I've recently had a number of people ask me about my views on animal rights and veganism. This is not a topic that interests me all that much, which is why I've never done any introductory lectures on it. I'm also a little uncomfortable presenting my position on this because I think we would be better off if the meat industry were abolished. I want the vegans to win, and the ethical argument from animal welfare is, for most people, probably the most powerful motivation for veganism. I don't particularly want to undermine it. Having said that, sentimentality for animals is ingrained enough in our culture that I hardly expect a video on a small youtube channel to have much influence. For a defense in the philosophical literature of a position fairly close to mine, see Peter Carruthers, "The Animals Issue". A few important differences: (1) Carruthers presents rather different responses to the marginal cases argument, which I do not find particularly convincing. (2) He does not raise any objection to animal agriculture. (3) He endorses a standard kind of contractualism. While my general view of morality is something close to contractarianism/contractualism, I have objections to how these theories are often developed. I haven't yet worked out in detail what my own position is, and perhaps I never will, which is why the first part of this video evinces a contractarian spirit without getting into a technical details. (In any case, it would take a whole series to go into the technical details of different normative theories. If you want a detailed exposition of contractualism and how it relates to animal ethics, read Carruthers!)
It's odd that you would take the time and effort to make a long video such as this and not take time to explore the topic a bit better and produce a competent response. There's lots of people happy to take this on in discord, and we wouldn't have to worry about pesky YT policy: discord. gg/ dUPFfby
@@CogDiss I have explored it. During my degree, I took several ethics courses which covered animal ethics. While doing my PhD, I worked as a teaching assistant on my uni's philosophy of morality course. If I didn't have any relevant background, I wouldn't have made the video at all.
@@KaneB ah ok, so you'd be aware of animal ags. effect on: -climate change -antibiotic resistance and increasing pandemic risk -increasing occurrences of violent crime in the community (in instances of slaughterhouses being opened up in an area) -wasting resources that could be used to end world hunger and I assume, also, the NTT argument which would seem to expose that you wouldn't be opposed to farming mentally handicapped people?
@@KaneB I'll retract the statement on the infectious disease risk. However, the environmental/mass industry/vegans create demand statements made don't stack up. There's little to no empirical evidence to support "holistic" style animal ag, certainly especially on a large scale. If you're aware of any, let me know. There's no reason to be particularly interested in local ag. either. There's multiple plant products which are so much less environmentally damaging than animal products that you can ship them across the world (and actually have them circumnavigate the earth a couple of times) and easily be less damaging to the environment. Transport as a whole is a relatively small concern. Economically it would possibly just be more viable to engage in trade to different parts of the world for different food products, and the environmental effects would likely be comparatively quite small. I don't see why it'd be the case that buying vegan products from a non-vegan business would result in that money being used for animal products? The information coming out with demand changes would indicate otherwise. Businesses seem to be altering their offerings to be more friendly towards veganism if the market indicates an interest. Additionally, the "addressing world hunger statement" stands. We currently waste resources which could be used to end world hunger so that people in rich countries, and rich people in poorer countries can consume animal products. Edit: Also, I didn't see any statement addressing animal slaughterhouses being linked with increased rates of violent crime (including murder, assault and rape). Happy to provide evidence if needed.
Hey, I am a PhD student studying philosophy and writing my thesis on Vegan ethics. Would you be interested in a discussion as I think there are issues with this video but I appreciate your approach.
Yeah, I'm open to a discussion, though I'm not sure if I would have much of interest to say; your knowledge of the topic doubtless outstrips mine (I'm also a philosophy PhD student, but I focus of phil of science). I can email you if it's easier to organise that way.
Hi@@PerspectivePhilosophy and Kane, I am a fourth year honours undergrad student majoring in philosophy with the goal of doing my MA this Fall within the domain of either meta-ethics or applied ethics/veganism - I would love to have the opportunity to join the discussion if you two don't mind!
@@PerspectivePhilosophy Yeah, you two have to talk! I've been following both of you for some years now, I was actually thinking how you would respond Lewis, while watching this video: I thought it would be something like, to understand the eudaimon life you need to compare your interests to the interests of others, hence it is necessary to consider the subjectivity of other beings, that are capable of subjectivity, in order to understand one's own subjectivity. Or some Hegelian jazz like that.
@@KaneB Yes! Please make it happen! You can talk about metaethics (as Lewis is a realist and has an interesting spin on objective morality), philosophy of science (as Lewis thinks psychology is not a science), and of course veganism. That would be soo good!
I really like your channel, but that's the first video I have a lot of problems with. I wonder, since morality is a system of rules created by rational agents, why exclude the interests of the beings which do have interests, but are not rational agents? Why does the fact that they cannot participate in the creation of the rules entail that they don't matter? I mean, many societies have excluded people from participating in rule-creation (i.e. slaves). It seems like what makes it wrong to exclude them is that they have interests and these interests matter. Obviously, we could reply that slaves could participate in rule creation, but not animals, but if the only justification for rules is the self-interest of people participating in the rule-making, then it seems it would be totally fine for them not to include slaves, since that might not be in the self-interest in the actual set of rule-makers.
As you noted yourself, the current industrial agriculture that vegans participate in, is still primarily for animal feed. If this was directed to human needs, the size and scope would shrink substantially. Pair this with more sensible permaculture practices within a vegan framework and it’s virtually a non-issue compared to the current model that is still primarily inflated because of animal agriculture. Also, the appeal to ancient pastoral societies living in sustainable balance is even more unrealistic permaculture given the current population scale. A sensible meat eater still doesn’t cut emissions more than even the most careless/frivolous of mainstream vegans. It’s just the more pragmatic option.
It's difficult for me to see how, from the perspective of slaveholders in the British Empire or Antebellum South, slavery could be immoral and the abolition of slavery moral on the theory that morality is merely rational self-interest. It's true that the difference between slaves and masters was arbitrary (premised on skin color rather than any "morally relevant" distinction), but this wouldn't make it the case that a slaveholder could end up as a slave. Given that one is not and never could be a member of the group currently excluded from the social contract, and that one benefits from the exploitation of the excluded group (very much in the way we now do from exploiting animals), I don't see how it's in that person's self-interest to accept that group into the social contract/enlarge the circle of moral concern to include that group. So is it the case that your moral theory sees slavery as moral, at least from the perspective of the slaveholders?
There is always the concern that slaves could rise up and kill their masters, as they had multiple times in the past (most successfully in Haiti). Extending moral considerations to slaves increases the likelihood they will do the same to you, but excluding them from the social contract risks them killing you. Given that animals have been "enslaved" and killed for thousands of years without any such uprising, we can safely say that the same argument wouldn't apply to them.
One reason I give animals moral standing is that they can exhibit some reasoning. It is not the same as human reasoning, it does not work to the same ends, it will never be as good as humans. Animals display preferences, have memories, corivds (like crows) can hold grudges. At least capachin money's have a very basic idea of justice. I would worry about setting a bar so high for some moral standing. In a world in which thier is an alien species born doing calculus, would we be lacking in enough reasoning that we become food.
When I shop at my local store I do support a store that stocks meat but I do this on the assumption that the store is a rational economical actor seeking to maximise profits. So me, buying vegan products and not their meat will skew their purchasing so they restock with more vegan stuff and less meat. My local store used to have barely any vegan stuff 2 years ago and now have several shelves and so on. (Obviously not only because of me). But since my purchasing is actually in a sense voting for the store to restock with vegan stuff I dont see how I am supporting their meat production. It would only do that if the store had an economically irrational need to keep restocking with more meat than it can sell.
Sure, I certainly wouldn't claim that vegans support animal agriculture in exactly the same way as omnivores do. But I don't see how you get around the point that they do support it, unless you're just defining "support" in some unusual way. Retail and distribution is an essential part of the animal agriculture industry. When you buy food from shops or restaurants that stock meat, you're directly funding the distribution aspect.
Thanks Kane, a very interesting video. However, your response to the marginal case of people with severe mental disabilities seems to imply that it’s permissible to kill anyone that we know for certain will not become rational. But this seems absurd.
As I mentioned in the video, I'm somewhat limited in what I can say here. However, people with such disabilities sometimes become rational; even if they don't, they may for all we know have brain structures that would support this with the right kind of interventions. There are also good reasons, just from a practical point of view, to resist denying humans basic rights, because this kind of thinking has often resulted in persecution of those capable of rational agency.
@@KaneB that still raises the questiom of, if there are humans with no rationality and no chance of their status being changed through medical intervention, is it acceptable to eat those people? E.g. severe dementia, brain damage, etc. I'm not sure I accept what seems to be a slippery slope objection at the end from you, there doesn't seem to be any reason society couldn't conduct itself in such a way that we eat only a certain type of human.
@@KaneB I still think there’s a problem here. Even if your response tells us that it’s wrong to kill those with severe mental disabilities, it does so for the wrong reasons. It would imply that the right to life of those with severe mental disabilities is contingent upon whether it is possible for them to recover. Again, this seems absurd. Thanks for being so active in responding to your comments btw :)
Hey Kane, great video, I just had a few questions of clarification. 1. The contractarianism you advocated, is this basically an I scratch your back if you scratch mine approach that rules animals out because they cannot enter into this agreement? If so, to what degree are they outside our moral considerations? Are they entirely outside it like inanimate objects? Or are they due some kind of consideration, such that we might deter people from torturing them for fun for example? (For the animals good as opposed to some kind of stamping out sadism from society for our own good) 2. You asked for a morally relevant property that is distinct to humans and offered rationality. But when it comes to morality why do we care about rationality? Is it not that rationality is imbedded in a larger concern for 'utility'? Yes, rational beings/humans may experience unique kinds of negative utility, or indeed a more vivid negative utility, than animals but nevertheless there is some negative utility animals still experience. Thus they would be included in our moral equations. I guess this is how I would imagine the utilitarian perspective to be and if I advocate using 'the ability to suffer' rather than rationality as the morally relevant attribute, thereby including animals, I am simply advocating utilitarianism to a non-utilitarian. I'd just like to say arguments about rationality/future rationality of babies or incapacitated people seem entirely besides the point to me, the reason why I would see animals as deserving moral consideration is their ability to suffer.
(1) Yes, that's pretty much my approach. Animals have no moral standing in my view. Animal suffering should be viewed as completely irrelevant when we consider what we ought to do. (2) Morality is (ideally) constituted by rules negotiated by rational agents, each acting primarily in their own self-interest. One immediate thing that will flow from this are various protections for rational agents. I agree that utilitarians will come to very different conclusions to me, but I'm not a utilitarian.
@@KaneB Thanks for the reply, I imagine your personal stance on morality is an unusual one to your average audience member (myself included). I also imagine you'll receive many replies assuming you hold some other view of morals, utilitarianism say, and arguing that your take on animal welfare is inconsistent with this, rather than debating against your actual contractarianism. If you do ever do a follow up video, perhaps laying out how different moral viewpoints see this issue would be helpful, I agree with you that hypocritical utilitarians who use ad hoc arguments to defend their meat eating are more frustrating than anyone else in these discussions. I may find your view that animal suffering is completely irrelevant to be quite repugnant, the view that is not you, but atleast it's consistent with how we treat factory farmed animals, which isn't something you can say for the views of the public. If you have time to respond to one final question; When you say animals are morally equivalent to inanimate objects, I guess it's hard to get my head around not having an emotional empathy response to seeing an animal suffer. So is it the case you just don't have this emotional response, just like I don't have one to the inanimate objects being crushed in a rubbish compactor, or is it that you do have the response but you think it to be misplaced or irrational because it doesn't fit with contractarianism? Or I can see an argument being, I'd prefer not to witness an animal suffer because I find it unpleasant, but this preference is aesthetic or something rather than moral. (And if anyone is wondering, I'm a moral antirealist who thinks moral statements are just preferences based on an evolutionary and socialized emotional response) (Also a vegan who frequently breaks their veganism because of the whole nihilism thing Kane discussed at the end of the video, and because meat and cheese etc taste great)
@@sjmurphysj39 Thanks for the suggestion. I don't yet have any plans to do a follow-up, but I'll bear that in mind should I ever change my mind. The main goal of this video, as I mention in the intro, was just to present my own views, rather than introduce the general debate about the topic, which is why I didn't address utilitarianism. Certainly though, utilitarianism is an important position to contend with in pretty much any ethical debate, so perhaps I should have said something about it. Two points in response to your question: First, I simply don't have the emotional response. I'm not moved at all by animal suffering. Second, I think that sympathy for animal suffering should, in the present environment, generally be resisted. Given my moral views, this emotion is often inappropriate, especially when it leads to people favouring restrictions on the use of animals to improve human life. To be clear, the issue is sympathy for animals in general. If a person owns a pet, they may feel sympathy towards it, and treat it as a kind of "honorary person", and this is fine (perhaps admirable) provided they have an appropriate attitude towards other animals. In the past, there was a strong check on sympathy, since people had much more direct contact with resource animals and pest animals, in addition to owning pets. On the other hand, the meat industry is terrible for all of us, and the animal welfare argument seems to be the most persuasive objection to it, for many people. So maybe modern sentimentality for animals isn't so bad after all!
@@KaneB Cheers Kane!! I don't want to presume upon your time so of course don't feel pressure to reply again, that being said... I agree that the animal welfare argument seems to be the most persuasive objection for most people, and it should be an easy argument to make to someone who agrees 1) Unjustified suffering is wrong (including in animals) 2) Animals suffer in factory farms 3) This suffering cannot be justified by habit or for pleasure reasons like enjoying the taste of meat (In my view it can however be justified for medical research, I'm guessing this is one of the things you're thinking of when you say sentimentality towards animals can be bad if "it leads to people favouring restrictions on the use of animals to improve human life".) The option of denying any of these claims is there but people are normally reluctant to do so, perhaps because as you've pointed out, citizens of industrialised societies lack the 'sympathy check' of working with animals. This means that most people can only eat meat with some heavy cognitive dissonance or denial going on. It seems to me you are denying claim number one, it's a new and peculiar thought to me that a being's suffering, even an animals, would carry no moral weight whatsoever. Amongst other things it has got me thinking about the importance of emotions to morality (I mean, if I woke up tomorrow no longer having an emotional response to animal suffering would that change my moral view of them..) so thanks for that. Well anyways, thanks againfor taking the time, all the best!
@@KaneB Clearly you're not a utilitarian. You are a psychopath, though. And your 'marginal person' arguments don't survive scrutiny at all - so you're a pretty crap philosopher, too.
I conceived of this video as my "final word" on the topic -- as something to point people to, whenever they ask me about my views on animals and veganism. It'll be interesting to find out whether I ever feel the need to revisit it.
I highly recommend you read just the first chapter of Peter Singers Animal Liberation. Cosmic Skeptic also has great videos like is Tel Aviv Speech, A meat eaters case for veganism, the Earthling Ed speech, and especially the documentary Dominion.
I have read Singer, among others. It's not that I'm unfamiliar with the arguments here. I took several courses that covered animal ethics during my degree.
Saving this video for later. I think one of the most powerful arguments for veganism tends to be (or at least should be if people engaged with it correctly) Name The Trait (NTT). I take this view because NTT doesn't presuppose any particular ethic, rather it tests one's consistency within their own ethic. In other words, if one's ethical theory entails e.g. that farming animals is immoral, NTT can help show this entailment. NTT isn't actually an argument for veganism, but I suspect it should lead a lot of people there if they carefully consider their current beliefs.
Name The Trait isn't an argument for veganism, as you said, it's a consistency test. The problem with Name The Trait is that there are a lot of convincing answers that get us "back where we started" so to speak. For example, someone could name the following two traits: 1. Humanity 2. Self-awareness So a being must either be human or self-aware in order to give it moral value. This would give moral value to a pig or chimpanzee which reached self-awareness, but not to farm animals. Additionally, now all human beings are counted. So what's the "reductio" here?
Why is ability to engage in moral rules the dividing line? Lets pertend there is a human of normal human inteligences , but unable of moral reasoning. Maybe they act in ways that violate someone eles rights. But I would not say they have given up their rights to moral standing. While we have a duty to the community to protect them we cant just eat them because they dont have moral standing. Why is an animal diffrent then this human (other then their intelligences.
