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First, thank you for your thoughts, antes, that was a real pleasure to read, really. Unfortunately, I don’t have true answers to your questions, because you’re asking tough questions and I’m not an authority at all, no degree, just an interested reader like yourself. But I can give you my attempts at answering them and you can reply.


>I'm under the impression that the more consistent a philosopher is in his philosophy (more rigid perhaps?) his ideas tend to result in different counterintuitive conclusions.

That really depends. I suspect you mean consistency as if it were based on a single value based on a single principle, like traditional utilitarianism. If one is committed to pluralism, though, that commitment might turn out differently. It’s also logically possible to be committed to folk ethics, common intuitions. Consistency in this regard means the opposite of what you say. For examples of this, see Ross and, to a lesser but more interesting degree, since he is a utilitarian, see Sidgwick.

But. Also check out metaphysics. Consistency in that field especially sometimes leads to to wildly unintuitive results. Famous papers like “I do not exist” aren’t uncommon. So you’re not off track here.



>Take for instance Bentham: He was probably the ultimate utilitarian who reduced the morality of all of our actions to the concept of value, through the balancing of our pains and pleasures. Surely he came up with his famous "Can they suffer?" precisely when he focused on living creatures' ability to experience those pains and pleasures.

Yes, I think so too. And, I think to their credit, the early utilitarians were challenged on this, about their theoretical willingness to include other animals into their moral calculations as if they were human. I forgot who it was (Mill?), but he said they, the utilitarians, were ready to stake it all on such an absurd result. Singer made good on this sentiment (that is, if you agree with him. His work, anyway, was better received.)




>Now, Bentham's rigid view didn't distinguish among different types of pleasures and also his ideas led him to come up with all sort of outrageous social norms, like creating workhouses where common citizens would forcibly take beggars to live and work so they wouldn't pester anyone on the streets and where their work would pay for their living expenses as well as to the one that kidnapped them for the inconvenience of taking them there in the first place. Not precisely something people remember him for...
So Mills came later and decided to humanize utilitarianism a bit, so he started incorporating other things that steered away from the exclusive idea of value which were based on virtues. Sandel says in this respect that:
Mill’s robust celebration of individuality is the most distinctive contribution of On Liberty. But it is also a kind of heresy. Since it appeals to moral ideals beyond utility—ideals of character and human flourishing—it is not really an elaboration of Bentham’s principle but a renunciation of it, despite Mill’s claim to the contrary.

.

>And the of course is the idea of lower and higher pleasures, in what the later are independent of our wants and desires and are simply based on our recognition of them being higher because of reasons of aesthetics and virtuosity.

I knew about Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures, but I haven’t read Mill so this is informative to me. Thanks!


>Mills's version of utilitarianism works around some of the Bentham's philosophy's softer spots, but he does it creating some ad hoc criteria that are completely subjective and at the expense of consistency.

I wonder, why do you say this?

Is it because Mill, according to your account, believes that “higher pleasures” and the virtues are divorced by what some have called “the resonance constraint”? That is, are we assuming these “higher” concerns aren’t necessarily connected to whatever our desires happen to be? Or that if they are so unconnected, they aren’t good?

If so, that rather begs the question against some opposing views in value theory (axiology). For a good book on this see https://www.amazon.com/Welfare-Happiness-Ethics-L-Sumner/dp/0198238789/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519531157&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=welfare+happiness+and+etics

See also

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-point-of-view-of-the-universe-9780199603695?cc=us&lang=en&

Starting page 200

These books are free, btw, if you want them (do you know how to get them for free?)









>My first question is, how important is philosophical consistency in the first place?

It’s important. Contradiction is deadly. If you can prove someone’s views are inconsistent, contradictory, unintelligible, incoherent, then that’s a neon light way of proving their view doesn’t work or isn’t true.



>I love consistency, to me is tantamount to good thinking (I'm an extremely logical person) but I uppose that it can be inconvenient as well. Notice that it goes back to the "grey areas" of my exchange with the other poster and also with our previous conversation on situational ethics: I rather have people take a principled stance instead of saying something that too me sounds like "yeah maybe your right or wrong... but you know, shit happens... so, we'll see how things are in this specific case".

There might be something to say about situational ethics, though, at least as we discussed it. Again, this is what I cited:

Hi MrJKFrosty! You raise a few different points, so I will address them one by one. I'm not an ethical expert, just a very happy vegan. Here goes:

>It's natural for animals to eat meat, and therefor we shouldn't be exempt from that reality.

