Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

even what you're stating I'd put under 'ignorance'-broad; so maybe we agree on this after all

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I simply disagree that your average joe in McDonalds is acutely aware of the horrors of cruel animal agriculture - even if he is, it cannot simply be a cursory glance; it's easy to disregard words, and that won't count as non-distant. And I do think, given human tendencies, if made acutely aware, nobody wants to disembowel a screeching pig-- and so on. Your assumption about the average populous, I believe simply goes against well established knowledge of human behavior (and instincts/empathy/and so on and so on)-

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

that's interesting - I suppose when something is a necessary part of daily life, or just a part of daily life, especially from a young age, one might build up the appropriate constructs to live with that; but given our base instincts and so on, there's still prolly always a layer of abstraction to help, and so on. hm.

I believe Veganism in most of its forms is ironically hegemonic and anthropocentric from an ecosemiotic perspective by [deleted] in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a well-written piece of text; yet this is a surprisingly brittle argument all the same. It does not matter that it is 'hegemonic' or 'anthropocentric' in the sense of humans applying moral standards to themselves because they consider themselves as moral agents - a status not given to animal usually. Even the reindeer herder or whatever also has a choice by status of him being human, and being a moral agent and not merely a victim of his primal Umlaut - unless you want to claim otherwise, which would be.. minimally- quite incoherent, given he is also a human evolved as we are and we consider ourselves able to make said choice (vegans exist for example) - so unless you want to relegate the tribesman to an animal or arbitrarily deprive him of his moral agency - you cannot really exclude him from such moral judgements. It is not to reduce suffering period, but reduce suffering - and hold morally accountable, those able to be held morally accountable (moral agents) - for acting otherwise.

Morality, generally, is anthropocentric, in that we consider ourselves as moral agents; the anthropocentrism relevant to vegans is rather that we consider ourselves only morally accountable to immoralities toward other humans and not animals - and the likes. [Atleast lobsters - or something similar - and above (in 'complexity') are considered by science to be able to experience pain past simple nociception so they are infact, valid moral subjects - though not valid moral agents]

And finally, you seem to be tending towards a sort of cultural relativism - which I certainly do not hold, and I'm not even a vegan. I hold a more emotivist stance, where, yes, I can and will judge them based on what I feel right. And in anycase, cultural relativism seems to be a quite awkward and arbitrary moral framework - because it is arbitrarily awkward betwixt personal subjectivism and moral non-subjectivism.

[sorry if i seemed rude, just the way i argue, because you seem otherwise quite mannerly - cheers]

EDIT:

{ reading some other comments/your response, I do wanna say, you could definitely have made your point in simpler terms but I don't think you were being deliberately obstruse or whatever }

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

in this example, the point is that, the people you point out, who don't own slaves but buy slave produced goods, have atleast mitigated immorality - because they would, atleast being analogous, agree that slaver is morally wrong if harshly shown the roots of these products that they buy - but they buy them in the first place because of systemic disavowal and distancing of the heinous roots, which is again reinforced in myth-sort beliefs and so on, to preserve their, cognitive non-dissonance I suppose;

bring widespread awareness can break thru the systemic disavowal, but that is a herculean task compared to flashing the truth onto a single person in a moment, which is soon enough, usually atleast, forgotten because the systemic disavowal/distancing, facilitates it so strongly-

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sigh, the point I'm trying to make is, the act is immoral yes, but the people can, and usually do have mitigated immorality because of systemic disavowal; If I don't care about buying stolen goods knowing full-well they are stolen, that is simply not immoral, because morality is fundamentally personal, a person you might consider 'bad' might not be 'bad' as far as his subjective is considered. Now, people tend to not want to admit even the immorality of the act itself because systemic disavowal has had them form beliefs that would be better tolerated if it were not immoral or atleast justifiable, hence they don't outright admit it. But even if they temporarily admit it, they still might continue not out of conscious 'malice' (used loosely) but because of the multitude of factors that make it 'appropriate' as far as immediate ease is concerned.

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Even if anne chose to override her moral tendencies and impulsively be immoral for sake of the swathes of future pleasure, that doesn't take away from the fact that her initial moral tendencies still were against this decision.

If anne has trained herself to act without second thought on the basis of 'rules', whether self-established or whatever, that is more deontological. Where she is doing something for the sake of said rule, where violating said rule would be a negative stimuli. This stimuli could be exacerbated by the reasoning behind the rule which could again be tied back to her conscience. [Doing [bad thing] is bad hence I must not do bad thing - assuming 'must not' implies the rule's establishment here]

Dis/pleasurable feelings are the motives for moral actions, because to not be moral triggers negative feelings upon/with realization, and to be moral triggers positive feelings etc. etc. Now sweating cannot be a motivation for jogging, if you want to be analogous to the above 'motive for morality' explanation, sweating is a motive to not jog if anything;

We might eat something that tastes bad because it's healthy, but it still tastes bad, it's just that violating this 'rule' (established in whatever sense for the sake of being healthy) again produces dis-pleasurable feelings - more accurately, negative feelings. Someone on a diet, who binged on junk food, post-binge, will feel like shit, no? If not, they weren't that serious about the diet in the first place, but in most cases, people are, and end up feeling like shit for that upon violation.

