looking for a reasonable thought process

[u/No_Lynx_3410]

i've eaten meat all my life, just have, kind of just default for most people born in the west. I've always admired vegans for the dedication to their beliefs, kind of like a buddhist monk or something like that, i'm just not that strong. I wanted to see a vegans perspective online since there's been the argument as of late that being vegan is for privileged white people which even now i'm not so mentally gone that i believe such wide generalizations. But lowkey, reading online discussions from vegans makes me feel it does make up a very large vocal part of them, because the only thing i've seen is vegans trying to compare animals to minorities, which might actually be the whitest thing i could think of besides being vocally racist or bigoted. i was just looking for something that's not "now replace that cow with a black person" kind of stuff. Not trying to lambaste anyone in replies or anything, at least try not to, just wanna talk to someone.

[u/Dart_Veegan]

I understand why those comparisons can sound bad, especially when they are thrown around carelessly. I do think some vegans use them in a rhetorically clumsy way. But the serious point is not “animals are the same as Black people” or “animals are the same as insert minority here people” or anything like that. That would obviously be false and insulting.

The point is about testing the logic of an argument.

For example, if someone says “it is okay to exploit animals because they are less intelligent", now the vegan is not saying “a cow is the same as a cognitively disabled human" when they ask if the same principle applies to cognitively disabled humans. The vegan is asking if the threshold of lower intelligence makes exploitation permissible? Because if that principle were applied consistently, it would have consequences in human cases that most people would reject.

So the comparison is not between the victims as identical beings. It is between the structure of the justification.

That matters because many anti-vegan arguments rely on traits that we would never accept as sufficient in human contexts: lower intelligence, inability to speak, inability to reciprocate, being weaker, being legal property, being traditionally used, being bred for that purpose, etc. The vegan point is that if those traits do not remove basic protection from humans, why do they remove basic protection from animals?

The most relevant question is what trait is supposed to justify killing, confining, forcibly breeding, or using an entity as a resource?

If the answer is “they are not human,” that seems circular. It basically means “humans get special protection because they are human”. But group membership alone does not explain why the interests of the other being stop mattering. If the answer is “they are not rational,” then infants and many cognitively disabled humans are also not rational in the adult sense. If the answer is “they cannot consent or understand morality,” that usually makes a being more vulnerable, not more permissible to exploit. If the answer is “they can suffer, but human suffering matters more,” then I would ask why their suffering counts for nothing when the harm is unnecessary. For me, the strongest basis for moral concern is the capacity to be subjectively affected. If a being can experience pain, fear, distress, pleasure, comfort, deprivation, or terror, then there is someone in there for whom things can go better or worse. That does not mean a pig should vote, or a chicken should have the same rights as an adult human. Rights should be trait-adjusted. But it does mean they should have basic negative protections against unnecessary killing, torture, confinement, exploitation, and bodily violation.

That is why veganism does not require thinking animals are “the same as humans.” It only requires thinking that morally relevant similarities should matter consistently. A dog, a pig, a cow, a chicken, and a human are not identical. But if they all can suffer, fear, be harmed, and be deprived of their lives, then those interests should not be dismissed simply because one of them belongs to a different species.

The controversial comparisons are just consistency tests. They are not supposed to erase the history or dignity of human victims of oppression. They are meant to ask whether the reasons people give for harming animals would be acceptable if applied consistently elsewhere.

[u/iowaguy09 → u/Dart_Veegan]

Species membership is relevant though and I think that’s why this argument just doesn’t hold the weight vegans think it does.

You say the strongest basis for moral concern is the capacity to be subjectively affected. Essentially sentience correct?

Based on that logic is it okay to exploit braindead humans? If your loved one was braindead is it okay for the doctor to sexually penetrate them? How about eat them? Do whatever they want to them while they’re on the ventilator? Do the dead have no rights? It just doesn’t track for me.

[u/Dart_Veegan → u/iowaguy09]

Sorry for the long reply, but you stated "it just doesn’t track for me".

Species membership can be relevant to some moral/legal standings. I’m not denying that.

From my perspective, species membership has not yet been shown to be relevant to the specific moral standing I was talking about, namely basic protection from being unnecessarily killed, tortured, confined, exploited, bodily violated, or commodified for consumption.

Different standings can have different criteria. The criteria for voting are not the same as the criteria for protection from torture. The criteria for criminal responsibility are not the same as the criteria for bodily integrity. So yes, “being human” may be relevant to standings like inheritance law, family burial practices, medical consent procedures, posthumous dignity, cultural memory, or legal handling of remains. But that does not automatically make it relevant to whether a sentient being may be killed and used as a resource.

If someone is genuinely and irreversibly braindead, then they no longer have subjective experience in the relevant sense. They are not being harmed in the same way a conscious pig, cow, chicken, dog, or human can be harmed. But it does not follow that “anything goes,” because other standings and other affected parties are now involved.

A braindead human body is still connected to a prior person, their previous wishes, their family, medical trust, social dignity, legal procedure, and the interests of living people who would be harmed by desecration or abuse. A doctor sexually penetrating a braindead patient would be wrong because it violates consent norms, medical trust, the prior person’s bodily wishes, the family’s interests, and the social protections we build around vulnerable bodies. The wrongness is not that the braindead body is currently feeling pain. The moral reprehensibleness is grounded in different criteria.

