Do you think vegans are too “preachy”, “moralistic”, or “judgmental”? I sometimes hear these sorts of complaints. It sounds like it’s all very well for these finicky vegans to fill their own plates with tofu and broccoli if they want. But where do they get off bothering everyone else with their “moral concerns” and trying to make people feel guilty? When are they going to just shut up and drink their kale juice?
They're not perfect, either. When they have consensual sex with adults, they use sex toys delivered by trucks, and sometimes those trucks run over children. So why should we listen to them?
Is it inmoral to ship sexual toys even when there's a very low probability to run over a kid? No. Is it inmoral to torture animals on factory farms? Yes.
"It is estimated that humans kill about 74 billion animals per year for gustatory pleasure...In return, we get enhanced gustatory pleasure during meals." - This doesn't acknowledge one of the most common and powerful arguments for eating meat, namely, health benefits for humans. The reason we get "gustatory pleasure" from eating meat in the first place is because we are genetically adapted to a diet that includes animal products. Veganism can have devastating health consequences, especially for children. If it were just a tradeoff between animal suffering and gustatory pleasure, the moral calculation would be easy. But if it's between animal suffering and human health, it's much more complicated. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2018.1437024
We also have gustatory pleasure from eating food that makes us obese, so I don't find that convincing. Further, as long as you take a multivitamin, you're generally fine, though there are a few other things. Here's an article that shows how to be a healthy vegan bodybuilder with citations, so it's definitely possible. https://legionathletics.com/vegan-bodybuilding/
Also, if you *have to* eat meat, just eat far less harmful humane certified meat and avoid anything that includes factory farmed products. Do this for your children too if that's a problem. Cut costs elsewhere if it's too expensive. Not eating out because of factory farmed stuff probably makes up for it if you refuse to even order vegan options for health fears.
The fact that we've genetically adapted to eat meat counts against it in terms of long-term health outcomes, not for it. Evolution is sometimes presented with the opportunity to take a gene that promotes short-term reproductive fitness at the expense of long-term health. It will take that trade more often than not and more often than the inverse because evolution is to a much larger extent concerned with reproduction. Artificial foods are not adapted to a meaningful extent. So, if we have an artificial food and a natural food and both have similar outcomes in the reproductive window, then the artificial food is more likely than not to be healthier long-term, apriori.
Let's assume all these worries check out. Now assume that you face the following choice between two lives.
Life 1. A long perfectly healthy life of eating meat, in which you kill around 7,000 animals in a way that inflicts a significant amount of suffering upon them (lets say 7,000 is a decent estimate of the amount of animals you will kill as a meat-eater over the course of your life).
Life 2. A slightly less long and slightly less healthy life, where you refrain from killing 7,000 animals.
I suspect that morality tells you to choose Life 2.
"A slightly less long and slightly less healthy life" - For some people the health consequences are devastating and irreversible. I do not think it's morally praiseworthy to pretend that this isn't a serious issue.
I think the evidence for veganism’s impact on health is pretty good and makes it plausible that most people will be healthier going vegan. I discuss some of it here
Did you see the paper I linked in my comment? You cite the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics as an authority, but its position statement is just anti-meat propaganda written by activists. It's good to care about animal suffering, but people should stop passing off wishful thinking as nutrition science.
I agree that "gustatory pleasure" is simplistic/reductionist. Yet I would rather risk a bit of cognitive impairment, though the evidence for that seems inconclusive, than inflict undeniable massive suffering on my fellow Earthlings.
The evidence will always be "inconclusive" because it's impossible to conduct long-term, controlled studies in nutrition. But the evidence that's available strongly points to veganism being a big risk, especially for children. I grew up a strict vegetarian, and know other kids who were raised the same way. It often doesn't end well. This needs to be part of the moral calculation, and not just ignored.
I agree it should be part of the calculation, but for me it's overwhelmed by the acute, undeniable and massive suffering meat Civ imposes on creatures I consider my friends.
Is longterm experience from Veg Civs any evidence here? The example that comes to mind is South Indian Brahmanism, which seems to output high cognitive performers quite regularly and widely.
Brahmins are known to have physiological adaptations for dealing with vegetarianism (not veganism), which evolved over the course of thousands of years.
In order to decide whether human suffering is overwhelmed by animal suffering, we have to measure the former. Animal-rights activists have made virtually no serious effort to do that.
We're even better at conscious engineering. I bet if we took animal suffering more seriously, as a species, we could find ways to address the nutrition angle. Hopefully short of genetically re-engineering non Brahmins:)
You misunderstand how science works. There's rarely a critical experiment that settles a controversy. You have to look at the totality of the empirical and theoretical evidence. The evidence re vegetarianism/veganism and health is summarized in the paper.
It's false that I rely "mostly old studies." Even if it were true, what difference would it make? Is there a problem with those studies? Are they contradicted by new and better ones?
If you think the paper "doesn't really seem to address the main question of vegan diets and why supplementation wouldn't work," I have to assume you didn't read it.
In epidemiology meat eaters are typically less healthy, and WHO now recommends no mor than 500g/week of which 0g should be processed. The seventh-day adventist cohort is a pretty good ”apples to apples” comparison in which the the non-meat group has better health.
I think this is similar to how people should understand evangelists. They don't just think that not worshiping the true God is a little foible. They think that it is an extreme wrong. In terms of quantity of harm, this class of actions outweighs all other wrongs done by human beings combined, and by a wide margin. Once understood, there should be a greater patience.
Mike, do you maintain friendships with people that eat meat? E.g. if the moral arguments for vegetarianism/veganism are sound, it seems that someone like Bryan Caplan is participating in a moral horror of a scale that would, in other contexts, be more than sufficient reason to justify disassociating from them, and perhaps even *require* doing so.
I think this falls into the same bucket as "most ethicists agree with this position intellectually, even those who still eat meat themselves". Yes, possibly associating with such monsters at all is morally wrong if you take the argument to its conclusion, but real-world hypocrisy does not undermine the truth of an argument that doesn't depend at all of the behaviour of the arguments proponents. (A truth is still true, no matter who says it.)
NTT differing between a pig and a human toddler, such that you should stand by and watch while someone pays to have a pig tortured, but kick the ass of someone who's paying to have a toddler tortured.
It really makes no sense. The difference obviously doesn't lie in characteristics of the groups of moral patients, but rather in the differing amount of good that can be accomplished by different responses in the current sociopolitical context.
When I steelman the "preachy vegan" sentiment, or idealize it, it is a charge of hypocrisy against those vegans who don't reflect on their own continued participation in animal suffering. All of us on the grid are full participants in a form of life that is terrible for the planet, humans and non- alike. I'm what people would call vegan, but if vegan means "eating and living ahimsically" I feel pretty far from vegan. I assume they don't check for bird & squirrel nests, let alone social insect colonies, when they cut trees for lumber and paper products I use. And the highways I rely on are terrible for animals. The list goes on and on. But yeah, factory farming is a straight-up nightmare I want no connection to.
I think these concerns are going to depend on the specific consumer ethic a Vegan endorses. Or rather, just whatever consumer ethic view is correct.
I’ve seen some interesting views being adapted around deontological considerations when it comes to the abstaining from animal products that I think have some good potential. (Especially since they’re not tied to efficacy).
>Do you think vegans are too “preachy”, “moralistic”, or “judgmental”?
Nah, these qualities naturally come about from having a radical and exotic moral framework detached from what most people believe
>It is very common for people to agree that buying meat is wrong while declaring that they plan to continue doing it anyway, because they are weak-willed.
I agree. Moreover, it's pathetic. I respect vegans more than these people.
>the objections they raise are among the lamest, most easily answered objections to be found in all of philosophy
Most people being stupid is not evidence for or against veganism
>In return, we get enhanced gustatory pleasure during meals.
...and quality nutrition, that vegan diets can match only with great difficulty and expense, if at all. Funny you omit that, huh?
> So, even if human welfare were 1,000 times more important than animal welfare, this would still plausibly count as the worst thing humans have ever done
That's where the problem is. Let's consider a variation of the trolley dilemma, and tie 1000 pigs to one side, and a single, regular human being to another, which matters more? As far as I'm concerned, anyone who chooses to save the pigs has his moral compass badly miscalibrated. Same with ten thousand pigs. Or a million. Or bazillion of them.
Why? The difference between animals and humans is qualitative, not merely quantitative. A human can lead a life filled with meaning. A pig...is a pig. Me getting quality, tasty and reasonably priced nutrition matters more than N pigs because it empowers me to act in ways that matter. I think most grasp this intuitively even if they struggle to put it into words.
And I graciously neglected to mention the problem of whether animals can even suffer - we don't know how consciousness works, and science is powerless to establish it, so definitive judgement is difficult to produce on this matter, even if vegans like to pretend that it's obvious.
P.s. I'm not a hater - you've written the best libertarian book I know of, but I think you let your emotions get in the way of your reason on this
You have the outline of a good argument here (human life being qualitatively more valuable) but it's diminished by the lame rhetoric and unfunny writing style.
A moral agent is an entity that is sufficiently able and willing to fulfill moral obligations, and of reconciling via restitution if they fail to fulfill those.
