One factor Peterson misses is counter-factual agreements.
If sufficiently advanced aliens came along whose concepts of rights were too complex for us to understand/implement how would we like them to act? Us unilaterally giving animals “rights” can be thought of as a counter-factual agreement with those aliens that we should be given similar rights. E.g. “All living beings have the right to achieve no worse utility than they would achieve if left to their own devices within their own environment”.
Not sure if this is helpful—probably the word “rights” is too loaded to be a useful concept in the debate anyway.
I’m not sure how one would evaluate utility for a plant. Without desires should we count revealed preferences? Should we count them as desiring offspring or desiring the continuation of their species?
Thinking about it like this gives an interesting and possibly helpful framing.
I’m not sure how one would evaluate utility for a plant. Without desires should we count revealed preferences?
That would be interesting. Clearly, an ethical vegan should never eat spicy food. Spices are toxins that plants secrete to defend themselves against predators, and the vegan should respect the plant’s revealed desires. The same applies to plants that defend themselves with hard shells or thorns. A vegan should only eat plants that want to be eaten. The vegan must prohibit also the consumption of plants that can only be rendered edible by cooking. Cooking is an intrinsically violent and barbaric practice, as are stabbing with forks, slashing with knives, and grinding with teeth. And where is the dignity of plants when they are industrially grown and then transported vast distances, sometimes to regions where the living plant could not survive?
No. The ethical vegan should have all their teeth removed and subsist on free-range tomatoes, depositing their stools in the fields where they are grown.
One would have to distinguish between instrumental and terminal values. As evolutionary entities without a brain, their terminal value would have to be reproduction rather than survival? I certainly don’t think plants have a preference for dignity.
Also if humans give life to plants/animals, that being had 0 utility before humans got involved. However, others never had the chance to live and so lost utility. It certainly isn’t an easy calculation.
One factor Peterson misses is counter-factual agreements.
If sufficiently advanced aliens came along whose concepts of rights were too complex for us to understand/implement how would we like them to act? Us unilaterally giving animals “rights” can be thought of as a counter-factual agreement with those aliens that we should be given similar rights. E.g. “All living beings have the right to achieve no worse utility than they would achieve if left to their own devices within their own environment”.
Not sure if this is helpful—probably the word “rights” is too loaded to be a useful concept in the debate anyway.
Does that include plants? This is not a frivolous question.
I don’t know—I just made it up :)
I’m not sure how one would evaluate utility for a plant. Without desires should we count revealed preferences? Should we count them as desiring offspring or desiring the continuation of their species?
Thinking about it like this gives an interesting and possibly helpful framing.
That would be interesting. Clearly, an ethical vegan should never eat spicy food. Spices are toxins that plants secrete to defend themselves against predators, and the vegan should respect the plant’s revealed desires. The same applies to plants that defend themselves with hard shells or thorns. A vegan should only eat plants that want to be eaten. The vegan must prohibit also the consumption of plants that can only be rendered edible by cooking. Cooking is an intrinsically violent and barbaric practice, as are stabbing with forks, slashing with knives, and grinding with teeth. And where is the dignity of plants when they are industrially grown and then transported vast distances, sometimes to regions where the living plant could not survive?
No. The ethical vegan should have all their teeth removed and subsist on free-range tomatoes, depositing their stools in the fields where they are grown.
One would have to distinguish between instrumental and terminal values. As evolutionary entities without a brain, their terminal value would have to be reproduction rather than survival? I certainly don’t think plants have a preference for dignity.
Also if humans give life to plants/animals, that being had 0 utility before humans got involved. However, others never had the chance to live and so lost utility. It certainly isn’t an easy calculation.