doug> ravi wrote:
>> Doug Henwood wrote:
>>>
>>> I talked to an East Coaster a while back who spent some time in
>>> Berkeley, hating it. She said the final straw, though, was when
>>> she bought a pound of coffee that had a label assuring that "no
>>> birds were harmed" in the production of the beans.
>>>
>>
>> doug, i dont get your point. are you saying that veganism is some
>> sort of silly california fad and has no moral value?
doug> I fail to see the moral value of veganism, yes. Minimizing
doug> animal foods in your diet is probably a good health move,
Doug,
Do you not grant any moral value at all in maximizing your level of healthiness? Perhaps it's minimal, but I'm hard pressed to say that it's morally neutral, and even more hard pressed to say it's a moral harm.
Easily avoidable animal suffering aside, a vegetarian diet is pretty widely conceded to be more healthy for its consumer than a meat-rich diet. Surely there's *some* moral value in maximizing one's own health? (Even if not an absolute value and one that, or so many claim, should be weighed against other goods.)
It's hard to see how certain well-known moral debates -- say the case of the so-called "Drunken Indian" which Clifford Geertz, Richard Rorty and a few others batted around a few years back, chiefly as a way to talk about moral value and ethnocentrism -- get any traction at all if one's regard for one's physical integrity has no moral value at all. Even if mistreating oneself falls within the realm of "ontological" freedom, that doesn't mean it's morally valueless.
Best, Kendall Clark