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My reasoning is based on the opposite of solipsism. I assume that I am not the only conscious being that can suffer. I also assume based on evidence that I am a physical entity and my capacity for intelligence, consciousness, joy, and suffering is based on the makeup and complexity of my nervous system. This could be wrong, but there is a mountain of scientific evidence to support this view. Looking at other species, I assume that their capacity for and quality of experience is similar. Cows are mammals, sexual, social, emotional, relatively intelligence animals. I assume their capacity for suffering is somewhat proportional based on those traits. I have no proof of this and no one ever will unless we figure out how to communicate with cows directly (probably impossible).

Plants don't seem to be conscious, at least on the same timescale, as humans. I think it's fairly obvious to anyone that they don't have the same capacity to suffer as a human. What would be your reasoning for supporting that view?

Note that I grew up on a farm raising sheep, cows, turkeys, ducks, dogs, and cats, and have experienced first hand the domination and torture of individuals of all these species by myself, my parents, and our neighbors. Have you seen how industrial farming works?

I think part of your comment might be based on the idea that vegans are playing a social virtue game rather than being compassionate for its own sake and you feel challenged and offended by that. I encourage you to break out of that mentality, although I admit many diets are based around that virtue game.

> I think part of your comment might be based on the idea that vegans are playing a social virtue game rather than being compassionate for its own sake and you feel challenged and offended by that

Not quite, I find the chosen solution to be arbitrary and that the chosen solution continues to move with new information about what suffering is. Echoed by the less verbose quip someone made earlier in the thread about needing to switch to a rock based diet.

I think several other rationales for the same dietary preferences are stronger, for example being against factory farming has nothing to do with only consuming plants it has to do with not consuming factory farmed meat.

I think several other responses to the mammalian suffering observation are stronger, for example, regulating or reducing how much of it occurs, which would have a greater impact than your dietary preference.

It’s hard for an individual to regulate or reduce factory farming. And indeed the overlap between vegans and animal rights activists is likely quite large.

But there’s also something to be said of simply opting out of a system you believe to be evil. For example, with slavery, the correct response is not to advocate to regulate or reduce how much slavery occurs while still being a slave owner. The correct response is first to not be a slave owner.

does your analogy extend to no pets as well?

I’m trying to understand the extent of your particular position, or which similarity to focus on

I don’t have any particular position, beyond hypocrisy. I’ve been vegan at times in the past, currently I’m not.

As for pet ownership, I honestly don’t know. I think it’s certainly ethically complicated but personally I don’t think it’s wrong per se. I would say there’s a massive difference between keeping a dog as a pet and keeping a tiger or monkey, though.

no field animals anymore

but house animals though

Keeping a dog could be considered worse from the perspective of forced eugenics by our ancestors against canines. Domesticated dogs are abominations, some say.

There's a clear difference, to me at least, between arbitrariness and the reasoning I've put forth. I agree that it is impossible to create an exact algorithm for choosing one's food to reduce suffering butt as new evidence is found, behaviors around food consumption _should_ change.

Related though: we haven't discussed the energy efficiency of producing meat vs plant matter, which is another important factor, unrelated to suffering.

> I grew up on a farm ...

Interesting. That seems like a clear case of "familiarity with these creatures lets me empathise with them".

Wonder if people growing up among scuba diving families (or other situations very familiar with sea life) might have a parallel version of the same thing?

> if plants could yell and howl in pain they would.

What is that based on?

> that entire view is based on the vegan feeling so uniquely enlightened

This point, and others like it, are just unfounded ad hominem attacks. Nobody here has said anything like it, and the only time I've seen something like it mentioned is when people use similar attacks.

it’s based on this paper and the signals they receive and reactions, plants do not have vocal chords though

I expounded upon the viewpoint I was familiar with, I said I’m familiar with it and wrote about it

There are no strawmans or ad hominem in doing that

The only response is whether the view interpretation was inaccurate or not

Someone can't be familiar with an ad hominem viewpoint and write about it?

To grow the cow you need to have it murder a lot of grass over its lifetime. The grass suffering is endless. So eat one plant to save the suffering of many more.

Wait, what are we optimising for here?

Vegans themselves acknowledge that veganism may not be flawless; however, this does not imply that their perspective is fundamentally incorrect. Lets say we are able to find plants would have to endure too much pain. Even in such case, veganism works because less plant shall suffer.

Vegans aren't wrong.

less plants shall suffer?

…per capita?

Livestock would consume more plants as food than they give back as food

Also, what is the flawless alternative philosophy? And is flawlessness a standard for doing anything? What belief or decision does anyone hold or choose, in any domain, that is flawless?

If the theory of evolution is valid and it is also true that animals have been eating stuff from plants - like caterpillars eating leaves(painful) and bees pollinating(pleasurable?) - wouldn’t there be selective pressure to develop vocalisation to convey sentiment?

So, maybe trees haven’t developed these abilities to speak because they’re sturdier and feel/sense less (or the ToE is incorrect/incomplete).

the theory of evolution only selects for traits till reproduction. traits that have no affect on ability to reproduce are completely random mutations that never get weeded out.

So why aren’t plants moaning in pleasure when insects pick up their pollen?

Why does not one tree use vocalisations to attract insects? Why flowers and not, say, the death sounds of an antelope to attract a bunch of animals whose fur can be vector to transport burrs?

All the cells in a organism communicate. Neurons are not special in that they communicate, but in that they do it fast. Animals move, and to do that correctly, they have a brain as fast control center. The experience of being, including suffering, is likely very similar between brained animals whose domain is movement in space. Plants live in a domain of chemical gradients in the soil and light gradients comming from the sky. They need a no-sigal (suffering) and a yes-signal (pleasure) as any other type of organism to navigate their domain properly, and the intensity of the signals needs to be appropriate, up to absolute, their live is on the stake.

I draw the line at sentience (a subjective experience) and plants don’t meet the consensus of criteria. I’m not even sure some animals like bivalves do.

Also, if your next step has to land on a dog or a patch of grass it almost sounds like you are going to say it doesn’t matter because we can’t know if the grass has a subjective experience (but we know the dog has one).