Ok, you got me on the topic of where bacon comes from. For the sake of argument, substitute bacon with beef jerky.
As for your second point, are you saying it’s ok to drive a species to extinction or near extinction as long as the individuals of the present generation get to live a bit longer?
What do you think of the following idea? Would you go to a wild life park and erect electric fences to keep lions away from antelopes and instead feed fish to the lions? This would stop the unethical violence lions commit against antelopes.
As for your second point, are you saying it’s ok to drive a species to extinction or near extinction as long as the individuals of the present generation get to live a bit longer?
No. I’m saying that except for the part where I really like dairy and make some use of leather, I don’t care if cows continue to exist. The individual, living cows that already exist, I would prefer not to unnecessarily harm. There are some species that I like and want to keep around. For instance, pandas are cute. I’d miss them. Honeybees are important to all kinds of things very important to me. I would miss them too.
What do you think of the following idea? Would you go to a wild life park and erect electric fences to keep lions away from antelopes and instead feed fish to the lions? This would stop the unethical violence lions commit against antelopes.
Lions are not persons, and are therefore not morally responsible for anything they do, so there is nothing unethical about lion-on-antelope violence. I think there are things I could do with the fence construction money and the fish (or the grocery budget) that would be better uses of resources than keeping lions on a pescetarian diet.
Lions are not persons, and are therefore not morally responsible for anything they do, so there is nothing unethical about lion-on-antelope violence.
???
Wait, so you’re a vegetarian from virtue ethics—you think it’s virtuous not to harm animals—and not because the event of animal suffering is disutilous apart from its particular causes?
Or do you mean that the event is bad and to be prevented, but cannot be termed “unethical”?
I have no idea where you got those suggestions. Neither one is accurate about my beliefs: I don’t go around using the concept of virtue when I talk about ethics, and I only think bad things can be also unethical when they are the result of deliberate or negligent actions/inactions by a person. I think ethics is about the behavior of persons, not the behavior of lions or the edibility of antelopes.
I get my opinions about who should be a vegetarian by the following logic:
I would not up and kill a cow/chicken/guinea pig/cat/whatever for no reason. It seems to me that it would be wrong to go around killing animals (or, for that matter, smashing vases or setting books on fire or committing any act of destruction) for no reason.
It seems that there are some reasons where it would be quite okay to kill an animal (or smash a vase or set a book on fire). If I were starving (if I needed a shard of ceramic to cut some wrongly convicted-of-witchcraft person free from a stake/if I were otherwise going to freeze to death) then I would kill and eat a cow (smash a vase/set a book on fire).
So somewhere in the space of reason-having, between “no reason” and “otherwise a person will die”, there must be a threshold of adequacy sufficient to kill an animal (or do any other destructive thing). For the death-for-food of non-personhood-having animals, I draw that line at the excellent quality of life of whoever might eat them. I can have an excellent quality of life and eat only occasional fish. My friend who gets sick when she doesn’t eat enough meat can’t. So she needn’t be a vegetarian, but I should.
You make a binary distinction that animals are not “people”, and therefore not subject to ethical judgements. But you don’t make what seems like to me the closely-related binary distinction that animals are not “people” and therefore should not be factored into ethical judgements.
Usually, people make both or neither of these assumptions.
Vases and books are also not people, and I use indistinguishable logic to argue against their needless destruction. I guess I’m just unconventional like that.
Were you aware of your unconventionality before this exchange? (I worry that I’m missing some of your tone in print.)
Is there some standard poll of philosophers’ views on ethics? Could you poll your department on vases and books?
(I, unlike PG, think the conjunction of caring about antelope suffering with not subjecting lions to ethical judgement is common. But I think that your position on vases and books is rare, at least away from virtue ethics.)
I am quite aware of my unconventionality. As far as I know, I’m independent and very, very lonely in buying the above reasoning. Many ethicists try to make some vague nod in favor of preserving works of great art, but then pass off which works of art are great to the aestheticists and don’t care about lesser works. I follow that intuition all the way down and think that stuff in general shouldn’t be destroyed unnecessarily.