It's natural for some animals to eat meat. Human beings are able to eat many different kinds of food, including meat. We also can eat candy, beer, insects, human meat, shoe leather, etc. It would be very difficult to decide what is really a "natural" human diet. Historically, humans have eaten whatever is most available and provides the best nutritional/energy rewards. Some primates eat other animals, and others do not. As modern humans, we have the choice to eat what makes the most sense for us according to a variety of factors, not just broad-sweeping labels of what's natural.

>Yes, animals have less developed brains than humans and thus it's more difficult for them to make conscious decisions, but humans are not to blame for that. It's a consequence of billions of years of evolution, adaptation and natural selection. Sorry guys, but I'm not going to make things harder on myself just because I have the burden of being a more developed organism.

As you said earlier, humans are animals. Every other species on earth doesn't have less developed brains than humans - this is a lie humans tell ourselves to justify our treatment of other species. Our brains are remarkably similar to other vertebrates. They're just specialized for our environments. It's no more difficult for other species to make conscious decisions than it is for us. You are not a more developed organism than every other kind of animal. You are just a different kind of organism. Isn't it convenient that humans would place humans at the top of our intelligence hierarchies? Ranking intelligence by human standards will always put humans at the top. We're better at being humans than any other animal. We can win human intelligence tests any day of the week. There's a lot of really interesting reading you could do on this, but if you're interested specifically in the neurological question of how our brains compare to those of other species, check out Carnivore Minds.

>Many carnivorous animals are capable of safely consuming plants, while only a handful of species (certain lion species, for example) are physically incapable of eating vegetation.

I agree.

>In contrast, animals in the wild are brutally and relentlessly mauled apart with the claws and teeth their predator exhibits.

This is a generalization. Every carnivorous/predatory species hunts differently. Yes, some do cause their prey to suffer. Others don't.

For me, the existence of predator/prey relationships doesn't compel me to change my behavior one way or the other. My veganism tells me to eat as low on the food chain as possible in order to minimize suffering, because I can do so and thrive as a very healthy human. I eat delicious food every day, I feel great, I'm a healthy weight, and I get to pull myself out of the factory farming system altogether. I recognize that not all humans throughout history have been able to do that. Historically, humans have been both prey and predator. Now, our species acts as an apex predator. Why defend our factory farms when we have much simpler and kinder options readily available to us?

>it's like people are playing some kind of game, and they just want you to join their side

I completely understand this, and it makes it difficult to figure out what's true. I do think that vegans sometimes stretch the truth in order to try to win converts, but I look at that as a misguided act of compassion, because the new vegans are going to learn eventually and then they may very well give up.

Personally, I believe that we can absolutely be healthy on a plant-based diet as long as we supplement B12, D3, and omega-3 fatty acids.The first two are incredibly cheap: This supplement costs $20 for a three-month supply of B12, on top of giving a host of other useful nutrients in case you're missing anything, and for $12 you can buy eight months' worth of D3.

As for omega-3 fatty acids, they are unfortunately on the more expensive side. A lot of vegans say that we can get sufficient EPA and DHA by eating ALA, such as from flaxseed and chia, and converting it ourselves. While there was a promising study saying that vegans convert ALA to EPA and DHA more efficiently that omnis, flax and chia on their own are probably not sufficient.

At the recommended dosages, supplementing omega-3 FAs will cost you about $15 a month. I usually buy Ovega-3, although I recently tried Tesla and liked it as well. We probably need more than 500g a day, since we're meant to consume a somewhat even ratio of omega-3 and omega-6, which would push the cost up to $30 a month or higher. I take three grams a day for mental health, although I doubt that most people would need that much.

As far as needing eggs and dairy to be healthy, I suspect that that's the work of animal industries spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Dairies have taken a huge hit lately as people switch to plant-based milk (now with 100% less pus!), and I think they'd gladly lie to the public in order to tourniquet their losses. For instance, we were all told that we need milk in order to have strong bones, right? But that's absolutely not true. First-world countries have higher rates of osteoporosis. And while I'm not sure how credible this is, the great Yourofsky believed that it was because animal protein is acidic, and to counteract that acidity our bodies draw calcium from our bones.

I'm going to wrap this up before I ramble any more, but in short, take B12 D12 and omega-3s and you will be all set!

