Philosophical Vegan Forum

Ive been a long time supporter of Gary Francione and unknowingly the deontological position as it pertains to veganism. I have a rudimentary understanding of what deontology is, and since working on the open letter to Matt Dillahunty, I am being exposed to those terms but would like to fully understand the position. The letter is critical of Gary and his approach, and I would like it if someone (brimstone, volenta, miniboes, thebestofenergy or anyone else on the forum) could explain exactly what deontology is and what the issue is.

As I understand it, from working on the letter, is that deontological veganism states as fact that animals should not be treated as property regardless of the use. If this is the case, what is the issue regarding this? In what case could use be justified? In the letter, the example of one mouse being killed in research to save billions, but that doesn't happen in the real world. In the real world billions of mice (and other animals) are killed and little to no real benefit to humans is reached. Would there be scenerios in which one human ought to be killed to benefit others? Seems as if we allow for other animals to be killed for our purposes, we ought to be allowed to force other humans into painful or lethal situations for the benefit of others.

Im not looking for an argument, but I would like someone to explain to me what the problem with Gary's reasoning is, and what the more rational position is. I do not want to hold views of veganism that are irrational, and so if I have been lulled into a woo position, Id like to see how and where. Is the most rational vegan position that of moral consequentialism?

From what I know, the problem is that deontology doesn’t base what is right or wrong off of the result of an action, but the action in and of itself. Deontology states, “It’s wrong because it’s wrong and that’s that (regardless of the outcome),” whereas consequentialism bases the morality of something on the actual consequences.

Deontological veganism is- “It’s wrong because it’s animal exploitation, and sentient animals have the right to not be exploited.” It’s circular logic.

And then consequentialist veganism is- “It’s wrong to hurt an animal unnecessarily because causing unnecessary suffering is wrong, because it hurts others for no reason.” But now typing that out, it also sounds like circular logic. Maybe I’m confused.

TheVeganAtheist wrote:If this is the case, what is the issue regarding this? In what case could use be justified? In the letter, the example of one mouse being killed in research to save billions, but that doesn't happen in the real world. In the real world billions of mice (and other animals) are killed and little to no real benefit to humans is reached.

That was just an example, I think, to show a flaw with deontological thinking.

TheVeganAtheist wrote: Would there be scenerios in which one human ought to be killed to benefit others? Seems as if we allow for other animals to be killed for our purposes, we ought to be allowed to force other humans into painful or lethal situations for the benefit of others.

What, like kill one person (against their will) and use their organs to save ten people? I really don’t know. I’m looking forward to hearing what other people have to say about that.

EquALLity wrote:From what I know, the problem is that deontology doesn’t base what is right or wrong off of the result of an action, but the action in and of itself. Deontology states, “It’s wrong because it’s wrong and that’s that (regardless of the outcome),” whereas consequentialism bases the morality of something on the actual consequences.

Deontological veganism is- “It’s wrong because it’s animal exploitation, and sentient animals have the right to not be exploited.” It’s circular logic.

That's also how I'd describe deontology: "it's wrong because it's wrong."

I see Gary Francione's posts on Facebook and unfortunately he does seem to use this reasoning frequently. You're right as far as I can tell that this is circular logic.

EquALLity wrote: “It’s wrong to hurt an animal unnecessarily because causing unnecessary suffering is wrong, because it hurts others for no reason.”

EquALLity, I don't believe however that consequentialist veganism involves circular reasoning. The example you mentioned sounds like circular reasoning, because you essentially said the same thing 3 times (unnecessary suffering is wrong). However, consequentialist veganism can be described like this:

"Inflicting unnecessary suffering upon animals is wrong because it goes against the strongest and most basic interests of sentient beings, and those who are causing the suffering do not have strong enough reason to trump the interests of these beings. The purpose of ethics is to respect the interests of all sentient beings, with the interests prioritized based upon how important they are to those who hold them. Therefore we are obligated not to unnecessarily harm animals."

So long as the person you say this to understands what you're saying, and agrees that this is what "ethics" are all about, then you should not need to explain any further. Unfortunately, "ethics" is a somewhat nebulous concept due to disagreement about what it means, but so long as you have established what the term "ethics" means, then this would (hopefully) be a good explanation of why unnecessary harm towards animals is wrong, without using circular reasoning.

This is my understanding of consequentialist veganism (and this is the way I advocate it), and I don't think it involves circular reasoning. Feel free to criticize me if I'm mistaken. I look forward to seeing this discussion unfold further.

TheVeganAtheist wrote:Would there be scenerios in which one human ought to be killed to benefit others?

This could happen but it would be rare. If you take the full life boat example with five small guys struggling in the water while one 250 kilo fat guy is sitting comfortably in the life boat then yes, the fat guy should be thrown in the water. However, no one would feel comfortable living in a world where they might be killed so that their organs can be used to save the lives of ten other people so the spiral effect of such an action would bring more negative than positive consequences.

