I have no idea what that question even means. I don’t want to save the Bengal tiger because I think it has a “life worth living” but because I want the species to flourish.
But to the extent that you are concerned that battery chickens have negative lives, why become a vegetarian? Eat free range meat. Or eat only hunted meat. And why make a fuss about trace amounts of meat products in your cheese or whatever? Isn’t it suspicious that people who make the strange claim that animals count as objects of moral concern also make the strange claim that animal lives aren’t worth living and also cash out that concern by a dietary purity ritual? Were I a cynic, I might even think that the religious-seeming ritual were the whole point, and the elaborate epicyclical theology built around it a mere after-the-fact justification.
“Isn’t it suspicious that people who make the strange claim that animals count as objects of moral concern also make the strange claim that animal lives aren’t worth living”
No, this makes perfect sense. 1. They decide animals are objects of moral concern. 2. Look into the conditions they live in, and decide that in some cases they are worse than not being alive. 3. Decide it’s wrong to fund expansion of a system that holds animals in conditions that are worse than not being alive at all.
Isn’t a direct consequence of (2) is that those animals are better off dead than alive and so, if the opportunity to (relatively costlessly) kill some of them arises, one should do so?
I don’t know whether we’d get to absurdum, so far I’m trying to figure out how far you (that is, the general-vegetarian “you”) are willing to take this reasoning.
Well, not quite. If you think being dead has positive utility for this creature, this positive utility is not necessarily small. If so, you need to weight the issues in killing against that positive utility.
For example, let’s take “death is painless”—actually, if the negative utility of the painful death is not as great as the positive utility of dying, you would still be justified and obligated to impose that painful death upon the creature as the net result is positive utility.
In general, vegetarians don’t care as much about e.g. species flourishing as they do about the vast amounts of suffering that farmed animals are quite likely to experience. I see nothing strange in viewing animals as morally relevant and deeming their life a net negative, thus hoping they wouldn’t have to exist.
Eating only free range or hunted meat is a pretty good option, although of course not entirely unproblematic, from the suffering-reduction point of view. It is very often brought up by non-vegetarians whenever the topic of animal suffering comes up—anecdotally I counted four people I know who I have heard using the argument when explaining or defending their meat eating. None of them actually even eats mainly free range or hunted meat. To me, it seems the whole point is unfortunately only ever used as a motte that people retreat to to avoid having to feel or look bad, before again just eating whatever as soon as they can stop thinking about it. This might not mean these people don’t really care on some level: I’d guess it is more expensive cognitively to analyze and keep tabs on which meat products cause only acceptable amounts of suffering, without succumbing to rationalization and constant habit-breaking and eventually forgetting the project, than it is to just rule meat out of your diet and stop thinking about it.
Another reason why free-range and hunted meat are not quite equivalent to veg(etari)anism is that they don’t seem to scale as easily to feed large populations for a reasonable land area and product price. That said, I for one would welcome a society which mostly eats plant-based food, but with the very occasional expensive hunted or ethically-farmed piece of meat or cheese, which indeed seems like what a non-factory-farming omnivore society could end up looking like. (Of course, for us embracing a more negative form of utilitarianism, wild-animal suffering would still be a problem, but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion.)
Do you want the human species to flourish in a way different from the way you want the chicken species to flourish. If yes, in what ways? If not, do you object to a North Korea style singleton government (which will solve a lot of present coordination problems for us, for a nominal utility fee of course)?
Yes, I view humans as substantially different from chickens and relate to them in a very different way. I view this as a strength of my position, not a weakness.
You should have started by describing your interpretation of what the word “flourish” means. I don’t think it’s a standard one (any links to prove the opposite?). For now this thread is going nowhere because of disagreements on definitions.
One of the things I hate most about this website is the people who love to claim that ordinary usages of English words are somehow non-standard or obscure.
flourish /ˈflʌrɪʃ/
verb
(of a living organism) grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly congenial environment.
I’m not sure what you mean by “factory-farmed,” but cows, sheep, pigs and free-range chickens seem healthy and vigorous. I’ve never been inside a battery-farm or a veal pen, but I’ll grant arguendo that those animals aren’t healthy or vigorous. But that’s an argument for eating free-range chicken, not for vegetarianism.
Does it matter? He has established that he does not think their happiness is important. It’s clear you two care about two different things. There is no point in further establishing what he means by “flourish”.
I have no idea what that question even means. I don’t want to save the Bengal tiger because I think it has a “life worth living” but because I want the species to flourish.
