I treat it as exactly zero, even if you can argue otherwise. If I don’t, I am vulnerable to questions like “if there were ten quadrillion chickens, would you murder a human to save them?” I would not murder that human, so 1/1000 or any number you can come up with is too high.
Isn’t that just the trolley problem with chickens? Absent context I value five humans more than one human, that doesn’t necessarily mean I would murder one human to save five. I don’t see why saying that chicken suffering is bad necessarily traps you or obligates you to kill humans to protect even a very large number of chickens.
Yes, but the reason I’d refuse is different. In the case of the chickens, I’d refuse because I think the human is more valuable than the chickens; I’d do this no matter how many chickens you increased the number to. This also applies in a scenario without murder—if I had to save a lot of chickens or one human, I’d save the human every time (ignoring questions of how the chickens are useful to humans), and my answer won’t change no matter how many chickens it is.
It follows that I value the chickens at zero, not at 1/1000.
I treat it as exactly zero, even if you can argue otherwise. If I don’t, I am vulnerable to questions like “if there were ten quadrillion chickens, would you murder a human to save them?” I would not murder that human, so 1/1000 or any number you can come up with is too high.
Isn’t that just the trolley problem with chickens? Absent context I value five humans more than one human, that doesn’t necessarily mean I would murder one human to save five. I don’t see why saying that chicken suffering is bad necessarily traps you or obligates you to kill humans to protect even a very large number of chickens.
Yes, but the reason I’d refuse is different. In the case of the chickens, I’d refuse because I think the human is more valuable than the chickens; I’d do this no matter how many chickens you increased the number to. This also applies in a scenario without murder—if I had to save a lot of chickens or one human, I’d save the human every time (ignoring questions of how the chickens are useful to humans), and my answer won’t change no matter how many chickens it is.
It follows that I value the chickens at zero, not at 1/1000.