Obligation is a relation among moral agents. If I have an obligation regarding a moral non-agent, it will be mediated through an obligation to the moral agent responsible for that moral non-agent. If there is no such moral agent, there is no obligation.
If I am obligated not to buy factory farmed meat, I must be obligated to a moral agent that is responsible for the relevant animals.
I could be obligated to the animals directly, or to some group of other moral agents, or to myself, or to god/the universe, if those are moral agents or can somehow be assisted to fulfill obligations.
I don’t think animals are all moral agents. I am not obligated to avoid causing suffering of animals in general, because they are not obligated to avoid bringing about my suffering, either as a group or as specific individuals. They are not moral agents on their own. So there cannot be a direct symmetric obligation without assistance or mediation from genuine moral agents.
For there to be a direct asymmetric obligation requires that a moral agent take responsibility for each animal involved. That way, the other moral agent can assume the obligations on behalf of the animal toward me, making the relationship symmetric.
I don’t think I am obligated to other persons to avoid factory meat, because for me to be obligated to them they would need a form of standing, they would need to have taken responsibility for the animals in question. The persons with standing regarding the animals in question are the factory operators. If PETA had standing, the animals would not be in the farms. PETA would be caring for all of them, and protecting them from harm. It would not be sufficient for PETA to destroy the factory farms and free the animals, they would have to adopt them and protect them, which is infeasible. They are free to protect as many animals as they can, but that gives them no rights over animals claimed by others. They could perhaps sue for custody and adopt them, but then they would be responsible for them, and could not set them free.
So, to the extent that I am obligated to refrain, I am obligated to the factory operators, persons who consent for me not to refrain. Those who object to treatment of animals they have no responsibility for have no standing, no basis for claiming that I have an obligation to them.
I might be obligated to myself. Perhaps I think it would make me a worse person to eat meat and cause the suffering of animals. Certainly I think it would make me a worse person to torture them pointlessly. But obligations to the self are not enforceable by other persons. It is not much of an obligation if it is also my free choice.
I don’t think I am obligated to any god or to the universe, beyond the necessity of obeying physical laws, such as they are. If I find a way to violate them, that means I misunderstood what they are. If an obligation is to be enforced upon me, it will be through physical law or social enforcement. Social enforcement requires that I be obligated to specific persons, not the universe. To say that I am obligated to the universe is a denial of my premise that obligation is a social relation between moral agents. The universe is not a moral agent. It does not fulfill,obligations symmetrically.
Cruelty to animals is icky, and indicative of danger of more serious mental problems with potential social consequences. But the impact of factory farming on the psychology of producers and consumers should be an empirical question, not a moral one. This violates our intuitions.
A serious objection can be raised. What about children or dementia patients? Are they moral agents? According to this account they are not, and must depend on a relatives, guardians, or some other genuine moral agent to act as proxy. This violates the universalism common in our culture. But what is the practical difference? If there truly is no relative, adoptive parent, charitable agency, religious organization of shoddy government bureaucracy willing to take responsibility for an infant or a helpless adult, that infant or helpless adult is doomed to die. This account says the quiet part out loud. For infants and invalids to have social standing, society must take responsibility for them, and do so explicitly. There is no external agency that forces society to do so. Members of society may choose to do so, or choose not to.
The fate of the vegan consequentialist is to alternate between vegan activists who accuse consequentialism of being pitifully weaker than deontology, and actual deontologists who use their theory as an excuse for selfish torture of sentients.
I consider your reply to be a version of deontology that's so thoroughly evil in its account of what makes the unneccessary torture of non-agent sentients wrong, that I would be rightly accused of strawmanning if I had attributed such belief to anyone else.
I think you haven’t quite understood it. It can't be used to claim that “unneccessary torture of non-agent sentients wrong.” It doesn’t use the concept of wrongness (I hope), and so could not be used to construct an argument concluding something about wrongness.
It uses “obligation “ instead. This seems more concrete to me.
If we stay within that frame, we would need to find a way to explain how moral agents can impose obligations on each other unilaterally. They can get them to agree to them, or they can impose them on others by force. Can the ones being imposed upon impose other obligations on the imposers? If so, that will cause chaos. If not, what explains the asymmetry?
I mean, I understand it insofar as I've read copiously on "obligation" and encountered similar reasoning many times. I still don't know how to bridge this gap, if it's even possible, but moral "obligation" makes no sense to me. World states are better or worse than other world states, and actions are morally better or worse based upon rational predictions about the likelihood they'll bring about morally different world states. This appears to be a bidirectionally infinite continuum.
Yes, of course there are *legal* and *relational* obligations. These are set down in rules, and something may happen if you break them. But moral rightness isn't rule-based. What's wrong about torturing a puppy for fun isn't that I told somebody I wouldn't or that I signed a contact with them saying the puppy was their property. What's wrong with it is that the puppy experiences torture, a very bad experience, and this makes the world worse.
Okay. Then we are not obligated to pursue better world states, but choose freely to do so, because we happen to like them better?
>World states are better or worse than other world states,
Is there a universal standard, by which all agents will judge world states the same? Or do we each have our own, with some similarities? Are the similarities necessary or accidental?
>and actions are morally better or worse
As distinct from better or worse to actual persons?
>based upon rational predictions about the likelihood they'll bring about morally different world states.
Does this place a strong constraint on the possibilities? I.e., how narrow a range of predictions can be considered rational?
>This appears to be a bidirectionally infinite continuum.
“This” being the measure by which to compare world states?
>But moral rightness isn't rule-based.
Because it is world-state-comparison based?
>What's wrong about torturing a puppy for fun isn't that I told somebody I wouldn't or that I signed a contact with them saying the puppy was their property. What's wrong with it is that the puppy experiences torture, a very bad experience, and this makes the world worse
What's wrong with puppy torture is that it's no fun for humans with normal psychology, at least in the contemporary west. I have heard that people in Europe used to drown cats as entertainment. I suppose I should be skeptical, but if this actually happened, they would have considered a world with drowning cats an improvement over one without. So an appeal to better and worse worlds has to go a bit further in explaining what makes a particular standard of world-goodness better than alternative standards.
That doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about puppy torturers, unless we learn that it isn’t empirically linked with more direct antisocial behavior. Thinking puppy torture is intrinsically bad is different from thinking it is evidence of dangerous mental illness. Could it be possible that puppy torture might not supply evidence of that in some context?
If tormenting sentient creatures is bad full stop, and everyone owes it to the universe to stop, puppy torture and factory farms are not the only things that have to go. If “sentient” is taken literally, as in “having senses,” then we need to all become Jains, not just vegans. And maybe the Jains haven’t gone far enough to avoid being bad.
Or that is absurd, and that approach uses “sentient” in the colloquial sense of “smart” or “cute”, depending on context.
The world-state-comparison approach depends on persons asserting authority where they refuse to accept responsibility. People can prevent as much puppy torture as they like by taking responsibility for puppies. Or they can impose their measure of world-goodness on each other.
> Okay. Then we are not obligated to pursue better world states, but choose freely to do so, because we happen to like them better?
Some people choose to pursue better world states more reliably than others, and those are morally better people. I'm not thoroughly convinced of incompatiblist determinism, but I don't think we need the concept "freely" in order to attribute degrees of moral rightness/wrongness to internally caused actions.
> Is there a universal standard, by which all agents will judge world states the same? Or do we each have our own, with some similarities? Are the similarities necessary or accidental?
By "standard", do you mean a fact, or a measuring tool? Yes, I think there's an agent-independent fact of the matter about which potential world states are better than others. No, our individual toolsets for perceiving and measuring it aren't identical. They seem to highly overlap for many of us. Some of us have highly defective toolsets, like sociopaths. I suppose I'd call these differences accidental, resulting from natural selection and cultural development, but the same is true for abilities to appreciate mathematical and scientific truths.
>>and actions are morally better or worse
>As distinct from better or worse to actual persons?
Yes. It's much simpler to characterize actions in scalar consequentialist terms, as opposed to persons. Moral hazard is a large confounder. I still think we can make many high-resolution distinctions between persons, though.
> Does this place a strong constraint on the possibilities? I.e., how narrow a range of predictions can be considered rational?
I think it does, yes. The vast majority of actions cause extreme unpredictable consequences for unpredictable moral patients (the "butterfly effect"), yet end up rationally considered neutral. We can only morally judge certain actions that have reliable effects in one direction, e.g. paying daily for the bodies or bodily secretions of tortured mammals and birds (bad), effectively advocating for the reduction toward abolition of this system (good).
>>This appears to be a bidirectionally infinite continuum.
>“This” being the measure by which to compare world states?
The goodness of a world state is one continuum, and the moral rightness of an action is a second continuum, based upon a Bayesian calculation over the moral magnitudes of the world states that the action might bring about.
>>But moral rightness isn't rule-based.
>Because it is world-state-comparison based?
Yes.
> What's wrong with puppy torture is that it's no fun for humans with normal psychology, at least in the contemporary west.
This strikes me as a morally insane statement, like someone unable to understand morality directly, trying to reverse-engineer it by analogy with the laws of a state. It was just as wrong when it was normal to do.