I certainly admire your honesty and courage for taking a position that - in our times - will surely put you on a permanent record with what many will find distasteful to say the least. I can't say I agree, but finding the right argument is very hard indeed. The one thing that bothers me about your approach is that you may seem to privilege your own "feelings" and "intuitions" and "sense of outrage" as a kind of moral guide when it comes to the outcome of "policing nature" - but then diminish what others "feel" about animals as just "degenerate sentimentality". I can't quite put my finger on it just yet, but it seems as if you are using more than just rational calculations in order to reach your conclusion of what ought or ought not to be done, but seem to disallow that "something more" that others might also be using in their own rational calculations. I'm conflicted to the extent that - like you - and I have no brief for moral realism, except as a useful fiction, but I can't quite figure out where to go from there. I'm not entirely convinced with your argument about why infants belong to the moral community. I have heard very similar arguments against abortion - from the very moment that an egg is fertilized they say - for similar reasons as you give about potential development as a normal human being. I'm assuming that you are not an essentialist in any sense of that term, but is there a danger that you put a lot of weight on human DNA as opposed to non-human DNA? Just how essential is that difference to moral standing? It's a bit surprising the extent to which you draw rather crisp boundaries for what counts as having moral standing given that my impression is you tolerate a great deal of vagueness in other areas. Some will think that you privilege human infants because you have really no choice but to say so in a public forum such as youtube, even if your actual reasons simply do not lead you to that conclusion. In that regard, that conclusion would in fact be consistent with your announced point of view in the first place, which essentially takes what may be called a game-theoretic approach using reason and logic with - and only those - who can do likewise as determining who has - or has not - moral standing. To some extent, this reminds me a bit of Ayn Rand who sometimes had something like this position but not so well-argued. Far more subtle is David Gauthier on a contractarian view of morals. I would guess that the work of Brian Skyrms is worth a look insofar as he discusses these kinds of social dynamics in an evolutionary context. That's why I hope that you do go on to tackle decision theory - game theory - and evolutionary game theory - for it has much to say about precisely all those issues as it relates to the evolution of ethics. On the whole I am generally persuaded that the proper study of ethics and morality - and rationality as well - has to be done in the larger context of evolution (I recognize that all this is very unsatisfactory - but there's only so much I can blather on about in a TH-cam comment!). Look forward to more of your content!
This is a great video. Thanks for this. Just about the 'no children' to save the environment argument. Surely it's incorrect to say that people can only have a net negative environmental impact. Would you say it would have been better for the environment if Greta Thunberg's parents had remained childless? In the world we live in I think it's very possible to have a sub-zero impact on the environment if we take into account our impact on others and carbon capture schemes.
I'm much more sympathetic towards the animal rights position (and am vegan) but I wanted to comment on 40:11 Even as a vegan, I think that bullfighting is much worse than killing a cow for a steak. And I think that it's easy to form a defense of eating steak but not of bullfighting. The reason why is because people derive sadistic pleasure from the spectacle of watching an animal be slowly stabbed to death. That's a bit different to killing an animal (and the possible suffering that might come with doing so) in order to partake in a different kind of pleasure (food).
On my road to veganism I have tried to find good arguments against veganism. Unfortunately, I have mostly found bad or downright idiotic arguments, so it's really nice to hear some intellectual perspectives from the non-vegan side. So thank you very much for that! At around 18:40 you get into animal suffering, and you end with presenting a conclusion you find extremely counterintuitive and completely outrageous. We both agree that while it is relevant, it does not really change the marginal cases argument, and neither does the thing I am about to bring up. I believe there are similar outrageous conclusions in the human case when you say we are obligated to help if we come across a human in dire need, e.g. an infant being eaten alive by rats. If we are obligated to do this, I believe we are also obligated to donate money to charities, because the fact that the people in need are far away bears no relevance to the moral obligation. This reaches a similary outrageous conclusion, since it would end up with us having to keep donating as long as there is someone in dire need of our money. This is a thought CosmicSkeptic presented in his video "Should You Sell All Your Possessions?". I believe he ended up with the conclusion that it may be a moral virtue to help the infant, but not an obligation. What are your thoughts on this?
I think there are relevant differences between the two cases -- again, if we're taking the perspective of morality as a system of rules constructed by rational agents to promote the self-interest of rational agents. Suppose I'm walking down the road and I see a person being attacked by rats. Now, I grant that, if I were being attacked by rats, I would want somebody to help me. But who has the obligation to help me? Well, if somebody happens to be walking by me while the attack is occurring, this person can easily help me specifically. What's more, I can say to this person: "If you were in my position, being attacked by rats, and I was walking by as it happened, you would want me to help you!" So, if I see somebody being attacked by rats, it take it that I have a prima facie obligation to help. What about people in desperate need who live far away? I'm considering whether or not to donate money to charity. Again, I know that if I were starving, I would want somebody to help me. But is reasonable for me to expect that any given person in a more affluent country help me specifically? Obviously not. There are literally millions of people who are, from the affluent person's point of view, of equal status to me. Why help me specifically, as opposed to the millions of others? Furthermore, even if literally every wealthy person gave up all their wealth, it's not clear that this would help me -- it depends on the political and economic circumstances and what exactly is done with the money. Yes, some people could give money directly to me. But there is no obligation to do that, rather than to give their money directly to other starving people, or give their money to charities and similar organizations, etc. In general, the question is: When a person is in need, can this person reasonably expect me to help them? Well, if we're within a few meters of each other, and if I can easily help at little cost to myself, the answer is yes. If we're living in different countries, of course not. Even if we think that there is a general obligation to give to charity, there is certainly no obligation to help any specific stranger in a different country.
@@KaneB Thank you for taking the time to read and answer my comment - I really and honestly appreciate it. From my understanding, you mention the following differences which you deem relevant: specificity, effectiveness/guarantees of donations, distance, and ease/cost of helping (you also mention living in different countries, but I assume that is referring to distance). The ease/cost of helping attribute is in my view not a difference which is in favour of your argument, given the two examples (rat attack and charity donation). It is very easy to donate (assuming you have the money). I would argue it takes more effort to fight off a rat attack and certainly puts yourself at more risk. I don't think the distance aspect is a relevant difference, as I said in my original comment. I assume you know why, so I'm not going to expand on it. As for specificity, I do not understand why you deem it relevant. Furthermore, I am talking about the moral obligation to give to charity, not to donate to any specific person. Similarly, in the rat attack case, the fact that a specific person is being attacked bears no relevance in my opinion - it could be anybody being attacked. But I would like to explore the aspect anyway, since you deem it important. What if you saw two different rat attacks occurring at the same time, wouldn't this then equate the two scenarios (rat attack and charity) in regards to specificity? To use your phrasing: "Is it reasonable for me to expect that a person walking by help me specifically over the other person being attacked? Obviously not.". The last aspect, effectiveness/guarantee of donation is definitely relevant - I fully agree with you. But as you mentioned, you can donate directly to someone, and your problem with that seems to relate to specificity. So, if we resolve the specificity difference, this aspect would become irrelevant. Either way though, I hope we can just assume the donation is effectively helping, since this allows us to talk about the moral aspect rather than the political and economic aspects.
@@dbraae Re ease: Giving up all your non-essential money is not easy. You said yourself that it's an outrageous conclusion. Now perhaps we have good reason to accept this outrageous conclusion, but surely it wouldn't be easy to enact. (If you're just arguing for a general obligation to give some of your non-essential wealth to charity, that's fine. I endorse that too, provided we're putting aside concerns about the effectiveness of such action.) Distance matters insofar as it makes a difference to whether or not it's reasonable to expect a given other person to provide aid to you. Though I do not really see this as separate from the other points. >> Furthermore, I am talking about the moral obligation to give to charity, not to donate to any specific person Surely the question here is whether the obligation to provide aid when you see a stranger in need generalizes to an obligation to give up all of your non-essential wealth to charity? Well, my point is that the obligation to provide aid in the rat case arises in virtue of the relation you have to the person being attacked. Maybe you have a separate argument in favour of the obligation to give up all non-essential wealth to charity. But then why bring up the rat case? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you here. Anyway, as noted, the view I'm taking on this is that moral rules are constructed by rational agents negotiating in self-interest. I adopt particular constraints on my behaviour when it benefits me in the long run for other people to adopt the same constraints. I think there is a strong case for a rule along the lines of: "if you comes across somebody in need, and providing aid would be at little cost to yourself, then you ought to provide aid to that person." If everybody adopted this rule, then (a) I would receive aid in situations such as being attacked by rats or, to take a more likely scenario, collapsing on the street, but (b) none of us would be required to make extreme sacrifices or to significantly alter our projects. This rule would promote the interests of almost all of us. >> What if you saw two different rat attacks occurring at the same time, wouldn't this then equate the two scenarios (rat attack and charity) in regards to specificity? Well, you should probably try to help both of them. If we're assuming that you somehow know for sure that you can't help both, then yeah, there wouldn't be an obligation to either person specifically. Then it's up to you which person you help.
@@KaneB We seem to be talking past each other, maybe I'm not good at communicating my points, or maybe it's just a downside of textual communication. I will try to keep this comment short to combat this. My point is that you "expand" the moral obligation in the animal case, but you do not make the same "expansion" in the infant/human case. That is, you say if animals have moral standing (like infants) then 18:46 "we should put a similar degree of effort into eliminating wild animal suffering...", but those two scenarios are not equal. The equal scenario would be: Save an infant if you come across one in need. Infant's moral value = animal's moral value. Therefore, save an animal if you come across one in need. Instead, you replace the conclusion with "take measures to eliminate all wild animal suffering in the world". I agree that the moral obligation towards animals will eventually lead us to such a conclusion, but so will it in the human case. I brought up charity because that is a relevant, equal expansion of the human case. I just think we should be consistent. Do you understand what I'm getting at?
@@dbraae Ah, I understand you now. Perhaps I should have been clearer about this point in the video, but I do not think that those who endorse the marginal cases argument are committed to the view that we ought to give up all our non-essential wealth to the eradication of animal suffering. The absurd conclusion, at least for me, is simply the idea that whatever steps we are taking to reduce human suffering, we should be taking similar steps to reduce animal suffering. So certainly, if you come across an animal in need, you should offer aid, just as you should offer aid when you come across a human in need. More generally, we should have as a goal the eradication of (extreme) wild animal suffering, just as we have as a goal the eradication of (extreme) human suffering. The vast majority of people agree that, in an ideal world, there would be no violence, starvation, infant mortality, etc., among humans, and that societies should take steps to address these problems. However, very few people endorse the view that each individual is obligated to give up all of their non-essential wealth to this goal. It would be the same in the case of wild animal suffering: we should be taking steps to reduce it, though this need not place demanding obligations on each individual.
The foundational argument that other animals aren’t rational agents seems faulty. At 6:38 we get the definition of a rational agent: - Long-term planning - The ability to consider sets of social rules to compare costs and benefits of adopting particular rules - To give reasons for and against particular actions - impose constraints on one’s own behaviour in accordance with this reasoning “…there are no non-human animals that have this capacity” I find this statement very surprising. It wouldn’t be difficult to give examples of other animals showing these traits in various ways (with a possible exception of “to give reasons”, depending on what this phrase entails). A simple search reveals several studies on other animals as rational and moral agents.
I don't think anything important hangs on this. There is clearly a difference in the cognitive capacities, particularly with respect to social interaction and the construction of rules, between normal adult humans and all other animals. That difference is what matters to me, however it's spelled out more precisely.
Hey Kane. The argument you use to justify the moral status of infants is quite fascinating to me because it's identical to a number of arguments I've heard made by anti-abortion activists in justifying the moral status of fetuses. I don't know whether you've addressed the abortion debate elsewhere but I wonder whether you agree with the assessment that your defense of the moral status of infants leads directly to a defense of the moral status of unborn babies.
In my view, foetuses do have moral standing. I'd even be happy to say that foetuses have a right to life. But a right to life doesn't entail a right to utilize somebody else's body to maintain your life. I see abortion as justified as a matter of self-defence: if somebody is occupying your body without your consent, it's acceptable to use deadly force in response.
@@KaneB hmm, would be interested in a discussion between yourself and Avi Bitterman on the topic of abortion. If you're interested I can try and reach out to him?
@@a8310596 My position on abortion is very simple, and my knowledge of the abortion literature limited, so I don't think I would have much to contribute to a discussion about it.
Hello I watches your metaethic videos. I wanted to ask something. Basically I want to learn is there any philosophical position that defends the statement "killing innocent people, lying, harming people(the actions which we find wrong or evil) are not actually wrong. And one can do them as they wish it is a matter of ability to do so". Does moral nihilism fit with description? Thanks...
Moral nihilism does say that those things are not actually wrong. It's also called moral error theory, and it holds that all moral claims are false. So not only is it not wrong to kill innocent people, but it's also not good to protect innocent people. There is also moral non-cognitivism which says that moral claims are meaningless. So killing innocent people is not wrong because saying that anything is wrong is babbling nonsense. Saying things are right or wrong is just baby talk that people continue to say as adults.
What would you say to someone thst instead of infants brings up humans that lack mental capacity/are in comas? Would it be the same answer that you gave in this vid? (AskYourself's counterpoint to the trait being rationality.)
Kane, how do you feel about proposed “solutions” to wild animal suffering? Some utilitarians have argued there’s an obligation to create advanced technology to re-engineer nature itself to stop all the predation and nasty stuff. Personally I don’t think we have an obligation to stop wild animal suffering unless humans caused it, but I’d like to hear what you think
Since I don't see wild animal suffering as a problem to be solved, even in the case where humans have caused it, I'd say such solutions are at best pointless, and it would be much more worthwhile to devote the time spent on that towards figuring out ways of repairing damaged ecosystems.
@@KaneB nice reply. What’s interesting is that many of the people supporting this decision are negative utilitarians, so they believe we should only minimize animal suffering instead of making their lives more pleasurable. Many often think that repairing ecosystems or making new ones creates the grounds for more animal suffering, and is cruel or sociopathic. It’s a counter intuitive view, but an interesting one. Would like to know your thoughts on that too
The argument at 7:30 doesn't seem very satisfying to me. As you note shortly after, there are obvious costs to being intolerant towards homosexuality, and the disgust many people feel toward homosexuality can be greatly reduced through contact with gay people or seeing sympathetic depictions of gay people in fiction (indeed, countries like the US or UK seem to have reached a stage where homophobia is offensive to far more people than homosexuality is). There are also few, if any, people who would have a strong negative reaction to the idea of someone else eating mustard. So we can easily make a case for tolerating these activities without dismissing emotive value judgements altogether. More generally, if someone argued that there should be rules prohibiting X/actively encouraging X on the grounds that X just strikes them as repugnant/virtuous in a pre-reflective kind of way, there are questions we can ask like "how many people feel this way?", "what would the costs and/or cobenefits of these rules be?" "how practicable would it be for people who feel this way to simply get over it?", so it seems like it would be pretty easy to take some value judgements into account without being committed to just going along with any request that anyone makes.
There are also some cases where appeals to emotive value judgements appear to support sound conclusions. For example, consider a rule that memorials to historical atrocities, like the transatlantic slave trade, are to be treated with respect. I'm guessing you would find this rule reasonable, but it's hard to see how anyone has a material interest in this rule being followed. On the other hand, if we allow appeals to the community's value judgements, then it's easy to explain the basis for a rule like this.
I don't "dismiss emotive value judgements altogether" and I'm not sure why you think I do. Given this, it's a bit difficult to understand your objection. As for the case of the slavery memorial -- well, I'd say that destroying the memorial is wrong because (a) it would involve damaging somebody else's property (or public property) and so violate property conventions that it is in our interests to respect and (b) it would probably evince a racist attitude, which is bad for similar reasons as homophobia. (There may be other reasons as well, but without anymore detail, those are the two that spring to mind.)
