I think the scale slides the other way too. So just because plants looks different than us, it seems kind of arbitrary to relegate them as "not thinking" and subject to whatever we want to do with them. I mean, I'm sure grass isn't thrilled about having its new growth trimmed repeatedly.
Not making an argument one way or the other, just have been thinking about it for myself. So I suppose my only point to the above would be that "there's always a subjective line that needs to be drawn somewhere, rather than an objective one."
Agreed. Main thing is, I like being alive and have to eat, at least, plants to stay alive. So it does bring you to an interesting point of, so... if I can't safely say that even plants aren't really thinking food... I should just not try to formulate an argument about which things are "thinking", but not everything is relative. Using the facts we have now I will only go so far on the whole whole relativism angle. Cows are way more like me than a black bean, for example. So it is pretty easy to at least roughly group things. Anyway, we agree here, but ultimately we shaped the world in a certain way (our ancestors) so we just have to accept that we can't change certain things easily or at all (what we eat, that we have to cut grass, etc). So that line of thinking about "should I eat thing X?" just seems trickier because I have so many biases rattling around in my brain and we always construct our internal narrative to fit facts.
What isn't hard is the sustainability argument. That is super simple arithmetic. And that is the one that pretty much seals it for me.
I think a lot of people start from the sustainability angle and then convince themselves of a lot of things that are murky or they themselves didn't really personally decide this, it is just something a lot of other people are doing / have decided and it fits their narrative of "meat is not sustainable". That said I do think there are well reasoned actors out there that have "done the work" to decide eating meat is not for them, but don't dress it up as a philosophical choice until you /have/ done the work and thought it through. It starts and ends with a lot of Why? :)
Not making an argument one way or the other, just have been thinking about it for myself. So I suppose my only point to the above would be that "there's always a subjective line that needs to be drawn somewhere, rather than an objective one."