[Commenting note: This one is for people who are basically on board with animal rights (whatever their personal dietary limits). If you personally believe that animal suffering is not something people in general should change their diets about, kindly don’t comment.]
I’ve noticed that there are basically two strains in vegan advocacy. One tends to be more consequentialist (“eating animals causes animal suffering, which is bad”); another tends to be deontologist (“we have a rule that says no eating animals and everyone should follow it”). In my opinion, consequentialist veganism is awesome, but deontologist veganism is legitimately harmful to the cause of animal rights.
First, it treats all animal products as if they are the same. For instance, some vegans say that honey is off-limits, while others insist that no true vegan eats bivalves. This is absurd. Harvesting honey does not usually involve harming bees, and from an ethical perspective, bivalves are basically a form of plant. A sensible consequentialist realizes that if we care about animal suffering, then you can slurp down oysters with a honey chaser to your heart’s content. But it violates the “no animal products!” rule, so a whole bunch of people have to give up tasty food for no reason.
Second, deontologist veganism is an all-or-nothing philosophy. In my experience, ex-vegans seem to go back to eating the standard American diet. Many people stop being vegan for sensible reasons: they were deficient in nutrients, they were fatigued and depressed while vegan, they moved back home with their parents who refuse to buy vegan food, or they were a guest in a culture in which refusing food causes great offense. But instead of experimenting to see how they can reduce their meat consumption and preserve their mental health or enjoying the meal their hosts offer and returning to veganism, they go back to having hamburgers for lunch and chicken salad for dinner. This is particularly bizarre, because you would think vegans had already done the hard part (overcoming omnivores’ resistance to the idea that their tasty food was produced in horrifyingly bad conditions).
The reason, I think, is that deontologist veganism doesn’t let people think in shades of gray. Because deontologist veganism involves a single rule– no animal products– people fail with abandon. Consequentialist veganism lends itself to a harm-reduction stance. It asks: can you be vegan at home, or until 7pm, or three days a week? Can you get your animal-product needs met with bivalves and dairy? Can you cut out chicken and eggs, which cause a disproportionate amount of harm? By meeting people where they’re at, consequentialist veganism can result in a much greater overall reduction of animal products.
Third, deontologist veganism involves making weak arguments. In general, consequentialist vegans tend to be opposed to animal suffering; conversely, deontologist veganism tends to be opposed to animal exploitation. Nearly everyone accepts that it is wrong to make animals suffer: they oppose starving cats, forcing dogs to fight each other, or pulling the wings off flies to see what will happen. Most people, however, do not accept that animal exploitation is wrong: they don’t agree that “animals exist for their own reasons and belong in their own habitat with other members of their species… animals themselves belong in their world, not ours, with the freedom to live as they choose.”
Personally, I think that factory farming maintains itself because of omnivores’ collective denial. If the vast majority of people genuinely understood, without flinching away because they don’t want to have to make personal sacrifices, what the animal that produced their chicken pot pie or omelet went through, they would become lacto vegetarian instantly. Attempting to break down this wall of denial is a difficult task. However, it is not helped by deontologist vegans complaining about domestication or using animals as a means rather than an end. We don’t want omnivores to think those silly vegans object to farming because the nice friendly family farmer they see on the egg carton doesn’t respect the animal’s autonomy and sexually assaults the cow by milking it, when in reality we are objecting to animals being tortured.
I don’t see deontologist veganism in the wild very much, because I am lucky enough to be surrounded by sensible consequentialists. But the general cultural idea of a vegan is still a deontologist, and this irks me. Deontology sucks.
Thing of Things 
Could you comment on how shades-of-grey consequentialism works? I’m not all that familiar with consequentialism in general, but my understanding was that it usually states that the only ethical action is the one that maximises well being or preferences of whatever. That would make it as all or nothing as a deontoligical rule.
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I personally see utilitarianism/consequentialism not as selecting *the* ethical action out of all possible actions, but as ranking possible actions on a scale from worse to better. (There may not even be a possible action that maximizes utility, only an infinite series each of which is better than the previous ones.)
I came to this view independently, but I have since learned that it has a name in the the philosophical literature, “scalar utilitarianism”, and a spokesperson, Alastair Norcross.
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Consequentialism let’s you trade off against other priorities. I like not torturing animals, and also not feeling depressed and sick all the time. Torture scales linearly with amount consumed, health returns to meat plateau rapidly. So the utility-maximizing position is “some animal products, but not a lot.”
