Veganism and Moral Intuitions

“What have the Romans ever done for us?”“Hard distinctions make bad philosophy”— John McCarthy~ ~ ~I believe there are vital health reasons to avoid a vegan diet, but that is not the subject of this post. Instead, I want to inspect two ethical claims made by vegans:Environmental: Creating meat, eggs, or dairy calories is ecologically worse than creating non-meat/eggs/dairy calories, so we should only eat the latter.Animal Welfare: Eating meat, dairy, or eggs causes animal suffering, which should be avoided, so we should not raise these animals.You can imagine stricter or looser versions of these, and I don’t think they are the only claims, just common ones. Taken together with some other beliefs about health, a common vegan position is that since eating animal products is unnecessary, it is unethical.Even the casual reader of ethics and moral development literature has seen the suggestion that most people do not arrive at their own beliefs via argument. Instead, people tend to copy…