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.
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I need to do more reading and thinking on this topic tbh. I used to have a utilitarian/reduction of suffering approach, but utilitarianism, if you really put it to the test, has some weird implications (Peter Singer, The Experience Machine, the ones who walk away from omelas, etc), so I’m exploring a deontological approach, based mainly on Kant, with some minor tweaks.
Here’s my current draft:
Act such that you treat sentient beings always as an end and never as a mere means.
The basic idea is that animals are beings with unique wants, needs, desires, and fears, so its wrong to disregard those by treating them as a mere means to an end.
I like this approach because it solves some problems with suffering based moralities (if I kill someone with no pain but I get joy, is that wrong?) And it also allows for mutually beneficial relationships with animals. For example, if I keep a companion animal, while respecting them as an individual, that’s okay.
It also, I think, is useful when talking about, say, wool. Technically, shearing wool from sheep reduces the suffering of sheep, but the wool industry treats the animals as a mere means to their wool, which is wrong (and that’s reflected in the way sheep are treated on those farms).
I do admit that it has some problems that need to be resolved. First, its difficult for me to argue that sentience is something intrinsically valuable. The difference between using someone as a means and an end simultaneously is also fairly gray. For example, someone could argue that killing animals isn’t using them as a mere means as long as you “respect the animal” and use them for food. Which obviously I don’t condone.
I think I need to read Korsgaard and a few other philosophers lol.
Really neat perspective. I’ve thought that way previously as a pretty hard-line stance, and I think I incorporate it into the way I communicate to people about veganism. However, after hearing some of the critiques of Singer’s ethics, I find the bullet biting to be okay for me lol. Mostly because the situations are usually absurd and I have trouble thinking deontologically and personally love pragmatic approaches
Thanks for writing this up. I believe that intention also matters. Although there’s no difference in terms of the contribution towards suffering, I would treat myself and others differently between accidentally eating non-vegan food vs willingly eating the same food.
I also think it’s important to consider the use of animal products in society. In your wool example, do you believe you have a responsibility to instead donate the wool to avoid others from purchasing wool that does lead to harm? As long as non-vegan societies exist, is it possible for the use of any animal product to be ethical?
Practically, in the real world, I find it easier to draw the line at avoiding the use of all animal products. Even if there may exist animal products that are ethical to use, I find it easier to adhere to the simpler principal of total avoidance. I also think total avoidance helps contribute towards activism. Being seen using animal products, however they were obtained, may enables other to legitimize their own use of animal products.
I’m not sure how this will fly here, but I want to offer a different perspective. I was someone who always respected people who made the choice to go vegan but just know myself well enough to know I would never be able to fully give up things like cheese, eggs, or meat. I’m not, like super proud about what that says about me, but it is what it is.
Since “being vegetarian” and “being vegan” were always presented as binary choices that’s kind of where the introspection stopped. I wasn’t going to “stop eating meat”, and that seemed to be the demand, you know?
Kurzgesagt’s video Why Meat is the Best Worst Thing in the World really turned me around that way of thinking. It makes a strong case that if you can’t bring yourself to totally give it up, but have sympathy for the ethical and social arguments against meat, it doesn’t have to be binary. It everyone tried to cut down how much meat they eat by 1/3, it has the same impact as 33% of meat eaters going vegan. It’s worth doing it part way.
Every since then I’ve tried to eat at least one vegetarian meal a day, preferably vegan. I won’t lie and say I always make good on it, but I’ve definitely reduced the amount I consume, and make more of an effort to incorporate things like beyond/impossible meat into recipes that I would have used beef in before, or order a vegetarian meal if the last time I went out I got something with meat. It’s not ideal, but it is more than I was doing.
I think all or nothing messages can push people away who would be willing to take some action, but not fully commit, and maybe be counter productive even if it’s cognitively easier to square.
Just my 2¢
Hi, just to let you know that I, too, once thought I could never give up animal products. I used to eat a shit load of meat and cheese almost every day. But then after one Christmas a couple of years ago I stopped (at least with the meat, I became vegan later on).
At first it was kind of difficult, because I had to come up with new / more / other meals to eat. But after a few weeks I got used to it and looking back, I realize that it was actually very easy - at least much easier than I initially thought. There’s so much in the way of replacement products nowadays. Seriously, if I could do it, you can too. It also helps to not think “does this dish taste like the animal product version?” and instead think “is this dish tasty?”
As for the hive’s (still funny to me) rules, we try to keep the “coddling” to a minimum. I’ve heard this strategy of activism referred to as baby steps. I’ll try to side step that to avoid the rule since your thoughts are very interesting and you put a lot of effort into responding here.
Activism and Baby Steps
I think all or nothing messages can push people away who would be willing to take some action, but not fully commit, and maybe be counter productive even if it’s cognitively easier to square.
