Philosophical Vegan Forum

I've searched the forum before posting I did not find any reference to Engel or his work. Personally I find his argument to be quite sound and well supported but it makes me curious what others think about it especially because there is so little reference to it. (and it's posted all the way back in 2001)

This is the link to it: http://www.academia.edu/818875/Why_You_ ... ating_Meat

Here is an abstract from it:

An argument for the immorality of eating meat and other animal products is advanced. Unlike other arguments for ethical veganism, the present argument is not predicated on the wrongness of speciesism, nor does it depend on your believing that all animals are equal or that all animals have rights, nor is it predicated on some contentious ethical theory that you likely reject. Rather, it is predicated on your beliefs. The argument shows that even those of you who value humans over nonhumans are committed to the immorality of eating meat, given your other beliefs.

The whole document is quite long, so if you feel lazy you can check out someone's notes on it here: http://www.mesacc.edu/~davpy35701/text/engel.pdf

Wow, that is a long article. It sounds interesting though. This will take me a while to read.

Thanks for posting!

An argument for the immorality of eating meat and other animal products is advanced. Unlike other arguments for ethical veganism, the present argument is not predicated on the wrongness of speciesism, nor does it depend on your believing that all animals are equal or that all animals have rights, nor is it predicated on some contentious ethical theory that you likely reject. Rather, it is predicated on your beliefs. The argument shows that even those of you who value humans over nonhumans are committed to the immorality of eating meat, given your other beliefs.

That sounds interesting. That's similar/(equal?) to how I think. I mean, you'll never know where to draw the line because vegans are not perfect. Why draw the line at veganism when you could draw the line at freeganism or other ways of lives that cause even less harm. At what point does our convenience not justify harm towards other animals? If someone is against slavery for the reason that it causes suffering, it is easier to argue that they should also be against killing animals for trivial reasons since it also causes a lot of suffering. Almost no one is for slavery.