@@KaneB OK, maybe "dismiss emotive value judgements altogether" was putting it too flippantly, but as far as I can see, your position is something along the lines of: "When a community is constructing a system of moral rules, they will need to focus on satisfying the material interests of their members. And attempting to add rules on the basis of some members simply _feeling_ that X is wrong is not a viable option; reason being many people find many different things distasteful and any system of rules that tried to prohibit any activity deemed offensive to anybody would end up being so restrictive as to make everybody worse off than if they had simply learned to deal with the fact that some people are going to act in ways they don't like." In contrast, my intuition would be that there isn't any reason not to treat value judgements as just another kind of interest. So for example, if it was the case that a clear majority of a given community found animal suffering very upsetting and there wasn't much cost to having rules protecting animals, that would appear to me to be a perfectly adequate justification for them adopting some animal protection rules. And I don't think allowing this kind of move would necessarily open the door to adopting an excessively restrictive or arbitrary set of rules, because there are criteria the community could consider when deciding whether to adopt or reject a given value-based rule. The most obvious questions being "What are the costs of enforcing this rule?" and "How many people actually care about this issue?". I would also hope that one of the values the community considered important would be some kind civic libertarianism, of course there's no guarantee they would, but hopefully you can see how, depending on the ideological makeup of the community, allowing value judgements to factor into policy making could be compatible with a fairly libertarian outcome. Regarding the slavery monument example, I was thinking of someone showing disrespect in a way that doesn't damage the monument, e.g. going up to it late a night, singing a crude song, flicking the V sign at it, chucking some empty beer cans at it, that sort of thing. And yeah, that's definitely something I should have made clearer. As for the objection that this would be bad because it shows a racist attitude, that's fair, but you can change it to a WWI memorial, for example, where behaving in the way I described doesn't seem to express any particular worldview besides being a shithead, but I would guess that you would still object to it. Perhaps a better example of a good value-based policy would be using public money to build these kinds of monuments in the first place, or possibly the treaties restricting human activity in Antarctica. I mean maybe you can come up with a reason why these policies are in our material self interest, but certainly my intuition would be that it's an open question whether these policies make us materially better off and that the _primary_ reason for them is just that we want to pay respects to these historical tragedies and we want to protect the Antarctic ecosystem and there's no good reason not to make policy on those bases.
The marginal case argument can be used with different questions. My line for when I'm okay with eating something is not the same line where I would be okay with not helping it. There are some humans I don't help but there are no humans I eat.
I'm a bit confused about how this is connects to what I said about the MCA. Are you objecting to my argument? If so, I'm not sure how the objection is supposed to work. There are plenty of humans that I don't help. But the point is that if we deny that there is any morally relevant property that distinguishes marginal humans from animals, then in whatever situations where there is an obligation to provide aid to save the lives of marginal humans, there will also be an obligation to provide aid to save the lives of animals. I'm not claiming that the MCA entails that we must always provide aid to humans in need, or anything like that.
@@KaneB We ask someone, what makes it okay to kill and eat animals but not humans? The person responds with some marginal case X. Now we ask them, what makes it okay to help humans and not help animals? Now the person responds with some marginal case Y. Sounded as though you implied X need to be the same as Y. Was this the case?
@@Oskar1000 Okay, now I'm even more confused. What do you think a "marginal case" is? When you ask someone what makes it okay to eat animals but not humans, they will respond by citing a property that distinguishes humans from animals. They wouldn't respond with a marginal case. A marginal case, in this context, is a human who lacks, or apparently lacks, the property cited.
Hi Kane, I'm new to your channel and I'm wondering if you have read Marquis de Sade? I think the philosophy of sadism is directly applicable to animal agriculture -- the reason we can torture these animals for pleasure is because we have ultimate power over them. So the only moral argument (I can think of) for veganism would be based on virtue ethics (i.e. what kind of person do *I* want to be) and if I don't fancy myself a sadist then I should not act like one. I suppose it goes along the lines of ascetism that self discipline is a virtue in itself, as opposed to being mindlessly controlled by desire. Of course, as you pointed out, a lot of vegans are self indulgent so perhaps this is not their motivation. But overall, I really appreciate this video and especially agree that eliminating "wild animal suffering" is absurd, and also the way "companion animals" are used in our society is very undignified and reflects a sorry state of human civilisation -- i.e. man's best friend is a mutilated (forcibly sterilised) animal who will never be independent.
Have you read Bernard Williams's article 'The Human Prejudice'? I think that it is the most brilliant demonstration of the flaws in the whole 'speciecism' argument that Peter Singer advances. There is a video series of him presenting it on youtube. th-cam.com/video/szgMiqbR57s/w-d-xo.html
Many years ago; it didn't resonate with me much at the time. I remember very little about it, though I recall feeling it was rather wishy-washy and obscure. Maybe I should check it out again.
I like that William's 'Whose side are you on?' paper, but it's only the idea of agent relative permissions writ large; that is, what we ought to do in extremis. I think there is no objection to the claim that one may hold that where there is a symmetrical conflict of a desires to x, then one is justified in breaking the symmetry by saying 'well, I simply value my own life more than I value theirs', and this goes for family, community, country, species, planet and so on. Of course there is the question of whether this was truly a symmetrical conflict of desires - a genuine moral dilemma if you like - but if we assume that it was and thus there was only a disjunctive either/or choice open to the agent, then Williams makes a good, if somewhat obvious, argument. But in the everyday choices we face, particularly food choices in western societies, then there is certainly no way that it can be argued that we face a genuine moral dilemma when we are choosing what to have for lunch: it is simply not an either/or decision, thus the argument Williams presents in that talk and in his paper are not applicable.
I benefit from stealing. But if everybody stole, I would stop benefitting. Therefore, what I ought to do is to steal, and also to convince others not to steal. One way I might convince others not to steal is via philosophical arguments. These philosophical arguments need not be made authentically; just as what's good is that I and I alone steal, it's also good that I and I alone lie. Toward these ends, I might claim to accept social conventions against theft and lying. It's not necessary that I actually accept any. I'll still be limited by the threat of consequences, like jail time and ostracism, but at the point that consequences are the only limits, are we still talking about morality, or have we begun talking about something else? Is that actually how people think? I don't think so, not most people. But then, people regularly behave in less rational ways-- or perhaps, we behave rationally, but following consistent rules that are not simple enough for most philosophers' tastes. I agree that morality has some prosocial functions, and that society has some beneficial effects for individuals; it seems likely to me that moral societies survived where amoral societies failed, and that moral individuals survived (in pack animals like humans) where amoral individuals died. I believe that morality as we experience and practice it is a sort of prosocial heuristic, something that "works" more often than it doesn't (quote marks because "survival of the fittest" is a tautology, and we don't want to make any kind of mistakes in thinking that "working" means that it works toward our own current values; functional morality here can refer to an awful lot of tribalism, scapegoating, and othering that many of us currently abhor.) I think that we have to be very careful whenever we talk about self-interest. Sometimes, when we use this phrase, we're talking about some purely selfish self-interest, like ensuring that our descendants survive as deeply into the future as possible, or avoiding pain, or endless coke and hookers. Other times, we acknowledge that our self-interest may be served by jumping on a grenade, because we are interested in the well-being of others; other's self-interest is *our* self-interest. Not for any *reason* , mind. Not because they'll reward us later, because we're in bits and pieces after our sacrifice. We just are. Eventually, we're reduced to unjustifiable primary values; if those values include "I don't want animals to suffer," there may be no argument to be made either for or against. We can also acknowledge that "coke and hookers" self-interest can sometimes be served by protecting animals from violence. Sadness, horror, disgust, shame are not just emotions: they are *painful* emotions, they can be much more painful than having soybeans for dinner AGAIN, and our self-interests are best served by preventing actions that cause them to occur. Yes, it's true, looking away may be one way to protect ourselves, but it is unreliable.
Does morality have to be an on/off switch, or can it change by degree. I am in a process of eliminating animal flesh from my diet not because I think thier is an equivilance but because I think they have just enough to be not killed for food. But if thier is a trolley problem with 1 chimpanzees and 1 person the chimp is going to die.
Yeah, I think think the standard view is that animals matter, they just don't matter as much as humans, not even marginal humans. Both those of us who deny animals moral standing, and those of us who think that animals matter less than all humans, are challenged by the marginal cases argument.
It seems to me, rational agents would voluntarily chose not to overuse the field and this not need rules. This makes me think we make rules for irrational agents.
Factually false statement at 57:33 since Animal Aggritulre is responsible for at least 87% of relevant GHG emission, eat position paper on the journal of ecological studies by Dr. Sailesh Rao
@11:20 I don't follow. By your reasoning, couldn't we rather opt for a rule which cultivates disgust and attempts to eliminate homosexuality, since homosexual practices are a small minority of sexual practices (less than 10%) ? That seems like a rule that benefits the interests of the majority if it feels disgust at homosexuality. It could be more efficient at promoting the interests of most people rather than the overly general rule you stated. PS. I think homosexuality is totally fine, I come from a moral realist point of view.
Defining words and concepts isn't about prescribing how we think those concepts ought to be used, but rather it's about describing how they are used in real life. When we say that morality is a social construct, are we giving careful consideration to what most people mean in real life when they use the concept of morality? Of course we're free to pick a social construct and call that morality, but if that's not what other people mean when they talk about morality, then we're creating confusion. For what it's worth, when I talk about morality I'm not referring to a social construct. Perhaps that's just my misunderstanding of the proper usage of moral terms, but it seems that most people put far more concern into morality than they would put into a mere social construct. Star Trek is a social construct, and some people care an awful lot about Star Trek, but it doesn't even come close to the concern they put into morality. I am also very concerned about the thing which I'm referring to when I speak of morality, so it seems clear to me that other people have roughly the same understanding of morality as I do, or at least most of us are not talking about some social construct. Morality being a social construct really confuses the whole issue. We might ask whether we should eat meat or not, or whether we should protect the environment, but why ask when what we should do is just a social construct? It's like debating over the various qualities of Star Trek captains. What we should do or shouldn't do is just a matter of morality, and we could be focusing our attention upon something real instead. Taking seriously the idea of morality being a social construct is truly baffling. It makes it difficult to discuss morality without slipping into confusion, because one inevitably forgets that morality isn't real.
Regarding the 'we should despair and do nothing argument'. I'm sympathetic towards this as I've definitely held this position in the past. However given the facts, that 2 degrees of warming is better than 3 degrees which is better than 4, I now think we still have a duty to reduce carbon emissions even if it doesn't stop extensive heating of the world (if some cities are flooded but not others this is a big gain). There is argument about tipping points, which means, any changes we make may not lead to meaningful difference. However the climate system is so big, chaotic, complex and unpredictable that we cannot know that our impact won't make a difference (think of the butterfly effect). The stakes are also so high, that it's morally, worth a 'gamble' to make things better. Unfortunately I don't think we can't get off the hook this easily and do nothing, although the problem is so overwhelming it seems insurmountable and the feeling is understandable.
One thing that might seem intuitively obvious to most might benefit from fleshing out and unpacking , namely why rational agents deserve privileging or higher moral consideration over other animals or life forms :)
It seems the point of the video is that only those agents deserve moral status that are potentially capable of entering into some kind of social contract that on average probably promotes our personal self interest. The claim is while mentally disabled people have the capacity, chimps do not. This latter point sounds quite fishy to me though. Some mentally challenged people are not that clever.
Hi Kane, I sat down and watched your full video. I found your video to create some thought provoking ideas. Yet I have my own questions and criticisms on your interpretation of ethics. The first issue is with your structure. You validated your approach toward ethics by comparing it with the society. In other words, I think you were fascinated with creating a utopia rather than describing ethical questions. This was interesting to me because you did not address questions that are most relevant to ethics. (e.g., How would the treatment of a gorilla and a mouse differ? Or say a mosquito?) I think there are a lot of good questions like these that you could have addressed. When you did address ethics, you favored the elementary over the academic, such as, babies deserve to live and if you tell me they don’t then your crazy. The second issue is with self-interest. I think you made the mistake of describing something that is successful and falsely assuming that it is therefore ethically correct or ideal. Here I also want to describe your critique of homophobes. I find that in your rule system a homophobe would be validated by their claims (8:20). After all, why should their psychological, emotional, or biological pain be diminished? We know from psychology that being offended is a physically unpleasant feeling in the brain. From there we can deduce that your ethics system should include it for that reason. Finally, I think that you are downplaying the role that psychology can play. At the beginning of the video, you made the statement that animal suffering doesn’t move you (2:40). I am not going to question that. But what I want to notice is how this presents a large problem for your system. People can learn to be numb to just about anything. We know that typically ethical people can become demons if given a badge and a gun (Stanford Prison Experiment). It is not always the case that people have self-interests and they pursue them rationally. You made an example of the field that may become trampled. What you are alluding to is the tragedy of the commons (Overgrazing eventually kills the herd etc.) What is fascinating is that you presented this feature as if it was a strength of selfish based ethics. In reality the tragedy of the commons is a direct critique to the notion that self interest prevails. More examples of this phenomenon are the Easter Islanders and deforestation, the saber tooth tiger going extinct, and perhaps climate change. In each of these situations the group does not have the immediate negative consequences that self interest based systems depend on.
I may grant that the MCA on its own is a case for moral equivalence, but I don't see how I cannot add another argument that shows that humans are more important, thus effectively turning the MCA into an argument for moral consideration.
Hi, Kane. I liked your video a lot, but about your argument on the actual capacity of infants to develop rationality, i find an implicated case that could be problematic: abortion. It´s evident that most cases of pregnancy entail the existance of a fetus that has the actual capacity (at least as actual as that of a newborn infant) to develop rationality. You just need to leave the fetus grow till it becomes an infant (in a relatively short period of time). That fetus is biologically preppared to develop the same capacities that the infant will develop later. Would you say that abortion is also immoral based in this claims? (English is not my native language, sorry if i wrote something wrong).
I'm happy to grant that the fetus has a right to life. But a right to life doesn't entail the right to utilize somebody else's body to sustain your life. In my view, if a person is occupying your body without your consent, it's acceptable to use deadly force against that person. So I'm not in favour of restrictions on abortion.
@@KaneB But isn´t that line of reasoning problematic? I mean, in that case you put the "daily interest" of the gestating woman above the survival interest of the fetus growing inside her (unless the woman´s life is in danger because of the process of giving birth or sustaining the life of a fetus). If we grant that a non-letal threat to our well-being is enough to justify a letal threat to the well being of another rational agent, then we could justify killing someone because, for example, he robbed us. Where do we put the boundary or why would we put it in the case of someone "growing inside our body"?
@@xBinderblackx I think people have the right to decide what to do with their own bodies. Bodily autonomy is extremely important to me, and to pretty much everybody else. If there is reason to think that the robber may be posing a significant threat to one's bodily autonomy, lethal force may well be justified. An unwanted fetus is directly violating bodily autonomy in a significant way. Nonconsensual pregnancy is a far more significant imposition, both in the physical effects and in how long it lasts, than is nonconsensual sex, but I think lethal force is justified in response to nonconsensual sex.
@@KaneB I agree about the relevance of bodily autonomy, but i don´t see why it would outweight the entire life of another rational being (you even could say that his/her own bodily autonomy it´s at stake too). One could say that bodily autonomy, in fact, is restricted all the time in favour of certain moral rules and necessities. For example, your bodily autonomy with respect to movement, in the case of walking the park that you mentioned in the video; or your bodily autonomy with respect to eating (for not having money to buy food), or with respect with resting (for the need to wake up and go to work). In any case, i do not see how we could go from "bodily autonomy is extremely important" to "bodily autonomy (in cases when life is not at stake) is more important than the life of another rational agent".
@@xBinderblackx I'm not sure that any of those examples you list should be characterized in terms of restrictions on bodily autonomy. I suppose this is a purely semantic matter. What's important for me is the inviolability of one's body, that each person has the right to decide what changes are made to their bodies, so that people do not interfere with another person's body without their consent. Sticking your finger in somebody's ear would be a very minor violation of bodily autonomy. Drugging somebody's drink, so imposing unwanted physiological changes upon them, would be more serious. Nonconsensual pregnancy is among the absolute worst violations of bodily autonomy that occur commonly. Only things like homicide and extreme torture are worse. It's not that bodily autonomy "outweighs" the lives of others. I'm not sure how to weigh those things against each other; and anyway, as you note, defending one's own bodily autonomy may involve significantly violating the bodily autonomy of the attacker. But so what? The point is just that people have a right to defend themselves. (If 10 people are attempting to kill you, it's okay to use lethal force against all 10 of them, even though I assume that 10 lives would "outweigh" one.) Is it acceptable to use lethal force in defense against nonconsensual sex? I think the answer to that is obviously "yes". But then there is no question that it's acceptable in response to nonconsensual pregnancy. One reason is that nonconsensual pregnancy is, by pretty much any measure, a far more significant violation of bodily autonomy than is nonconsensual sex. Another reason is that in many cases of nonconsensual pregnancy, lethal force is the only option, since if the fetus is in the early stages, it will die if it's removed.
