so that it hurts these disabled children when they try to eat your food. You blame them for stealing from you, even though these children are starving and they don't have the mental capacity to understand that they're stealing from you and that stealing is wrong.
"If animals are sentient, the golden rule should apply to them. If it doesn't apply, why should it apply to anyone?"
Yes it applies to them as well. And what we do to animals with poisons is despicable.
And here we are needing to make a choice.
We either eat plants, causing all the atrocities you mentioned.
Or eat animals too, causing all the atrocities you mentioned, plus the atrocities of animal farming.
The goal of vegans is to not kill anyone.
The issue here is that this is not feasible currently, so we go for the next best thing.
Extending commitments to others perfectly technically doesn't happen outside of mathematics, a toddler could tell you.
Just because toddlers, and most humans, can’t extend every moral principle universally doesn’t mean we’re ethically required to treat cows like pets; moral concern is selective, socially grounded, and doesn’t magically apply to every being just because you, or my three year old daughter, wants it to…
My position is that just because there are imperfections, doesn't mean realms outside of math like ethics can't be built, quite the contrary. You would be tearing down everything (including giving cannibals an argument against your behavior) when clearly there is room for constructive agreement. It's a lot more finicky to make accurate claims given such a criticism; I certainly observe some ethical imperatives to treat cows like pets that are as universal as anything else in this domain; a requirement, not so much.
What gives ethics its stability is not perfection, but the way our lives already go on together.
Inertia? Of morals? That's not too compelling to me. Why not just imperfect communication... i.e. sharing some commitments presupposed or otherwise. I take it you are against this for the way it typically plays out with implicit assumptions and it's not that a process doesn't exist. I would say that ethics generally aren't up for debate for good reason, but in the current time there is sometimes a need to spell them out.
Moral disagreement is sometimes about confusion, sometimes about disagreement within a practice, but often it marks the limit of argument itself. Where agreement in form of life ends, explanation does not step in to rescue it. That is not inertia, and not merely miscommunication; it is the point where justification gives way to how we go on.
Form of life is merely biological taxonomy, a sorry excuse for not evaluating personness.
"‘Form of life’ isn’t a species label, it’s how our words and actions make moral sense. Call it taxonomy, and you’ve already stepped outside the language game of ethics and are thus wrong." “Form of life” is not just a biological category, it is the shared background of practices, language, norms, and behaviors that make sense of our words and actions. It’s about the ways people live, interact, and understand meaning, not species classification.
Calling it “merely biological taxonomy” is a misunderstanding, it reduces a rich conceptual and social linguistic framework to a label, ignoring the normative, practical, and linguistic dimensions that give moral concepts their sense.
Eh, I looked it up. "Go on" is Wittgenstein too? I would point to my second and third comments or the exit sign.
If you want to demonstrate good faith in debate you would recognize where I was correct and own that you were wrong in conflating form of life with biological categorization in a simplified terms, etc. You are moving the goalpost from argument to argument and now, exhausted of excuses, circling back to past comments or threatening to ghost. It seems less like you are here to debate in good faith and more that you are here to proselytize your “good Word” of veganism that is unassailable and can never be wrong.
Go on” is Wittgenstein too, sure, because it’s another example of how even ordinary, tiny expressions get their meaning from use, context, and shared practices. Go on can be a command to physically move; encouragement to continue an answer from a teacher; demand to take up one’s turn in a game; threat (“Go on, make my day”); sarcasm; etc. Ethics and morality derive their force irl in much the same way; from how ethical and moral terms are used in society.
The much bigger reason evidence fails is apathy from ideology. Let's be honest most arguments that vegans make are built on ideas also intuitively shared by most people. Do not abuse animals for no justified reason, like dogs or cats. But apply this to a cow and woah! Its fine in that case. This is a blatant contradiction in most peoples moral intuition.
But the ideology of meat eating is strong and very very old, so people are driven to apathy. There are other reasons but i'd argue this is the most prevalent.
I feel like the herd mentality is probably bigger than tradition as a reason.
If almost half of the populace started loudly saying "but why are you being homophobic? I have this logical argument why homophobia is wrong, and you have no response?!" then most of the remainder would stop expressing homophobic views. But it's easier to ignore them when it's only 3% of the population loudly making this argument and most of the other 97% are just going with the flow and expressing the same homophobic views as everyone else, or are at best quietly disapproving internally.