Amount of torture can further be reduced by replacing factory farmed products with humanely sourced products (backyard chickens can have perfectly wonderful lives and I don’t see gathering the eggs as hurting them)- which lets you trade money for more health while staying ethically neutral.
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The deontological commitment is usually the thing that separates “vegan” from “vegetarian” or even just “eater of fewer animal products than you otherwise might.” This is both a terminology issue and a practical concern- the consequentialist arguments against eating eggs from your neighbors chickens (have I mentioned that I live in the Midwest?) are tenuous.
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Another way to “fail with abandon” is to look at all the animal suffering in nature, and conclude that there’s no point to veg*nism at all.
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I’m extremely skeptical of the idea that animals in nature, on average, suffer more than factory farmed animals.
If I was given a choice between being tortured for a couple years and then dying relatively painlessly, or living two years of normal life before being killed by a grizzly bear, I’d take the bear.
Animals starving during famines probably causes more suffering, but probably equivalent to a factory farm. Again, I’d pick slow starvation over a few months over years of torture.
This is why I think consequentialist vegetarians should support hunters. Sustainable hunting is designed to kill the precise number of animals that exceed an ecosystem’s carrying capacity. Hunting results in more animals dying quickly of gunshot wounds and less animals dying of slow gradual starvation. Plus, the more wild game meat hunters eat, the less factory farmed meat they are buying.
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Ghat – I should just note that I think you underestimate the sheer prevalence of parasitism in wild populations. Just about every individual wild animal has some sort of parasite, whether it be a slightly annoying tick or a severe tapeworm or a massive bot-fly infestation (seriously, I have a colleague who documented wild mice with bot fly larvae comprising >20% body mass; they looked like something out of a horror movie).
I’m not sure if that shifts the calculations *enough* (plus, we should probably move away from factory farming anyway), but I’ve noticed that parasitism is often under-appreciated in these discussions, and figured I should note it for completeness of calculations.
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This also explains why so many vegetarians/vegans take offense when we suggest WAS reduction as a sensible human goal.
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I really hate the all-or-nothing approach to vegetarianism/veganism. From a practical, harm reduction stance, it’s absurd. If you can convince a dozen people to skip meat one day a week, that will result in less animal consumption than one person going vegan every minute of every day.
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The thing about that, as an argument against deontology, is that it assumes utilitarianism.
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Yes, I agree with 100% ofthis post!
I really hate the way no-shades-of-gray vegan mentality doesn’t allow for much gradual easing into more ethical eating habits. Both my non-vegetarian friends and also some of my strictly vegan friends seem to look at me weirdly when I say that I now refuse to eat bacon and am now trying to avoid pig meat in general for ethical reasons.
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I believe that people take the all-or-nothing approach because they believe that if they allow themselves to adopt a more nuanced approach that the epicycles will eventually lead to them reasoning themselves into failing completely and deciding to abandon their diet restriction entirely. So they shut off nuance and justification so as to not permit failure. That this sort of behavior puts one’s success more at risk because they have set it up as a dichotomy rather than a gradient is possibly one of the more non-intuitive elements of human psychology as it pertains to human ethics.
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Like quitting cold turkey when you are a smoker? Makes sense.
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I think a lot of people favor veganism rather than more complex and less restrictive harm-reduction-through-diet strategies because they think veganism is a good schelling point, while general harm reduction isn’t. It’s generally (but not always) been my experience that when people attempt to reduce meat consumption without eliminating it, they more frequently forget and backslide rapidly, to a great enough extent that it cancels out the benefit of lower explicit recidivism.
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I mean, I do support people in general going vegan (and I myself am a lacto vegetarian, not a trying-to-reduce-my-amount-of-meat-arian), but if you have an health issue or practical problems then I think it’s time to take a step back and go “how can I reduce harm?”
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Thanks for this. I’ve been a vegetarian for three years this month, and try to limit my egg consumption to local chicken-friendly farms. I’m not trying to “follow rules,” I’m trying to reduce suffering. While I believe that “animals are people, too,” that doesn’t stop me from putting my dogs on a leash or neutering my cats. Maybe not the most consistent position, but I guess it’s just easier for me to think about in in terms of harm reduction and making ethical choices rather than as a rigid right vs wrong duality.