Something I remember hearing a while back as a bit of a confrontation was to change the group we are harming in our actions to see if that changes how we see how we act. For example, swap the following two actions.
A. "I kill 4 animals a week for my food. I can opt not to, but that is not what I am used to and I like this." B. "I went to the animal shelter and killed 4 dogs for food. I can opt not to, but that is not what I am used to and I like this"It seems like an unfair comparison, even one made out to “get” people in some sort of ethical snare, but the situation is virtually the same. Dogs and normally farmed animals have no real difference separating the two and we can opt to not kill either. In fact, dogs can and have been farmed and killed quite recently. Some are vocally upset that people have tried to stop them from doing so as it seems extreme to them for others to stop them.
Now What?
All of that being said, I understand what you mean by it being hard to change. We can look at anyone with an addiction to a substance and just tell them to switch, but we as humans are horrible at changing and there are often other factors that hold people back from doing what they ought to do.
You mention, that you would never be able to give up meat, cheese, etc. But the thing is, you don’t really have to. We, as animals, love the taste of umami, acid, salt, sugar, etc. These are just biological phenomena brought forward from our genetics to get us to consume food with vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients we need. But a vegan diet doesn’t have to give those up. Vegan foods throughout history have been made from whole foods and are delicious (especially coming from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia).
Also, modern food science has made cheap, and often reasonably healthy, vegan alternatives to many of the things you are worried about. Just today, I consumed a homemade pizza made with spicy chorizo (made from gardein be’f crumbles) and daiya cheese (not a healthy meal, but you get my point). Hell, there are several restaurants that carry these options on their menu if we’re feeling lazy. We can cook scrambled eggs, omelets, or breakfast sandwiches with Just Egg as well. Granted, my family avoids these products and only uses them for special occasions as we opt for more whole food options, but these ones in particular are low in saturated fat and sodium - making them reasonable processed foods to consume regularly, even when compared to their animal counterparts.
If you ever want some options for your favorite foods, my partner and I love to experiment and try what is best, both in store, at restaurants, and at home. We haven’t found anything that cannot be reasonably replaced yet. I also study nutrition and am more than willing to help out with any worries you might have there.
I think you make a good point with societal factors of my actions. Its a critique with some utilitarians because our hedonistic calculations are sometimes just straight out missing indirect factors - something we definitely need to consider.
For me, I rationalize this all by trying to compare the other aspects of my ethical views. When I try to make sense of what I ought to do, I consider the total good/lack of bad that the action will have. For your example, donating the wool might indeed be the most ethical option. However, I’d rate it at about as good as donating my extra food I don’t nutritionally need but want for hedonistic reasons (e.g., candy, cake, extra servings of pasta, etc). I can donate that end product and reduce the need for someone else to buy it, thus reducing harm elsewhere, but it wouldn’t be very impactful.
My main goal, in this odd scenario I’ve imagined, would be to live that life with the sheep/chickens to show others how our relationship to animals may be redefined as one that is purely mutualistic. One where we gain from them existing (food production) and they gain from our protection and modern amenities like healthcare (and hopefully we both gain social value if possible). I think that societal impact might be more than the relative bandage of donating wool/egg to offset harm from other people’s choices.
There are a number of different branches I can go on here, but I’ll just post high level thoughts to start.
The issue with trying to define these lines in a capitalist society is they’ll always be blown past when any leeway is given. If you say “eggs can be harvested ethically”, what you’ll end up with necessarily is the egg industry we have today, where we macerate 10s of millions of baby male chicks a day because they’re not profitable.
If it’s done outside of a capitalist system, then you still have to contend with the idea that permitting these types of exploitation will mean that the people who want the things (eggs/wool/etc.) will do the exploitation on the grounds that they want those products, not because they want to take care of these animals and they have some byproduct you happen to use. The “caretakers” will be focused on their productive output instead of caring for them as pets. This is bad.
More abstractly, utilitarianism has some issues. Approaching morality as a simple math equation can lead to justifying atrocities much easier. When you can just say “the pleasure I get from this is more good than the pain you get is bad”, then you can justify exploitation from a utilitarian perspective. If you take a step back though, it should be obvious that the idea of justifying suffering with pleasure is horrendous, yet this is the core calculus of utilitarianism.
A focus on rights and their violations leads to a moral view that doesn’t allow you to use your own pleasure, or pleasure more generally, to justify inflicting harm. It’s a better system for the oppressed, while utilitarianism is better for the oppressors.
I don’t agree that utilitarianism is pro-oppression by nature, especially when reasonable consideration is applied. As an example, you present the transition from exploitative practices (eggs/wool/etc) without harm to the same practices with harm. This being allowed with the justification that my pleasure is worth more than their pain (an argument you attribute to the utilitarian camp). However, that would be defined as egoism rather than the utilitarianism. Utilitarians would posit all beings capable of suffering or pleasure ought to be given adequate consideration for their relative abilities.