If, tomorrow, 60% of people became vegan, then most of the remaining 40% would crumble within a year, and most of the ones who didn't would be oddities operating on a different value system than the rest of us - cult members etc
I am seeing a lot of arguments here that justify factory farming while simultaneously also justifying slavery in the 19th century, about how morals are arbitrary - I really don't think that most factory-farming patronisers actually think "it's fine cos morals are arbitrary." They know it's on shaky moral ground and they merely don't want to think about just how shaky the ground is, and they absolutely don't want to defend it.
I would agree. While morality is imo subjective and dependent on values like op said, if your best justification for a behavior's status as acceptable is that acceptability is subjective or that we shouldn't expect morals to be consistent, you are admitting that the vegans are correct, even from the perspective of your own values, and you just don't want to change your behavior.
Can you expand on this coherently? This seems to be exactly what the OP is addressing. "I'm right because I say I'm right" is not a very persuasive argument.
My point is basically that all of OPs arguments would be just as useful if I want to murder people. If your argument to justify a behavior is only that morality is subjective, I can say the same thing to justify any behavior. If your argument can justify a stance you don't agree with, you have to admit it's not a very good argument (or admit that it's fine to murder people because morality is subjective). The question is, are you following a set of morals that is consistent with your values? If you eat meat, either the answer is no, or you don't have any moral values. The argument isn't I'm right because I'm right, the argument is "it's wrong to cause unnecessary suffering, and the suffering caused by animal exploitation is unnecessary." If your argument is animal suffering doesn't matter to you like human suffering does, then we have to get into the name a trait argument, or just admit you aren't following a consistent set of moral values.
Morality is subjective, which is why our laws (depending on your country) are not based on morality, and very often the countries whose laws are based on morality are not generally thought to be a good place to live.
Sure, you can use arguments to justify anything.
Why do I have to admit it's not a very good argument? Why would I have to admit it's fine to murder people because morality is subjective?
Again, why is this so? You are just making claims without substantiating them.
Alright, let's play name the trait. If I say, "I find it acceptable to kill animals for food". You would presumably disagree with that. Except you do kill animals for food. You poison animals to defend your food. So I'll ask you what trait allows you to lure in animals with food while they are starving to intentionally poison and murder them, and why you wouldn't lure in starving, mentally disabled children with candy and food to intentionally poison and murder them? Or do you just admit you aren't following a consistent set of moral values? :)
Irrelevant, didn't say anything about laws. Also, laws are subjective too. Maybe not "what is the law" but "what should the law be" is equally subjective compared to morality.
Because you know it isn't convincing. If I murdered your mother and explained that you being upset about that is just because you subjectively value her, and that if I don't value your mother, it wasn't wrong to kill her, you wouldn't be convinced. So if your best argument is that morality is subjective, you don't really have an argument at all?
You've seen the arguments before.
That's not name the trait, that's name the situation.
I think if you genuinely need to to survive and be healthy (if you are on Reddit, you almost certainly don't), then sure you can eat animals.
We can break this down further if you want, but let me ask you this first: is being less imperfect better than being more imperfect? Does killing someone in self defense justify all killing in any situation regardless of necessity? This is one of those bad faith "if you aren't absolutely perfect, no one can be expected to even try" arguments. Also, if your argument is that the trait that let's you kill animals is needing food, then your mentally disabled child argument is literally just irrelevant trolling you are lashing out with, likely due to cognitive dissonance.
Sure, what should be law be is subjective.
Hmmm, maybe laws aren't so irrelevant. If we believe laws are irrelevant, and you murder my mother, I would simply murder you.
So you're conceding the debate.
I'm going to assume that you're intelligent enough to understand that I was setting up the situation in which you're supposed to name the trait.
.........................lol
Nope. Name the trait, admit that you do not follow a consistent set of values, or concede the debate.
Why should it be illegal to murder your mom?
No, I'm focusing it. Your response to all the arguments that you've definitely seen before is that morals are subjective/inconsistent, so you don't have to care about them. This discussion is about why that's a bad response.
That situation makes the trait irrelevant. If you need to eat that specific food to survive and be healthy, I don't think the trait matters at all. You are allowed to do what you need to do to keep living and be healthy. You, the redditor reading this don't need to eat meat to do this. If you don't need to do it survive, then the trait that allows you to eat things is "lacking conscious awareness required for suffering".
