Hypothetically, you are a vegan with an iPhone.
Your choice to become a vegan was because you determined it to be morally correct.
Your moral evaluation is based primarily on two considerations
- That factory farming is harming the environment
- That treating animals inhumanely is, well, inhumane
You bought your iPhone because it is shiny and rad.
Of iPhones, the following things can be said pretty convincingly
- The factories these iPhones are heavily polluting and are harming the environment 1
- The workers in these factories are being treated, well, fairly inhumanely 2
QUESTION 1 As this hypothetical vegan, are you acting morally correctly?
Hypothetically, let's say that on top of the pollution and poor working conditions a baby seal is clubbed to death for every iPhone made.
No. You are not acting in a "morally correct" fasion when making your yearly iPhone purchase.
QUESTION 2 Why, or why not?
Because baby seals are cute.
Let's make a couple more assumptions, and then ask some more questions
QUESTION 3 Hypothetically, you answer that food supply problems is most important moral issue to you, and it is morally correct to be acting on at least some, but not all moral issues. Is the meat eating person who does not own an iPhone your moral peer?
That depends on whether the you consider the frequency and magnitude of a persons actions to be important when determining peers. If it's possible for a person who snowboards on a 3 degree slope for 3 hours a year to be the peer of one who rides a 30 degree slope 8 hours a day 300 days a year then yes, it is possible for the iphone-less meat-eater to be a vegan moral peer.
QUESTION 4 If, hypothetically, you accept this person as your moral peer, what makes your proselytising acceptable?
Because you may be able to convince them to not eat meat, AND they may continue to not buy an iPhone. Before proselytising: only one seal a year saved. After proselytising: many chickens, cows, pigs, sheep and sea creatures also saved.
QUESTION 5 If, hypothetically, you accept that proselytising is acceptable between individuals who both believe they are acting morally acceptably, can I give your phone number to an evangelical christian congregation?
No. Nor may you give my phone number to your favorite phone-less vegan (not that they'd have much use for it). However, all forms of speech are acceptable by those who consent to speak to each other.
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