I think many rule based utilitarians, myself included, would find a reasonable course of action in our future, even with capitalism being the main force of economic action. For example, the pleasure one receives for consuming an egg is small, while the suffering in current industry practices is great. This would result in a severely bad hedonistic calculus from utilitarians, even if the egoists would love it. However, in the future, we may be presented with options like I showed in my original post. Ones without suffering. In those, the ends do indeed justify the ends as the means provides no harm, and the ends provide only good.
I would argue that the deontological argument of “animals have innate rights” is considered in the utilitarian approach as well, even if it is presented differently. The argument from my point of view is that most animals, besides ourselves, clearly have the basic ability to thrive and suffer. That ability needs to be considered in our calculations. This, I would say, is the core tenant of utilitarianism. All who can suffer, ought not to have to suffer. All who can thrive, ought to be able to thrive. All who can provide these qualities to others, ought to do so to the best of their abilities.
Similarly, and more of a tangent on my personal views: I sit firmly in the negative utilitarian camp. I acknowledge that more good is better than neutrality, but clearly the removal of suffering needs to be the primary impetus for action. So I am extremely rarely in agreement with the idea that “the pleasure I get from this is more good than the pain you get is bad.” As in that, pleasure, especially smaller pleasures, are weighted more than suffering.
A utilitarian and an egoist can often align on what is “just” so long as the pleasure of some action outweighs the pain it inflicts. Of course there’s no actual way to measure X pleasure or Y pain, but people will make claims to how much pain/pleasure they get in some scenario and use it as justification for whatever they want.
We’d agree that the pleasure of egg consumption is small, but I know many people who will say things like “I can’t give up cheese” or “I can’t give up eggs”. They’ll go as far to say the only pleasure they get out of life is eating food, and that no amount of suffering could outweigh the raw pleasure they get in a utilitarian calculation.
Since there’s no proper test we can do to say “no you’re only getting 4 units of pleasure but you’re inflicting 80 units of suffering for that egg”, all we can go on is people’s own judgement about their own pleasure, and their guesses about the pain they inflict. It’s a very ad-hoc and non-principled approach, that anyone can use to justify anything so long as they say they’ve hit some required pleasure threshold.
This is all an argument against utilitarianism, not negative utilitarianism specifically, which does alleviate some of these issues. You’ll still come up against moral issues that deontological ethics can solve but negative utilitarianism cannot (e.g why is it unethical to kill a person who has no connections and whose death will not produce any negative utility in the world). A rule utilitarian would say yes this is fine ethically, but the rule should be that killing is unethical because that’ll produce the most positive utility/least negative utility. This would allow people to justify isolated murders so long as it’s not setup as a rule for society that murder is okay, and that the murders produced no negative utility (e.g painless killing methods etc.).
As for more practical considerations in regards to animals, I’ll allude back to my point about being unable to actually quantify pleasure/pain units. Someone right now might say that a “family farm” of chickens is ethical because the positive utility outweighs the negative utility of the chickens, unaware of the kinds of pain the chickens go through or the maceration of the baby males required to allow the females to survive in a profitable environment. But you might be able to find a more “ethical” form of exploitation that you might find okay that still produces negative utility that you just don’t recognize as such.
The safe way to go about the world is to recognize the rights of these animals the same way we recognize the rights of humans. Whether you want to call them natural rights or human-constructs, it doesn’t matter. These animals shouldn’t be exploited for their byproducts even if we can’t find any negative utility being inflicted. Life is always going to have some kind of suffering in it, so veganism usually implies an antinatalist stance for non-human animals. As a negative utilitarian yourself, you should recognize that we don’t have the right to birth animals as they might experience negative utility as a result of our exploitation, even if we try our best to mitigate it.
Interestingly, I am not actually on the side of antinatalists. I think a short term negative utilitarian thought process usually justifies antinatialism, but I also view the entirety of their ideals as short sighted. To use the most popular example in being against human birth, they might argue that human life has so much suffering that the good can never could justify it; especially, the suffering to others. However, we ought to think about the future implications of our actions. If we were to go to the extreme, stop the cycle of human birth, then eventually we do end up wiping ourselves out - the antinatalist ideal. But if I am to also use extreme future circumstance, what is stopping a future species from continuing to cause suffering? What about the suffering currently happening in the wild? I’d argue the approach from antinatalists forgets about these realities and does not actually reduce harm. Especially because there is a decent likelyhood that we eventually have a far less negative impact than we have now (see: veganism and environmentalism on the rise). I also acknowledge it could get worse, but I try not to dwell on speculation if I cannot reasonably discern the consequences, unlike the antinatalist position which most certainly does conclude the elimination of humans as a whole is good.