What's the lol? I don't think anyone is morally obligated to starve to death. I just don't think anyone who lives in a typical climate with humane access to resources needs to eat animals to survive and be healthy.
Ok, I think your dichotomy here is wrong, and I still think it doesn't matter because of the point laid out before, but I can answer it easily regardless. For behaviors you don't need to do to be healthy and survive, the trait that allows you to eat something is, like I said above, the trait that allows you to eat something is "lacking conscious awareness required for suffering", and if you do need to do something to be healthy and survive, then there is no trait justification necessary. You can do it.
If I say that one of my goals is to be a part of a functioning society, randomly murdering people is at odds with that goal.
I guess that might be the discussion you are having, but that is not the debate I asked you to have.
I'm sorry, I am going to ask this so I understand you correctly. You think my scenario makes the trait irrelevant. So if starving, mentally retarded children are stealing your food, you find it acceptable to lure them in with candy and poison them to death?
So if I'm starving to death, I can murder another human being to eat them?
If the trait is lacking conscious awareness required for suffering, then I can eat mussels and oysters even if I am not starving and I have other foods available to me?
Your desire to have a "functioning" society (inherently a subjective word because it assumes a goal) is subjective. If I don't care about having a society the functions in the way you do, it's ok if I murder your mom?
...so?
If you are somehow in the impossible situation where you have no other option to survive, yes. Do you think you have an obligation to starve and die?
If you are in the almost impossible situation where that is genuinely your only option to survive, yes. Do you think you have the obligation to let yourself starve to death?
A lot of other people on the sub disagree with me on this, but I think so, yes.
Well that's the thing. Eating an animal is a perfectly justified reason. Non-vegans don't see that as not justified. Kicking a dog for no reason is not justified and psychopathic. There's a clear delineation between the two.
Eating a dog is a perfectly justified reason. Kicking a cow for no reason is not justified and psychopathic.
Why is eating an animal perfectly justified?
Because you get something out of it that is necessary. Nutrition. Kicking an animal or needlessly hurting it for no reason doesn't give any value.
Nutrition from an animal isn't a necessity; there's no reason kill a dog for nutrition or things. Are you sure kicking an animal for no reason doesn't give any value? What about because someone likes it, because they find it fun?
That's often what the discussion boils down to, and it's very interesting. How do you define "necessity", then? Just bare survival? Cause in most cases, seems like people would argue that humans should not only have access to bare minimum for existence, but also for comfort - be able to have access to non life saving medicine, for example. If you have skin issues that cause severe irritation but are not life threatening, it's certainly not a necessity for you to be able to treat them by that measure. Hygiene could be severely limited, access to entertainment or media, most of what we do and use have nothing to do with necessity.
However, that's not how we generally understand "necessity". Life of austerity is not a life we understand as worth living. Being able to enjoy life - entertainment, social life, adventure and great food is among that. Veganism means austerity if I truly enjoy eating animal based products, thus in any consistent definition certainly is a necessity for living an enjoyable life.
Yeah here I mean we're not obligated to eat meat (or any animals). And if kicking dogs leads to an enjoyable life, I assume you'd be fine with that. I don't have an issue with the taste of meat although I understand an animal doesn't deserve (or want) to die because of it, hence rejecting the commodification of animals; there's plenty of other things that I enjoy eating and have an enjoyable life.
"And if kicking dogs leads to an enjoyable life, I assume you'd be fine with that." - absolutely, exactly as would you, in principle. If kicking a dog once made your life permanently enjoyable, great and longer, then you'd accept that in an instant. Just as everyone, including the veganest vegans, are okay with vehicular transport, despite its inherent cost of animal suffering (road kills, for an instant). Everyone has the exact same conclusion here - "animal suffering is acceptable". We just perceive cost/benefit equation differently.
Veganism is NOT a commitment to austerity. Veganism is a moral claim about the way we treat animals as a society. It's not about causing austerity in people. I know some meat eaters who agree but say "i'm weak willed" or "i enjoy it too much", at least they are being honest. Theres plenty of good vegan food. And beyond that, a vegetarian diet requires basically no change in lifestyle and has a good impact.
