If patterns of avoidance looked like what reasonable science-based consequentialist GHG/sustainability concerns would look like, I would be fine with it.
But what I found is that universally people who talk about sustainability make decisions that are worse or orthogonal to the issue, like buying expensive, organic, and low yield crops (fancy fruits and vegetables) etc., instead of cheapest, highest yield, and most mainstream crops and meat from grass-fed animals. And they’re very rarely genuinely interested in science behind nutrition, agriculture, energy etc.
What all makes me believe that they just pretend to be concerned about GHG and sustainability.
Actually, how about consequentialist vs non-consequentialist as labels? Wouldn’t that be even more accurate?
But what I found is that universally people who talk about sustainability make decisions that are worse or orthogonal to the issue...
Sorry, but I’m calling bullshit. I agree that there’s a lot of inconsistent posing that goes on around these issues, and it frustrates the hell out of me too. But claiming it’s universal is just inaccurate. (At best it’s a sloppy exaggeration.)
There are vegetarians whose primary or only concern is sustainability, and who try to make food choices that reflect this. I know some of them personally.
To infer that anyone who makes decisions that don’t exactly mesh with “reasonable science-based consequentialist GHG/sustainability concerns” are “just pretend[ing] to be concerned about GHG and sustainability” is unjustified. As I’ve noted elsewhere, there are a often tensions between the various rationales for restricted diets. Which means that if you buy into more than one of these rationales, you’ll sometimes end up having to make awkward compromises between them. That doesn’t mean that you don’t really care about any of them; it just means that the world isn’t conveniently designed to let you have everything you want.
Actually, how about consequentialist vs non-consequentialist as labels? Wouldn’t that be even more accurate?
Do you mean labels to distinguish the people you have values-disagreements with vs. people you broadly agree with on values but may have empirical disagreements with? I don’t think the consequentialist/non-consequentialist distinction will do that.
Many of the animal-welfare types that I presume you would disagree with are actually pretty hardcore utilitarians (and a fortiori consequentialists). Peter Singer would be a good example. Your difference with them lies in what entities each of you take to fall within the sphere of moral concern: they think animals count; you don’t. It doesn’t have much to do with consequentialism per se.
EDIT: To be slightly more constructive, anthropocentric consequentialist vs. non-(anthropocentric consequentialist) may capture what you want to express.
I don’t see this as a value-disagreement case. Someone who has different values, and behaves in a way that’s broadly consistent with these values, is on the consequentialist side. People who just follow certain rituals (like not eating meat), and claim to have some values but don’t act in a way consistent with them, are on non-consequentialist side.
I’ve never seen anybody who was vegetarian because of value disagreements, and was behaving consistently with their alleged values.
For example if you claim to prefer non-existence of animals to them being used as food, then you clearly must support destruction of all nature reserves, as that’s exactly the same choice. And if you’re against animal suffering, you’d be totally happy to eat cows genetically modified not to have pain receptors. And so on. All positions never taken by any vegetarians.
For example if you claim to prefer non-existence of animals to them being used as food, then you clearly must support destruction of all nature reserves, as that’s exactly the same choice. And if you’re against animal suffering, you’d be totally happy to eat cows genetically modified not to have pain receptors. And so on. All positions never taken by any vegetarians.
I think most animal-welfare researchers would agree that animals on the nature reserve suffer less than those in factory farms, where conditions run contrary to the animals’ evolved instincts. As far as consistent vegetarians, I know at least 5-10 people (including myself) who are very concerned about the suffering of animals in the wild and who would strongly support genetically modified cows without pain receptors. (Indeed, one of my acquaintances has actually toyed with the idea of promoting the use of anencephalic farm animals.) Still, I sympathize with your frustration about the dearth of consequentialist thinking among animal advocates.
If animals in nature lead lives that are worth not living, is there a case here for somehow making sure that if humanity goes extinct, the rest of the biosphere goes with it (think doomsday device with ten thousand year timer, or some other more serious way)? Also depends on whether we’d expect any intelligent species arising after humanity to evolve into a better or worse than average (or than zero) civilization, I guess.
For example if you claim to prefer non-existence of animals to them being used as food, then you clearly must support destruction of all nature reserves, as that’s exactly the same choice. And if you’re against animal suffering, you’d be totally happy to eat cows genetically modified not to have pain receptors. And so on. All positions never taken by any vegetarians.
