Although I entirely agree with the spirit of your point I’d like to add a long-winded side-note (essentially “and also”, not “but”). I guess when treated as a “title” Veganism is an inherently philosophical stance, but many conflate “Veganism” with “Having A Strictly Vegan Diet/Lifestyle” so my comment is for those people. Some who identify with the latter of the two (like myself) may be as such - or at least have become as such - for various other “logical reasons”. In the early-90s I inadvertantly became “mostly vegetarian, sometimes pescaterian” due to living with a vegetarian girlfriend. Working in an extremely physically strenuous career, and also coming from a childhood littered with various unexplainable health “issues”, I noticed (with hindsight) huge and surprising physiological benefits from that change. Due to that, and reading about how fundamental human classifying parameters are at the very herbivorous end of the spectrum (nails not claws, very long intestines, low-acidity digestive system which struggles to break down harder animal cell-walls in food, sweating through skin not tongue, mostly non-canine teeth, not having predatory close-set eyes, etc), I proceeded within a year to full vegetarianism - this time consciously. It took years to overcome the n00b mistakes (lack of nutritional knowledge, cooking skills, motivation) that usually eventually turn people back off vegetarianism, and at that point as some of the “fog of war” cleared I noticed a few lingering “issues” from my youth. I had researched food intolerances so did a test to find I was moderately intolerant to 3 types of meat and a few other odd things, and more importantly strongly intolerant to milk (and milk products). The followup consultant told me such a strong reaction indicates all animal-milk would be problematic, not just cow’s. That prompted going vegan in about 2013, with such a dramatic further health-improvement I had to tell myself not to obsess with “if only I’d known this 30 years ago”. Even though I have since become increasingly “philosophically vegan” through a kind of mental osmosis, the point I want to make here is that was really post-hoc, as a side-effect. My original drivers were “purely by accident, then conscious but for functional reasons”. These days - nearly 30 years after going vegetarian and more than 10 years after going vegan - I just do some resistance/weight-training each morning yet I’m far more healthy and “built” than I ever was throughout an effectively “acrobatic” career (even when training for that career 45hrs/week and eating half-kilo mincemeat-based meals as a teenager), even though I ended that career years ago. Those are also very “logical reasons” in addition to the usual “logical ethical vegan reasons regarding treatment of animals”, as also are the “logical ecological reasons” too (particularly the extreme amount of deforestation that is done to create grazing land for livestock).
Although I entirely agree with the spirit of your point I’d like to add a long-winded side-note (essentially “and also”, not “but”). I guess when treated as a “title” Veganism is an inherently philosophical stance, but many conflate “Veganism” with “Having A Strictly Vegan Diet/Lifestyle” so my comment is for those people. Some who identify with the latter of the two (like myself) may be as such - or at least have become as such - for various other “logical reasons”. In the early-90s I inadvertantly became “mostly vegetarian, sometimes pescaterian” due to living with a vegetarian girlfriend. Working in an extremely physically strenuous career, and also coming from a childhood littered with various unexplainable health “issues”, I noticed (with hindsight) huge and surprising physiological benefits from that change. Due to that, and reading about how fundamental human classifying parameters are at the very herbivorous end of the spectrum (nails not claws, very long intestines, low-acidity digestive system which struggles to break down harder animal cell-walls in food, sweating through skin not tongue, mostly non-canine teeth, not having predatory close-set eyes, etc), I proceeded within a year to full vegetarianism - this time consciously. It took years to overcome the n00b mistakes (lack of nutritional knowledge, cooking skills, motivation) that usually eventually turn people back off vegetarianism, and at that point as some of the “fog of war” cleared I noticed a few lingering “issues” from my youth. I had researched food intolerances so did a test to find I was moderately intolerant to 3 types of meat and a few other odd things, and more importantly strongly intolerant to milk (and milk products). The followup consultant told me such a strong reaction indicates all animal-milk would be problematic, not just cow’s. That prompted going vegan in about 2013, with such a dramatic further health-improvement I had to tell myself not to obsess with “if only I’d known this 30 years ago”. Even though I have since become increasingly “philosophically vegan” through a kind of mental osmosis, the point I want to make here is that was really post-hoc, as a side-effect. My original drivers were “purely by accident, then conscious but for functional reasons”. These days - nearly 30 years after going vegetarian and more than 10 years after going vegan - I just do some resistance/weight-training each morning yet I’m far more healthy and “built” than I ever was throughout an effectively “acrobatic” career (even when training for that career 45hrs/week and eating half-kilo mincemeat-based meals as a teenager), even though I ended that career years ago. Those are also very “logical reasons” in addition to the usual “logical ethical vegan reasons regarding treatment of animals”, as also are the “logical ecological reasons” too (particularly the extreme amount of deforestation that is done to create grazing land for livestock).