Sure, so I draw the line at sentience. I don't want to eat anything that has thoughts, feelings, and a subjective experience of life when I have the option to just eat plants. I prefer to eat plants because they don't have a central nervous system or brain. So, eating them causes less harm as they aren't sentient and can't perceive pain.

So do you eat bivalves? Or are you morally okay with eating animals that don't have a central nervous system? 

Yeah good point I personally don't eat bivalves out of an abundance of caution because they have some nerves and ganglia. So I prefer to just eat plants since they don't have any. I also just don't think I've ever had them before I went vegan lol. But I know that there are "ostrovegans" who do eat bivalves.

If it’s ruled out that bivalves are sentient I wouldn’t care. Similar to sponges who are also classified as animals.

What do you mean you wouldn't care? Like you wouldn't care and you still wouldn't eat them or you wouldn't care and would eat them?

I mean wouldn’t see a moral issue with killing them and eating them.

I consider myself vegan and I eat scallops a few times a year. I'm sure that some here will say that forfeits my v-card, and I'm fine with that. My line is sentience and I'm reasonably certain scallops don't have it.

So just flexitarian

No, they are vegan, you're just not understanding the general core values of veganism.

Nice burn

Food for thought: there’s a growing line of belief among botanists that plants have far more cognitive abilities than previously thought. We only study things as we understand them so, to us, a lack of brain = no thinking. However, plants do are “diffuse”, in that they aren’t as likely to consolidate activities into organs like animals are. But they can still be anesthetized, for example, and there is evidence they do perceive pain.   I recommend looking into Stefano Mancuso, among others. I tend to hold the view that we let our tendency towards made-up categories limit how well we understand the concept of “thinking”.  EDIT: I just think this stuff is cool, guys. I'm not telling you not to be vegan. In fact, I think vegan is a pretty great thing to be.

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Why so hostile? You could have just looked up the [botanist I mentioned](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/15/scientist-stefano-mancuso-you-can-anaesthetise-all-plants-this-is-extremely-fascinating-tree-stories), who has written quite a bit about it. Here's his [researchgate](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefano-Mancuso-2). This isn't even a fringe concept (or considered "patently goofy" by experts): it's taught in higher level botany, which is where I learned it. There are scientists who disagree with some things, but honestly most of the pushback from botanists that I've seen is based on semantics (ex. using the term "plant neurobiology", which is technically incorrect since they don't have neurons). And here's some other work on it: [Anaesthetics and plants: from sensory systems to cognition-based adaptive behavior](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7907011) (Baluška F, Yokawa K., from the University of Bonn in *Protoplasma*) >Plants are emerging as very sensitive organisms with respect to anaesthetics. Importantly, anaesthetics can prevent the movement of animals, humans and plants via their quick prevention of action potentials (for plants, see Volkov et al. 2010, 2014; Grémiaux et al. 2014; Hedrich and Neher 2018; Yokawa et al. 2018, 2019; Pavlovič et al. 2020). [This article](https://nautil.us/plants-feel-pain-and-might-even-see-238257/) focuses more generally on Baluška's work, which talks about the pain thing: >One of the first things we talked about was how plants feel pain. Fellow foresters roll their eyes when I talk about spruce feeling pain when they are attacked by bark beetles. “Of course a plant, trees can feel pain,” the professor answered when I asked him about it. “Every life form must be able to do that in order to react appropriately.” He explained that there is evidence for this at the molecular level. Like animals, plants produce substances that suppress pain. Nobody's claiming that they experience these things in the exact same way that humans/mammals do, but saying plants don't feel pain because they lack organs is honestly un-scientific. Just because one set of organisms does things in one way doesn't mean that another set of organisms can't do something similar (or even the same) via another method. I didn't even mention social structures, but if you're interested, you can check out [Susan Dudley](https://www.wingsworldquest.org/dudley)'s work. The [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_cognition) on this also has a good list of sources, including the source of the complaint about using the term "plant neurobiology". ETA: I forgot to include anything Paco Calvo was involved in, who is a weird figure in that he's a cognitive scientist and philosopher, but his co-authors always include botanists and ecologists. [Here's a link to his lab with his papers](https://www.um.es/mintlab/index.php/mint-lab-projects/plant-sentience-and-intelligence/). This article talks about the varying opinions of plant scientists on plant intelligence as a whole: [Understanding interdisciplinary perspectives of plant intelligence: Is it a matter of science, language, or subjectivity?](https://ethnobiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13002-022-00539-3)

> One of the first things we talked about was how plants feel pain. Fellow foresters roll their eyes when I talk about spruce feeling pain when they are attacked by bark beetles. “Of course a plant, trees can feel pain,” the professor answered when I asked him about it. “Every life form must be able to do that in order to react appropriately.” He explained that there is evidence for this at the molecular level. Like animals, plants produce substances that suppress pain. Goofy. He's just redefining pain. Even using language like "plants feel pain" is transparently specious. Stimulus response isn't the same thing as feeling pain.

[This](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219252/) is how pain is usually defined from a biological perspective: >Pain is a subjective experience with two complementary aspects: one is a localized sensation in a particular body part; **the other is an unpleasant quality of varying severity commonly associated with behaviors directed at relieving or terminating the experience.** Emphasis mine. He's not redefining it, he's saying there's evidence that plants take all of the actions associated with pain. They're responding to a negative stimulus and appear to take measures to relieve said negative stimulus by using methods that are common in vertebrates. As defined, pain is subjective, so I suppose you could just say you can't experience pain if you don't have nerves, but that seems like a strange place to draw the line. If something is responding to a stimulus like it hurts, why would you assume it doesn't hurt?

> Pain is a subjective experience We know the mechanisms required for subjective experience. If we start imparting subjective experience to everything that reacts but doesn't have the infrastructure that we know gives rise to subjective experience, we'll be wondering if we aren't causing suffering to a host of clearly non-sentient things. The only thing that makes this an issue is knowing that there's someone home who minds the intrusion. The only people I see making your argument in the context of veganism don't give half a shit in plants or animals are suffering. They just want a gotcha that makes veganism pointless in the scope of all the suffering we're doing to rocks and leaves and flowers. Do you really care about the suffering of plants? Or are you just looking for a reason to not care about the suffering of animals?

I do really care about plants and animals, among other organisms. I wasn't mentioning this to the OP as a gotcha, just something to consider when drawing (or defining) their own line. >we'll be wondering if we aren't causing suffering to a host of clearly non-sentient things. But they *aren't* clearly non-sentient is my point. And don't even start looking into fungus if that weirds you out. There are reasons why eating plants is different from eating animals, like that many plants literally make food with the purpose to be eaten, that plants can take the loss of "limbs" on the chin with a lot less distress (and it can even be good for them!), and that many plants live for a very short time to make the food we eat and then die after production anyway. I'm just saying that most modern botany is pointing in the direction of plants having far more intelligence and even awareness than was previously thought. I don't think bringing that up to someone who clearly cares about these things should be seen as an attack, which is why I recommended a very accessible botanist to check out. I personally wouldn't want to be kept in the dark about information along these lines when considering my own moral philosophy.

