Thanks for the comment. You’re right that realized welfare is ultimately what matters. My hope is that thinking about capacity for welfare will sometimes help inform our estimates of realized welfare, though this certainly won’t be true in every case. As an example of an instance where thinking about capacity for welfare does matter, consider honey bees. At any given time, there are more than a trillion managed honey bees under human control. Varroa destructor mites are a common problem in commercial hives. When a mite attaches to an adult bee, it slowly drains the bee’s blood and fat. (It might be comparable to a tick the size of a baseball latching on to a human.) How does this affect the bee’s welfare? If bees have a capacity for welfare roughly similar to vertebrates, it seems like in the long-run we can do a lot more good by focusing on honey bee welfare.
I believe that interspecies comparisons of welfare are extraordinarily difficult, but I think you are still too pessimistic about the prospect of making such comparisons. It’s true that on many views welfare will be constituted (in whole or in part) by subjective (i.e., private) states for which we don’t have direct evidence. But we can still use inference to the best explanation to justifiably infer the existence of such states. We only have access to our own subjective experiences, but we infer the existence of such states in other humans all the time. (Humans can give self-reports, but of course we can’t independently verify such reports.) I think we can do the same with varying degrees of confidence for nonhuman animals.
For a discussion of possible cross-species measures of animal welfare, see this paper by Heather Browning.
Happy to really get in the weeds of this issue if you want to talk more.
To fill out the details of what you’re getting at, I think you’re saying “the welfare level of an animal is X% of its capacity C. We’re confident of both X and C in the given scenario for animal A is high enough that it’s better to help animal A than animal B”. That may be correct, but you’re accepting that than you can know the welfare levels because you know the percentage of the capacity. But then I can make the same claim again: why should we be confident we’ve got the percentage of the capacity right?
I agree we should, in general, use inference to the best explanation. I’m not sure we know how to do that when we don’t have access to the relevant evidence (the private, subjective states) to draw inferences. If it help, trying putting on the serious sceptic’s hat and ask “okay, we might feel confident animal A is suffering more than animal B, and we do make these sort of judgement the whole time, but what justifies this confidence?”. What I’d really like to understand (not necessary from you—I’ve been thinking about this for a while!) is what the chain of reasoning is that would go into that justification.
But then I can make the same claim again: why should we be confident we’ve got the percentage of the capacity right?
I think even if we’re not confident, bounds on welfare capacity can still be useful. For example, if I know that A produces X net units of good (in expectation), and B produces between Y and Z net units of good, then under risk-neutral expected value maximization, X < Y would tell me that B’s better, and X > Z would tell me that A’s better. The problem is where Y < X < Z. And we can build a distribution over the percentage of capacity or do a sensitivity analysis, something similar to this, say.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the comment. You’re right that realized welfare is ultimately what matters. My hope is that thinking about capacity for welfare will sometimes help inform our estimates of realized welfare, though this certainly won’t be true in every case. As an example of an instance where thinking about capacity for welfare does matter, consider honey bees. At any given time, there are more than a trillion managed honey bees under human control. Varroa destructor mites are a common problem in commercial hives. When a mite attaches to an adult bee, it slowly drains the bee’s blood and fat. (It might be comparable to a tick the size of a baseball latching on to a human.) How does this affect the bee’s welfare? If bees have a capacity for welfare roughly similar to vertebrates, it seems like in the long-run we can do a lot more good by focusing on honey bee welfare.
I believe that interspecies comparisons of welfare are extraordinarily difficult, but I think you are still too pessimistic about the prospect of making such comparisons. It’s true that on many views welfare will be constituted (in whole or in part) by subjective (i.e., private) states for which we don’t have direct evidence. But we can still use inference to the best explanation to justifiably infer the existence of such states. We only have access to our own subjective experiences, but we infer the existence of such states in other humans all the time. (Humans can give self-reports, but of course we can’t independently verify such reports.) I think we can do the same with varying degrees of confidence for nonhuman animals.
For a discussion of possible cross-species measures of animal welfare, see this paper by Heather Browning.
Happy to really get in the weeds of this issue if you want to talk more.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
To fill out the details of what you’re getting at, I think you’re saying “the welfare level of an animal is X% of its capacity C. We’re confident of both X and C in the given scenario for animal A is high enough that it’s better to help animal A than animal B”. That may be correct, but you’re accepting that than you can know the welfare levels because you know the percentage of the capacity. But then I can make the same claim again: why should we be confident we’ve got the percentage of the capacity right?
I agree we should, in general, use inference to the best explanation. I’m not sure we know how to do that when we don’t have access to the relevant evidence (the private, subjective states) to draw inferences. If it help, trying putting on the serious sceptic’s hat and ask “okay, we might feel confident animal A is suffering more than animal B, and we do make these sort of judgement the whole time, but what justifies this confidence?”. What I’d really like to understand (not necessary from you—I’ve been thinking about this for a while!) is what the chain of reasoning is that would go into that justification.
I think even if we’re not confident, bounds on welfare capacity can still be useful. For example, if I know that A produces X net units of good (in expectation), and B produces between Y and Z net units of good, then under risk-neutral expected value maximization, X < Y would tell me that B’s better, and X > Z would tell me that A’s better. The problem is where Y < X < Z. And we can build a distribution over the percentage of capacity or do a sensitivity analysis, something similar to this, say.