1) Some people may be offended by Noem's violation of a norm rather than by the harm inflicted on the animal. We have a norm that says you shouldn't harm dogs like that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the norm has a moral foundation. I'm sure there are better examples of similar kinds of arbitrary norms, but the one that immediately comes to mind is the norm against asking what an acquaintance's salary is. Certain people would be greatly affronted by the violation of that norm but would likely admit that there is nothing evil about the question.
2) That said, I agree that much of the populace is confused about this, but if they had to think it through and come up with a more consistent set of positions, it's unclear how many would land on veganism. After all, about half of the philosophers in the 2020 PhilPapers survey thought that eating meat was acceptable in ordinary circumstances.
I'd conjecture the standard deontological position is something like the following.
1) If it's your dog, you have a closer social and emotional connection to it, which heavily multiplies the weight you have to put on its welfare. Relatedly, these connections mean the dog has certain expectations about how you will treat it, which makes killing it prematurely a betrayal; whereas with factory farmed animals, they are intended to be abused from birth on, so they come to expect that, which attenuates the betrayal. [Yikes, I'm really stretching to make sense of their view there.]
2) The causal chain when you kill a dog yourself (or pay a vet to) is more *proximal* than when you eat meat. It's also more *deterministic* since, with eating meat, the causal chain is highly stochastic --- typically your purchase has no effect, and only rarely has a large effect. These put another HUGE difference in the welfare multipliers you're supposed to use.
I would think that getting more precise about how this welfare-weighting system works should be of tremendous urgency for deontologists. I'm puzzled why they're not working on it more.
Is there really no one smart disputing the argument from marginal cases? That seems to be the main argument used here to suggest that we should care about animals even if they are far less intelligent than most humans.
My take is that the argument relies on the notion that every human being from birth to death is a moral person whom it would be wrong to hurt or kill, but if you just slightly relaxed that from "every human being" to "the vast majority of human beings" and picked that vast majority in a sensible way, the argument from marginal cases starts to fall apart. I think many meat eaters would be willing to make that tiny relaxation if they were ever forced to grapple with the issue and presented with the option. After all, while it's unpleasant to think about it if you don't have a reason to, it's pretty common for people with loved ones in terminal mental decline to eventually decide that their loved person is already gone, even if their body is still eating and breathing and moving and reacting.
To be clear, being slightly more selective about personhood is not going to suddenly exclude children or adults with Down Syndrome or Alzheimer's - the excluded would be bereft of anything resembling human level cognition, either they've permanently lost the ability or they haven't developed it yet. Furthermore, it wouldn't suddenly be open season on any human excluded from personhood. The vast majority of excluded humans would still be protected by all kinds of laws and norms and property interests of the people who care about them. You could even imagine a world that embraces this view but decides not to change any of the existing laws or consequences for harming humans. But one thing that would change would be that it becomes harder to claim we need to worry about most animals' welfare.
Mark Budolfson has some work on this that is good although I think it rests on some economic misconceptions.
Probably the best you could do in the vicinity of defending meat eating is argue that average meat eaters have a good moral excuse. The argument would be roughly similar to the argument that you shouldn't be harsh on fat people: eating food that tastes good to you is an extremely powerful evolved imperative and resisting it is a lot like resisting a severe addiction. This combined with the norms and expectations of the culture (which are no doubt culturally downstream from the evolutionary psychology I just mentioned) could be argued to create a situation where meat eaters aren't blameworthy for the dietary wrong they do.
No, indeed I am one of the people who I'm talking about. It wouldn't be psychologically possible for me to stop eating meat. I'm not proud of this! In my case I have an extra excuse which is that I have bad dietary restrictions due to chronic stomach problems, and without meat I would have nothing to eat at most restaurants and very little that could work for protein that I can stand eating. But again, not proud of this at all.
Thank you for reminding me how cruel factory farming is.
As to the dog it does seem like Noem had some justification, though would have been better for her to omit that story.
Couple thoughts:
1) Some people may be offended by Noem's violation of a norm rather than by the harm inflicted on the animal. We have a norm that says you shouldn't harm dogs like that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the norm has a moral foundation. I'm sure there are better examples of similar kinds of arbitrary norms, but the one that immediately comes to mind is the norm against asking what an acquaintance's salary is. Certain people would be greatly affronted by the violation of that norm but would likely admit that there is nothing evil about the question.