*While it wasn't dairy, /r/vegan recently had a laughably transparent article about someone who was arguing not only that it was okay to wear fur, but that it was actually a moral imperative* to do so. It was such a moving piece that I immediately drove to a mink farm and snapped those little fuckers' necks myself, because god damn it, I'm a patriot

You've already admitted that you think moral action is instrumentally good toward the good end of efficient communal living, which again is a moral naturalist account. For someone close to your view see here:

https://www.amazon.com/Morality-Normativity-Society-David-Copp/dp/0195144015#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1521580328994


>What you simply fail to realize (in a spectacular manner) is that that description is not incompatible with living under sound ethical reasoning

"Sound ethical reasoning" on your view would be reducible to rational decision making toward the end of of efficient communal living. This is a moral naturalist account of what "sound ethical reasoning" would entail.


>Believing there is no INHERENT right and wrong does not stop one from deciding what is wrong and right, independently of what you think is universal or not.

You seem to think efficient communal living is intrinsically or inherently valuable, that is, if we are to make any sense of your claim that morality is instrumentally good toward the end of efficient communal living. If efficient communal living is also instrumentally valuable that just pushes the question down the road -- instrumental toward what good end? It has to stop somewhere, something has to be the source of this instrumental good, for that just is what it is to be "instrumentally good" (which you allow the existence of).

Relevant studies:

• Vegetarian versus Meat-Based Diets for Companion Animals (2016) - "Cats and dogs maintained on vegetarian diets may be healthy—including those exercising at the highest levels—and indeed may experience a range of health benefits."
  
• Cats and Carbohydrates: The Carnivore Fantasy? (2017) - "Because of the discrepancy in carbohydrate content between a natural prey diet and currently available traditional commercial cat foods, excess carbohydrate intake is often considered the primary cause of feline obesity [4,8,9]. It has been postulated that excessive amounts of dietary carbohydrates cause an overproduction of insulin resulting in excess fat deposition ... Nguyen et al. and Backus et al. confirmed increased weight gain and expansion of fat mass when cats had free choice access to a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet ... in comparison to a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet ... Coradini et al. also concluded that a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet .. resulted in increased fat deposition and greater weight gain when fed ad libitum compared to a high-carbohydrate, low-protein diet ... Based on the research discussed above, carbohydrates do not appear to be the biggest concern in the development of obesity. Overfeeding and thereby consumption of excess calories of any macronutrient is a much more important risk factor for obesity and should be the main focus of obesity prevention."
  
• VEGAN NUTRITION OF DOGS AND CATS (2014) - "It is the intention of this paper to provide general information on vegan nutrition of dogs and cats and furthermore to deal with how an adequate nutrient intake can be met with only plant based feeds" - Master's thesis from the Veterinary University of Vienna (translated from German).
  
  
  More : https://www.reddit.com/r/veganpets/wiki/faq
  
  
  

  Is the science settled on vegan pet diets? What are the benefits and risks?
  

  
  More research definitely needs to be done in this field. The provided studies show evidence that vegan diets can be healthy for dogs, cats, and other pets, but many of those studies were small: more evidence is required to prove it. However, it is difficult, expensive, and time consuming to gather enough scientific research to "prove" something. Just look at all the confusion in human nutrition research, which receives many times more funding and interest than veterinary nutrition research ever will.
  
  Does that mean we should avoid vegan pet diets in the meantime? Ultimately this is a personal decision, but this subreddit's stance is a resounding NO. Let's create a simple cost/benefit analysis to help make this decision.
  
  

  Benefits and Support
  

  
  

• Most, if not all, currently available peer reviewed research supports vegan pet diets as a healthy food source
  
• There are many reasons to believe vegan pet food may be healthier than meat-based pet food, even if all the studies have not yet been performed to prove it
  
• There are at least 23 different suppliers of vegan pet foods, many of which only provide vegan pet foods. How could these companies stay in business if all their customers became ill?
  
• All of the minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and other additives that go into vegan pet foods go into regular pet foods too.
  
• Thousands of cats and dogs have already gone vegan, as evidenced by their social media presence
  
• "through their diet, [cats and dogs] constitute about 25–30% of the environmental impacts from animal production in terms of the use of land, water, fossil fuel, phosphate, and biocides." - Source
  
• A cow, pig, chicken, fish, or other animal died to provide byproducts for your pets meal. How is your pet different from them?
  
  

  Risks
  

  
  

• Vegetables are less acidic than meat. Basic food may cause urinary crystal issues in cats, especially male cats. Most vegan cat foods are acidified (just like regular cat food), minimizing the risk of this issue. It's still smart to monitor your cat when switching over.
  
