Introduction
What I will expose in this post is a new prudential/deontological argument in favor of veganism. This is a “universal self-interest” argument, which any rational sentient being -human or alien- would adopt to protect its own survival leading to a generalized veganism as a consequence.
How can it be partly prudential and partly deontological? Because it seems to me that this argument Is universalizable to all sentient beings across the universe, in fact, aliens play a major role in the argument. Furthermore, it is applicable only by intelligent or “reasonable” beings, which may result in a kind of Kantian argument. Nevertheless, it states that everyone should follow it only because it’s in everyone best interest to follow it. Which avoids some obscure epistemological justifications, in favor of universal intrinsic interests and preferences of the subjects, making it -kind of- both prudential and deontic.
We first have to make some assumptions.
The first one is the following:
All sentient living forms across the universe have as such an intrinsic desire for survivability and reproduction.
First, I want to clarify what we are considering when I say sentient. Various way of considering sentience exists and we are here considering what is called “narrow sentience”. This designs conscious hedonic capacity, as a phenomenal state. No need here for more complex cognitive faculty, by considering the most minimal sentience definition, we make sure to englobe all the living beings able to have the most basic hedonic experiences.
Biological justification
According to modern evolutionary biology, any sentient organism must possess intrinsic motivational systems geared toward survival and reproduction. Natural selection consistently favors heritable traits that enhance an individual’s ability to stay alive long enough to reproduce (Darwin, 1859). Work in “universal Darwinism” extends this logic beyond Earth, suggesting that wherever life arises, the same selective pressures will produce comparable drives for persistence and gene propagation (Dennett, 1995). Thus, leading us to accept the premise that sentience everywhere entails a built-in “will to survive and reproduce” as the default evolutionary strategy. We could obviously criticize universal Darwinism and be skeptic to this idea, but I think one could at least consider this premise as possible. A last thing to note is that, what really interests us in this argument is centered on the will to survive, not to reproduce, so we won’t insist on this part.
Philosophical justification
One of the strengths of this argument is that it is probably compatible with hedonism as a theory of wellbeing, as well with desire-satisfactionism. Even though it is compatible with those view it is not compatible with a utilitarianism because it doesn’t increase the total amount of wellbeing in the world.
For those who are not familiar with those views, hedonism as a theory of wellbeing states that wellbeing is the sum of the total amount of pleasures minus the total amount suffering experienced, this is a called a hedono-doloric calculus. A hedono-doloric calculus with more pleasure at the end means a certain quantity of wellbeing. To address this premise now, I think a hedonist would simply consider the fact that maximizing one’s life duration will maximize the number of pleasures lived, which will maximize one’s hedono-doloric balance overall, aligning with the desire for survivability.
A desire-satisfactionism view states that wellbeing corresponds to the realization -or not- of the desires one has. If I desire to drink a glass of water, but that I can’t for some reasons, the non-accomplishment of this desire will decrease the well being of the subject. If the subject is able to drink the glass of water, the wellbeing increases by the intensity of the desire accomplished. Now this premise in a desire-satisfactionism view would I think be justified in a similar way. Realizing our preferences should bring us wellbeing; and staying alive should lead us to realize our desires and preferences over time which should also bring well-being long term.
The limits
I acknowledge that there are a few counter-arguments possible that we could and should consider here. Maybe one’s life is extremely bad and not living it would be better than having a life filled with suffering. Maybe one could have a desire so strong and intense to die that the pleasure taken in the realization of such act would bring more wellbeing than continuing living (even though such cases are highly improbable). Maybe this -the premise- is only applicable to earth life forms but in the universe, other life forms have a distinct way of realizing wellbeing, or have different biological considerations due to a non-universal Darwinism.
But, treating every counter argument would require much more time and is not the subject of this post. So, consider that given what we’ve said, we should at least consider as possible and at best as probable the following premise:
All sentient living forms across the universe have as such, an intrinsic desire, or a certain interest for survivability. Given the fact that this should maximize their wellbeing and their biological and evolutional “goal”.
The utilitarian’s aliens
Now that we have stated all of this, let’s first consider the notorious argument of the human-eating aliens. Singer proposed this argument in animal liberation (1975) and asks us to imagine extraterrestrials invading Earth, treating humans as cattle, ultimately slaughtering them for food. Basically, doing to us what we are doing to other animals.
