The initial argument that convinced you to not eat meat seems very strange to me:
Her: why won’t u eat rabbits?
Me: because i had them as pets. i know them too well. they’re like people to me.
This reads to me as: I don’t think eating rabbits is immoral, but I have an aesthetic aversion to them because of emotional attachment, rather than moral consideration. Is that not the right reading?
Her: i will get you a pet chicken
Me: …
Me: omg i’m a vegetarian now :-/
So, you’ve now built extended your emotional attachment towards rabbits to all animals? Or just the possibly-pettable-ones? But firstly, why do you think that’s a good thing?
I guess as an instrumental tactic for “I want to become a vegetarian but can’t seem to stick to it”, ‘imagine your favourite pet, but they’re ’ might work. But it’s surprising that without that initial impetus this worked.
As I’ve stated in the piece and elsewhere in the comments, I don’t think of myself as making moral distinctions, but if you must phrase it in those terms think of me as a preference utilitarian, but you are right that unlike in moral theory proper the source of moral consideration lies solely in my own preferences, which matches more with aesthetic theory if you’re inclined to think in that way (like with morality, I view aesthetics as trying to put too much essence in the world as a result of trying to understand it from an insufficiently broad frame).
I have no way to say that I think what I did is “good”, as in I don’t see my actions through the lens of morality so I cannot judge things “good” or “bad”. I conceptualize this instead as more completely satisfying my preferences, although I’m open to a more parsimonious understanding.
It is probably true that I already believed in favor of being a vegetarian but wasn’t acting on it, although I also wasn’t trying to be one either, but that is likely relevant. My conversion story should not be taken as an argument for all people to become vegetarians: it’s instead an argument for me to be a vegetarian so I can more get what I want.
The initial argument that convinced you to not eat meat seems very strange to me:
This reads to me as: I don’t think eating rabbits is immoral, but I have an aesthetic aversion to them because of emotional attachment, rather than moral consideration. Is that not the right reading?
So, you’ve now built extended your emotional attachment towards rabbits to all animals? Or just the possibly-pettable-ones? But firstly, why do you think that’s a good thing?
I guess as an instrumental tactic for “I want to become a vegetarian but can’t seem to stick to it”, ‘imagine your favourite pet, but they’re ’ might work. But it’s surprising that without that initial impetus this worked.
As I’ve stated in the piece and elsewhere in the comments, I don’t think of myself as making moral distinctions, but if you must phrase it in those terms think of me as a preference utilitarian, but you are right that unlike in moral theory proper the source of moral consideration lies solely in my own preferences, which matches more with aesthetic theory if you’re inclined to think in that way (like with morality, I view aesthetics as trying to put too much essence in the world as a result of trying to understand it from an insufficiently broad frame).
I have no way to say that I think what I did is “good”, as in I don’t see my actions through the lens of morality so I cannot judge things “good” or “bad”. I conceptualize this instead as more completely satisfying my preferences, although I’m open to a more parsimonious understanding.
It is probably true that I already believed in favor of being a vegetarian but wasn’t acting on it, although I also wasn’t trying to be one either, but that is likely relevant. My conversion story should not be taken as an argument for all people to become vegetarians: it’s instead an argument for me to be a vegetarian so I can more get what I want.