tim gier

One of the persistent themes that I see again and again is the question about why vegans have to be so insistent upon consistency.

I think that it is perfectly acceptable for anyone one of us to be personally opposed to one thing or another. But, at the same time, if one employs valid and sound reasoning and arguments in support of whatever conclusions one reaches, then one can hope both to remove inconsistencies in one’s own thinking as well as create a path where others can follow. So, while I accept that our species has a habit of inconsistency of thought, and although I find it interesting, I do not celebrate it and, to the contrary, I try to eliminate it as much as I am able in my own life. Some people view this endeavor as arrogance, or elitism. I see it as seeking to understand an objective morality.

My veganism is not the cause of my way of thinking or my way of life. My veganism is the result of the application in my life of (basically) three tenets: 1) Violence against individuals is almost always unjustifiable and should be avoided as much as possible, 2) individuals have the rights to freedom and liberty and 3) similarly situated individuals are due equal consideration. I explain those three tenets in general terms here and while they are sufficient for the purposes of this discussion, as Tim Putnam points out in the comment thread to that post, they are not exhaustive. For example, Tim rightly suggests that Justice should be added to my list. But, in this post, I will explain how these three things, at least, inform my understanding and practice of veganism.

A little background.

With respect to other animals, the dominant current legal and moral frameworks treat individuals as things and as property. I believe this is wrong. Gary Francione deserves the credit for formulating this argument in terms of property rights and sentience.

Prior to reading Francione’s writings in February of this year, I had reasoned my way to rejecting Moral Relativism, which states that Morality & Ethics are subject to culture, time and place. They are not. There are things that are wrong, whether we, or anyone else for that matter, recognize them as such. Don’t take my word for it though. Louis Pojman wrote an excellent article specifically on the topic which I have learned quite a bit from.

I had also accepted that Immanuel Kant was right when he said that no-one should be treated strictly as the means to some others ends. Individuals are ends in themselves, and cannot be used as mere tools by which some other achieves their own exclusive desires.

I wrote a post about those two ideas and how they inform my thinking here. In that post, I extend Kant’s idea about means and ends to not only human animals, but to all other animals as well. To justify my doing so, I wrote this:

Animals are not capable of higher order thought but they certainly act in their own self-interest. They seek food, avoid pain, suffer from loneliness and fail in the bonds of captivity. Some animals use tools, form complex social bonds & act cooperatively, establish elaborate communication systems, exhibit signs of culture, care for their sick and remember their dead.

To continue to treat innocent living beings as though they were things, with no more moral value than machines, is to do wrong to them. They deserve better.

That sounds like a very close approximation of sentience, but it is not a definition of the term, and it was not until I read Francione’s work that I understood sentience as he explains it.

I read Tom Regan’s work some years ago, and Regan makes the same mistake I did, though in a different way. Regan speaks about sentience, but like me, he then qualifies the similarity between human animals and all the other animals with irrelevant characteristics couched in human, and necessarily speciesist terms. I won’t critique Regan’s work here, that is not my purpose, but I will critique my own writing.

When, in the selected quote above, I say “Animals are not capable of higher order thought” whose “higher order” am I referring to, and in what sense could any nonhuman animal ever be capable of such “higher order thought?” The concept of “higher order thought” is a social construct, with no non-arbitrary correlative in nature. Holding non-human animals to such an arbitrary standard of thought or intelligence is similar to the problem of administering IQ tests cross-culturally without adjusting the tests for those different cultures.

Would we expect students tested in a village in India to have the same set of experiences and skills as students in Tokyo? Applying the testing standards that reflect rural agricultural life would necessarily disadvantage urban Japanese students and the test would not be an acceptable way to judge the similarities between two differently situated populations. Such a test might be useful as a tool to study the differences in the kinds of learning and socialization that students in different parts of the world experience, but it would not be a sufficient test of intelligence irrespective of the culture of the specific individuals tested. It would be biased. It might even be a form of racism to suggest that the results of such a flawed test would represent relevant differences of intelligence objectively.

In the same way, applying a human standard (of “higher order thought”) to individuals who can in no way share the experiences or socializations of human ones necessarily disadvantages the nonhuman individuals. Testing for such qualities as “higher order thought” might still be interesting from the standpoint of determining an individual’s relative performance against an arbitrary standard, but it would not be a sufficient objective measurement of the capacities of the actual individuals involved. It would be biased, and it would be speciesist.

Characteristics such as most of the ones I mention in the above referenced quote are irrelevant to the question of the moral status of nonhuman animals. Because consideration of those characteristics unjustly and inevitably disadvantages all other animals compared to human animals, such consideration is speciesist.

Sentience alone, as Francione rightly points out, is the relevant criteria for the inclusion of a being within a moral framework.

What is sentience?

Simply put, almost all animals, including the human variety, are most certainly sentient beings. All sentient beings share some very basic characteristics: We all are alive. We all know that we are alive. We all do things necessary to keep ourselves alive.

