Somehow I don't think you'd find that so fair when the time comes.

And so do you think it's permissible for us to kill and eat severely mentally disabled humans?

It's really not though.
And classics have stood the test of time because they are well-written and contain important thoughts about the human condition and other philosophical issues.

It's one thing to dislike a classic novel--that's just taste. It's another to to fail to realize why the novel is a classic, your own preferences aside. That failure shows that you really don't understand the novel at all, likely through a lack of literary ability and knowledge.

Maybe not for you.

Testimony needs to be logical, coherent, and believable.

It is inherently illogical for a deity to exist. Not so with crime.

So what if there's two eye witnesses? Or three? Or one hundred?

Yes, there are special circumstances where we must decide on testimony alone, and where that testimony is convincing enough to convict.

But again, I think you're just too stubborn about your absolutist free speech thing to budge.

I get it. You just don't want to believe victims. The entire legal system from police officers to prosecutors to defense lawyers to judges know that the vast majority of perps walk free despite credible testimonies because of people like you who demand the impossible from innocent persons.

This is going nowhere, because you have an ideological position about free speech that you will cling to no matter how many lives suffer because of it.

But I'm not sure why I even continue this conversation after you basically said a victim of a rape is at fault unless she took defense classes, set up a security system, and decided to sacrifice the life of her own baby.... It's obvious you're just biting the bullet or you're just amoral and so it's pointless to discuss this any further.

A) I'm not sure what your point even is. Because the chicken cannot recognize the instrument of its death, it deserves to be killed? Or that it therefore doesn't reeeeally want to live? Walk up to a baby with a gun and he'll want to play with it.
B) They do not need to possess the full range of any of our abilities. It suffices that they possess the abilities to suffer and feel pleasure. (I mean, they can do more, but that's all moral consideration requires.) You're not killing them to save them from anybody. You're killing them for the pleasure of eating them. But even if you were trying to protect them, that's not the way to go about it. Again, you can't take a child, say "you're gonna die someday, so I'll just kill you now to spare you the rest."
C) I feel like you're being purposefully obtuse here: vegans don't want to participate in the slaughter and torture of billions of sentient animals.

Out of 1000 rapes, 994 perps walk free. But you're worried about false testimonies...
Consider the 1.3 million rapes a year... and you're worried about false testimonies....

I have compassion for those testifying to horrific situations that were beyond their control.

Basically, you're saying, someone should risk having their child murdered to avoid rape, or let themselves be raped to save their kid and we should all just sit back and say, "hey, that's what you get for being a weakling."

Wow.
Way to have a) zero compassion for others.
and b) absolutely no understanding of the human psyche.

See my above example.

And I'd have a category of criminal threatening, but speech wouldn't be sufficient for that, there would need to be some immediate physical threat present--for example, holding someone at gunpoint. — Terrapin Station

5'4" 100lb woman home alone with her infant child. 6'2" 275lb man comes in and threatens to kill her baby if she doesn't sleep with him/give him all her money/something else horrible. Hmmm, no guns needed to make that woman feel threatened enough to comply. And obvious enough that a serious crime has been committed.

Guess it's a good thing you're not king. Under your rule more rapists would get away than already do, and the current number is shocking enough.

Luckily most people realize that you can't just say anything you want. Basically, most of us realize that you should not be allowed to use speech to harm others by inciting force/violence, committing fraud, or defamation. It should be pretty obvious why.

AK shows marriage to be complicated. It also shows that it requires a certain sense of giving up personal freedom. It locates happiness for most people within these confines, however, and shows that many people who seek more freedom eventually regret it. But there's a lot more complexity to it than I'm describing, because life is complex.

Easy is relative. Most "easy" books are simplistic and don't really dig beyond the surface of things. You can challenge yourself to grow and then "hard" books, like War and Peace actually become easier reads.

For example, I'm a free speech absolutist. Some speech is going to offend/upset some people. It's morally wrong to prohibit or to socially pressure speech restrictions in my opinion. — Terrapin Station

Do you think someone should be allowed to lie and shout fire in a theater when it will cause mass hysteria and people will get hurt in their attempts to escape?

And free speech is important because the harm caused by restricting it is potentially greater than by letting people talk.

They're not single issue books, if that's what you want. Yes, they are long, but that's how they get to the heart of a lot of issues without being shallow and flakey.

Anna Karenina is one of the greatest novels ever written. It explores themes of marriage, justice, loyalty, faith, responsibility toward society versus the self.... And so on. I'm afraid you just weren't reading carefully if you couldn't see any of that.

Dickens explored social issues, true, but since there's literally a whole branch of SOCIAL-POLITICAL philosophy, I'm not sure how that makes it unphilosophical.

Honestly, if your book fails to explore social-politcal dimensions of warfare... It's bound to be pretty narrow and just scratching the surface. But hey. Maybe that's what you're going for.

What do you mean by "explicitly"? They all incorporate lengthy philosophical dialogues or monologues. The Russians tend to dive more deeply into their philosophical heritage.

Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, most Victorian lit., Sartre, Woolf, Maugham.... To name a few authors.

That's a weird question.
I think veganism is better than omnivorism.
Any other personal qualities will vary from person to person.

Vegans have recognized that animal use causes a hugely disproportionate amount of harm in relation to the happiness gained from eating them/using such products. They choose not to participate therein at minimal personal cost. And actually they gain a lot health-wise.

