Your instinct is correct, your desire for a more common sense and innocent view of life is correct. Negative utilitarians, anti-natalists, and others with grim ethical views will try to convince you that you are wrong, and they will have a lot of persuasive ammo to use — because the suffering and tragedy in life is very real — but the wisdom of ages and nations is on your side.
Some form of hedonic utilitarianism may in some sense be correct in principle, but, even so, the way hedonic utilitarian calculations are made in practice can easily be oversimplistic. Is my experience of meaning and purpose in life not in some sense part of my pleasure or happiness? Are all forms of suffering inherently bad and undesirable, something we should get rid of if somehow we had the option, or is, in fact, much suffering important to life and part of what makes it good and worth living? There are times I have been grateful for my suffering.
So many of the points you make in this article are right and beautifully articulated. You are absolutely on the right track.
The one specific argument I disagree with is about factory farms. Getting rid of factory farms does not necessarily reduce the net number of lives, human or animal, in the long-term. The resources that go into factory farms can go into supporting other lives, human or animal. Or getting rid of factory farms may reduce the net number of lives, but not to zero, and allow the remaining lives to be better, which is something common moral intuition and revealed preference supports (e.g. people choosing to have fewer children who they can give more resources per capita). We generally don’t like the repugnant conclusion — we would prefer to have fewer lives above a certain minimum bar of well-being we think of as the conditions for a good life than more lives that fall below that bar — and rejecting the logic of the larder is based on a similar logic as rejecting the repugnant conclusion.
(There is a separate idea about whether we should try to improve conditions for animals on factory farms in the meantime, which at least in effective altruism there is widespread agreement that we absolutely should, even if our end goal is to get rid of factory farms eventually. Those are compatible goals.)
I don’t really know what to do about wild animal suffering because we have so much uncertainty about animal consciousness and, even if we knew much more, it would still be hard to figure out what to do, at least in terms of trying to address the whole global problem. (Maybe some limited interventions are clearer and simpler, and not insurmountably hard.) We may need much more advanced science and technology, as well as much more wealth, to properly address wild animal suffering. So, we may have to wait a while before we can do it. But we have a lot on our plate to solve in the meantime, like factory farms and global poverty.
But your overall life-affirming stance is correct and you eloquently explain some of the reasons for taking this stance and rejecting the life-denying stance of negative utilitarians and anti-natalists.
Part of the problem is we understand very little about human consciousness and even what it would mean for human consciousness to be “net positive” or “net negative”. Some people talk as if they can know what that means in practice, but this is highly dubious.
In all of us there is a voice calling out that we want to live.
“By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes.” –E.M. Forster
(On a personal note, even though life can feel hard and heavy at times, there are moments when something makes me laugh a lot and that alone seems to be enough to justify life in spite of all the suffering, and make me glad I lived.)
You’re probably right about factory farming. I do think that we should eat less meat, and some drop in number of farm animals would probably be good.
But I wanted to say in which direction would life affirming stance take us if fully accepted.
Unfortunately it would also point us towards greater acceptance of repugnant conclusion which is another thing that I dislike and that feels wrong.
But the thing about repugnant conclusion is what it really means “barely worth living”. How high this bar is, is very subjective.
If such lives are truly worth living, it might not matter that much if it’s barely.
But if the bar is too low, then they might indeed be not worth living, according to most who wouldn’t agree with the bar. The bar is subjective, this is the problem.
And it’s very hard to talk about lives being or not being worth living when it comes to existing beings.
It’s easier when planning for the future. If certain cows and chickens are never to be born / hatched in the first place, we can’t really say they were harmed by not being born / hatched.
So reducing number of farm animals is probably not that bad.
It’s more that life affirming stance makes reduction of farming less of a priority, but still certainly permissible and probably something to be endorsed, as with current numbers it’s very hard to ensure adequate welfare for those animals.
I think the right framing for factory farming is to think of Earth having certain resources and which lives those resources go toward supporting, not whether they go toward supporting those lives at all.
For example, the resources being used to support factory farming are not being used to support some other number and quality of human and animal lives that they could be used to support. So, the trade-off is not between animals in factory farms and nothing, but between animals in factory farms and some number of humans and/or animals not in factory farms.
I think it would be a mistake to confuse the life-affirming attitude with endorsement of the repugnant conclusion. Or that it makes eliminating factory farms less of a priority. I think this is too simple and too binary a way of thinking about it. Animals in cages can’t fly, jump, or run. But they would like to, and they should.
