https://strawpoll.com/poy9kl5VPgJ
If you’re vegan, please answer the poll question in the link above.
If you’re not vegan, please don’t answer the question. I’m only interested in hearing what vegans think about this.
To be clear, I don’t judge any vegans for believing that humans matter more than other animals. You’re already doing the right thing by being vegan, so that’s fine. It probably wouldn’t affect your actions or decisions in any situation, aside from hypotheticals that are extremely unlikely to happen. So I think that being vegan is compatible with what some may call speciesism or human supremacy etc - or favoring/prioritizing members of your own species - without placing a value judgment on that. As we all know, you don’t NEED to consider all sentient beings as mattering equally, in order to recognize that non-human sentient beings matter more than “your tastebuds” - or your particular fashion preference or whatever - or than your mostly arbitrary habits that you can easily change, and when you can replace and meet all your needs with alternatives.
That said, personally I think all sentient beings matter equally. I’m willing to accept any supposed reductios that extend logically from this view - though I don’t consider them absurd, I find them to be logically sound & I actually find it to be impossible to logically defend speciesism without that leading to even “worse” reductios that the majority of people would be even more appalled by, and which would be far more arbitrary and less benevolent/empathically oriented. But I’m not here to debate that. I just wanted to state what my opinion is on the matter.
I also think that the antispeciesism argument is a great and very convincing/effective argument for veganism/animal rights - it’s convinced many people to go vegan, especially the “Name the Trait” thought experiment etc - so it’s interesting to me when people are vegan despite not agreeing with those antispeciesist arguments, and I really respect that since it indicates to me that you extend compassion to other sentient beings without it needing to be logically proven why you should or why it would be contradictory if you didn’t - it’s just natural empathy.
Plus, of course, we often tend to associate veganism with antispeciesism, and speciesism with carnism/animal exploitation - since they very often go hand-in-hand, and I think speciesism is kind of a risky ideology for a society to believe in while simultaneously significantly devaluing nonhuman animals - to a status lower than a human’s arbitrary desire to eat a particular candy for example, seeing it as a “personal choice” and “right of the human consumer” to do whatever they want to other sentient beings provided they aren’t a more legally protected species like humans, dogs or cats - but we must remember that this doesn’t have to be the case and it is perfectly possible to be vegan without thinking humans and other animals are equally important/hold equal intrinsic moral value, etc. Now, equal moral consideration - or equity - is certainly possible either way, even if you don’t think they hold equal absolute worth.
Very interested to see the poll results, since I’m actually not sure whether most vegans think humans and other animals matter equally or not.
I think everything is relative to oneself. Certain humans to me matter more than other humans, so certain animals/non-humans matter more than others. My bunny matters more than a lot of humans to me… and a decent amount of animals matter more to me than most humans. So I guess it depends on how close they are to you and what you value.
Tbf I think a being’s “value” and whether they matter differently than others to you are separate things.
Good point. I should have specified I meant discounting other factors that might make you care about someone more or less. So, all else being equal. Let’s say that, for sake of example, a human and a non human animal were both unknown to you, you didn’t have any relationship with either of them, and they were both just as “moral” of individuals, and even had the exact same impact on those around them and the environment, etc (hypothetically, even if that isn’t realistic, to get a sense of where our values lie if the only relevant difference is the species of the individual, and the traits that would entail). We can either equalize those traits or not, either way it should ultimately lead to the same answer, for most people anyway. Btw I’m not asking you what you would do in that situation, just explaining more accurately what I meant.