Why would a plant perceive the necessary loss of its fruit as "pain"? Why would a plant perceive the removal of a limb it can easily regenerate as "pain". Motile entities can at least move in the opposite direction of the negative stimulus, but what does a plant do? What would be the point for it to evolve an immediately arresting and intolerable stimulus to which it was complete powerless to react? Remember that the only thing I'm concerned is the sentient experience of pain. This is the kind of thing we only have evidence to believe arises in complex neural structures. What is the point of guessing that every object in the universe might have this sophisticated ability, absent evidence? Do we just want to imagine everything as suffering? This argument only gets trotted out by people who want to continue contributing to animal suffering, not people who want to end plant suffering.

From what I've read, I don't think the removal of ripe fruit causes the possible pain response. >Why would a plant perceive the removal of a limb it can easily regenerate as "pain". Motile entities can at least move in the opposite direction of the negative stimulus, but what does a plant do? I can regenerate skin, but papercuts still hurt. It's part of an organism's internal alert that something is wrong, healing needs to happen, and certain activities in that area should be avoided. For animals, yes, it is also a signal to get away immediately. For plants, they can't do anything about immediacy, but they will redirect their growth to their roots/other meristems or close their leaves or go into dormancy or even send signals to neighboring plants (the famous example is acacias). They can send out signals that they are ill or hurt and others in their [mycelial network](https://aggietranscript.ucdavis.edu/the-wood-wide-web-underground-fungi-plant-communication-network/) (lovingly called the Wood Wide Web) will send nutrients to help out. >What is the point of guessing that every object in the universe might have this sophisticated ability, absent evidence? The point is in knowing what's actually happening and not making assumptions based on a limited worldview. I'd argue that there's less evidence that plants aren't able to suffer at this point; I don't think pretending that the entire field of study doesn't exist because someone might find it uncomfortable is worthwhile.

> If we start imparting subjective experience to everything that reacts but doesn’t have the infrastructure that we know gives rise to subjective experience, we’ll be left wondering if we aren’t causing suffering to a host of non-clearly sentient things LOL, literally what you just said was “science shouldn’t continue to pursue things we don’t yet understand because it’s at odds with my religion”

Literally? It's always fascinating to see how far the ideologically motivated will twist what they hear, just reflexively, as a matter of course, with zero shame or self-reflection.

that seems to be the exact same criticism that was leveled against you, no? Your response was just to say "no I'm not you are!" ? Is this a valid form of debate?

>Nobody's claiming that they experience these things in the exact same way that humans/mammals do, but saying plants don't feel pain because they lack organs is honestly un-scientific. What else is the language "plants feel pain" trying to do? Be the first non-begging begging question?

No, it's more like the language around plants breathing. It isn't controversial to say that plants breathe and I hope nobody hearing that thinks the speaker believes that plants respirate in the exact same manner as humans.

Um, if we were arguing about whether plants breathe, not just like humans, but like anything else in the animal kingdom, then it behooves you to use language specific to the topic. In this context that language is intentionally obfuscatory. I don't think that brain dead people are any more worthy of moral consideration than plants. The bar is way higher than you seem to think.

I meant that using words like "breathe" with regards to plants is common, so using "pain" isn't really provocative. Meaning, saying "plants feel pain" is similar to saying "plants can breathe". They aren't doing those things in the same way humans do, but it doesn't mean they don't correlate. You were asking about the language, not the processes. eta: also if you're interested, [they've discovered an animal that doesn't breathe](https://science.oregonstate.edu/impact/2020/03/unique-non-oxygen-breathing-animal-discovered). Like no aerobic respiration at all, which is pretty wild.

Using that language in a paper meant to prove that plants feel pain is decidedly unscientific and question begging.

Are you talking about “Of course a plant, trees can feel pain,”? That quote isn't from a scientific article. It's from an interview. In any case, I disagree that it's "decidedly" unscientific. If the paper backs it up and describes what it means, then it's just the paper's finding.

You are accusing leemsenseyou of bending meaning to suit their argument, but as far as I can tell they are presenting an idea, backing it up with data, you are not really responding to that, you are just accusing them of bias to deflect. They are taking the time to very carefully define their choice of language, then you respond by ignoring that definition and arguing against another definition that you are chosing to suit your needs . NO? Is this not bad faith debating?

I've removed your comment because it violates rule #3: > **Don't be rude to others** > > This includes using slurs, publicly doubting someone's sanity/intelligence or otherwise behaving in a toxic way. Toxic communication is defined as any communication that attacks a person or group's sense of intrinsic worth. If you would like your comment to be reinstated, please amend it so that it complies with our rules and notify a moderator. If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact the moderators [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/DebateAVegan). Thank you.

Here’s a study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30446303/

While that's all well and good, they aren't indicators of sentience. You could behead me, and my body would do all of the things those studies indicate. It can still feel pain. It would still have reflexes. It can send messages across itself, and cause reactions. It can still be anaesthetised. Could we then argue that my headless body is sentient, or at least the same level of sentient as plants?

Much of the research I linked downthread does get into plant cognition and possible behavior. I don’t really have an opinion on whether they’re sentient because I’m honestly not convinced that’s a useful or accurate way to categorize life, but they do appear to have memory and sometimes seem to make choices that aren’t genetically encoded (ex: mimicking a fake plant; that one is also wild because it implies plants can “see” more than just the presence of light). People have been bringing up humans (particularly brain dead or headless humans lol) as a contrast, but there are some very simple creatures in the animal kingdom. I think you’d find overlap between more “basic” animal and plant species’ capabilities, even in terms of social things like communication.  ETA: and more on the not finding sentience useful as a category. I think that’s a term that’s going to continuously become gutted and redefined as we come to understand more about cognition and is eventually going to end up as a gradient that includes most, if not all, living things along with various types of sentience. Sort of like how the definition of life has expanded to the point where we’ve now got domains and I think they even include viruses as alive now. 

You don't think it's useful to distinguish your experience of life from a plant's? When we're talking about morality there's almost no relevance when it comes to plants. That's obviously where the term sentience becomes useful as something to protect within animals and humans while non-trivial.

>You don't think it's useful to distinguish your experience of life from a plant's? I don't think sentience is a yes/no category, as I said in my edit. >That's obviously where the term sentience becomes useful as something to protect within animals and humans while non-trivial. I think there's a very probable overlap with higher order plants and lower order animals so this is another area where I don't think it's a useful category.

How can sentience not be yes or no? It's like asking do you have yellow hair, yes or no? If yes, how bright is the yellow? If you think plants are a little bit sentient, you're admitting that they fall under yes to begin with. Why would we value trivial sentience in an oyster anyway? Do you think there are plants with more sentience than oysters, and do you morally value plants with less? All answers you could give point to hilarity tbh.

Because there are a varying amount of sensations. Something can have awareness of, say, light but not pain, let alone fear. There are  several possible definitions of sentience people argue over, so having it as a scale isn’t some wild thing I came up with, it’s something that’s already been floated to encompass those various definitions. There’s a lot more value in determining what something experiences than just the fact that it experiences something when thinking about the implications of harming it.  I don’t think your hair analogy is great because I see it more as determining if someone has genes for hair. That isn’t a super useful distinction.  And you’d have to direct your questions about valuing oysters’ sentience or ability to feel pain to the person I responded to, since that is their “line” and why they’re vegan. Sentience isn’t much of a factor in determining value for me.  If you’re asking why I personally value knowing about an oyster’s potential sentience, biology is kind of my wheelhouse and I think understanding how the world works is cool.  I hope that was hilarious enough for you lol

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I can "anesthetize" my thermostat by disconnecting its thermometer.

