“Which came first — is a mode of causality — that, in the case of the Chicken Question … is like drinking the bitter, back-barn moonshine of causality.

That’s what the question is trying to get you to see, directly, personally. You have to question the question’s structuring of expectation, sequence and identity. In simple mechanical operations we may suppose this mode of causality. Beyond that limited scope other modes are required.

Actual chickens aren’t hypothetical, either. Neither are eggs.”

— a which