Most of the time when people say they have an unpopular opinion, it turns out it’s actually pretty popular.
Do you have some that’s really unpopular and most likely will get you downvoted?
If you adopt a utilitarian perspective I agree (and I also totally agree that this is a matter of philosophy, clearly the norms do not support my hot take). If only the end matters and not the reasons, I agree that the ethical quandary falls away.
I tend to think utilitarian ethics are quite useful for states or organizations, but I don’t think individual ethics are typically the utilitarian kind (though we are surely influenced by utilitarian analysis for example a lot of vegans are vegan for straight up environmental reason and therefore wouldn’t even need to contemplate the ethics of fake meat beyond environmental impact). I think there’s a more innate sense of ethics that makes me not want to eat something as vital and curious as a cow or a chicken. I’m not trying to reduce the total amount of harm in the world, I just don’t want to be the cause of the death of another entity when I can help it. Eating a vegan burger that looks and feels like a beef burger feels like symbolic support of a practice I don’t support. Perhaps if all beef were pseudo beef that would change things.
Burgers look absolutely nothing like a dead animal. Carnists have already done the work to remove the imagery of the act of violence from eating meat. Most vegans wouldn’t eat e.g. a vegan rotisserie chicken because that actually does look like a murdered animal.
Also, you can’t be vegan for environmental reasons. Veganism is explicitly about ethics
So as not to muddy the vegan movement. Veganism is explicitly about ethics, and stretches beyond a diet and into anything else that involves animal products
