Of course, this argument is correct. But here is my sincere question:
Does it matter?
People have had these philosophical arguments at least since Peter Singer's original "Animal Liberation" article. And meat-eating has gone up and up and up. EA embraced the issue, and meat-eating has gone up and up and up. Climate change gets worse and meat-eating goes up and up and up. Even in Germany, where it has gone down a bit, each German is eating MORE factory-farmed animals.
Even the first poster here -- your own blog reader who is against factory farming for selfish reasons -- doesn't take philosophy seriously.
The question isn't: is it wrong? The question is: what can we do differently to change things?
Look. The problem with eating meat is not that one must belief trivial benefits outweigh incomprehensible animal siffering. That's easy enough to believe, just set the radius of your moral circle to between 8.4 and 10.6.
The TKO is what you say in the last part of your article. Eating meat is terrible for yourself, and, even worse, terrible for the planet. Climate Change, Superbugs, etc.
When one factor in how removing those costs would benefit society, eating meat in factory farms is basically blown out of the water. At worst any real and substantial benefits of meat can still be gained by reducing its consumption massively outside the factory farm context.
All the stuff about animal suffering is just utilitarian "total utility!!! Moral Circle!!! holocaust x1000!!!" grandstanding.
It is possible for most people to be fine with paying for torture for trivial benefits. But most people of decent moral sense recognize that's wrong. This becomes especially clear when one reviews what actually goes on in factory farms. Note, I have not argued that there are not scenarios in which one should eat meat -- merely that the scenarios that most of us regularly find ourselves in, where the meat comes from a factory farm, is not one of those scenarios where it's justified. You don't have to be a utilitarian to oppose ungodly amounts of senseless cruelty. Most people recognize that it would be wrong to torture dogs for taste pleasure -- the same is true of meat.
(1) The argument that meat is bad for you is very uncompelling, and scientifically unsubstantiated. "Meat" itself is far too broad--surely, raw chicken is unhealthy. But beef is universally excepted as OK, and healthy, especially in leaner cuts. Salmon is really healthy. You don't see most athletes go vegan!
(2) The climate change argument is true, but only plausible under a utilitarian frame. That is to say, that the vast majority of meat eaters in the West could continue consuming meat and not deal with the worst effects of climate change. I doubt that most would PURELY selfishly, as you describe, change their lifestyle. There must be some utilitarian analysis--that climate change harms more people than the factors that contribute to it help.
(3) You have failed to engage in Matthew's articulation, seen here and in other posts, for utilitarianism. You cannot call something "grandstanding" and move on, that is the entire purpose of this blog for the most point.
(1) This is not true. I've elsewhere provided lots of evidence for this claim -- see this article https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est. Obviously there are different types of meat that are differently bad -- no one disputes that. It's even possible that the ideal diet would contain meat, I'm not sure. But the evidence is quite clear that most people's health would improve if they went vegan.
(2) You don't have to be a utilitarian to be opposed to climate change killing millions of people, along with other pollution killing many more. Anyone who has any sense thinks its bad to cause mass death.
(3) I think that this post should be seen as a standalone article -- separate from my advocacy of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism has just about nothing to do with the wrongness of eating meat. Every plausible moral theory holds that our eating of meat is totally and utterly indefensible.
Who is the person you reference in point #3? I’ve never heard of her.
1) I am not competent to debate the health effects of meat. I am doubtful that, on balance, factory farms are essential to a healthy diet. That being said, I am also fairly sure that eating a moderate amount of a fair variety of meats is fine from a health perspective.
On balance then, I can’t form a debatable opinion here. I’ll take your word for it.
2) I am highly skeptical that the consequences of meat can be compartmentalizations away like that.
A. Superbugs, wasted labor costs, land & resource use, and the global health effects of emissions are pretty uniform. We cannot get bribe a virus, and although I’m sure poorer countries are more severely impacted simply because they have less mitigation, they are still major costs for everyone.
B. Climate change measures are directly felt even by rich nations. Take California. The massive inefficient monolith of meat production is consuming vast amounts of water that the state needs. Yet when cuts are made to water use, residential activities are the first to be cut, even as the state exports water to places like Saudi Arabia for meat production.
Additionally, global conflicts, supply chain breakdowns, instability, etc. all meaningfully reduce the compounding growth and prosperity of the whole world. A lifetime that sees 0.5% less growth per year could be a lot worse then one that gets full growth. You know how compound interest works.
And that’s ignoring the risks that climate change causes world war three and gives us all the sweet embrace of death.
And I don’t think it needs to be “purely selfish”. Bulldog even says that pretty kind people still eat meat. If they knew about it’s effects and good alternatives, they may very well switch.