>Thinking puppy torture is intrinsically bad is different from thinking it is evidence of dangerous mental illness. Could it be possible that puppy torture might not supply evidence of that in some context?
Yes. I agree that puppy torture in the developed Western world today supplies much more evidence of mental illness than it did in medieval Europe. However, this is a profoundly different question from the moral wrongness of the torture, which fundamentally derives from the intense suffering of the puppy. (Weighed against the benefit to the torturers, which I assume was comparably trivial then as now.)
> If tormenting sentient creatures is bad full stop, and everyone owes it to the universe to stop, puppy torture and factory farms are not the only things that have to go. If “sentient” is taken literally, as in “having senses,” then we need to all become Jains, not just vegans. And maybe the Jains haven’t gone far enough to avoid being bad.
I think scalar consequentialism is true. There's no "have to go". The world would continue to become *better* as more and more suffering was efficiently reduced and well-being efficiently increased, correct.
> Or that is absurd, and that approach uses “sentient” in the colloquial sense of “smart” or “cute”, depending on context.
No, I mean it as you described, having subjective states with moral valence (happiness and suffering, or close analogues). It seems correlated with intelligence, but not the same thing. Nor is there any reason to think we current humans represent the possible maximum of sentience; much more likely, we're barely scratching the surface.
> The world-state-comparison approach depends on persons asserting authority where they refuse to accept responsibility. People can prevent as much puppy torture as they like by taking responsibility for puppies. Or they can impose their measure of world-goodness on each other.
Why should I accept the moral force of your terms "authority", "responsibility" and "impose", unless you can show me their reliable efficacy in bringing about better world states while preventing worse ones?
What is the argument or reason for accepting your key premise? * If I have an obligation to a moral non-agent, it is mediated by an obligation to the moral agent responsible for that moral non-agent. If there is no such moral agent, there is no obligation.
Is this premise more plausible than Michael's argument and premises in support of ethical vegetarianism? Below is a presentation of his ethical argument:
1. Suffering is bad.
2. It is wrong to cause an enormous amount of something bad for the sake of relatively minor benefits for ourselves.
3. Factory farming causes an enormous amount of suffering for relatively minor benefits for humans.
4. Therefore, factory farming is wrong.
5. If it's wrong to do something, it's wrong to pay other people to do it.
6. Buying products from factory farms is paying people for factory farming.
7. Therefore, it's wrong to buy products from factory farms.
Does your view entail that you have no moral obligation to a baby without a society? Does your view imply that it's not wrong to inflict an enormous amount of bad things on that baby for the sake of relatively small benefits for yourself? If your answer is a loud yes, then it seems obvious how implausible your view is. Or will it be more plausible than Michael's premises? Have a great day.
>What is the argument or reason for accepting your key premise? * If I have an obligation to a moral non-agent, it is mediated by an obligation to the moral agent responsible for that moral non-agent.
If I violate my obligation, a moral agent can respond via the legal system or other social sanctions. A moral non-agent typically can’t do so for themselves, and must have assistance from a moral agent.
>Is this premise more plausible than Michael's argument and premises in support of ethical vegetarianism?
Do they contradict each other? Only if “bad” and “wrong” imply that moral agents have direct unmediated obligations regarding moral non-agents. If bad and wrong just mean, counter to my intuitions, then there is not conflict.
How do moral non-agents give consent without the help of a guardian or someone with power of attorney?
>Does your view entail that you have no moral obligation to a baby without a society?
I suppose. Fortunately you very rarely get babies without mothers, and even less frequently without relatives, charities, churches, or governments. And when you do get babies without those, they are already in dire straights, whether or not someone is obligated to them. If no one takes responsibility for them, they are dead.
>Does your view imply that it's not wrong to inflict an enormous amount of bad things on that baby for the sake of relatively small benefits for yourself?
Would I do it? No. Is that because I am obligated not to? I don’t think so. In this context, “wrong” is ambiguous. Perhaps “obligation” is too, but I have tried to show what I mean by it in context.
> will it be more plausible than Michael's premises?
Perhaps more practical and less ambiguous. We do things that are wrong often. What does his argument conclude about actual behavior?
He is an intuitionist, so he can’t really be faulted for using his intuition. There is probably an intuition or two hiding in my account, as opposed to factual claims. They should be found and examined, though you are not obligated to be the one to do it.
A consequentialist can do anything if the stakes are high enough. Not sure what a deontologist might say in general. This idea seems more like an odd cousin of contractarianism, though I hope it doesn’t carry the exact same baggage.
I don't see how you're answer proves you're premise about moral obligation. Why to have a moral obligation you need a moral agent that can respond via the legal system or other social sanctions? It seems clear you're not giving a reason at all.
I guess I expressed it badly, or it’s just a bad idea. It seems clear enough to me, but I have more context than you do.
An obligation can be a social relationship, or it can be an abstract philosophical idea. For the abstract idea to become concrete, it must take the form of a social relationship.
Yes, it is a bad idea. But why should I or you believe that? I see your point, but you haven't justified your thesis. I'm not playing the skeptic here. It really seems like you haven't presented any argument or reason at all. If you're trying to say that it seems obvious to you that your premise is true, then your argument is hopeless, it's not obvious to anyone else. Thanks for your time, though.
I have a couple of questions about the "factory farming causes animal suffering" argument against eating meat.
1. When driving through the rural USA, it is quite common to see cows grazing on pastures. This doesn't look like animal torture; it looks like cows living typical cow lives. Are these grazing cows just very atypical?
2. What about fish? Aren't they often caught in their natural habitat, not in factory farms? If the objection is to the torture of animals in factory farms, not that animals have a right not to be killed for food, then why wouldn't it be fine to eat fish?
1. That part of their lives is not torture, which is also why it's not hidden away from the public. Tranportation to the slaughterhouse and the slaughterhouse itself are most definitely torture. There's also the tricky question within consequentialism of whether lost years of life (either in terms of the cow's happiness or its preferences) is bad; they are killed at far below their potential healthy lifespan. But certainly, one's moral footprint would be massively reduced by switching from eating chickens (who suffer near-constant hellish conditions) to cows.
2. With wild-caught fish, the ethical issue is the way in which they die after being caught, which is typically slow suffocation combined with crushing, as well as many environmental effects (some huge fraction of ocean plastic is from fishing nets). Farmed fish typical experience close to the worst conditions out there. If you catch your own fish and kill them right away, this seems like one of the lowest moral-impact ways to eat vertebrates.
Different animal products on the market are very far from equal in terms of moral impact. Bivalves like oysters, when they're rope-farmed rather than wild-caught, probably have almost no moral impact. But for nearly all of us, none of these are necessary. Plant-based diets have the best long-term health outcomes, and getting fortified foods has never been easier.
- Of course there are plenty of meat eaters who are not good at articulating the reasons for their position. That is true of almost every philosophical position unless it is extremely rare.
- It is possible that vegans are both morally correct and annoying about it.
- The meat eating question is absolutely 2-sided. The moral argument for veganism relies more on logic than actual experience (ie, what most people think/do). It’s not at all clear that morality should work that way.
It's certainly possible to be both morally correct and annoying. The key point is relative: the average vegan activist is vastly less strident, let alone aggressive, than people confronting similarly enormous moral badness. Anti-rape activists certainly don't welcome serial rapists with open arms a month after they've realized rape is wrong.
Yes, that’s true, and there’s a good reason for it. Being vegan isn’t really a question of character, but of belief. Religions often welcome new converts. And religious people are often annoying. Morally speaking, being vegan is more like paying tithes to a church than it is to not murdering people. Your example shows that on some level everyone knows this.
No, it shows that present-day vegans are at the thin edge of the wedge of moral progress. People a century or so ago would have found it insane to imprison a human for beating a dog that was his own property. People who were against pet abuse back then had to adopt kinder, more conciliatory approaches toward abusers.
Your example about pet abuse is a good one, and quite close to the vegan case. I agree with you that morality is changing, and that it is quite possible it will change in a direction that makes veganism more mainstream (although I don't think that is inevitable).
But the following ideas are not mutually exclusive: 1) morality is changing so that some fringe concepts become mainstream and 2) there is, at any given point, a difference between "character" morality and "belief" morality.
I believe both of these statements. When a person is raised in a particular social environment and rejects prevailing morality in a way that causes unusual harm to other living beings, this is quite likely to be evidence of what I would call "bad character". They are probably not be someone I would ever want to cooperate with--i.e., I don't want to cooperate with rapists or murderers. I don't think these people can simply change their stripes and become worthy.
However, moral beliefs that are not common in society are more likely to be upheld by beliefs, and beliefs can change (at least more than "character"). I don't think knowing whether someone holds those beliefs necessarily says a lot about their character. If someone does not hold particular beliefs but generally has good character I am more likely to ignore past behavior relative to that thing when I determine whether I can cooperate with them.
Would you apply the terms in the same way synchronicially, across cultures? If someone in an Islamic state tolerates his neighbors' exploration of different religious beliefs and doesn't kill them for apostasy, this doesn't speak to his character?
