Isn't this effectively the same argument pro-slavery advocates used? "(Slaves|Animals) would live brutal, worse off lives if they weren't owned by their masters. Therefore (vegetarians|abolitionists) want more suffering in the world."
Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
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Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
#42Is this a big troll? The author moves directly from > "reducing harm to these animals without reducing their numbers" to > "support reducing the number of wild animals, for instance through habitat destruction or sterilisation" WHY at all would that make sense? It's a giant IF they believe reducing harm is better than non-existence. So... er, ok... the author is saying (to put it succinctly) that IF an existence of s…
This follows from the assumption "If wild animals’ well-being is indeed below the threshold for a life worth living", which is argued in the passage:
> One reason to suspect that on average this pleasure is outweighed by suffering is that most species use the reproductive strategy of r-selection, which means that the overwhelming majority of their offspring starve or are eaten shortly after birth and only very few reach reproductive age (Horta 2010; Ng 1995). For instance, ‘in her lifetime a lioness might have 20 cubs; a pigeon, 150 chicks; a mouse, 1000 kits’ (Hapgood 1979), the vast majority of which will die before they could have had many pleasurable experiences. Overall, it seems plausible that wild animals have worse lives than, say, free-range cows. If vegetarians think it’s better for the latter not to exist, they must believe the same thing about wild animals.
Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
#43Is this a big troll? The author moves directly from > "reducing harm to these animals without reducing their numbers" to > "support reducing the number of wild animals, for instance through habitat destruction or sterilisation" WHY at all would that make sense? It's a giant IF they believe reducing harm is better than non-existence. So... er, ok... the author is saying (to put it succinctly) that IF an existence of s…
The "giant if" you mention is stated explicitly in the section you quote: "More precisely then, ethical consequentialist vegetarians believe that farmed animals have lives so bad they are not worth living, so that it is better for them not to come into existence. Vegetarians reduce the demand for meat, so that farmers will breed fewer animals, preventing the existence of additional animals. [...] I will argue that if vegetarians were to apply this principle consistently, the suffering of wild animals would dominate their concerns, and would plausibly lead them to support reducing the number of wild animals, for instance through habitat destruction or sterilisation."
Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people have ethics like yours, but these are not consequentialist ethics, which is what the article is discussing. In consequentialism, an act's rightness is determined by the goodness of what happens, not other factors.
You and the paper miss the mark by not imagining the position that leaving something wild is good
As I said above, I don't think that view is associated with the "ethical consequentialist vegetarianism" questioned here and often defended in academic philosophy. In fact part of the point of the consequentialist idea here is that maybe it doesn't matter who or what was responsible for something (e.g., a human or an ecosystem) in order to decide if the thing itself was good or bad.
Although not all consequentialists afford any moral status to animals, I think consequentialists would find it super congenitally difficult to say "oh, but that's OK -- nature did it!".
Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
#45I've made a similar argument here. The goal of elimination of suffering leads to a future very different from the world we inhabit today, but definitely better for it. A world of limited beings who all suffer is amenable to improvement on many levels. https://www.exratione.com/2016/06/the-hedonistic-imperative-... Suffering is not only human, however. The natural world from which we evolved continues to be as bloody,…
It seems like you were influenced by David Pearce, especially in your terminology, but you don't seem to have mentioned him here. Maybe you could add a link?
Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
#46Is this a big troll? The author moves directly from > "reducing harm to these animals without reducing their numbers" to > "support reducing the number of wild animals, for instance through habitat destruction or sterilisation" WHY at all would that make sense? It's a giant IF they believe reducing harm is better than non-existence. So... er, ok... the author is saying (to put it succinctly) that IF an existence of s…
The argument is pretty straightforward.
According to this paper, vegetarian philosophers argue that livestock live lives not worth living because of the cruel treatment they receive. The paper then argues that wild animals receive worse treatment from nature. Therefore, their lives are similarly not worth living. Reducing suffering is the goal, and not living is better than living, so reducing the number of wild animals is best.
There are a number of good arguments to this. One would be that humans breeding livestock increases the amount of suffering, whereas wild animals are not bred. Another is about directly benefiting (eating) from this suffering verses not benefiting. Yet another is that active harm from cruel treatment is different from passive harm by "not helping" the wild animals.
Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
#47> "Ethical consequentialist vegetarians believe that farmed animals have lives that are worse than non-existence." Nonsense. There are plenty of "ethical consequentialist" vegetarians who don't care about animal welfare but believe eating meat is unethical because it harms the environment or exacerbates human poverty and hunger.
Animals are beyond sustainable - they are an integral part every ecosystem on the planet. The crime is our factory methods of raising animals. If we reintegrated livestock into their natural roles in the environment and treated meat as culling for population management, while the price would rise it would ethically sound and good for the planet.
Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's specifically talking about ethical consequentalism, which is related to utilitarianism -- the idea that you should act in a way to maximize happiness and minimize suffering. Some vegetarians are not consequentialists, and so they can reject this argument for the reason you describe, but I know many who are.
I've been around a lot of hardcore vegans, and literally none of them would subscribe to the bizarre abstract philosophy of "minimizing suffering" in the wild. It's an absurdity. The idea is to remove human causes of destruction, not to intervene in nature to manufacture some kind of utopia. Again, absurd. Essentially nobody would actually believe this, aside from philosophical masturbation.
I am a vegan and I believe there's an important qualitative distinction between the suffering that we cause and the suffering that we fail to prevent, but I still think the suffering in nature is bad and would like to see a way that we could reduce it.
There must be different cultures and views within veganism. :-)
Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article explicitly states that it only applies to a subset of Vegetarianism, namely Ethical Consequentialist Vegetarianism. Ipso facto, it does not apply to the entirety of Vegetarianism, hence the explicit disclaimer in the introduction.
I reject that as an appropriate or meaningful subset of what it means to be vegetarian, hence my comment. It's basically nonsense as far as I'm concerned. Do you have any supporting view of ethical consequentialist vegetarianism as a sound philosophical position or argument?
The foundational work that advances this view is Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, from 1975, and a whole bunch of other philosophers have written about it since then.
Re: Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals
#50Is this a big troll? The author moves directly from > "reducing harm to these animals without reducing their numbers" to > "support reducing the number of wild animals, for instance through habitat destruction or sterilisation" WHY at all would that make sense? It's a giant IF they believe reducing harm is better than non-existence. So... er, ok... the author is saying (to put it succinctly) that IF an existence of s…
The argument is pretty straightforward. According to this paper, vegetarian philosophers argue that livestock live lives not worth living because of the cruel treatment they receive. The paper then argues that wild animals receive worse treatment from nature. Therefore, their lives are similarly not worth living. Reducing suffering is the goal, and not living is better than living, so reducing the number of wild anim…
Note that none of of these are consequentalist arguments, though. A consequentialist argument would focus on the relative amounts of suffering, not on the beneficiaries or agents of it.