Jamison et al bring up an excellent critique of the structure of the animal rights movement when they make the case that the movement can be a functional secular religion. This critique, while useful in considering the structure of the movement, is a prime example why sociological thought is different from philosophical thought. Like a lot of pieces in it's field the reader can't help but notice the author assumes they are writing from a stance of ideological neutrality (the social 'sciences' rhetorically justifying their existence) and thus can properly talk about deviation from this ideologically neutral world.
So much nonsense. There is certainly a desire for transcendental feeling in human beings, which is expressed by religion and various secular ideologies, but throughout the authors seek to rhetorically invalidate these religions and ideologies without dealing with those religion/ideologies contents. Very much like how early anthropologists catalogued the various practices of foreign cultures without bothering to ask the members what any of it meant from their perspective, let alone considering they may have valid and pertinent views.
That all being said, it did make me think about how the move from believing that suffering was bad, and then acting on that by becoming a vegetarian/vegan is something of a mystic process a transcendental movement that may lack essential logical justification. The average person on the street would say something is good or bad for arbitrary reasons, whereas the non-relativist philosopher must justify that there is an objective way to determine if an action or thing is good or bad.
So much nonsense. There is certainly a desire for transcendental feeling in human beings, which is expressed by religion and various secular ideologies, but throughout the authors seek to rhetorically invalidate these religions and ideologies without dealing with those religion/ideologies contents. Very much like how early anthropologists catalogued the various practices of foreign cultures without bothering to ask the members what any of it meant from their perspective, let alone considering they may have valid and pertinent views.
That all being said, it did make me think about how the move from believing that suffering was bad, and then acting on that by becoming a vegetarian/vegan is something of a mystic process a transcendental movement that may lack essential logical justification. The average person on the street would say something is good or bad for arbitrary reasons, whereas the non-relativist philosopher must justify that there is an objective way to determine if an action or thing is good or bad.
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