Good question. I assume you are using the Islamic state as an example of a society that is generally intolerant (correct me if this assumption is wrong). So is it a sign of good character if a person has unusually tolerant beliefs that are uncommon for their own society?
I am going to bite the bullet here and say that it is not, with a few qualifications. First, it obviously says something about their personality and probably suggests a personality trait that I personally like and appreciate. But I don't think the thing being signalled in this example is the same thing as moral "character". I use quotes here to acknowledge that my use of the term is probably not universal (although I *think* it represents an understanding that is widely held).
So what do I mean by moral character? Basically, I think it represents capacity for social cooperation within some particular context. It is necessarily context-dependent because it depends on common understanding and trust among particular people. Therefore, I reject the notion of universal morality (even if some particular people beneficially cooperate based on a shared hallucination that their particular morality is universal).
Now, even though I reject universal, abstract morality, I concede that some particular sets of ideas might lead to larger scale cooperation than others. Thus, I do not reject the idea of moral "progress".
I would make an analogy to the idea that individuals don't evolve, populations evolve. Similarly, moral progress is best understood at the population level, and at the individual level moral character is depends whether you conform to current prevailing moral norms.
Couldn't the argument be made that those billions of chickens, cows, pigs, etc., that are raised for slaughter would not have been born at all if they were not intended to be eaten? I understand that animals suffer the same way humans do, but their slaughter is a tiny moment of their lives that they cannot anticipate in the way humans can ponder our mortality. Maybe they are aware to some extent of their impending demise, like this scene from Silence of the Lambs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLBotH5Bki8
I also don't see why veganism is morally superior to vegetarianism. Being hooked up to milking machines is probably not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it's not like cows and chickens are deprived of spending their time how they want when humans collect eggs and milk. They may be harmed in some way in the process; I am not entirely sure.
The conditions in factory farms are so bad that it's better they not exist. If humans were raised the same way, we'd all agree.
Dairy farms are horrific too. The Internet has plenty of resources on this, and many of them are sent to meat factory farms when they can't milk anymore.
I extrapolate the original point to be that an argument against factory farming is not necessarily an argument against eating meat. In practice, it may amount to the same thing, since so much meat is produced that way, and if we all had to raise our own chickens we would eat a lot less. But still.
That's right. And vegans will cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, the overwhelmingly most practical path toward ending the worst holocaust in history by orders of magnitude, is to get people to realize they can be healthy and happy eating plants and fungi.
I agree. That's the most significant causal path, given typical human psychology. But in those contexts where explicit ethics arise, speaking the truth about the animal holocaust is usually better than pussy-footing around it.
My guess is that this problem will be solved in a similar way as the shift to renewable energy. When it is cheaper to replace meat with alternatives judged to be just as good or better, then we will do so. At the same time, we will rationalize our choice with moral arguments to make ourselves feel better. We will thus get a triple win — cheaper meat, less killing and suffering, and we will feel superior by doing so.
Long term, if someone is interested in making the world a better place, then this is a fruitful area of research.
I fully agree with you myself (im vegetarian, not vegan due to gluten reasons… plus family pressures)
But i think most people simply dont CARE about morality like that. Their concern is about things they immediately care about, things society or people they care about care about, or with what kind of people they admire or don’t.
The moral consequences or suffering is very secondary to that.
So when one says that one think eating meat is morally wrong, the standard reaction from many is not “oh, so my action is doing harm” but “oh your saying i and everyone else that eats meat is immoral? But we are normal and people agree its normal and not psychopathic!!”
I have very low hopes of solving this problem, and is hoping for labgrown meat and vegan alternatives to get better.
(And also for vegan options to stop randomly having what in them so i can go more fully vegan without having to spend a full time job on it)
This is one of the few areas I disagree with you so I’ve tried to think about why because I’m confident you are a better thinker than me. In survival situations it is widely accepted that eating other humans is okay. So it must be that in survival situations eating animals is okay. For most of human history (before the Industrial Revolution?) people were in a survival situation. So there must be a point in human history where eating animals switched from being okay to not okay - I’ve never heard a vegan identify this point - seems like a bit like the abortion issue. Very complicated and almost taste based.
When it became morally wrong to eat animals is irrelevant. What matters is whether it's okay to eat animals *right now.* Even if it was okay at some point in the past, it's not okay now. That question may be interesting for historical reasons but it's ultimately irrelevant right now.
I also disagree that it's widely accepted that eating humans in survival situations is okay. I actually don't accept that, and I doubt many would either. I don't know where you get that.
Well, eating another person in a survival situation is still wrong. We don't say: 'Eating little Timmy was not wrong because you were, after all, super hungry'. We say, 'eating little Timmy was wrong, but maybe you shouldn't be blamed for it'. That's because you might have an excuse on grounds of duress. Although, see the case of R v Dudley and Stephens for scepticism that duress can serve as an excuse for murder in survival circumstances.
So, killing non-human animals is and always was wrong. The question is simply: Is killing non-human animals in 2024 wrong but excused, or wrong and not excused? The latter seems more plausible.
To me this just raises the question of why should people be moral when nobody is looking.
And an even more important question, why should people not simply do the bare moral mimimum required by the society they live in? Why should they be exceptionally morally good?
Is the punishment for not being exceptionaly morally good only feelings of guilt?
That does not seem to be enough to persuade people in many cases.
Are they simply ignorant of all the negative effects of not being exceptionally morally good or what is going on?
As a scalar consequentialist, I'd say that people who don't understand what's personally good about becoming more morally good, simply don't understand the concept. It's like asking me what arithmetic-independent reason I have for believing that 17 is greater than 16.
I feel feelings of sympathy and empathy to others and yet is that all there is?
For example in some cases some people who also feel sympathy and empathy towards others have to choose between suffering feelings of guilt or suffeeing from poverty.
Is it hard to understand this equation?
Im some cases doing the moral thing will make you poorer, less popular, will make you lose social status and so on.
Is it hard for you to understand why in such cases people oftec act against their own conscience?
I’m a vegan for the animals. I do think there are a lot of preachy vegans and their tactics close hearts and minds to veganism. Earthling Ed, Joey Carbstrong and Vegan Gains are just three of the worst examples, but they’re not alone. What they do is intellectual and moral domination. The ethics of veganism is both simple and complex. Like any ethical position there are many lifeboat situations, moral dilemmas and gray areas in it. I’d say I was 99% de-ontological and 1% consequentialist, but that’s a rough description.
The clever, sociopathic, mensa-member, philosophy pedants in the comments section are probably unreachable, and it’s probably an egotistical waste of time trying to “preach” or argue with them at all. I think the tried-and-true method of reaching people, little by little, is the friendly potluck method. Invite people to vegan and/or vegetarian potlucks, enjoy the good food, and answer the questions of the vegan-curious in a relaxed, non-threatening and non-judgmental way. Admit veganism can raise important questions and it doesn’t have all the answers.
Back to philosophy---consequentialism, de-ontology, etc.---Reducing the horrible suffering AND WRONGFUL DEATHS, however “humane”, to some sort of hoity-toity debating exercise, or scientific analysis of evolutionary biology, or economic or ecological cost/benefit calculation, is a grotesque abuse of otherwise respectable and noble traditions. Nazi death camps, abandoning a three year old in Times Square, child-rape….are all just horrible and evil things, and I don’t need to hear cost/benefit or environmental impact analyses on them, or what Hegel or Dawkins has to say about them. Yes, I’m a backwards person who believes in Good and Evil. Hurting and killing, mental or physical---unnecessarily, willfully, negligently---is EVIL. At some point you’ve got to set philosophy and science aside and take a stand. But do it with skill, tact and patience. Do it with vegan potlucks.
I think a steelmanned version of vegan-aversion is that most people aren't open by default to others' perspectives, so criticizing them serves only to frustrate. They are perceived similarly to those who yell at passers-by about the end-times. Of course, such preachers may think that they are trying to avert a catastrophe of epic proportions, but whether it is true or not, people's perception of it means that their only effect is annoying others.
Vegans have every right judge others, but if they want to impact others' behavior, they need to cultivate a different perception.
Part of the problem is that animal consumption is ubiquitous, but everyone has already heard of veganism. If you hit them with the basic vegan arguments, they won't engage with it, since they already know that everyone has heard of those crazy vegans and their arguments.
Perhaps more effective, would be to present them with an idea that they don't already associate with crazies, and they don't already have mentally categorized as 'something we all know not to take seriously' - selective animal consumption.
By some estimations, the per gram or calorie impacts on animal welfare of consuming beef are far far lower than those of consuming chicken (with cows' much larger size and better typical conditions far outweighing greater sentience).
Almost no one has heard this argument, so people won't already have it in a mental folder of "stuff only weird other people think." It may also be perceived as much more pragmatic and hence, less preachy.
I hate those preachy anti child abusers. When I ask them if they’d like to go looking for a child to abuse, they get upset!
They're not perfect, either. When they have consensual sex with adults, they use sex toys delivered by trucks, and sometimes those trucks run over children. So why should we listen to them?
