Now thinking about this a bit more, the first pair might be really a triple:
The belief that eating meat is bad
The intention to eat meat
The belief/desire(?) that I don’t do bad things
This does seem like some form of contradiction (cognitive dissonance?), and some/many people will remove the tension by giving up 1) and keeping the other two. This is called motivated thought, or rationalization: Which is indeed irrational, not just immoral.
The right response would arguably be to give up 2), which would remove the moral problem while not being irrational.
Giving up just 3) (to some degree) would still be immoral, but it’s unclear whether doing so would be irrational.
Now thinking about this a bit more, the first pair might be really a triple:
The belief that eating meat is bad
The intention to eat meat
The belief/desire(?) that I don’t do bad things
This does seem like some form of contradiction (cognitive dissonance?), and some/many people will remove the tension by giving up 1) and keeping the other two. This is called motivated thought, or rationalization: Which is indeed irrational, not just immoral.
The right response would arguably be to give up 2), which would remove the moral problem while not being irrational.
Giving up just 3) (to some degree) would still be immoral, but it’s unclear whether doing so would be irrational.