I think Vasco’s personal strong endorsement of hedonistic utilitarianism has maybe caused confusion about the degree to which the meat eating problem can be avoided just by abandoning utilitarianism for standard reasons. And I also worry some of the criticism of Vasco is stretching the term “naive utilitarian” beyond its standard meaning.
On the first point, an overall ethical view could imply that global health donations are bad for the reasons Vasco gives, even if it was quite distant from hedonistic utilitarianism in a number of ways:
-Firstly, this doesn’t really seem to be a question of preference versus hedonistic utilitarianism. Presumably there is some sense in which preference utilitarianism counts animal suffering as frustrated preference and still bad. So the frustration of animal preferences caused by meat eating could still outweigh the value in terms of satisfied preference from saving human lives. It’s unclear to me which of preference or hedonistic utilitarianism is more likely to deliver this result, but I don’t see an obvious reason why hedonistic utilitarianism is more likely to.
-Secondly, and more importantly, just valuing other things apart from pleasure and suffering won’t necessarily reverse Vasco’s conclusion that meat consumption patterns mean saving human lives does more harm than good, though you’d need to re-do the analysis. On any sane pluralist view where things other than pleasure and suffering matter (and as it happens, I fairly strongly reject pure hedonism), suffering is still bad. So it could still be the case that the badness of suffering caused by the average human through meat consumption outweighs the value of the hedonic and non-hedonic goods that the typical beneficiary of life-saving global health charities will experience in a lifetime. It is likely true that bringing in non-hedonic goods makes it more likely that the goods experience in a human lifetime come out as outweighing the suffering caused by meat consumption, but more likely doesn’t mean “guaranteed” or even “probability above 50%”, it’s purely relative.
-Thirdly, nothing about Vasco’s reasoning here implies the controversial consequentialist claim that you should murder people or otherwise violate human rights, or break standard commonsense moral rules whenever that produces the best consequences. It’s perfectly coherent to think that a human life continuing is net harmful because of meat consumption, but also you shouldn’t murder that person, or try and bring about their death through conventionally immoral means like lying, law-breaking etc., because consequentialism is false, and the ends don’t justify the means. It’s true that Vasco is (effectively) recommending one particular action that would bring about deaths in response to the harms humans would cause, namely, not donating to global health charities. But this is not a conventionally immoral or obviously rights-violating action. Common sense morality says that you are allowed not to give to global health charities for any number of reasons: you want to spend the money on your own children, you want to give to research into the rare cancer that killed your Dad etc. So common sense morality is consistent with the recipients of global health charities not having a right to our help, and with it being morally permissible to withhold that help even if it leads to their deaths*.
The meat eater/eating problem is an issue for anyone who
A) Donates to global health
B) Thinks that animal suffering can in principle be compared to, and sometimes outweigh large benefits to humans
C) Thinks we shouldn’t make donations that are net harmful.
That is surely a far wider group than “hedonistic utilitarians”, not just in principle, but in practice. I say this not to defend Vasco’s personal honor-I find total commitment to hedonistic utilitarianism a bit scary as it happens, but because I don’t think other people should avoid thinking about the potential inconsistency in their views here. Even if, like Karthik, you are 100% certain that the correct reaction to any inconsistency can’t possibly be deciding that it is net good when the average child dies, it is probably still good to think about which of your other commitments you want to give up to avoid inconsistency.
As for “naive utilitarianism”, as I understood this term it doesn’t mean “embracing any conclusion that conflicts with common sense, because you are a utilitarian and believe it is correct from a utilitarian point of view.” Rather, as I understood it a “naive utilitarian” was a utilitarian who:
A) Tries to make moral decisions on the basis of explicit utility calculations and B) Is prepared to perform conventionally highly immoral and norm-breaking actions like stealing and murder, if an explicit utility calculation implies they are optimal.
And part of the point of calling this “naive” was that such a decision procedure was not only contrary to common sense, but also unlikely to actually maximize utility.
Vasco’s post isn’t a clear example of naive utilitarianism in this sense because he isn’t recommending any action that is clearly highly conventionally immoral and norm-breaking. The only action he is recommending, if any, is not donating to global health charities. His reasons for thinking this are definitely extremely inconsistent with common sense, but that’s not enough to make it “naive utilitarianism” as I understand the term, because I understand it, naive utilitarianism is distinctively about pursuing utilitarian ends through ruthless/violent/deceptive means.
*(I’m not denying there might be some less common sense non-consequentialist moral views on which aid recipients do have a right to our help.)