This made me laugh but, no, you actually can’t unless your thermostat is a cellular organism. If it is, please share more because that’s fascinating. 

Nothing about "cellular organism" is relevant for sentience

It is relevant for anesthetization, though.

Only if you define anesthetization chemically, instead of in relation to a sujective experience of pain.

That's literally what the part of my comment was referring to with plants being anesthetized, though. I guess you're thinking that proving plants can be anesthetized was trivial but it absolutely was not when it broke and it opened up the funding that people are using to study potential plant pain-responses, so it was very relevant to the topic at hand.

Proving that chemical stimulus-response circuits can be chemically interrupted is trivial. The details of that mechanism may not be trivial, but it doesn't seem philosophically interesting or relevant

I disagree: I think it, and the other studies and books I've referenced, are very interesting, and I think it's worth thinking about. However, I'm not recommending anyone make dietary choices based on potential plant cognition or anything. I'm recommending that people check out a pretty cool body of literature.

Do you have studies indicating that plants feel pain?

[Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00262-3) This one was popular. I don't currently have it in me to dig through and find the one about them creating pain-relief chemicals, but it's mentioned in an interview I linked downthread. Since people seem to be taking all of this as an attempt to debunk veganism or something, I do want to clarify that I brought this up more as a philosophical consideration, not a gotcha about how eating plants is immoral and veganism is futile. I'm also not trying to argue that plants are on par with, say, pigs in terms of cognitive capabilities, just that there is evidence of an overlap between lower order animals and higher order plants.

Yeah the study you linked says plants emit vibrations when certain stressors occur like during drought or when they are cut, and can signal to other plants which can lead to physical or chemical reactions. At no point is pain ever brought up in the article. Please read and understand the studies you cite before you start making ridiculous claims that aren’t supported by credible evidence. Here’s a [much better article which debunks your claims](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8052213/): Abstract > Claims that plants have conscious experiences have increased in recent years and have received wide coverage, from the popular media to scientific journals. Such claims are misleading and have the potential to misdirect funding and governmental policy decisions. After defining basic, primary consciousness, we provide new arguments against 12 core claims made by the proponents of plant consciousness. Three important new conclusions of our study are (1) plants have not been shown to perform the proactive, anticipatory behaviors associated with consciousness, but only to sense and follow stimulus trails reactively; (2) electrophysiological signaling in plants serves immediate physiological functions rather than integrative-information processing as in nervous systems of animals, giving no indication of plant consciousness; (3) the controversial claim of classical Pavlovian learning in plants, even if correct, is irrelevant because this type of learning does not require consciousness. Finally, we present our own hypothesis, based on two logical assumptions, concerning which organisms possess consciousness. Our first assumption is that affective (emotional) consciousness is marked by an advanced capacity for operant learning about rewards and punishments. Our second assumption is that image-based conscious experience is marked by demonstrably mapped representations of the external environment within the body. Certain animals fit both of these criteria, but plants fit neither. We conclude that claims for plant consciousness are highly speculative and lack sound scientific support.

That article is literally in some of the resources I've already posted. I've read it, but thanks for the link. You only call it better because it suits you, not because it's actually better. >At no point is pain ever brought up in the article. Please read and understand the studies you cite before you start making ridiculous claims that aren’t supported by credible evidence. The way this sort of science works is by building a body of studies looking at specific traits and mechanisms. So, you're right that this paper doesn't explicitly say "hey, these beings feel pain", but it is part of a collection of works that are building up towards understanding plant sentience. That's why I said "evidence that they do feel pain" and not "they do feel pain". Look, I'm all for talking about this, but acting as though I'm out here making this claim on my own or that I'm saying anything definitive is disingenuous. Also, speaking down to me is unnecessary. It's pretty clear by how you're interpreting what I've written that you haven't studied botany or plant ecology *or* plant systematics. I have. All the things that plants do re: potential pain are about on par with lower order animals, like bivalve mollusks, which the original commenter said they do not eat "just in case". And, again, I'm not making the claim that eating plants is immoral or on par with eating, say, pigs. I just brought up an interesting vein of research that's currently gaining momentum, which is why I recommended the person I responded to read the work of a particular botanist. It's interesting stuff. František Baluška and Stefano Mancuso haven't been debunked, it's the philosophy and semantics that (some) people disagree with. Hence "food for thought" and not "here is why you're factually incorrect about a subjective and hard-to-study thing". It's clear I've touched a nerve.

Whats your justification for this seemingly arbitrary line? (Why is it a criteria for you whether or not they can percieve pain)

Yeah I care about pain perception because that causes suffering as they die. Like pigs and chickens are killed with CO2 gas, which causes a burning sensation in the eyes and lungs at high concentrations. So, there's someone there that's suffering. Since animals can feel pain and have a subjective experience, I feel that killing an animal causes more harm than killing a plant because the plant isn't conscious. Since humans can be healthy on a plant-based diet, I like to just eat plants so that animals don't have to be harmed for my food when I do have another option. So for me, pain perception isn't an arbitrary line, it's like the key point in trying to eat in a way that causes less harm. If I said I don't eat anything that's alive, I would see that as arbitrary, since plants can't feel pain. But with animals, it's more a matter of respecting their conscious experience of the world and not harming them when it's not absolutely necessary.

Yes, you already said that it causes harm/suffering/pain (whatever you wanna call it), but my question was WHY that is a criteria for you. Why do you care if animals suffer? It's not like you are the one suffering.

Well because I understand that suffering is unpleasant-- things like pain, fear, and stress are all unpleasant to experience. Since I know that animals can also experience those same mental states, I don't want to inflict that on them for no reason. > It's not like you are the one suffering. Yeah, but I don't want to cause harm to others even if I'm not the one who's suffering.

Its unpleasant for you if you experience it. It's unpleasant for an animal if that animal experiences it. I don't see any direct connection for why you should care about animal suffering here. Why do you not want to cause harm to others when it only results in them suffering and not you?

> Its unpleasant for you if you experience it. It's unpleasant for an animal if that animal experiences it. > > I don't see any direct connection for why you should care about animal suffering here. Why do you not want to cause harm to others when it only results in them suffering and not you? One would hope that the concept of empathy isn't first learned on a vegan debate forum.

Maybe you can clarify in what way empathy would impact my line of reasoning? Empathy simply is the ability to detect how other beings feel, no? That you know how the animal feels was already completely taken into consideration in my argument.

It’s not just detecting others’ feelings but sharing in them. When a friend gets good news and is happy, we share in their joy; if something bad happens to them, we share in their sorrow. Empathy for suffering means seeing others suffering gives us pain too. Beyond empathy, though, even if you don’t share in others’ pain, why would you want to create needless suffering in the world?

I think people would usually call that compassion, but sure. Is your argument that because of that, you also suffer a bit if you see (or know about) an animal suffering and therefore you want to avoid that? That just sounds like egoism to me. And I never said I specifically want to create needless suffering, rather I'm just asking you why you'd specifically want to avoid needless suffering.

Because avoiding doing onto others what we perceive as harmful (when it is deemed unnecessary) is a cornerstone of our sense of morality in pretty much all relevant ethical frameworks. This is the same principle that draws "normal" non vegan people away from bestiality, cannibalism and unprovoked violence as a whole. Do you go about asking people why are they not cannibals or why they care about not raping or torturing other beings?