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I generally just lurk — um, hi! — but I couldn’t not comment on this one. I really like the framework you’ve laid out; it makes explaining my thoughts a lot easier. Using your terms, I was deontologically vegan all through high school, but for about a year now I’ve been moving towards consequentialist reducetarianism. (How do you know if someone’s vegan? We’ll tell you. How do you know if someone’s a ‘consequentialist reducetarian’? We’ll tell you.) When I went vegan, in the beginning, I had a tremendous amount of momentum — I was (sort of) defying my parents, trying out something obscure-therefore-cool, and taking the ethical high ground to boot. It had to be all or nothing, because that was the entire point. Slipping even once would have punctured the momentum. Then over the next four years I retrofitted my diet with actual principles, had crises of faith, cried and vomited over factory farms, debated whether I was an awful person for not wanting to spend my entire life on animal rights, learned I didn’t really like farm animals very much, questioned whether I even cared enough about human lives, had more crises of faith, and was prodded to admit that I didn’t see anything wrong with eating brainless animals. What about shrimp? Well, shrimp were pretty stupid too. I didn’t care about shrimp. So I would eat one, then? Well …
I started eating brainless and very stupid sea critters. Then SlateStarCodex published Vegetarianism for Meat Eaters, and suddenly my overpriced, palm-oil-laden vegan butter didn’t seem so smart either. I still think of myself as vegan, because my beliefs about factory farms and so on haven’t changed, and also because I would hate for people to think I’ve suddenly become reasonable, but I’m now in practice lacto vegetarian. I’m also a lot more hydrated than I used to be, because the cafeteria water dispenser is right between the soy milk and cow milk and so feels like compromise.
This summer I’m studying in Russia, in a homestay — your Sensible Reason for Dropping Complicated Diets #4. I’m thinking I might call it my rumspringa. I’m pretty confident that I’m right about factory farms in the first world, but I’m also pretty confident that the world won’t end if I eat meat for a few months. I don’t remember if I felt any different before being vegan. I don’t think I did, but so many people claim otherwise that I do wonder. The idea that I might be losing brainpower because of my diet really freaks me out, and I’m not sure what I would do if I determined it was true. (And I’m really not interested in feeling bad for hypothetically being selfish over a few IQ points. If there’s anything I’m allowed to be selfish about, it should be IQ points.)
But anyway: I agree with you, and very much enjoyed anonymously dumping my #VeganStory all over your comment section.
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I hate the all-or-nothing stance too.
On the other hand, “Most people, however, do not accept that animal exploitation is wrong: they don’t agree that “animals exist for their own reasons and belong in their own habitat with other members of their species… animals themselves belong in their world, not ours, with the freedom to live as they choose.””… baffles me. Most people don’t believe that? Even if they’re against animal cruelty? Really? Why?
I don’t agree with animal exploitation. I agree with zoos for the purposes of conserving and protecting animals whose habitats humankind has already damaged to the point that their survival is threatened; I think in an ideal world we wouldn’t need zoos. I accept that certain animals, like dogs and cats, probably chose to live in a symbiotic relationship with humans and make good companion animals; I selfishly like the idea of owning a more exotic pet, but morally I don’t agree with most of the pet trade, and I don’t agree with the borderline animal abuse that is overbreeding of dogs to attain unhealthy “breed standards”. All other things being equal, I think animals should be able to choose. I can’t say that my actions and thoughts have always lined up with that ideal, like when I keep contemplating owning a snake, but it’s what I believe in, which is why ultimately I don’t own a snake as of yet.
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I think part of it is because the “choice” many animals have is illusory – they’re not rational actors weighing costs and benefits, but are rather acting on a combination of instinct, conditioning, and learning (the balance of which varies from species to species). If I left my tortoise outside, he would definitely run away, not because I don’t provide optimal conditions for him, but because his species hails from a land of sparse, patchy resources where moving on is so often the best option that evolution has simply coded that into his tiny little brain as a general rule. I thwart his instinct by keeping him inside much as a parent stops their kid from sticking their finger in a light socket or swallowing antifreeze, knowing that he has a happy life here (including an active love life with a domed ceramic structure in his cage, which includes…”completion”…). There’s not really any “choice” or “denying choice” – he has no choice in either case, as he’s simply following pre-set, hard-coded rules laid down millions of years ago.
I find, coming from the perspective of someone whose pets are almost entirely cold-blooded, that there’s a lot of anthropomorphism, a lot of assumptions about “yearning to be free” which really just derive from our own background as a wide-foraging savannah ape, and mistakes instinct for conscious decisions.