Of course, the most selfish people (like me) are agents of Ba’al and Moloch. We will eat 10 times the meat to compensate. Some people are just not going to change, that’s an unfortunate fact.
3) Utilitarianism is false - it implies that enough dust specks can outweigh anything. But this is an a priori falsehood I cannot entertain.
I also am being a bit sarcastic in these comments sections… did you see me revealing my true form as Yahwah a few months ago?
No Zebra, I have no seen your Yahwah phase of commenting, I'm sure it was great.
My argument is relatively simple: people like eating meat and the consequences are generally not enough to make them stop.
I agree with everything you and "Bulldog" say—f.f. is bad.
(1) Climate change. Seems as though adaption will resolve the majority of its harms for the West. Californians have not meaningfully changed eating habits because of droughts.
(2) Viruses. Another one seems unlikely, and if one were to arise, people wouldn't stop factory farming because of it.
(3) Instability, breakdowns, growth. I don't know why f.f. causes this, and if it does, it's because of adverse effects of climate change. None will stop people from eating meat.
We agree that a healthy dose of utilitarianism would resolve the problem by providing a selfless ethical alternative to f.f. If one deploys utilitarianism intelligently, it can make a persuasive case against eating meat. Just a thought because I think we agree with each other on most of the substance.
But you definitely don't have to be a utilitarian to be opposed to eating meat. The idea that paying for unimaginable torture in exchange for a burger is just about as obvious an ethical principle as you'll find anywhere. I agree descriptively that these haven't convinced people not to eat meat -- my claim is that they ought to.
If you’re making the claim that people will eat meat regardless of the negative consequences of incompatibility with their purported beliefs, then you are correct.
Then it becomes more of a social problem. One (sadly) does not resolve murder by making an intelligent case for why it’s bad for one to kill.
> No Zebra, I have no seen your Yahwah phase of commenting, I'm sure it was great.
TO TURN THY SCALP AGAINST THE WORD OF THE lord IS BUT A PRELUDE TO DAMNATION O GRAND SINNER. REPENT.
Of course, this argument is correct. But here is my sincere question:
Does it matter?
People have had these philosophical arguments at least since Peter Singer's original "Animal Liberation" article. And meat-eating has gone up and up and up. EA embraced the issue, and meat-eating has gone up and up and up. Climate change gets worse and meat-eating goes up and up and up. Even in Germany, where it has gone down a bit, each German is eating MORE factory-farmed animals.
Even the first poster here -- your own blog reader who is against factory farming for selfish reasons -- doesn't take philosophy seriously.
The question isn't: is it wrong? The question is: what can we do differently to change things?
https://www.onestepforanimals.org/about.html
I agree that merely arguing it is wrong will not end factory farming. But I think it can reduce it, to some degree.
Look. The problem with eating meat is not that one must belief trivial benefits outweigh incomprehensible animal siffering. That's easy enough to believe, just set the radius of your moral circle to between 8.4 and 10.6.
The TKO is what you say in the last part of your article. Eating meat is terrible for yourself, and, even worse, terrible for the planet. Climate Change, Superbugs, etc.
When one factor in how removing those costs would benefit society, eating meat in factory farms is basically blown out of the water. At worst any real and substantial benefits of meat can still be gained by reducing its consumption massively outside the factory farm context.
All the stuff about animal suffering is just utilitarian "total utility!!! Moral Circle!!! holocaust x1000!!!" grandstanding.
It is possible for most people to be fine with paying for torture for trivial benefits. But most people of decent moral sense recognize that's wrong. This becomes especially clear when one reviews what actually goes on in factory farms. Note, I have not argued that there are not scenarios in which one should eat meat -- merely that the scenarios that most of us regularly find ourselves in, where the meat comes from a factory farm, is not one of those scenarios where it's justified. You don't have to be a utilitarian to oppose ungodly amounts of senseless cruelty. Most people recognize that it would be wrong to torture dogs for taste pleasure -- the same is true of meat.
Absolutely true. It is unfortunate that the whirlpool of politics has prevented this from being known and acted upon by everyone.
This seems silly.
(1) The argument that meat is bad for you is very uncompelling, and scientifically unsubstantiated. "Meat" itself is far too broad--surely, raw chicken is unhealthy. But beef is universally excepted as OK, and healthy, especially in leaner cuts. Salmon is really healthy. You don't see most athletes go vegan!
(2) The climate change argument is true, but only plausible under a utilitarian frame. That is to say, that the vast majority of meat eaters in the West could continue consuming meat and not deal with the worst effects of climate change. I doubt that most would PURELY selfishly, as you describe, change their lifestyle. There must be some utilitarian analysis--that climate change harms more people than the factors that contribute to it help.
