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Vaniver comments on Vegetarianism - Less Wrong Discussion
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This is where the tautology resides. (Perhaps it would be clearer to call it "defining your conclusion" or "circularity"?)
I am ambivalent that we should categorically seek to reduce the suffering of our fellow humans (and ourselves). I am personally moved by most suffering I see, but I recognize that as an emotional response. I am aware of many situations in which suffering is a dramatically positive force, and many in which it is not. I don't like calling things bad, I like calling them bad at X.
I also don't think our justifications for working to minimize the pain of our fellow humans are neurological- and so the biological similarity does not strike me as relevant for many valid approaches to the situation.
The idea that suffering can have positive effects is in no way mutually exclusive with the idea that it is itself bad.
Is there any reason why the suffering of factory-farmed animals would be worth it?
Bacon.
This is to say economics says yes. People's observable behavior indicates that they do consider the process worth it.
It shows that the benefit to the people is greater than the pain to the people. The pain of the pig is ignored. Considering the vast majority of the pain is to the pig, that's a pretty big oversight.
No, it doesn't say anything about pain to humans. It shows that people collectively consider it worth it. That information is valuable when considering questions like:
But, if you could pith the pig painlessly (or engineer pigs that did not suffer while their meat is grown / harvested), then the quality of the bacon would not alter (unless you're a sadist).
The question was 'worth it?', not intrinsically desirable.
I'm sure there is an obligatory link in there somewhere. ;)
Here we're discussing definitions, I think. If you assume suffering is bad a priori, that seems to me to preclude there being (worthwhile) benefits from suffering. I find that difficult to swallow.
And this isn't just "surgery is worth it, even with the pain, but it would be more worth it without the pain"- this is looking at "no pain no gain" situations. Do they exist? I strongly suspect so. (I think many people overestimate how many there are, but that doesn't mean something things aren't better with a sting.)
Our justifications for working to minimize the pain of our fellow humans aren't neurological. Our justifications for thinking that our fellow humans do experience pain are, in part, neurological (and in part based on our observations of their behavior). Once we have good reason to think that some action of ours does cause our fellow humans pain, then we have a moral reason to avoid that action. That moral reason may or may not be an insurmountable one, but causing a fellow human pain at least requires some appeal to some good that outweighs the pain.
I had assumed that the leap here for most people would be extending moral consideration to non-humans. I'm surprised to see that the leap in this case appears to be extending moral consideration to beings other than oneself.
I don't buy this. There may be situations in which suffering motivates some other positive action, but I can't see in what sense suffering itself could be positive -- as in, ceteris paribus, better to have suffering than not to.
I'm sorry, I'm being unclear. I'm not arguing that person X should maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain and not care about anyone else. I'm arguing that person X should find a different utility function than pleasure minus pain (and that includes their own).
I'm very glad you included this phrase, because that's where our disagreement lies. I don't think ceteris paribus is an option in most of the cases I'm considering. For example, the positive effect of a rite of passage scales with the amount of suffering undergone during it.
My favorite pieces of art are mostly very sad. If you could somehow preserve everything else about them while taking away only the tragedy, I'd value them much less. Ceteris paribus, I prefer to live in a world where I can be driven to tears by stories of heroic self-sacrifice (for example).
This is totally irrelevant to the question of animal suffering, though.