Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hi!

I joined this forum to ask a philosophical question. I was just banned on veganforum.org for this question but I will try it again on this forum, on behalf of plant well-being.

I understand that the question is sensitive for vegans but it is also important that the question is addressed.

I am interested to learn more about the motive to become vegan, and especially the authenticity and validity of the motivation considering the ban on veganforum.org for asking a honest philosophical question, which does not appear to be an incident. Academic philosophers are reporting about the occurrence of the issue in which vegans and animal right activists actually become aggressive against people who intend to argue on behalf of plant well being.

When one wants to protect animal well being, how can one feel the urge to agitate against someone who intends to protect the well being of other types of creatures? How can there by a distinction? This question would interest me during my participation on this forum.

I am also interested to learn more about vegan life style and how it is possible to manage to receive an optimal nutrient diet, in an ethical way.

I hope to learn a lot on this forum!

Welcome to the forum, plant! Don't worry, no chance of getting banned around here (If I'm not mistaken, we've only banned one person, for being too dogmatically vegan.

I'll see to your post when I get the chance, this can be an interesting discussion.

Thank you for the welcome!

I actually do not intend to question anything with regard to (plausibility) of veganism. I simply intended to denote the fact that there may be a factor at play that prevents attention (from vegans) for the well being of plants.

Vegans are seen as a group of humans that have attention for ethics, more so than others. In essence, they fulfill a certain guiding role for humanity as a whole. Therefor, if for some reason attention for the well-being of plants is excluded with vegans and animal rights activists, who will be capable of taking it up for plants?

Protection would need to come from a lower level, e.g. philosophers and people with a generic perspective on ethics / protection of the environment. Lacking a ideological motive, what could make them results-oriented?

Philosopher Michael Marder, a research professor at the University of the Basque Country, mentioned the following response from animal rights activists to his argument that plants are sentient beings.

Philosopher: Plants are sentient beings that should be eaten with respect

His claim that a plant is an “intelligent, social, complex being” has been contested by some biologists, but a stronger reaction has come from animal-rights activists who fear their cause is undermined by extending a duty of respect to plants.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/unth ... -1.1965980

As mentioned in my other topic: Big Pharma is already investing $1 trillion USD per year in synthetic biology (1000 billion USD per year).

With humans, Big Pharma had to endure a certain scrutiny. Severe fraud and corruption still happened, but there was a level of oversight.

The following research by professor John P. A. Ioannidis (Stanford University) shows that the short term financial interest of companies can result in profound corruption of science.

Effectiveness of antidepressants: an evidence myth constructed from a thousand randomized trials?
https://philpapers.org/rec/JOHEOA-2

The corruption for financial motives goes far. Some time ago it was revealed that the publisher of The Lancet (Elsevier) published 6 fake scientific journals for pharmaceutical companies, to mislead scientists and doctors in the financial interest of companies.

Reputational damage for medical publisher Elsevier, which publishes The Lancet, among others. Last week the Dutch-English company admitted that from 2000 to 2005 it had published six fake journals that were issued for scientific journals. In reality, they were marketing magazines paid for by pharmaceutical companies. The papers published in Australia had names such as Australasian Journal of General Practice and Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine. The magazines look solid, also because the name Elsevier is prominent on the front page and the sponsor's name is not.

Companies serve short term financial profit with a simple mindset: "if you don't do it, another company will. Either take a billion USD extra or lose the fight to survive.". In this case humans are involved (medicine) and there may be pretty strong ethical forces at play, although obviously not (yet) efficient enough to prevent such profound corruption.

What if companies are let on the loose for a synthetic biology revolution? Who will speak for the plants and animals? The potential for damage may be much greater as there will logically be less control and oversight.

Making money on disease creates an incentive to promote disease with chronic disease as the ideal situation. Essentially, with their massive often ill gotten funds, Big Pharma invests into bio-tech to secure further growth. The origin of the synthetic biology industry may be corruption for a large part.

Humans figuratively speaking started out of a cave and when weighing the potential for natural disaster against not making progress sufficiently fast could be in favor of the latter by definition. I can see from a political perspective that simply enabling Big Pharma companies to create research capacity sufficiently fast by any means would be in favor of humanity. In the case of a major species threatening event, the capacity of Big Pharma can be 100% dedicated to solving the problem.

At present times however, an argument could be that humans should evolve and put intelligence before practice.

The potential for exponential growth could heighten the risk of letting Big Pharma-like companies run dumb with synthetic biology. A mistake can potentially cause a disaster for the human species or even nature on earth.

Therefor, when one learns that vegans and animal-rights activists may be ignoring the well being of plants, one wonders: who remains that could potentially protect plants if that would ultimately prove to have been essential?