I don’t agree with the premise of the first position, but I agree wholeheartedly with the second (well, replacing “pain receptors” with a complete rework of the mammalian brain and nervous system, since just removing pain receptors is a very limited kind of alleviation of suffering. After all, I could remove your literal pain receptors and lock you in a 6x6 cell for your whole life, and you’d still be suffering.)
I hope now you’ll never again have to say it’s a position never taken by any vegetarian.
I second Yvain on both. Besides, even if taw’s claim that vegetarians never take those positions were true, it would not imply that none of them is behaving consistently with their alleged values. It could simply be that some vegetarians decisions were over-determined. In other words, a person could have two reasons not to eat meat, each of which was sufficient.
well, replacing “pain receptors” with a complete rework of the mammalian brain and nervous system, since just removing pain receptors is a very limited kind of alleviation of suffering. After all, I could remove your literal pain receptors and lock you in a 6x6 cell for your whole life, and you’d still be suffering.)
As an aside, what you’re describing here would be (to my mind) ethically indistinguishable from vat-grown meat.
For example if you claim to prefer non-existence of animals to them being used as food, then you clearly must support destruction of all nature reserves, as that’s exactly the same choice.
This isn’t obvious to me at all. Can you explain?
And if you’re against animal suffering, you’d be totally happy to eat cows genetically modified not to have pain receptors.
Pain is not the only form of suffering. Temple Grandin has suggested that animals are worse off when they are afraid than when they are in pain.
I think he means that since the animals on the preserve will eat one another, if you think they’d be better off not existing than living to one day be eaten, you should destroy the preserve.
Oh. If that’s what it means, then it’s only equivalent for someone who rejects the doing-allowing distinction to an extreme degree and considers destroying the preserve in the first place a neutral act, rather than an act which would have an impact on other valuable things like biodiversity and make a lot of humans angry.
it’s only equivalent for someone who rejects the doing-allowing distinction to an extreme degree
This suggests that the consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist distinction might actually the right one after all. (Of course, the claim that only consequentialists act in ways that are broadly consistent with their values is still, er… contentious, to say the least.)
Not at all! Consequentialists can get doing-allowing distinctions via self-other asymmetries or agent relativization, and non-consequentialists don’t have to embrace the distinction.
Fair enough. I tend to code self-other asymmetry and agent-relativization as non-consequentialist, even though they can be formally treated as such; but that’s admittedly a matter of (potentially idiosyncratic) taste. (I worry that otherwise consequentialism doesn’t uniquely identify anything; perhaps such fears are unwarranted.) Your second point is of course valid either way.
Someone who has different values, and behaves in a way that’s broadly consistent with these values, is on the consequentialist side.
This seems like a highly non-standard use of the word consequentialist. Deontologists and virtue types (what are they called anyway? “virtue ethicists” seems too cerebral/theoretical… aretaics? aretaists?) seem generally capable or acting in accordance with their values.
If this is what you’re trying to capture, then “value-consistent” and “non-value consistent” would possibly be more accurate. (More simply: consistent, and hypocritical, though I’d personally avoid the latter.)
I’ve never seen anybody who was vegetarian because of value disagreements, and was behaving consistently with their alleged values.
I assume you don’t mean this in the trivial sense that none of us act in absolute concordance with our alleged values. Given that, all I can say is that you must be particularly unfortunate in the subset of vegetarians you’ve “seen”, and that you might want to be wary of generalizing from one example.*
For example if you claim to prefer non-existence of animals to them being used as food, then you clearly must support destruction of all nature reserves, as that’s exactly the same choice.
I’m afraid this example is anything but clear to me. Could you perhaps explain why you think this in more detail?
And if you’re against animal suffering, you’d be totally happy to eat cows genetically modified not to have pain receptors. And so on. All positions never taken by any vegetarians.
Depends how you define suffering. In any event, I would have thought that the general willingness of vegetarians on this thread to eat vat-grown meat would serve as a pretty clear counter-example to the sort of claim that you’re making here.
* I guess you could think that they’re behaving inconsistently with their stated values because they hold factual beliefs with which you disagree. However you examples suggest that this isn’t the source of the conflict. And calling them non-consequentialist for that reason would certainly be misleading.
what are they called anyway? “virtue ethicists” seems too cerebral/theoretical… aretaics? aretaists?