(23:00) "...a gradual developmental process that starts with the newborn baby..." Which newborn baby do you think was the first baby that had the capacity for rationality---Cain? Doesn't every newborn baby inherit its capacity for rationality from its parents who, in turn, inherited their capacities from their parents and so on all the way back to the time before there were human beings when our ancestors were only "animals" (and, indeed, even further back than that)? The process of rationality didn't start with a newborn homo sapiens baby, it started much, much earlier than that. Your argument is limited to an extremely short view of time and development. You have no idea if a dog or a squirrel or any other animal has or lacks the capacity to develop rationality over the time scale in which human beings actually developed it. Moreover, not all newborn human babies right now have the capacity for rationality that will allow them to become core members of the moral community within your limited time-frame. Why do they receive the benefit of special pleading?
You claim that mistreating infants (like killing them, using as medical experiments etc) is morally unacceptable. How about stop feeding an infant and leaving it outside on the cold to die? Is that morally different than an abortion (e.g fetus evictionism)? If yes, why? The fetus has, like an infant, the capacity to develop rational agency. What's the morally relevant factor that distinguishes those two cases, if any?! It obviously can't be the birth, (like humanity is not the morally relevant factor on the MCA). Thanks!
Guess I'm a rare vegetarian that does only abstain from meat cause hurting animals makes me feel bad, but am fine if it doesn't make other people feel bad.
39:28 - This is the point though. If there were no grounds for feeling that killing dogs is wrong then we would not feel that it is wrong when we see it. We do feel that it is wrong, thus there must be some grounds for thinking that it is wrong. You could try and argue that whatever the basis of this feeling may be that it is not morally relevant: but this is quite a challenge - to show that there is NO moral relevance to the basis of that feeling. And you can even deny that animals have any moral standing at all and still make the case that there is at least some instrumental value for humans in being attuned to apparent suffering of other beings. This is a reason, and the reason doesn't have to be this absolute moral imperative, just that it is less wrong to kill a carrot, or eat a Beyond burger, and since we have that choice, then we ought to take it. Add on the environmental issues, the fact that a plant based diet can be good for health if done properly (in that, as it is less calorie dense, you can eat a lot more plant based food than animal products thus lowering chances of obesity and the associated risk factors) and the case for veganism seems very strong.
I'm a bit confused about this response. In that part of the video I was talking specifically about people who meat from animals such as pigs, while objecting to others eating dog meat.
@@KaneB Yes, I didn't make it clear. I was trying to say that it is a hard challenge to try to show that whatever the basis of the repugnance we feel towards dog butchery (given that most of us do feel at least some repugnance) does not also apply to pigs or cows or whatever. And we only need some sort of reason or a pro tanto reason to justify the claim that it is morally better to err on the side of caution and order the bean burger. Or of course you can bite the bullet and say that butchering dogs is not morally troubling at all, as you yourself may say, but I often find that is more of a position that is wheeled out for debates and such, but if real life they do find it somewhat distressing and troubling to watch a dog being killed.
@@neoepicurean3772 humans have tens of thousands of years in symbiosis with dogs. There's evidence to believe we may not even have become human without having domesticated dogs. It's not unreasonable that humans have an attachment to an animal that has helped to feed us, protect us, and provide companionship for tens of thousands, perhaps millions of years. From an evolutionary standpoint, they have become more like family. Sharks don't eat remora. Badgers and coyotes form a symbiotic hunting relationship. This is not unique or unreasonable to understand.
Going as plant eater as possible for environmental reasons is right thing to do. But l listened this video, and l didn't catch how sentimentality towards animals blocks activities that may benefit humans - do you mean pets? How sympathy to animals and giving them rights isn't progressive? (if we think that being progressive is going upward to better) Or as an non-english native l didn't understand some things correctly. ------ In overall, whole animal lives matter-debate has been whole a mess to me throught years. But l try to eat less meat because of practical reasons (environmental reasons, red meat and health issues), but not totally abandon it, until we get techno utopia, where all kinds of meat and organ parts are created, so l can continue to make traditional dishes which include hearts, lungs, etc. And just in case l try to learn how to hunt animals and butcher them, just in case we face a great disintegration and/or collapse. But this is just my nonsense rambling. -------- But all these problems with modern agriculture is also linked to huge population growth with meat being a middle-class status symbol to gain. -------- You should put a "non cencored" video to alternative platforms, which are then linked in description. ----- l try to "fool" or reason to myself my meat eating, that in nature there are also exploitation. But then this can be answered, that we have for once possibility to deny meat eating from us and at the same time we can get all proteins ect. from plants, and in the future from "cell-gardens". But then someone says, that animals have better life overall in our hands (even if they get a shot to head in the end, or fatten just to give us our their meat) than their counterparts in nature. But then l ask "did animals made social contract to imprison, domesticate and use them only for our food?". Social contract theory is just to fool ourselves to justify these kind of... some sort of oppressive systems. And oh boy, if we go to think about plants, and why they grow spikes or are poisonous... that's a hell of rabbit hole. Then we would just kill ourselves, because whatever we do, there is ALWAYS oppression towards flora and fauna. Kill an annoying fly or weed. edit: "Since I don't see wild animal suffering as a problem to be solved, even in the case where humans have caused it" - So it is okay to make domesticated or pet animals suffer? Did l miss something? l feel that l god more questions than answers.
Hey Kane, thanks for your perspective, I really appreciate your content here, although on this issue I disagree. I guess I just love kittens too much. Btw, how would you justify granting a right to life to a fetus? Just on the basis of a potential to develop into a person?
I have been listening to you for some time now, and truly enjoy your content. BUT I have to say that at about minute 40:00: you suddenly lost your philosophical composure which is otherwise precisely what is so admirable about you. Telling certain others to F--- Off ... took me by surprise! But also surprising is too easy recourse to moral sentiments like "repugnance" that say you feel at the end of your video. Just how much work are these moral "sentiments" doing in justifying your views? Why should anyone care about your "sentiments" as somehow a moral guide, while shaming the "sentimentality" of others as degenerate? I find myself largely agreeing with much of what you say, but I have this unresolved uneasiness that there is something not fully self-consistent here, but I can't put my finger on it!
@@KaneB Ok, here they are: "Vegans participate in destructive agriculture practices": Destructive? maybe but THE MOST destructive practice for the environment is animal agriculture since the biggest part of the crops produced in the world go to feed factory farm animals. "Vegans participate in the meat industry when the purchase from a restaurant or supermarket": Just because you buy in a particular establishment doesn't mean that you are generating demand for ALL of their products. If the manager of a supermarket has problems selling a particular product he/she will probably evaluate stop selling THAT particular product, not al of their products. So if you don't buy meat form a supermarket but buy any other product, you are not participating in the demand of meat (I literally can't believe I need to explain this). "Animal agriculture can be done (and has been done) sustainably": There might be a few things that could be done in order to make animal agriculture more sustainable but it will ALWAYS be more damaging to the environment than just producing plant-based food for direct human comsuption. Also even "local" agriculture is WAY less damaging to the environment than animal agriculture. You say that there are "some places" where it is more sustainble to eat meat than plants but of course you don't mention which places are those becuse it's just bullshit. "The problem is not agriculture it is mass-scale, non-local agriculture": Dude, the ONLY way to meet the demand of animal products is through mass-scale, non-local animal agriculture. Also, again, it doesn't matter if it is local or grass-fed or small-scaled animal agriculture, it will NEVER be less contaminating than eating plant-based foods directly. This fantasy that you and other people have about a meat industry that is less contaminating than planting and harvesting food for direct human comsumption is just that, a fantasy.
@@gaudigalves >> Destructive? maybe So you are conceding that either (1) my claim in question is not incorrect or (2) you don't know whether or not my claim is incorrect. >> THE MOST destructive practice for the environment is animal agriculture since the biggest part of the crops produced in the world go to feed factory farm animals I never denied this. This is, in fact, an important part of the overall argument of that section. >> So if you don't buy meat form a supermarket but buy any other product, you are not participating in the demand of meat You may not be participating in the demand, but you are certainly participating in the industry. Product distribution is an important part of agriculture in general. >> There might be a few things that could be done in order to make animal agriculture more sustainable but it will ALWAYS be more damaging to the environment than just producing plant-based food for direct human comsuption This is simply false. There are places where a nutritionally adequate plant-based diet can only be secured through industrial agriculture. It would be more sustainable for people in such places to shift towards more traditional forms of food production which would involve consuming animal products. Of course, it would require significant population reduction for this to become the norm -- given the current population, industrial agriculture is the only option, and in *that* context, a plant-based diet is significantly better. But I never denied this. Indeed, this is, again, an important part of the argument in that section. >> Dude, the ONLY way to meet the demand of animal products is through mass-scale, non-local animal agriculture I'm well aware of that. This is one reason why I argue in favour of ending meat consumption. >> This fantasy that you and other people have about a meat industry that is less contaminating than planting and harvesting food for direct human comsumption is just that, a fantasy That is not a fantasy that I have, and this would be obvious to you if you had actually paid attention to the video. You do realize that in this section of the video, I'm *defending* veganism? I'm very clearly presenting and supporting an environmentalist argument for veganism. I don't mean to be rude, but you come across as so blinded by your own ideology that you can't even recognize when people with different perspectives agree with you. I mean, how much more explicit do I have to make it? The subtitle of the video is literally "but you should still go vegan (probably)". The section that you are criticizing here is titled "animal agriculture vs humanity". It seems clear to me that the only mistakes here are on your part.
Let's see what happens if I become a moral realist... It is an objective fact that only humans have moral standing. Huh, didn't seem to make any difference!
@@KaneB you argued for not just moral antirealism but constructivism about moral norms. It is the constructivism, only attractive as a result of your general antirealist commitments, that yields the wrong answers. Turns out it makes a difference afterall!
@@aaronchipp-miller9608 Just to say a bit more on this: I can't be bothered to do this right now, but I'd be quite happy to provide a realist translation/interpretation of the arguments in this video. I'll even do it for different kinds of realism - a naturalist interpretation, an intuitionist interpretation, etc. You'll have to get back to me on this though, because as I said, I can't be bothered right now.
@@KaneB sure. You can generally argue any conclusion at all if you assume the premises. The question is which system allows you to have those premises. It's extremely unclear how one would get the premises you want without a strange wedding of constructivism and realism. Something like "this is what itd be rational to agree on and so those are now belief independent moral facts." Its much more natural to take the route you do. Namely, "moral facts dont exist. So when we're talking about morality we're talking about rules that serve some end etc etc". So, like I said earlier, ones metaethical commitments are salient
1. Animals are morally equivalent to marginal humans; 2. It's morally acceptable to eat animals; 3. If animals are morally equivalent to marginal humans and it's morally acceptable to eat animals then it's morally acceptable to eat marginal humans; Therefore, it's morally acceptable to eat marginal humans.
@@Bilboswaggins2077 You know, the reason humans breed herbivorous animals to feed on them is because that is simply more efficient. If it takes 10 kJ of grass to be able to eat 1kJ of cow meat, then it would take 10kJ of cow meat to make 1kJ of tiger meat. This means that feeding on infants would only be economically reasonable if humans were to go vegan (because then the energy to generate children would come from plants rather than meat, which is the viable option). So we'd kind of have to accept both conclusions from the marginal cases argument and we would both go vegan and cannibal.
One problem with the Singer expanding circle is that the step after inclusion of animals is inclusion of plants, bacteria, protozoa etc and probably after refusing to eat plants, we would certainly all die. So expanding the circle seems like a flawed premise because you can't justify why you stop at animals any more than stopping at humans or close relatives (we are distantly related to bacteria afterall).
Have you factored in that animals which aren’t self aware, while they may feel pain, cannot be aware that it is they who are experiencing the pain? They are one step removed from the suffering. So their suffering isn’t actually like our suffering.
Are you suggesting that one needs to know one is suffering in order to suffer 'properly' or in a more substantial way? What do you mean by "they are one step removed from the suffering"?
@@austinpowers7670 No, just that their experience of suffering is not like ours. It’s difficult for me to even imagine how theirs might be. Feeling the pain yet not being able to rationalize it. Perhaps it the mirror opposite of phantom pain.
First half is very good, second half rather bad. The reasons are 1. You don't show the upsides of industrial animal agriculture, mostly feeding billions of humans while using far less space than ecological agriculture. 2. There are no serious studies that show one could give up industrial animal agriculture without starving countless people. One could reduce it, but nothing more. 3. Negative effects on the environment are not specified. One might also see it as a rational use of the environment. In terms of the climate effect, energy production is the core issue, agriculture is overall minor.
Why would buying a jar of peanut butter in a supermarket "fund the meat industry"? The supermarket will just use the income to restock the peanut butter? You're clearly a philosopher rather than a grocer.
I like animals and care about the environment, but perhaps the biggest appeal for becoming a vegan is getting to join their surprisingly backstabbing, online community.
> Even vegans deep down agree with imo Why do you say that? That's not the impression I've ever had, here in the UK. I'd be more inclined to say that deep down, most omnivores feel that animal agriculture is morally bad due to its impact on animal welfare. The reason for this is that extreme sentimentalism towards animals seems strongly ingrained in our society. Abstaining from the use of animal products is the natural result of this.
@@KaneB I think it's possible to say that humans are doing something morally wrong without conceiving of the things we are being morally wrong towards as victims. Vegans in my opinion dislike the actions of animals farmers and of meat eaters but don't particularly believe that animals have the capicity to be moral victims. I've asked vegans for example if they would kill a predator to defend a baby human and the answer is generally yes. Switch the baby for a non human animal prey and the answer is generally no. I think this and other such examoles illustrate that they too do not see animals as having the capability of being victims.
Veganism is largely driven by emotion. It's a religion and reflects the modern suicidal imperative that leftiss have of extending empathy to everyone and everything.
I've recently had a number of people ask me about my views on animal rights and veganism. This is not a topic that interests me all that much, which is why I've never done any introductory lectures on it. I'm also a little uncomfortable presenting my position on this because I think we would be better off if the meat industry were abolished. I want the vegans to win, and the ethical argument from animal welfare is, for most people, probably the most powerful motivation for veganism. I don't particularly want to undermine it. Having said that, sentimentality for animals is ingrained enough in our culture that I hardly expect a video on a small youtube channel to have much influence.
For a defense in the philosophical literature of a position fairly close to mine, see Peter Carruthers, "The Animals Issue". A few important differences: (1) Carruthers presents rather different responses to the marginal cases argument, which I do not find particularly convincing. (2) He does not raise any objection to animal agriculture. (3) He endorses a standard kind of contractualism. While my general view of morality is something close to contractarianism/contractualism, I have objections to how these theories are often developed. I haven't yet worked out in detail what my own position is, and perhaps I never will, which is why the first part of this video evinces a contractarian spirit without getting into a technical details. (In any case, it would take a whole series to go into the technical details of different normative theories. If you want a detailed exposition of contractualism and how it relates to animal ethics, read Carruthers!)
It's odd that you would take the time and effort to make a long video such as this and not take time to explore the topic a bit better and produce a competent response.
There's lots of people happy to take this on in discord, and we wouldn't have to worry about pesky YT policy:
discord. gg/ dUPFfby
@@CogDiss I have explored it. During my degree, I took several ethics courses which covered animal ethics. While doing my PhD, I worked as a teaching assistant on my uni's philosophy of morality course. If I didn't have any relevant background, I wouldn't have made the video at all.
@@KaneB ah ok, so you'd be aware of animal ags. effect on:
-climate change
-antibiotic resistance and increasing pandemic risk
-increasing occurrences of violent crime in the community (in instances of slaughterhouses being opened up in an area)
-wasting resources that could be used to end world hunger
and I assume, also, the NTT argument which would seem to expose that you wouldn't be opposed to farming mentally handicapped people?
