I admire you passion, and I think you do have the right to tell me that my beliefs and feelings are wrong. First of all, you have the freedom of speech. Second, some beliefs are inherently immoral, for example, the belief that one should rape a child. I argue that there are objective moral truths, and one of the most important ones is that unnecessary violence is morally impermissible.

Perhaps what you meant by “I have no right” is that you should not punish someone just for their beliefs. I agree, of course, that we have the right to think whatever we want to think. But surely we do not have the moral right to do whatever we want to do. The kind of moral relativism where every action is morally permitted is a breeding ground for violence. Not all beliefs are entitled to respect (decent regard), especially irrational and immoral beliefs.

What do you think?

So you’re right that we need to focus more on the solutions: popularizing veganism, making vegan food tastier, more convenient, and cheaper; having more vegan cookbooks, restaurants, etc. I hope in vitro meat will be cheap enough to compete with real meat.

@Leafy –
So bogus, what a weak excuse. I honestly don’t know how you can feel right about yourself while holding beliefs like that. I can understand nearly any justification that people give in order to continue to consume animal products, but I cannot understand Narveson’s.

Great point in your last paragraph. It seems so hopeless sometimes, doesn’t it? The great majority of people won’t listen to reason or won’t take much time to really empathize with any being, which makes it entirely frustrating to live on this planet. So if people won’t take ethical action themselves, we must work to make it easy for them. Ensuring easy, cheap vegan alternatives everywhere is a start. People would have far fewer excuses to continue consuming animal products. Also, breaking the prejudices against vegan food is important too. Those are two practical solutions that I constantly envision. As I said, people are rarely ethically motivated *sigh* But they may be a bit more when it’s convenient for them.

I should really make a blog post out of this: focus on the solution, not the problem.

I think Narveson rejects the idea of any moral consideration for animals because he believes in contractualism: “a uniform set of rules to be imposed by everybody on everybody.” Since animals can’t comprehend human social contracts and can’t communicate with us, they can’t enter into contracts with humans. Therefore, they have no rights, not even the negative right not to be tortured. Gary Francione rejects the idea of the social contract and points out in the debate that humans who are not capable of moral agency are still part of the moral community, and nonhuman animals should be, too.

I agree with the slavery analogy of @jordanbsanders, but unfortunately I think that people refuse to see it because they are too obsessed with their rights to “property,” to make money, and to eat the way they always have and enjoy. I fear that we’ll never see an end to animal abuse until it becomes extremely convenient and/or profitable to stop carving nonhuman animals up and selling them as food.