(It’s not like the debate here is about whether animals in factory farms should be killed or not — they are going to be killed anyway, that’s the whole point of factory farms.)
I think the best real life comparison is the one I already raised. People in countries undergoing economic development (either now, for developing countries, or in the past, for developed countries) doing family planning and choosing to have, say, two children instead of five, because they can provide for two children much better than they can for five. It’s hard to argue this isn’t out of love or an affirmation of life. It’s hard to say this is any way life-denying, negative utilitarian, anti-natalist, nihilist, or pessimistic. It’s simply parents trying to care best for their children, and affirming the value of having kids and parenthood, while attempting to balance quantity of lives with quality of lives as best they can figure out.
You said in another comment, “my life-affirming stance isn’t necessarily a life-maximizing stance”, so maybe you already agree.
The most disturbing part of negative utilitarianism is that it implies the optimal thing to do would be to annihilate the whole universe right now. This sounds insane, but I have seen at least one person on the EA Forum who, while cagey about saying such things outright, seemed to believe that it would be better if no life on Earth (or anywhere in the universe) existed at all.
I think it would be a mistake to confuse the life-affirming attitude with endorsement of the repugnant conclusion. Or that it makes eliminating factory farms less of a priority. I think this is too simple and too binary a way of thinking about it. Animals in cages can’t fly, jump, or run. But they would like to, and they should.
I agree that factory farming should be eventually eliminated entirely.
But I’m not so sure about non-factory less intensive types of farming.
You put it really great here: Animals in cages can’t fly, jump, or run. But they would like to, and they should.
I agree wholeheartedly.
(It’s not like the debate here is about whether animals in factory farms should be killed or not — they are going to be killed anyway, that’s the whole point of factory farms.)
Another very strong point. Here’s how I look at it. The question is whether the world with some number of farm animals (cows, pigs, chicken, etc) is better than the one without them, even if it means that those animals will be continually grown for the purpose of being killed? That is what is better—to kill them once and for all (or stop reproducing them) - some sort of near extermination, perhaps to keep just a few specimens and keep them in zoos. Or to keep growing them and killing them perpetually. It’s very unpleasant to even think about it like this, but this is the only honest way of thinking about it. So thanks for bringing this up. I lean towards it being better to keep them in numbers significantly larger than just a few zoo individuals to preserve the species, but in number significantly lower than their current population. Perhaps the optimal number of those animals is equivalent to maximum number of them that we can support in humane conditions and without industrial farming… Perhaps like they were kept in the before industrial revolution. Maybe we could keep just 10% − 20% of animals in conditions like that. If they could live truly good lives, while providing us with food and agricultural products, and being slaughtered in humane ways. Then I think it’s better then near extermination, and also much better then current inhuman conditions in which they are kept. It would be great if we could perhaps keep the number as large as 50% of the current number, while improving their life conditions maximally, but I’m afraid it’s very hard to achieve.
I think the best real life comparison is the one I already raised. People in countries undergoing economic development (either now, for developing countries, or in the past, for developed countries) doing family planning and choosing to have, say, two children instead of five, because they can provide for two children much better than they can for five. It’s hard to argue this isn’t out of love or an affirmation of life. It’s hard to say this is any way life-denying, negative utilitarian, anti-natalist, nihilist, or pessimistic. It’s simply parents trying to care best for their children, and affirming the value of having kids and parenthood, while attempting to balance quantity of lives with quality of lives as best they can figure out.
Yes I agree, there’s no moral obligation, IMO, to have as many children as possible.
I’m also unsure about factory farmed animals vs. animals on hobby farms or smaller-scale farms. I was referring to only, specifically factory farms. ~99% of farmed animals are on factory farms, so what to do about other kinds of farms is a much more minor consideration. It still matters, it just matters ~1% as much.
I think you are on the right track with your discussion of keeping much fewer cows, pigs, chickens, etc. in much more humane conditions. Which is to say, I agree with the track you’re on.
The main point I’d add in addition to what you just said is that I’m not picky about the species of the creatures (human or non-human) that replace the factory farmed animals. For example, if it somehow (I don’t know how) turned out that the resources we saved by eliminating factory farms (e.g. by replacing them with the stuff the charity New Harvest is working on) meant we can support a lot more pet dogs and cats on the Earth, the large majority of whom were well-loved and well-treated, then I would be happy with that outcome.
