I like to look into a bunch of things that are best avoided when talking to colleagues and whatnot. One of those things is abortion, which is obviously a controversial and delicate topic that everyone, and especially every HR department, would rather avoid. Another one of those things I like to look into, one that is maybe a bit more accessible but still controversial, would be veganism. For me these two things sorta coincided over time, with my thoughts about abortion forming into a pro-life position even while, or maybe especially while, I was looking into veganism, agreeing with it in some ways, disagreeing with it in other ways, and even having spats with vegans here and there... Whatever it may be, I just kept finding lots of echoes of the two ideas as listening to vegan activists in video essays or podcasts makes me very often come across thoughts that I could very easily plagiarize into a pro-life statement. In fact, a quick exchange that I once “won” against a vegan was when I brought up the idea of showing abortion footage as often as vegans show footage of factory farming. He partly agreed with me and then played Socrates a little bit as he asked me the golden question – What's the morally relevant trait about animals that in your view justifies exploiting and killing them? So I figured I should parry it instead of answering, and I told him to give me his justification for abortion because whatever it might be I'm fairly certain I could easily rework it into an anti-vegan position.
8. The moral value of an animal cannot be based on usefulness.
A lot of people, perhaps some more pragmatic people, argue against vegans by saying that animals are useless outside of being turned into food. They don't build things or at least not important ones, they don't write books, they don't sing songs or at least not proper songs... Ultimately, they don't do much of value. You might enjoy sitting on a park bench to watch the ducks for a bit but after a while you just get bored because nothing is happening. In essence then, animals are considered by some to hold no value other than what they can do for us, and that for them to die, preferably quick, and to then be used for something good is better than them going about their apparently empty lives, like these mindless flesh robots.
Vegans obviously counter this idea in many ways, but I'd say one of the most essential one is to say that the value of a living being can never be dependent on what that being can do for someone else. The inherent moral value of life cannot be based on a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately approach, and it must instead be inherent to all living things who, by definition, want to go on living their natural lives. It therefore seems to me that, although it might require some more building, we might likewise see the value of the unborn as something inherent as well, and not dependent on what cool tricks they can do.
7. If animals are somehow useless and lower, then humans should be their caretakers.
More or less in line with the previous statement some people might also consider that animals lack the capacity of awareness that humans have. They don't really care about most things, and if they seem to it's just because people create abstractions in their minds, derived from instances of imagined meaningful communication. In reality, animals are considered by some to be stupid and unaware, they kinda don't care what happens to them as long as it's quick and painless, and if some pain does befall them they appear to forget it soon after. At the end of the day, they don't seem to particularly want anything, and since they don't then maybe we can put them to good use.
Vegans might counter this one with layered arguments, first by refuting some of the claims and finding odd instances of animals appearing to communicate and exhibiting some real human behaviors. And second, the vegan might counter by saying that even if it is the case that animals are stupid and unaware, then doesn't it mean that precisely for that reason the smart and aware humans should be their caretakers, and not their butchers? In a way I might be inclined to agree, because of course, a living thing being frail is precisely further reason to award it more moral consideration, not less.
6. Should an animal go rogue, its owner is the one to blame.
This one is a bit more practical and quotidian. Oftentimes we hear stories of big dogs who attack someone for one reason or another. It sparks a significant debate as people need to figure out what to do with the beast. Quite often the courts will order that the dog be put to sleep, which once again, it seems very much like a regrettable but practical decision. But a lot of people, even a lot of non-vegans, become quite upset, arguing that the dog has no particular awareness of its crime and that the true culprit is the owner due to surely mistreating the dog, or else the culprit is the fella who must have antagonized the dog. In a nutshell then, it is believed that the innocent one here is being cruelly punished for someone else's lack of responsibility.