Vasco’s post isn’t a clear example of naive utilitarianism in this sense because he isn’t recommending any action that is clearly highly conventionally immoral and norm-breaking. The only action he is recommending, if any, is not donating to global health charities.
While it would be unfair to compare Vasco’s possible recommendation to a recommendation for “conventionally highly immoral and norm-breaking actions like stealing and murder,” conceding that exclusion doesn’t really help me that much. There’s still a wide scope of action in which one could act on a principle what looks something like young children’s lives as a class are likely net-negative and so we should generally avoid saving those lives unless it would be rights-violating to do so. [1]
For example, I could vote against costless consumer-safety laws because they are lifesaving, or vote against hospitals having to provide unfunded lifesaving charity care to those who are unable to pay for that care (EMTALA in the US). There are other reasons one might conceivably vote against such legislation (e.g., heavy libertarian ideology, or awareness of the rather significant costs of EMTALA).
But if I’m going to apply the reasoning of Vasco’s post when evaluating lifesaving global health charities, I’m going to need a good reason not to apply it to strangers drowning in a pond or votes on legislation. And I’m not thrilled with the candidate arguments that I can come up with to confine the post’s logic to the narrow grounds of charitable donations (even though I accept the reasons for not extending them to murder, theft, etc.). Without a convincing way to cabin the post to charitable donations, I think most of us are not willing to consider biting the bullet and (e.g.) voting to repeal lifesaving legislation even though having more people die of exploding toasters and emergency-room refusals would presumably lead to fewer factory-farmed animals.
I went with rights-violating with a nod to this post (the top result for naive utilitarianism on Google), and because I wanted to minimize strong effect of partiality commonly associated with conventional morality.
Yeah, I think this is probably right. My point isn’t that there is nothing troubling or potentially dangerous about Vasco’s reasoning-that’s clearly not true-but just that people should be careful in how they describe it, and not claim it rests on more controversial starting premises than it actually does. (I.e. in particular that it doesn’t have hedonism or consequentialism as a starting premise; obviously it does make some controversial assumptions.)
Thanks, Jason. Assuming the best voting option has benefits relative to not voting equivalent to increasing the consumption of 1 person by 4 % for 1 year, that half of the population votes, which extrapolated to all voters would imply consumption growing 2 pp (= 0.04*0.5) faster for 1 year, and that each consumption doubling for 1 year is as good as averting 0.5 DALYs, the best voting option would be worth averting 0.02 DALYs (= 0.04*0.5). I estimate cage-free campaigns have a cost-effectiveness of 4.59 DALY/$, in which case donating just 0.00436 $ (= 0.02/4.59) to such campaigns would be as good as casting the best vote. For a net income of 20 $/h, that would be 0.785 s (= 0.00436/20*60^2). Voting would take way more time than this, so it would be better for people caring about animal welfare to skip voting to work (on directly helping animals, or earning to give), or have a good time to make them more productive in their work later.
I think most people (I would say over 99 percent outside of EA) would consider avoiding saving the lives of the poorest and most disadvantaged humans because they might make animals suffer, while rich countries continue to cause most animal suffering a “conventionally highly immoral and norm-breaking action.”, thus meeting your second criteria.
I also think most people (although perhaps not over 95 percent) would consider this pursuing utilitarianism through ruthless means.
To perhaps labour the point, the idea saving the lives of really poor people is a good thing, is a pretty strong conventional norm, even if most people don’t take that seriously enough to do much about it.
Stopping doing something is still an action.
So for me at least this meets your criteria for naive utilitarianism.
I’d distinguish here between actions and reasons for action. The action is not conventionally immoral, but the reason for action is. I think this is probably a significant distinction, though how it is significant doesn’t feel very clear to me.
I don’t understand this distinction really, but I’m not great at the nuances of moral philosophy. Which action do you not think is “conventionally immoral?”
Thanks yes that’s an interesting one. I understand the situation now and maybe it does matter to some degree, although like you I cant understand how it to what degree.
I think if you ask people a question like “do you think it’s immoral to stop giving to global health charities because they may peoples lives they may harm animals” then almost everyone would consider that conventionally immoral.
If you ask people “do you think it’s immoral to choose not stop giving to charities which save peoples lives” that might slip through as not immoral yes, but only because people would automatically assume other reasons for not taking that action.
In any case though, I think what I mostly object to isn’t the claim that if you endorse Vasco’s reasoning because you are a utilitarian that counts as “naive”, but rather the use of the “naive utilitarian” label to imply that his reasoning:
a) is distinctively utilitarian rather than being compatible with a variety of moral views
b) commits you to being prepared to use violence/deception.