Is it inmoral to ship sexual toys even when there's a very low probability to run over a kid? No. Is it inmoral to torture animals on factory farms? Yes.
Did you miss that my comment was sarcasm, following upon BB's sarcasm?
Sorry, I was hungry :v
"It is estimated that humans kill about 74 billion animals per year for gustatory pleasure...In return, we get enhanced gustatory pleasure during meals." - This doesn't acknowledge one of the most common and powerful arguments for eating meat, namely, health benefits for humans. The reason we get "gustatory pleasure" from eating meat in the first place is because we are genetically adapted to a diet that includes animal products. Veganism can have devastating health consequences, especially for children. If it were just a tradeoff between animal suffering and gustatory pleasure, the moral calculation would be easy. But if it's between animal suffering and human health, it's much more complicated. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2018.1437024
We also have gustatory pleasure from eating food that makes us obese, so I don't find that convincing. Further, as long as you take a multivitamin, you're generally fine, though there are a few other things. Here's an article that shows how to be a healthy vegan bodybuilder with citations, so it's definitely possible. https://legionathletics.com/vegan-bodybuilding/
Also, if you *have to* eat meat, just eat far less harmful humane certified meat and avoid anything that includes factory farmed products. Do this for your children too if that's a problem. Cut costs elsewhere if it's too expensive. Not eating out because of factory farmed stuff probably makes up for it if you refuse to even order vegan options for health fears.
The fact that we've genetically adapted to eat meat counts against it in terms of long-term health outcomes, not for it. Evolution is sometimes presented with the opportunity to take a gene that promotes short-term reproductive fitness at the expense of long-term health. It will take that trade more often than not and more often than the inverse because evolution is to a much larger extent concerned with reproduction. Artificial foods are not adapted to a meaningful extent. So, if we have an artificial food and a natural food and both have similar outcomes in the reproductive window, then the artificial food is more likely than not to be healthier long-term, apriori.
Let's assume all these worries check out. Now assume that you face the following choice between two lives.
Life 1. A long perfectly healthy life of eating meat, in which you kill around 7,000 animals in a way that inflicts a significant amount of suffering upon them (lets say 7,000 is a decent estimate of the amount of animals you will kill as a meat-eater over the course of your life).
Life 2. A slightly less long and slightly less healthy life, where you refrain from killing 7,000 animals.
I suspect that morality tells you to choose Life 2.
"A slightly less long and slightly less healthy life" - For some people the health consequences are devastating and irreversible. I do not think it's morally praiseworthy to pretend that this isn't a serious issue.
I think the evidence for veganism’s impact on health is pretty good and makes it plausible that most people will be healthier going vegan. I discuss some of it here
https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est
Did you see the paper I linked in my comment? You cite the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics as an authority, but its position statement is just anti-meat propaganda written by activists. It's good to care about animal suffering, but people should stop passing off wishful thinking as nutrition science.
I’ll check it out! Though I think even if the academy paper is bogus, there’s more than enough evidence for positive health effects of veganism.
I agree that "gustatory pleasure" is simplistic/reductionist. Yet I would rather risk a bit of cognitive impairment, though the evidence for that seems inconclusive, than inflict undeniable massive suffering on my fellow Earthlings.
The evidence will always be "inconclusive" because it's impossible to conduct long-term, controlled studies in nutrition. But the evidence that's available strongly points to veganism being a big risk, especially for children. I grew up a strict vegetarian, and know other kids who were raised the same way. It often doesn't end well. This needs to be part of the moral calculation, and not just ignored.
I agree it should be part of the calculation, but for me it's overwhelmed by the acute, undeniable and massive suffering meat Civ imposes on creatures I consider my friends.
Is longterm experience from Veg Civs any evidence here? The example that comes to mind is South Indian Brahmanism, which seems to output high cognitive performers quite regularly and widely.
Brahmins are known to have physiological adaptations for dealing with vegetarianism (not veganism), which evolved over the course of thousands of years.
In order to decide whether human suffering is overwhelmed by animal suffering, we have to measure the former. Animal-rights activists have made virtually no serious effort to do that.
Wow, caste is de facto genetic engineering.
We're even better at conscious engineering. I bet if we took animal suffering more seriously, as a species, we could find ways to address the nutrition angle. Hopefully short of genetically re-engineering non Brahmins:)
You misunderstand how science works. There's rarely a critical experiment that settles a controversy. You have to look at the totality of the empirical and theoretical evidence. The evidence re vegetarianism/veganism and health is summarized in the paper.
It's false that I rely "mostly old studies." Even if it were true, what difference would it make? Is there a problem with those studies? Are they contradicted by new and better ones?
If you think the paper "doesn't really seem to address the main question of vegan diets and why supplementation wouldn't work," I have to assume you didn't read it.
In epidemiology meat eaters are typically less healthy, and WHO now recommends no mor than 500g/week of which 0g should be processed. The seventh-day adventist cohort is a pretty good ”apples to apples” comparison in which the the non-meat group has better health.
I think this is similar to how people should understand evangelists. They don't just think that not worshiping the true God is a little foible. They think that it is an extreme wrong. In terms of quantity of harm, this class of actions outweighs all other wrongs done by human beings combined, and by a wide margin. Once understood, there should be a greater patience.
Mike, do you maintain friendships with people that eat meat? E.g. if the moral arguments for vegetarianism/veganism are sound, it seems that someone like Bryan Caplan is participating in a moral horror of a scale that would, in other contexts, be more than sufficient reason to justify disassociating from them, and perhaps even *require* doing so.
I think this falls into the same bucket as "most ethicists agree with this position intellectually, even those who still eat meat themselves". Yes, possibly associating with such monsters at all is morally wrong if you take the argument to its conclusion, but real-world hypocrisy does not undermine the truth of an argument that doesn't depend at all of the behaviour of the arguments proponents. (A truth is still true, no matter who says it.)
Yeah, this is my big problem with Name The Trait.
NTT differing between a pig and a human toddler, such that you should stand by and watch while someone pays to have a pig tortured, but kick the ass of someone who's paying to have a toddler tortured.
It really makes no sense. The difference obviously doesn't lie in characteristics of the groups of moral patients, but rather in the differing amount of good that can be accomplished by different responses in the current sociopolitical context.
When I steelman the "preachy vegan" sentiment, or idealize it, it is a charge of hypocrisy against those vegans who don't reflect on their own continued participation in animal suffering. All of us on the grid are full participants in a form of life that is terrible for the planet, humans and non- alike. I'm what people would call vegan, but if vegan means "eating and living ahimsically" I feel pretty far from vegan. I assume they don't check for bird & squirrel nests, let alone social insect colonies, when they cut trees for lumber and paper products I use. And the highways I rely on are terrible for animals. The list goes on and on. But yeah, factory farming is a straight-up nightmare I want no connection to.
I think these concerns are going to depend on the specific consumer ethic a Vegan endorses. Or rather, just whatever consumer ethic view is correct.
I’ve seen some interesting views being adapted around deontological considerations when it comes to the abstaining from animal products that I think have some good potential. (Especially since they’re not tied to efficacy).
>Do you think vegans are too “preachy”, “moralistic”, or “judgmental”?
Nah, these qualities naturally come about from having a radical and exotic moral framework detached from what most people believe
>It is very common for people to agree that buying meat is wrong while declaring that they plan to continue doing it anyway, because they are weak-willed.
I agree. Moreover, it's pathetic. I respect vegans more than these people.
>the objections they raise are among the lamest, most easily answered objections to be found in all of philosophy
Most people being stupid is not evidence for or against veganism
>In return, we get enhanced gustatory pleasure during meals.
...and quality nutrition, that vegan diets can match only with great difficulty and expense, if at all. Funny you omit that, huh?
> So, even if human welfare were 1,000 times more important than animal welfare, this would still plausibly count as the worst thing humans have ever done
That's where the problem is. Let's consider a variation of the trolley dilemma, and tie 1000 pigs to one side, and a single, regular human being to another, which matters more? As far as I'm concerned, anyone who chooses to save the pigs has his moral compass badly miscalibrated. Same with ten thousand pigs. Or a million. Or bazillion of them.
Why? The difference between animals and humans is qualitative, not merely quantitative. A human can lead a life filled with meaning. A pig...is a pig. Me getting quality, tasty and reasonably priced nutrition matters more than N pigs because it empowers me to act in ways that matter. I think most grasp this intuitively even if they struggle to put it into words.
And I graciously neglected to mention the problem of whether animals can even suffer - we don't know how consciousness works, and science is powerless to establish it, so definitive judgement is difficult to produce on this matter, even if vegans like to pretend that it's obvious.
P.s. I'm not a hater - you've written the best libertarian book I know of, but I think you let your emotions get in the way of your reason on this
You have the outline of a good argument here (human life being qualitatively more valuable) but it's diminished by the lame rhetoric and unfunny writing style.
I actually agree, not at my best here at all
A moral agent is an entity that is sufficiently able and willing to fulfill moral obligations, and of reconciling via restitution if they fail to fulfill those.
Obligation is a relation among moral agents. If I have an obligation regarding a moral non-agent, it will be mediated through an obligation to the moral agent responsible for that moral non-agent. If there is no such moral agent, there is no obligation.