@@CogDiss You didn't watch the video.
@@KaneB I'll retract the statement on the infectious disease risk.
However, the environmental/mass industry/vegans create demand statements made don't stack up.
There's little to no empirical evidence to support "holistic" style animal ag, certainly especially on a large scale.
If you're aware of any, let me know.
There's no reason to be particularly interested in local ag. either.
There's multiple plant products which are so much less environmentally damaging than animal products that you can ship them across the world (and actually have them circumnavigate the earth a couple of times) and easily be less damaging to the environment.
Transport as a whole is a relatively small concern.
Economically it would possibly just be more viable to engage in trade to different parts of the world for different food products, and the environmental effects would likely be comparatively quite small.
I don't see why it'd be the case that buying vegan products from a non-vegan business would result in that money being used for animal products?
The information coming out with demand changes would indicate otherwise. Businesses seem to be altering their offerings to be more friendly towards veganism if the market indicates an interest.
Additionally, the "addressing world hunger statement" stands.
We currently waste resources which could be used to end world hunger so that people in rich countries, and rich people in poorer countries can consume animal products.
Edit:
Also, I didn't see any statement addressing animal slaughterhouses being linked with increased rates of violent crime (including murder, assault and rape).
Happy to provide evidence if needed.
Hey, I am a PhD student studying philosophy and writing my thesis on Vegan ethics. Would you be interested in a discussion as I think there are issues with this video but I appreciate your approach.
Yeah, I'm open to a discussion, though I'm not sure if I would have much of interest to say; your knowledge of the topic doubtless outstrips mine (I'm also a philosophy PhD student, but I focus of phil of science). I can email you if it's easier to organise that way.
@@KaneB Absolutely, could still be interesting and always nice to talk to another philosopher!
Hi@@PerspectivePhilosophy and Kane, I am a fourth year honours undergrad student majoring in philosophy with the goal of doing my MA this Fall within the domain of either meta-ethics or applied ethics/veganism - I would love to have the opportunity to join the discussion if you two don't mind!
@@PerspectivePhilosophy Yeah, you two have to talk! I've been following both of you for some years now, I was actually thinking how you would respond Lewis, while watching this video: I thought it would be something like, to understand the eudaimon life you need to compare your interests to the interests of others, hence it is necessary to consider the subjectivity of other beings, that are capable of subjectivity, in order to understand one's own subjectivity. Or some Hegelian jazz like that.
@@KaneB Yes! Please make it happen! You can talk about metaethics (as Lewis is a realist and has an interesting spin on objective morality), philosophy of science (as Lewis thinks psychology is not a science), and of course veganism. That would be soo good!
I really like your channel, but that's the first video I have a lot of problems with. I wonder, since morality is a system of rules created by rational agents, why exclude the interests of the beings which do have interests, but are not rational agents? Why does the fact that they cannot participate in the creation of the rules entail that they don't matter?
I mean, many societies have excluded people from participating in rule-creation (i.e. slaves). It seems like what makes it wrong to exclude them is that they have interests and these interests matter.
Obviously, we could reply that slaves could participate in rule creation, but not animals, but if the only justification for rules is the self-interest of people participating in the rule-making, then it seems it would be totally fine for them not to include slaves, since that might not be in the self-interest in the actual set of rule-makers.
As you noted yourself, the current industrial agriculture that vegans participate in, is still primarily for animal feed. If this was directed to human needs, the size and scope would shrink substantially. Pair this with more sensible permaculture practices within a vegan framework and it’s virtually a non-issue compared to the current model that is still primarily inflated because of animal agriculture. Also, the appeal to ancient pastoral societies living in sustainable balance is even more unrealistic permaculture given the current population scale. A sensible meat eater still doesn’t cut emissions more than even the most careless/frivolous of mainstream vegans. It’s just the more pragmatic option.
Would it though? Beef is a super food in comparison to wheat, it’s not like they have the same amount of nutritional value.
It's difficult for me to see how, from the perspective of slaveholders in the British Empire or Antebellum South, slavery could be immoral and the abolition of slavery moral on the theory that morality is merely rational self-interest. It's true that the difference between slaves and masters was arbitrary (premised on skin color rather than any "morally relevant" distinction), but this wouldn't make it the case that a slaveholder could end up as a slave. Given that one is not and never could be a member of the group currently excluded from the social contract, and that one benefits from the exploitation of the excluded group (very much in the way we now do from exploiting animals), I don't see how it's in that person's self-interest to accept that group into the social contract/enlarge the circle of moral concern to include that group.
So is it the case that your moral theory sees slavery as moral, at least from the perspective of the slaveholders?
There is always the concern that slaves could rise up and kill their masters, as they had multiple times in the past (most successfully in Haiti). Extending moral considerations to slaves increases the likelihood they will do the same to you, but excluding them from the social contract risks them killing you.
Given that animals have been "enslaved" and killed for thousands of years without any such uprising, we can safely say that the same argument wouldn't apply to them.
@@donanderson3653 you ever seen how many ranchers get trampled by cows, kicked by a mule or horse?
One reason I give animals moral standing is that they can exhibit some reasoning. It is not the same as human reasoning, it does not work to the same ends, it will never be as good as humans. Animals display preferences, have memories, corivds (like crows) can hold grudges. At least capachin money's have a very basic idea of justice. I would worry about setting a bar so high for some moral standing. In a world in which thier is an alien species born doing calculus, would we be lacking in enough reasoning that we become food.
When I shop at my local store I do support a store that stocks meat but I do this on the assumption that the store is a rational economical actor seeking to maximise profits.
So me, buying vegan products and not their meat will skew their purchasing so they restock with more vegan stuff and less meat. My local store used to have barely any vegan stuff 2 years ago and now have several shelves and so on. (Obviously not only because of me).
But since my purchasing is actually in a sense voting for the store to restock with vegan stuff I dont see how I am supporting their meat production. It would only do that if the store had an economically irrational need to keep restocking with more meat than it can sell.
Sure, I certainly wouldn't claim that vegans support animal agriculture in exactly the same way as omnivores do. But I don't see how you get around the point that they do support it, unless you're just defining "support" in some unusual way. Retail and distribution is an essential part of the animal agriculture industry. When you buy food from shops or restaurants that stock meat, you're directly funding the distribution aspect.
Thanks Kane, a very interesting video. However, your response to the marginal case of people with severe mental disabilities seems to imply that it’s permissible to kill anyone that we know for certain will not become rational. But this seems absurd.
As I mentioned in the video, I'm somewhat limited in what I can say here. However, people with such disabilities sometimes become rational; even if they don't, they may for all we know have brain structures that would support this with the right kind of interventions. There are also good reasons, just from a practical point of view, to resist denying humans basic rights, because this kind of thinking has often resulted in persecution of those capable of rational agency.
Yup
@@KaneB that still raises the questiom of, if there are humans with no rationality and no chance of their status being changed through medical intervention, is it acceptable to eat those people?
E.g. severe dementia, brain damage, etc.
I'm not sure I accept what seems to be a slippery slope objection at the end from you, there doesn't seem to be any reason society couldn't conduct itself in such a way that we eat only a certain type of human.
@@CogDiss I directly address dementia in the video.
@@KaneB I still think there’s a problem here. Even if your response tells us that it’s wrong to kill those with severe mental disabilities, it does so for the wrong reasons. It would imply that the right to life of those with severe mental disabilities is contingent upon whether it is possible for them to recover. Again, this seems absurd.
Thanks for being so active in responding to your comments btw :)
Hey Kane, great video, I just had a few questions of clarification.
1. The contractarianism you advocated, is this basically an I scratch your back if you scratch mine approach that rules animals out because they cannot enter into this agreement?
If so, to what degree are they outside our moral considerations? Are they entirely outside it like inanimate objects? Or are they due some kind of consideration, such that we might deter people from torturing them for fun for example?
(For the animals good as opposed to some kind of stamping out sadism from society for our own good)
2. You asked for a morally relevant property that is distinct to humans and offered rationality. But when it comes to morality why do we care about rationality? Is it not that rationality is imbedded in a larger concern for 'utility'? Yes, rational beings/humans may experience unique kinds of negative utility, or indeed a more vivid negative utility, than animals but nevertheless there is some negative utility animals still experience. Thus they would be included in our moral equations.
I guess this is how I would imagine the utilitarian perspective to be and if I advocate using 'the ability to suffer' rather than rationality as the morally relevant attribute, thereby including animals, I am simply advocating utilitarianism to a non-utilitarian.
I'd just like to say arguments about rationality/future rationality of babies or incapacitated people seem entirely besides the point to me, the reason why I would see animals as deserving moral consideration is their ability to suffer.
(1) Yes, that's pretty much my approach. Animals have no moral standing in my view. Animal suffering should be viewed as completely irrelevant when we consider what we ought to do.
(2) Morality is (ideally) constituted by rules negotiated by rational agents, each acting primarily in their own self-interest. One immediate thing that will flow from this are various protections for rational agents. I agree that utilitarians will come to very different conclusions to me, but I'm not a utilitarian.
@@KaneB Thanks for the reply, I imagine your personal stance on morality is an unusual one to your average audience member (myself included). I also imagine you'll receive many replies assuming you hold some other view of morals, utilitarianism say, and arguing that your take on animal welfare is inconsistent with this, rather than debating against your actual contractarianism.
If you do ever do a follow up video, perhaps laying out how different moral viewpoints see this issue would be helpful, I agree with you that hypocritical utilitarians who use ad hoc arguments to defend their meat eating are more frustrating than anyone else in these discussions. I may find your view that animal suffering is completely irrelevant to be quite repugnant, the view that is not you, but atleast it's consistent with how we treat factory farmed animals, which isn't something you can say for the views of the public.
If you have time to respond to one final question; When you say animals are morally equivalent to inanimate objects, I guess it's hard to get my head around not having an emotional empathy response to seeing an animal suffer. So is it the case you just don't have this emotional response, just like I don't have one to the inanimate objects being crushed in a rubbish compactor, or is it that you do have the response but you think it to be misplaced or irrational because it doesn't fit with contractarianism?
Or I can see an argument being, I'd prefer not to witness an animal suffer because I find it unpleasant, but this preference is aesthetic or something rather than moral.
(And if anyone is wondering, I'm a moral antirealist who thinks moral statements are just preferences based on an evolutionary and socialized emotional response)
(Also a vegan who frequently breaks their veganism because of the whole nihilism thing Kane discussed at the end of the video, and because meat and cheese etc taste great)
@@sjmurphysj39 Thanks for the suggestion. I don't yet have any plans to do a follow-up, but I'll bear that in mind should I ever change my mind. The main goal of this video, as I mention in the intro, was just to present my own views, rather than introduce the general debate about the topic, which is why I didn't address utilitarianism. Certainly though, utilitarianism is an important position to contend with in pretty much any ethical debate, so perhaps I should have said something about it.
Two points in response to your question: First, I simply don't have the emotional response. I'm not moved at all by animal suffering. Second, I think that sympathy for animal suffering should, in the present environment, generally be resisted. Given my moral views, this emotion is often inappropriate, especially when it leads to people favouring restrictions on the use of animals to improve human life.
To be clear, the issue is sympathy for animals in general. If a person owns a pet, they may feel sympathy towards it, and treat it as a kind of "honorary person", and this is fine (perhaps admirable) provided they have an appropriate attitude towards other animals. In the past, there was a strong check on sympathy, since people had much more direct contact with resource animals and pest animals, in addition to owning pets.
On the other hand, the meat industry is terrible for all of us, and the animal welfare argument seems to be the most persuasive objection to it, for many people. So maybe modern sentimentality for animals isn't so bad after all!
@@KaneB Cheers Kane!!
I don't want to presume upon your time so of course don't feel pressure to reply again, that being said...
I agree that the animal welfare argument seems to be the most persuasive objection for most people, and it should be an easy argument to make to someone who agrees
1) Unjustified suffering is wrong (including in animals)
2) Animals suffer in factory farms
3) This suffering cannot be justified by habit or for pleasure reasons like enjoying the taste of meat
(In my view it can however be justified for medical research, I'm guessing this is one of the things you're thinking of when you say sentimentality towards animals can be bad if "it leads to people favouring restrictions on the use of animals to improve human life".)
The option of denying any of these claims is there but people are normally reluctant to do so, perhaps because as you've pointed out, citizens of industrialised societies lack the 'sympathy check' of working with animals. This means that most people can only eat meat with some heavy cognitive dissonance or denial going on.
It seems to me you are denying claim number one, it's a new and peculiar thought to me that a being's suffering, even an animals, would carry no moral weight whatsoever. Amongst other things it has got me thinking about the importance of emotions to morality (I mean, if I woke up tomorrow no longer having an emotional response to animal suffering would that change my moral view of them..) so thanks for that.
Well anyways, thanks againfor taking the time, all the best!
@@KaneB Clearly you're not a utilitarian. You are a psychopath, though. And your 'marginal person' arguments don't survive scrutiny at all - so you're a pretty crap philosopher, too.
Oh boy, you are going to have a lot of fun after this
I conceived of this video as my "final word" on the topic -- as something to point people to, whenever they ask me about my views on animals and veganism. It'll be interesting to find out whether I ever feel the need to revisit it.
I highly recommend you read just the first chapter of Peter Singers Animal Liberation. Cosmic Skeptic also has great videos like is Tel Aviv Speech, A meat eaters case for veganism, the Earthling Ed speech, and especially the documentary Dominion.
I have read Singer, among others. It's not that I'm unfamiliar with the arguments here. I took several courses that covered animal ethics during my degree.
@@KaneB would be good to hear you address them, as they are important arguments in the discourse of this topic
Saving this video for later. I think one of the most powerful arguments for veganism tends to be (or at least should be if people engaged with it correctly) Name The Trait (NTT). I take this view because NTT doesn't presuppose any particular ethic, rather it tests one's consistency within their own ethic. In other words, if one's ethical theory entails e.g. that farming animals is immoral, NTT can help show this entailment. NTT isn't actually an argument for veganism, but I suspect it should lead a lot of people there if they carefully consider their current beliefs.
Name The Trait isn't an argument for veganism, as you said, it's a consistency test. The problem with Name The Trait is that there are a lot of convincing answers that get us "back where we started" so to speak. For example, someone could name the following two traits:
1. Humanity
2. Self-awareness
So a being must either be human or self-aware in order to give it moral value. This would give moral value to a pig or chimpanzee which reached self-awareness, but not to farm animals. Additionally, now all human beings are counted. So what's the "reductio" here?
Conclusion: Kane B doesn‘t care about pressing the button on a conscious, low-rational infinite-pain machine.
Why is ability to engage in moral rules the dividing line? Lets pertend there is a human of normal human inteligences , but unable of moral reasoning. Maybe they act in ways that violate someone eles rights. But I would not say they have given up their rights to moral standing. While we have a duty to the community to protect them we cant just eat them because they dont have moral standing. Why is an animal diffrent then this human (other then their intelligences.
