[noondip]

> Plants are just as alive as mammals, fish or insects

Two things: plants aren't sentient and animals also eat plants - many, many times more plants than vegans do. So if you truly regard plant and animal life to be the same, it would behoove you to immediately stop eating animals! It's very obvious how this argument falls flat on its face when brought to the light of critical thinking.

> how do you justify your greater reliance than meat eaters on migrant underpaid labor?

This is just conjecture, but I'll try and answer anyway. You can be vegan and care about how workers are treated. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Personally, I grow most of my food myself, but obviously this isn't practical for most people. Why not turn this question around and ask, how are slaughterhouse workers treated and what their experience must be like?

> Isnt this just a game of semantic false moral superiority until there is a nutrition source that is completely death and suffering free?

Pretty ironic to hear this from someone who beliefs him or herself to be superior to animals, and justifies their destruction. It's not a game of semantics - in fact, it's not a game at all. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change. You can be coy all you want, but you are actively contributing to the problem by consuming animal products.

[unprepare]

>plants aren't sentient

Is a venus fly trap sentient? Is a cricket sentient? Is a starfish sentient? Is a worm sentient? How about trees that communicate with other trees nearby?[1][2]

>and animals also eat plants

Plants also eat animals[3] animals also eat other animals, so i dont understand how this is an argument.

>This is just conjecture

61% of all farmworkers have incomes below pverty level, average life expectancy subtanstially lower than rest of population[4]

cites migrants earning 7500$ per year, 52% having no legal status in US[5]

>Why not turn this question around and ask, how are slaughterhouse workers treated and what their experience must be like?

you could certainly make that argument, but i dont think its likely to mirror agricultural migrant labor

>Pretty ironic to hear this from someone who beliefs him or herself to be superior to animals, and justifies their destruction.

Thats quite a label to apply to someone you've never met and whose never said anything like that.

You seem to believe you are superior to plants though...

[1]https://karban.wordpress.com/research/ [2]http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden... [3]http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/publications/volunteer/young_na... [4]http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/migrants.html [5]http://articles.extension.org/pages/9960/migrant-farm-worker...

[noondip]

You're making straw man arguments. Humans don't breed, enslave and kill billions of starfish, crickets and worms. Do you see what you're doing? Rather than acknowledge we're harming many animals which are no doubt sentient, you're appealing to fringes to bolster an illogical argument. I'm not surprised - many carnists take refuge in the plant-killing argument as a last resort. It's fascinating what lows the human mind will reach to justify cruelty. And so what if animals kill other animals? Do you really think that's a reason to act the same? Why pick this behavior, and not the one in which animals commit infanticide or sniff each other's rear ends?

> You seem to believe you are superior to plants though

The only one I'm superior to is myself when I still paid for the abuse of animals.

[unprepare]

>Humans don't breed, enslave and kill billions of starfish, crickets and worms.

But we do breed, enslave and kill trillions of carrots, apples, potatoes, tomatoes, etc

But again, you have made it clear you feel that some life is not as valuable, namely plant life - so it is morally acceptable from your view to kill plants but not animals because of the difference in the value of life.

Thats good for you but i am interested in hearing arguments from someone who doesn't just ignore uncomfortable facts.

[noondip]

The plant-killing argument is extremely trite and appealing to it to justify the animal holocaust just shows you are desperate for any reason to keep engaging in animal abuse. Please - do have the humility to read again and see just how ridiculous your arguments have been. Claiming vegetables are enslaved and killed is just silly and you know it. What's more, I've repeatedly told you more plants are killed for livestock feed, but somehow you choose not to address this apparent contradiction.

[unprepare]

you actually completely fabricated what you think my views are, i'm justifying nothing and my position is still unstated.

I'm simply exploring a philosophical question, while you are obviously defending your lifestyle choices.

That philosophical question being how can one type of life be valued more than another, or how do you justify a moral position of life is precious while simultaneously ending life daily for nourishment. this is a quandary literally every human on the planet faces, no one is attacking veganism, or you , or your choices.

How you are missing that this is my argument, and continually projecting me as some one dimensional 'vegans are even worse than meat eaters' is quite confounding to me.

[dragonwriter]

> Two things: plants aren't sentient

I don't think there is any coherent and useful definition of sentience for which no plants are sentient but all animals are sentient.

[noondip]

There is a very clear and obvious distinction between the plant and animal kingdoms. Any attempts to qualify both as the same when it comes to their destruction is just a coy way to rationalize unethical behavior. Like I said, even if it were true that plants feel pain the same as animals, one would still be compelled to go vegan, since animals "kill" more plants than people do by eating them directly.

[dragonwriter]

> There is a very clear and obvious distinction between the plant and animal kingdoms.

Sure, but whether the things which make up that distinction have particular ethical significance is a different question. And I have yet to see any definition of sentience for which both of the following are true:

(1) It does, in fact, apply to all animals and no plants, and

(2) Most people would agree that it has ethical significance.

In fact, I haven't seen any definition of sentience for which even (1) alone is true.

> Like I said, even if it were true that plants feel pain the same as animals, one would still be compelled to go vegan, since animals "kill" more plants than people do by eating them directly.

That seems to a apply a utilitarian standard of ethics, not the categorical one which is usually in arguing that veganism is an ethical compulsion (under the categorical ethics usually applied to argue for veganism, recognizing plants as sentient would make eating either inexcusable, even if it were a survival necessity.)

Once you accept that its a utilitarian matter, determining that something is ethically demanded requires agreeing to a particular ethical calculus -- a method of aggregating utilities and disutilities experienced by different participants. And there's an infinite number of possible functions that can be used, and they can support any possible conclusion.

[noondip]

> under the categorical ethics usually applied to argue for veganism, recognizing plants as sentient would make eating either inexcusable

Veganism is the ethical position that animals should not be exploited for food, clothing and other purposes. If you want to start a Compassion for Carrots organization, be my guest, but please don't form conjecture on others' behalf. You've also not yet provided evidence for plants' sentience, so you haven't actually given reason for considering the abuse of animals to be ethical or acceptable.

[unprepare]

>You've also not yet provided evidence for plants' sentience

So you dont care about the morality of ending life, you only care about the morality of ending sentient life - got it.

[noondip]

I'm glad you were finally able to realize the distinction between sentient and non-sentient life. Nice talking with you!

[unprepare]

This is exactly what i was getting at, but vastly more well worded