This one seems a bit funny because it's strange how so many people are vehemently against the animal being put to sleep even after a violent attack because they are capable of retracing the steps until they find what they believe to be the root cause of the problem. When they do so they inevitably conclude that the dog didn't do more than being a dog, although certain circumstances led him to harm someone. So let's say for the sake of argument that one fella owns and mistreats a dangerous dog, and another fella walks past the gate and provokes the dog. The dog bites the fella, the dog is put to sleep, and people become outraged blaming both the owner and the pedestrian because it seems they are capable of reasoning that regardless of whoever has the blame, the truth as they see it is that the dog is the innocent one, and yet he's the one being made to pay the ultimate price. But why? Because I guess it's easy, because it's better to not exist than to exist complicatedly. But at what point does that reasoning become so pragmatic to the point of being immoral?
5. Every living being should be allowed to continue on living.
After initial defenses regarding some of the previous points, a vegan might go on to grant that even if an animal is, for all intents and purposes, useless, it is still immoral to harm or kill it simply because it's intuitively understood by everyone that every living creature has an inherent desire to continue to live. Indeed, this seems universal, everything that is alive wants to continue to live until their dying day comes like a thief in the night, and if that thing in question appears incapable of communicating we still assume that, by the mere laws of nature, it is best left alone rather than interfered with.
This seems very logical to me, but if we are inclined to leave all animals to their own devices so that they can determine how they want to live their lives, then maybe likewise we should leave the unborn to grow and develop however they should. Or at the very least maybe we should assume that though seemingly unaware, it is a much safer bet to say that the embryo is more inclined towards life than towards death. Or then at the very very least maybe we should assume that just because the embryo can't quite communicate it doesn't mean we can assume that non-existence is the way to go.
4. No one should be able to claim ownership over anyone else.
I myself have jokingly brought this one up before, arguing that farmers have the right to choose what they do with the animals they own. The counter that vegans have towards this idea is fairly immediate, as are their analogies, though those are rather sensitive to make and quite risky within the optics game before a crowd of “speciesists” which is to say most people. Still, it makes some intuitive sense, no human being can claim ownership of another, and even if legally we do in fact take ownership of farm animals and pets, you might say we don't own them because in truth we can't. When it comes to pets this is more noticeable, as vegans and even some non-vegans tend to avoid calling themselves pet owners, or at least they consider the pet to be a member of the family, and they certainly avoid referring to their dog or cat with the it pronoun.
So then in essence if the situation at hand describes two different individuals, why should one be able to use the body of the other for resources? And even worse, why should one be able to end the other's life due to a claim of ownership? They really shouldn't, they are two separate bodies and two separate beings. Still, some people might claim that in this case the embryo isn't allowed to use the mother's body against her will neither, in a very much quid pro quo fashion, I suppose. And even if we fully grant it, which we might not be inclined to do because after all, it is in a dog's nature to be a dog, the big difference is how one solution to the problem is much more forever than the other.
3. If you're not vegan you should be able to stomach footage of factory farming.
As I mentioned before, this is probably the first parallelism I came up with. Vegans often carry shocking footage of factory farming to show to wandering people, which I suppose is a strategy that makes sense, at least sometimes. They argue that if you support a thing then you should be able to witness it just as you would witness any other process. You should be able to, quite literally, see how the sausage is made... To paraphrase Cheese Wagstaff, there's some psychology here, seeing as a person's reaction to such a thing could be sidestepping the morality of the action itself, no matter if that sidestep goes one way or the other. But it is still interesting philosophically because surely if you don't see anything inherently wrong with any given something then you also can't be too upset at the procedure through which you obtain that something. To be upset seems to indicate a kind of compromise, a kind of loophole that allows you to support something you know you wouldn't otherwise, especially if you knew there was a better way, a cleaner way.
Likewise the parallels here seem obvious to me. Most people who are quite in favor of abortion aren't very keen to watch such footage, which seems hypocritical to me. You might say those same people aren't also inclined to watch colonoscopies but that don't mean they wanna ban them. Yeah, sure, but I think looping back around to the psychology point I'd say most people know there's an intuitive difference between physical disgust and moral disgust. Maybe in some measure these things overlap, especially if you take a naturalistic approach to morality, or even if you don't. But still, at the end of the day I'm left with a sneaking suspicion that our moral intuitions regarding such blatant carnage are often correct. And if I'm wrong about that then I'm at least right that if vegans wanna blast factory farming footage all the time then I might could do something similar in return.