I certainly admire your honesty and courage for taking a position that - in our times - will surely put you on a permanent record with what many will find distasteful to say the least. I can't say I agree, but finding the right argument is very hard indeed. The one thing that bothers me about your approach is that you may seem to privilege your own "feelings" and "intuitions" and "sense of outrage" as a kind of moral guide when it comes to the outcome of "policing nature" - but then diminish what others "feel" about animals as just "degenerate sentimentality". I can't quite put my finger on it just yet, but it seems as if you are using more than just rational calculations in order to reach your conclusion of what ought or ought not to be done, but seem to disallow that "something more" that others might also be using in their own rational calculations. I'm conflicted to the extent that - like you - and I have no brief for moral realism, except as a useful fiction, but I can't quite figure out where to go from there. I'm not entirely convinced with your argument about why infants belong to the moral community. I have heard very similar arguments against abortion - from the very moment that an egg is fertilized they say - for similar reasons as you give about potential development as a normal human being. I'm assuming that you are not an essentialist in any sense of that term, but is there a danger that you put a lot of weight on human DNA as opposed to non-human DNA? Just how essential is that difference to moral standing? It's a bit surprising the extent to which you draw rather crisp boundaries for what counts as having moral standing given that my impression is you tolerate a great deal of vagueness in other areas. Some will think that you privilege human infants because you have really no choice but to say so in a public forum such as youtube, even if your actual reasons simply do not lead you to that conclusion. In that regard, that conclusion would in fact be consistent with your announced point of view in the first place, which essentially takes what may be called a game-theoretic approach using reason and logic with - and only those - who can do likewise as determining who has - or has not - moral standing. To some extent, this reminds me a bit of Ayn Rand who sometimes had something like this position but not so well-argued. Far more subtle is David Gauthier on a contractarian view of morals. I would guess that the work of Brian Skyrms is worth a look insofar as he discusses these kinds of social dynamics in an evolutionary context. That's why I hope that you do go on to tackle decision theory - game theory - and evolutionary game theory - for it has much to say about precisely all those issues as it relates to the evolution of ethics. On the whole I am generally persuaded that the proper study of ethics and morality - and rationality as well - has to be done in the larger context of evolution (I recognize that all this is very unsatisfactory - but there's only so much I can blather on about in a TH-cam comment!). Look forward to more of your content!
This is a great video. Thanks for this. Just about the 'no children' to save the environment argument. Surely it's incorrect to say that people can only have a net negative environmental impact. Would you say it would have been better for the environment if Greta Thunberg's parents had remained childless? In the world we live in I think it's very possible to have a sub-zero impact on the environment if we take into account our impact on others and carbon capture schemes.
I'm much more sympathetic towards the animal rights position (and am vegan) but I wanted to comment on 40:11
Even as a vegan, I think that bullfighting is much worse than killing a cow for a steak. And I think that it's easy to form a defense of eating steak but not of bullfighting. The reason why is because people derive sadistic pleasure from the spectacle of watching an animal be slowly stabbed to death. That's a bit different to killing an animal (and the possible suffering that might come with doing so) in order to partake in a different kind of pleasure (food).
On my road to veganism I have tried to find good arguments against veganism. Unfortunately, I have mostly found bad or downright idiotic arguments, so it's really nice to hear some intellectual perspectives from the non-vegan side. So thank you very much for that!
At around 18:40 you get into animal suffering, and you end with presenting a conclusion you find extremely counterintuitive and completely outrageous. We both agree that while it is relevant, it does not really change the marginal cases argument, and neither does the thing I am about to bring up.
I believe there are similar outrageous conclusions in the human case when you say we are obligated to help if we come across a human in dire need, e.g. an infant being eaten alive by rats. If we are obligated to do this, I believe we are also obligated to donate money to charities, because the fact that the people in need are far away bears no relevance to the moral obligation. This reaches a similary outrageous conclusion, since it would end up with us having to keep donating as long as there is someone in dire need of our money. This is a thought CosmicSkeptic presented in his video "Should You Sell All Your Possessions?". I believe he ended up with the conclusion that it may be a moral virtue to help the infant, but not an obligation. What are your thoughts on this?
I think there are relevant differences between the two cases -- again, if we're taking the perspective of morality as a system of rules constructed by rational agents to promote the self-interest of rational agents.
Suppose I'm walking down the road and I see a person being attacked by rats. Now, I grant that, if I were being attacked by rats, I would want somebody to help me. But who has the obligation to help me? Well, if somebody happens to be walking by me while the attack is occurring, this person can easily help me specifically. What's more, I can say to this person: "If you were in my position, being attacked by rats, and I was walking by as it happened, you would want me to help you!" So, if I see somebody being attacked by rats, it take it that I have a prima facie obligation to help.
What about people in desperate need who live far away? I'm considering whether or not to donate money to charity. Again, I know that if I were starving, I would want somebody to help me. But is reasonable for me to expect that any given person in a more affluent country help me specifically? Obviously not. There are literally millions of people who are, from the affluent person's point of view, of equal status to me. Why help me specifically, as opposed to the millions of others? Furthermore, even if literally every wealthy person gave up all their wealth, it's not clear that this would help me -- it depends on the political and economic circumstances and what exactly is done with the money. Yes, some people could give money directly to me. But there is no obligation to do that, rather than to give their money directly to other starving people, or give their money to charities and similar organizations, etc.
In general, the question is: When a person is in need, can this person reasonably expect me to help them? Well, if we're within a few meters of each other, and if I can easily help at little cost to myself, the answer is yes. If we're living in different countries, of course not. Even if we think that there is a general obligation to give to charity, there is certainly no obligation to help any specific stranger in a different country.
@@KaneB Thank you for taking the time to read and answer my comment - I really and honestly appreciate it.
From my understanding, you mention the following differences which you deem relevant: specificity, effectiveness/guarantees of donations, distance, and ease/cost of helping (you also mention living in different countries, but I assume that is referring to distance).
The ease/cost of helping attribute is in my view not a difference which is in favour of your argument, given the two examples (rat attack and charity donation). It is very easy to donate (assuming you have the money). I would argue it takes more effort to fight off a rat attack and certainly puts yourself at more risk.
I don't think the distance aspect is a relevant difference, as I said in my original comment. I assume you know why, so I'm not going to expand on it.
As for specificity, I do not understand why you deem it relevant. Furthermore, I am talking about the moral obligation to give to charity, not to donate to any specific person. Similarly, in the rat attack case, the fact that a specific person is being attacked bears no relevance in my opinion - it could be anybody being attacked. But I would like to explore the aspect anyway, since you deem it important. What if you saw two different rat attacks occurring at the same time, wouldn't this then equate the two scenarios (rat attack and charity) in regards to specificity? To use your phrasing: "Is it reasonable for me to expect that a person walking by help me specifically over the other person being attacked? Obviously not.".
The last aspect, effectiveness/guarantee of donation is definitely relevant - I fully agree with you. But as you mentioned, you can donate directly to someone, and your problem with that seems to relate to specificity. So, if we resolve the specificity difference, this aspect would become irrelevant. Either way though, I hope we can just assume the donation is effectively helping, since this allows us to talk about the moral aspect rather than the political and economic aspects.
@@dbraae Re ease: Giving up all your non-essential money is not easy. You said yourself that it's an outrageous conclusion. Now perhaps we have good reason to accept this outrageous conclusion, but surely it wouldn't be easy to enact. (If you're just arguing for a general obligation to give some of your non-essential wealth to charity, that's fine. I endorse that too, provided we're putting aside concerns about the effectiveness of such action.)
Distance matters insofar as it makes a difference to whether or not it's reasonable to expect a given other person to provide aid to you. Though I do not really see this as separate from the other points.
>> Furthermore, I am talking about the moral obligation to give to charity, not to donate to any specific person
Surely the question here is whether the obligation to provide aid when you see a stranger in need generalizes to an obligation to give up all of your non-essential wealth to charity? Well, my point is that the obligation to provide aid in the rat case arises in virtue of the relation you have to the person being attacked. Maybe you have a separate argument in favour of the obligation to give up all non-essential wealth to charity. But then why bring up the rat case? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you here.
Anyway, as noted, the view I'm taking on this is that moral rules are constructed by rational agents negotiating in self-interest. I adopt particular constraints on my behaviour when it benefits me in the long run for other people to adopt the same constraints. I think there is a strong case for a rule along the lines of: "if you comes across somebody in need, and providing aid would be at little cost to yourself, then you ought to provide aid to that person." If everybody adopted this rule, then (a) I would receive aid in situations such as being attacked by rats or, to take a more likely scenario, collapsing on the street, but (b) none of us would be required to make extreme sacrifices or to significantly alter our projects. This rule would promote the interests of almost all of us.
>> What if you saw two different rat attacks occurring at the same time, wouldn't this then equate the two scenarios (rat attack and charity) in regards to specificity?
Well, you should probably try to help both of them. If we're assuming that you somehow know for sure that you can't help both, then yeah, there wouldn't be an obligation to either person specifically. Then it's up to you which person you help.
@@KaneB We seem to be talking past each other, maybe I'm not good at communicating my points, or maybe it's just a downside of textual communication. I will try to keep this comment short to combat this.
My point is that you "expand" the moral obligation in the animal case, but you do not make the same "expansion" in the infant/human case. That is, you say if animals have moral standing (like infants) then 18:46 "we should put a similar degree of effort into eliminating wild animal suffering...", but those two scenarios are not equal. The equal scenario would be:
Save an infant if you come across one in need.
Infant's moral value = animal's moral value.
Therefore, save an animal if you come across one in need.
Instead, you replace the conclusion with "take measures to eliminate all wild animal suffering in the world". I agree that the moral obligation towards animals will eventually lead us to such a conclusion, but so will it in the human case. I brought up charity because that is a relevant, equal expansion of the human case. I just think we should be consistent. Do you understand what I'm getting at?
@@dbraae Ah, I understand you now. Perhaps I should have been clearer about this point in the video, but I do not think that those who endorse the marginal cases argument are committed to the view that we ought to give up all our non-essential wealth to the eradication of animal suffering.
The absurd conclusion, at least for me, is simply the idea that whatever steps we are taking to reduce human suffering, we should be taking similar steps to reduce animal suffering. So certainly, if you come across an animal in need, you should offer aid, just as you should offer aid when you come across a human in need. More generally, we should have as a goal the eradication of (extreme) wild animal suffering, just as we have as a goal the eradication of (extreme) human suffering. The vast majority of people agree that, in an ideal world, there would be no violence, starvation, infant mortality, etc., among humans, and that societies should take steps to address these problems. However, very few people endorse the view that each individual is obligated to give up all of their non-essential wealth to this goal. It would be the same in the case of wild animal suffering: we should be taking steps to reduce it, though this need not place demanding obligations on each individual.
The foundational argument that other animals aren’t rational agents seems faulty. At 6:38 we get the definition of a rational agent:
- Long-term planning
- The ability to consider sets of social rules to compare costs and benefits of adopting particular rules
- To give reasons for and against particular actions
- impose constraints on one’s own behaviour in accordance with this reasoning
“…there are no non-human animals that have this capacity”
I find this statement very surprising. It wouldn’t be difficult to give examples of other animals showing these traits in various ways (with a possible exception of “to give reasons”, depending on what this phrase entails). A simple search reveals several studies on other animals as rational and moral agents.
I don't think anything important hangs on this. There is clearly a difference in the cognitive capacities, particularly with respect to social interaction and the construction of rules, between normal adult humans and all other animals. That difference is what matters to me, however it's spelled out more precisely.
Hey Kane. The argument you use to justify the moral status of infants is quite fascinating to me because it's identical to a number of arguments I've heard made by anti-abortion activists in justifying the moral status of fetuses. I don't know whether you've addressed the abortion debate elsewhere but I wonder whether you agree with the assessment that your defense of the moral status of infants leads directly to a defense of the moral status of unborn babies.
In my view, foetuses do have moral standing. I'd even be happy to say that foetuses have a right to life. But a right to life doesn't entail a right to utilize somebody else's body to maintain your life. I see abortion as justified as a matter of self-defence: if somebody is occupying your body without your consent, it's acceptable to use deadly force in response.
@@KaneB hmm, would be interested in a discussion between yourself and Avi Bitterman on the topic of abortion. If you're interested I can try and reach out to him?
@@a8310596 My position on abortion is very simple, and my knowledge of the abortion literature limited, so I don't think I would have much to contribute to a discussion about it.
Hello I watches your metaethic videos. I wanted to ask something. Basically I want to learn is there any philosophical position that defends the statement "killing innocent people, lying, harming people(the actions which we find wrong or evil) are not actually wrong. And one can do them as they wish it is a matter of ability to do so". Does moral nihilism fit with description? Thanks...
Moral nihilism does say that those things are not actually wrong. It's also called moral error theory, and it holds that all moral claims are false. So not only is it not wrong to kill innocent people, but it's also not good to protect innocent people.
There is also moral non-cognitivism which says that moral claims are meaningless. So killing innocent people is not wrong because saying that anything is wrong is babbling nonsense. Saying things are right or wrong is just baby talk that people continue to say as adults.
@@Ansatz66 but I heard they still use moral language and think we shouldn't harm innocent people.
What would you say to someone thst instead of infants brings up humans that lack mental capacity/are in comas? Would it be the same answer that you gave in this vid? (AskYourself's counterpoint to the trait being rationality.)
I discuss this after I talk about infants.
Kane, how do you feel about proposed “solutions” to wild animal suffering? Some utilitarians have argued there’s an obligation to create advanced technology to re-engineer nature itself to stop all the predation and nasty stuff. Personally I don’t think we have an obligation to stop wild animal suffering unless humans caused it, but I’d like to hear what you think
Since I don't see wild animal suffering as a problem to be solved, even in the case where humans have caused it, I'd say such solutions are at best pointless, and it would be much more worthwhile to devote the time spent on that towards figuring out ways of repairing damaged ecosystems.
@@KaneB nice reply. What’s interesting is that many of the people supporting this decision are negative utilitarians, so they believe we should only minimize animal suffering instead of making their lives more pleasurable. Many often think that repairing ecosystems or making new ones creates the grounds for more animal suffering, and is cruel or sociopathic. It’s a counter intuitive view, but an interesting one. Would like to know your thoughts on that too
The argument at 7:30 doesn't seem very satisfying to me. As you note shortly after, there are obvious costs to being intolerant towards homosexuality, and the disgust many people feel toward homosexuality can be greatly reduced through contact with gay people or seeing sympathetic depictions of gay people in fiction (indeed, countries like the US or UK seem to have reached a stage where homophobia is offensive to far more people than homosexuality is). There are also few, if any, people who would have a strong negative reaction to the idea of someone else eating mustard. So we can easily make a case for tolerating these activities without dismissing emotive value judgements altogether.
More generally, if someone argued that there should be rules prohibiting X/actively encouraging X on the grounds that X just strikes them as repugnant/virtuous in a pre-reflective kind of way, there are questions we can ask like "how many people feel this way?", "what would the costs and/or cobenefits of these rules be?" "how practicable would it be for people who feel this way to simply get over it?", so it seems like it would be pretty easy to take some value judgements into account without being committed to just going along with any request that anyone makes.
There are also some cases where appeals to emotive value judgements appear to support sound conclusions. For example, consider a rule that memorials to historical atrocities, like the transatlantic slave trade, are to be treated with respect. I'm guessing you would find this rule reasonable, but it's hard to see how anyone has a material interest in this rule being followed. On the other hand, if we allow appeals to the community's value judgements, then it's easy to explain the basis for a rule like this.
I don't "dismiss emotive value judgements altogether" and I'm not sure why you think I do. Given this, it's a bit difficult to understand your objection.
As for the case of the slavery memorial -- well, I'd say that destroying the memorial is wrong because (a) it would involve damaging somebody else's property (or public property) and so violate property conventions that it is in our interests to respect and (b) it would probably evince a racist attitude, which is bad for similar reasons as homophobia. (There may be other reasons as well, but without anymore detail, those are the two that spring to mind.)
@@KaneB OK, maybe "dismiss emotive value judgements altogether" was putting it too flippantly, but as far as I can see, your position is something along the lines of:
"When a community is constructing a system of moral rules, they will need to focus on satisfying the material interests of their members. And attempting to add rules on the basis of some members simply _feeling_ that X is wrong is not a viable option; reason being many people find many different things distasteful and any system of rules that tried to prohibit any activity deemed offensive to anybody would end up being so restrictive as to make everybody worse off than if they had simply learned to deal with the fact that some people are going to act in ways they don't like."
In contrast, my intuition would be that there isn't any reason not to treat value judgements as just another kind of interest. So for example, if it was the case that a clear majority of a given community found animal suffering very upsetting and there wasn't much cost to having rules protecting animals, that would appear to me to be a perfectly adequate justification for them adopting some animal protection rules. And I don't think allowing this kind of move would necessarily open the door to adopting an excessively restrictive or arbitrary set of rules, because there are criteria the community could consider when deciding whether to adopt or reject a given value-based rule. The most obvious questions being "What are the costs of enforcing this rule?" and "How many people actually care about this issue?". I would also hope that one of the values the community considered important would be some kind civic libertarianism, of course there's no guarantee they would, but hopefully you can see how, depending on the ideological makeup of the community, allowing value judgements to factor into policy making could be compatible with a fairly libertarian outcome.
