https://strawpoll.com/poy9kl5VPgJ
If you’re vegan, please answer the poll question in the link above.
If you’re not vegan, please don’t answer the question. I’m only interested in hearing what vegans think about this.
To be clear, I don’t judge any vegans for believing that humans matter more than other animals. You’re already doing the right thing by being vegan, so that’s fine. It probably wouldn’t affect your actions or decisions in any situation, aside from hypotheticals that are extremely unlikely to happen. So I think that being vegan is compatible with what some may call speciesism or human supremacy etc - or favoring/prioritizing members of your own species - without placing a value judgment on that. As we all know, you don’t NEED to consider all sentient beings as mattering equally, in order to recognize that non-human sentient beings matter more than “your tastebuds” - or your particular fashion preference or whatever - or than your mostly arbitrary habits that you can easily change, and when you can replace and meet all your needs with alternatives.
That said, personally I think all sentient beings matter equally. I’m willing to accept any supposed reductios that extend logically from this view - though I don’t consider them absurd, I find them to be logically sound & I actually find it to be impossible to logically defend speciesism without that leading to even “worse” reductios that the majority of people would be even more appalled by, and which would be far more arbitrary and less benevolent/empathically oriented. But I’m not here to debate that. I just wanted to state what my opinion is on the matter.
I also think that the antispeciesism argument is a great and very convincing/effective argument for veganism/animal rights - it’s convinced many people to go vegan, especially the “Name the Trait” thought experiment etc - so it’s interesting to me when people are vegan despite not agreeing with those antispeciesist arguments, and I really respect that since it indicates to me that you extend compassion to other sentient beings without it needing to be logically proven why you should or why it would be contradictory if you didn’t - it’s just natural empathy.
Plus, of course, we often tend to associate veganism with antispeciesism, and speciesism with carnism/animal exploitation - since they very often go hand-in-hand, and I think speciesism is kind of a risky ideology for a society to believe in while simultaneously significantly devaluing nonhuman animals - to a status lower than a human’s arbitrary desire to eat a particular candy for example, seeing it as a “personal choice” and “right of the human consumer” to do whatever they want to other sentient beings provided they aren’t a more legally protected species like humans, dogs or cats - but we must remember that this doesn’t have to be the case and it is perfectly possible to be vegan without thinking humans and other animals are equally important/hold equal intrinsic moral value, etc. Now, equal moral consideration - or equity - is certainly possible either way, even if you don’t think they hold equal absolute worth.
Very interested to see the poll results, since I’m actually not sure whether most vegans think humans and other animals matter equally or not.
I personally think that humans do “matter more” than most other animals, but I’m not a human exceptionalist. I think there’s a spectrum of neurological complexity (for lack of a better term) that determines a lifeforms ability to experience complex emotional life. The more sophisticated that machinery is, the more moral consideration a being deserves.
One of the benefits of this is line of reasoning is that it also rejects speciesism for a more fundamental categorisation, but still fairly trivially answers questions like: Why can’t animals vote? Or, should killing a sentient animal (an ant, or bee, perhaps) deserve the same punishment as killing a human?
I also think that there is some threshold where there’s essentially no complex emotion processing capability. This, to me, provides a clear and consistent answer to why it is OK to kill some life (plants, microbes) for our own survival, but not others.
Of course there are some problems. The “emotional capacity” or “neurological complexity” measure kinda hand waves away a lot of tough questions about the nature of consciousness that’s at or beyond the limits of our current sciences.
If you asked me to elaborate, in the “name the trait” scenario, and kept digging, I’d quickly run out of my depth, because it’s not my area of expertise.
The problem with the “personal choice” argument is that, under capitalism, the consumer isn’t the one that’s exploiting or slaughtering or butchering. That’s all being done by highly exploited workers, and even if they were paid what they’re worth (and they’re not) there’s ample evidence that this kind of work is inherently deleterious - slaughterhouses especially.