2. Convenience is never a good enough reason to end a life.
Which is more important – convenience or life? That's a go-to question for vegans, though sometimes they mention taste pleasure instead. It's a pretty strong question to ask, especially to any person who has already granted, though he's correct or not, that the vegan diet is feasible. If so then it does lead that person to conclude that taste pleasure achieved from a varied gastronomy, plus the convenience of not having to change, aren't good enough reasons to bring sentient lives into this world only to then end them to fulfill those pursuits, which we would all see as rather vapid. This being the case, vegans argue that a person's convenience should never outweigh someone else's life, though by “someone” they include animals too of course, because they identify in animals more than enough moral value for their lives to be protected as a matter of principle.
I'd say the same applies within pro-life. A lot of times you don't find yourself arguing against the morality of the action in itself, you instead find yourself arguing against specific cases of specific people who had to deal with specific problems. Pro-life people often get pushed into a corner, and in responding they try to be measured, and maybe they even start thinking that if they were in the given situation they might momentarily forgo their pro-life principles. But even if they did, that wouldn't disprove the principles though, because the argument as it stands for both ideologies is that even if it is very convenient for me that a certain life ends, and even if it is very inconvenient for me that said life doesn't end, which I suppose can be different things, it is still the case that convenience should never outweigh life. And we hold this too as a matter of principle.
1. Animals aren't somethings, they are someones.
This one also may have been previously alluded to, and after all, eventually these things all line up and echo with each other... So if the value of an animal cannot be determined by usefulness, what is it determined by? Vegans argue that the only meaningful things you can use to determine the value of a living being are, one, does that being have an experience of the world? And two, can that being suffer? At the end of the day it's all about these two things, and since most animals appear to have both they are therefore held in high regard, their lives cannot be ended for seemingly no valid reason, and their bodies cannot be exploited. Furthermore, some vegans go as far as defending that even their eggs and milk cannot be eaten, even if acquired through harmless means, because it is still wrong to view them as food. Indeed, vegans see animals as individuals, as the differences between us and them are about as superficial as anything else.
For this last parallel with pro-life I am cheating a bit because it's not so much a parallel per se. Given that vegans see sentience and the capacity to suffer as the main traits, they'd be consistent in supporting abortion if the embryo is deemed to have no experience of the world and no capacity to suffer. Perfectly consistent, but where does that consistency lead you? I'd say it leads you towards the absurdity of arguing that a living chicken in your grandma's backyard is morally valuable because of its awareness of the world and maybe even its place as a member of that chicken community, which is somehow held as more valuable than the very real experience of the world and place in society that the embryo will soon have if left undisturbed. In this instance I become quite confused as to how there's little to no reason why a chicken could be killed, but the elimination of an unborn life can be performed for no reason whatsoever, simply because the “thing” that is being killed is unaware, and it is owned by someone else, and it is stupid, and it is useless... just like all animals are in the eyes of non-vegans.
I guess then in closing, if non-vegans are “speciesists” then vegans are “sentienceists” for whom the chosen trait is, at least to me, no less arbitrary than any other. If human life is deemed morally neutral because it lacks sentience, then this judgment call is entirely dependent on at what point in time you choose to draw the line. And even if a given human is perpetually lacking sentience, then I feel as though the vegan would be left with no choice but the absurdity to value the chicken instead, with all its real value and experience of the world, while the potential of the human life was left in the recycling bin... Seems like madness to me, seems like nothing but a very narrow view.
And at the end of it all it also occurs to me that if vegan arguments ring true within pro-life, then pro-life arguments might ring true within veganism. As long as the speciesism charge is eaten I suppose there's no harm done, but either way, I just can't help seeing veganism, or its underlying moral system, as an ironically and fundamentally pessimistic ideology, in which no life has value in and of itself, as its value is just dependent on awareness and suffering. But the cheat-cheat then becomes that anyone incapable of suffering, or anyone for whom awareness of the world has been made lesser, then maybe, just maybe, they are better off never having been born in the first place.
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