Anyway, back to our original conversation lol. I am familiar with some utilitarians that bring up relative harm and gain. In fact, I acknowledge that is, from my view, a significant weakness in their argument because of the subjectivity involved in an seemingly objective world view. However, I wouldn’t throw out utilitarian beliefs because of the shortcomings of a few lines of thinking. One of the arguments I’ve increasingly found more reasonable as of late is Singer’s arguments of “What We Owe Each Other”. In this attempt to answer your question of how we compare relative good/bad effects, he would argue we ought to do all we can to help one another, or in a different sense, all we can to make sure others are not harmed. For the hypothetical, “Yeah the chickens die, but I looooove wings” or other equally egregious examples, Singer would say that is well within our means to ensure we do not cause the suffering to those chickens. It is very easy, from and objective stance, to say that the trade there is not equal.
For Singer, the extent to which we should go in our consideration of others is as far as we can until we have put ourselves in relative equality to their well-being (a sort of indirect egalitarian view). For a less extreme example, he would posit I should help my struggling neighbor by cooking them a nutritious meal (a good for them), even if it costs me money and took my time away (a bad for me). However, I do not necessarily have to do that if I am struggling at an equal or less point to them. On a tangent, some of his views on effective altruism in practice seem flawed to me, but that’s for a different conversation I suppose.
That brings me back to the original point of my posting: animal byproducts. When I think of what may be permitted, I think back to Singer’s viewpoint. With that, the question isn’t “what can I permit”, but rather, “how much can I help.” This fundamental switch in ethical priority allows us to do all we can to inhibit harm rather than do everything we want, but not in specific cases. So for chickens laying eggs, I ought to do the most that I can to help them. Whether that be going vegan, protesting, speaking with others in my community, etc. That does not mean I should not use their byproducts though. For that, we’d first need to establish that it harms them. In the hypothetical presented in the original post, this requirement does not hold true, therefore there is no reason for concern.
Also, before I give my fingers a break from typing, I feel its important to note I do acknowledge there are rough edge cases with the views presented. Hell, Singer is as famous as he is because if he is not shy about confronting them. However, I find some deontological views equally troublesome. For a not-so-extreme example, if I do not exploit the chickens in the example I laid out, what do the carnivores eat? Currently, there is no means to feed them except for animal products and wiping them out requires significant harm and ecological horror. With that in mind, if I am to commit wholly to the idea of never exploiting an animal, I am dooming some wild animal to a likely violent death that I could have otherwise stopped. I’ve met several threshold deontologist that would say there is clearly some threshold for exploitative harm, but it seems to me that we run into the same issue you just presented when we go down that path (where is the line). That, I find to be more uncomfortable than some of Singer’s bullet-biting.
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:
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
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.
To more surely reduce negative utility, it’s a much simpler and sure approach to just reject the idea that exploiting animals is permissible.
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).
If I have to say what most convinced me in my head canon/ethics, it would be the one thought experiment where if you got to choose what the world would be like but you couldn’t choose who you would be in the world, what would you want that world to be like?
And I would choose a vegan world every time. So I practice what I want the world to be.
To me, I am the cow, I am the pig, I am me. We are all that blind space traveler. None of us got to choose what body we ended up in.
Wow, all of these posts are a lot to read. I agree with everyone for the most part. Living up to ethical standards can be incredibly challenging, half due to the sheer ignorance or difficulty of finding out how things are manufactured, and the unexpected edge-cases that can really challenge a person’s morality. This is something I call philosophical courage, and it requires that I do hard things and end relationships with people who consistently violate the principles I have, because in many cases it is tantamount to consenting to behavior I think is wrong.
I stopped eating animals and using products made from them when I finally understood how horrifically and at the incredible scale that animals are mistreated. I became vegan when I finally understood that I can live a long healthy life without eating meat or dairy, eliminating the main excuse people have for avoiding change. I personally dislike eating, I find it a chore, so I never felt like I was missing out on taste, a quality that is usually improved by adding plants anyways.
While I do think it is ethical to keep utilitarian items like clothing made of leather, since they last a long time and wearing things you own for as long as possible reduces the waste cycle immensely, I gave away all my leather stuff because I had developed a strong distaste for being around dead animals, and I sure as well won’t wear them.
Some things I have become less extreme about, like eating honey. I am still incredibly ambivalent about it, because it is essentially taking away the food made through the labor of the animals that need it, but I also got sick recently and honey did a lot for my throat. I don’t know, I feel ignorant about this.
I made an exception for buying shoes made of wool, because they were super nice and on sale, and the fact that we have domesticated sheep to produce so much hair that they essentially die if they are not sheered is a gray area for me.