But I think that your position on vases and books is rare, at least away from virtue ethics.
While it’s apt to note that virtue ethicists care a great deal for things, there are others. There’s a (small) movement towards some sort of ‘information ethics’, at the forefront of which are folks such as Terry Bynum and Luciano Floridi.
Floridi, when pressed, once admitted to being concerned for the integrity of a chair.
I didn’t mean to imply that virtue ethicists care for things. Quite the opposite!
I haven’t found anything interesting about Bynum or Floridi, but I imagine their information-flavor is orthogonal to the usual distinction between consequentialists, deontologists, and virtue ethicists.
I didn’t mean to imply that virtue ethicists care for things. Quite the opposite!
Ah. Well that’s strange—in my experience, virtue ethicists care for things quite a bit. I know one fellow who (it might be said) values his stringed instruments nearly as much as his children.
I haven’t found anything interesting about Bynum or Floridi, but I imagine their information-flavor is orthogonal to the usual distinction between consequentialists, deontologists, and virtue ethicists.
It’s hard to say… we’re dealing with a new ontology here, so the ethics looks strange.
Nominally, Bynum is some sort of eudaimonist consequentialist, but it would be doing his “flourishing ethics” a disservice to leave it at that. And Floridi’s “information ethics” is at times consequentialist in tone and at times deontic, but it’s hard to say exactly what he’s getting at. At the moment, I don’t even have anything to recommend, but hopefully there will be some worthwhile material in the next few years.
What I should have meant was that the value of the objects is irrelevant to whether a person displays virtue in handling them.
Also, the revealed values of particular virtue ethicists is not so relevant—that fellow is probably just not virtuous. After all, ethicists are the least ethical of philosphers.
Hm. Okay, so it’s an event that locally has negative utility relative to our set points, but locally maximizes relative to anything we can do about it. Fair enough.
So if I understand you correctly, you say that the reward ‘quality of life of whoever might eat cows’ does not justify the cost of taking the life of said cows.
Well, why not? Not only are cows delicious, cows need humans to survive. Many
humans enjoy the deliciousness of cows. It is a symbiotic relationship, cows evolved deliciousness and passivity to be easily handled while humans use their technology to protect and provide for cows in return.
Interrupting this relationship will result in the extinction or near extinction of cows. If said cow is not eaten by a human, it does not go on living happily ever after. Said cow would find it very difficult if not impossible to survive on it’s own in the wild. Over thousands of years cows lost their ability to fight of predators and instead became good at growing meat, milk and being passive so that farmers could handle it easily. Removing they cow from it’s ecosystem(the farm) is not like freeing it.
Do you see what I’m getting at? The vegetarian agenda is would hurt the cow species.
you say that the reward ‘quality of life of whoever might eat cows’ does not justify the cost of taking the life of said cows.
This is the opposite of what I said.
Interrupting this relationship will result in the extinction or near extinction of cows.
Yes. I have already said I don’t care if cows go extinct, except inasmuch as they are useful. If they stop being useful (if people stop eating them and using their byproducts) then they can go extinct and this will not bother me.
It doesn’t bother you if cows go extinct but it bothers you if humans kill cows for food? I don’t understand. Going extinct is worse than individuals periodically dying. Going extinct means the ALL die.
The cows that already exist are the only cows I wish to spare suffering. They will die anyway; no one is planning to make any cows immortal. If they simply don’t have calves, the cow species will go extinct without doing any harm to any cows that already exist.
[quote]the worst part of a factory farm cow’s existence isn’t death, but life[/quote]
I disagree on multiple levels.
-Dying is worse than living no matter how bad of a place you live in
-cows don’t think like humans. the biggest factor in their happiness is food. cows might be quite happy in farms, or at the very least I think their life is not a permanent state of torture.