This is one of those problems that everybody sees immediately but nobody can do anything about it without more effort than it’s worth. We’ve been called “virtue ethicists” for at least 30 years, and it’s sticking.
“Utilitarianism, Deontology, and Virtue Ethics” seems like everybody involved is violating some sort of naming convention. It should be “Utilitarianism, Deontism, and Virtuism” or “Utility Ethics, Deontic Ethics, and Virtue Ethics”, or something.
I agree completely. There’s a phrase we use, “aretaic turn”, which describes the move towards consideration of virtue in all philosophical fields in the mid-to-late 20th century. I like it.
For example if you claim to prefer non-existence of animals to them being used as food
The issue is not “being used as food”, but being raised in a particularly unpleasant way, much worse than would be experienced in a nature reserve.
And if you’re against animal suffering, you’d be totally happy to eat cows genetically modified not to have pain receptors. All positions never taken by any vegetarians.
How many vegetarians have you actually asked this one? I think you’d find many who would be happy with that; I know many say they would eat vat-grown meat.
If patterns of avoidance looked like what reasonable science-based consequentialist GHG/sustainability concerns would look like, I would be fine with it.
But what I found is that universally people who talk about sustainability make decisions that are worse or orthogonal to the issue, like buying expensive, organic, and low yield crops (fancy fruits and vegetables) etc., instead of cheapest, highest yield, and most mainstream crops and meat from grass-fed animals. And they’re very rarely genuinely interested in science behind nutrition, agriculture, energy etc.
What all makes me believe that they just pretend to be concerned about GHG and sustainability.
Actually, how about consequentialist vs non-consequentialist as labels? Wouldn’t that be even more accurate?
Sorry, but I’m calling bullshit. I agree that there’s a lot of inconsistent posing that goes on around these issues, and it frustrates the hell out of me too. But claiming it’s universal is just inaccurate. (At best it’s a sloppy exaggeration.)
There are vegetarians whose primary or only concern is sustainability, and who try to make food choices that reflect this. I know some of them personally.
To infer that anyone who makes decisions that don’t exactly mesh with “reasonable science-based consequentialist GHG/sustainability concerns” are “just pretend[ing] to be concerned about GHG and sustainability” is unjustified. As I’ve noted elsewhere, there are a often tensions between the various rationales for restricted diets. Which means that if you buy into more than one of these rationales, you’ll sometimes end up having to make awkward compromises between them. That doesn’t mean that you don’t really care about any of them; it just means that the world isn’t conveniently designed to let you have everything you want.
Do you mean labels to distinguish the people you have values-disagreements with vs. people you broadly agree with on values but may have empirical disagreements with? I don’t think the consequentialist/non-consequentialist distinction will do that.
Many of the animal-welfare types that I presume you would disagree with are actually pretty hardcore utilitarians (and a fortiori consequentialists). Peter Singer would be a good example. Your difference with them lies in what entities each of you take to fall within the sphere of moral concern: they think animals count; you don’t. It doesn’t have much to do with consequentialism per se.
EDIT: To be slightly more constructive, anthropocentric consequentialist vs. non-(anthropocentric consequentialist) may capture what you want to express.
I don’t see this as a value-disagreement case. Someone who has different values, and behaves in a way that’s broadly consistent with these values, is on the consequentialist side. People who just follow certain rituals (like not eating meat), and claim to have some values but don’t act in a way consistent with them, are on non-consequentialist side.
I’ve never seen anybody who was vegetarian because of value disagreements, and was behaving consistently with their alleged values.
For example if you claim to prefer non-existence of animals to them being used as food, then you clearly must support destruction of all nature reserves, as that’s exactly the same choice. And if you’re against animal suffering, you’d be totally happy to eat cows genetically modified not to have pain receptors. And so on. All positions never taken by any vegetarians.
I think most animal-welfare researchers would agree that animals on the nature reserve suffer less than those in factory farms, where conditions run contrary to the animals’ evolved instincts. As far as consistent vegetarians, I know at least 5-10 people (including myself) who are very concerned about the suffering of animals in the wild and who would strongly support genetically modified cows without pain receptors. (Indeed, one of my acquaintances has actually toyed with the idea of promoting the use of anencephalic farm animals.) Still, I sympathize with your frustration about the dearth of consequentialist thinking among animal advocates.