(3) You have failed to engage in Matthew's articulation, seen here and in other posts, for utilitarianism. You cannot call something "grandstanding" and move on, that is the entire purpose of this blog for the most point.
(1) This is not true. I've elsewhere provided lots of evidence for this claim -- see this article https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est. Obviously there are different types of meat that are differently bad -- no one disputes that. It's even possible that the ideal diet would contain meat, I'm not sure. But the evidence is quite clear that most people's health would improve if they went vegan.
(2) You don't have to be a utilitarian to be opposed to climate change killing millions of people, along with other pollution killing many more. Anyone who has any sense thinks its bad to cause mass death.
(3) I think that this post should be seen as a standalone article -- separate from my advocacy of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism has just about nothing to do with the wrongness of eating meat. Every plausible moral theory holds that our eating of meat is totally and utterly indefensible.
Who is the person you reference in point #3? I’ve never heard of her.
1) I am not competent to debate the health effects of meat. I am doubtful that, on balance, factory farms are essential to a healthy diet. That being said, I am also fairly sure that eating a moderate amount of a fair variety of meats is fine from a health perspective.
On balance then, I can’t form a debatable opinion here. I’ll take your word for it.
2) I am highly skeptical that the consequences of meat can be compartmentalizations away like that.
A. Superbugs, wasted labor costs, land & resource use, and the global health effects of emissions are pretty uniform. We cannot get bribe a virus, and although I’m sure poorer countries are more severely impacted simply because they have less mitigation, they are still major costs for everyone.
B. Climate change measures are directly felt even by rich nations. Take California. The massive inefficient monolith of meat production is consuming vast amounts of water that the state needs. Yet when cuts are made to water use, residential activities are the first to be cut, even as the state exports water to places like Saudi Arabia for meat production.
Additionally, global conflicts, supply chain breakdowns, instability, etc. all meaningfully reduce the compounding growth and prosperity of the whole world. A lifetime that sees 0.5% less growth per year could be a lot worse then one that gets full growth. You know how compound interest works.
And that’s ignoring the risks that climate change causes world war three and gives us all the sweet embrace of death.
And I don’t think it needs to be “purely selfish”. Bulldog even says that pretty kind people still eat meat. If they knew about it’s effects and good alternatives, they may very well switch.
Of course, the most selfish people (like me) are agents of Ba’al and Moloch. We will eat 10 times the meat to compensate. Some people are just not going to change, that’s an unfortunate fact.
3) Utilitarianism is false - it implies that enough dust specks can outweigh anything. But this is an a priori falsehood I cannot entertain.
I also am being a bit sarcastic in these comments sections… did you see me revealing my true form as Yahwah a few months ago?
On three -- I've defended this conclusion here. https://benthams.substack.com/p/utilitarianism-wins-outright-part-336?s=w
“I’d rather reject ethics as a whole than accept [something].”
- P. as Quoted by you and modified by me.
Though out of all the arguments in that post, the historical path of progress is the strongest to me.
No Zebra, I have no seen your Yahwah phase of commenting, I'm sure it was great.
My argument is relatively simple: people like eating meat and the consequences are generally not enough to make them stop.
I agree with everything you and "Bulldog" say—f.f. is bad.
(1) Climate change. Seems as though adaption will resolve the majority of its harms for the West. Californians have not meaningfully changed eating habits because of droughts.
(2) Viruses. Another one seems unlikely, and if one were to arise, people wouldn't stop factory farming because of it.
(3) Instability, breakdowns, growth. I don't know why f.f. causes this, and if it does, it's because of adverse effects of climate change. None will stop people from eating meat.
We agree that a healthy dose of utilitarianism would resolve the problem by providing a selfless ethical alternative to f.f. If one deploys utilitarianism intelligently, it can make a persuasive case against eating meat. Just a thought because I think we agree with each other on most of the substance.
But you definitely don't have to be a utilitarian to be opposed to eating meat. The idea that paying for unimaginable torture in exchange for a burger is just about as obvious an ethical principle as you'll find anywhere. I agree descriptively that these haven't convinced people not to eat meat -- my claim is that they ought to.
Ah.
If you’re making the claim that people will eat meat regardless of the negative consequences of incompatibility with their purported beliefs, then you are correct.
Then it becomes more of a social problem. One (sadly) does not resolve murder by making an intelligent case for why it’s bad for one to kill.
> No Zebra, I have no seen your Yahwah phase of commenting, I'm sure it was great.
TO TURN THY SCALP AGAINST THE WORD OF THE lord IS BUT A PRELUDE TO DAMNATION O GRAND SINNER. REPENT.
Well, I have convinced many people, simply through argument. But this is, of course, not all that I'm doing to combat factory farming.