Ok, you got me on the topic of where bacon comes from. For the sake of argument, substitute bacon with beef jerky.
As for your second point, are you saying it’s ok to drive a species to extinction or near extinction as long as the individuals of the present generation get to live a bit longer?
What do you think of the following idea? Would you go to a wild life park and erect electric fences to keep lions away from antelopes and instead feed fish to the lions? This would stop the unethical violence lions commit against antelopes.
No. I’m saying that except for the part where I really like dairy and make some use of leather, I don’t care if cows continue to exist. The individual, living cows that already exist, I would prefer not to unnecessarily harm. There are some species that I like and want to keep around. For instance, pandas are cute. I’d miss them. Honeybees are important to all kinds of things very important to me. I would miss them too.
Lions are not persons, and are therefore not morally responsible for anything they do, so there is nothing unethical about lion-on-antelope violence. I think there are things I could do with the fence construction money and the fish (or the grocery budget) that would be better uses of resources than keeping lions on a pescetarian diet.
???
Wait, so you’re a vegetarian from virtue ethics—you think it’s virtuous not to harm animals—and not because the event of animal suffering is disutilous apart from its particular causes?
Or do you mean that the event is bad and to be prevented, but cannot be termed “unethical”?
I have no idea where you got those suggestions. Neither one is accurate about my beliefs: I don’t go around using the concept of virtue when I talk about ethics, and I only think bad things can be also unethical when they are the result of deliberate or negligent actions/inactions by a person. I think ethics is about the behavior of persons, not the behavior of lions or the edibility of antelopes.
I get my opinions about who should be a vegetarian by the following logic:
I would not up and kill a cow/chicken/guinea pig/cat/whatever for no reason. It seems to me that it would be wrong to go around killing animals (or, for that matter, smashing vases or setting books on fire or committing any act of destruction) for no reason.
It seems that there are some reasons where it would be quite okay to kill an animal (or smash a vase or set a book on fire). If I were starving (if I needed a shard of ceramic to cut some wrongly convicted-of-witchcraft person free from a stake/if I were otherwise going to freeze to death) then I would kill and eat a cow (smash a vase/set a book on fire).
So somewhere in the space of reason-having, between “no reason” and “otherwise a person will die”, there must be a threshold of adequacy sufficient to kill an animal (or do any other destructive thing). For the death-for-food of non-personhood-having animals, I draw that line at the excellent quality of life of whoever might eat them. I can have an excellent quality of life and eat only occasional fish. My friend who gets sick when she doesn’t eat enough meat can’t. So she needn’t be a vegetarian, but I should.
You make a binary distinction that animals are not “people”, and therefore not subject to ethical judgements. But you don’t make what seems like to me the closely-related binary distinction that animals are not “people” and therefore should not be factored into ethical judgements.
Usually, people make both or neither of these assumptions.
Vases and books are also not people, and I use indistinguishable logic to argue against their needless destruction. I guess I’m just unconventional like that.
Were you aware of your unconventionality before this exchange? (I worry that I’m missing some of your tone in print.)
Is there some standard poll of philosophers’ views on ethics? Could you poll your department on vases and books?
(I, unlike PG, think the conjunction of caring about antelope suffering with not subjecting lions to ethical judgement is common. But I think that your position on vases and books is rare, at least away from virtue ethics.)
I am quite aware of my unconventionality. As far as I know, I’m independent and very, very lonely in buying the above reasoning. Many ethicists try to make some vague nod in favor of preserving works of great art, but then pass off which works of art are great to the aestheticists and don’t care about lesser works. I follow that intuition all the way down and think that stuff in general shouldn’t be destroyed unnecessarily.
While it’s apt to note that virtue ethicists care a great deal for things, there are others. There’s a (small) movement towards some sort of ‘information ethics’, at the forefront of which are folks such as Terry Bynum and Luciano Floridi.
Floridi, when pressed, once admitted to being concerned for the integrity of a chair.