If I am obligated not to buy factory farmed meat, I must be obligated to a moral agent that is responsible for the relevant animals.
I could be obligated to the animals directly, or to some group of other moral agents, or to myself, or to god/the universe, if those are moral agents or can somehow be assisted to fulfill obligations.
I don’t think animals are all moral agents. I am not obligated to avoid causing suffering of animals in general, because they are not obligated to avoid bringing about my suffering, either as a group or as specific individuals. They are not moral agents on their own. So there cannot be a direct symmetric obligation without assistance or mediation from genuine moral agents.
For there to be a direct asymmetric obligation requires that a moral agent take responsibility for each animal involved. That way, the other moral agent can assume the obligations on behalf of the animal toward me, making the relationship symmetric.
I don’t think I am obligated to other persons to avoid factory meat, because for me to be obligated to them they would need a form of standing, they would need to have taken responsibility for the animals in question. The persons with standing regarding the animals in question are the factory operators. If PETA had standing, the animals would not be in the farms. PETA would be caring for all of them, and protecting them from harm. It would not be sufficient for PETA to destroy the factory farms and free the animals, they would have to adopt them and protect them, which is infeasible. They are free to protect as many animals as they can, but that gives them no rights over animals claimed by others. They could perhaps sue for custody and adopt them, but then they would be responsible for them, and could not set them free.
So, to the extent that I am obligated to refrain, I am obligated to the factory operators, persons who consent for me not to refrain. Those who object to treatment of animals they have no responsibility for have no standing, no basis for claiming that I have an obligation to them.
I might be obligated to myself. Perhaps I think it would make me a worse person to eat meat and cause the suffering of animals. Certainly I think it would make me a worse person to torture them pointlessly. But obligations to the self are not enforceable by other persons. It is not much of an obligation if it is also my free choice.
I don’t think I am obligated to any god or to the universe, beyond the necessity of obeying physical laws, such as they are. If I find a way to violate them, that means I misunderstood what they are. If an obligation is to be enforced upon me, it will be through physical law or social enforcement. Social enforcement requires that I be obligated to specific persons, not the universe. To say that I am obligated to the universe is a denial of my premise that obligation is a social relation between moral agents. The universe is not a moral agent. It does not fulfill,obligations symmetrically.
Cruelty to animals is icky, and indicative of danger of more serious mental problems with potential social consequences. But the impact of factory farming on the psychology of producers and consumers should be an empirical question, not a moral one. This violates our intuitions.
A serious objection can be raised. What about children or dementia patients? Are they moral agents? According to this account they are not, and must depend on a relatives, guardians, or some other genuine moral agent to act as proxy. This violates the universalism common in our culture. But what is the practical difference? If there truly is no relative, adoptive parent, charitable agency, religious organization of shoddy government bureaucracy willing to take responsibility for an infant or a helpless adult, that infant or helpless adult is doomed to die. This account says the quiet part out loud. For infants and invalids to have social standing, society must take responsibility for them, and do so explicitly. There is no external agency that forces society to do so. Members of society may choose to do so, or choose not to.
The fate of the vegan consequentialist is to alternate between vegan activists who accuse consequentialism of being pitifully weaker than deontology, and actual deontologists who use their theory as an excuse for selfish torture of sentients.
Both deontology and consequentialism are broader than that.
Do you consider my reply to be deontology, consequentialism, or something else?
I consider your reply to be a version of deontology that's so thoroughly evil in its account of what makes the unneccessary torture of non-agent sentients wrong, that I would be rightly accused of strawmanning if I had attributed such belief to anyone else.
I think you haven’t quite understood it. It can't be used to claim that “unneccessary torture of non-agent sentients wrong.” It doesn’t use the concept of wrongness (I hope), and so could not be used to construct an argument concluding something about wrongness.
It uses “obligation “ instead. This seems more concrete to me.
If we stay within that frame, we would need to find a way to explain how moral agents can impose obligations on each other unilaterally. They can get them to agree to them, or they can impose them on others by force. Can the ones being imposed upon impose other obligations on the imposers? If so, that will cause chaos. If not, what explains the asymmetry?
I mean, I understand it insofar as I've read copiously on "obligation" and encountered similar reasoning many times. I still don't know how to bridge this gap, if it's even possible, but moral "obligation" makes no sense to me. World states are better or worse than other world states, and actions are morally better or worse based upon rational predictions about the likelihood they'll bring about morally different world states. This appears to be a bidirectionally infinite continuum.
Yes, of course there are *legal* and *relational* obligations. These are set down in rules, and something may happen if you break them. But moral rightness isn't rule-based. What's wrong about torturing a puppy for fun isn't that I told somebody I wouldn't or that I signed a contact with them saying the puppy was their property. What's wrong with it is that the puppy experiences torture, a very bad experience, and this makes the world worse.
>moral "obligation" makes no sense to me.
Okay. Then we are not obligated to pursue better world states, but choose freely to do so, because we happen to like them better?
>World states are better or worse than other world states,
Is there a universal standard, by which all agents will judge world states the same? Or do we each have our own, with some similarities? Are the similarities necessary or accidental?
>and actions are morally better or worse
As distinct from better or worse to actual persons?
>based upon rational predictions about the likelihood they'll bring about morally different world states.
Does this place a strong constraint on the possibilities? I.e., how narrow a range of predictions can be considered rational?
>This appears to be a bidirectionally infinite continuum.
“This” being the measure by which to compare world states?
>But moral rightness isn't rule-based.
Because it is world-state-comparison based?
>What's wrong about torturing a puppy for fun isn't that I told somebody I wouldn't or that I signed a contact with them saying the puppy was their property. What's wrong with it is that the puppy experiences torture, a very bad experience, and this makes the world worse
What's wrong with puppy torture is that it's no fun for humans with normal psychology, at least in the contemporary west. I have heard that people in Europe used to drown cats as entertainment. I suppose I should be skeptical, but if this actually happened, they would have considered a world with drowning cats an improvement over one without. So an appeal to better and worse worlds has to go a bit further in explaining what makes a particular standard of world-goodness better than alternative standards.
That doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about puppy torturers, unless we learn that it isn’t empirically linked with more direct antisocial behavior. Thinking puppy torture is intrinsically bad is different from thinking it is evidence of dangerous mental illness. Could it be possible that puppy torture might not supply evidence of that in some context?
If tormenting sentient creatures is bad full stop, and everyone owes it to the universe to stop, puppy torture and factory farms are not the only things that have to go. If “sentient” is taken literally, as in “having senses,” then we need to all become Jains, not just vegans. And maybe the Jains haven’t gone far enough to avoid being bad.
Or that is absurd, and that approach uses “sentient” in the colloquial sense of “smart” or “cute”, depending on context.
The world-state-comparison approach depends on persons asserting authority where they refuse to accept responsibility. People can prevent as much puppy torture as they like by taking responsibility for puppies. Or they can impose their measure of world-goodness on each other.
> Okay. Then we are not obligated to pursue better world states, but choose freely to do so, because we happen to like them better?
Some people choose to pursue better world states more reliably than others, and those are morally better people. I'm not thoroughly convinced of incompatiblist determinism, but I don't think we need the concept "freely" in order to attribute degrees of moral rightness/wrongness to internally caused actions.
> Is there a universal standard, by which all agents will judge world states the same? Or do we each have our own, with some similarities? Are the similarities necessary or accidental?
By "standard", do you mean a fact, or a measuring tool? Yes, I think there's an agent-independent fact of the matter about which potential world states are better than others. No, our individual toolsets for perceiving and measuring it aren't identical. They seem to highly overlap for many of us. Some of us have highly defective toolsets, like sociopaths. I suppose I'd call these differences accidental, resulting from natural selection and cultural development, but the same is true for abilities to appreciate mathematical and scientific truths.
>>and actions are morally better or worse
>As distinct from better or worse to actual persons?
Yes. It's much simpler to characterize actions in scalar consequentialist terms, as opposed to persons. Moral hazard is a large confounder. I still think we can make many high-resolution distinctions between persons, though.
> Does this place a strong constraint on the possibilities? I.e., how narrow a range of predictions can be considered rational?
I think it does, yes. The vast majority of actions cause extreme unpredictable consequences for unpredictable moral patients (the "butterfly effect"), yet end up rationally considered neutral. We can only morally judge certain actions that have reliable effects in one direction, e.g. paying daily for the bodies or bodily secretions of tortured mammals and birds (bad), effectively advocating for the reduction toward abolition of this system (good).
>>This appears to be a bidirectionally infinite continuum.
>“This” being the measure by which to compare world states?
The goodness of a world state is one continuum, and the moral rightness of an action is a second continuum, based upon a Bayesian calculation over the moral magnitudes of the world states that the action might bring about.
>>But moral rightness isn't rule-based.
>Because it is world-state-comparison based?
Yes.
> What's wrong with puppy torture is that it's no fun for humans with normal psychology, at least in the contemporary west.
This strikes me as a morally insane statement, like someone unable to understand morality directly, trying to reverse-engineer it by analogy with the laws of a state. It was just as wrong when it was normal to do.