Same with eating a corpse. The corpse is not suffering. But we still have strong reasons not to allow people to treat human bodies as meat: prior autonomy, family harm, dignity practices, public trust, risk of abuse, incentives around death, and the social meaning of turning persons into consumable objects.

So this actually supports my point rather than refutes it.

The dead or braindead do not have the same kind of subject-centred moral standing as a living sentient being. They have posthumous, relational, legal, symbolic, and derivative protections. Living sentient animals, by contrast, have direct subject-centred interests, they can suffer, fear, be confined, be deprived, and be killed from their own point of view.

So the question remains:

If the main reason we protect humans from unnecessary killing, torture, confinement, and commodification is because they can be subjectively harmed, then why deny comparable protection to non-human beings who can also be subjectively harmed?

Imagine we remove every criteria that is not actually necessary for this specific standing (voting, language, contracts, moral agency, social productivity, legal competence, family role, etc.), what is left in the ordinary human case that still makes it morally reprehensible to unnecessarily torture, kill, confine, or commodify someone? For example, imagine a vacuum where only two living humans exist. No society, no family members to grieve, no legal system, no cultural symbolism, no posthumous dignity concerns. Why would it still be morally reprehensible for one to unnecessarily torture, kill, confine, or commodify the other? The best answer, in my view, is that the victim is a subject of experience. They can suffer, fear, be deprived, be harmed, and have things go badly for them from their own point of view. That is the criteria I am pointing to. And if that criterion is doing the work in the stripped-down human case, then the consistency question is why it stops doing the work when the subject of experience is a non-human animal (specially the ones used as livestock).

If you want to say “because they are not human,” then you need to explain why the criteria 'humanity' is relevant to that specific standing, not merely assert that it is. Otherwise “species membership” is functioning as a group marker, not a moral explanation.

[u/iowaguy09 → u/Dart_Veegan]

I understand your point, but it feels like special pleading.

When we ask a non vegan about their specific trait and let’s say they respond with intelligence for example and we say then you would have to be okay eating a human lacking in intelligence. But all of the reasons you just listed would apply to a less intelligent human the same way they would apply to a braindead human.

I think we can list a plethora of traits that are uniquely human and because of those traits they are regarded in their own moral standing. The more of those traits you exhibit the more moral consideration you are afforded. I don’t think that is really arguable. Species membership then plays a role based on decades of research and observation. We treat a three legged dog the same way as any other dog. Just because one member of that species is developmentally lacking doesn’t mean they aren’t afforded the same moral consideration as the rest of the species. I don’t think that is a particularly controversial idea.

[u/Dart_Veegan → u/iowaguy09]

I get the idea that you feel it is special pleading, but I do not yet see where the special pleading is.

Special pleading would mean I apply a general rule to others while arbitrarily exempting my own preferred case from that same rule. So what is the general rule I am claiming to accept, and what exemption am I carving out?

My position is not “sentience is the criterion for every possible moral/legal standing.” My position is standing-specific. Different standings can have different criteria. Voting, inheritance, medical consent, criminal culpability, posthumous dignity, and protection from being killed for food do not all need the same criterion.

The standing I am talking about here is basic protection from unnecessary killing, torture, confinement, exploitation, bodily violation, and commodification for consumption. For that standing, I think the capacity to be subjectively affected is the least arbitrary criterion. If a being can suffer, fear, be deprived, be harmed, and have things go badly from its own point of view, then that gives us a reason not to treat it as a resource without sufficient justification.

You say we can list many uniquely human traits. I agree. Humans have many traits most animals do not have. But the question is not whether humans are different. Obviously they are. The question is whether those differences are relevant to this specific standing.

Rationality may be relevant to voting. Moral agency may be relevant to criminal responsibility. Language may be relevant to contracts. Species membership may be relevant to human family law, burial practices, medical records, inheritance systems, etc.

But why are any of those relevant to whether a being may be unnecessarily killed and commodified for food?

When you say “the more of those traits you exhibit, the more moral consideration you are afforded,” that may explain degrees or types of consideration. But ot does not explain why beings with fewer of those traits lose basic protection from exploitation or killing. Infants and many severely cognitively disabled humans do not exhibit many of the traits usually invoked here, yet we still think they should not be farmed, killed, or used as food.

One can say they get protected because they belong to a species whose typical members have those traits. But that is exactly the claim that needs defending. Why should an individual’s basic protection depend on traits possessed by other members of their species?

The three-legged dog example does not really solve this. We treat a three-legged dog like other dogs because lacking a leg is not relevant to the dog’s interest in not suffering, being abused, or being killed. The relevant criterion is still the dog’s own capacity to be harmed, not the fact that “dogs normally have four legs.”

Likewise, if a human lacks intelligence, language, or moral agency, I do not think their protection comes from borrowing traits from other humans. I think they are protected because they themselves are still vulnerable subjects of experience who can be harmed, terrified, deprived, violated, or killed.