Sure, but that just means nothing. Everyone is a vegan by that measure, not many people outside of sociopaths would be okay with harming animals for fun. Both vegans and the rest of society pick a line up to which animals harm is justifiable for human comfort. Vegans just say "road kills are acceptable, but eating meat is not" and the rest says "both road kills and eating meat is acceptable". Vegans just picked a different line up to where they are okay with causing animal death and suffering.
In the case of roadkill, that's not intentionally causing animal suffering, assuming someone didn't mean to hit the animal. Also, some vegans might say even roadkill is unjustifiable.
Yes, vegans have the justified line, the line of (most) of the rest of society is not justifiable.
Why is harming animals for fun wrong
Neither is meat production, the purpose is not to cause harm to the animal, it's to obtain meat. If meat was not obtained, then obviously animal slaughter would not happen.
Sure, and you get to have your perspective on where the line is and I get to have mine. Both are equally justified unless a better justification is actually provided.
Because that's where I put the line, just as vegans do. Both picks are obviously as arbitrary as anything else.
So you agree that you get nutrition from animals, you just dispute that it's necessary to get that nutrition from animals. Now you have to demonstrate why something being unnecessary means one should stop the action. Do you drink coffee? Almond milk? Do you own an electronic device with which you made this comment?
We live in a society. Kicking dogs for fun makes those dogs more likely to attack other people out of fear or aggression. Society frowns on this. The needs of the society to not get attacked by predators outweighs the one persons entertainment from kicking a dog.
You could get your protein elsewhere. Factory farming animals is unnecessary in the modern world - evidenced by my existence and ongoing healthy diet. If we can meet our nutritional needs without factory farming, then 'nutrition' isn't enough to justify it. The more moral thing to do is to steer clear of it, and patronising these businesses who harm animals when it is clearly unnecessary is the less moral choice.
It's pretty plain and simple. If you accept morality is a thing, and you accept that the meat industry is cruel to animals, and you accept that you can flourish on a vegan diet just the same, then there's really only one moral choice. There's no 'necessity' argument.
Animal products are not necessary though.
Your argument falls apart when CLEARLY it’s not a necessity; if it was, vegans would die.
I mean before the advent of modern agriculture and fortified foods, they may not have died, but they definitely weren't going to be healthy and that too was only in the last 60/70 years
Do you mind providing a source for your claim? I’m skeptical of the validity of the claim, but regardless, that’s not the world we live in today and presumably not relevant to your situation either.
Just basic vitamins like b12 didn't start getting added into food until closer to the middle of the 20th century with b12 fortification becoming mandatory in 1998. That was less than 30 years ago and we all know the health consequences of no b12 intake.
Also, are you saying it was moral before because it was necessary, and therefore immoral now because it’s not necessary?
You know cows get their b12 from fortified foods too right lol
Vegans do die.
And most people don't stay vegan, with health concerns by far the largest explanation for why they ceased being vegan.
Lmao. My argument was not that vegans don’t die. And just curious, do you mind sharing data that most people don’t stay vegan?
Eating an animal is NOT a perfectly justified reason to kill it. That's sort of the entire argument.
what do you make of the now-illegal method for the preparation of Ortolan? fine cos it's food and justified? or things like veal, fois gras, dog, whale, dolphin? Because a lot of people just seem to draw the line at 'wherever wider society draws the line'.
Valuing dogs more than cows is not inconsistent, it reflects context sensitive moral reasoning, where moral significance depends on relationships, societal roles, and practical human priorities and goals. Dogs are companions; cows are agricultural animals. Drawing distinctions between them is rational and ethically coherent. Veganism is wrong to assume all sentient beings must be treated identically and is the very thrust of my argument here it is presupposing what is morally relevant and then universalizing it; that’s an arbitrary universality that no human moral system actually follows. People’s ethical frameworks can consistently weigh obligations differently across species without being hypocritical, which exposes the flaw in the vegan claim that moral intuitions about dogs vs. cows are “blatantly contradictory.”
Veganism does not necessarily argue every sentient being should be "treated identically". It only argues the animals we slaughter wantonly today deserve to be valued enough we don't slaughter them for no good reason ( Eating meat is not a good reason)
Not without contradicting themselves...