Factory farmed animals could be replaced by humans, by other animals, or by animals of the same species (e.g. cows, pigs, and chickens) in smaller numbers, and any of those scenarios would be okay. More than okay, good.
If you think of the limited resources we have, such as energy, land, human labour, money/wealth/capital, etc., those resources can support a certain number of lives of a certain level of quality, and we are always making that trade-off, not a trade-off between lives and no lives.
Could you clarify a bit?
Your instinct is correct, your desire for a more common sense and innocent view of life is correct. Negative utilitarians, anti-natalists, and others with grim ethical views will try to convince you that you are wrong, and they will have a lot of persuasive ammo to use — because the suffering and tragedy in life is very real — but the wisdom of ages and nations is on your side.
Some form of hedonic utilitarianism may in some sense be correct in principle, but, even so, the way hedonic utilitarian calculations are made in practice can easily be oversimplistic. Is my experience of meaning and purpose in life not in some sense part of my pleasure or happiness? Are all forms of suffering inherently bad and undesirable, something we should get rid of if somehow we had the option, or is, in fact, much suffering important to life and part of what makes it good and worth living? There are times I have been grateful for my suffering.
So many of the points you make in this article are right and beautifully articulated. You are absolutely on the right track.
The one specific argument I disagree with is about factory farms. Getting rid of factory farms does not necessarily reduce the net number of lives, human or animal, in the long-term. The resources that go into factory farms can go into supporting other lives, human or animal. Or getting rid of factory farms may reduce the net number of lives, but not to zero, and allow the remaining lives to be better, which is something common moral intuition and revealed preference supports (e.g. people choosing to have fewer children who they can give more resources per capita). We generally don’t like the repugnant conclusion — we would prefer to have fewer lives above a certain minimum bar of well-being we think of as the conditions for a good life than more lives that fall below that bar — and rejecting the logic of the larder is based on a similar logic as rejecting the repugnant conclusion.
(There is a separate idea about whether we should try to improve conditions for animals on factory farms in the meantime, which at least in effective altruism there is widespread agreement that we absolutely should, even if our end goal is to get rid of factory farms eventually. Those are compatible goals.)
I don’t really know what to do about wild animal suffering because we have so much uncertainty about animal consciousness and, even if we knew much more, it would still be hard to figure out what to do, at least in terms of trying to address the whole global problem. (Maybe some limited interventions are clearer and simpler, and not insurmountably hard.) We may need much more advanced science and technology, as well as much more wealth, to properly address wild animal suffering. So, we may have to wait a while before we can do it. But we have a lot on our plate to solve in the meantime, like factory farms and global poverty.
But your overall life-affirming stance is correct and you eloquently explain some of the reasons for taking this stance and rejecting the life-denying stance of negative utilitarians and anti-natalists.
Part of the problem is we understand very little about human consciousness and even what it would mean for human consciousness to be “net positive” or “net negative”. Some people talk as if they can know what that means in practice, but this is highly dubious.
In all of us there is a voice calling out that we want to live.
“By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes.” –E.M. Forster
(On a personal note, even though life can feel hard and heavy at times, there are moments when something makes me laugh a lot and that alone seems to be enough to justify life in spite of all the suffering, and make me glad I lived.)
You’re probably right about factory farming. I do think that we should eat less meat, and some drop in number of farm animals would probably be good.
But I wanted to say in which direction would life affirming stance take us if fully accepted.
Unfortunately it would also point us towards greater acceptance of repugnant conclusion which is another thing that I dislike and that feels wrong.
But the thing about repugnant conclusion is what it really means “barely worth living”. How high this bar is, is very subjective.
If such lives are truly worth living, it might not matter that much if it’s barely.
But if the bar is too low, then they might indeed be not worth living, according to most who wouldn’t agree with the bar. The bar is subjective, this is the problem.
And it’s very hard to talk about lives being or not being worth living when it comes to existing beings.
It’s easier when planning for the future. If certain cows and chickens are never to be born / hatched in the first place, we can’t really say they were harmed by not being born / hatched.
So reducing number of farm animals is probably not that bad.
It’s more that life affirming stance makes reduction of farming less of a priority, but still certainly permissible and probably something to be endorsed, as with current numbers it’s very hard to ensure adequate welfare for those animals.