There are a lot of possible responses but in order to avoid most of them, let’s consider an alternative argument:
Consider that those aliens are hyper sentient, which means that their welfare range is way higher than ours. Let’s say that human welfare range is equal to 1 and an alien is equal to 1 000. When eating human meat, the possible pleasure taken by the aliens is at his maximum (which means 1 000x the maximum amount of pleasure possibly taken by a human).
Let’s also consider that those aliens are utilitarian, and because they are, even though our welfare range is very low, they still want to minimize our suffering as much as possible to maximize the utilitarian goal. In order to do so, they have a technology to suppresses our ability to feel pain, anxiety, stress… Maybe via genetic modification, anyway, their way of doing it doesn’t matter as long as it is pain-free.
A utilitarian wouldn’t have any choice but to accept -maybe with some reticence- his fate, and be eaten by those aliens, thus maximizing by a lot, the total amount of wellbeing.
The core of the argument:
Even if it would be better in term of maximizing wellbeing to be eaten, it Is not in the interest of the aliens to eat us, as much as it isn’t in our interest to eat animals -nor exploit them-.
If we consider the fact that aliens could come to earth and do such thing, those aliens should also consider that such thing could happen to them with a more advanced technological and more sentient V2 alien civilization which would take immense pleasure in eating them. And those V2 aliens, should also consider the fact that a V3 even more advanced and more sentient civilization could exist and want to eat them, and so on.
If we accept the following promise which states that: All sentient living forms across the universe have as such an intrinsic desire, or a certain interest for survivability, given the fact that this should maximize their wellbeing and their biological and evolutional “goal”.
And given the fact that we probably wouldn’t want to be eaten by aliens, and that those aliens wouldn’t want to be eaten either. Then I argue that those aliens would renounce to eat human meat in consideration of such possibilities even though eating human meat would bring them so much pleasure, in order to not be eaten by those V2 aliens and so on.
This argument states that, we should as humans then not eat -nor exploit- non human animals because we wouldn’t want to be eaten -not exploited- by aliens. Those aliens given their advanced technological and intellectual knowledge, must’ve had those considerations and considered that the best would be to not eat us in order to not be eaten by those V3 aliens. Which leads to a continual chain of veganism.
We can here see in what way this argument is kind of deontological because it applies to every intelligent or reasonable being in the universe, but it is not based on a transcendent law that we have to follow. It is rather a universal law, based on the consequences of biology that is in the best interest of every being to follow, making it partly -or mainly- prudential.
The limits -again-
I firmly believe this argument has some potential, but there are a few flaws.
Firstly, universal Darwinism is not certain at all, if aliens had different interests or biological goals then it would not apply to them.
Secondly, if those aliens somehow knew that there was a ceiling in term of hedonic experiences, or that welfare range also had a ceiling, then the aliens with that ceiling reached, by being at the top in term of hedonic capacity could eat painlessly those under them, maximizing wellbeing according to a utilitarian goal.
In the same way, if let’s say aliens V3000 were the ones at the top of the galaxy in term of technology, not even hedonic capacity possible. What would stop them from eating those under them? This argument considers that there always could be someone higher, but if there is no one, then it probably doesn’t work.
I think we could at least consider this argument as plausible, maybe probable is a bit too much though.
This is my first post on this forum and I’m still conceiving this argument, so I will gladly take any feedback that you may have.
Thank you for reading this.
The reasoning here seems to be that rational beings will follow something like Kant's first formulation of the categorical imperative--don't eat meat unless you could will it as a universal law that everybody should eat meat, including space aliens who wanted to eat you.
My understanding is that Kant did regard following the categorical imperative as a requirement of rationality. But many will have doubts on that score. It's true that if everybody robbed banks, nobody would be able to borrow money. But if you had the opportunity to rob a bank and go scot free, would it really be prudentially irrational to do so? By the same token, if I can eat animals and the rest of the universe won't in fact copy me, how is it against my self-interest to do so?
Even if we grant that it's prudentially rational to follow Kant's Formula of Universal Law, it's not clear that there would be anything contradictory or self-defeating in willing that everybody, including space aliens, should eat meat. There might be no space aliens. Or if there are, they might live too far away to pose much of a threat.