• Vegan diets feel risky to many. Some people claim that obligate carnivores, like cats, cannot survive on a properly formulated, nutritionally balanced "unnatural" vegan diet. In Zimbabwe, 164,000 crocodiles (obligate carnivores) are commercially raised on a vegan diet, it has been found cats digest >93% of the starches found in kibble, and cats readily digest the amino acids that are currently added to meat-based cat foods. In meta-analysis, cats have been found to do well on vegan diets.
  
• To be continued?
  
  There's a lot of potential good to come from a pet's vegan diet, even for their health. Any issues or risks that might arise can be monitored, discovered, and immediately reversed by returning to the pet's regular diet. Lots of benefit, low risk.
  

How Not To Die has been an amazing resource for me in my last 1.5 years on the vegan diet. I trust Michael Gregor and 100% recommend an algae-based Omega 3 supplement for that good EPA and DHA.

Here are the 2.5 supplements that I have been taking to achieve my satisfactory blood test results:

Multivitamin:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001GAOHVG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

Omega 3:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074N5JZK8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

D3 - I only take this in the wintertime.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CYA8HD6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

re: studies of animal emotions

>Jaak Panksepp (2004, 2005) has been conducting a research program that he calls “affective neuroscience” and that encompasses direct study of animal emotions (2004), exemplified for example in the experimental investigation of rats “laughing” and seeking further contact in response to tickling by humans (Panksepp & Burgdorf 2003). Over several decades, his work (reviewed in Panksepp 2005) has elucidated the neuro- and molecular-physiological bases of several ‘core emotional systems’ including ‘seeking’, ‘fear’, ‘rage’, ‘lust’, ‘care’, ‘play’, and ‘panic’. Panksepp argues that these are shared by all mammals, and may be more widely shared among vertebrates.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/#currsci-emotion

Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions

Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans

'Laughing’ rats and the evolutionary antecedents of human joy? Physiology and Behavior

But yes, the subjective experiences of others, whether human or other kinds of animal are rather hidden from us, so we should withhold absolute credence concerning our beliefs about what's going upstairs in their minds. But, plausibly, morality obliges us to be careful in situations like these, not hazardous, so we shouldn't harm or kill these animals without good reason on the assumption that these animals lack what we may believe to be crucially morally relevant properties that we are actually barred from investigating fully at this time.

PETA has long had a campaign against fishing.

["What a Fish Knows"] (https://www.amazon.com/What-Fish-Knows-Underwater-Cousins/dp/0374537097/) is a really great book about how fish should get greater consideration. I highly recommend adding it to your summer reading list.

It's a good example of a controversial position.

For more fun, check out this thread:

http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss3/1/

The start is an article about fish not feeling pain. It has about fifty responses, including one from the guy who wrote that book "What a Fish Knows."

It seems a moral precautionary approach is called for. If you don't know, don't kill.

>that doesn’t mean I’m going to force her to eat a vegan diet and potentially make her even sicker.

I think you are ignorant about dog food, and you seem to be saying that any vegan that feeds their dog vegan food is OK with forcing their dog to be at greater risk. I am ignorant too of lots of things, being vegan takes a lot of time to learn everything. Just the other day I bought probiotics that had milk in them by accident.



This is the one I use am I am confident I am not putting my dog at risk. If you have any evidence I am putting my dog at greater risk I will surely look at this evidence, but I did invest a good deal of time researching this before I switched dog food.

https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Balance-Vegetarian-Formula-28-Pound/dp/B000634HD2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1540911533&sr=8-2

> I’m hesitant to even say I’m vegan these days because of how crazy some are about it.

You can still be an awesome vegan without preaching it or letting people online know you are a vegan. You can still advocate and lead by example in real life and make a great impact to the world. I take the same strategy and identify as plant based online, but people in real life know me as vegan. If a online community is constantly causing you negative emotions & stress you need to dip out of that community imo.

Try this book.

There are friendly mouse traps that the mice will lead into and then you can just go to a wooded area and free them. No harm to them and no mice problem in your shop.

Here’s a link to buy them. Also they’re reusable which is nice!

https://www.amazon.com/Humane-Mouse-Trap-Plastic-Children/dp/B07L8JNPF2/ref=asc_df_B07L8JNPF2/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=242009199808&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18111005431343056146&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002190&hvtargid=pla-620523621735&psc=1

Right, and as I said in my other comment, no one is saying that the world should continue consuming meat at the pace it is currently consuming it. But, on a small scale, and as a part of a functioning and sustainable farming system that raises animals according to their utility, as such that they've been domesticated and bred into their current existence, there isn't anything inherently wrong with these animals, especially where terrain and climate allow. Meat animals don't belong on big open fields in temperate areas raised by the hundreds. Dairy animals started in the mountains and in colder climates that couldn't support annual crops. It's only inefficient if you explicitly make it inefficient by raising them only for slaughter.