I think Vasco’s personal strong endorsement of hedonistic utilitarianism has maybe caused confusion about the degree to which the meat eating problem can be avoided just by abandoning utilitarianism for standard reasons. And I also worry some of the criticism of Vasco is stretching the term “naive utilitarian” beyond its standard meaning.
On the first point, an overall ethical view could imply that global health donations are bad for the reasons Vasco gives, even if it was quite distant from hedonistic utilitarianism in a number of ways:
-Firstly, this doesn’t really seem to be a question of preference versus hedonistic utilitarianism. Presumably there is some sense in which preference utilitarianism counts animal suffering as frustrated preference and still bad. So the frustration of animal preferences caused by meat eating could still outweigh the value in terms of satisfied preference from saving human lives. It’s unclear to me which of preference or hedonistic utilitarianism is more likely to deliver this result, but I don’t see an obvious reason why hedonistic utilitarianism is more likely to.
-Secondly, and more importantly, just valuing other things apart from pleasure and suffering won’t necessarily reverse Vasco’s conclusion that meat consumption patterns mean saving human lives does more harm than good, though you’d need to re-do the analysis. On any sane pluralist view where things other than pleasure and suffering matter (and as it happens, I fairly strongly reject pure hedonism), suffering is still bad. So it could still be the case that the badness of suffering caused by the average human through meat consumption outweighs the value of the hedonic and non-hedonic goods that the typical beneficiary of life-saving global health charities will experience in a lifetime. It is likely true that bringing in non-hedonic goods makes it more likely that the goods experience in a human lifetime come out as outweighing the suffering caused by meat consumption, but more likely doesn’t mean “guaranteed” or even “probability above 50%”, it’s purely relative.
-Thirdly, nothing about Vasco’s reasoning here implies the controversial consequentialist claim that you should murder people or otherwise violate human rights, or break standard commonsense moral rules whenever that produces the best consequences. It’s perfectly coherent to think that a human life continuing is net harmful because of meat consumption, but also you shouldn’t murder that person, or try and bring about their death through conventionally immoral means like lying, law-breaking etc., because consequentialism is false, and the ends don’t justify the means. It’s true that Vasco is (effectively) recommending one particular action that would bring about deaths in response to the harms humans would cause, namely, not donating to global health charities. But this is not a conventionally immoral or obviously rights-violating action. Common sense morality says that you are allowed not to give to global health charities for any number of reasons: you want to spend the money on your own children, you want to give to research into the rare cancer that killed your Dad etc. So common sense morality is consistent with the recipients of global health charities not having a right to our help, and with it being morally permissible to withhold that help even if it leads to their deaths*.
The meat eater/eating problem is an issue for anyone who
A) Donates to global health
B) Thinks that animal suffering can in principle be compared to, and sometimes outweigh large benefits to humans
C) Thinks we shouldn’t make donations that are net harmful.
That is surely a far wider group than “hedonistic utilitarians”, not just in principle, but in practice. I say this not to defend Vasco’s personal honor-I find total commitment to hedonistic utilitarianism a bit scary as it happens, but because I don’t think other people should avoid thinking about the potential inconsistency in their views here. Even if, like Karthik, you are 100% certain that the correct reaction to any inconsistency can’t possibly be deciding that it is net good when the average child dies, it is probably still good to think about which of your other commitments you want to give up to avoid inconsistency.
As for “naive utilitarianism”, as I understood this term it doesn’t mean “embracing any conclusion that conflicts with common sense, because you are a utilitarian and believe it is correct from a utilitarian point of view.” Rather, as I understood it a “naive utilitarian” was a utilitarian who:
A) Tries to make moral decisions on the basis of explicit utility calculations
and
B) Is prepared to perform conventionally highly immoral and norm-breaking actions like stealing and murder, if an explicit utility calculation implies they are optimal.
And part of the point of calling this “naive” was that such a decision procedure was not only contrary to common sense, but also unlikely to actually maximize utility.
Vasco’s post isn’t a clear example of naive utilitarianism in this sense because he isn’t recommending any action that is clearly highly conventionally immoral and norm-breaking. The only action he is recommending, if any, is not donating to global health charities. His reasons for thinking this are definitely extremely inconsistent with common sense, but that’s not enough to make it “naive utilitarianism” as I understand the term, because I understand it, naive utilitarianism is distinctively about pursuing utilitarian ends through ruthless/violent/deceptive means.
*(I’m not denying there might be some less common sense non-consequentialist moral views on which aid recipients do have a right to our help.)