I think the right framing for factory farming is to think of Earth having certain resources and which lives those resources go toward supporting, not whether they go toward supporting those lives at all.
For example, the resources being used to support factory farming are not being used to support some other number and quality of human and animal lives that they could be used to support. So, the trade-off is not between animals in factory farms and nothing, but between animals in factory farms and some number of humans and/or animals not in factory farms.
I think it would be a mistake to confuse the life-affirming attitude with endorsement of the repugnant conclusion. Or that it makes eliminating factory farms less of a priority. I think this is too simple and too binary a way of thinking about it. Animals in cages can’t fly, jump, or run. But they would like to, and they should.
(It’s not like the debate here is about whether animals in factory farms should be killed or not — they are going to be killed anyway, that’s the whole point of factory farms.)
I think the best real life comparison is the one I already raised. People in countries undergoing economic development (either now, for developing countries, or in the past, for developed countries) doing family planning and choosing to have, say, two children instead of five, because they can provide for two children much better than they can for five. It’s hard to argue this isn’t out of love or an affirmation of life. It’s hard to say this is any way life-denying, negative utilitarian, anti-natalist, nihilist, or pessimistic. It’s simply parents trying to care best for their children, and affirming the value of having kids and parenthood, while attempting to balance quantity of lives with quality of lives as best they can figure out.
You said in another comment, “my life-affirming stance isn’t necessarily a life-maximizing stance”, so maybe you already agree.
The most disturbing part of negative utilitarianism is that it implies the optimal thing to do would be to annihilate the whole universe right now. This sounds insane, but I have seen at least one person on the EA Forum who, while cagey about saying such things outright, seemed to believe that it would be better if no life on Earth (or anywhere in the universe) existed at all.
I agree that factory farming should be eventually eliminated entirely.
But I’m not so sure about non-factory less intensive types of farming.
You put it really great here: Animals in cages can’t fly, jump, or run. But they would like to, and they should.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Another very strong point. Here’s how I look at it. The question is whether the world with some number of farm animals (cows, pigs, chicken, etc) is better than the one without them, even if it means that those animals will be continually grown for the purpose of being killed? That is what is better—to kill them once and for all (or stop reproducing them) - some sort of near extermination, perhaps to keep just a few specimens and keep them in zoos. Or to keep growing them and killing them perpetually. It’s very unpleasant to even think about it like this, but this is the only honest way of thinking about it. So thanks for bringing this up. I lean towards it being better to keep them in numbers significantly larger than just a few zoo individuals to preserve the species, but in number significantly lower than their current population. Perhaps the optimal number of those animals is equivalent to maximum number of them that we can support in humane conditions and without industrial farming… Perhaps like they were kept in the before industrial revolution. Maybe we could keep just 10% − 20% of animals in conditions like that. If they could live truly good lives, while providing us with food and agricultural products, and being slaughtered in humane ways. Then I think it’s better then near extermination, and also much better then current inhuman conditions in which they are kept. It would be great if we could perhaps keep the number as large as 50% of the current number, while improving their life conditions maximally, but I’m afraid it’s very hard to achieve.
Yes I agree, there’s no moral obligation, IMO, to have as many children as possible.
I’m also unsure about factory farmed animals vs. animals on hobby farms or smaller-scale farms. I was referring to only, specifically factory farms. ~99% of farmed animals are on factory farms, so what to do about other kinds of farms is a much more minor consideration. It still matters, it just matters ~1% as much.
I think you are on the right track with your discussion of keeping much fewer cows, pigs, chickens, etc. in much more humane conditions. Which is to say, I agree with the track you’re on.
The main point I’d add in addition to what you just said is that I’m not picky about the species of the creatures (human or non-human) that replace the factory farmed animals. For example, if it somehow (I don’t know how) turned out that the resources we saved by eliminating factory farms (e.g. by replacing them with the stuff the charity New Harvest is working on) meant we can support a lot more pet dogs and cats on the Earth, the large majority of whom were well-loved and well-treated, then I would be happy with that outcome.
Factory farmed animals could be replaced by humans, by other animals, or by animals of the same species (e.g. cows, pigs, and chickens) in smaller numbers, and any of those scenarios would be okay. More than okay, good.
If you think of the limited resources we have, such as energy, land, human labour, money/wealth/capital, etc., those resources can support a certain number of lives of a certain level of quality, and we are always making that trade-off, not a trade-off between lives and no lives.