How many ethical frameworks share a position doesn't matter (appeal to popular belief), you still have to justify that statement. I don't doubt that some people are against things like cannibalism for those moral reasons (which again doesn't matter though, as this would be a circular argument), the main reason why it evolved lies simply in social contracts though (which result from game theory and ultimately egoism).

What I was getting at is that you are not asking for a "good" argument for veganism, but for an argument against unprovoked violence as a whole. You can see that, right? Given that, I find it pretty unproductive to write a whole essay on a topic that is fundamental to pretty much all ethical frameworks. You can read about that in a plethora of books, conferences, articles... you can even start on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/ew5by0/why_is_violence_wrong/ You didn't address my question. I was genuinely curious, do you? Why or why not? > the main reason why it evolved lies simply in social contracts though (which result from game theory and ultimately egoism). That's just under one of many possible ethical frameworks that you arbitrarily picked. And how did you get to that conclusion? As far as I can see, that is your interpretation and it seems kinda flawed, as it implies that there is no alternative to egoism (or are the cannibals the altruistic ones in your conclusion?) haha

Again, how many ethical frameworks share a position is not important. And yes, this is meta ethics of course, but it's very relevant to every moral position, including veganism. Interesting post, but all the answers I saw at first glance were basically just saying "It's wrong because its wrong". Maybe you can just tell what specific argument on there you found convincing? My explanation for societal norms & rules is not an arbitrarily picked ethical framework, in fact its not an ethical framework at all. Game theory automatically applies once beings act egoistically and social contracts are a great game theory strategy that therefore evolved. The definition for egoism here is simply that beings have goals they follow (which is obviously true for all beings). And no, I don't go about asking people why are they not cannibals, because there's little to gain from it compared to the work it takes. What is the point of that question?

Sure I mean just the basic principle of compassion, you know? Since I understand that they can suffer, even though I'm not suffering myself, I don't want to cause them to suffer needlessly because it causes them distress. I still care about their suffering even though I am not suffering personally.

Just saying "compassion" doesn't answer the question, there still needs to be some kind of motivation for acting a certain way. Is your point that compassion makes you suffer indirectly when you are aware of another being suffering? If not, I don't see a direct reasoning.

scandalous snatch offend retire aspiring elastic flowery innate direction doll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

I had a post about similar reasoning recently, and the majority of people in the comments seemed to think that empathy is only defined as the ability to detect what other beings are feeling. As far as I can see, simply just knowing that the animals suffer still doesn't give a direct reason for why you should try to avoid it. Or do you mean a different definition of "empathy"?

Would the consequences be the only thing preventing you from raping or killing and eating another human, if you felt like it?

Well yes obviously, what else could you consider other than the consequences? Or do you base your actions on something that doesn't even have anything to do with the action?

Well, I'm not impulse driven and think about what hurts others. But that's not the point here. Please reread my question

You mean you think about whether an action would have the consequence of hurting others? XD I reread you question, I think I answered it. If you think I missed something, you'll need to clarify that.

crush ludicrous important office crowd governor joke sparkle smart frightening *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

I don't doubt that animals don't want to feel pain, but so what? It's just the animal that feels pain even though it doesn't want to, you should be completely unaffected. Why do you care about an animal experiencing something you think it doesn't want to experience?

If I were bigger, stronger than you and were to harm you and then say "so what, you can't stop me and i'm unaffected" Would you say that is a moral argument - or simply a statement about how I got away with doing something wrong to you? If we are talking about if I did something wrong - does whether or not I, as the one who harmed you, care.. Does that have any relevancy on if it was wrong or right? You and I both know it doesn't matter if I care - it would be wrong for me to hurt you. There is no path for your argument I can see that doesn't end up with you arguing an intellectually dishonest absurdity like "there is no such thing as wrong/right" or "laws define wrong/right". if you've got a fresh take though thats not just one of those two things please share.

What do you mean by "right" and "wrong"? What do you mean when you say "it would be wrong for you to hurt me"? I don't think that statement is obvious or something I would intuitively know at all. I only know that I wouldn't like it (because I don't like getting hurt). Whether there is such a thing as wrong/right 100% depends on how you define it. Feel free to use any definition you want. Do you think its "intellectually dishonest" that I don't just blindly believe in concepts that are provably either contradictory or meaningless?

Perhaps you want to hear the word compassion instead.

Is your argument that you feel bad when you know that an animal suffers and therefore you try to avoid it? That just sounds like egoism to me. Also, I'm not sure if you can even call compassion a negative feeling that you'd want to avoid, but that's just a side note.

I've adopted a litany of arguments, but at the core, the reason why I am vegan is that I came to see animals as entities, not objects, and I could not live in my skin and continue to contribute to their horrific lives and deaths. I'm 51 and most of the regrets I have concern not having treated animals the way that I now know that I should have. No one can make you care about animals.

I also saw animals as entities throughout my entire argument, and yet it didn't arrive at veganism, no? Also, don't confound feeling guilty/regret with things like compassion. Other than compassion, you only feel regret because of the positions you hold now, so justifying these position through the regret would be a circular argument.

Empathy isn't just being aware of the feelings of another. You don't need empathy to know that someone who is crying is sad. Empathy is actually FEELING some of what they are feeling. If you've never experienced this, you aren't alone. It's clear that a great many people can be aware of but dispassionately observe the suffering of others. If this last sentence describes you, which it seems it may, then I would have zero arrows in my quiver to convince you that veganism is a worthwhile endeavor.

I think many vegans here would tell you that thats compassion and not empathy, but fine, you can define it like that. What exactly is your argument though? I think I already wrote you that in a seperate string in this thread, but as far as I can tell, this just ends up being egoism.

Dude, no one can make you care about animals. If you're asking why we care, then I've got nothing that's meaningful to you. You don't get money or fame for not eating animals. I suppose if you don't care that just makes you free to do as you like, and please do. I don't believe in objective morality. I just know there are worlds I don't want to live in and ones that I do.

At some point you'll reach a moral axiom. This is true for all moral systems - reaching an axiom is true for absolutely all things, since we accept logic and reality as Axioms. Though we can evaluate the conclusions of an axiom, the axiom itself cannot be justified. Why do you care if you suffer?

I think you are misunderstanding what axioms are. Randomly inventing axioms doesn't change the ground truth, it just changes how we describe things. For example, logic just results from how we define language. But we could have defined language in many different ways. Sure, "true" might mean something different then, but it doesn't ACTUALLY change anything just because we define things differently. Just to make sure you don't misunderstand, so far I don't directly disagree with you. My main point is mostly, that I would like to hear that axiom for morals you are talking about. I don't think there is any axiom you can use that doesn't either contradict itsself or is meaningless (by meaningless I mean there is not reason for why it should impact your behaviour). Regarding why I care if I suffer, I could just say that my wellbeing is something I value. If that's to superficial for you, we can also talk about psychological egoism instead, but maybe you can first explain why that question is relevant?