While it would be unfair to compare Vasco’s possible recommendation to a recommendation for “conventionally highly immoral and norm-breaking actions like stealing and murder,” conceding that exclusion doesn’t really help me that much. There’s still a wide scope of action in which one could act on a principle what looks something like young children’s lives as a class are likely net-negative and so we should generally avoid saving those lives unless it would be rights-violating to do so. [1]
For example, I could vote against costless consumer-safety laws because they are lifesaving, or vote against hospitals having to provide unfunded lifesaving charity care to those who are unable to pay for that care (EMTALA in the US). There are other reasons one might conceivably vote against such legislation (e.g., heavy libertarian ideology, or awareness of the rather significant costs of EMTALA).
But if I’m going to apply the reasoning of Vasco’s post when evaluating lifesaving global health charities, I’m going to need a good reason not to apply it to strangers drowning in a pond or votes on legislation. And I’m not thrilled with the candidate arguments that I can come up with to confine the post’s logic to the narrow grounds of charitable donations (even though I accept the reasons for not extending them to murder, theft, etc.). Without a convincing way to cabin the post to charitable donations, I think most of us are not willing to consider biting the bullet and (e.g.) voting to repeal lifesaving legislation even though having more people die of exploding toasters and emergency-room refusals would presumably lead to fewer factory-farmed animals.
I went with rights-violating with a nod to this post (the top result for naive utilitarianism on Google), and because I wanted to minimize strong effect of partiality commonly associated with conventional morality.
Yeah, I think this is probably right. My point isn’t that there is nothing troubling or potentially dangerous about Vasco’s reasoning-that’s clearly not true-but just that people should be careful in how they describe it, and not claim it rests on more controversial starting premises than it actually does. (I.e. in particular that it doesn’t have hedonism or consequentialism as a starting premise; obviously it does make some controversial assumptions.)
Thanks, Jason. Assuming the best voting option has benefits relative to not voting equivalent to increasing the consumption of 1 person by 4 % for 1 year, that half of the population votes, which extrapolated to all voters would imply consumption growing 2 pp (= 0.04*0.5) faster for 1 year, and that each consumption doubling for 1 year is as good as averting 0.5 DALYs, the best voting option would be worth averting 0.02 DALYs (= 0.04*0.5). I estimate cage-free campaigns have a cost-effectiveness of 4.59 DALY/$, in which case donating just 0.00436 $ (= 0.02/4.59) to such campaigns would be as good as casting the best vote. For a net income of 20 $/h, that would be 0.785 s (= 0.00436/20*60^2). Voting would take way more time than this, so it would be better for people caring about animal welfare to skip voting to work (on directly helping animals, or earning to give), or have a good time to make them more productive in their work later.
I think most people (I would say over 99 percent outside of EA) would consider avoiding saving the lives of the poorest and most disadvantaged humans because they might make animals suffer, while rich countries continue to cause most animal suffering a “conventionally highly immoral and norm-breaking action.”, thus meeting your second criteria.
I also think most people (although perhaps not over 95 percent) would consider this pursuing utilitarianism through ruthless means.
To perhaps labour the point, the idea saving the lives of really poor people is a good thing, is a pretty strong conventional norm, even if most people don’t take that seriously enough to do much about it.
Stopping doing something is still an action.
So for me at least this meets your criteria for naive utilitarianism.
I’d distinguish here between actions and reasons for action. The action is not conventionally immoral, but the reason for action is. I think this is probably a significant distinction, though how it is significant doesn’t feel very clear to me.
I don’t understand this distinction really, but I’m not great at the nuances of moral philosophy. Which action do you not think is “conventionally immoral?”
Not giving to global health charities.
Thanks yes that’s an interesting one. I understand the situation now and maybe it does matter to some degree, although like you I cant understand how it to what degree.
I think if you ask people a question like “do you think it’s immoral to stop giving to global health charities because they may peoples lives they may harm animals” then almost everyone would consider that conventionally immoral.
If you ask people “do you think it’s immoral to choose not stop giving to charities which save peoples lives” that might slip through as not immoral yes, but only because people would automatically assume other reasons for not taking that action.
In any case though, I think what I mostly object to isn’t the claim that if you endorse Vasco’s reasoning because you are a utilitarian that counts as “naive”, but rather the use of the “naive utilitarian” label to imply that his reasoning:
a) is distinctively utilitarian rather than being compatible with a variety of moral views
b) commits you to being prepared to use violence/deception.
I would probably agree with that, but I was responding to your criteria above, in which case I think it meets your “Naive utilitarian” citeria.
Thanks for the great clarifications, David! Strongly upvoted.