Yes, they can without contradicting themselves. You assume, as I said, that everyone MUST have a trait based ethical framework when they don’t. My social group does not. It’s the entire point of my OP that is over your head. You presupposing your ethical grounding free of justification and then blaming others of inconsistency when they do not accept. You say, “no good reason” and cannot objectively define what a moral good reason is. You are just exerting and extending your opinion as a fact. I reject your opinion unless you can ground it objectively and independently of your predisposed moral frameworks
I don't have a trait based moral framework at all, so it would be strange for me to want that universally. Though i'm curious how veganism isn't entailed by virtue ethics.
How exactly am I supposed to argue that something is right or wrong without my predisposed moral framework? Am i supposed to use yours? Sure just tell me what it is.
You think you can argue about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as if the words float free. But their sense is in the way we use them. To argue, you already step into a network of language rich in context; the question isn’t whose framework to adopt, it’s whether your words make sense in the practices you share with others. If not, then there’s no point in arguing “facts.”
You cannot ask whether veganism is entailed by virtue ethics as if it floats above all practice. ‘Entailment’ only has meaning inside a language-game; virtues themselves are shown in how we act, not in abstract formulas. To ask whether something ‘must’ follow is already stepping outside the grammar that gives moral words their sense.
Why is abusing a dog wrong
I’ve explained that several times. The reason “abusing a dog is wrong” is meaningful because of the social practices, reactions, and shared forms of life that sustain it. It is not a universal truth floating independently, but a rule embedded in a living, historically shaped human activity of certain groups of people and not others.
Uh what? Are you saying morality is decided by social consensus or culture? So slavery was morally okay? Incredible
Lolol. Again, as I said in my OP and here ad nauseam, that is not what I am saying. You are demonstrating incredible bad faith And that you have ZERO intention of engaging the premise of the OP. Describing morality as grounded in forms of life isn’t saying “culture decides what’s right.” It’s saying moral judgment gets its force from shared practices and responses, not from abstract proofs. A practice can be intelligible within a culture and still be condemned from ours; that condemnation doesn’t need timeless principles to be real. The mistake is assuming the only alternatives are universal abstractions or moral relativism.
I am not a moral subjectivist. This is nothing more than saying "they are different because they are farm animals!" That's nothing more than ideology.
I am not a moral subjectivist either. If you are a moral objectivist then the burden is on your to prove your morals are universal and objectively factual and not your opinions.
Vegan arguments famously rest on principles that everyone agrees to and are enshrined as law in certain countries, like animal abuse. Contradictions abound like in the UK where a bill on the rights of animals literally inclused an exception "except in the case of poultry and farm animals..."
Please show me the country that has made it illegal to kill and eat animals. I’ll wait.
Also, you are conflating the law with morality, a no no.
Also also, you are making an all or nothing fallacy. In my society we give animals some moral protections but not protections against killing and eating, even if other options are available. This is the point of my post so I’ll make it simply: without presupposing, show me why we are wrong for giving some rights to some animals, less to others, and fewer to others. Why do we have to give less rights to animals than humans but more than you believe we are?
It is illegal to kill and eat animals in bhutan
Correction: not illegal to eat them, only to kill them. They import meat from other countries.
That’s categorically wrong. You also avoided most of my comment, does that mean you have no counterargument?
Yes, i corrected the comment. It is illegal to kill animals. This proves my point anyhow. Laws that outlaw intentionally killing animals in every case exist in the world, as well as laws against their abuse. All of these laws fly in the face of what happens in animal agriculture, hence this is a legal contradiction, which may suggest a widespread moral contradiction like i'm also claiming.
And yet laws allow for the consumption of these animals in all these places showing it is moral to eat animals, just not harm them for other reasons.
You're confusing the law and morality, a no no
Lolol, I am only responding to your claims and showing how even within your faulty logic, if it is taken as correct, you are still wrong.
I was not appealing to the law, I was pointing out its internal contradiction.
I'm not talking about "rights", which is the law (who's conflating it now?) i'm talking about morality. I reject the question.
Where in the US, UK, Canada, etc. in the West is it immoral to eat meat? I’ve shown how your position is wrong and you are ignoring the actual points for red herrings. By literally excluding chickens, etc. you are showing that they do not value those animals; there’s nothing saying you have to value all animals equally or you are wrong; that is my entire position in my OP that you are presupposing everyone has to have your trait based ethical system or they are wrong. Why? It’s only a matter of consistency once oyur position is adopted and from nowhere else.