Ultimately, I’m vegan so that no one has to do any of that work for me, and once workers have control I don’t think anyone will ever have to do that kind of work ever again. I’ve done it myself, it’s distressing and horrible, so how could I make someone else do it? This kind of work is always harmful, and it’s just not worth it.
But, no, I don’t think humans and non-human animals have equal ethical value. I just think that the ethical value of humans is the reason to have compassion for non-human animals. How we treat them is correlated with how we treat each other and ourselves.
Interesting. You seem to echo some of Kant’s thoughts on the topic (though he was not explicitly against exploiting and slaughtering animals, but just believed it should be done painlessly [which is obviously still violating the animals’ interests & is an act of violence & brutality by humans, and ignores all the other cruelty in the process of farming them & animal exploitation in general], so not entirely, but perhaps he didn’t even consider meat and animal product eating/using/animal use was unnecessary, and I think a form of “veganism” would be a logical extension of what he said when applying those values consistently and factoring in modern evidence and circumstances):
Immanuel Kant — ‘He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.’
Basically he thought that non-human animals didn’t have intrinsic value or rights, but that their value or rights were extrinsic/instrumental to preserving and protecting human rights - sorry if this isn’t what you meant.
Immanuel Kant believed that while humans have no direct duties to non-human animals, mistreating them can be morally wrong because it can harm one’s own moral character. He argued that actions like cruelty to animals can desensitize individuals to suffering/violence and potentially lead to harmful behavior towards other humans (a lot of more recent psychological research and statistics support these assessments). Therefore, while he considered that non-human animals lack the moral status of “rational beings” (which he considered exclusive to humans, though it’s unclear if believed it to be universally true of all humans ‐ he did describe children, people with certain intellectual disabilities, cognitively declining elderly, and more prejudicially, women and non-Europeans as being less rational…), their mistreatment is still indirectly wrong due to its impact on human morality and the subsequent spillover effect that can have on how humans treat each other. I’m sure he would also be against what slaughterhouse workers are forced to deal with and what happens to those communities of people if he knew about it too (including domestic violence, aligning with the somewhat intersectionalist view of “violence begets violence/oppression/injustice/harm etc”), based on his values.
Of course, the argument from marginal cases which was proposed by people like Roman philosopher Porphyry and Jeremy Bentham - known for the frequently cited animal rights quote “The question is not can they reason, nor can they talk, but can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?” (and later, in modern vegan/animal rights discourse, the argument from marginal cases evolved into the Name The Trait argument, for which we have Isaac Brown AKA “AskYourself” to thank), criticized this stance and challenged its ability to remain consistent in its reasoning without taking away human rights from certain humans who possessed similar mental capacities to the non-human animals whose exploitation was attemptedly justified based on their supposed lack of rationality or lower intelligence.
Sorry to go off topic in critiquing Kant, I know you don’t agree with everything he said, but just some of the things you said reminded me of it - and those are valid points. How we treat non human animals definitely does backfire significantly on humans in a variety of ways. Where I would disagree is that I think non-human animals have innate moral value, deserving of intrinsic rights and protections, even if harming them hypothetically wasn’t going to negatively impact humans - and arguing that it does, even if true, is much harder to prove, in some cases, than recognizing the undeniable direct actions to the non-human animals. Not to be rude, but veganism to me is about animal rights (because I think non-human animals need & deserve their own movement and this is it), not human rights (even though it has positive side-effects for human rights, and human rights obviously matter, equally in my opinion, or the rights of sentient beings in general), and the idea of not exploiting animals just because of its utility in helping humans to not do so, is a very nuanced view (even going beyond plant-based environmentalism, since there are forms of animal exploitation which may not negatively impact the environment necessarily but which are still cruel to the animals, which could be opposed on the basis of it contributing to negative behaviors between humans), but I think some might consider it a form of “plant-based humanism” or “intersectionalist humanist ahimsa” or something, not sure. But, I’m fine if you consider yourself vegan (you are of course by multiple definitions), after all you’re leaving the animals alone, so that’s what matters and I respect your view :)
Having gone this far off topic, though, may as well continue.
