For You
One of the more interesting topic I discuss with people is why exactly they formed their vegan belief system. Some point out that they saw a documentary of Youtube video showing the horrors of animal agriculture, but that just points to our gut reaction, not necessarily the logical backing making us change our lifestyles. With that being said, where do you personally derive your beliefs from? Do you hardline certain deontological sticking points like exploitation? Do you just care about the relative net impact on creatures and their ability to thrive? Or is it something else entirely?
Personal Viewpoint
Personally, I draw my entire ethical world view on broad utilitarian viewpoints. So if a chicken were to suffer because of something I did, I must have done something wrong. Equally, if a chicken were to thrive because of something I did, I did something good. However, I do not think about the exploitation nor commodification of that chicken, because those are anthropomorphic ideas that they likely do not care about. Sure, commodification and exploitation are usually wrong because they excuse people’s actions, but, it seems to me that there are some niche cases where these qualities, which we often find as bad, are in fact morally neutral.
I think I realized that after seeing a video of someone who saved several hens from factory farms who were still producing eggs, and continued to use the eggs for their personal usage (feeding carnivorous animals and supplementing their own diet so far as the chicken did not have any physical stressors). I tried to look at the situation objectively to find some issue with the chicken being malnourished, abused, or made to do something they didn’t like. But alas, the hens involved had no medical issues, were able to thrive in a safe and comfortable environment, and were nutritionally supplemented to ensure their well being (i.e., no nutritional deficiencies). Plus, carnivorous animals got a meal so less animals as a whole were harmed.
The humans involved in the prior example did not need to consume the chickens eggs, but doing so posed no ethical issue, so for me, it was ethically neutral - a non issue.
Other Example
If you still want to read, here’s another example of my views. I personally avoid wool as I know where it comes from and the suffering that must be inflicted in our system. However, I acknowledge that there are ways in which wool can be a viable fabric while still allowing for thriving lives for sheep.
First, I think about a normal house dog. They usually hate getting a hair cut when they’re younger because they are scared of the razor. After you get a razor with a cooling blade mechanism and get them exposed to it, they learn to not be afraid of it and instead enjoy the experience since the hair cut doesn’t actually provide any physical pain. For that, I feel no moral qualms with giving them a hair cut because they seems to enjoy or be unbothered by it. If I put in the effort to utilize the hair I cut off in a meaningful way, it’d be fine to do. Especially because I just throw it away otherwise.
Equally, a sheep “wool” is simply their hair. Some breeds have the genetics to grow more or less, but growing it and having it removed do not have to bring about harm - we just do it because we value cheap goods year round far more than their livelyhoods so we adopt cruel standards. If I were to some day have some sort of homestead, where I raised sheep from their adolescence all the way to their death of natural causes, and continued to give to shave their wool, I see not problem with doing so. Given that they are well fed, not hurt in the process, and were given access to natural pastures that they can use to thrive. In fact, I’d argue that is a good thing to do as I’ve taken care of them their entire life (protection from normal predators, warm home, access to food, etc) without harming them in the process.
TL;DR exploitation and commodification are usually bad, but I find the reason for them being bad to be the harm (direct and indirect), not just the fact that they are exploited.
I agree with your take on antinatalism, which is why I’m not an antinatalist. If we had the ability to stop all human births though, and not just the subset that would be born to antinatalists, then it becomes a more interesting ethical position.
My reasoning for why “what can I permit” is a better framing than “how much can I help” is essentially that we can’t be morally obligated to help, because that would imply people don’t have the moral right to end their own life. If someone can benefit from your help, you have an obligation to keep going even if you don’t want to and would rather not exist. This I think is an adequate reductio ad absurdum. I would claim people’s only obligations are to not cause suffering (which would also not be caused if you chose to stop existing). If your entire existence is net-neutral, you haven’t done anything wrong. Put another way, to claim that someone who simply exists in the wilderness, who sits around and does nothing, has somehow committed an immoral act seems obviously wrong.
The reason exploitation of chickens is wrong isn’t because they care about some ideal world where they’re not being exploited, but some actual practical realities we have to consider. If you find an abandoned egg in the wilderness and decide to eat it, sure we can agree that’s fine. But once you get into a human taking an animal into their care, things get more ethically gray. Permitting people to take care of animals and utilize their byproducts in the process presents an obvious conflict of interest. We want the chicken to produce as many eggs as possible, so we’ll breed chickens who do that, and ultimately destroy their wellbeing in the process. As chickens exist today, they produce an entire order of magnitude more eggs than they did in the wild. We can’t separate these interests, exploitation will always present a conflict of interest, and permitting it will allow a violation of rights and subsequent harm to take place for the benefit of the exploiter. To more surely reduce negative utility, it’s a much simpler and sure approach to just reject the idea that exploiting animals is permissible.
The animal sanctuaries that act in the animal’s best interest will simply feed the eggs back to the chickens so they can regain those lost nutrients. We know that the people in those sanctuaries are acting in the interest of the animals, and not looking for some ethical workaround that allows them to consume eggs. Having people who care about the animals taking care of the animals will be better than having people who are only out for what the chickens produce take care of them.
As for the ecological question, I don’t advocate that we interfere in wild affairs. This goes back to my rejection of the ethical framing “how much can I help”. I have an obligation to not cause harm or violate the rights of animals because there is a practicable alternative to that. I don’t have an obligation to prevent other humans or non-human animals from perpetrating this harm. It’s a good thing for me to try to get humans on board with being vegan, but vegans don’t have an obligation to make other people vegan. It’s enough to just stop the suffering you as an individual contribute.
Maybe at some point in the future we’ll have the means to reduce suffering in the wild without causing ecological damage. That’d be a good thing, but the thing we’re obligated to do is just not introduce more suffering. If humans were an entirely neutral species, and didn’t introduce any more suffering or pleasure into the world, there’d be no moral issue with our existence.
I agree with many of the points you make here. I think my drop off is that I would not harm the chickens in the hypothetical presented. For you, I might actually change the word “exploitation” to something along the lines of “commensalism” at worst, and “mutualism” at best. If we dip into the conflict of interest issue:
I would say that is against my view. As soon as you drip past the point that they are not being taken care of and/or harmed in any way that we could reasonably prevent by simply not interacting with them, I am firmly against it. In that, we do not have to contradict a utilitarian doctrine.
This could be true. But only if you practice a flawed negative utilitarianism wherein you do not actually reduce harm. If you harm the chickens, then clearly you’ve gone against your own beliefs. If you keep the chickens, an ethically neutral option, then you’re all set.
It’s been a hot second, but I also mentioned the animal sanctuaries in my original post. In them, there is no conflict of interest as the animals are all rescued or arrived by their own choice. For nutritional worries, we just have to look at the biology of a chicken. If they lay 3 eggs a day, there is a significant chance they develop a calcium deficiency. However, if they lay 1 egg every day or two, and are given a proper diet conducive to their utmost well-being, then they have no deficiency, even without eating the eggs. This gives us the ability to give those eggs to humans or other carnivorous animals who may need those nutrients. I see this as the ideal scenario for the future.
In a perfect world, we would outlaw animal abuses to chickens in the same way we do to dogs and cats (with a higher degree than now). In that, no slaughter, exogenous hormone, etc would be used in their lives and we could instead focus on living with one another in a harmonious relationship. I acknowledge we have a long way to go to get to that point, but I see that as far better alternative than chickens going extinct (a net neutral, or possibly negative if we care about wild animal suffering - which I do).