Are there degrees of moral permissibility? Is it just what a person can overlook in their day-to-day life?
I can understand hypocrisy, I see it, I partake in it. It's almost unavoidable to have one's values clash with one's actions. Yet I've never encountered a pro-meat argument that was ever founded on anything stronger than the aesthetics of the product. I can't think of any circumstance that would articulate when aesthetics may out way suffering. Maybe moral permissibility is more subjective, like: I may not consider someone else's dietary hypocrisy morally permissible, but as far as they're concerned (and the majority of Western culture) they're absolutely permissible, no question. The way its done is the way its done. Since the morality of industrial farming is overlooked by the greater percentage of people, morality in the cultural sense (concerning the farming only) is defined to overlook the offence.
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You write: "to what degree is it morally permissible for a person to continue to eat meat, while still being enlightened to the factory farming (and other reasons to cease/limit meat consumption)?"
Aside from special circumstances sufficient to override the perceived obligations (lifeboat stuff, mainly), it's not morally permissable at all, and by the agents own standards.
You write: "Are there degrees of moral permissibility? Is it just what a person can overlook in their day-to-day life?"
I don't think so; some act x under conditions y is either permissible or not. There are degrees of moral harm, though, since some acts are worse than others.
You write: "I can understand hypocrisy, I see it, I partake in it. It's almost unavoidable to have one's values clash with one's actions."
To the extent that hypocrisy is "unavoidable," it's hardly hypocritical. Ought implies can, after all.
You write: "Yet I've never encountered a pro-meat argument that was ever founded on anything stronger than the aesthetics of the product. I can't think of any circumstance that would articulate when aesthetics may out way suffering."
In the case of highly sentient beings, there probably are none.
You write: "Maybe moral permissibility is more subjective, like: I may not consider someone else's dietary hypocrisy morally permissible, but as far as they're concerned (and the majority of Western culture) they're absolutely permissible, no question. The way its done is the way its done. Since the morality of industrial farming is overlooked by the greater percentage of people, morality in the cultural sense (concerning the farming only) is defined to overlook the offence."
I don't think there is any such thing as "morality in the cultural sense" in contrast simply to "morality." Tradition and convention may often oppose or ignore morality, but they are not moral positions per se.
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