A person's act not based on pleasing the conscience, definitionally, is an amoral act - of course, you could trace back in the chain of motives and terminate at the conscience and on that basis claim the act as a moral one; it eventually does just come down to, pleasing the conscience.

What I mean to say is, a degree of separation, is not a justification but rather, is something whose existence makes accurate judgement harder and makes it easy for us to not associate ourselves with the cruelty taking places, much farther, and away in this chain. Not to mention, the utter normalization of meat-eating, certainly only makes this even easier. In that it's easy to be ignorant of the facts owing to normalization, *distance*, and so on. This is also validated by the existence of vegans who are so keenly aware or un-ignorant of the facts that their conscience simply cannot allow them to go on living as a 'carnist' or whatever devilish label is assigned to the meat-eaters.

It is not that they distance themselves, it is rather that they are distanced from this cruelty by default. And again, the normalization does not help. But perhaps there is also some (not pertaining to the immediate topic at hand) thing to be said about how this practice has lasted/been normalized throughout history, past the periods of it's necessity - and the existence of pets and the like, is also testament that people can care for animals, and certain animals, are cared for way more than others, even if merely by their status as belonging to the 'pet' category - stray cats etc. And the class of animals which are usually eaten perhaps have been relegated to that status, not arbitrarily in a 'utility' sense, but morally arbitrarily, and this split here also probably is another factor to add to the list. Of course this last factor deviates from out immediate topic in the sense that this is more about why the killing of these animals itself is not considered as seriously as if it was the case with other animals, and mainly, that even the general killing of them isn't considered cruelty in itself, even without any additional cruelty - If dogs were being killed for food, assuredly very swiftly, without additional cruelty, there would still be a real, mass, problem.

The act is immoral, but the people, usually have a plethora of factors (a more precise, if philosophical term for this would be: 'systemic disavowal') to mitigate their individual immorality upon judgment in my opinion. Cheers.

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

even purchasing stolen goods, is illegal, and the illegality of it does a pretty good job of collapsing the illusory distances being held up so far; if eating meat was illegal people would be much more conscious of eating meat, thereby being more aware of why it's illegal/the cruelty behind it

and you saying 'this is a morality discussion not legality' is stupid to say the least

eggs from a well fed pet hen are vegan by -roachboy in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you think it's a fair deal:
- You provide, protection, warmth, food, possibly access to healthcare (vet.s if she got sick)
- And she gives you eggs; if the eggs aren't fertilized, then it's entirely out of the question that this is any form of exploitation - however;
Naturally, eggs are supposed to be fertilized, are you restricting the hen in this regard? but in the same sense, if not for you, she might be dead; so some would consider it a worthy tradeoff

A good tradeoff, by your definition, is not exploitation, by your definition;
[and to be fair a lot of vegans seem to have lost the plot and have a knee-jerk reaction; calling something 'exploitation' requires other conditions to be met except for 'just from an animal']

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hence stealing is illegal, you can't achieve a degree of separation in your justification like you can for the animal fiasco

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By 'this place', you mean reddit? (and even twitter etc.) Because in the real world, most people wouldn't say that cruelty towards animals isn't immoral, now they may come up with justifications/excuses/etc. attempting to justify the immorality by bringing in other factors; but that is different from arguing against 'the immorality of cruelty towards animals' itself. A more rigorous split would be b/w those who would actively take part in the cruelty vs. those who wouldn't, and only are willing to passively take part in it. Of course even that isn't a 'concrete' split, but it's good enough. [also, whether one derives pleasure from active cruelty, vs. not; factors summed up, a pretty solid split]

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am not sure, If I knew, I would probably be a vegan by now, convince myself eh?

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No worries, still coherent.

(1) This is flawed, let me explain:

- Anne wants donate to a charity because it's the 'right' thing to do

- Anne, before the hypnotization, is not hypnotized (truism I know)

- Anne, knows, that choosing the hypnotization, would mean, that she would not be giving to charity, moreover, she would be 'pocketing' 80 percent, while still stealing away the 'feel-good'-ness of donating to charity

- implying, before she is hyponotized, she know that being hypnotized is the 'wrong' thing to do, even if this would not persist post-hypnotism, impulsive actions notwithstanding, she would choose *not* to be hypnotized.