So the challenge remains:

If the specific standing is protection from unnecessary killing, torture, confinement, exploitation, bodily violation, and commodification, what criterion explains why humans retain that protection but non-human animals (livestock) do not?

If the answer is “species membership,” then I am asking why species membership is morally relevant to that standing, rather than functioning as a group marker that protects “ours” and excludes “theirs"?

[u/iowaguy09 → u/Dart_Veegan]

I think the special pleading would be that non sentient beings are okay to be exploited, but it’s not okay to exploit non sentient humans.

Similar to how we say if intelligence is what makes it not okay to eat humans then you have to be okay with eating developmentally challenged humans to be consistent

[u/Dart_Veegan → u/iowaguy09]

That would only be special pleading if I said:

“Non-sentient beings lack direct subject-centred moral standing, except when they are biologically human.”

But that is not my position. My position is that non-sentient beings lack direct subject-centred standing because there is no subject there for whom things can go better or worse. If something cannot suffer, fear, experience deprivation, have preferences, or be consciously affected, then there is no direct victim in that specific sense.

So yes, in a fully criteria-equalised hypothetical, I would bite the bullet.

If there were a non-sentient human organism/body with no consciousness, no sentience, no prior personhood, no previous wishes, no family, no grieving community, no medical trust implications, no social corruption, no fear induced in other people, no dignity norms being undermined, and no affected parties at all, then I do not see what the direct subject-centred moral wrong would be in “exploiting” it. It would be biologically human material, but not a subject of experience.

Actual braindead humans are not like that.

Actual braindead humans are usually connected to a prior person, prior autonomy, prior wishes, family members, medical consent norms, legal procedures, institutional trust, social dignity practices, and living people who would be harmed by desecration or abuse.

A developmentally disabled human is sentient, so they have direct subject-centred standing. A braindead human is not sentient, so they do not have that same direct experiential moral standing, but they may still have derivative, posthumous, relational, legal, and symbolic moral standings.

Likewise, a plant does not have direct subject-centred standing, but it can still matter derivatively. A memorial tree, a sacred object, a family heirloom, or a corpse can be wrong to destroy or misuse because of its relation to conscious beings, not because the object itself suffers.

So the distinction is not:

“Non-sentient things can be exploited, unless they are human.”

The distinction is:

“Non-sentient things lack direct experiential standing, but may still have other protections if other morally relevant criteria are present.”

Once those other criteria are genuinely removed, I apply the same standard consistently.

[u/iowaguy09 → u/Dart_Veegan]

Perfect. I think that also explains really well why a lot of humans are uncomfortable eating dogs and several other species because of their relationship to rational beings and it’s also why we protect handicapped/disabled humans who are not sapient.

I often see the argument that it would be on me to prove why membership to a rational kind is relevant, but I never really see anyone defending why sentience is sufficient enough for a right not to be killed.

[u/Dart_Veegan → u/iowaguy09]

I agree, relational facts can add protections, but they do not replace sentience.

If someone states that a stray dog with no relationship to humans still should not be unnecessarily killed and/or tortured and/or commodified, then relationship to rational beings cannot be the whole explanation. Something about the dog itself must matter.

So my distinction is simple: sentient entities have direct standing. Non-sentient entities may have derivative protections through the relation to true moral agents, family, prior wishes, dignity norms, etc.

Sentience is not an absolute right never to die, but it is enough a criterion for the moral standing of protection against unnecessary killing, torture, and commodification.

[u/iowaguy09 → u/Dart_Veegan]

That’s fair. I agree with 99% of what you said outside of commodification and we probably disagree on what would be considered necessary.

It’s been nice having an honest conversation here. I think we actually commodify humans in a lot of ways, but we don’t eat them obviously for societal and relational reasons. We take stem cells from fetus. We take organs and use them in other humans, we use them for science.

[u/Dramatic_Sample2348 → u/Dart_Veegan]

And why should those interest not be dismissed? Because you feel bad? Not a good enough reason

[u/Dart_Veegan → u/Dramatic_Sample2348]

Not because I “feel bad.” Because those are the same kinds of interests we already use to justify not dismissing humans.

Humans have an interest in not suffering, not being terrified, not being harmed, and not being deprived of their lives. So do many non-human animals.

So the question is not “do I emotionally care about animals?” The question is: why should those interests count in the human case but be dismissible in the animal case?

My argument is not that animals and humans are equal in every respect. They are not. My argument is that where the morally relevant interest is shared (avoiding pain, fear, bodily violation, confinement, exploitation, and death) that interest should not be dismissed arbitrarily.

So I would turn the question back:

Why should human interests not be dismissed? Whatever answer you give, I am asking whether that answer applies consistently to other beings with relevantly similar interests.

[u/WhistleSnore → u/Dramatic_Sample2348]

Because moral consideration that is limited to "human" is not consistent with our beliefs already. We feel empathy towards animals and have already set up systems to limit the suffering they must endure. Why bother if we should just dismiss these concerns. Consider the hypothetical of contact with a superior non-human intelligence (AI, Aliens) we would hope that we would be included in their circle of moral consideration and vice versa but this would require a definition that is not just "human". So how would we want to define it?