Saying all that, what is really important for my is respecting the autonomy and rights of animals, and the exploitation of them is depressing and immoral. I am personally against the ownership of animals, AKA pets. I think zoos are disgusting and is basically slavery. The fact that we treat dogs and cats better than people but fuck over any other species is stupid and evil. I also think riding horses is wrong.
Many animals are incredibly intelligent, especially animals slaughtered for their flesh like pigs and cows. I truly believe humans can live harmoniously with other species, the way a myriad of animals live together in a forest, but with a lot less death.
Animals should be treated with respect, interacted with as companions, given their space and habitat to thrive. We should not be destroying the rain-forest just to make demand for meat. It is like blowing your brains out in order to feed your family while in the middle of a garden, because your children do not like the taste of vegetables.
Yet… I recently met someone I really care about who is not vegan, and I do not want to lose. We share a lot of the same outlook on life and are on similar career paths; she makes me a better person. So, my concept of philosophical courage is kicking my ass because I might eventually lose her because of what she eats.
I don’t know, this sucks.
I think I share some of the same view points, although for different reasons.
One thing I wonder is if returning animals to their natural habitats is always the better option. This idea mostly comes from the shear magnitude of wild animal suffering. We like to think of nature as harmonious, but it is incredibly violent with death and suffering being a daily or evenly hourly threat. This happens in nature whether or not humans are involved.
With that said, I don’t think there is much I can do personally to prevent wild animal suffering from that standpoint. Instead, I think we might want to consider the possibility that animal husbandry is a decent idea. Not in the idea that we should use animals for wide scale commodification and consumption (requiring their early death). But rather, we adapt other animals into our lives and keep them safe while providing them with the maximum possible comfort and protection.
As per my chicken example, a wild chicken is far better suited to live with me than in the wild. Killing or harming them would negate the good of keeping them from danger as I am now the new threat, but “owning” them isn’t necessarily bad. I would more so frame it as being a caretaker, even if they produce something that we like or can use. Similarly to my dog hair example, just using the natural byproduct from an animal isn’t bad ethically, it’s just the way we do it where we find issue. So if they were to continue laying eggs at a rate that doesn’t hurt them, I see no issue in eating said eggs in the same way I see no issue in using the hair that is naturally shed/cut from my dog to improve their and my livelyhood (if their hair was indeed useful).
I will say it’s a tricky paradigm. Owning sounds inherently wrong because we recall ideas of slavery and all the implications of that such as forced labor and abuse. But that is using human ideas of jobs, freedom, choice, etc. It’s why I would rather focus on how my actions impact the chicken’s well being rather than abstract ideas. Even if it is more difficult sometimes to grapple with, I feel the chicken, or any other example animal is far better off living their whole life in a caretaker situation with no suffering caused by the use of their byproduct, than really any other.
As an aside, I hope you and the person you care about work out. It’s tough to be patient when you care about something so deeply, but I hope that you’re able to pull through and you both are happy :)
I think about that too, but it seems like a sisyphean effort to protect every animal. I think this mentality comes from the fact that humans have transformed most of the land on Earth, destroying habitats and killing off species in the process. It doesn’t help that most people are biased to only care about a handful of animals, and treat everything else like some bizarre alien as if they don’t belong to the same planet.
It is maddeningly lame and annoying to hear people talk about animals. I cannot count the number of omnivores who say to my face that the love all animals. ALL ANIMALS? Just the dumbest rationalization to keep themselves from questioning there own morality.
Anyways, thank you! I am headed out for a date soon, so I am happy.
I mean, I am the only person in my family who is vegan. I don’t hate me family, I just don’t like to be near them when they eat.
I tend towards consequentialism and prioritise ‘reduction of suffering’ as my main criterion. I believe that I should try and reduce suffering if I can, or at least not passively allow it where it causes me no real suffering (eg. Buying mostly secondhand clothes, repairing clothes, eating vegan etc.) I simply do not need to eat animals and so I don’t.
I’m not sure this counts as any kind of comprehensive philosophy but it’s where I’m starting from.
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I’m answering first and reading your answer and replies after.
- It is not necessary to consume animal products to meet or exceed nutritional and energy requirements. They are not necessary to clothe or shelter us.
- Consumption of animal products is an inefficient use of land and resources, causing deforestation and food insecurity.
- If culturally normalised globally, meeting demand for animal products results in enormous suffering, to humans and animals. CAFOs cause psychological, ecological, and biological damage. Using products they produce (vegetarianism) usually ends up with them still entering in the same suffering and premature death system because of economic incentives.
- Animals are sentient and prefer a state of relative wellbeing and satisfaction of natural instincts just like we do. Making excuses to violate animals does not align with principals of nonviolence and compassion for beings.
- Altering animals genetically via breeding practices to make them more suitable for our purposes (increasing wool on sheep, increasing meat or egg size on chickens) causes unnecessary suffering.