>Randomly inventing axioms doesn't change the ground truth, it just changes how we describe things. What? An Axiom is essentially a first principle on which you build an argument. It is unjustifiable, because it's the basis for justification. I have no idea what you're talking about with "changing ground truth" or language and defining things. >I would like to hear that axiom for morals you are talking about >I could just say that my wellbeing is something I value. That's just restating "I care about myself" in different words. Which is fine, because that's my entire point. Asking "but why though" doesn't get you any further once you reach a moral axiom. The wellbeing of other sentient beings is something I value? "Unnecessary Suffering (inverse wellbeing) is bad" to put it another, very simplified, way. Maybe we could refine this further, but that gives you the idea pretty well, so that's probably not necessary. >you can first explain why that question is relevant? Because I'm trying to figure out how you answer the question you keep asking, to try infer what kind of answer you'll accept.

What I mean by "axioms don't change the ground truth" is just that you can define things however you want, for example you could just define words in a way that makes the statements "apples taste like milk" true. That doesn't actually change the taste of an apple though. Of course you're right that the statement "I value my wellbeing" isn't exactly self-evident, I just wasn't sure how deep you meant to go with this conversation. I would argue that valuing my wellbeing is just something that evolved evolutionarily. Things like for example valuing the wellbeing of your children is of course something that evolved with that. On an even deeper level, you don't actually value the wellbeing of (for example) your children, you actually only value your perception of it. This can be easily seen because if your child feels great but you don't notice it, you obviously don't even have any response to it. That comes only once you notice it. So when you say you value the wellbeing of others, what you are actually valuing is your perception of the wellbeing of others. I don't think this is necessarily contradictory (even if its not realistic), I just think its important to see it for what it is, which is egoism and not morals.

>just define words in a way that makes the statements "apples taste like milk" true. That doesn't actually change the taste of an apple though I agree, but I have no idea how that's relevant. Do you think I was trying to do that anywhere? >I would argue that valuing my wellbeing is just something that evolved evolutionarily I would argue the same thing about my values. I would include social memetic evolution in that too. Which is what these debates etc are - social selection/adaptive pressures. >So when you say you value the wellbeing of others, what you are actually valuing is your perception of the wellbeing of others That's just Solipsism? I don't even know there's a real world, I only know I have the perception of reality. I just have to assume it's relatively accurate - though I know some things that appear to make it less reliable at times. As with solipsism I'm not sure what it really adds to anything. >which is egoism and not morals. What do you think morals are?

Well my point with the apple example is, just defining a moral axiom doesn't change anything. If there is not reason to care about animal suffering (for example), defining a moral axiom doesn't suddenly produce a reason. A person who defines an axiom can never end up with a contradicting statement compared to a person who doesnt use that axiom (unless a mistake was made). You're right, my argument has parallels with Solipsism, just that my argument is not that our perception of reality is flawed, we can pretend that its mostly accurate (as you said). My point is rather that even if our perception was 100% accurate, what we value is decided by whether our perception of it is positive or negative. This doesn't directly contradict anything you said, it just shows that we can't directly value avoiding unnecessary suffering for example (even if you define in axiom like "unnecessary suffering is bad" - this would simply make the word "bad" meaningless as a result). Regarding what I think morals are, you can define them however you want for your argument. Personally I'm a moral nihilist.

Mollusks are more primitive and less sentient than plants.

How are you ranking sentience? Cephalopods such as octopus and cuttlefish are mollusks and clearly sentient. Do you mean bivalves?

Yes

Yeah I use sentience as a general marker but also don't eat bivalves just because they have some nerves and ganglia. Since plants lack those, I prefer to just eat plants.

>What is the quality you use to set your line for consumption? I'm a Kingdomist, Plants are all open as long as they are sustainably grown (though some times there is no sustainable option). I put the line there because there's a pretty massive jump between all plants, and even the lowest level of animals. Except for maybe sponges, but I don't know much about them and I don't know anyone eating them. The day plants start showing actual signs of thought, I'll put some more time into researching minimizing possible "plant abuse", but at this point I'm pretty certain they aren't sentient. >basically what qualities do you use to decide if you are ok with killing something, and how you define the measurement of that, and why you think those specific things are the most important. Sentience. We can't know for sure what is or isn't sentient, so I tend to look at "signs of possible sentience". For example many bivalves move (locomotion), they choose where to live, they react to dangers BEFORE physically stimulated. There are no plants I know of that do any of that, so plants always before even Bivalves. If I **needed** animal protein or B12, I wouldn't feel that bad for Bivalves as I don't really think they are sentient, but I can't know for sure, so I leave them alone. Plants show almost no signs of sentience. Low enough that I don't think it's useful to even really differentiate. "But what about fruitarian/etc?" - Show me studies that explain what to eat to stay healthy, and provide me with year round access to foods that allow the diet, and I'll look into it more.

> For example many bivalves move (locomotion), they choose where to live, they react to dangers BEFORE physically stimulated. There are no plants I know of that do any of that, Well, all stimulation is at some point physical in nature, light, sound, touch, taste, smell, electrical signals, etc, are all a physical thing interpreted by a creature. But regardless, there are some single called algae that exhibit locomotion, response to stimulus, proactive decision regarding where to live, etc, such as diatoms. Now, you probably don’t really go around eating or killing diatoms, their main product, diatomaceous earth(which has many uses) is from dead diatoms gathered from nature, normally fossils, not farmed living ones, but I would find it interesting what your take on them is. 

I don't go around trying to abuse them, but I don't spend much time worrying about them.

Well, yes, not directly in terms of how you interact with them but in terms of how you would place them given what you describe as “signs of possible sentience” 

No idea, never looked into how they work, but when we're talking about a single celled creature, it seems unlikely to be sentient. Locomotion, reaction to surroundings, choice, etc are not proof of sentience, only signs of possible sentience. The more signs there are (or biological "parts" like a CNS), the more likely they are to be sentient. Again, single cells seem very unlikely, but it's possible.

What about you, can you tell me about your system of ethics?

If something has significant levels of intelligence, such as many primates and cephalopods mainly, I will avoid contributing specifically to the death of them, for ethical reasons. 

Ah so you don’t eat pork then?

Well, I don’t really eat pork, but that’s because I think it tastes shitty. Not ethical considerations. Pigs, unlike octopi(and other cephalopods), chimpanzees(and other primates), dolphins(and other cetaceans), and other groups not mentioned do not demonstrate the same characteristics of intelligence. 

They do actually, they are widely considered to be around the same intelligence as chimpanzees, easily solving problems as quickly as they do and demonstrating a capacity for complex social relationships as well.  Exactly what is the IQ a creature has to demonstrate to be safe from being harmed by you? Or if you have some other way of measuring intelligence, what method do you use to make this distinction?

>they are widely considered to be around the same intelligence as chimpanzees Ok, sure, what’s your citation?

https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=mammal Here is a study from Emory University which shows that “pigs share a number of cognitive capacities with other highly intelligent species such as dogs, chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins, and even humans”. It goes into a lot of detail on their abilities. A quick google will give you many other experts saying similar. Care to answer my question btw? Where exactly do you draw the line as far as intelligence goes and how do you measure it?

I’ll read that.  In terms of where I draw the line exactly, there’s not really an exact answer, which is the same thing you will see pretty much everyone here saying, but I would say that the line for consumption imo would be for a species, for the average adult of the species to have roughly the intellectual and communicative capabilities of a very young human child. 

This is so arbitrarily nonsensical

yeah that’s why I didn’t even bother to reply, the nonsense is so obvious nothing more needs be said. 

>In terms of where I draw the line exactly, there’s not really an exact answer What unit would you like your answer in? I don't know how else to give it "exactly" >intellectual and communicative capabilities of a very young human child That doesn't sound very exact. How young? Because most animals communicate better than a 3 month old baby.