It's just an obvious, easy choice that others are too stubborn to make. Like recycling, but more impactful than that.

Lol. Okay, well, duly noted, vegans aren't perfect. We never had that illusion, but if it makes you feel better, here again in all caps: VEGANS AREN'T PERFECT!

Veganism is still not paradoxical.

An imperfect commitment is not an actual commitment. What one is in fact commitment to is an ideal that sounds a lot less appealing. — Tzeentch

That's not true. Almost all commitments we make are imperfect. Do you try to be a nice person? Thoughtful? A good partner/spouse? And if you ever find yourself falling short of an ideal you hold, do you seriously just give it all up? Nope. You do what you can. That necessarily, practically involves being selective.

Veganism is one part of a larger approach to reducing harm in the world. It's not the only thing you can do. It's not the magic final solution. In a phrase from logic 101, it's a necessary but insufficient condition.

And "preaching" is a red herring. This thread is about whether veganism in and of itself contains a contradiction. Whether or not certain vegans seem to you preachy is entirely beside the point.

You're missing the point.
Charity workers and vegans alike are working towards reducing harm. Both are aware of the impossibility of total elimination of suffering. Both still find it to be a worthwhile endeavor to reduce suffering.

Our body needs meat — TheMadFool

No. It doesn't.

Is it a cruel twist of fate or is it an opportunity to make life for all living things better? — TheMadFool

Depends on what we decide to do. Currently we are destroying the planet and murdering billions of animals for our taste for flesh, so it seems the bad part is winning. It all depends on how many people can ultimately choose to put the needs of others and the planet before a pretty trivial desire. And if they can do so in time.

Except a) that chickens and all animals spend a considerable amount of energy avoiding death, so it's safe to say they don't want it. B) you're taking any potential pleasures in life away from them. C) that's not what farms actually do, so it's not really a practical question.

Do you ever do charitable work? Or donate to a charitable cause? Or even just help out someone randomly? If yes, then why don't you donate all of your income? Why not become a saint or the next Mother Theresa?

A commitment to doing good, or at least reducing harm in the world does not equal a commitment to sacrificing your whole life. Are there areas all people could improve? Sure.

Again, the fact that we can't be perfect about our commitment to a better world does not mean we toss the baby out with the bathwater and just do whatever the heck we want.

Oh, I see. You're talking about humans as predators and why would they be moral towards others, especially prey, at all. Interesting question.

For one, because we're social animals. We evolved to have empathy for others. It was meant for our group, but it's a skill that we can use on non-humans as well.
For another, we actually only fairly recently in evolution started being huge predators. Pre-tools, we only occasionally caught small mammals, birds, or fish. We ate lots of vegetable matter, grubs, and termites.

Also, we have a lot of impulses given to us by evolution that seem paradoxical. The human mind is able to entertain conflicting impulses. Like to be selfish or to share. To procreate indifferently or to be monogamous. I don't think it's paradoxical, though it is the root of much good literature and story telling.

You're touching on really interesting questions that I would love to further discuss. However, they fall beyond the scope of the question of this thread. The question here was whether there is a paradox at the heart of veganism, which there obviously isn't.

Maybe you could start a thread asking which, if any moral consideration can/should be extended towards animals? I'd love to discuss the difference between a moral agent and moral patient.

Omg, this is getting too funny.
"I didn't say it was paradoxical to use suffering as a basis for veganism, I just said it was contradictory!"

:rofl:

In any case, I've already explained why it's not contradictory.

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but: only an atheist would believe that atheism is older than Christianity. For the Christian, Adam and Eve directly knew God, and before them, the angels knew him, and before that, well, God knew himself.

You said it was paradoxical to use suffering as a basis. I pointed out why it is not. Sorry you're unable to understand that.

Not sure why you're so concerned about the humility of vegans. This post is about whether veganism itself contains a paradox. Which it doesn't. It's a commitment to reducing suffering by avoiding animal products. It's not about eliminating suffering altogether, since that is likely impossible.

It's not paradoxical though. Veganism is about the commitment to reducing suffering. They're under no illusions that all suffering will be gone. It's clearly not paradoxical to ascribe to ideals that greatly reduce suffering.

You do what you can and the best you can. Most vegans don't wear animal products either.

And even if they didn't, you're basically saying that since we can only eradicate part of the suffering by changing our lifestyle, we shouldn't bother and just go ahead and cause a much larger amount of suffering.

That's a problem, but clearly not an argument to go ahead and commit mass murder.
It's akin to saying that since driving cars will statistically and accidentally kill so and so many people every year anyway, I should just go out and mow down pedestrians for fun.

A taste for meat does not equal the need to kill. It's pretty obvious that we do not need to kill animals for food. For vegans there is no paradox, because we refrain from taking part in that whole system.

It's a paradox for omnis who want to maintain that they care about animals, believe less suffering is better than more suffering, and yet willingly contribute to the meat industry.

Yes. Because we should be living in peace wuth the rest of the world. Especially other sentient beings.

https://youtu.be/ZUsiY8FxoWs

Of course we all think our own opinions are right and others are wrong somehow. Otherwise we would have the other opinion.

"Superior" is the wrong word though, because a good philosopher maintains a decent amount of humilty, self-criticism, and willingness to proven wrong.