The Vegan Thread

It is with this in mind that I am perfectly at ease sitting next to friends whilst they consume animal produce. Not all vegans are obsessed with trying to convert people to their belief structure.

Exactly, I don't have an issue with that, either (and I don't even think that it's particularly magnanimous of me to concede that).

I've stressed to you before, Neil, that I'm not overly concerned with converting people--sorry if the attitude grates and the post above, for instance, comes across like that. I'm more than happy to provide information, though, and yes, that does involve taking a strong moral stance myself. If I wasn't convinced that being vegan was right, I wouldn't be vegan. I also believe that I can justify my position convincingly if challenged, although of course to do this properly takes some work and is perhaps best not attempted on an Internet forum.

But people are morally autonomous--everybody of necessity makes their own moral decisions for themselves. Information that is provided in most cases does not have the potential to sway people in itself. It requires personal experience to create a moral motivation that acts alongside moral reasons, i.e., something that is specifically relevant to a person's life rather than generally applicable. People's moral journeys are complex, from different backgrounds, with different necessities.

So, if someone wanted to disagree with me, they'd of course be perfectly welcome. If someone came up with an argument that showed me that I'm wrong, I'd likewise be perfectly happy to go along with this argument, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I'm certainly aware of the history of philosophy on this and as it is, I don't know of any arguments that could successfully show that avoidance of harm and all that is not the way to go, but who knows? My ethical position is broadly Platonic and Kantian, but Kant famously thought that animals were not self-conscious and therefore not subject to moral consideration (with which of course I don't agree), and I might well be attacked by a follower of Kant on this, or by an arch-consequentialist who didn't follow Singer, or someone with a different ethical position altogether, etc. I'm not pretending it's an easy subject, or indeed that I must apodictically be right. I've just done a good deal of studying the arguments for and against, and I've gone with those that convince me. I've also been lucky in having personal experiences that have motivated me to go down this route.

Don't know if that makes my stance any clearer--again, if all this comes across with a shit attitude, that's not the intention. It's really just a case of standing up for what I believe in.