For the second time thats not what i'm saying either. And for the second time i'm not even a virtue ethicist.
The law didn't justify that difference in value, neither can you.
You're conflating the law and morality, a no no.
Firstly, i am not arguing about rights(which are laws so whos conflating now?) I am arguing about morality. Killing then eating animals with no good reason is wrong.
I do have to presuppose things, but it just so happens that most people presuppose similar things. That's why evidence DOES work sometimes. Why is slaughtering then eating animals not wrong under your moral system. If you think I have the burden of proof or whatever just humor me for a moment.
Obviously basing veganism on suffering would mean that anyone who believes in it would necessitate that they agree that suffering is bad. Your only argument to the contrary is apathy, and that’s not compelling. It’s pathetic actually.
Accepting that suffering is bad in some cases doesn’t force identical moral status on all animals; veganism’s demand for universal protections of sentient beings is arbitrary, not a flaw in anyone else’s ethics. Valuing some beings differently than others isn’t apathy, it’s rational, context-sensitive ethics, exposing veganism’s arbitrary demand for absolute protections of all sentient life.
setting the line at the “ability to feel suffering” is in no way arbitrary. valuing beings differently is arbitrary speciesism.
I think you are wrong in presupposing that veganism claims to be universally ethical. It's entirely possible to debate and defend veganism from... quite a few non-universal frameworks.
If you don't have a response to those, then your argument is either quite limited in scope, or can only be applied as a critique of objective morality in general.
Nobody has to answer any of that, because we're not trying to convince you that our morals are correct. We're trying to get you to see that YOUR actions are opposed to YOUR morals. Yes, you pick them. Yes, that's somewhat arbitrary. And yet, it still matters.
The relevant question you need to answer is about you. It is subjective in nature. Are you a good person? If you kill beings indiscriminately for taste pleasure, can that possibly be the case, according to YOUR moral framework. If you're honest with yourself, the answers will be painful. Your post shows just how much you'll do to avoid that pain. Maybe try facing it instead.
My actions do not oppose my morals in the least. They are not subjective either. My morals are intersubjective and based on status and practice based ethics.
Let’s start with a basic question.
Do you think that we have a moral obligation not to breed and slaughter humans for taste pleasure?
OP doesn't like this question, because it would lead to NTT 😁👌
It’s not that I don’t like or dislike it, it’s just not relevant to me as me and my community don’t use a trait based ethical framework to decide our ethics. We use a status and practice based ethical framework. Saying one is better than the other without independent and objective evidence is simply just nonsense that reinforces the presupposed frames this very debate is about.
That's a lot of words for: "I don't like to answer this question, because I don't want to slaughter humans for no reason, but then I would have to admit that slaughtering non-human animals for no good reason is unethical and against my own morals".
Stop seeking excuses. You don't need to continue abusing animals as products, slaves and objects. These are certainly not your morals, are they?
That’s a lot of words to say, “I don’t have a valid or sound counterattack so I am going to go to ad hominem instead.”
You want to debate, but not engage in a debate. Very dishonest of you, using derailing.
It's not ad hominem to point out your violence against animals - it's honesty. This is literally the definition of this sub: Veganism. And veganism is the rejection of all animal exploitation. Because they can feel, are sentient and there is no need to abuse, oppress and discriminate against them.
So what is your justification to not being vegan and keeping abusing animals as commodities?
Or are you going to dodge again with "I don't wanna answer this" or "in my community"-bullshit. YOU are doing this. YOU are responsible.
BTW, look at your comment you said I wouldn’t respond to and see if I am OK with debating…
Look at how I engage with good faith and not irrational ad hominem. BTW, ad hominem is when you make the argument about the person and what they personally do and NOT the topic at hand so that is exactly what you did.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1pq89fs/comment/nuywta2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The topic at hand is veganism. You haven't responded. How can we see your values if you derail saying it is ad hominem?
AGAIN:
Do you think that we have a moral obligation not to breed and slaughter humans for taste pleasure?
Are abusing animals as commodities your values?
I can answer it if it is good with you. If you want to live in basically all societies, yes, you have a moral obligation not to breed and eat humans. Key nuance here tough is from where the obligation comes from.
A lot of the presuppositions are made by engaging in the argument to begin with. We don't rehash them in the same way I don't need to axiomatically justify logic every time I wish to make a causal statement.
