Different people might justify vegetarianism by citing the suffering of animals, health benefits, environmental impacts, or purely spiritual concerns. As long as there isn’t a camp of vegetarians that claim it does not have e.g. redeeming health benefits, we can more or less add all those opinions together.
I think that this is actually very close to the bible/koran example. If people reach similar conclusions from different reasons, they’re probably just rationalizing. It would be very surprising if truly independent aspects of vegetarianism all happen to point the same way.
I guess this means that you and I reach the same conclusion about the bible/koran example, but for different reasons ;-)
ETA: I am more negative about vegetarian evidence than James, but I am also more positive about the theists (cf Unknowns, Michael Vassar). In both cases, I say that they are mistaken about why they hold the beliefs they do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the reason is bad. So maybe my position does not apply to my agreement with James.
But believers in the Bible really do reject the Koran, and believers in the Koran reject (the extant versions of) the Bible (which they claim are corrupted, as can be “proved” by noticing that they disagree with the Koran). Whereas in the vegetarianism examples, there is no mutual rejection, just people who emphasise a particular point while also accepting others. Many of the people who go veggie to prevent animal suffering would also agree that it causes environmental damage. It’s just that their own emotional hierarchy places animal suffering above environmental damage, not a real disagreement about the state of the world (same map of the territory, different preferred locations).
It would be much more credible if vegetarians said, for instance, that the suffering of animals, health benefits, environmental impacts, and purely spiritual concerns all involved considerations that pointed both towards and away from vegetarianism but that the balance of the arguments points towards it.
In practice, as far as I can tell, environmental concerns pretty much all point towards vegetarianism with some shellfish and other abundant sea life.
I think that this is actually very close to the bible/koran example. If people reach similar conclusions from different reasons, they’re probably just rationalizing. It would be very surprising if truly independent aspects of vegetarianism all happen to point the same way.
I guess this means that you and I reach the same conclusion about the bible/koran example, but for different reasons ;-)
ETA: I am more negative about vegetarian evidence than James, but I am also more positive about the theists (cf Unknowns, Michael Vassar). In both cases, I say that they are mistaken about why they hold the beliefs they do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the reason is bad. So maybe my position does not apply to my agreement with James.
But believers in the Bible really do reject the Koran, and believers in the Koran reject (the extant versions of) the Bible (which they claim are corrupted, as can be “proved” by noticing that they disagree with the Koran). Whereas in the vegetarianism examples, there is no mutual rejection, just people who emphasise a particular point while also accepting others. Many of the people who go veggie to prevent animal suffering would also agree that it causes environmental damage. It’s just that their own emotional hierarchy places animal suffering above environmental damage, not a real disagreement about the state of the world (same map of the territory, different preferred locations).
It would be much more credible if vegetarians said, for instance, that the suffering of animals, health benefits, environmental impacts, and purely spiritual concerns all involved considerations that pointed both towards and away from vegetarianism but that the balance of the arguments points towards it.
In practice, as far as I can tell, environmental concerns pretty much all point towards vegetarianism with some shellfish and other abundant sea life.