Check out The Third Plate, I learned a lot from this guy when I used to work for him. It's an appeal to conscious eating that's well-researched and well thought out, but also aware of the reality of our current food system.

Demand and the need to bend the earth to our appetites is the problem, and that is a problem regardless of which fruits of the earth we're eating.

I'm not sure I accept that we're hardwired to eat meat. We're hardwired to eat, and yes, we're physiologically equipped so that meat is one of the many things we can chose to eat, but surely you see that that is in a completely different category than the drive for self-preservation?

>OK, so should you give all money to charity after expenses or after earning a certain amount since you could survive?

You're conflating aversion to inflicting harm with proactively preventing harm. I would argue that, yes, there is a responsibility to do both, but to different degrees. Interestingly there is indeed a movement advocating exactly what you suggest: that you should maximise your positive effect by working to earn as much as possible and give away everything you can to carefully selected recipients, once your basic needs are covered (see effective altruism).

>I alao take issue with saying meat is not needed

It always baffles me that people can say this to people that are living proof that it's not. Let me guess, you have a rare undiagnosed condition that demands meat and live in rural Mongolia where charred meat and yaks milk is all that's available?

>So you consider the potential to kill to be unvegan? What do you do about the consequences of that philosphy?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'potential to kill' or what consequences you have in mind.

Been feeding my dog this for 3 years (just as an experiment and if I noticed anything remotely detrimental I would have no problem putting her back on her old food, which was probably just as shitty as most regular dog food is once you find out what's really in it). Just had her yearly vet appointment and the only thing wrong with my yorkie/shih tzu is an eye issue where she can't make her own tears anymore, a very common problem in the breed and not diet-related at all.

So I guess my dog never got your memo that she's an obligate carnivore https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Balance-Vegetarian-Formula-28-Pound/dp/B000634HD2/ref=pd_rhf_ee_s_rp_c_0_10?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B000634HD2&pd_rd_r=eddae553-4152-45ee-9444-ba19245ff4e2&pd_rd_w=9fgas&pd_rd_wg=dvc13&pf_rd_p=4f7ba04e-e8f6-4ecc-9fa2-76eede5d0d3d&pf_rd_r=Q9YQ60512PFFFJ2CDAH4&psc=1&refRID=Q9YQ60512PFFFJ2CDAH4

As others have pointed out, if the basis for being vegan is utilitarian -- the idea that we ought to reduce suffering as much as possible -- then it's very easy to each the conclusion that our current lifestyles are unjustifiable along many dimensions, because we could reduce more suffering by, say, donating to charities instead of going to the movies.

You may be interested in Living High and Letting Die (1999) , which explores these ideas. Peter Unger, the author, argues that we operate under and "illusion of innocence" with respect to our developed-world behavior. He thinks we should donate much larger portions of our income to organizations like UNICEF.

There are a number of reviews and critical responses to the book. Many are behind paywalls, but I could grab some if you're interested.

It's worth pointing out that if you are not utilitarian, it's a bit easier to avoid the conclusion that you ought to give everything away to feed the children and such. Kantians and deontologists more generally are usually much firmer in negative duties not to positively harm others, and far fuzzier when it comes to positive duties to aid others. So you could argue that, while it is good to aid others, we are not in general obligated to aid others as much as possible; we just cannot harm them directly or exploit them.

This doesn't get them completely off the hook, though. For one, we do rely on exploitative labor practices around the world for the goods we enjoy. If the vegan argument that buying something that was built off of harm/exploitation works for animals, there is no reason it shouldn't work for human beings, too. There are also other ways we are harming others in the developed world. The argument gets easier to make the more it becomes obvious that climate change will most gravely affect the poorest and most vulnerable populations of the world, and that members of the developed world disproportionately contribute to that.

More generally, one might also argue that our current stance toward much suffering is a form of "ommision" (e.g., letting die) that is a form of harm, and so subject to Kantian/deontological prohibitions, in the same way that deliberately not running in to save a drowning child in front of you is a form of direct harm. It's just that the child is starving, and far away, and requires money instead of someone who knows how to swim, none of which are morally relevant factors.