TheVeganAtheist wrote:As I understand it, from working on the letter, is that deontological veganism states as fact that animals should not be treated as property regardless of the use. If this is the case, what is the issue regarding this? In what case could use be justified? In the letter, the example of one mouse being killed in research to save billions, but that doesn't happen in the real world. In the real world billions of mice (and other animals) are killed and little to no real benefit to humans is reached. Would there be scenerios in which one human ought to be killed to benefit others? Seems as if we allow for other animals to be killed for our purposes, we ought to be allowed to force other humans into painful or lethal situations for the benefit of others.

Regarding possible flaws in Francione's thinking, have you ever heard him say that animal use might be justified in some situations? I've heard him say things like "99.999% of animal use is transparently frivolous and cannot be justified." Does he actually think that 100% of animal use is definitely unjustifiable, and if so, is this an indication that his argument for veganism is ultimately based on deontology?

ArmouredAbolitionist wrote:EquALLity, I don't believe however that consequentialist veganism involves circular reasoning. The example you mentioned sounds like circular reasoning, because you essentially said the same thing 3 times (unnecessary suffering is wrong). However, consequentialist veganism can be described like this:

"Inflicting unnecessary suffering upon animals is wrong because it goes against the strongest and most basic interests of sentient beings, and those who are causing the suffering do not have strong enough reason to trump the interests of these beings. The purpose of ethics is to respect the interests of all sentient beings, with the interests prioritized based upon how important they are to those who hold them. Therefore we are obligated not to unnecessarily harm animals."

So long as the person you say this to understands what you're saying, and agrees that this is what "ethics" are all about, then you should not need to explain any further. Unfortunately, "ethics" is a somewhat nebulous concept due to disagreement about what it means, but so long as you have established what the term "ethics" means, then this would (hopefully) be a good explanation of why unnecessary harm towards animals is wrong, without using circular reasoning.

This is my understanding of consequentialist veganism (and this is the way I advocate it), and I don't think it involves circular reasoning. Feel free to criticize me if I'm mistaken. I look forward to seeing this discussion unfold further.

Yeah, that makes more sense.

ArmouredAbolitionist wrote:Regarding possible flaws in Francione's thinking, have you ever heard him say that animal use might be justified in some situations? I've heard him say things like "99.999% of animal use is transparently frivolous and cannot be justified." Does he actually think that 100% of animal use is definitely unjustifiable, and if so, is this an indication that his argument for veganism is ultimately based on deontology?

I think saying animal usage in and of itself is immoral makes him a deontologist, even if he believes some is justified in certain situations. Because what is the negative result of animal usage alone? If you take an unfertilized egg that is just a waste product, or milk a cow gently, and sell the eggs and milk, animals are being used, but how are they being hurt?

I'll try to break down the differences.

Point 1: Definitions of bad.

Consequentialism identifies a "root of evil"
Deontology creates a shopping list of things that are bad.

Occam's razor prefers the former, and the latter causes a lot of emergent problems in any attempt to apply the system. I'll explain that in a moment.

Commonly, consequentialism will say that suffering is evil, or that violating the wills of sentient beings is the evil (these are both distinct forms of consequentialism). But NEVER both of those things. In the latter case, suffering might also be bad, but ONLY as a consequence of violating the wills of sentient beings.
What you set as this 'ultimate evil' is extremely important, and even subtle distinctions can have immense differences in consequence.
This can be seen as a sort of "butterfly effect" if you like; a tiny change here causing huge differences in interpretation for everything else.

This is one reason why some people dislike consequentialism; it can be seen as unstable, and highly subject to minor differences in the definition of what is ultimately evil. Deontology is the naive fix to that, because you can just make a shopping list of all of the things you arbitrarily dislike and call them bad.

Kant tried and failed to propose his "categorical imperative" as a means to resolve the subjective and arbitrary nature of this list, but in practice nobody knows about or cares about that.

Deontology will commonly say: Lying is bad. Suffering is bad. Slavery is bad. Exploitation is bad. Etc.

The biggest problem with this list is that there is no metric or means of comparison between them, making all of them equally and infinitely bad.

What if you tell a lie to save a life? Well, there is no "unit" of lying, or life by which the lie can be compared to the life to see which is greater. There's no common currency between the two to compare them.
As such, if you do ANYTHING wrong, you have done wrong, and none of the rules may be violated in the least under any circumstances.

And that brings us to:

Point 2: Scales and trade-off in practical application.

Consequentialism lets you compare two goods, or two wrongs, or complex actions containing good and bad, to determine the best of imperfect choices
Deontology denies this: It's all or nothing. If you don't live in a perfect world of moral black and white you're screwed.