Consider this:

An abandoned dog finds her way to my driveway, thirsty from the draining heat of another long Florida summer day. She finds a small pool of water near where I just watered the yard. Eagerly, she laps it up, keeping herself alive. But, the teenager who lives three doors down comes racing down the street, as he does every afternoon, unaware of the dog near the road. The dog, thank goodness, is smart enough to know the sound of an approaching car, and so, she makes a quick decision. She chooses to stop drinking now, as thirsty as she is, so she can get out of the road, ensuring that she lives to drink another day. I said ‘thank goodness’ when what I meant was ‘thank sentience.’

Sentience is that characteristic which separates not “men from mice”, but mice from machines. The very word animal, according to Merriam-Webster embodies the concept of sentience: animal comes from the Latin word anima or soul.

I realize, as does Francione, that there are marginal cases, where we may not now be able to say with certainty that all animals are sentient. Perhaps some mollusks, sponges, worms, certain insects and other beings are not sentient. But plainly dogs, cats, cows, pigs, snakes, birds, and almost every other animal we humans interact with are sentient beings. (In those cases where I cannot know for sure, I choose to give all animals the benefit of my doubts.)

They are all individuals, just like you and me.

All sentient individuals, like you and me, have an interest in their lives and the continuation of those lives. The interest that each of us has in our lives means that we also all have the right to live our own lives, free from interference as far as is possible, as we alone see fit.

By thinking in terms of sentience, I can now consistently apply Kant’s ideas about mean and ends to non-human animals.

Since, according to the three tenets I mention above, individuals who are similarly situated deserve equal consideration, and since all individuals are entitled to freedom and liberty, and since all sentient beings are individuals, then all sentient beings have an equal right to freedom and liberty. They are not things.

Because sentient beings are not things, it is wrong to use them solely as the means to an end. For example, just as it would be wrong for me to take your labor from you without due compensation, for the sole purpose of enriching myself, so it is wrong that we take the products of labor from any sentient being.

That is why drinking a cow’s milk is wrong.

Dairy production treats cows as milk factories, as if they were mere machines rather than sentient beings, using individuals for the sole purpose of enriching the dairy farm owners and shareholders at the expense of the cow’s interests in her own life and the products of her labor. (Is it a linguistic coincidence that milk is literally the product of the labor of birth?)

But notice this.

It is not because cows are treated badly that dairy farms are evil places. It is not because their calves are ripped from them within hours of birth that we should not drink milk.

It is because we do not have the right to use the living sentient cow as if she was an inanimate thing that we must not drink milk. It is no more moral to take the milk from a cow than it is to kill her for her hide. The severity of what we do to, or what we do with the cow is irrelevant – that we do anything at all with her is the relevant offense.

Of course, if, under the current system, the farmer has cows, it is better for the cows that he not abuse them. But he ought not to have them in the first place. He ought not to own them. That is the moral offense, and that is what must be remediated. Justice requires no less.

As another example, using chimpanzees as human analogues in medical testing and experimentation is wrong. It is not because the chimps are so like us that it is wrong. It isn’t because the chimps are abandoned when they no longer serve our purposes. It isn’t because we make them sick with cancer in the hope of finding a cure for ourselves. Even if we did not do all those things, we would still not be justified in taking chimpanzees from their natural environments. They are not things for us to do with as we please. They are individuals who, even though they are not like us in many ways, have the right to their own lives because they are just like us in the only way that matters – they are sentient.

As one final example, we do not have the right to destroy the natural habits of all the other individuals who share the world with us. Our obligation is not to the habitat itself, but to those who live there. We should no sooner clear-cut a rainforest full of innocent individuals than we would carpet-bomb a city full of innocent individuals. Neither action would be right and neither would be moral, because the individuals involved have the right to live their lives as best they can. How would they do that with their homes destroyed?

To my friends, my family, my followers and my acquaintances, I would ask that you consider seriously the arguments I have made as I have made them. Click on the links within this post and on the sidebar of this blog. Spend some time at Gary Francione’s site especially, not because of who he is, but because of what he says. Even if you think that your mind is made up, and that you have heard it all before, please read these things one more time with an open mind.  There are so many lives at stake.

To the vegetarians who may read my blog, I applaud that you have decided to stop eating meat. But if you still eat eggs, dairy products, fish, chicken or anything derived from them or any other animal – if you still wear leather shoes and belts, if you think it too difficult to read every label, or be mindful at every restaurant, or ask for a special favor at your next family get-together, if you benefit directly from the property status of other animals in any way – I will ask you to consider this: If it is a moral wrong to treat individuals as things, then that wrong cannot be made right until each and every individual is respected as they deserve to be.

We do not owe our obligations to those who do not yet exist. We cannot correct the wrongs committed against those who are alive today by promising to do better in the future, when we’re ready, after we’ve gradually changed. We owe our obligations to those who are alive right now, and they deserve our respect right now. It is their lives, and their dignity, that hang in the balance. Please try not to let them down.

Go vegan!