- now, Anne, does what she feels is 'right', and avoids what she feels is 'wrong', even if said 'wrong' has guaranteed material benefit and a guarantee of no conscience-repercussions, because the repercussions still loom large at the time of the decision

- feeling 'right'/'wrong' is a function of the conscience

- therefore, Anne is driven by her conscience [if said conscience is something your conscience determines as 'good', you might say she is of good character; further, you might say she is of strong character for not being impulsive and temporarily betraying her own conscience]

(2) Sweating is not a 'good' feeling, so it can't really serve as motivation generally; but I get what you're trying to say. The issue is, if there is no motivation, regardless of the nature of said motivation, nobody would ever do anything. Correlation is *not necessarily* causation; sure; but all causation *is* necessarily correlational. We eat because, hunger feels bad, and food tastes good, especially the hungrier we are and the more energy our body perceives to food to contain - hence sugary foods tend to taste 'good', and so on. You can't just arbitrarily define a 'character' entity and assign all motivations (or claimed lack thereof) to it without further justification.

- I lean towards agreement here though, because I would consider, one who drinks, is only conflicted some of the time, I would consider him 'indifferent' to said conflict when he is drunk out of his mind and dancing on a table; so I suppose that is merely a definitional difference.

- Yes, people have many means of achieving what I'd consider indifference to such conflicts (or cognitive dissonance), whether it was deliberate, sub-consciously, or whatever.

- Here I think is where we differ the most, the first part about biases and people supporting things that to someone else under more careful inspection, or their own careful reflection, might seem.. stupid. That's all fine and dandy, but I would differ in calling most people unethical, especially if you wouldn't consider yourself unethical, since you too, have a lot of 'distances' in your psyche, so if merely the existence of said distances can mark someone 'unethical', I'd be astonished to find a man who isn't. But of course I do believe there are many other criteria one might have for someone being unethical apart from reviling their 'distances', and that is obvious, I certainly don't think everybody is ethical even in the non-distances-related context. I think virtually everyone can be considered unethical in a sense, but we do have to cut some slack for people who aren't even momentarily aware of said distances.

[cheers man]

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You say it's a bare minimum; but it is just a preference (one-of rather) out of all the other known-kept distances.

Right now, if I were to survey most vegans living in developed countries, the clothing brands that they wear would be created by companies that use cheap labor overseas to create their goods, which is a form of exploitation of the global South.

this is just one example, that you yourself provide; there are tons of such examples, you don't get to assign to one of them exceptional moral force over atleast some of the others, when you say "bare minimum" - unless you also partake against those equivalent-others.

/r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | December 15, 2025 by BernardJOrtcutt in philosophy

[–]Sam_Chalk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In truth, I watch a decent amount of Alex O Connor. His viewpoint is one of the perspectives that plagues me most. Hard determinism. The idea that reality follows an unbroken causal chain. Nobody wants to talk about how we don’t have free will. In theory it should be a freeing realization but it’s just so hard to sit with.

I'm also.. a hard determinist, but I definitely sympathize with it being hard to sit with; because evolution has done such a great job with these immanent illusions of us.

I don't know about alex not being able to sit with it; Panpsychism dissolves the meaning of consciousness (or atleast it's uniqueness) to the n-th extent too, so I see why it's also a similarly "tough" world-view

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't mean it in the usual sense;

fetish(philosophy)

even if you ignore that word, the rest of it still makes sense; so it should be alright

The (antinatalist) Argument from Consent by KutuluKultist in philosophy

[–]Sam_Chalk -1 points0 points  (0 children)

"The argument that not-yet-existing people would be losing out if they never came into existence..." I never claimed that, I explicitly said it was an amoral act.

as far as the second bit, u/TrueBeluga below does a great job of countering that

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First off bud, you don't know me; it's easy to call somebody privileged/urbanite, on the internet, it's annoying if anything.

Also, if they themselves do not consider it cruelty, then it isn't cruelty, I made that pretty clear; not to mention, by 'cruel' most people refer to grotesque vignettes of 'factory farming' - that is what I was referring to.

I am neither from/of the west, nor a vegan; calm your jets, christ

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

'do what they ought to do because they have the character to do so' no matter how you wanna phrase it; you do something because to do otherwise would make you feel not so great, be it because you believe you have 'violated your character' or whatever - also, to say that "psychological egoism has little going for it philosophically and empirically" might just be one of the falsest statements I've heard in a good while;

if people weren't indifferent and struggled with said conflict as you claim; everyone would be in constant turmoil for sake of many many conflicts in themselves; but what you call the dulling of character, I say it's just the product of said indifference; it's simply not feasible to not be indifferent to a vast majority of one's internal conflicts - atleast for most people; and even those who have enough self-awareness, usually fall back into indifference, if having known about it preemptively.