As explained above, this is an inherent problem to deontology which can not be fixed (even if deontologists wanted to, which they don't- they see this as a selling point and like the absolutism).

This is also what makes deontology so unreasonable and useless in reality.
Outside of academic hypotheticals, deontology is completely unrealistic.

To this end, consequentialism is frequently criticized for letting people do bad things, justifying them with a good outcome, but this practice is usually ignorant of the full implications of actions and ALL of their consequences.

As Jebus mentioned, regarding killing one person to save ten.

And finally:

Point 3: Justifying the definition

ArmouredAbolitionist put it pretty well. The consequentialist definitions of good and bad are strongly justified, semantically, rationally, as well as mentioned above, pragmatically.

Deontological definitions, however, are arbitrary and subject to whim. They most commonly involve appeal to authority, or divinity, and as EquALLity mentioned, circular logic.

Kant, as I mentioned, tried to resolve this with the Categorical Imperative, but failed to do so. We can discuss that more later if you're interested, along with Kant's arguments for god (based on his moral system), which is quite a topic of its own.

TheVeganAtheist wrote: In what case could use be justified?

It doesn't have to be justified if it's not harmful. Although that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be illegal because it usually leads to harm.
Just as not all slaves were harmed by slavery, but the vast majority were (and still are) because it is a system inherently prone to abuse (which is why it had to be outlawed). It is the consequences we have to look at, not the thing in itself.

A wrong can be justified if the good consequences are greater than the wrong itself, but that takes a substantial amount of foreknowledge, and where we're talking about laws, a look at the entire system and the consequences of allowing that general kind of action on a wide scale.

Animal testing, for example, looked at narrowly probably does more good than harm in developing drugs, but looked at in terms of opportunity cost it also prevents the development of superior models that would do even more good (and without the harm), so it should be stopped even so, due to the opportunity cost. The issue is that there are better options, and that has to be considered (these things don't happen in a vacuum).

ArmouredAbolitionist wrote: Regarding possible flaws in Francione's thinking, have you ever heard him say that animal use might be justified in some situations? I've heard him say things like "99.999% of animal use is transparently frivolous and cannot be justified." Does he actually think that 100% of animal use is definitely unjustifiable, and if so, is this an indication that his argument for veganism is ultimately based on deontology?

I haven't read much by him. I wouldn't be surprised if he was inconsistent. Or that could represent a softening of his position somewhere in order to appear more rational.

I wouldn't be very surprised if he didn't know what deontology was. But, again, I've only read/seen enough to put me off him, which didn't take much with the kinds of absolutist statements he makes.


I see he thinks he knows what it is:

Francione wrote:What on earth are you talking about? If you think that this follows from my having a deontological view about animal issues, then I respectfully suggest that you are in error.

http://philosophybites.com/2012/10/gary ... onism.html

https://www.facebook.com/abolitionistap ... 5258287898

Francione wrote:It frightens me that you think my deontological approach is similar to his utilitarian approach. In fact, I don't know where to begin with that so I won't.

I don't know if he actually knows what it means, though. With the frequency of his use, one would have thought he would have read the definition at some point though.

Jebus wrote:

TheVeganAtheist wrote:Would there be scenerios in which one human ought to be killed to benefit others?

This could happen but it would be rare. If you take the full life boat example with five small guys struggling in the water while one 250 kilo fat guy is sitting comfortably in the life boat then yes, the fat guy should be thrown in the water. However, no one would feel comfortable living in a world where they might be killed so that their organs can be used to save the lives of ten other people so the spiral effect of such an action would bring more negative than positive consequences.

I don't agree with this. The 250kg guy shouldn't be killed even if 100 person were saved. Saving people is very different from not killing/enslaving someone for no good reason.

Anon0045 wrote: I don't agree with this. The 250kg guy shouldn't be killed even if 100 person were saved.

Why?

In the example of the fat man pushed in front of the easily stopped train to save the people down the track, the fat man is basically minding his own business; it's troubling to select somebody from a normal social situation and sentence him or her to death to save others.

In this case, the fat man is monopolizing a life saving resource in an emergency situation, and dooming five other people to die. Or even ten children, if you want.
He's saving himself.

It's relatively non-controversial that life-boat resources should be dedicated to where they will do the most good and save the most lives, as they were designed.

Anon0045 wrote: Saving people is very different from not killing/enslaving someone for no good reason.

Not really. You can try to say one is action and one is inaction, but the bottom line is that more people have lived or died based on your choice.
What is distinct is the social implications of acting in certain ways and in certain situations.

Is it conducive to social order to create a society where innocent people can be arbitrarily selected for death to save others' lives? Probably not.
Generally, humans will reject that form of social contract. Basic human rights are a functional thing that have good consequences, which is why they are generally right (right morally, to implement, as distinct from "rights").