Comment on Why Eat Less Meat?

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 08:39:46 GMT

Me: What would you say to someone who thinks we should only care about the suffering of white humans of European descent? Would you be fine with that?

You: That would indeed seem weird and arbitrary. One objection I might raise to such a person is that it's non-trivial, in many cases, to discern someone's "whiteness", not to mention one's exact ancestry. "European" is not a sharp boundary where humans are concerned...

I think that fights the hypothetical a bit much. Imagine something a bit sharper, like citizenship. Why not restrict our moral sphere to US citizens? Or take Derek Parfit's within-a-mile altruism, where you only have concern for people within a mile of you. Weird, I agree. But irrational? Hard to demonstrate.

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I try not to argue by definition, so it's the latter: I have empirical concerns. See this post, point 4 (but also 3 and 5), for a near-perfect summary of my concerns.

So do you think nonhuman animals may not suffer? I agree that's a possibility, but it's not likely. What do you think of the body of evidence provided in this post?

I don't think there is a tidy resolution to this problem. We'll have to take our best guess, and that involves thinking nonhuman animals suffer. We'd probably even want to err on the safe side, which would increase our consideration toward nonhuman animals. It would also be consistent with an Ocham's razor approach.

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It seems to me that there are both empirical facts and analytic arguments that would shift this person's position closer to my own; a logically contradictory, empirically incoherent, or reflectively inconsistent moral position is generally bound to be less convincing.

What would you suggest?

Discuss