Take for example "diet is a moral domain"
By engaging in an argument about veganism, you and I have already agreed that diet exists in an ethical framework
Taking a broad stroke at the rest, yeah a lot of vegans presuppose many of these claims, but anyone with some ability to read into an argument can easily parse out that these are inherent and need not be spoonfed.
How does this result in evidence failing in dispute? I have no idea. You spent a lot of words to say that vegans aren't doing a good enough job spoon feeding people
Unarguable? So what exactly do you suppose the moral philosophers do all day?
Is it not possible, do you think, that this topic that has been being argued for thousands of years is in fact complicated?
This is a weird post.
It’s true that a lot of veganism debates are philosophically sloppy. However, the biggest reason for that is most people don’t make considered ethical choices about their diets, they follow cultural norms and the things they say are a consequence of their behaviours, not a cause of them.
Here’s two very central examples of this. First, almost everyone who eats meat makes arguments that prove too much. They make arguments against the vegan position that imply there’s actually nothing that it would be unethical to do to a non-human animal. Most people aren’t going to bite that bullet. Similarly, if you reject any ethical responsibility for what you economically incentivise, you end up with implications that few people are going to accept.
Another common example is the health debate. Can you live healthily on a 100% vegan diet? Well, let’s say for the sake of argument that you can’t, but you otherwise accept the vegan ethical position. What sort of diet and other behaviours would you end up with? It wouldn’t look anything like the people who mostly make this argument.
People aren’t automatically good philosophers. When they talk about this stuff they make bad arguments. It’s true of both sides. You should look for the best arguments for a position instead of judging it by the average quality of reasoning used to support it.
I promise you if you read a book by Peter Singer you’re not going to see the sorts of elementary philosophical problems you’re talking about. You might not like the reasoning or all the implications — plenty of people don’t, and his ethics are not the only philosophical position that ends up at vegan behaviours. But if you want to read an argument that’s properly formed, his case is certainly that.
Here’s an outline of the argument as I see it.
First, what even are ethics? How do we cross any sort of is/ought? What you wrote is a bit all over the place on this question, so we need to get our feet properly under us.
There’s lots of positions on this but here’s mine. I think a “null ethics” would be internally consistent. If you told me you admitted no ethical considerations at all I would have no basis for argument. However, my own psychology is such that I would not be happy living that way. The same thing in me that looks at and judges other people looks at and judges myself. I can’t turn this off. If I try to write myself different rules than I would write for others, I just end up seeing myself as a person who sees themself as mattering more. I don’t accept that in others and I can’t accept it in myself.
So that’s the ultimate grounding of it all, and it basically ends up with ethics as deductive reasoning over a minimal set of axioms. The axioms are not self-evident. If you reject that suffering is somehow bad or something fundamental like that, well gg, our reasoning parts company at that point.
But the implications of biting one of those really fundamental bullets is going to be something like “nothing matters”. Most people aren’t happy trying to live like that.
Okay so if we get to this “some things do matter” position, why do non-human animals matter? It’s the same sort of “I can’t be happy just thinking I’m axiomatically special” thing. If I ask myself what ethics I would endorse something else to have towards me, the reason that they shouldn’t torture me or whatever isn’t because of my species. It’s the nature of the experience. My species is only relevant to the extent it changes the range of experiences I can have.
So can non-human animals have negative experiences? Well, it’s difficult to gather undeniable direct observations of this. But I find it very difficult to explain the behaviours of non-human animals without believing they have emotions. And almost everyone does agree with this — few people would agree it’s okay to torture a dog just to pass the time. If you don’t accept that non-human animals are ethically relevant, it’s hard to explain why not.
Once we’re at this point that some things do ethically matter, and it’s about the experiences not the species, you need to get into a lot of factual detail. I claim that you can differ on very fine-grained points, but the overall picture you end up with about what it is or is not okay to do is going to look much more like the vegan position than the cultural default position.
I agree with you that evidence about animal sentience, farming practices etc only has moral force after certain background commitments are already in place. You're also definitely right that these commitments are rarely argued for explicitly and instead function as certainties embedded in a form of life. It's also valid to point out that veganism cannot be deductively forced on everyone.
However, I feel that your conclusion goes too far in treating the non-universality of presuppositions as disarming ethical critique, as opposed to merely reframing its nature.
