I see. How do you justify doing this?Making use of comforts that cause suffering to others, while one's ideals seem to be to reduce suffering. — Tzeentch
Answer mine first, which pre-dates yours, and is related to it:Meanwhile, why don't you answer my question? — Tzeentch
If you weren't saying that then point were you trying to make in this post?Are you now saying that your position is that if one doesn't do one of those things (some ludicrous, some that have no impact at all) then there is no point in doing anything to reduce suffering? — andrewk
In order to get an answer, you'll first need to explain what it means. How does who justify what?how do you justify it — Tzeentch
If we were to follow your prescription, we would be stopped from putting our ideals into practice - that's the point of the proverb. By the standard you seem to be promoting, we would never do anything to help anyone unless we could be sure that it was the maximum possible good we could do for everyone. Apparently there's no point giving a starving man a meal unless we immediately sell everything we own and distribute it amongst all the starving people on the Earth.And never let proverbs stop one from putting one's ideals into practice. — Tzeentch
That's because zero is not attainable in those other items. There's no reason why an inability to reach 'perfection' in one dimension should prevent someone from striving for it in a dimension in which it is practically attainable.when vegans address these other aspects, reduction is the solution they adopt there. — Isaac
Name some.there are alternatives aplenty depending on what one finds reasonable or 'convenient'. — Tzeentch
They are not relevant to it because veganism is not a philosophy. It is a practice, and different people adopt the practice for different reasons - concern for animal suffering, concern about killing animals, their own health, environmental concerns, their own digestion, economics (it's cheaper), fashion.I don't see how their actions are relevant to a discussion on Veganism as a philosophy. — Isaac
I think it is very hard to justify unnecessary use of a car, which is why I very rarely drive, and try to get as many passengers as possible when I do. The long-term, committed vegans I know feel and act similarly.how does one justify driving a car, which pollutes the atmosphere? — Tzeentch
One doesn't have to justify something for which there is no reasonable alternative. If one is born into such a society, the best one can do is minimise unnecessary consumption. Again, the vegans I know do that.How does one justify living in a consumption based society which inevitably causes suffering to both animals and humans on a large scale? — Tzeentch
I can see how one might take it that way when one comes up against militant vegans that angrily proclaim that anybody who has even tiny bits of animal produce is evil. But I don't think it's fair to characterise an entire movement based on its most extreme fringes.I mean what vegans as a philosophy are advocating, otherwise 'vegan' becomes meaningless. — Isaac
Perhaps we are the most dangerous species, rather than the most violent one. After all, there are other species whose entire life is conflict and predation or parasitism.Do you see, then, the irony (paradox?) that the most violent species, humans, are the ones troubled by their own natural bloodlust? — TheMadFool
I'm sorry but I can't quite bring myself to believe that you really do not understand the difference between 'removing all harm' and 'reducing harm', despite your best attempts to persuade me otherwise.How does a vegan justify the use of anything beyond the bare necessities of life when such luxuries almost universally cause harm to something, somewhere? — Tzeentch
On the contrary, Peter Singer - probably the world's most influential and well-known vegan - advocates exactly that, ie minimising, or even just reducing. He has written repeatedly that it is not realistic to expect that most people will give up eating meat, but if they can even be persuaded to reduce their consumption somewhat, and pay more attention to the conditions in which their meat was produced, a great deal of suffering can be prevented.But that's not what vegans are advocating with regards to meat eating though is it? Vegans are advocating eliminating meat, not minimising it. — Isaac
No. It isn't.Non-violence is a soft stance as opposed to, say, the on-going malady of terrorism. Isn't it? — TheMadFool
I'm afraid I am unable to make any sense of this. Are you denying that, for a typical city dweller that can only obtain food from shops, there is less animal suffering involved in a vegan diet than an omnivorous one? If there is less suffering involved, and it is easy to show that's the case, then the vegan's goal of reducing suffering has been achieved.if the vegan goal was to actually reduce suffering they could chose to not eat fruits and vegetables from farms. — DingoJones
Hopefully not in the biblical sense. I'm pretty sure there's a para somewhere in the bible forbidding that sort of thing. :razz:and before that, well, God knew himself — NKBJ
No they're not. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, William Wilberforce, Emily Pankhurst, Yitzakh Rabin were all revered for their integrity and moral courage. I can't think of anybody that would describe any of them as docile.People who are of moral bent are generally docile. — TheMadFool
Here is what you said:The explanation of NKBJ you linked, like your reiteration of it, doesnt address what I am saying. — DingoJones
The response to that was that the vegan causes less suffering and the moral principle they are following is to reduce suffering.When a vegan argues against a meat eater on the basis of suffering they are being contradictory because the vegan too causes suffering for what they eat. — DingoJones
And NKBJ explained here why that is not contradictory. You have not responded to that explanation. If you still believe it is contradictory or a paradox (you actually said it was both) you need to explain why that is the case. How can a goal of reducing animal suffering be used to justify eating meat or, more specifically, eating meat produced by Western factory farming methods?What I said was, when a vegan argues against a meat eater on the basis of suffering they are being contradictory because the vegan too causes suffering for what they eat. — DingoJones
Hitchens' book needs to be read in the context of when he wrote it and his experience around that time.So, what do you think? — TheMadFool
All too often one finds that, does one?All too often one finds that these people use all the luxuries society has to offer, except for the fact that they don't eat animal products, ignoring the fact that all these other luxuries contribute either directly or indirectly to the suffering of other beings (including other humans). — Tzeentch
Just wondering, did you mean 'To claim' rather than 'To deny'? Surely most people would deny that claim, on the ground that our confidence is almost certainly greater now than it would have been in 1000 BCE.To deny that our confidence in the proposition that the Earth is round is the same as it has always been, despite everything we have learned, is to deny reality. — SophistiCat
I foresee this discussion heading towards Kant's CPR. While that is one of my favourite topics, it would probably be getting a bit far from the OP so I'll keep stumm.All observations are theory-laden. — Inis
Popper's position, and mine, is that when a hypothesis graduates to a higher state it becomes a theory. There is no higher state than a theory. To say that a theory is not a fact is not to question it, it is to acknowledge the proper accepted meaning of the word theory in the scientific community.These theories seem to go from being a controversial hypothesis to a fact of reality, and anyone who questions them is a crackpot. — Inis
We can't directly observe that a planet, or any object, is spherical because we see in 2D and spheres are 3D. We have reams of data that are consistent with the theory that the Earth is approximately spherical so we adopt that theory.There is no "theory of a spherical earth". The earth literally is (approximately) spherical. The theory is the explanation of that phenomenon, and there have been a couple of those. — Inis
It could be that the Earth we see as approximately spherical is actually a 3D cross-section of an object that is actually a 4D hypersphere. We can never rule out more elaborate theories. But we don't need to. We just say 'this is the best hypothesis we have at present, and it has been working very well, so we'll keep on using that unless or until it stops working well'.Does the spherical Earth cast doubt upon Popper’s claims about scientific theories never been confirmed? — Craig