Regarding the slavery monument example, I was thinking of someone showing disrespect in a way that doesn't damage the monument, e.g. going up to it late a night, singing a crude song, flicking the V sign at it, chucking some empty beer cans at it, that sort of thing. And yeah, that's definitely something I should have made clearer.
As for the objection that this would be bad because it shows a racist attitude, that's fair, but you can change it to a WWI memorial, for example, where behaving in the way I described doesn't seem to express any particular worldview besides being a shithead, but I would guess that you would still object to it. Perhaps a better example of a good value-based policy would be using public money to build these kinds of monuments in the first place, or possibly the treaties restricting human activity in Antarctica. I mean maybe you can come up with a reason why these policies are in our material self interest, but certainly my intuition would be that it's an open question whether these policies make us materially better off and that the _primary_ reason for them is just that we want to pay respects to these historical tragedies and we want to protect the Antarctic ecosystem and there's no good reason not to make policy on those bases.
The marginal case argument can be used with different questions.
My line for when I'm okay with eating something is not the same line where I would be okay with not helping it.
There are some humans I don't help but there are no humans I eat.
I'm a bit confused about how this is connects to what I said about the MCA. Are you objecting to my argument? If so, I'm not sure how the objection is supposed to work.
There are plenty of humans that I don't help. But the point is that if we deny that there is any morally relevant property that distinguishes marginal humans from animals, then in whatever situations where there is an obligation to provide aid to save the lives of marginal humans, there will also be an obligation to provide aid to save the lives of animals. I'm not claiming that the MCA entails that we must always provide aid to humans in need, or anything like that.
@@KaneB
We ask someone, what makes it okay to kill and eat animals but not humans? The person responds with some marginal case X.
Now we ask them, what makes it okay to help humans and not help animals? Now the person responds with some marginal case Y.
Sounded as though you implied X need to be the same as Y. Was this the case?
@@Oskar1000 Okay, now I'm even more confused. What do you think a "marginal case" is?
When you ask someone what makes it okay to eat animals but not humans, they will respond by citing a property that distinguishes humans from animals. They wouldn't respond with a marginal case. A marginal case, in this context, is a human who lacks, or apparently lacks, the property cited.
@@KaneB Oh so sorry. Meant trait or set of traits. Or property/set of properties.
Name the trait is a bad argument. We don't need to name any trait to justify the eating and killing of animals for food.
Hi Kane, I'm new to your channel and I'm wondering if you have read Marquis de Sade? I think the philosophy of sadism is directly applicable to animal agriculture -- the reason we can torture these animals for pleasure is because we have ultimate power over them. So the only moral argument (I can think of) for veganism would be based on virtue ethics (i.e. what kind of person do *I* want to be) and if I don't fancy myself a sadist then I should not act like one. I suppose it goes along the lines of ascetism that self discipline is a virtue in itself, as opposed to being mindlessly controlled by desire. Of course, as you pointed out, a lot of vegans are self indulgent so perhaps this is not their motivation.
But overall, I really appreciate this video and especially agree that eliminating "wild animal suffering" is absurd, and also the way "companion animals" are used in our society is very undignified and reflects a sorry state of human civilisation -- i.e. man's best friend is a mutilated (forcibly sterilised) animal who will never be independent.
Have you read Bernard Williams's article 'The Human Prejudice'? I think that it is the most brilliant demonstration of the flaws in the whole 'speciecism' argument that Peter Singer advances. There is a video series of him presenting it on youtube. th-cam.com/video/szgMiqbR57s/w-d-xo.html
Many years ago; it didn't resonate with me much at the time. I remember very little about it, though I recall feeling it was rather wishy-washy and obscure. Maybe I should check it out again.
I like that William's 'Whose side are you on?' paper, but it's only the idea of agent relative permissions writ large; that is, what we ought to do in extremis. I think there is no objection to the claim that one may hold that where there is a symmetrical conflict of a desires to x, then one is justified in breaking the symmetry by saying 'well, I simply value my own life more than I value theirs', and this goes for family, community, country, species, planet and so on. Of course there is the question of whether this was truly a symmetrical conflict of desires - a genuine moral dilemma if you like - but if we assume that it was and thus there was only a disjunctive either/or choice open to the agent, then Williams makes a good, if somewhat obvious, argument. But in the everyday choices we face, particularly food choices in western societies, then there is certainly no way that it can be argued that we face a genuine moral dilemma when we are choosing what to have for lunch: it is simply not an either/or decision, thus the argument Williams presents in that talk and in his paper are not applicable.
Have you ever done a video on presuppositionalism,? Might be an interesting discussion.
No. I don't do much philosophy of religion.
@@KaneB oh i never realized that, been watching your stuff quite a bit lately
I benefit from stealing. But if everybody stole, I would stop benefitting. Therefore, what I ought to do is to steal, and also to convince others not to steal. One way I might convince others not to steal is via philosophical arguments. These philosophical arguments need not be made authentically; just as what's good is that I and I alone steal, it's also good that I and I alone lie. Toward these ends, I might claim to accept social conventions against theft and lying. It's not necessary that I actually accept any. I'll still be limited by the threat of consequences, like jail time and ostracism, but at the point that consequences are the only limits, are we still talking about morality, or have we begun talking about something else?
Is that actually how people think? I don't think so, not most people. But then, people regularly behave in less rational ways-- or perhaps, we behave rationally, but following consistent rules that are not simple enough for most philosophers' tastes. I agree that morality has some prosocial functions, and that society has some beneficial effects for individuals; it seems likely to me that moral societies survived where amoral societies failed, and that moral individuals survived (in pack animals like humans) where amoral individuals died. I believe that morality as we experience and practice it is a sort of prosocial heuristic, something that "works" more often than it doesn't (quote marks because "survival of the fittest" is a tautology, and we don't want to make any kind of mistakes in thinking that "working" means that it works toward our own current values; functional morality here can refer to an awful lot of tribalism, scapegoating, and othering that many of us currently abhor.)
I think that we have to be very careful whenever we talk about self-interest. Sometimes, when we use this phrase, we're talking about some purely selfish self-interest, like ensuring that our descendants survive as deeply into the future as possible, or avoiding pain, or endless coke and hookers. Other times, we acknowledge that our self-interest may be served by jumping on a grenade, because we are interested in the well-being of others; other's self-interest is *our* self-interest. Not for any *reason* , mind. Not because they'll reward us later, because we're in bits and pieces after our sacrifice. We just are. Eventually, we're reduced to unjustifiable primary values; if those values include "I don't want animals to suffer," there may be no argument to be made either for or against.
We can also acknowledge that "coke and hookers" self-interest can sometimes be served by protecting animals from violence. Sadness, horror, disgust, shame are not just emotions: they are *painful* emotions, they can be much more painful than having soybeans for dinner AGAIN, and our self-interests are best served by preventing actions that cause them to occur. Yes, it's true, looking away may be one way to protect ourselves, but it is unreliable.
How do you get to the point where you can break down point of views and ideas the way you do in this video?
Does morality have to be an on/off switch, or can it change by degree. I am in a process of eliminating animal flesh from my diet not because I think thier is an equivilance but because I think they have just enough to be not killed for food. But if thier is a trolley problem with 1 chimpanzees and 1 person the chimp is going to die.
Yeah, I think think the standard view is that animals matter, they just don't matter as much as humans, not even marginal humans. Both those of us who deny animals moral standing, and those of us who think that animals matter less than all humans, are challenged by the marginal cases argument.
It seems to me, rational agents would voluntarily chose not to overuse the field and this not need rules.
This makes me think we make rules for irrational agents.
It is interesting how this position and attitude perfectly mirrors that of Destiny
Factually false statement at 57:33 since Animal Aggritulre is responsible for at least 87% of relevant GHG emission, eat position paper on the journal of ecological studies by Dr. Sailesh Rao
I wanna see Kane B vs Alex O’Connor debating over this.
That'd be gold .. and hilarious :D
I just sent him an email. I suggested a few different topics to talk about though, so if he does respond, we might not talk about this one.
@11:20 I don't follow. By your reasoning, couldn't we rather opt for a rule which cultivates disgust and attempts to eliminate homosexuality, since homosexual practices are a small minority of sexual practices (less than 10%) ? That seems like a rule that benefits the interests of the majority if it feels disgust at homosexuality. It could be more efficient at promoting the interests of most people rather than the overly general rule you stated.
PS. I think homosexuality is totally fine, I come from a moral realist point of view.
Go vegan!
Nah
Why?
I love beef
@@americanfirstfuturist1971 I'm happy to discuss it over voice, if you want to find me join our discord server called Animal Rights Advocates.
I only eat about 100gms of meat a week. I like eating chicken and beef.
Defining words and concepts isn't about prescribing how we think those concepts ought to be used, but rather it's about describing how they are used in real life. When we say that morality is a social construct, are we giving careful consideration to what most people mean in real life when they use the concept of morality? Of course we're free to pick a social construct and call that morality, but if that's not what other people mean when they talk about morality, then we're creating confusion.
For what it's worth, when I talk about morality I'm not referring to a social construct. Perhaps that's just my misunderstanding of the proper usage of moral terms, but it seems that most people put far more concern into morality than they would put into a mere social construct. Star Trek is a social construct, and some people care an awful lot about Star Trek, but it doesn't even come close to the concern they put into morality. I am also very concerned about the thing which I'm referring to when I speak of morality, so it seems clear to me that other people have roughly the same understanding of morality as I do, or at least most of us are not talking about some social construct.
Morality being a social construct really confuses the whole issue. We might ask whether we should eat meat or not, or whether we should protect the environment, but why ask when what we should do is just a social construct? It's like debating over the various qualities of Star Trek captains. What we should do or shouldn't do is just a matter of morality, and we could be focusing our attention upon something real instead. Taking seriously the idea of morality being a social construct is truly baffling. It makes it difficult to discuss morality without slipping into confusion, because one inevitably forgets that morality isn't real.
Nice arbitrary anthropomorphism
Regarding the 'we should despair and do nothing argument'. I'm sympathetic towards this as I've definitely held this position in the past. However given the facts, that 2 degrees of warming is better than 3 degrees which is better than 4, I now think we still have a duty to reduce carbon emissions even if it doesn't stop extensive heating of the world (if some cities are flooded but not others this is a big gain). There is argument about tipping points, which means, any changes we make may not lead to meaningful difference. However the climate system is so big, chaotic, complex and unpredictable that we cannot know that our impact won't make a difference (think of the butterfly effect). The stakes are also so high, that it's morally, worth a 'gamble' to make things better. Unfortunately I don't think we can't get off the hook this easily and do nothing, although the problem is so overwhelming it seems insurmountable and the feeling is understandable.
One thing that might seem intuitively obvious to most might benefit from fleshing out and unpacking , namely why rational agents deserve privileging or higher moral consideration over other animals or life forms :)
It seems the point of the video is that only those agents deserve moral status that are potentially capable of entering into some kind of social contract that on average probably promotes our personal self interest. The claim is while mentally disabled people have the capacity, chimps do not. This latter point sounds quite fishy to me though. Some mentally challenged people are not that clever.
I know you do not think animals can be moral agents but can they be moral pacients. If not why?
Hi Kane, I sat down and watched your full video. I found your video to create some thought provoking ideas. Yet I have my own questions and criticisms on your interpretation of ethics.
The first issue is with your structure. You validated your approach toward ethics by comparing it with the society. In other words, I think you were fascinated with creating a utopia rather than describing ethical questions. This was interesting to me because you did not address questions that are most relevant to ethics. (e.g., How would the treatment of a gorilla and a mouse differ? Or say a mosquito?) I think there are a lot of good questions like these that you could have addressed. When you did address ethics, you favored the elementary over the academic, such as, babies deserve to live and if you tell me they don’t then your crazy.
The second issue is with self-interest. I think you made the mistake of describing something that is successful and falsely assuming that it is therefore ethically correct or ideal. Here I also want to describe your critique of homophobes. I find that in your rule system a homophobe would be validated by their claims (8:20). After all, why should their psychological, emotional, or biological pain be diminished? We know from psychology that being offended is a physically unpleasant feeling in the brain. From there we can deduce that your ethics system should include it for that reason.
Finally, I think that you are downplaying the role that psychology can play. At the beginning of the video, you made the statement that animal suffering doesn’t move you (2:40). I am not going to question that. But what I want to notice is how this presents a large problem for your system. People can learn to be numb to just about anything. We know that typically ethical people can become demons if given a badge and a gun (Stanford Prison Experiment). It is not always the case that people have self-interests and they pursue them rationally. You made an example of the field that may become trampled. What you are alluding to is the tragedy of the commons (Overgrazing eventually kills the herd etc.) What is fascinating is that you presented this feature as if it was a strength of selfish based ethics. In reality the tragedy of the commons is a direct critique to the notion that self interest prevails. More examples of this phenomenon are the Easter Islanders and deforestation, the saber tooth tiger going extinct, and perhaps climate change. In each of these situations the group does not have the immediate negative consequences that self interest based systems depend on.
I may grant that the MCA on its own is a case for moral equivalence, but I don't see how I cannot add another argument that shows that humans are more important, thus effectively turning the MCA into an argument for moral consideration.
1:06:50
Hi, Kane. I liked your video a lot, but about your argument on the actual capacity of infants to develop rationality, i find an implicated case that could be problematic: abortion. It´s evident that most cases of pregnancy entail the existance of a fetus that has the actual capacity (at least as actual as that of a newborn infant) to develop rationality. You just need to leave the fetus grow till it becomes an infant (in a relatively short period of time). That fetus is biologically preppared to develop the same capacities that the infant will develop later. Would you say that abortion is also immoral based in this claims? (English is not my native language, sorry if i wrote something wrong).
I'm happy to grant that the fetus has a right to life. But a right to life doesn't entail the right to utilize somebody else's body to sustain your life. In my view, if a person is occupying your body without your consent, it's acceptable to use deadly force against that person. So I'm not in favour of restrictions on abortion.
@@KaneB But isn´t that line of reasoning problematic? I mean, in that case you put the "daily interest" of the gestating woman above the survival interest of the fetus growing inside her (unless the woman´s life is in danger because of the process of giving birth or sustaining the life of a fetus). If we grant that a non-letal threat to our well-being is enough to justify a letal threat to the well being of another rational agent, then we could justify killing someone because, for example, he robbed us. Where do we put the boundary or why would we put it in the case of someone "growing inside our body"?
@@xBinderblackx I think people have the right to decide what to do with their own bodies. Bodily autonomy is extremely important to me, and to pretty much everybody else. If there is reason to think that the robber may be posing a significant threat to one's bodily autonomy, lethal force may well be justified. An unwanted fetus is directly violating bodily autonomy in a significant way. Nonconsensual pregnancy is a far more significant imposition, both in the physical effects and in how long it lasts, than is nonconsensual sex, but I think lethal force is justified in response to nonconsensual sex.
@@KaneB I agree about the relevance of bodily autonomy, but i don´t see why it would outweight the entire life of another rational being (you even could say that his/her own bodily autonomy it´s at stake too). One could say that bodily autonomy, in fact, is restricted all the time in favour of certain moral rules and necessities. For example, your bodily autonomy with respect to movement, in the case of walking the park that you mentioned in the video; or your bodily autonomy with respect to eating (for not having money to buy food), or with respect with resting (for the need to wake up and go to work). In any case, i do not see how we could go from "bodily autonomy is extremely important" to "bodily autonomy (in cases when life is not at stake) is more important than the life of another rational agent".
@@xBinderblackx I'm not sure that any of those examples you list should be characterized in terms of restrictions on bodily autonomy. I suppose this is a purely semantic matter. What's important for me is the inviolability of one's body, that each person has the right to decide what changes are made to their bodies, so that people do not interfere with another person's body without their consent. Sticking your finger in somebody's ear would be a very minor violation of bodily autonomy. Drugging somebody's drink, so imposing unwanted physiological changes upon them, would be more serious. Nonconsensual pregnancy is among the absolute worst violations of bodily autonomy that occur commonly. Only things like homicide and extreme torture are worse.