- We are an exceptionally numerous and powerful species whose actions transform the world. We can make choices that lead to flourishing or to horror on massive scales. We can’t take an “individualist” approach assuming that our specific way of doing things (such as a quaint family farm) would scale across billions of people.
I really admire those who sacrificed sensory pleasures to meet these objectives, but in my part of the world I don’t even have to. While I sacrificed the specific sensory pleasure of specific foods, for me analogous just as satisfactory replacements exist. It’s really not too much different than moving away from a place where you had one favorite restaurant to a place where that restaurant doesn’t exist so you pick a new favorite restaurant.
Sorry, long post ahead:
I agree with points 2, 5, and parts of the others. But I disagree on specifics of a few of said points.
It is not necessary to consume animal products to meet or exceed nutritional and energy requirements. They are not necessary to clothe or shelter us.
It is true that humans can go without an animals byproducts and survive with ease. However, I will note that in an ideal scenario of no-slaughter and high-welfare laws, wool is a superior alternative to plastic clothing given how wasteful plastic products are. However, this is only relevant for cold parts of the world where normal cotton clothing is inadequate. I myself opt for plastic and second hand wool, but would rather have an option of a sheep in my care which would never encounter any harm if we are to continue to experience cold environments. Additionally, eggs specifically serve as a great means to care for non-human animals that do indeed need animal-based foods. Maybe in the future, lab grown meat will replace the need for this, but currently it seems to be the best option to reduce suffering overall. Finally, just because something is not necessary, does not mean we shouldn’t do it. If indeed my hypothetical care for a hen is only positive (nutritionally thriving, warm home, freedom to roam the yard to scavenge and perch, etc), then eating the non-fertilized eggs they produce is a neutral act. As with the example in the original post, if you were to use a dogs hair they let out from shedding as a coat, I would view that as a completely neutral option. Maybe slightly positive since it would be thrown out otherwise.
Using products they produce (vegetarianism) usually ends up with them still entering in the same suffering and premature death system because of economic incentives.
Usually, yes. but I do not advocate for this. I advocate for a future of companionship between humans and chickens that features either a commensalistic or mutualistic relationship. One where no one is harmed. Something along the lines of how people treat their dogs/cats now. I believe this is quite achievable with animal welfare laws.
We can’t take an “individualist” approach assuming that our specific way of doing things (such as a quaint family farm) would scale across billions of people.
Sure, a quaint farm wouldn’t scale across a billion people. But you do not need it to. I am specifically pointing to this being a good relationship, not that all people should have it. Similarly, I advocate for people to grow their own food. However, I understand that mass farming is necessary for plant foods to be grown for a majority of people. If we are to assume that my hypothetical situation features no harm to the chickens while giving them a great life (like I might give for my dog), then I see it as a net good.
Animals are sentient and prefer a state of relative wellbeing and satisfaction of natural instincts just like we do. Making excuses to violate animals does not align with principals of nonviolence and compassion for beings.
This is my biggest drop off in views. Non-human animals definitely do prefer a state of well being and do seem to have senses of individualism and other traits we value. However, it is important not to assign anthropomorphic ideas to them. For example, I know my dog loves to go outside and run around. If I were to give him full freedom and access to express his natural instincts, I would just let him outside to roam free. However, I know that I can give him a superior that features living in a warm area with access to food at standard times, frequent treats, and lots of time exercising outside with me or others present. I would view chickens in the same way I view said dog. An animal I ought to take care of while letting them express their instincts to a reasonable extent as to not harm them. So i’d give them a heated barn to protect them from the elements and predatory animals as well as provide nutritional assistance as foraging is not always ideal. During the day, they’d be free to roam the yard and fulfill their wishes.
I think it’s very important to acknowledge how awful living in the wild really is. Obviously, the current treatment of animals is worse, but I wouldn’t say we shouldn’t live with them as a part of our lives. Just a far better relationship featuring care and never harm.
I had a similar discussion here, if you’re not in a long conversation sorta mood. Nevoic and I talked about the relative merits of rights vs welfare approaches. I think my conclusion after speaking with them is that I still find utilitarian systems of practice to be more reasonable, but I understand and can empathize with the deontologists
I choose not to refer to myself or other people with philosophical terms. I prefer to use the words to describe specific arguments. Basically a person can make a deontological argument without referring to themselves as a deontologist. I think the scenarios of life are diverse enough that a person may find one way of reasoning more applicable in a certain realm and another in another. Or you could even want to justify an action with multiple arguments. Sometimes, I make deontological arguments for my social relationships but I don’t commonly use them outside. I often find utilitarian arguments useful, but they also have their limitations.
I didn’t enjoy giving up wool when I became a vegan because I was a needlefelter. I also don’t think anyone can deny that wool is a material with great properties.