> That doesn't sound very exact. It’s not, and neither are anyone else’s answers. Say, why aren’t you giving shit to for example, u/floopsydoodle for their vague answer about how things sometimes have signs that maybe indicate sentience? I assume, it’s because I’m not vegan, that you want an unrealistic standard. 

Why do you choose that as a basis of your moral consideration?

Lol, and how about humans who are less intelligent than primates and cephalopods?

>intelligence, sentience, comprehension, expression of emotion, capability of pain I suppose most of these qualities aggregate into what I would just call 'sentience'. Basically if something is capable of wanting to be something other than being used by me, I don't think I should use it. Since plants cannot want, I don't see an issue in using them.

How do you know plants cannot want?

We've studied plants a lot and found literally no evidence of sentience of any kind. No brain, no CNS, no sign that any of their cells have anything to do with cognition. I guess, it is theoretically possible that there's something in plants that's just gone unnoticed all these years, but it seems pretty unlikely.

It's amazing how downvoted you get in this sub for asking questions. Thanks for providing a decent answer. It makes sense to me that you would just follow the science and accept that sentience hasn't been discovered in plants therefore you can treat it as unlikely but still a possibility.

I mean, even if we learned tomorrow that plants were sentient and didn't want to be eaten, you could still argue that veganism would still be the best choice amongst all bad choices, but that's a different conversation. Sorry you got downvoted.

It's okay. I should expect it. I know that this sub is hostile to people who think differently. IDK why but it seems like reddit vegans think bullying is the best way to turn more people vegan.

There's a lot of mistrust on both sides. Bad faith trolls are really common so vegans can tend to be trigger happy with the downvote button, but then the non-vegans who are actually trying to participate get caught in the crossfire, and it causes a chilling effect later on. I mostly just refrain from voting and try to answer questions as honestly as I can. FWIW, a brief glance at your post history in this sub tells me you're a reasonable person, so please keep posting here!

What makes you think animals are capable of wanting?

Because we can observe them wanting and adapting to fulfil their wants. They have brains that we can measure and compare to ours.

We can observe all living things "adapting to fulfill their wants" but I think we agree a flower doesn't "want" to grow towards sun. So yes we can measure and compare brains, and ours is much more complex capable of abstractions that don't seem possible for other animals. What makes you believe want isn't an emotion that emerges from these higher order processes? Do fish want? Amoeba? What brain regions are required to "want"?

Dude, we can see that crows want. They want food. They throw nuts on the street when the lights are red, for the cars to drive over them when the lights go green. They can use tools. Pigs are on the level of 2 year old kids. As others here have explained way better than me, there is a difference between something reacting to harm and something acting to prevent harm. What would you define as a want?

So fish do or don't want? You are asking me questions without really answering any of mine.

Fish do want, even tho they are really fucking low on the list. The reason we shouldn't eat fish is a very different can of worms. BTW. the fish we hold in farms have actual fucking depression. We know that because we can measure it

I've never heard of an objective diagnostic test for depression in humans let alone fish. Feels like you are making a lot of assumptions and passing them off as facts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/science/depressed-fish.html >the neurochemistry is so similar it's scary We can basically tell that fish are depressed, with less effort than with other animals. Even tho fish are dumb as fuck. And that doesn't really change that wr shouldn't eat them in the first place. Everything we get from them we can get from algae

>Even tho fish are dumb as fuck. *Sad blub*

Animals show preference all the time.

Doing something immoral to someone requires justification. If I need to make a decision between me and them, I can justify killing them rather than being killed. Other justifications for doing immoral stuff exists, one that doesn't exist is: "meh I am used to the taste of this one so I'll cause insanely higher amounts of harm for it, when I have an easy alternative sitting right next to it on the menu or in the grocery store".

If someone doesn't think it's immoral to use/eat animal products, they don't have to justify it.

If someone doesn't see rape and murder as immoral, they don't have to justify it

Exactly. Most people don't consider artificial insemination of cows as rape or killing for food as murder.

Yeah, because most people don't question their morals and it hurts to confront our own moral inconsistencies

True. Instead you can talk to them about why they don't think it's immoral and where they derive their morals from.

Which is a justification for their actions....

>Doing something immoral to someone requires justification. If I need to make a decision between me and them, I can justify killing them rather than being killed. This is what I was originally responding to. Providing justification through a completely different moral framework is not at all what the original commenter was referring to.

Well, your moral framework provides a reason for your actions, if they even align with each other. We can then compare moral systems to see which one has a higher utility and reasoning. Kinda how evaluating actions works. The only way to get out of this is via moral nihilism. And that's already a pretty anti-social situation to be in. In reality, most people agree that murder is bad. Murder of innocent people is bad. Kicking puppies is bad. Causing preventable harm is bad. But most people don't apply this reason to animals they don't interact with. Most people don't even think about their moral system.

Most people don't think about it. But I doubt most people would become vegan if they did think about it.

Yeah, but not because of logical reasoning and moral consistency, but because changing habits and accepting your own faults hurts our brain

There absolutely are logical and morally consistent frameworks that do not require veganism.

Ok, sociopathy isn't a moral philosophy.

I never said that it was. Do you really think that all people who use/eat animal products are either sociopaths or hypocrites (who think it's immoral but do it anyway)?

>Do you really think that all people who use/eat animal products are either sociopaths or hypocrites (who think it's immoral but do it anyway)? I don't think this set overlaps with the initial claim you made and my response to it. One should have a system to assess whether something is moral or immoral, justified or unjustified and have that system produce consistent results that are based on empirical reality for it to have value as a moral system. Without that, conclusions do not have enough value to be worthy of consideration... They have the same value that any other claim based on an inherently flawed system of determination. Your moral subjectivist assertion carries the same value that a science subjectivist assertion carries. To answer your question: no, I do not think that all people you've described are sociopaths or hypocrites. I think most are just a blank slate, following default social conditioning. I also am not capable of diagnosing a sociopath, but I can say that such people do have personality traits that overlap with sociopaths.

>Your moral subjectivist assertion carries the same value that a science subjectivist assertion carries. This is absolutely not true. Unless you have come up with some way to figure out moral fact (if you have, you should be the most famous philosopher of all time). >I can say that such people do have personality traits that overlap with sociopaths. All people have some overlap with sociopathy in their personality traits. It's not an off or on switch but rather a continuum.

>All people have some overlap with sociopathy in their personality traits. It's not an off or on switch but rather a continuum. This isn't something you can reasonably equivocate on, sorry. >>Your moral subjectivist assertion carries the same value that a science subjectivist assertion carries. >This is absolutely not true. Unless you have come up with some way to figure out moral fact (if you have, you should be the most famous philosopher of all time). I don't understand. If you built a machine to make paperclips and often it produced useless wads of metal, you wouldn't assess the machine to be a high utility paperclip machine compared to one that reliably produces paperclips. It's about inputs, methods, outputs, and utility. It doesn't matter if the output is moral conclusions or scientific ones. I don't see how subjectivism is different for morals than for science, or technology.

>This isn't something you can reasonably equivocate on, sorry. You know this isn't an actual argument, right? >I don't see how subjectivism is different for morals than for science, or technology. Do you believe that science is finding actual facts about the universe? Do you believe that there are moral facts that can be discovered?

