Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hello everyone!
I'm truthsearch, and I'm glad to have joined this forum! I want to satisfy 2 somewhat conflicting desires of mine by joining Philosophical Vegan: grow in understanding, devotion and activism to veganism, vegetarianism and anticarnism as someone who believes in these ideas; and augment my intellectually humility and open-mindedness to all ideas, even veganism and co with their opposites, so I avoid dogma and engage in dialectic and intellectual growth.

Outside of vegan topics, I have inclinations towards left-libertarianism and am a Christian apostate. I hope to be a good interlocutor in this forum of dialectic!

Welcome truthsearch, I think we can answer the problem you have. Feel free to start a thread on it!

What originally turned you onto Veganism?

Welcome truthsearch!

You're coming in at a good time, we've just migrated the forum and are kind of working on re-invigorating discussion here.
Please don't hesitate to jump in to discussions or start new threads. You should have the ability to start new topics now.

Red wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 11:20 am Welcome truthsearch, I think we can answer the problem you have. Feel free to start a thread on it!

What originally turned you onto Veganism?

Hello Red, sorry for the extremely late reply! Haven't been on there for a long time, but I'm now starting the habit to do so, it's important.

Hm, what made me a vegan believer? Admittedly, it was a long time ago since I became one so I may have forgotten the exact reasons why. But now it's mostly because of the unnecessary suffering and death caused to sentient animals that's cruel and treats them not as ends that need to engage in metasurvival (basically a critical - not as in 'negative' but 'critical thinking' - attitude towards the justification of surviving. This is just a concept beased on my own philosophical views on life).

The thing is, I have this nagging suspicion that my arguments for veganism are weak and my belief is just pure emotion and not rational, which I don't like. I know I need to read the literature on pro and anti veganism carefully to deal with this issue (and philosophy more generally), but it's not always easy to do that. And I have an interest in vegan activism but the thought of it is extremely daunting: I live in an area where veganism and vegetarianism are very rare and carnism is dominant, so the fear of serious carnist pushback is real. This keeps me from vegan activism* (which is where I hope you guys can help!); not to mention I also have other interests as important as veganism, like propagating left-libertarianism, improving my game dev skills and etc.

I know, I know, I'm a really ambivalent and messed up guy when it comes to this vego stuff! But in the end, what I'm sure of is the value of intellectual humility and dialectic to solve these problems.

*Due to this situation, I mostly live as a pescatarian as full veganism is tough to do here.

brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Tue Dec 19, 2023 10:34 pm Welcome truthsearch!

You're coming in at a good time, we've just migrated the forum and are kind of working on re-invigorating discussion here.
Please don't hesitate to jump in to discussions or start new threads. You should have the ability to start new topics now.

Wonderful! Will soon do!

truthsearch wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:09 am Hello Red, sorry for the extremely late reply! Haven't been on there for a long time, but I'm now starting the habit to do so, it's important.

That's fine, the forum's been fairly quiet as of late.

truthsearch wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:09 amHm, what made me a vegan believer? Admittedly, it was a long time ago since I became one so I may have forgotten the exact reasons why. But now it's mostly because of the unnecessary suffering and death caused to sentient animals that's cruel and treats them not as ends that need to engage in metasurvival (basically a critical - not as in 'negative' but 'critical thinking' - attitude towards the justification of surviving. This is just a concept beased on my own philosophical views on life).

While these views do need a bit of fleshing out, it certainly is the start of understanding ethics, and why anything is unethical (not just unnecessary animal suffering).

truthsearch wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:09 amThe thing is, I have this nagging suspicion that my arguments for veganism are weak and my belief is just pure emotion and not rational, which I don't like. I know I need to read the literature on pro and anti veganism carefully to deal with this issue (and philosophy more generally), but it's not always easy to do that.

It's good you recognize this potential issue; Most vegans are vegan because of some intuitive reaction to seeing suffering, rather than basing their Veganism on a logical understanding of ethics (basically, right for the wrong reasons). We can teach you about ethics and the empirical arguments for Veganism.

truthsearch wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:09 amAnd I have an interest in vegan activism but the thought of it is extremely daunting: I live in an area where veganism and vegetarianism are very rare and carnism is dominant, so the fear of serious carnist pushback is real. This keeps me from vegan activism* (which is where I hope you guys can help!); not to mention I also have other interests as important as veganism, like propagating left-libertarianism, improving my game dev skills and etc.

I get the feeling, though it sounds even worse in your case due to the culture you're in. What country are you from if you don't mind me asking?

truthsearch wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:09 amI know, I know, I'm a really ambivalent and messed up guy when it comes to this vego stuff! But in the end, what I'm sure of is the value of intellectual humility and dialectic to solve these problems.

Learning these arguments comes down to what you're willing to out up with, given the ignorance and frustrating nature of most anti-vegan arguments.

truthsearch wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:09 am*Due to this situation, I mostly live as a pescatarian as full veganism is tough to do here.