But in the reality of the world we live in, and specifically for me, my use of wool is potentially tied up with a system of live transport. Typically when animals used for wool reach the end of their lives, they’re packed up on ships in a brutal manner and sent to be processed for meat. I’d hate to make a mistake and accidentally support that, either by making an errant purchase or stochastically inducing someone else to buy wool who would likely buy it from that system instead of mutualistic scenarios.
I don’t really have a enough of a problem with someone buying secondhand wool to protest it. There are products that I purchased before becoming vegan that I’m using until the end of their lifespan.
Personally, I don’t necessarily have a problem with mutualistic relationships between animals and humans, such as we see in certain sanctuaries. I’d be willing to evaluate moral decisions in such situations on a case by case basis. But I do think that in today’s climate, animal welfare is just a smokescreen for animal exploitation. So many people justify eating meat from CAFOs with the idea that they buy from family farms some percentage of the time. The urgency for me is to stop the massive exploitation than to entertain edge cases, and the way to do that is to advocate veganism.
As to whether it would be morally neutral for me to eat an egg from a backyard hen in specific scenarios, perhaps it is. I just don’t really see why I would, when I don’t have any real reason to. I think that feeding eggs from rescued hens to other rescued animals is potentially justifiable, although I would want to learn more and rule out alternatives before I would confidently vote yes that its ok to do it.
Yeah, green/ethical washing seems to be annoyingly more prevalent these days. One thing that you might be interested in, given your pluralist approach to ethics, is this strategy guide to the welfarist approach. It acknowledges that we need to change people’s mind, but also presents the idea that cultures change slowly so we should probably target easy to achieve goals (cage free -> pasture raised -> no slaughter ->). I will always tell people to just stop doing what they’re doing, but if I have to focus on a wide scale issue, i’ll focus on something achievable to get the ball rolling. After all, it’s very easy to go from flexitarian to vegetarian/vegan than it is to go from a carnist to a vegan.
I’m just curious- how much footage / information have you seen about what actually goes down in the “cage free” egg industry? Why exactly do you see that as “better”?
To me, all that does is convince someone to buy more expensive eggs, when they could just not and save themselves the surcharge.
I am quite aware of each of the labels and their often times meaningless qualities. Have spent about 5 years in the activism space, although there’s always something new.
But I will say, each step is indeed better. You are right to point out that others will just buy the caged-chicken eggs as they’re cheaper. This tells me we need better legislation so standards are not up to struggling individuals, but enforced laws. But people will not vote for law makers nor will law makers introduce and vote on bills that are unpopular with people. We need more people to feel that cage-free is the default. This is obviously just a stepping stone, but it is a vital one.
Each step, while incremental, is vital to changing the world. There are a significant portion of people currently alive that will never change there ways unless given an easier solution. They ought to change, but we need to work with what we can for the time being. With that, we can advocate for policy changes, research in good alternatives, and bring about campaigns without the corporate sphere, even if it seems like we’re doing very little.
Even if the goal is the abolition of human and non-human interaction, we need logical steps to get there. Otherwise, we don’t move the world forward.
I come from the perspective of someone who felt tricked into years of animal exploitation by the welfarist position. I wasted hundreds if not thousands of dollars buying grassfed, free range, yada yada bullshit.
And in my view I should have just either kept that money or just went vegan. I don’t think jt did anything good, I don’t think it moved the world further at all. All it did was make me poorer and make me delay doing the right thing, the thing that does make a difference, which is going vegan.
Its not to say I wouldn’t engage in dirty pragmatism when I’m arguing with others. I emulate my best friend who made the biggest impact on me. I’m ok using any means necessary to make carnists reduce their consumption of animal products, including praising “small steps” like Veganuary or meatless monday or something. But my friend never coddled my delusion of animal welfarism and I also draw the line there.
Would I vote on a bill that made battery cages illegal? Sure. Would I try to convince carnists to also do that? Sure. That’s the extent of it. I’m not going to tell someone cage free is ok or better. Id just focus on how bad battery cages are.
I think that is a reasonable approach. I also reason personally that just not buying the eggs is better than the pasture raised eggs. That being said, my OP was about the theoretical on what is right and wrong, not the practical advice I’d tell others in their purchasing decisions.
Good discussion on how we ought to engage with people. 10/10 would do again
My current stand is reduce the suffering in the world as much as possible. You can’t be perfect.
I have an interesting question. My girlfriend is a vet and she has a vet pharmacy. She has saved a lot of animals and in the same time she sells animal food and most of it is made from meat.
Without selling animal food the pharmacy will not exist since it’s the most of the income and without the pharmacy she will not be able to save animals.
Is selling meat in this case justified, in your point of view?
Vets are not interested in animal welfare. Your wife’s profession exists to enable and enhance the exploitation of animals. Without disrespect.