2) That said, I agree that much of the populace is confused about this, but if they had to think it through and come up with a more consistent set of positions, it's unclear how many would land on veganism. After all, about half of the philosophers in the 2020 PhilPapers survey thought that eating meat was acceptable in ordinary circumstances.
I think they may have been confused by the question about whether it was asking what they did or what one should do.
I'd conjecture the standard deontological position is something like the following.
1) If it's your dog, you have a closer social and emotional connection to it, which heavily multiplies the weight you have to put on its welfare. Relatedly, these connections mean the dog has certain expectations about how you will treat it, which makes killing it prematurely a betrayal; whereas with factory farmed animals, they are intended to be abused from birth on, so they come to expect that, which attenuates the betrayal. [Yikes, I'm really stretching to make sense of their view there.]
2) The causal chain when you kill a dog yourself (or pay a vet to) is more *proximal* than when you eat meat. It's also more *deterministic* since, with eating meat, the causal chain is highly stochastic --- typically your purchase has no effect, and only rarely has a large effect. These put another HUGE difference in the welfare multipliers you're supposed to use.
I would think that getting more precise about how this welfare-weighting system works should be of tremendous urgency for deontologists. I'm puzzled why they're not working on it more.
Maybe Danny Shahar and the casual impotence objection. But it's one of those topics where there are almost no smart proponents.
Is there really no one smart disputing the argument from marginal cases? That seems to be the main argument used here to suggest that we should care about animals even if they are far less intelligent than most humans.
My take is that the argument relies on the notion that every human being from birth to death is a moral person whom it would be wrong to hurt or kill, but if you just slightly relaxed that from "every human being" to "the vast majority of human beings" and picked that vast majority in a sensible way, the argument from marginal cases starts to fall apart. I think many meat eaters would be willing to make that tiny relaxation if they were ever forced to grapple with the issue and presented with the option. After all, while it's unpleasant to think about it if you don't have a reason to, it's pretty common for people with loved ones in terminal mental decline to eventually decide that their loved person is already gone, even if their body is still eating and breathing and moving and reacting.
To be clear, being slightly more selective about personhood is not going to suddenly exclude children or adults with Down Syndrome or Alzheimer's - the excluded would be bereft of anything resembling human level cognition, either they've permanently lost the ability or they haven't developed it yet. Furthermore, it wouldn't suddenly be open season on any human excluded from personhood. The vast majority of excluded humans would still be protected by all kinds of laws and norms and property interests of the people who care about them. You could even imagine a world that embraces this view but decides not to change any of the existing laws or consequences for harming humans. But one thing that would change would be that it becomes harder to claim we need to worry about most animals' welfare.
Mark Budolfson has some work on this that is good although I think it rests on some economic misconceptions.
Probably the best you could do in the vicinity of defending meat eating is argue that average meat eaters have a good moral excuse. The argument would be roughly similar to the argument that you shouldn't be harsh on fat people: eating food that tastes good to you is an extremely powerful evolved imperative and resisting it is a lot like resisting a severe addiction. This combined with the norms and expectations of the culture (which are no doubt culturally downstream from the evolutionary psychology I just mentioned) could be argued to create a situation where meat eaters aren't blameworthy for the dietary wrong they do.
Yeah maybe. I read Budolfson's paper a while back I think but found it vewry unconvincing--like other proponents of causal inefficacy. https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-causal-inefficacy-objection-is?utm_source=publication-search
Yeah at a glance your criticisms match the reasons why I eventually rejected the argument.
Great minds...
You're not vegan, right?
No, indeed I am one of the people who I'm talking about. It wouldn't be psychologically possible for me to stop eating meat. I'm not proud of this! In my case I have an extra excuse which is that I have bad dietary restrictions due to chronic stomach problems, and without meat I would have nothing to eat at most restaurants and very little that could work for protein that I can stand eating. But again, not proud of this at all.
:(
Well then I think the important things to do are offset (that's the most important one--giving to effective animal charities is probably even more important than being vegan https://benthams.substack.com/p/offset-if-you-eat-meat), prioritize bigger animals and especially avoid chicken and eggs (https://benthams.substack.com/p/if-youre-going-to-eat-animals-eat), and reduce meat consumption at the margin.
I really hope they do invent good lab-grown meat.