But to the extent that you are concerned that battery chickens have negative lives, why become a vegetarian? Eat free range meat. Or eat only hunted meat. And why make a fuss about trace amounts of meat products in your cheese or whatever? Isn’t it suspicious that people who make the strange claim that animals count as objects of moral concern also make the strange claim that animal lives aren’t worth living and also cash out that concern by a dietary purity ritual? Were I a cynic, I might even think that the religious-seeming ritual were the whole point, and the elaborate epicyclical theology built around it a mere after-the-fact justification.
“Isn’t it suspicious that people who make the strange claim that animals count as objects of moral concern also make the strange claim that animal lives aren’t worth living”
No, this makes perfect sense. 1. They decide animals are objects of moral concern. 2. Look into the conditions they live in, and decide that in some cases they are worse than not being alive. 3. Decide it’s wrong to fund expansion of a system that holds animals in conditions that are worse than not being alive at all.
Isn’t a direct consequence of (2) is that those animals are better off dead than alive and so, if the opportunity to (relatively costlessly) kill some of them arises, one should do so?
Is that supposed to be reductio ad absurdum? Euthanizing feral pets is standard. I’d do the same for livestock.
I don’t know whether we’d get to absurdum, so far I’m trying to figure out how far you (that is, the general-vegetarian “you”) are willing to take this reasoning.
If you can’t otherwise improve their lives, the death is painless, and murder isn’t independently bad.
Well, not quite. If you think being dead has positive utility for this creature, this positive utility is not necessarily small. If so, you need to weight the issues in killing against that positive utility.
For example, let’s take “death is painless”—actually, if the negative utility of the painful death is not as great as the positive utility of dying, you would still be justified and obligated to impose that painful death upon the creature as the net result is positive utility.
I was just giving what would be sufficient conditions, but they aren’t all necessarily necessary.
In general, vegetarians don’t care as much about e.g. species flourishing as they do about the vast amounts of suffering that farmed animals are quite likely to experience. I see nothing strange in viewing animals as morally relevant and deeming their life a net negative, thus hoping they wouldn’t have to exist.
Eating only free range or hunted meat is a pretty good option, although of course not entirely unproblematic, from the suffering-reduction point of view. It is very often brought up by non-vegetarians whenever the topic of animal suffering comes up—anecdotally I counted four people I know who I have heard using the argument when explaining or defending their meat eating. None of them actually even eats mainly free range or hunted meat. To me, it seems the whole point is unfortunately only ever used as a motte that people retreat to to avoid having to feel or look bad, before again just eating whatever as soon as they can stop thinking about it. This might not mean these people don’t really care on some level: I’d guess it is more expensive cognitively to analyze and keep tabs on which meat products cause only acceptable amounts of suffering, without succumbing to rationalization and constant habit-breaking and eventually forgetting the project, than it is to just rule meat out of your diet and stop thinking about it.
Another reason why free-range and hunted meat are not quite equivalent to veg(etari)anism is that they don’t seem to scale as easily to feed large populations for a reasonable land area and product price. That said, I for one would welcome a society which mostly eats plant-based food, but with the very occasional expensive hunted or ethically-farmed piece of meat or cheese, which indeed seems like what a non-factory-farming omnivore society could end up looking like. (Of course, for us embracing a more negative form of utilitarianism, wild-animal suffering would still be a problem, but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion.)
Do you want the human species to flourish in a way different from the way you want the chicken species to flourish. If yes, in what ways? If not, do you object to a North Korea style singleton government (which will solve a lot of present coordination problems for us, for a nominal utility fee of course)?
Yes, I view humans as substantially different from chickens and relate to them in a very different way. I view this as a strength of my position, not a weakness.
You should have started by describing your interpretation of what the word “flourish” means. I don’t think it’s a standard one (any links to prove the opposite?). For now this thread is going nowhere because of disagreements on definitions.
One of the things I hate most about this website is the people who love to claim that ordinary usages of English words are somehow non-standard or obscure.
Do you see anything about “a life worth living”?
Do you think factory-farmed animals grow and develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly congenial environment?
I’m not sure what you mean by “factory-farmed,” but cows, sheep, pigs and free-range chickens seem healthy and vigorous. I’ve never been inside a battery-farm or a veal pen, but I’ll grant arguendo that those animals aren’t healthy or vigorous. But that’s an argument for eating free-range chicken, not for vegetarianism.
Does it matter? He has established that he does not think their happiness is important. It’s clear you two care about two different things. There is no point in further establishing what he means by “flourish”.