First I will discuss an interesting epistemological issue that arises in various guises. Then I will explain why I think I should become a vegetarian without justification.
Another less standard case involves our future selves. Generally, we take the judgments of our future selves to be more authoritative than our current selves. If someone can convince us that we will regret something when we are older, we are oftentimes compelled. If you were to find out that your future self disagrees with your current self about some issue, you would likely find the future belief compelling, or at least a very serious defeater for your current belief. It seems to me that one reason for these judgments is that we take our future selves to be in at least as good an epistemic position as our current selves, and very probably in a better epistemic position. This is because our future selves, barring cognitive deterioration, are taken to be like our current selves new and improved.
When it comes to straightforward factual beliefs, I think this intuition is relatively sound. Probably I will have a more nuanced and grounded view about, say, welfare programs when I am 20 years older. So if I could find out what my belief will be in 20 years, it would constitute a defeater for my current belief insofar as the two differ. In terms of preferences, however, giving priority to future selves is peculiar. It is not obvious to me, for example, that it is more important for 60 year old me to not have a job than it is for 20 year old me. This sort of issue commonly arises for people who get permanent tattoos. They are often accused of being shortsighted, since they allegedly won't want a tattoo at some unidentified later age. But who is to say that someone's 60 year old preference is more important than his or her 20 year old preference? I think there are interesting issues here to be explored, and I will pursue none of them.
I have discovered a new case of this sort. Specifically, there seem to be cases where we can know that we would be (justifiably) convinced of a certain proposition if we did the relevant investigation. I believe it is overwhelmingly likely that hypothetical me would find many arguments for becoming a vegetarian, even perhaps a vegan, convincing, if I were to read them. Were I to study the treatment of animals, the health effects of a vegetarian life style, the environmental effects of the meat industry, and so on, it seems to me that I would find the case overwhelming. But I do not want to spend very much time investigating this issue, because I want to read the New York Times instead.Yet, because I know I would be convinced by the vast literature, and unconvinced by fledgling counter-literature, I don't need to read it. It seems that I can justifiably skip to the conclusion I would have if I took the relevant epistemic path.
Is there anything wrong with this reasoning?
Note that I am not suggesting submitting to possible worlds where we are brainwashed. Although I can imagine paths to becoming convinced of any proposition, I don't take all of these to be epistemically authoritative. Furthermore, there seem to be hazy cases. For example, I'm not sure that reading all the relevant literature on philosophy of science would lead me to scientific realism. Therefore, I have to adopt positions as I do research. But I am convinced that if I read, say, all the literature on Creationism and Evolution, I would come out accepting the theory of evolution. So, I can just skip to the end and accept the theory, rather than go through the arduous process of reading popular biology.
I think the vegetarian case is like the evolution case. But it's not clear exactly why some cases are like this, and some are not. Is it based on our current predisposition? Is it based on some kind of view about the consensus of relevant experts? Will this post, unlike my previous two, elicit any comments at all?
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