I’m a non-vegan who is pretty confident animals are moral patients.
I would not object to humans being farmed by non-humans provided that the result is more utils being created than the counterfactual (perhaps some utils being enjoyed by the non-human farmers/eaters, but most utils being enjoyed by the humans who are being brought into existence by farming and who would not counterfactually exist).
FWIW, I do think there are instrumental reasons for humans not to subjugate other humans—and those instrumental reasons are very strong—and so of course I would not endorse slavery or cannibalism.
I am a pretty committed total view utilitarian on intuition, which is where this position comes from (but think that to be more confident I should engage at some point with metaethics and try to test how confident I am in this particular ethical framework). If you are a prior existence utilitarian or if you have some non-utilitarian tendencies, farming humans might seem much worse and I should take those intuitions seriously.
Applying this to animals, I feel very comfortable drinking milk or eating grass-fed beef raised here in New Zealand. I am soon relocating to London, and will need to reconsider the specific suffering/pleasure involved in animal products produced there.
Disclaimer: I previously worked on a dairy/beef farm in New Zealand, so there is some risk that my thinking on this topic has been biased by that experience.
I think this point of view makes a lot of sense, and is the most reasonable way an anti-speciesist can defend not being fully vegan.
But I’d be interested to hear more about what the very strong ‘instrumental’ reasons are for humans not subjugating humans, and why they don’t apply to humans subjugating non-humans?
(Edit: I’m vegan, but my stance on it has softened a bit since being won round by the total utilitarian view)
I’m a non-vegan who is pretty confident animals are moral patients.
I would not object to humans being farmed by non-humans provided that the result is more utils being created than the counterfactual (perhaps some utils being enjoyed by the non-human farmers/eaters, but most utils being enjoyed by the humans who are being brought into existence by farming and who would not counterfactually exist).
FWIW, I do think there are instrumental reasons for humans not to subjugate other humans—and those instrumental reasons are very strong—and so of course I would not endorse slavery or cannibalism.
I am a pretty committed total view utilitarian on intuition, which is where this position comes from (but think that to be more confident I should engage at some point with metaethics and try to test how confident I am in this particular ethical framework). If you are a prior existence utilitarian or if you have some non-utilitarian tendencies, farming humans might seem much worse and I should take those intuitions seriously.
Applying this to animals, I feel very comfortable drinking milk or eating grass-fed beef raised here in New Zealand. I am soon relocating to London, and will need to reconsider the specific suffering/pleasure involved in animal products produced there.
Disclaimer: I previously worked on a dairy/beef farm in New Zealand, so there is some risk that my thinking on this topic has been biased by that experience.
I think this point of view makes a lot of sense, and is the most reasonable way an anti-speciesist can defend not being fully vegan.
But I’d be interested to hear more about what the very strong ‘instrumental’ reasons are for humans not subjugating humans, and why they don’t apply to humans subjugating non-humans?
(Edit: I’m vegan, but my stance on it has softened a bit since being won round by the total utilitarian view)