If animals in nature lead lives that are worth not living, is there a case here for somehow making sure that if humanity goes extinct, the rest of the biosphere goes with it (think doomsday device with ten thousand year timer, or some other more serious way)? Also depends on whether we’d expect any intelligent species arising after humanity to evolve into a better or worse than average (or than zero) civilization, I guess.
I don’t agree with the premise of the first position, but I agree wholeheartedly with the second (well, replacing “pain receptors” with a complete rework of the mammalian brain and nervous system, since just removing pain receptors is a very limited kind of alleviation of suffering. After all, I could remove your literal pain receptors and lock you in a 6x6 cell for your whole life, and you’d still be suffering.)
I hope now you’ll never again have to say it’s a position never taken by any vegetarian.
I second Yvain on both. Besides, even if taw’s claim that vegetarians never take those positions were true, it would not imply that none of them is behaving consistently with their alleged values. It could simply be that some vegetarians decisions were over-determined. In other words, a person could have two reasons not to eat meat, each of which was sufficient.
As an aside, what you’re describing here would be (to my mind) ethically indistinguishable from vat-grown meat.
This isn’t obvious to me at all. Can you explain?
Pain is not the only form of suffering. Temple Grandin has suggested that animals are worse off when they are afraid than when they are in pain.
I think he means that since the animals on the preserve will eat one another, if you think they’d be better off not existing than living to one day be eaten, you should destroy the preserve.
Oh. If that’s what it means, then it’s only equivalent for someone who rejects the doing-allowing distinction to an extreme degree and considers destroying the preserve in the first place a neutral act, rather than an act which would have an impact on other valuable things like biodiversity and make a lot of humans angry.
This suggests that the consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist distinction might actually the right one after all. (Of course, the claim that only consequentialists act in ways that are broadly consistent with their values is still, er… contentious, to say the least.)
Not at all! Consequentialists can get doing-allowing distinctions via self-other asymmetries or agent relativization, and non-consequentialists don’t have to embrace the distinction.
Fair enough. I tend to code self-other asymmetry and agent-relativization as non-consequentialist, even though they can be formally treated as such; but that’s admittedly a matter of (potentially idiosyncratic) taste. (I worry that otherwise consequentialism doesn’t uniquely identify anything; perhaps such fears are unwarranted.) Your second point is of course valid either way.
This seems like a highly non-standard use of the word consequentialist. Deontologists and virtue types (what are they called anyway? “virtue ethicists” seems too cerebral/theoretical… aretaics? aretaists?) seem generally capable or acting in accordance with their values.
If this is what you’re trying to capture, then “value-consistent” and “non-value consistent” would possibly be more accurate. (More simply: consistent, and hypocritical, though I’d personally avoid the latter.)
I assume you don’t mean this in the trivial sense that none of us act in absolute concordance with our alleged values. Given that, all I can say is that you must be particularly unfortunate in the subset of vegetarians you’ve “seen”, and that you might want to be wary of generalizing from one example.*
I’m afraid this example is anything but clear to me. Could you perhaps explain why you think this in more detail?
Depends how you define suffering. In any event, I would have thought that the general willingness of vegetarians on this thread to eat vat-grown meat would serve as a pretty clear counter-example to the sort of claim that you’re making here.
* I guess you could think that they’re behaving inconsistently with their stated values because they hold factual beliefs with which you disagree. However you examples suggest that this isn’t the source of the conflict. And calling them non-consequentialist for that reason would certainly be misleading.
This is one of those problems that everybody sees immediately but nobody can do anything about it without more effort than it’s worth. We’ve been called “virtue ethicists” for at least 30 years, and it’s sticking.
“Utilitarianism, Deontology, and Virtue Ethics” seems like everybody involved is violating some sort of naming convention. It should be “Utilitarianism, Deontism, and Virtuism” or “Utility Ethics, Deontic Ethics, and Virtue Ethics”, or something.
That’s a shame. I actually kind of fancied aretaic (used as a noun in the same sense as stoic/Stoic).
I agree completely. There’s a phrase we use, “aretaic turn”, which describes the move towards consideration of virtue in all philosophical fields in the mid-to-late 20th century. I like it.
The issue is not “being used as food”, but being raised in a particularly unpleasant way, much worse than would be experienced in a nature reserve.
How many vegetarians have you actually asked this one? I think you’d find many who would be happy with that; I know many say they would eat vat-grown meat.