I personally have trouble with the writing (or possibly translating) style used in Kantian ethics, so what I know comes second-hand. Since Jeremy Bentham’s argument is Utilitarian rather than directly in the Kantian tradition, I’m curious whether you’ve looked into Christine Korsgaard’s work. She’s a modern philosopher who sticks to Kant’s moral framework but reaches a different conclusion regarding the moral position of animals in their own right.
Been meaning to look into Christine Korsgaard, thanks for reminding me. Multiple vegans have recommended her to me already. I don’t agree with everything Bentham says either, or many ideas associated with utilitarianism for that matter. And I do think veganism is a deontological stance against animal exploitation rather than a utilitarian calculation of how we can do the most good and reduce the most suffering etc. But, Jeremy will forever remain an insightful, pioneering & seminal voice in the animal rights movement, in my opinion - just for some of the specific ideas and thoughts he expressed, not everything.
I suppose my veganism is human-centric out of self-interest and because I am uninterested in moralism. I don’t hurt animals because it hurts me, and I don’t want to make other people hurt animals because it hurts them and that also hurts me. I want to improve human welfare for my own welfare, not out of a moral obligation.
Not to denigrate vegan moralism, since we are ultimately working towards the same goal and essentially doing the same thing. I just don’t think moralism is a firm foundation, at least for me. I needed something material to justify the effort required to become and stay vegan, and that meant understanding the materially deleterious effects of animal exploitation on me and the society I live in.
I think everything is relative to oneself. Certain humans to me matter more than other humans, so certain animals/non-humans matter more than others. My bunny matters more than a lot of humans to me… and a decent amount of animals matter more to me than most humans. So I guess it depends on how close they are to you and what you value.
Tbf I think a being’s “value” and whether they matter differently than others to you are separate things.
Good point. I should have specified I meant discounting other factors that might make you care about someone more or less. So, all else being equal. Let’s say that, for sake of example, a human and a non human animal were both unknown to you, you didn’t have any relationship with either of them, and they were both just as “moral” of individuals, and even had the exact same impact on those around them and the environment, etc (hypothetically, even if that isn’t realistic, to get a sense of where our values lie if the only relevant difference is the species of the individual, and the traits that would entail). We can either equalize those traits or not, either way it should ultimately lead to the same answer, for most people anyway. Btw I’m not asking you what you would do in that situation, just explaining more accurately what I meant.
No, “humans” don’t matter more than non-human animals. First of all, the category of “human” is problematic and largely pseudo-scientific (see post-humanism). Secondly, I don’t think there’s any universal, objective measurement of mattering or “value”. Thirdly, even I agree to work wtih these categories and their labeling, there’s really no reason to value entire species over another entire species. Did Hitler matter more than a good doggo? Hell no. For me it’s a matter of context, individual perspective, etc. Generally I feel like humans are worth less than non-humans in that humans are literally torturing and murdering non-humans on a massive scale to the point that the entire planet will probably become uninhabitable.
(footnote: I would’ve voted “no” on poll but they don’t allow votes from my VPN.)
I largely agree with your take. Could you possibly elaborate on what you meant by the category of human is problematic and largely pseudo scientific? I know only a little bit about posthumanism (and transhumanism, though I know that’s different), but I don’t really immediately see how these ideas connect. I’d love to know more, because this reminds me of concepts I’ve thought about for a long time. I’m developing a theory I call critical species theory - based of course on critical race theory. So this is right up my alley.
Damn, I disabled the VPN restriction too. Dumb site.
I’ll add your vote in mentally.
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Yes, humans are animals. I apologize for when I often accidentally say “humans and animals” or just “animals” to refer to non-human animals. I try to remember to not use language that implies humans aren’t animals, or are in some separate pseudoscientific category, and instead say things like “other animals”, “non-human animals”, “our fellow animals”, “OTHAs (Other-Than-Human-Animals)”, or “non-human sentient beings” (when referring specifically to all animals or all sentient beings who aren’t human, and “sentient beings” or “animals (including humans)” when referring to all animals or all sentient beings).