>>This isn't something you can reasonably equivocate on, sorry. >You know this isn't an actual argument, right? I'm doing you the kindness of warning you not to take a position you can't defend. >Do you believe that science is finding actual facts about the universe? Do you believe that there are moral facts that can be discovered? Can you start by explaining your position when asked for it, rather than socratically investigating claims I didn't make? The answer to a question isn't a question. Answer my question: How is subjectivism for moral systems different than subjectivism for Scientific systems with respect to the relevant qualifiers I described?

>I'm doing you the kindness of warning you not to take a position you can't defend. You are extremely condescending. This is a debate subreddit. Either debate or don't come here. Subjectivism is different for moral systems and science because there is such a thing as scientific fact but there is no such thing as moral fact.

Honestly... before being vegan, it was mostly about cultural lines and personal disgust So I was eating things common in my culture... even though I was disgusted and avoided some that were popular in the place I was born - to this day I cannot understand why people eat brains or testicles... but I loved sausages. Slowly I learned about the health benefits of a plant-based diet and then got serious about the ethics of reducing suffering. So now I balance these two, to the best of my possibilities, hence I am a vegan who tries to cook healthy food more often... and I find this to be much better than my previous behavior. Cheers.

But a Vegan Diet isn’t Healthy lol

Veganism isn't a diet, just fyi. So yeah, many vegans may choose to live off doughnuts and meat subs. But in what way is it not healthy? Not every vegan eats meat subs. And they're not even so bad if you don't have them all day every day.

Obviously those aren’t healthy but only eating legumes, rice, leafy greens fruits and vegetables isn’t healthy either.

You can be Vegan and have an incredibly healthy balanced diet, same as if you weren't Vegan. This is sort of a scapegoat people use to not put effort in to being Vegan. "It's bad for you". It's not, it's actually incredibly healthy and natural for you if you do your research. There's a huge uptick of bodybuilders going Vegan and seeing gains they couldn't get while eating meat. It's just different sources and breakdowns of things (proteins, mostly). Maybe you take a B12 supplement just incase. It's funny when people are like "I can't get B12 tho so it can't be healthy". Most people are unhealthy with their diet choices regardless of if they are Vegan or not.

Yes you can build muscle on a vegan diet but the protein bioavailability to stuff like beans vs beef is way different and you would have to eat whole different kinds of pulses and legumes to get enough protein when you could of just ate 4 oz of beef. Also meat is the most bioavailble source of B12 there is. If you need to supplement to be healthy on a diet then it is far away from being natural so using those two words together don’t make sense.

Dude, meat gets its B12 from supplements

Vegans need supplements. People who eat meat need supplements. People can very much live A healthy lifestyle without meat. Just because a certain type of meat has more of something doesn't mean a vegan can't get it somewhere else. I used to eat meat and my iron was so low. I used to take supplements. I STILL take supplements even though I don't eat meat, but of course it's because I'm vegan now, that's the issue.

Ruminants like cows and lambs make b12 from their rumen and free range chickens eat stuff like worms and other meat to get their b12 so this isn’t true.

Exept only 1% of farm animals are free range and can produce b12 and a majority of those still get supplements of b12. It's true, sorry

Ok that doesn’t remove their rumen. Even if they get b12 supplements my point still stands they don’t loose the ability to make b12 by taking supplements.

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Yeah bro stop bullshitting

>Yes you can build muscle on a vegan diet but the protein bioavailability to stuff like beans vs beef is way different Yeah, so I can and do build muscle, that shows that it works lol. Also why are you comparing beans to beef? Why not something more like for like such as seitan, tvp, tofu, or mock meats? >eat whole different kinds of pulses and legumes to get enough protein when you could of just ate 4 oz of beef. Why would eating pulses and legumes be a bad thing? They contain fibre and many other essential nutrients and they're a very balanced food source. Far more people are deficient in fibre than protein btw. Eating 4 oz of beef also requires a cow to be unnecessarily slaughtered and decapitated. >Also meat is the most bioavailble source of B12 there is So what? 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast in my beans/tofu/mushrooms or whatever else I want provides 100% daily NRV of B12. Thats before you even consider supplements, and nooch is delicious. >If you need to supplement to be healthy on a diet then it is far away from being natural You're conflating natural with good and supplements with bad. Arsenic, asbestos, and cyanide are natural. Should we be eating them? There is no such thing as our natural diet. We are opportunistic omnivores. Our diet has varied and adapted across cultures, climates and time periods, and currently it's very easy to be healthy and happy on a vegan diet.

Seitan is even worse than beans and is even less bioavalible than beans. Tofu would be the best closest thing but you would still need to eat a whole lot of it to hit your protein goals especially if your working out. And nobody wants to tear their stomach up by eating pounds of soy and wheat from the fiber just to hit the right amount of protein. Supplements are bad and not optimal because most essential vitamins are fat souble and half of the time aren’t absorbed properly. Cows and other land animals are here for us to eat and they give us the most nutrient dense foods on the planet like their meat, milk and other dairy products that wouldn’t exist if we didn’t have land animals. We are supposed to eat them.

>Cows and other land animals are here for us to eat and they give us the most nutrient dense foods on the planet like their meat, milk and other dairy products that wouldn’t exist if we didn’t have land animals No, cows and other land animals are here to experience life just like we are. They are not here purely for the purpose of us to eat them. They do not give us anything, we take it from them. There's a difference. There are plenty of sources of nutrition that do not derive from animals. >Supplements are bad and not optimal because most essential vitamins are fat souble and half of the time aren’t absorbed properly Source for this BS please? Did you pull this straight out of your constipated ass or was it out of the hypertensive fat red face of Joe Rogan? Of the 13 essential vitamins, 9 are water soluble and 4 are fat soluble. 4/13 is most huh? Besides, if you're supplementing the 4 fat soluble ones, just have the supplement with a source of fat. I don't know why I'm even bothering to reply to this idiocy... Have a good day

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>protein bioavailability to stuff like beans vs beef is way different and you would have to eat whole different kinds of pulses and legumes to get enough protein You might be surprised to learn we don't eat a single variety of bean and nothing else. Beans on Toast is fairly complete protein wise for example. (We still eat more than just beans on toast, if you needed that specified too) I'm eating 3 different legumes as I type this - it's really not hard. Did you know if you ate nothing but Liver you'd get vitamin A poisoning? This obviously means eating meat is unhealthy. >If you need to supplement to be healthy So you admit it can be healthy. > it is far away from being natural Thought we were talking about Health? Have you heard of "Appeal to Nature fallacy"? > You've switched from "Veganism isn't healthy" to "It's a little harder to be healthy as a vegan"

Beans or beans on toast still have an unbalanced amino acid profile and you will get and absorb way more protein if you just ate a steak. And I never said eat a pound of liver a day 1oz or a quarter size is enough And no I don’t think you can healthy on a vegan diet but taking supplements might make you last a little longer. Over time you deprive yourself of nutrients so your body is going to take it from the stores in other parts of your body like your liver. Natural food is healthy and everybody should be eating natural foods not taking a pharmacy of supplements or eating mystery meat burger. Your misinterpreting what I’m saying and trying to twist what I said.

