That may be, but by becoming a vegan, you don’t make a problem any better, you just neglect to make it worse. And since I have a very limited ability to make this issue worse and no power at all to make it better, the only ethical reason not to eat meat is to protect my conscience.
Besides, extra production when it comes to meat means raising another animal when previously one would not be allowed to mature. Its life may be short and unhappy, but I value a life of suffering more than no life at all.
So you are nearing the end of your life due to some disease, and the doctor tells you: “At the moment when you would otherwise die, we have a procedure that can give you an extra two minutes of life. Unfortunately, you will spend all of those two minutes in utter agony, as if your entire skin were flayed and bathed in salt and red-hot barbs had been simultaneously thrust into your throat, genitals and anus. Then, after two minutes of this, you will die.” Will you opt for the procedure?
Ciphergoth’s point was to show that you did not really believe the statement “I value a life of suffering more than no life at all.”
Now that the point is made, your justification of extra production falls apart. Saying that extra production means more lives which means more good is not a good argument. If you honestly felt this way, then you’d accept ciphergoth’s deal—and you’d also be morally obligated to forcibly impregnate as many women as possible to boot.
If you read my comment below, you would see that I was not referring to my own life. Also, as I said before, that statement is a generalization. I am not hard programmed to absolutely value the maximization of life, but, as a general rule, I feel bad if something that could be alive is not.
Also, I never said that extra production is a good thing, I said that there was moral value to be found in it, which can compensate for the overall end of the process. And valuing additional life does not obligate you to impregnate women if you feel a stronger moral obligation towards not forcibly impregnating people. I made a statement about a characteristic of my utility function, I did not make a statement about the driving force behind my utility function. The desire to optimize life in others does not override most of my other desires.
By the way, its interesting that you automatically seem to assume I’m male. You happen to be right and the odds were on your side, but still.
My apologies on the male assumption. By sheer chance, when I first wrote the comment referencing ciphergoth, I noticed myself using the pronoun “he” and took steps to rephrase appropriately. Yet I did not do the same with you.
I really need to spend more time checking my assumptions before I post, but old habits are tough to break in a short period of time. Your above post will reinforce the need for me to check assumptions before hitting the “comment” button.
As for extra production, I can see that a stronger moral obligation would override in circumstances like rape. But what about culture wide influences? It isn’t obvious to me that a stronger moral obligation would override your desire to have a culture-wide policy on reproducing as often as possible. Wouldn’t a major goal of yours be to somehow help guide civilization toward some optimal human saturation in your light cone? I don’t mean paperclip maximization style, as obviously after a certain density overall good would be lessened, not greatened. But surely an increase in human density up to some optimal saturation?
I know you say that “the desire to optimize life in others does not override most of my other desires”, but surely this applies mostly to principles like “don’t rape”, and not to principles like “don’t institute strong societal encouragement for procreation”.
edit: Added a missing “don’t institute” on the final line.
I value a life of suffering more than no life at all.
Just so I’m clear… are you saying that you predict you would never want to end your life if you predicted that it would be a life of suffering? Or that you might want to end your life in that case, but you currently believe it would be better if you were unable to? Or something else?
I never said anything about the life in question being mine. To be honest, I don’t value personally experiencing life all that much. I meant that I generally value the lives of other beings even if much of their lives involve suffering. Of course that is a ridiculously generalized statement, but the probability of a creature’s happiness will usually be infinitely greater if that creature actually exists.
In any case, my main point was that a person can value the feelings of a being and still rationally decide to allow that being to be slaughtered so that the person can eat it. I don’t think I would have that much more of a problem eating tasty human meat than tasty chicken meat, but I could be wrong, seeing as how I’ve never eaten human.
I agree you didn’t say the life in question was yours. You said that a life of suffering was more valuable than no life, from which I inferred (apparently incorrectly) that your life of suffering is more valuable than you not having life at all.
That may be, but by becoming a vegan, you don’t make a problem any better, you just neglect to make it worse. And since I have a very limited ability to make this issue worse and no power at all to make it better, the only ethical reason not to eat meat is to protect my conscience.
Besides, extra production when it comes to meat means raising another animal when previously one would not be allowed to mature. Its life may be short and unhappy, but I value a life of suffering more than no life at all.
So you are nearing the end of your life due to some disease, and the doctor tells you: “At the moment when you would otherwise die, we have a procedure that can give you an extra two minutes of life. Unfortunately, you will spend all of those two minutes in utter agony, as if your entire skin were flayed and bathed in salt and red-hot barbs had been simultaneously thrust into your throat, genitals and anus. Then, after two minutes of this, you will die.” Will you opt for the procedure?
No, what’s your point?
Ciphergoth’s point was to show that you did not really believe the statement “I value a life of suffering more than no life at all.”
Now that the point is made, your justification of extra production falls apart. Saying that extra production means more lives which means more good is not a good argument. If you honestly felt this way, then you’d accept ciphergoth’s deal—and you’d also be morally obligated to forcibly impregnate as many women as possible to boot.
If you read my comment below, you would see that I was not referring to my own life. Also, as I said before, that statement is a generalization. I am not hard programmed to absolutely value the maximization of life, but, as a general rule, I feel bad if something that could be alive is not.
Also, I never said that extra production is a good thing, I said that there was moral value to be found in it, which can compensate for the overall end of the process. And valuing additional life does not obligate you to impregnate women if you feel a stronger moral obligation towards not forcibly impregnating people. I made a statement about a characteristic of my utility function, I did not make a statement about the driving force behind my utility function. The desire to optimize life in others does not override most of my other desires.
By the way, its interesting that you automatically seem to assume I’m male. You happen to be right and the odds were on your side, but still.
My apologies on the male assumption. By sheer chance, when I first wrote the comment referencing ciphergoth, I noticed myself using the pronoun “he” and took steps to rephrase appropriately. Yet I did not do the same with you.
I really need to spend more time checking my assumptions before I post, but old habits are tough to break in a short period of time. Your above post will reinforce the need for me to check assumptions before hitting the “comment” button.
As for extra production, I can see that a stronger moral obligation would override in circumstances like rape. But what about culture wide influences? It isn’t obvious to me that a stronger moral obligation would override your desire to have a culture-wide policy on reproducing as often as possible. Wouldn’t a major goal of yours be to somehow help guide civilization toward some optimal human saturation in your light cone? I don’t mean paperclip maximization style, as obviously after a certain density overall good would be lessened, not greatened. But surely an increase in human density up to some optimal saturation?
I know you say that “the desire to optimize life in others does not override most of my other desires”, but surely this applies mostly to principles like “don’t rape”, and not to principles like “don’t institute strong societal encouragement for procreation”.
edit: Added a missing “don’t institute” on the final line.
Just so I’m clear… are you saying that you predict you would never want to end your life if you predicted that it would be a life of suffering? Or that you might want to end your life in that case, but you currently believe it would be better if you were unable to? Or something else?
I never said anything about the life in question being mine. To be honest, I don’t value personally experiencing life all that much. I meant that I generally value the lives of other beings even if much of their lives involve suffering. Of course that is a ridiculously generalized statement, but the probability of a creature’s happiness will usually be infinitely greater if that creature actually exists.
In any case, my main point was that a person can value the feelings of a being and still rationally decide to allow that being to be slaughtered so that the person can eat it. I don’t think I would have that much more of a problem eating tasty human meat than tasty chicken meat, but I could be wrong, seeing as how I’ve never eaten human.
I agree you didn’t say the life in question was yours. You said that a life of suffering was more valuable than no life, from which I inferred (apparently incorrectly) that your life of suffering is more valuable than you not having life at all.