I must be misusing the word fair, I’m not familiar with the usage you’re hinting at.
I’m not trying to anthropomorphise but it’s a reasonable extrapolation that they experience their own lives (certainly we have no real understanding of consciousness to apply to measure and prove or disprove this yet, but we cannot wait for it). With that assumption the life of (for example) a cow as livestock can be seen as a significantly worse experience for the animal than their natural/wild lives would have been, although still not optimal since they are subject to predators and other bad things. To not accept this as unkind or “unfair” treatment seems to be based on the assumption that they are really unconscious automatons that regulate some meat hanging off them—essentially a algorithmic restatement of the “they don’t have souls” view from the past.
I must be misusing the word fair, I’m not familiar with the usage you’re hinting at.
I’m not trying to anthropomorphise but it’s a reasonable extrapolation that they experience their own lives (certainly we have no real understanding of consciousness to apply to measure and prove or disprove this yet, but we cannot wait for it). With that assumption the life of (for example) a cow as livestock can be seen as a significantly worse experience for the animal than their natural/wild lives would have been, although still not optimal since they are subject to predators and other bad things. To not accept this as unkind or “unfair” treatment seems to be based on the assumption that they are really unconscious automatons that regulate some meat hanging off them—essentially a algorithmic restatement of the “they don’t have souls” view from the past.