It's not that bodily autonomy "outweighs" the lives of others. I'm not sure how to weigh those things against each other; and anyway, as you note, defending one's own bodily autonomy may involve significantly violating the bodily autonomy of the attacker. But so what? The point is just that people have a right to defend themselves. (If 10 people are attempting to kill you, it's okay to use lethal force against all 10 of them, even though I assume that 10 lives would "outweigh" one.)
Is it acceptable to use lethal force in defense against nonconsensual sex? I think the answer to that is obviously "yes". But then there is no question that it's acceptable in response to nonconsensual pregnancy. One reason is that nonconsensual pregnancy is, by pretty much any measure, a far more significant violation of bodily autonomy than is nonconsensual sex. Another reason is that in many cases of nonconsensual pregnancy, lethal force is the only option, since if the fetus is in the early stages, it will die if it's removed.
I just have to say this is a really good video. Very well done.
(23:00) "...a gradual developmental process that starts with the newborn baby..." Which newborn baby do you think was the first baby that had the capacity for rationality---Cain? Doesn't every newborn baby inherit its capacity for rationality from its parents who, in turn, inherited their capacities from their parents and so on all the way back to the time before there were human beings when our ancestors were only "animals" (and, indeed, even further back than that)? The process of rationality didn't start with a newborn homo sapiens baby, it started much, much earlier than that. Your argument is limited to an extremely short view of time and development. You have no idea if a dog or a squirrel or any other animal has or lacks the capacity to develop rationality over the time scale in which human beings actually developed it. Moreover, not all newborn human babies right now have the capacity for rationality that will allow them to become core members of the moral community within your limited time-frame. Why do they receive the benefit of special pleading?
You claim that mistreating infants (like killing them, using as medical experiments etc) is morally unacceptable.
How about stop feeding an infant and leaving it outside on the cold to die?
Is that morally different than an abortion (e.g fetus evictionism)?
If yes, why? The fetus has, like an infant, the capacity to develop rational agency.
What's the morally relevant factor that distinguishes those two cases, if any?!
It obviously can't be the birth, (like humanity is not the morally relevant factor on the MCA).
Thanks!
Guess I'm a rare vegetarian that does only abstain from meat cause hurting animals makes me feel bad, but am fine if it doesn't make other people feel bad.
I yhought that was jordan peterson on the thumbnail
It's from the painting "An experiment on a bird in the air-pump" by Joseph Wright of Derby
39:28 - This is the point though. If there were no grounds for feeling that killing dogs is wrong then we would not feel that it is wrong when we see it. We do feel that it is wrong, thus there must be some grounds for thinking that it is wrong. You could try and argue that whatever the basis of this feeling may be that it is not morally relevant: but this is quite a challenge - to show that there is NO moral relevance to the basis of that feeling. And you can even deny that animals have any moral standing at all and still make the case that there is at least some instrumental value for humans in being attuned to apparent suffering of other beings. This is a reason, and the reason doesn't have to be this absolute moral imperative, just that it is less wrong to kill a carrot, or eat a Beyond burger, and since we have that choice, then we ought to take it. Add on the environmental issues, the fact that a plant based diet can be good for health if done properly (in that, as it is less calorie dense, you can eat a lot more plant based food than animal products thus lowering chances of obesity and the associated risk factors) and the case for veganism seems very strong.
I'm a bit confused about this response. In that part of the video I was talking specifically about people who meat from animals such as pigs, while objecting to others eating dog meat.
@@KaneB Yes, I didn't make it clear. I was trying to say that it is a hard challenge to try to show that whatever the basis of the repugnance we feel towards dog butchery (given that most of us do feel at least some repugnance) does not also apply to pigs or cows or whatever. And we only need some sort of reason or a pro tanto reason to justify the claim that it is morally better to err on the side of caution and order the bean burger. Or of course you can bite the bullet and say that butchering dogs is not morally troubling at all, as you yourself may say, but I often find that is more of a position that is wheeled out for debates and such, but if real life they do find it somewhat distressing and troubling to watch a dog being killed.
@@neoepicurean3772 Ah, totally get you now!
@@neoepicurean3772 humans have tens of thousands of years in symbiosis with dogs. There's evidence to believe we may not even have become human without having domesticated dogs. It's not unreasonable that humans have an attachment to an animal that has helped to feed us, protect us, and provide companionship for tens of thousands, perhaps millions of years. From an evolutionary standpoint, they have become more like family. Sharks don't eat remora. Badgers and coyotes form a symbiotic hunting relationship. This is not unique or unreasonable to understand.
Going as plant eater as possible for environmental reasons is right thing to do. But l listened this video, and l didn't catch how sentimentality towards animals blocks activities that may benefit humans - do you mean pets? How sympathy to animals and giving them rights isn't progressive? (if we think that being progressive is going upward to better) Or as an non-english native l didn't understand some things correctly. ------ In overall, whole animal lives matter-debate has been whole a mess to me throught years. But l try to eat less meat because of practical reasons (environmental reasons, red meat and health issues), but not totally abandon it, until we get techno utopia, where all kinds of meat and organ parts are created, so l can continue to make traditional dishes which include hearts, lungs, etc. And just in case l try to learn how to hunt animals and butcher them, just in case we face a great disintegration and/or collapse. But this is just my nonsense rambling. -------- But all these problems with modern agriculture is also linked to huge population growth with meat being a middle-class status symbol to gain. -------- You should put a "non cencored" video to alternative platforms, which are then linked in description. ----- l try to "fool" or reason to myself my meat eating, that in nature there are also exploitation. But then this can be answered, that we have for once possibility to deny meat eating from us and at the same time we can get all proteins ect. from plants, and in the future from "cell-gardens". But then someone says, that animals have better life overall in our hands (even if they get a shot to head in the end, or fatten just to give us our their meat) than their counterparts in nature. But then l ask "did animals made social contract to imprison, domesticate and use them only for our food?". Social contract theory is just to fool ourselves to justify these kind of... some sort of oppressive systems. And oh boy, if we go to think about plants, and why they grow spikes or are poisonous... that's a hell of rabbit hole. Then we would just kill ourselves, because whatever we do, there is ALWAYS oppression towards flora and fauna. Kill an annoying fly or weed.
edit: "Since I don't see wild animal suffering as a problem to be solved, even in the case where humans have caused it" - So it is okay to make domesticated or pet animals suffer? Did l miss something? l feel that l god more questions than answers.
Thanks for not answering for this one!
@@ivan55599 That's Kane B for you.
Hey Kane, thanks for your perspective, I really appreciate your content here, although on this issue I disagree. I guess I just love kittens too much.
Btw, how would you justify granting a right to life to a fetus? Just on the basis of a potential to develop into a person?
I have been listening to you for some time now, and truly enjoy your content. BUT I have to say that at about minute 40:00: you suddenly lost your philosophical composure which is otherwise precisely what is so admirable about you. Telling certain others to F--- Off ... took me by surprise! But also surprising is too easy recourse to moral sentiments like "repugnance" that say you feel at the end of your video. Just how much work are these moral "sentiments" doing in justifying your views? Why should anyone care about your "sentiments" as somehow a moral guide, while shaming the "sentimentality" of others as degenerate? I find myself largely agreeing with much of what you say, but I have this unresolved uneasiness that there is something not fully self-consistent here, but I can't put my finger on it!
Ask Yourself: Name the trait!
Kane B: I'm about to destroy this man's whole career.
Gosh this video is full of empirical mistakes. Really disappointing coming from Kane B.
A fairly worthless comment, given that you say nothing about what these mistakes are.
@@KaneB Ok, here they are: "Vegans participate in destructive agriculture practices":
Destructive? maybe but THE MOST destructive practice for the environment is animal agriculture since the biggest part of the crops produced in the world go to feed factory farm animals.
"Vegans participate in the meat industry when the purchase from a restaurant or supermarket":
Just because you buy in a particular establishment doesn't mean that you are generating demand for ALL of their products. If the manager of a supermarket has problems selling a particular product he/she will probably evaluate stop selling THAT particular product, not al of their products. So if you don't buy meat form a supermarket but buy any other product, you are not participating in the demand of meat (I literally can't believe I need to explain this).
"Animal agriculture can be done (and has been done) sustainably": There might be a few things that could be done in order to make animal agriculture more sustainable but it will ALWAYS be more damaging to the environment than just producing plant-based food for direct human comsuption. Also even "local" agriculture is WAY less damaging to the environment than animal agriculture. You say that there are "some places" where it is more sustainble to eat meat than plants but of course you don't mention which places are those becuse it's just bullshit.
"The problem is not agriculture it is mass-scale, non-local agriculture": Dude, the ONLY way to meet the demand of animal products is through mass-scale, non-local animal agriculture. Also, again, it doesn't matter if it is local or grass-fed or small-scaled animal agriculture, it will NEVER be less contaminating than eating plant-based foods directly. This fantasy that you and other people have about a meat industry that is less contaminating than planting and harvesting food for direct human comsumption is just that, a fantasy.
@@gaudigalves >> Destructive? maybe
So you are conceding that either (1) my claim in question is not incorrect or (2) you don't know whether or not my claim is incorrect.
>> THE MOST destructive practice for the environment is animal agriculture since the biggest part of the crops produced in the world go to feed factory farm animals
I never denied this. This is, in fact, an important part of the overall argument of that section.
>> So if you don't buy meat form a supermarket but buy any other product, you are not participating in the demand of meat
You may not be participating in the demand, but you are certainly participating in the industry. Product distribution is an important part of agriculture in general.
>> There might be a few things that could be done in order to make animal agriculture more sustainable but it will ALWAYS be more damaging to the environment than just producing plant-based food for direct human comsuption
This is simply false. There are places where a nutritionally adequate plant-based diet can only be secured through industrial agriculture. It would be more sustainable for people in such places to shift towards more traditional forms of food production which would involve consuming animal products. Of course, it would require significant population reduction for this to become the norm -- given the current population, industrial agriculture is the only option, and in *that* context, a plant-based diet is significantly better. But I never denied this. Indeed, this is, again, an important part of the argument in that section.
>> Dude, the ONLY way to meet the demand of animal products is through mass-scale, non-local animal agriculture
I'm well aware of that. This is one reason why I argue in favour of ending meat consumption.
>> This fantasy that you and other people have about a meat industry that is less contaminating than planting and harvesting food for direct human comsumption is just that, a fantasy
That is not a fantasy that I have, and this would be obvious to you if you had actually paid attention to the video. You do realize that in this section of the video, I'm *defending* veganism? I'm very clearly presenting and supporting an environmentalist argument for veganism. I don't mean to be rude, but you come across as so blinded by your own ideology that you can't even recognize when people with different perspectives agree with you. I mean, how much more explicit do I have to make it? The subtitle of the video is literally "but you should still go vegan (probably)". The section that you are criticizing here is titled "animal agriculture vs humanity".
It seems clear to me that the only mistakes here are on your part.
I think it's not surprising that if one's metaethics are wrong that they'll get the wrong answers at the normative level.
Let's see what happens if I become a moral realist...
It is an objective fact that only humans have moral standing.
Huh, didn't seem to make any difference!
@@KaneB you argued for not just moral antirealism but constructivism about moral norms. It is the constructivism, only attractive as a result of your general antirealist commitments, that yields the wrong answers. Turns out it makes a difference afterall!
@@aaronchipp-miller9608 Nah. I can give exactly the same answers, but view them as moral facts.
@@aaronchipp-miller9608 Just to say a bit more on this: I can't be bothered to do this right now, but I'd be quite happy to provide a realist translation/interpretation of the arguments in this video. I'll even do it for different kinds of realism - a naturalist interpretation, an intuitionist interpretation, etc. You'll have to get back to me on this though, because as I said, I can't be bothered right now.
@@KaneB sure. You can generally argue any conclusion at all if you assume the premises. The question is which system allows you to have those premises. It's extremely unclear how one would get the premises you want without a strange wedding of constructivism and realism. Something like "this is what itd be rational to agree on and so those are now belief independent moral facts." Its much more natural to take the route you do. Namely, "moral facts dont exist. So when we're talking about morality we're talking about rules that serve some end etc etc". So, like I said earlier, ones metaethical commitments are salient
1. Animals are morally equivalent to marginal humans;
2. It's morally acceptable to eat animals;
3. If animals are morally equivalent to marginal humans and it's morally acceptable to eat animals then it's morally acceptable to eat marginal humans;
Therefore, it's morally acceptable to eat marginal humans.
Don’t see the issue here, soylent green might solve resource issues
@@Bilboswaggins2077 You know, the reason humans breed herbivorous animals to feed on them is because that is simply more efficient. If it takes 10 kJ of grass to be able to eat 1kJ of cow meat, then it would take 10kJ of cow meat to make 1kJ of tiger meat. This means that feeding on infants would only be economically reasonable if humans were to go vegan (because then the energy to generate children would come from plants rather than meat, which is the viable option).
So we'd kind of have to accept both conclusions from the marginal cases argument and we would both go vegan and cannibal.
One problem with the Singer expanding circle is that the step after inclusion of animals is inclusion of plants, bacteria, protozoa etc and probably after refusing to eat plants, we would certainly all die. So expanding the circle seems like a flawed premise because you can't justify why you stop at animals any more than stopping at humans or close relatives (we are distantly related to bacteria afterall).
Have you factored in that animals which aren’t self aware, while they may feel pain, cannot be aware that it is they who are experiencing the pain? They are one step removed from the suffering. So their suffering isn’t actually like our suffering.
Are you suggesting that one needs to know one is suffering in order to suffer 'properly' or in a more substantial way? What do you mean by "they are one step removed from the suffering"?
@@austinpowers7670 No, just that their experience of suffering is not like ours. It’s difficult for me to even imagine how theirs might be. Feeling the pain yet not being able to rationalize it. Perhaps it the mirror opposite of phantom pain.
@@LtDeadeye How do you get to that conclusion? Is there some scientific data or something that obviously differentiates the pain of animals?
@@sebastienleblanc5217 It’s a conclusion arrived at by Michael J Murray, author of Nature Red in Tooth and Claw.
Very ignorant point of view.
First half is very good, second half rather bad. The reasons are 1. You don't show the upsides of industrial animal agriculture, mostly feeding billions of humans while using far less space than ecological agriculture. 2. There are no serious studies that show one could give up industrial animal agriculture without starving countless people. One could reduce it, but nothing more. 3. Negative effects on the environment are not specified. One might also see it as a rational use of the environment. In terms of the climate effect, energy production is the core issue, agriculture is overall minor.
you're a rationalist alright, ive never seen this much rationalization
This would be a funny comment if I had ever claimed to be a rationalist. Unfortunately, I'm an empiricist.
Why would buying a jar of peanut butter in a supermarket "fund the meat industry"? The supermarket will just use the income to restock the peanut butter? You're clearly a philosopher rather than a grocer.
I like animals and care about the environment, but perhaps the biggest appeal for becoming a vegan is getting to join their surprisingly backstabbing, online community.
Even though I believe morality is objective I agree that animals do not matter morally for the most part. Even vegans deep down agree with imo.
> Even vegans deep down agree with imo
Why do you say that? That's not the impression I've ever had, here in the UK. I'd be more inclined to say that deep down, most omnivores feel that animal agriculture is morally bad due to its impact on animal welfare. The reason for this is that extreme sentimentalism towards animals seems strongly ingrained in our society. Abstaining from the use of animal products is the natural result of this.
@@KaneB I think it's possible to say that humans are doing something morally wrong without conceiving of the things we are being morally wrong towards as victims. Vegans in my opinion dislike the actions of animals farmers and of meat eaters but don't particularly believe that animals have the capicity to be moral victims. I've asked vegans for example if they would kill a predator to defend a baby human and the answer is generally yes. Switch the baby for a non human animal prey and the answer is generally no. I think this and other such examoles illustrate that they too do not see animals as having the capability of being victims.
If you think vegans dont think nonhuman animals can be morally wronged, you legitimately have no grasp on veganism
@@curon-io6uj Valuing humans more ceteris paribus than non-human animals is not the same thing as considering animal to not be moral patients.
Veganism is largely driven by emotion. It's a religion and reflects the modern suicidal imperative that leftiss have of extending empathy to everyone and everything.