I didn’t mean to imply that virtue ethicists care for things. Quite the opposite!
I haven’t found anything interesting about Bynum or Floridi, but I imagine their information-flavor is orthogonal to the usual distinction between consequentialists, deontologists, and virtue ethicists.
Ah. Well that’s strange—in my experience, virtue ethicists care for things quite a bit. I know one fellow who (it might be said) values his stringed instruments nearly as much as his children.
It’s hard to say… we’re dealing with a new ontology here, so the ethics looks strange.
Nominally, Bynum is some sort of eudaimonist consequentialist, but it would be doing his “flourishing ethics” a disservice to leave it at that. And Floridi’s “information ethics” is at times consequentialist in tone and at times deontic, but it’s hard to say exactly what he’s getting at. At the moment, I don’t even have anything to recommend, but hopefully there will be some worthwhile material in the next few years.
What I should have meant was that the value of the objects is irrelevant to whether a person displays virtue in handling them.
Also, the revealed values of particular virtue ethicists is not so relevant—that fellow is probably just not virtuous. After all, ethicists are the least ethical of philosphers.
The real reason why you don’t punish deer for jaywalking is that it doesn’t alleviate the problem. That has nothing to do with whether they feel pain.
I think that’s what I meant by:
They don’t mean the same thing. It is not the case that all bad things must be “to be prevented”.
What sort of event is bad, but not to be prevented?
An event with no superior alternative that can be ethically brought about.
Hm. Okay, so it’s an event that locally has negative utility relative to our set points, but locally maximizes relative to anything we can do about it. Fair enough.
So if I understand you correctly, you say that the reward ‘quality of life of whoever might eat cows’ does not justify the cost of taking the life of said cows.
Well, why not? Not only are cows delicious, cows need humans to survive. Many humans enjoy the deliciousness of cows. It is a symbiotic relationship, cows evolved deliciousness and passivity to be easily handled while humans use their technology to protect and provide for cows in return.
Interrupting this relationship will result in the extinction or near extinction of cows. If said cow is not eaten by a human, it does not go on living happily ever after. Said cow would find it very difficult if not impossible to survive on it’s own in the wild. Over thousands of years cows lost their ability to fight of predators and instead became good at growing meat, milk and being passive so that farmers could handle it easily. Removing they cow from it’s ecosystem(the farm) is not like freeing it.
Do you see what I’m getting at? The vegetarian agenda is would hurt the cow species.
I’m not sure a ‘species’ is the sort of thing that is could be hurt.
You don’t.
This is the opposite of what I said.
Yes. I have already said I don’t care if cows go extinct, except inasmuch as they are useful. If they stop being useful (if people stop eating them and using their byproducts) then they can go extinct and this will not bother me.
It doesn’t bother you if cows go extinct but it bothers you if humans kill cows for food? I don’t understand. Going extinct is worse than individuals periodically dying. Going extinct means the ALL die.
The cows that already exist are the only cows I wish to spare suffering. They will die anyway; no one is planning to make any cows immortal. If they simply don’t have calves, the cow species will go extinct without doing any harm to any cows that already exist.
Thou know’st ’tis common; all that live must die, passing through nature to eternity. This way, though, they don’t leave descendents to toil in cages.
As I said before, the worst part of a factory farm cow’s existence isn’t death, but life.
[quote]the worst part of a factory farm cow’s existence isn’t death, but life[/quote] I disagree on multiple levels.
-Dying is worse than living no matter how bad of a place you live in -cows don’t think like humans. the biggest factor in their happiness is food. cows might be quite happy in farms, or at the very least I think their life is not a permanent state of torture.
“Dying is worse than living no matter how bad of a place you live in”
Would you rather die and disappear, or die and burn in hell? Or burn in hell while alive? Never say never.
“cows don’t think like humans”
Yes. They don’t anticipate death. They don’t stay up all night fearing it. It comes as one sharp blow, and then oblivion.