That can be understandable, depending on the country. It's still good to do what you can!

truthsearch wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:09 am The thing is, I have this nagging suspicion that my arguments for veganism are weak and my belief is just pure emotion and not rational, which I don't like.

Keep in mind, this is only troubling for veganism specifically because you're comparing it to carnism, which is arbitrary.
Being objective about it, you're comparing any morality to any other and asking if there's a non-arbitrary way to distinguish them.

Are the arguments against cannibalism any weaker? How is it not non-rational emotion to not go around killing and eating other humans when convenient? (It's often inconvenient to eat humans because of law enforcement, etc. but not always inconvenient)

The question is one of any/all objective morality, because without objective morality any choice to abstain from an action is an emotional one.
The bad news for carnists is that there's no consistent and non-arbitrary way to exclude non-human animals and substantially include all human animals under moral consideration, so if morality means anything at all they have to cede at least to either the vegetarians or the cannibals.

I've known people who claim they would be excited to try human meat and would have no moral qualms about it, and who presumably would not protest on moral grounds being killed and eaten themselves.
This is the less common position compared to at least morally accepting vegetarianism as superior.

Whether morality is objective, and under that objectivity whether veganism or cannibalism is specified, is more complex a discussion. But maybe clarifying the error of carnism in this way will help you in the mean time: it's not a question of whether it's OK to eat non-human animals, it's a question of whether it's OK to eat any/all animals-- humans included.

While these views do need a bit of fleshing out, it certainly is the start of understanding ethics, and why anything is unethical (not just unnecessary animal suffering).

Ok then; well as they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step!

It's good you recognize this potential issue; Most vegans are vegan because of some intuitive reaction to seeing suffering, rather than basing their Veganism on a logical understanding of ethics (basically, right for the wrong reasons). We can teach you about ethics and the empirical arguments for Veganism.

Oh thanks for offering to teach me ethics and vegan arguments! I hope I can also offer great ideas that can push the veganism space forward!

I get the feeling, though it sounds even worse in your case due to the culture you're in. What country are you from if you don't mind me asking?

Well I live in an African country; vegan activism exists here, but it's very small and I imagine its growth will bring a lot of carnist pushback that can seriously damage the movement if you're not prudent. I did try to 'come out' as an aspiring vegan and live as much to my family once, but it didn't end well. So now when I get the chance to eat more vegetarian and vegan options, I don't reveal that to my family.
Also this is by the way, but do you have experience being in political movements or organisations? I ask this because I'd also like to propagate my kind of left-libertarianism in my country but I lack political experience. If possible we can discuss this in another place in this forum as this isn't probably the intended place for this.

Learning these arguments comes down to what you're willing to out up with, given the ignorance and frustrating nature of most anti-vegan arguments.

I don't quite understand this statement; can you please elaborate?

brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 3:43 pm

truthsearch wrote: ↑Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:09 am The thing is, I have this nagging suspicion that my arguments for veganism are weak and my belief is just pure emotion and not rational, which I don't like.

Keep in mind, this is only troubling for veganism specifically because you're comparing it to carnism, which is arbitrary.
Being objective about it, you're comparing any morality to any other and asking if there's a non-arbitrary way to distinguish them.

Are the arguments against cannibalism any weaker? How is it not non-rational emotion to not go around killing and eating other humans when convenient? (It's often inconvenient to eat humans because of law enforcement, etc. but not always inconvenient)

The question is one of any/all objective morality, because without objective morality any choice to abstain from an action is an emotional one.
The bad news for carnists is that there's no consistent and non-arbitrary way to exclude non-human animals and substantially include all human animals under moral consideration, so if morality means anything at all they have to cede at least to either the vegetarians or the cannibals.

I've known people who claim they would be excited to try human meat and would have no moral qualms about it, and who presumably would not protest on moral grounds being killed and eaten themselves.
This is the less common position compared to at least morally accepting vegetarianism as superior.

Whether morality is objective, and under that objectivity whether veganism or cannibalism is specified, is more complex a discussion. But maybe clarifying the error of carnism in this way will help you in the mean time: it's not a question of whether it's OK to eat non-human animals, it's a question of whether it's OK to eat any/all animals-- humans included.

=============
Your response brimstoneSalad is very intriguing and complex, but lemme recount it to ensure I understand: within carnism, you imply there's no 'consistent and non-arbitrary' way to both exclude other animals and include humans from serious moral consideration. Thus the central question for veganism and carnism to answer is not if it's morally permissable to eat any kind of nonhuman animal or not, but if it's morally permissable to eat any kind of animal* or not. I have other comments to say about your response but let's focus on if I adequately understand it.

* by 'animal' here, I mean 'human and nonhuman animals'. I believe as humans within the animal kingdom, the use of the word 'animals' should be implied to include them by default as well as nonhuman ones within the term, instead of separating them from other animals.

truthsearch wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 3:37 pmI have other comments to say about your response but let's focus on if I adequately understand it.

I believe you have understood it, yes. And good job of summarizing the argument in your own words, that's very good practice.