I don’t think it makes sense to kill an animal to “rescue” another animal from any ethical point of view. We do it because we love one animal more than another, or because one animal is more valuable as property than another animal, or other reasons that have nothing to do with animal ethics.
I See your point but I don’t agree. Saing vets are not interested in animal welfare is like saying doctors are no interested in human welfare.
In a perfect world people will not have pets. I don’t now where you are from but here we have a big problem with homeless dogs and cats. Its because of people like her the animals on the street are having a better life and preventing from more animals ending the same way.
From me is important the difference that a person is able to make. Not selling food will not change anything because people are going to buy it from someware anyway. Saving few hundred animals makes a difference.
That’s just not a valid comparison.
A doctor has a duty of care to their patient. A doctor must not do anything that is not in their patient’s best interests.
A vet has a duty of service to their patients OWNER. A vet will do anything to their patient that the owner pays for. If I own a bull, and I want to hold his heart in my hand just because I think that would be cool, a vet will help me make that happen.
They are not at all the same thing.
Most vets work in the field of animal agriculture. They are facilitating cruelty and violence on an industrial scale. They are not looking out for the welfare of animals. The animals that they treat are property; those animals exist for some function that serves humans, and vets very obviously exist to facilitate that exploitation, not to come to the aid of the exploited animals.
Why shouldn’t stray animals that cannot take care of themselves and have no human guardians be destroyed? Why should we instead kill OTHER animals so that these ones can be kept alive? No animals are being saved! You’re just choosing to kill a bunch of food animals instead of one pet. It’s self-interested speciesism, not altruistic compassion!
Sorry if I did not explain myself well. Here some points that I think are not quite right
A doctor must not do anything that is not in their patient’s best interests
Is true just because of the law.
A vet has a duty of service to their patients OWNER
Its not a duty, the vet can always say no to a client, he is not required to kill or heal, its his choice. (Because there are no laws for it yet)
Why shouldn’t stray animals that cannot take care of themselves and have no human guardians be destroyed?
I don’t know. Here the stray animals are not destroyed. My girlfriend chose to provide free service so they can be healed and castrated. So the population of the stray animals will decrease over time.
Why should we instead kill OTHER animals so that these ones can be kept alive? No animals are being saved! You’re just choosing to kill a bunch of food animals instead of one pet. It’s self-interested speciesism, not altruistic compassion!
I cant stop the killing of the animals and I don’t know anyone who can. The only solution I see is for people to stop having pets, but that is not up to me.
Its not a duty, the vet can always say no to a client, he is not required to kill or heal, its his choice.
I’m a vet student in the Netherlands, and here vets have a legal obligation to treat an animal in need. That being said, the interpretation of this law is quite lackluster. For example, farm animals are way more likely to get euthanized not because treatment is impossible, but because making money off of the animal is impossible. A farmer won’t spend more money on an animal that has become economically unviable and the vets are happy to comply.
In fact, and that’s my main point, they effectively have to comply. Sure, vets can refuse to do something they think is immoral. But if you have a vegan moral system, you simple can’t be a vet (at least not one for farm animals). You can’t provide the services the customers ask for.
I partly agree with [email protected] that vets don’t care about animal wellbeing. They care selectively about some animals. They only care about preventing suffering they think is unnecessary, and that is where the problem lies. Because way less is necessary than non-vegans think, since animal agriculture does not need to be profitable because it does not need to exist.
Probably you are right. I don’t know vets who work in with animal farms. But I think that not all vets are the same.
I assume you are one of does who care about the animal wellbeing?
Yes, and unlike 99% of my peers I care as much about the wellbeing of a pig as that of a dog. To me it’s just indefensible to help an industry do immoral things to pigs that not a single one of us would condone if done to dogs.
Unlike OP I’m not just interested in wellbeing though, but also animal rights. So I would still oppose painless slaughter for example.
One reason is that again, most of us take issue with the painless killing of a young healthy dog. Imagine someone who has their dog painlessly killed every time they go on a holiday, and then buy a new one afterwards. Is that fine? I don’t think so.
Sounds like a tough situation for her. I imagine being in that field must be a large source of internal conflict - definitely something I would have problems reasoning with.
From my POV, the hedonistic calculation might check out depending on the relative impact we give to each of these interactions. For example, killing an animal directly is probably less bad than buying an animal product (from a utilitarian perspective) since there’s a level of capitalistic abstraction I cannot reasonably account for because of my tiny human brain. So sure, she’s making money by use of harming animals, but its not as bad as directly harming said animals, and there’s a tough moral dilemma of which animals we ought to help all things being equal.
I think we all would find that the best solution would be to phase out the breeding of feline and other obligate carnivorous animals to limit or eliminate the need for killing others for their food. But for the time being, I find it difficult to find something for your girlfriend to do better. Seems to me that she is doing the best thing she can.
