🔗Comparing ≠ Equating
Last updated
Last updated
Comparisons/analogies are highly useful tools that are often used in philosophical discourse on veganism. They are useful for checking logical consistency by drawing attention to relevant symmetrical factors between elements.
Legality ≠ morality p1: Slavery used to be legal in the US in the 1800s p2: We now understand that slavery is highly unethical c: Therefore, what is legal is different from what is ethical, because our understanding grows over time and laws must be updated p1: Animal agriculture is currently legal in the US today p2: Something being legal does not necessarily make it ethical c: Therefore, animal agriculture is not necessarily ethical even though it is legal, for the same reason as we inferred with slavery - our understanding grows over time and laws must be updated The takeaway is that the legality of animal agriculture is an irrelevant factor to whether or not it is ethical.
In the above example, human slavery is being compared to animal agriculture. Nothing about this comparison is stating anything about whether either is more important than the other. Rather, this comparison is highly useful for demonstrating that legality is different from morality.
Sometimes when a comparison is made, the interlocutor will incorrectly insist that "you can't compare that" or "so you're saying [X] is the same as [Y]?" However, two elements do not need to be equivalent to be comparable. Comparing is different from equating. You can compare anything to anything. For example, many fallen tree branches are brown just like a normal brown bear is. This does imply that both may be hard to see lying in a forest due to camouflaging. This does not imply that brown bears are the same as fallen tree branches, nor does it imply that brown bears and tree branches have the same moral value.