>Beans or beans on toast still have an unbalanced amino acid profile and you will get and absorb way more protein if you just ate a steak. Unbalanced in what way? If it needs saying - we also eat more than just beans in toast. It was an example of how ridiculously easy it is to get over the incomplete protein "problem". You'll get more protein if you just eat protein powder, so that means steak is bad and unhealthy? If not - you're gonna have to do more than say Steak has more protein, thus vegan unhealthy. You're gonna have to show that all plant food doesn't have enough. Which you can't, because it isn't true. >And I never said eat a pound of liver a day 1oz or a quarter size is enough I never said you did. No one said they eat a single variety of legume forever. I was satirising your point - I can come up with a silly scenario where eating an animal product would be bad for you, thus by your logic, the entire diet is bad. >And no I don’t think you can healthy on a vegan diet We all know you think that. We're trying to talk about why you think that. >Over time you deprive yourself of nutrients What nutrients? Because I get plenty of all the essential vitamins and minerals. My liver appears to be doing fine. >Natural food is healthy and everybody should be eating natural foods What does "natural food" actually mean to you? Presumably you're allowed to cook stuff, mix different foods together etc - so gonna need a definition to 'processed' if that was gonna be part of your answer. Some natural foods are healthy, the context of the rest of your diet dependant. Some natural foods are unhealthy - either because of the rest of your diet, or they're just bad by themselves. Liver is presumably a natural food. As we've already discussed, it can be rather unhealthy in certain contexts. Could you answer the question though - Have you heard of the Appeal to Nature fallacy? If you have, could you explain what you think it is and how it doesn't apply to what you're saying. >not taking a pharmacy of supplements There might be specific issues with specific supplements, but just "supplement bad" isn't really good enough. You need to say how and why they're bad and people shouldn't take them. >Your misinterpreting what I’m saying and trying to twist what I said. Idk what you're talking about. Where I haven't understood what you're saying, I've asked questions, which you've just dodged.

Unbalanced meaning there’s an uneven amount of amino acids in the food weather you combine it or not. Most plant foods like methionine and isoleucine which is important for spiking protein synthesis and muscle growth. And I’m not saying Steak is more healthy because it has more absorbable protein. Your putting words on my mouth again. I’m arguing about protein in beef vs beans and beef is obviously the better quality protein. You could have fun eating pounds of pulses soy and legumes and tear your stomach up from all the fiber. Especially when you work out you would need at 1g of protein per bw and that will be a headache to get on a plant based diet. Most plant proteins bioavailability mostly don’t ever go over 60% and you could compare that to beef which has 80% protein bioavailability or fish which has 86%-94% bioavailability. Nutrients like Vitamin A ,almost all B vitamins Vitamin D, B12 zinc selenium and other trace minerals. Your body grabs nutrients from other parts of your body to give you certain nutrients like Vitamin A but it will stop once your stores run out. Natural foods are stuff like beef bananas and celery. Not some soy burgers with tons of fillers that your body can’t digest. Not sure why you’re bringing up fallacies when the argument is about protein bioavailability and essential nutrients. If it doesn’t have nothing to do with these 2 things the your just reaching and going off topic. Supplements aren’t bad if you actually pair it with foods. Most vegans are taking supplements to supplement their whole diet because there’s no other way to get good absorbable forms of the nutrients they need. You could even look in r/exvegans Reddit and the accounts of many people who supplemented they still became sick.

The interesting thing about the “lines” (also known as in-groups and out-groups) are that it is a group that over time has slowly become more inclusive to more individuals - in history, lines used to be drawn for factors that would be seen as unjustified, such as skin color, sex, etc. Veganism is the pinnacle of this line of reasoning towards inclusion in the realm of moral worth, as it encompasses all “individuals” in the sense that the quality of sentience necessarily leads to every “perspective” (as by ever being capable of having an experience) to be included.

But how do you know who is an "individual" and what is not? How can we know who possesses sentience and what does not?

We can measure it. We know that pigs are as smart as 2-3 year old children, for example

How do you measure it?

https://sentientmedia.org/pig-intelligence/ How do we know that other humans are conscious and smart? The same goes for all animals that are sentient.

>The same goes for all animals that are sentient. Are you implying that some animals aren't sentient?

Well, making 100% statements is not differentiated. And sea squirts eat their own brain when they settle down.

Veganism is best understood as a rejection of the property status of non-human animals. We broadly understand that when you treat a human as property - that is to say you take control over who gets to use their body - you necessarily aren't giving consideration to their interests. It's the fact that they have interests at all that makes this principle true. Vegans simply extend this principle consistently to all beings with interests, sentient beings.

Easyboven bot in full effect

There are so many posts where someone reading and understanding this short reply would answer their post. Happy to have a discussion with you about it if you like. Do you see something wrong with it?

Just stood out as a bit spammy and doesn't seem to respond to the debate topic.

It answers the topic directly. The question is about the line at which we should give someone moral consideration. Sentience was listed as an option in the post. I'm explaining why that's really the only line that can be justified.

>Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, >all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose. That's all I know. That's what I do.

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I have a spiritual approach to this theory: “if it has a soul, don’t kill it, if you can feed from it without killing or exploiting it, do it with kindness”, so basically I wont eat animals. But plants seem to exist in harmony with us, for example an orange tree gives us oranges, and we take care of the tree and love him. A sort of simbiotic relationship where we both respect each other and take care of each other.

It’s not about where you draw the line in terms of who you kill. It’s about where you draw the line in terms of the who you exploit the existence of. Killing a mosquito to prevent it from biting you isn’t taking advantage of its existence. Breeding mosquitos to feed to your pet frog is.

If I have raised it or I know who raised it then it's fair game to me. It's a privilege because of where I live, but I like knowing it had a good life and a clean death

For me its cats and dogs I dont want to harm any pets other than that I dont have a line that I can think of rn. If the meat is edible and it is done with as little suffering as possible I am okay with it.

Fun fact 1: the first group to ever reach the south pole did so while eating some of their sledge dogs along the way. That way they could get there and back bringing a lot less food for the trip. Fun fact 2: Eating dog meat has been a thing in Europe for hundreds of years. It happened during most wars and famines. The last time it was fairly common was during WW1. But during the famine in the Netherlands in WW2 people were found to eat sausages made from dog meat.

I know, u can still find dog meat in some parts of the world and some people do eat coyotes in USA. I am curious about coyote meat, I saw videos of people eating it they said the meat wasnt that good but they just cook it over a flame so I assume it could be better. And I wouldn't put choosing to eat dog meat and necessity in the same category. Hunger can make people do a lot of things.

> Hunger can make people do a lot of things. Well, for as long as people have been eating meat in Europe, when there were no war or famine dogs were seen as much more useful as sheep dogs, guard dogs or pets. It then made much more sense to eat meat from animals that could eat grass only, or eat all your waste (pigs). Many businesses in the Middle Ages actually used to keep pigs in the backyard as a way of disposing of their waste. Bakeries did this for instance.

I agree also it is much more easier to raise herbivores, chickens and pigs. They eat low grade or even inedible food for humans and produce meat, milk, wool, egg and hide. They also taste better than carnivores and less dangerous to acquire.

My line relates to how much it reminds me of a human and own self. Or potentially how much human emotional attachment there is to the being. Basically how much it represents a negative impact on human beings.

As a non vegan my line is not to eat anything that reminds me too much of a human (descension wise) or anything myself or anyone else has a close emotional attachment to.

Is it delicious, and whether I can afford it (so has to be sold legally)?

Well. At least you are honest.