The Vegan Thought Experiment

EDIT: So another proponent of this thought experiment contacted me and tried to clarify. If one can entertain the notion that alternate worlds exist, he pointed out, there is no logical inconsistency in the argument. They asked me to link to this google drive doc that explains more. That doesn't take away from the fact that it's an incredibly silly argument, like these (which also contain no logical inconsistency) but if true would imply, for example that reality doesn't exist and that an athlete can never overtake a tortoise. More silly (but sound) thought experiments here; if you're interested in learning more, I recommend you find some first-year philosophy students and head down to a pub. This is also not a new discussion; for a version of this argument that dates back to the third century CE (and refutations of the argument) click here. 

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People become vegan or vegetarian for all sorts of reasons. As I’ve written about previously, for me it was largely about environmental sustainability, though animal rights were also part of the equation. After years of working with poor farmers and studying food systems, I came to the conclusion that veganism is a false solution.

“But wait,” says your friendly neighbourhood vegan, “what about the rights of animals?”

“Um, animals don’t have rights except maybe the rights humans choose to give them because of our own ethical standards. When a snake eats a bird, that’s not a case of the snake violating the bird’s right to life. And when the bird escapes from a snake, it’s not violating the snake’s right to food.”

“So you say,” the vegan may continue, “but consider The Cowperson Thought Experiment. First of all are humans unique?”

“Why yes, I suppose every species is unique so humans are unique.”

“What is it that makes humans unique?”

“Um a whole lot of things I guess. Language, cognition, opposable thumbs, bungee jumping... I could go on.”

“Ok, let’s forget bungee jumping,” says the vegan. “Let’s take the other three. Suppose someone exists without language, without cognition and without opposable thumbs. Suppose in fact that this person possesses no trait that a cow does not possess. Would it be ok to kill this person?”

“Um, it’s a person, so no.”

“And there you’ve just proven the case for veganism. Animals have rights, QED 😛.”

There are so many things wrong with The Cowperson Thought Experiment that I hesitate to even mention it. It’s such an idiotic premise that I never would have even thought about it had I not been confronted with this exact argument a few days ago in a debate with someone who clearly considers themselves an expert on veganism and morality.

Since apparently some people do take it seriously, let’s go through the reasons why, while there may be sound reasons to go vegan, this definitely is not one of them.

The Problem of Thought Experiments

As a first-year undergraduate in Philosophy at McGill we loved thought experiments. When we were first introduced to The Trolley Problem we could go on for hours inventing different scenarios in which it was either impossible to do the right thing or by doing the right thing you’d actually be causing more harm.

For those new to thought experiments (lucky you) here’s a good explainer of The Trolley Problem. Basically it’s a series of thought experiments that explore the differences between killing and letting die and explains that we all have both utilitarian and deontological moral instincts. Utilitarian means that we’re maximising good in the world, deontological means that we should never instrumentalise people (people should always be an end in themselves, and never merely a means to some end). Moral philosophers talk a lot about instincts because that’s pretty much all they have to work with. Almost nothing is understood about why humans have these moral instincts in the first place.

My problem with The Trolley Problem and pretty much all similar thought experiments is that they’re used to simplify complex moral problems and then go on to make generalisations that are devoid of complexity. At the moment I have no doubt that thought experiments are being used to justify arguments both for and against mandatory COVID vaccination. As I’ve written about elsewhere, that’s a terrible and unscientific framing of our current predicament. When I was in university the hot issues were abortion and euthanasia; I don’t think anyone ever changed their stance on either of those through a deep contemplation of the trolley problem.

By design, thought experiments are overly simplistic. It is simply not the case that a doctor who can kill one patient to save five is making exactly the same choice as a train operator who can stop five people being killed by a runaway train but only by switching to a track with one person on it. There are details in each story that are (deliberately) left out. Unless you’re a first year philosophy student, there’s very little to be gained by any of this.

As a fourth year philosophy student I wrote a paper arguing that the discipline would never amount to anything unless it moved away from the reliance on thought experiments.

Cowperson? Really?

As bad as thought experiments are in general, The Cowperson Thought Experiment is an unusually bad one. In order for it to make any sense at all I have to believe that my attitude towards a regular cow is determined by what it lacks (language, cognition, opposable thumbs) and not by what it is with relation to myself. How we treat cows, how we treat any animal is determined by our instincts. Humans are not creatures that evolved in isolation from other animals. When my daughter was a few weeks old she could barely make out animal shapes. She’d certainly never seen a spider or a snake but she was afraid of both when shown photos. Why? The fear of venomous creatures runs deep in our DNA.

Here in South Africa we have some of the best national parks in the world - I’ve seen any number of wild antelope including oryx, kudu and springbok over the years. But when I get out of the jeep and walk, all the deer and antelope run away usually before I even know they were there. Their fear of an upright primate runs as deep as my daughter’s fear of snakes.

The way we interact with the creatures who our ancestors preyed upon is determined at a biological level. The Cowperson Thought Experiment is trying to conflate two things: the way humans interact with one another (regardless of any disabilities a given human may have) and the way humans interact with prey species. It just doesn’t work even as a thought experiment. We refer to people who are on life support as being in a “vegetative state”; does that mean if we eat a vegetable it’s somehow the equivalent of eating a person in a coma?

Ultimately I worry that the people who take these kinds of arguments seriously fall into the ultimate vegan trap, that of false equivalencies. And indeed it took only the slightest provocation for the vegan I was debating to claim that animal husbandry was worse than rape, murder, slavery and all the other ills known to human kind. That of course is demonstrably untrue. Anyone who’s milked a cow or called a goat to come in or ridden a horse knows that whatever’s going on with that relationship, it’s in no way the equivalent of slavery or rape. To make such an equivalency trivialises the very real crimes that humans commit against one another on a daily basis and marginalises vegans even more.

At the end of the day, I don’t care what you eat. I mean I hope whatever you’re eating makes you healthy and happy and if not, I’ll work with you to improve your diet. If you choose to avoid certain foods on principle, that’s your choice. But there is more than one way to eat ethically and judging other people based on their dietary choices is irrational and counter productive.

At this moment, our food systems are not sustainable - they rely on fossil fuels for fertiliser, they rely on shipping goods halfway round the planet just for the sake of the convenience of being able to buy greens year round (which is one reason why Veganuary is such a terrible idea especially in the Northern Hemisphere), and, yes, on the torture of animals in battery cages and industrial hog farms. The need of the moment is to develop alternatives that address all of these problems, rebuild ecosystems that humans have destroyed, and create food systems that are sustainable and humane while also being able to feed eight billion people.

Meeting these needs is not going to be easy. There are very real questions about how to best scale agroecological practices, how to localise food distribution systems, and how to teach best practices in terms of growing food for humans alongside (or within) “wild” ecosystems. In the face of these challenges, debating whether a theoretical cow-human hybrid has rights is a complete waste of time.

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