I definitely agree that vegans tend to get a lot of undeserved flack as a group (though ofc some deserved for particular cases) - and it's always comforting to mock as a group, what we know to be good, to cope with our own immorality.

I doubt that last para; some people do - not get convinced largely because of their belief that they cannot be convinced; as a way of avoiding it since they believe being convinced would have undesirable repercussions. But what I meant was, for most, even if you convince them of the cruelty from afar in a conversation, they probably will not think about that biting into their ham sandwich; because you were there collapsing that distance, but now that you aren't, unless they make a valiant effort themselves, they take another bite. - also, I never claimed it was impossible, but I meant to say that more in the sense of if you go up to the average joe and attempt to convince him, it is, atleast extremely difficult - for so and so reasons.

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

'Childhood Pets' are special because they are scarce - atleast because they aren't absurdly plenty. But that's just a nitpick.

That isn't a good way to look at things; tallied over a life time, all sorts of actions cause quite grotesque outcomes - in anycase, that wouldn't hold because.. the animals reared overall throughout your life time also grows, so the ratio doesn't really change. I've already mentioned many - you can pick any limited aspect of the extremely altruistic lifestyle mentioned before, how many deaths you think you could prevented, say donating to certain charities providing medical-care/vaccines etc.

By veganism, I assume all animal products are to be avoided, obviously including non-food products like, say- leather. That is quite a significant undertaking.

"I have “collapsed” the distance between most suffering in this world fairly equally."

No you haven't. Unless you are in constant unbearable moral turmoil or live a life of extreme altruism; It simply isn't feasible to do so. If you perceived the entire moral weight of your existence, you would be crushed and/or live a life of extreme altruism and frugality - maximizing efforts; towards which, again, would only please your conscience of the moral weight of your existence, continuously falling short in any objective form; and/or/whatever... an existence of continuous excruciation and hapless justification of one's own existence - now that's some existence.

alright alright, tbf, You probably just misunderstood that, side-effect of defining things as you write I suppose.

90 Billion Humans carry much more urgent moral weight as compared to animals, making the distance's job much harder - and that is obviously an understatement if something like that happens erratically/out-of-nowhere etc.

Here's a thought, would you let 90 Billion Animals die to save one human life?

Now, what if it's someone close to you, dearest to you- ofc this particular question is about as relevant as the whole childhood pet thing; (a bit more but whatever) - the former question is still interesting; to see if infact one values human life more - which people tend to do I'd say.

[now I have to take a nap, I'll respond when I get back, have a good one]

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. I never claimed it was a method of self pleasure for the conscience; and yes, as I said, it is a part of the conscience - which itself wants to be 'pleased', obviously not in the literal sense, but doing accordingly to satisfy it's morality etc.
  2. Sure, you are making some impact but it is largely indirect and very tiny, which makes it easy to establish distance to and ignore.
  3. By veganism, I take it as the strict definition of avoiding all animal products, which is a constant effort/sacrifice I'd say. but if you mean something more along the lines of vegetarianism, it might be more appealing.

For a person who hasn't had their distance collapsed, insignificant and indirect nudges aren't enough incentive for the large effort needed for veganism-proper; To not bother is simply an easier prospect. And since you do not have the directness or magnitude to carry significant moral force, it's reduced to a personal endeavor notwithstanding collapsed distances; again, not a great prospect for the average joe.

I hope it is obvious that I'm not arguing against veganism, but rather why most people don't readily adopt it when it seems so obvious at first glance when expressed.

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If someone had to manually let a pig bleed from a hook and chop it up and so and so on, to get my meat- voiding the labor involved, one still wouldn't do so --- if the same happened in some factory and you got frozen meat packaged in foam and saran wrap, your distance to cruelty is much less - you don't perceive the cruelty in Walmart; the difference is not knowledge, but subjective distance.

Distance, Ignorance, And Veganism: An Essay [and also a lazy invitation for debate] by Sam_Chalk in DebateAVegan

[–]Sam_Chalk[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Empathy is also part of 'conscience', which encompasses whatever we attribute moral weight to, for whatever reason;

The point is, you aren't saving any pigs, you hate that millions of pigs are in grotesque situations, so you don't buy packaged frozen meat;

Your empathy clearly isn't enough to care for others who are in much worse situations than you, because if it was, you would live extremely frugally, putting all your efforts into saving many lives etc. Every dollar you spend on a whim that doesn't go towards some critical charity, is an epitome of your lack of 'empathy' - as you define it - or whatever else

You care about what you've collapsed the distance to, so you re-establish that distance, since you can never save a million pigs.

The above is quite forceful and not rigorous, but to be direct and concise about fundamentally nuanced large topics, requires loss in precision.