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Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness

Despite the strength of arguments for veganism in the animal rights literature, alongside environmental and other anthropocentric concerns posed by industrialised animal agriculture, veganism remains only a minority standpoint. In this paper, I explore the moral motivational problem of veganism from...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Pickett, Susana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8058141/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33897260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09857-0
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author Pickett, Susana
author_facet Pickett, Susana
author_sort Pickett, Susana
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description Despite the strength of arguments for veganism in the animal rights literature, alongside environmental and other anthropocentric concerns posed by industrialised animal agriculture, veganism remains only a minority standpoint. In this paper, I explore the moral motivational problem of veganism from the perspectives of moral psychology and political false consciousness. I argue that a novel interpretation of the post-Marxist notion of political false consciousness may help to make sense of the widespread refusal to shift towards veganism. Specifically, the notion of false consciousness fills some explanatory gaps left by the moral psychological notion of akrasia, often understood to refer to a weakness of will. Central to my approach is the idea that animal exploitation is largely systemic and the assumption that moral motivation is inseparable from moral thinking. In this light, the primary obstacle to the adoption of veganism arises not so much from a failure to put genuine beliefs into action, but rather in a shared, distorted way of thinking about animals. Thus, common unreflective objections to veganism may be said to be manifestations of false consciousness.
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spelling pubmed-80581412021-04-21 Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness Pickett, Susana J Agric Environ Ethics Articles Despite the strength of arguments for veganism in the animal rights literature, alongside environmental and other anthropocentric concerns posed by industrialised animal agriculture, veganism remains only a minority standpoint. In this paper, I explore the moral motivational problem of veganism from the perspectives of moral psychology and political false consciousness. I argue that a novel interpretation of the post-Marxist notion of political false consciousness may help to make sense of the widespread refusal to shift towards veganism. Specifically, the notion of false consciousness fills some explanatory gaps left by the moral psychological notion of akrasia, often understood to refer to a weakness of will. Central to my approach is the idea that animal exploitation is largely systemic and the assumption that moral motivation is inseparable from moral thinking. In this light, the primary obstacle to the adoption of veganism arises not so much from a failure to put genuine beliefs into action, but rather in a shared, distorted way of thinking about animals. Thus, common unreflective objections to veganism may be said to be manifestations of false consciousness. Springer Netherlands 2021-04-19 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8058141/ /pubmed/33897260 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09857-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Articles
Pickett, Susana
Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness
title Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness
title_full Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness
title_fullStr Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness
title_full_unstemmed Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness
title_short Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness
title_sort veganism, moral motivation and false consciousness
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8058141/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33897260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09857-0
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