Plus, on a personal note, I cannot recommend a snake highly enough. I’ve had snakes now continuously for over 20 years, and worked with all sizes and hundreds of species, and I’ve gone so far as to semi-seriously butcher Socrates’ quote into “A life without snakes is not a life worth living”. They’re marvelous animals with fascinating behaviors, particularly if you give them a nice big cage with lots of natural features (branches, rocks, soil, leaves, bark chunks, etc.), but also low-maintenance. I’d recommend a ball python or corn snake as a first snake, depending on what you’re looking for (balls are slower and more sedentary, which can make them easier to deal with but less interesting to watch and handle).
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“animals exist for their own reasons land belong in their own habitat with other members of their species… animals themselves belong in their world, not ours, with the freedom to live as they choose.”,
If you really believe something like this, then ending wild animal suffering is much worse than factory farming.
(I mostly agree with the quote, except that I think ‘freedom of choice’ doesn’t even make sense for animals)
Overall what you write is very reasonable, but I think you are mostly remininding everyone that the position that has been held by moderate ecologists for decades is still the best.
I see this as a further example that the requirement for the individual to forge its own identity makes it impossible to have reasonable opinions.
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I don’t really understand “ending wild animal suffering”. Is it “let’s kill all the wild animals” or is it “let’s cure the most painful animal diseases and whatever”?
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From what I have read, a big part of it is preventing natural animal death, which is usually rather painful, in particular when they’re killed by a predator. One possible conclusion is that all natural ecosystems should be erased, which has been seriously discussed on this blog before iirc.
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If you mean that ending wild animal suffering (in the sense of making invasive decisions to remove suffering from their lives) is incompatible with that quote, then yeah, I agree. Which is one reason I don’t believe in the whole ending-wild-animal-suffering thing.
(The others are that I think it’s incredibly likely we’d mess it up, given our completely appalling track record with getting involved with non-human species, and that all suffering is not created equal. Compared to the artificial stressors that human societies manufacture, I suspect the natural stressors experienced by animals are much less horrific. I’d rather be chased down and mauled by a bear and be in excruciating pain for 20 minutes than be in excruciating pain from depression and anxiety for 20 years.)
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Then what about preventing human suffering?
Providing market and redistribution regimes like health care, international aid and national welfare is an invasive decision to remove suffering from people’s lives.
Wild animal suffering is very natural, but so is human suffering. Modern vaccines and anitbiotics rig the game in a very unnatural way. Should they be banned? If not, why not? Where do you draw the line?
I cannot help but notice that those who rationalize the intense suffering of wild animals – who, let’s face it, would never choose it voluntarily – are not the ones who will suffer from this symbolic decision. I predict you will never give up the invasive technological interventions that remove intense suffering from your life, even though it should be ethically the same thing.
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(CW: rationalising suicide.)
Actually, I’ve considered it a lot. If I could be zapped with a ray that turned me into an animal capable of functioning reasonably well in the wild (which I am currently not), then I could be convinced to do it by much the same things that would convince me it’s okay to commit suicide: that is, no one I value would suffer unduly for my disappearance, and they would go on to live no less happy lives than they would have with me. Since that’s not something that can be guaranteed, and since my life as a human in the wild would be extremely short and fraught by the emotional burdens of knowing the people I’d left behind, I wouldn’t do it.
I would have preferred to have been born into a wild animal life over my current one. Getting to choose at the age of 32, when I already have numerous emotional attachments and people who don’t want me to die, is a different thing.
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>from an ethical perspective, bivalves are basically a form of plant.
Is this settled? Last I checked this wasn’t settled.
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Their nervous system has atrophied to little more than a nerve net with some ganglia due to their sessile habits. It’s marginally more complex than jellyfish, but less so than flatworms, since there’s no brain anymore.
What this means ethically is up to you, but biologically, they’re almost as simple as you can get while still actually having nerves.
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OK, so not actually as clear-cut as plants, that was hyperbole. Still probably OK. Thank you.
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Ozy, your meat-reduction posts (and those from other “rationalist diaspora” types) make a lot of sense to me, and have done more to persuade me to reduce my consumption of animal products than the 1000000+ aggressively-deontological vegans on the internets. So, kudos! I now eat red meat once a month to prevent anemia, local eggs maybe once a week, and delicious vegetarian meals the rest of the time. I feel guilty sometimes about not being 100% veg*n, but I’m consuming waaaay less meat AND the flexibility of my diet makes me a better ambassador for meat reduction. (I didn’t try to talk my partners into reducing meat with me; they just watched me and asked questions over time, which was apparently persuasive?)
