Retracted cause this doesn’t really work for the abortion example. It does for the gay sex one though. For the abortion one, I guess I won’t condemn abortion based on some universal principle of how arguments should be conducted.
I don’t think it works for the gay sex example either for the reason I gave: in order to say that using disgust is good in one example and bad in another, you need what amounts to a separate argument for vegetarianism anyway. “That’s the most important thing about eating meat” is not an undisputed fact, it’s something that is only believed by vegetarians. Non-vegetarians wouldn’t agree with it.
This turns it into circular reasoning: You should be vegetarian because of disgust. You should accept disgust as an argument for vegetarianism because what it shows is “the most important thing”. And you only believe that that’s the most important thing if you’re already vegetarian.
Most of the fence sitters it’s aiming to convince care a lot more about things besides “icky dick in butt” though.
And most of the people I’ve argued with don’t take the “animals aren’t people, I don’t care about them at all” route, so if they understood the scale of the problem, animal suffering probably would be important to them, and not a distraction from the big important issues.
Retracted cause this doesn’t really work for the abortion example. It does for the gay sex one though. For the abortion one, I guess I won’t condemn abortion based on some universal principle of how arguments should be conducted.
I don’t think it works for the gay sex example either for the reason I gave: in order to say that using disgust is good in one example and bad in another, you need what amounts to a separate argument for vegetarianism anyway. “That’s the most important thing about eating meat” is not an undisputed fact, it’s something that is only believed by vegetarians. Non-vegetarians wouldn’t agree with it.
This turns it into circular reasoning: You should be vegetarian because of disgust. You should accept disgust as an argument for vegetarianism because what it shows is “the most important thing”. And you only believe that that’s the most important thing if you’re already vegetarian.
Most of the fence sitters it’s aiming to convince care a lot more about things besides “icky dick in butt” though.
And most of the people I’ve argued with don’t take the “animals aren’t people, I don’t care about them at all” route, so if they understood the scale of the problem, animal suffering probably would be important to them, and not a distraction from the big important issues.