>Thinking puppy torture is intrinsically bad is different from thinking it is evidence of dangerous mental illness. Could it be possible that puppy torture might not supply evidence of that in some context?
Yes. I agree that puppy torture in the developed Western world today supplies much more evidence of mental illness than it did in medieval Europe. However, this is a profoundly different question from the moral wrongness of the torture, which fundamentally derives from the intense suffering of the puppy. (Weighed against the benefit to the torturers, which I assume was comparably trivial then as now.)
> If tormenting sentient creatures is bad full stop, and everyone owes it to the universe to stop, puppy torture and factory farms are not the only things that have to go. If “sentient” is taken literally, as in “having senses,” then we need to all become Jains, not just vegans. And maybe the Jains haven’t gone far enough to avoid being bad.
I think scalar consequentialism is true. There's no "have to go". The world would continue to become *better* as more and more suffering was efficiently reduced and well-being efficiently increased, correct.
> Or that is absurd, and that approach uses “sentient” in the colloquial sense of “smart” or “cute”, depending on context.
No, I mean it as you described, having subjective states with moral valence (happiness and suffering, or close analogues). It seems correlated with intelligence, but not the same thing. Nor is there any reason to think we current humans represent the possible maximum of sentience; much more likely, we're barely scratching the surface.
> The world-state-comparison approach depends on persons asserting authority where they refuse to accept responsibility. People can prevent as much puppy torture as they like by taking responsibility for puppies. Or they can impose their measure of world-goodness on each other.
Why should I accept the moral force of your terms "authority", "responsibility" and "impose", unless you can show me their reliable efficacy in bringing about better world states while preventing worse ones?
What is the argument or reason for accepting your key premise? * If I have an obligation to a moral non-agent, it is mediated by an obligation to the moral agent responsible for that moral non-agent. If there is no such moral agent, there is no obligation.
Is this premise more plausible than Michael's argument and premises in support of ethical vegetarianism? Below is a presentation of his ethical argument:
1. Suffering is bad.
2. It is wrong to cause an enormous amount of something bad for the sake of relatively minor benefits for ourselves.
3. Factory farming causes an enormous amount of suffering for relatively minor benefits for humans.
4. Therefore, factory farming is wrong.
5. If it's wrong to do something, it's wrong to pay other people to do it.
6. Buying products from factory farms is paying people for factory farming.
7. Therefore, it's wrong to buy products from factory farms.
Does your view entail that you have no moral obligation to a baby without a society? Does your view imply that it's not wrong to inflict an enormous amount of bad things on that baby for the sake of relatively small benefits for yourself? If your answer is a loud yes, then it seems obvious how implausible your view is. Or will it be more plausible than Michael's premises? Have a great day.
>What is the argument or reason for accepting your key premise? * If I have an obligation to a moral non-agent, it is mediated by an obligation to the moral agent responsible for that moral non-agent.
If I violate my obligation, a moral agent can respond via the legal system or other social sanctions. A moral non-agent typically can’t do so for themselves, and must have assistance from a moral agent.
>Is this premise more plausible than Michael's argument and premises in support of ethical vegetarianism?
Do they contradict each other? Only if “bad” and “wrong” imply that moral agents have direct unmediated obligations regarding moral non-agents. If bad and wrong just mean, counter to my intuitions, then there is not conflict.
How do moral non-agents give consent without the help of a guardian or someone with power of attorney?
>Does your view entail that you have no moral obligation to a baby without a society?
I suppose. Fortunately you very rarely get babies without mothers, and even less frequently without relatives, charities, churches, or governments. And when you do get babies without those, they are already in dire straights, whether or not someone is obligated to them. If no one takes responsibility for them, they are dead.
>Does your view imply that it's not wrong to inflict an enormous amount of bad things on that baby for the sake of relatively small benefits for yourself?
Would I do it? No. Is that because I am obligated not to? I don’t think so. In this context, “wrong” is ambiguous. Perhaps “obligation” is too, but I have tried to show what I mean by it in context.
> will it be more plausible than Michael's premises?
Perhaps more practical and less ambiguous. We do things that are wrong often. What does his argument conclude about actual behavior?
He is an intuitionist, so he can’t really be faulted for using his intuition. There is probably an intuition or two hiding in my account, as opposed to factual claims. They should be found and examined, though you are not obligated to be the one to do it.
A consequentialist can do anything if the stakes are high enough. Not sure what a deontologist might say in general. This idea seems more like an odd cousin of contractarianism, though I hope it doesn’t carry the exact same baggage.
I don't see how you're answer proves you're premise about moral obligation. Why to have a moral obligation you need a moral agent that can respond via the legal system or other social sanctions? It seems clear you're not giving a reason at all.
I guess I expressed it badly, or it’s just a bad idea. It seems clear enough to me, but I have more context than you do.
An obligation can be a social relationship, or it can be an abstract philosophical idea. For the abstract idea to become concrete, it must take the form of a social relationship.
Yes, it is a bad idea. But why should I or you believe that? I see your point, but you haven't justified your thesis. I'm not playing the skeptic here. It really seems like you haven't presented any argument or reason at all. If you're trying to say that it seems obvious to you that your premise is true, then your argument is hopeless, it's not obvious to anyone else. Thanks for your time, though.
I have premises and a conclusion. Are you asking for an argument for the premises, or saying that the premises don’t lead to the conclusion?
And as long as it remains an abstract idea, nothing happens. Soft something to happen, it has to take the form of a social relationship.
I have a couple of questions about the "factory farming causes animal suffering" argument against eating meat.
1. When driving through the rural USA, it is quite common to see cows grazing on pastures. This doesn't look like animal torture; it looks like cows living typical cow lives. Are these grazing cows just very atypical?
2. What about fish? Aren't they often caught in their natural habitat, not in factory farms? If the objection is to the torture of animals in factory farms, not that animals have a right not to be killed for food, then why wouldn't it be fine to eat fish?
I appreciate these good-faith questions!
1. That part of their lives is not torture, which is also why it's not hidden away from the public. Tranportation to the slaughterhouse and the slaughterhouse itself are most definitely torture. There's also the tricky question within consequentialism of whether lost years of life (either in terms of the cow's happiness or its preferences) is bad; they are killed at far below their potential healthy lifespan. But certainly, one's moral footprint would be massively reduced by switching from eating chickens (who suffer near-constant hellish conditions) to cows.
2. With wild-caught fish, the ethical issue is the way in which they die after being caught, which is typically slow suffocation combined with crushing, as well as many environmental effects (some huge fraction of ocean plastic is from fishing nets). Farmed fish typical experience close to the worst conditions out there. If you catch your own fish and kill them right away, this seems like one of the lowest moral-impact ways to eat vertebrates.
Different animal products on the market are very far from equal in terms of moral impact. Bivalves like oysters, when they're rope-farmed rather than wild-caught, probably have almost no moral impact. But for nearly all of us, none of these are necessary. Plant-based diets have the best long-term health outcomes, and getting fortified foods has never been easier.
- Of course there are plenty of meat eaters who are not good at articulating the reasons for their position. That is true of almost every philosophical position unless it is extremely rare.
- It is possible that vegans are both morally correct and annoying about it.
- The meat eating question is absolutely 2-sided. The moral argument for veganism relies more on logic than actual experience (ie, what most people think/do). It’s not at all clear that morality should work that way.
It's certainly possible to be both morally correct and annoying. The key point is relative: the average vegan activist is vastly less strident, let alone aggressive, than people confronting similarly enormous moral badness. Anti-rape activists certainly don't welcome serial rapists with open arms a month after they've realized rape is wrong.
Yes, that’s true, and there’s a good reason for it. Being vegan isn’t really a question of character, but of belief. Religions often welcome new converts. And religious people are often annoying. Morally speaking, being vegan is more like paying tithes to a church than it is to not murdering people. Your example shows that on some level everyone knows this.
No, it shows that present-day vegans are at the thin edge of the wedge of moral progress. People a century or so ago would have found it insane to imprison a human for beating a dog that was his own property. People who were against pet abuse back then had to adopt kinder, more conciliatory approaches toward abusers.
Your example about pet abuse is a good one, and quite close to the vegan case. I agree with you that morality is changing, and that it is quite possible it will change in a direction that makes veganism more mainstream (although I don't think that is inevitable).
But the following ideas are not mutually exclusive: 1) morality is changing so that some fringe concepts become mainstream and 2) there is, at any given point, a difference between "character" morality and "belief" morality.
I believe both of these statements. When a person is raised in a particular social environment and rejects prevailing morality in a way that causes unusual harm to other living beings, this is quite likely to be evidence of what I would call "bad character". They are probably not be someone I would ever want to cooperate with--i.e., I don't want to cooperate with rapists or murderers. I don't think these people can simply change their stripes and become worthy.
However, moral beliefs that are not common in society are more likely to be upheld by beliefs, and beliefs can change (at least more than "character"). I don't think knowing whether someone holds those beliefs necessarily says a lot about their character. If someone does not hold particular beliefs but generally has good character I am more likely to ignore past behavior relative to that thing when I determine whether I can cooperate with them.