Correct me if I am wrong but you are saying 'unless you can ground your ethics without presuppositions, you cannot tell others they ought to change'?
No serious moral theory meets that standard
None of your critique is unique for veganism, as it would apply equally to human rights, anti-racism etc. None of those are derivable without presuppositions either. I don't feel you are applying the same scrutiny to omnivorous assumptions. You are presupposing that humans interests have default lexical priority, that tradition and normality are morally inert and that large-scale institutional harm require no justification unless challenged.
I think you are explaining something very fair, but explanation isn't exoneration. The contigency of moral commitments does not entail that all practices grounded in them are beyond critique.
This rationale applies just as well to omnivory from a cannibal’s perspective.
I appreciate the formalization. I don’t fully agree with the assertion that vegans smuggle in such evidence. Sure, some online commenters or activist do, but don’t think it’s implicit in the vegan definition or philosophy.
The response was just a great example of why evidence fails in vegan moral disputes.
He started with evidence and ended with shaming and guilt tripping. This makes their evidence less credible to the person they’re disputing with. Affect heuristic.
How many different ways can you phrase a debate proposition about morality being subjective without getting bored? Go tell religious people about this. Vegans on here have heard it hundreds of times from you already.
OP hates to address real issues and debates and keeps DERAILING, not engaging in debates. Remember this is "debate a vegan.
OP pretends to want to talk about morals, but doesn't like getting asked about their morals. This is not ad hominem (attacking someone personally) it's a necessary step to understand the person's moral system.
We asked and OP doesn't answer, only derails (probably because they hate the outcome of the answer: They are acting against their own morals)
If OP were honestly interested in veganism and debates, they would finally answer:
Do you think that we have a moral obligation not to breed and slaughter humans for taste pleasure?
Are abusing animals as products, slaves and objects your morals/values?
I agree, but would extend it out to "any moral" evidence fails to be convincing for any philosophy
It's why I personally try to use the reasonings for environmentalism & health as a more convincing method for a plant-based diet
Many humans cannot survive on plant based diets no matter how well planned. The overwhelming number of people who have tried for years and planned religiously and did every thing in their power to “do it right” and yet nevertheless found their health seriously deteriorating is proof enough that this is not the case for everyone. We are literally built to eat meat by evolution.
What’s wild to me about vegans is that they almost universally refuse to acknowledge this fact, usually flatly denying it and sticking their heads in the sand. They don’t reason from facts to morals but from morals to facts making fiction along the way, ie they think it’s wrong to eat meat so they delude themselves into thinking not eating meat must be viable for all people, disregarding the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Can you provide any empirical studies to back up this claim?
"Trust me bro". While ignoring scientific consensus with many studies and recommendations by the largest health institutions in the world, including the academy of nutrition and dietetics, the german and UK equivalent and even the world health organization. They all clearly say you can be healthy and strong on a plant based diet.
We need nutrition, not carcasses.
Denying science and putting his head in the sand is typical behavior to hide from the fact that he is abusing animals as products, slaves and objects until their excecution and it is completely unnecessary to do so.
Cite a current peer-reviewed study of sufficient sample size and reputation please.
I am perhaps more aware than anyone here that some humans cannot be healthy on a vegan diet. I have a feeding tube and have been on TPN (feeding directly into your veins) multiple times. TPN cannot be safely vegan. I have several severe digestive diseases. But even for me, when I can eat, I can eat vegan. Many more people can follow a vegan diet than convention would have you believe.
There are many, many more people who cannot access a vegan diet than cannot do it for health reasons.
I'm curious why you think someone would research this enough to write a paper on it. It's well established that food allergies and intolerances exist, and can be severe, so why would someone write a paper addressing this specifically in terms of veganism? What would they be saying that isn't already established? Who would be funding this research and for what reason?
It's like asking for a peer reviewed paper that the earth is round. Why would you publish that? It doesn't prove the earth is flat though.
That was the claim. "The overwhelming number [...] found their health seriously deteriorating". Asking for evidence that backs up such an extraordinary claim is warranted.
There are some people that cannot survive on a plant based diet. Very well, they can eat meat, preferrably lab grown. Their life is literally on the line. But for almost everyone else that's not the case. Veganism isn't about not killing any animals ever, it's about critiquing the ideology of animal agriculture.