Sorry I could not respond earlier as I was traveling. The first point is somewhat about (2) and the second point is about (1). On the second point, I could flesh this out more and may in a future post but basically even if we find animal investment/ownership does help (and there’s some indication it does), I think when you factor the extremely painful deaths that most of these animals have after a pretty brief life and more so the propagation of the idea of animal ownership that significantly increases the likelihood of the sort of unambiguously bad animal agriculture industry we have in the U.S. and Europe, that is likely to be pretty easily outweighed. Maybe I’m overconfident on this but I think as soon as we consider animals’ interests equally the picture changes dramatically.
On the first point, I say somewhat because I would argue for these side constraints for consequentialist reasons. At a rough level I would argue based on revealed preferences that our upholding norms for violence against humans suggests this is consequentially useful. That suggests we should extend those same norms to animals.
Sorry I could not respond earlier as I was traveling. The first point is somewhat about (2) and the second point is about (1). On the second point, I could flesh this out more and may in a future post but basically even if we find animal investment/ownership does help (and there’s some indication it does), I think when you factor the extremely painful deaths that most of these animals have after a pretty brief life and more so the propagation of the idea of animal ownership that significantly increases the likelihood of the sort of unambiguously bad animal agriculture industry we have in the U.S. and Europe, that is likely to be pretty easily outweighed. Maybe I’m overconfident on this but I think as soon as we consider animals’ interests equally the picture changes dramatically.
On the first point, I say somewhat because I would argue for these side constraints for consequentialist reasons. At a rough level I would argue based on revealed preferences that our upholding norms for violence against humans suggests this is consequentially useful. That suggests we should extend those same norms to animals.