Would you apply the terms in the same way synchronicially, across cultures? If someone in an Islamic state tolerates his neighbors' exploration of different religious beliefs and doesn't kill them for apostasy, this doesn't speak to his character?
Good question. I assume you are using the Islamic state as an example of a society that is generally intolerant (correct me if this assumption is wrong). So is it a sign of good character if a person has unusually tolerant beliefs that are uncommon for their own society?
I am going to bite the bullet here and say that it is not, with a few qualifications. First, it obviously says something about their personality and probably suggests a personality trait that I personally like and appreciate. But I don't think the thing being signalled in this example is the same thing as moral "character". I use quotes here to acknowledge that my use of the term is probably not universal (although I *think* it represents an understanding that is widely held).
So what do I mean by moral character? Basically, I think it represents capacity for social cooperation within some particular context. It is necessarily context-dependent because it depends on common understanding and trust among particular people. Therefore, I reject the notion of universal morality (even if some particular people beneficially cooperate based on a shared hallucination that their particular morality is universal).
Now, even though I reject universal, abstract morality, I concede that some particular sets of ideas might lead to larger scale cooperation than others. Thus, I do not reject the idea of moral "progress".
I would make an analogy to the idea that individuals don't evolve, populations evolve. Similarly, moral progress is best understood at the population level, and at the individual level moral character is depends whether you conform to current prevailing moral norms.
Couldn't the argument be made that those billions of chickens, cows, pigs, etc., that are raised for slaughter would not have been born at all if they were not intended to be eaten? I understand that animals suffer the same way humans do, but their slaughter is a tiny moment of their lives that they cannot anticipate in the way humans can ponder our mortality. Maybe they are aware to some extent of their impending demise, like this scene from Silence of the Lambs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLBotH5Bki8
I also don't see why veganism is morally superior to vegetarianism. Being hooked up to milking machines is probably not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it's not like cows and chickens are deprived of spending their time how they want when humans collect eggs and milk. They may be harmed in some way in the process; I am not entirely sure.
The conditions in factory farms are so bad that it's better they not exist. If humans were raised the same way, we'd all agree.
Dairy farms are horrific too. The Internet has plenty of resources on this, and many of them are sent to meat factory farms when they can't milk anymore.
I extrapolate the original point to be that an argument against factory farming is not necessarily an argument against eating meat. In practice, it may amount to the same thing, since so much meat is produced that way, and if we all had to raise our own chickens we would eat a lot less. But still.
That's right. And vegans will cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, the overwhelmingly most practical path toward ending the worst holocaust in history by orders of magnitude, is to get people to realize they can be healthy and happy eating plants and fungi.
Best way to accomplish that is to live well and healthily, eating plants and fungi; and let people imitate you.
I agree. That's the most significant causal path, given typical human psychology. But in those contexts where explicit ethics arise, speaking the truth about the animal holocaust is usually better than pussy-footing around it.
My guess is that this problem will be solved in a similar way as the shift to renewable energy. When it is cheaper to replace meat with alternatives judged to be just as good or better, then we will do so. At the same time, we will rationalize our choice with moral arguments to make ourselves feel better. We will thus get a triple win — cheaper meat, less killing and suffering, and we will feel superior by doing so.
Long term, if someone is interested in making the world a better place, then this is a fruitful area of research.
I fully agree with you myself (im vegetarian, not vegan due to gluten reasons… plus family pressures)
But i think most people simply dont CARE about morality like that. Their concern is about things they immediately care about, things society or people they care about care about, or with what kind of people they admire or don’t.
The moral consequences or suffering is very secondary to that.
So when one says that one think eating meat is morally wrong, the standard reaction from many is not “oh, so my action is doing harm” but “oh your saying i and everyone else that eats meat is immoral? But we are normal and people agree its normal and not psychopathic!!”
I have very low hopes of solving this problem, and is hoping for labgrown meat and vegan alternatives to get better.
(And also for vegan options to stop randomly having what in them so i can go more fully vegan without having to spend a full time job on it)
This is one of the few areas I disagree with you so I’ve tried to think about why because I’m confident you are a better thinker than me. In survival situations it is widely accepted that eating other humans is okay. So it must be that in survival situations eating animals is okay. For most of human history (before the Industrial Revolution?) people were in a survival situation. So there must be a point in human history where eating animals switched from being okay to not okay - I’ve never heard a vegan identify this point - seems like a bit like the abortion issue. Very complicated and almost taste based.
When it became morally wrong to eat animals is irrelevant. What matters is whether it's okay to eat animals *right now.* Even if it was okay at some point in the past, it's not okay now. That question may be interesting for historical reasons but it's ultimately irrelevant right now.
I also disagree that it's widely accepted that eating humans in survival situations is okay. I actually don't accept that, and I doubt many would either. I don't know where you get that.
Well, eating another person in a survival situation is still wrong. We don't say: 'Eating little Timmy was not wrong because you were, after all, super hungry'. We say, 'eating little Timmy was wrong, but maybe you shouldn't be blamed for it'. That's because you might have an excuse on grounds of duress. Although, see the case of R v Dudley and Stephens for scepticism that duress can serve as an excuse for murder in survival circumstances.
So, killing non-human animals is and always was wrong. The question is simply: Is killing non-human animals in 2024 wrong but excused, or wrong and not excused? The latter seems more plausible.
To me this just raises the question of why should people be moral when nobody is looking.
And an even more important question, why should people not simply do the bare moral mimimum required by the society they live in? Why should they be exceptionally morally good?
Is the punishment for not being exceptionaly morally good only feelings of guilt?
That does not seem to be enough to persuade people in many cases.
Are they simply ignorant of all the negative effects of not being exceptionally morally good or what is going on?
As a scalar consequentialist, I'd say that people who don't understand what's personally good about becoming more morally good, simply don't understand the concept. It's like asking me what arithmetic-independent reason I have for believing that 17 is greater than 16.
Seems weird.
I feel feelings of sympathy and empathy to others and yet is that all there is?
For example in some cases some people who also feel sympathy and empathy towards others have to choose between suffering feelings of guilt or suffeeing from poverty.
Is it hard to understand this equation?
Im some cases doing the moral thing will make you poorer, less popular, will make you lose social status and so on.
Is it hard for you to understand why in such cases people oftec act against their own conscience?
I’m a vegan for the animals. I do think there are a lot of preachy vegans and their tactics close hearts and minds to veganism. Earthling Ed, Joey Carbstrong and Vegan Gains are just three of the worst examples, but they’re not alone. What they do is intellectual and moral domination. The ethics of veganism is both simple and complex. Like any ethical position there are many lifeboat situations, moral dilemmas and gray areas in it. I’d say I was 99% de-ontological and 1% consequentialist, but that’s a rough description.
The clever, sociopathic, mensa-member, philosophy pedants in the comments section are probably unreachable, and it’s probably an egotistical waste of time trying to “preach” or argue with them at all. I think the tried-and-true method of reaching people, little by little, is the friendly potluck method. Invite people to vegan and/or vegetarian potlucks, enjoy the good food, and answer the questions of the vegan-curious in a relaxed, non-threatening and non-judgmental way. Admit veganism can raise important questions and it doesn’t have all the answers.
Back to philosophy---consequentialism, de-ontology, etc.---Reducing the horrible suffering AND WRONGFUL DEATHS, however “humane”, to some sort of hoity-toity debating exercise, or scientific analysis of evolutionary biology, or economic or ecological cost/benefit calculation, is a grotesque abuse of otherwise respectable and noble traditions. Nazi death camps, abandoning a three year old in Times Square, child-rape….are all just horrible and evil things, and I don’t need to hear cost/benefit or environmental impact analyses on them, or what Hegel or Dawkins has to say about them. Yes, I’m a backwards person who believes in Good and Evil. Hurting and killing, mental or physical---unnecessarily, willfully, negligently---is EVIL. At some point you’ve got to set philosophy and science aside and take a stand. But do it with skill, tact and patience. Do it with vegan potlucks.
I think a steelmanned version of vegan-aversion is that most people aren't open by default to others' perspectives, so criticizing them serves only to frustrate. They are perceived similarly to those who yell at passers-by about the end-times. Of course, such preachers may think that they are trying to avert a catastrophe of epic proportions, but whether it is true or not, people's perception of it means that their only effect is annoying others.
Vegans have every right judge others, but if they want to impact others' behavior, they need to cultivate a different perception.
Part of the problem is that animal consumption is ubiquitous, but everyone has already heard of veganism. If you hit them with the basic vegan arguments, they won't engage with it, since they already know that everyone has heard of those crazy vegans and their arguments.
Perhaps more effective, would be to present them with an idea that they don't already associate with crazies, and they don't already have mentally categorized as 'something we all know not to take seriously' - selective animal consumption.
By some estimations, the per gram or calorie impacts on animal welfare of consuming beef are far far lower than those of consuming chicken (with cows' much larger size and better typical conditions far outweighing greater sentience).
Almost no one has heard this argument, so people won't already have it in a mental folder of "stuff only weird other people think." It may also be perceived as much more pragmatic and hence, less preachy.