Love them

The worst is farmers who have Instagram pages showing how cute their animals are. Makes me sick.

They will literally eat one of these cows in the video and feel good about themselves because the cows got to experience a little bit of joy before being butchered.

This is a common problem. A lot of non vegans pretend vegans believe stupid things as a way to dismiss veganism as irrational. I think they call it the straw man or something.

True, but we can form a consensus based on what seems most plausible.

I set personhood at a lower bar than you. I don’t think people without those should be classified as things. Our language is limited, but as of now we have personhood and thing. And animals can have obligations, reciprocity and they even seem to occasionally have ideas.

David Attenborough is not an animal rights activist at all. He is more of an environmentalist/conservationist type. It’s a different psychology. He’s been decent on this issue but I have a very low bar.

The trait most people use now to recognize others as persons is being human. That wasn’t always the case. Basing what a person is on vibes with no identifiable criteria is silly. A teddy bear can be a person, a tree, a dog can be a person while a pig is not. We need criteria.

That’s a terrible classification. You need some criteria that can be applied consistently. Peer recognition is subject to the type of bias that lead certain groups of humans not being recognized as persons simply because of bigotry.

So someone without grammar and a shared history is not a person? And what is sapience? I’ve never heard a good definition that doesn’t exclude a lot of people.

What makes someone a person?

So if you say whales are not people because they don’t have X trait, you’ve just made a scientific claim. So yes verifying if other animals have personhood is a scientific question. Discussing what personhood is, is a philosophical discussion, but even that is science informed.

Neither of you will answer so I will just spell it out. The traits you are going to use to justify personhood have to be scientifically verified since science is what attempts to verify empirical claims, Philosophy may generate the values but science helps inform them.

Yes, but what specifically? In your opinion.

What do you think makes someone a person vs a thing?

Most animals are people in the ways that matter. They have personalities and a subjective experience of the world. Doing calculus, or putting on clothes is not what makes someone a someone. Being a unique individual with their own thoughts is what makes someone a someone.

the fermented cashew cheeses taste just as good but they are expensive and don’t melt. We need more vegans to drive economy of scale and innovation.

If we aren’t better than animals then it’s cruel to harm them just as it’s cruel to harm us. If we are better than animals then we should act better and hold ourselves to the highest standards of compassion and respect.

Like obviously this is the internet and you can find aggressive people but this has nothing to do with veganism. I’ve looked at the comments from a lot of justice movements and I don’t see a unique level of impoliteness coming from vegans. Pro life vs pro choice. They polite?

Dog and cat people are the same. Horse people too. Vegans are comparatively docile. And take a moment to understand the vegans perspective. You are defending the rape and murder of beings we care about. Often times you laugh at animal suffering. Vegans mostly just take it.

As far as animal rights activists go vegans are by far the most polite. Meat eaters will threaten to kill you if you cause an animal they find cute mild distress.