I think a lot of people look at veg*nism and think “but no more traditional holiday dinners with my family? No hamburgers at the neighborhood grill-out? Tons of restaurants with nothing I can eat so I’ll just have to starve?!” and give up the whole idea, but it doesn’t have to be that strict. It’s much easier to have a “Try not to eat meat but do what you’ve gotta do to keep yourself fed” rule. I do understand the mindset that giving yourself wiggle room will make you backslide, but, for me, that wiggle room is what makes it sustainable.
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“If you personally believe that animal suffering is not something people in general should change their diets about, kindly don’t comment.”
Since that would include both deontological vegans (which are, as you correctly observe, against exploitation, not against suffering) and non-vegans (to the extent that they don’t feel guilt about not being vegans), it does seem to prevent anything less than agreement that consequentialist veganism is superior in the comments.
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Most deontological vegans care about suffering as well (they are opposed to animal cruelty), and I was going to say “vegetarians only” but decided that people who can’t be vegetarian may also have input. I’ve noticed that internal veganism criticism tends to bring out a lot of omnivores that are like “ha ha this is why vegans are terrible! BACON 4 LYFE!” and I think this is not a useful contribution to discussion.
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I see your point, but still, the deontological concern for cruelty is something quite different from the consequentialist concern for suffering, as the former tends to be about the intentions of the perpetrator, while the latter is about an external state of affairs. Among other things, it often follows that a deontologist might direct most of their indignation against those actively involved in acts of animal cruelty, while holding the average (i.e. free of compelling reason like health or culture) meat-eater comparatively blameless, whereas a consequentialist might see both producers and consumers of animal products as more-or-less equally implicated in a state of affairs that produces suffering.
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I was a deontological vegan for eight years, which I learned in teenagerhood from an unhealthy mentorship/relationship with someone several years older than me. When I debugged their influence on my life, I dropped the veganism, because amongst other things my eating disorder was hiding in it. I wouldn’t actually describe it as tiring or anything? You get used to turning the package over to look at the ingredients, eventually, which additives come from beetle shells and other ways animal products are hidden with jargon. But then again, I’m someone who is comforted by schedules and repetitions, and I can deal with eating the same canned vegetables for years on end. Someone else really might find it restricting.
The funny thing is that I haven’t forgotten how animal suffering works – I’m just trying to apply myself to caring about my suffering wrt eating disorders, too. It’s hard to strike a balance, because veganism is one of those things I just don’t do halfway. Throughout those eight years I never once had a cheat day; I probably ate animal products once or twice on accident, but I was very diligent about never deliberately violating my ethical code. I’m trying to progress very slowly along the axis of eating more seafood than other meats; it’s very much triggering my ED shit but it’s sort of a give-and-take situation of just accepting that my dumb brain is going to hijack any diet modifications I make. I’m reasonably successfully avoiding beef, too, which is important to me because one of the things I care about wrt veg*nism is the amount of environmental impact meat has, and beef is one of the worst offenders in my mind.
So, yeah, I was a deontological vegan as a teenager and a young adult and these days I think consequentialist veganism has a lot more promise, even though I am not technically vegan any more and might not ever be fully vegan again.
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I used to subscribe to deontological vegetarianism, but my deontological decree was more along the lines of “don’t consume biological material that caused that which produced it suffering” as opposed to “don’t consume animal products.” Not sure if that is a fair position or not (is that even strictly deontological?) but I followed it anyway. Then I moved home and my mother went *insane*, accused me of being malnourished, and did everything she could to shovel hamburgers into me and eventually I gave in because I suck.
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” If the vast majority of people genuinely understood, without flinching away because they don’t want to have to make personal sacrifices, what the animal that produced their chicken pot pie or omelet went through, they would become lacto vegetarian instantly.”
Nope! I don’t care about the suffering of very, very dumb things.
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I don’t know where the claim “Harvesting honey doesn’t usually harm bees” came from, because the link there has a lot of details about honey farming that would seem to contradict that. There’s also the problem of overharvesting, which can kill entire hives.
(As for the ethical status of bees, I think it’s important to note that viewing the complexity of a swarm insect based on an individual is questionable too. I don’t know what suffering would look like for a swarm, but since swarm insects are so communal I would imagine that’s an important piece to at least think about.)
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