= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
rwallace comments on [link] SMBC on utilitarianism and vegatarianism. - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (69)
I think the ethics of farming is another place where problems in utilitarianism crop up.
There's a Parfitian argument that, since none of these animals would have existed otherwise, then killing them for food is no problem. But this would also apply to farming people, whether for food or chattel slavery, which we find repugnant. Obviously, though, this world is just as utility maximizing as Hanson's Malthusian em soup universe, neither of which seem particularly "good" (in fact, it is the em soup, just with fleshy people).
I don't have a "solution" to this, I think it just demonstrates one of the edges of utility theory's map.
One problem with this argument is that to eat chicken or pork, you have to be okay not only with killing animals, but with torturing them as well - there's no better word for the conditions in which chickens and pigs are typically kept.
This is perfectly well true, but I'm not interested in addressing this because I have never known this to be anyone's sufficient objection to eating meat.
Would you eat a well-treated chicken? How about a deer instantly killed by a Predator drone equipped to vaporize its brain faster than neurons react?
Those are both moral improvements on typical chicken. Another example is mutton: sheep are commonly kept on rocky hillsides which would otherwise go to waste, and commonly have a life that's about as good as it can get for a sheep, being mostly left alone to live as they would in the wild, except protected from predators and parasites.
Torture (not murder) is my stated objection to eating meat.
A number of people are motivated to be vegan or vegetarian by the conditions under which factory-farm animals live. For example, Julia Galef in this podcast.
Are you talking about objections or disgust? I can, through emotional manipulation, make you "object" to many things, but these don't occupy the same space as considered argument.
I'd guess that the poor treatment of animals is the main reason why people switch to vegetarianism. Most don't make the fine distinctions that would allow them to continue to eat the rare well-treated animals (although some do), but if food animals typically had pleasant lives and painless deaths then I expect that there would be far fewer vegetarians.
I know this comment has already been objected to, but I'll pile on anyway. Torture is my objection to eating dairy and eggs. Stop the torture, and I will switch back to vegetarianism over veganism. I am currently willing to buy dairy, at least, from "humanely raised" farms (though I never see it in stores, it does exist).
I'm a vegetarian who is fine with deer hunting and chickens/cows that are raised humanely, able to live their lives doing more or less what cows and chickens would normally spend their lives doing.