The clarity and urgency with which you advocate for farmed animals really earns you the title of Bentham’s Bulldog. From a long time vegan, keep up the good work
But wait... I have it on the good authority of several YouTube vegan advocates that utilitarians are all weak-willed apologists who want slightly bigger cages.
Are there good estimates for how much suffering is caused per burger? "Complicity in grave evil" may be a strong reason for deontologists / common-sense morality, but as a consequentialist I'm more interested in the marginal effect. I gather well-targeted donations make a vastly greater difference, in expectation, than personal dietary choices, so it seems a little odd when utilitarians (like Peter Singer & yourself) focus so much more on the latter. I would also guess it's easier to convince omnivores to donate more to effective animal charities than to convince them to become vegan. But I could be wrong about that.
> "But in order to avoid flagrant hypocrisy, to be consistent one must cease their own wrongdoing before expressing outrage over other’s wrongdoings."
Given that significant wrongdoing (viz. insufficient beneficence) is completely universal, I worry that anti-hypocrisy principles would result in no-one ever being allowed to mention others' bad behavior. But outrage over the violation of particular established good norms could still be a good thing, even if there are other (not yet socially "established") good candidate norms that we unfortunately continue to violate. It's worth working to establish those new good norms; but that's different from advocating for mere "consistency", which could just as well be achieved through moral "leveling down" (and ceasing to enforce the old established good norms).
Hey, unsure how to best contact you, so I'm just commenting on this post to note that if you want to get in touch, I'm using a different number to the one I was previously on. Email me at samueljnglover@gmail.com and I'll send you the number (or we can just communicate via email).
The clarity and urgency with which you advocate for farmed animals really earns you the title of Bentham’s Bulldog. From a long time vegan, keep up the good work
But wait... I have it on the good authority of several YouTube vegan advocates that utilitarians are all weak-willed apologists who want slightly bigger cages.
Are there good estimates for how much suffering is caused per burger? "Complicity in grave evil" may be a strong reason for deontologists / common-sense morality, but as a consequentialist I'm more interested in the marginal effect. I gather well-targeted donations make a vastly greater difference, in expectation, than personal dietary choices, so it seems a little odd when utilitarians (like Peter Singer & yourself) focus so much more on the latter. I would also guess it's easier to convince omnivores to donate more to effective animal charities than to convince them to become vegan. But I could be wrong about that.
> "But in order to avoid flagrant hypocrisy, to be consistent one must cease their own wrongdoing before expressing outrage over other’s wrongdoings."
Given that significant wrongdoing (viz. insufficient beneficence) is completely universal, I worry that anti-hypocrisy principles would result in no-one ever being allowed to mention others' bad behavior. But outrage over the violation of particular established good norms could still be a good thing, even if there are other (not yet socially "established") good candidate norms that we unfortunately continue to violate. It's worth working to establish those new good norms; but that's different from advocating for mere "consistency", which could just as well be achieved through moral "leveling down" (and ceasing to enforce the old established good norms).
Any thoughts on animal welfare in Europe? The law as written seems far better than the US, but I have no idea how that looks in practice
Hey, unsure how to best contact you, so I'm just commenting on this post to note that if you want to get in touch, I'm using a different number to the one I was previously on. Email me at samueljnglover@gmail.com and I'll send you the number (or we can just communicate via email).
It's quite easy to speak for a group which cannot speak for itself.