The arguments for the former mostly depend on nonhuman animals not being sufficiently self-reflective in the right way, and the arguments for the latter depend on brain size/​complexity or particular welfare-relevant capacities that humans have that nonhuman animals lack or have less of, e.g. preferences for the future.
we can’t know how much we are improving animal suffering
There’s also skepticism about the specific interventions supported to help nonhuman animals, because their welfare effects actually seem plausibly bad, or because the evidence is just much less rigorous, or because of interactions with wild animals (as discussed in this thread).
My own view is that farmed vertebrates are very likely to be conscious and brain size/​complexity is relevant and probably the most important factor, and I would tentatively use something between square root and linear weighting for brain regions involved in hedonistic experience. I also think that nonhuman animals (farmed and wild vertebrates) suffer about as much in practice as some of the worst off humans in the world, because of the horrible conditions they face. I also worry about the meat-eater problem, so that helping humans may harm nonhuman animals. Overall, I currently prioritize helping farmed chickens, and doing research on how to best help them and other nonhuman animals (including prioritizing between species).
“I would guess most arguments for global health and poverty over animal welfare fall under the following:
- animals are not conscious or less conscious than humans - animals suffer less than humans
“
I’m pretty skeptical that these arguments descriptively account for most of the people explicitly choosing global poverty interventions over animal welfare interventions, although they certainly account for some people. Polls show wide agreement that birds and mammals are conscious and have welfare to at least some degree. And I think most models on which degree of consciousness (in at least some senses) varies greatly, it’s not so greatly that one would say that, e.g. it’s more expensive to improve consciousness-adjusted welfare in chickens than humans today. And I say that as someone who thinks it pretty plausible that there are important orders-of-magnitude differences in quantitative aspects of consciousness.
I’d say descriptively the bigger thing is people just feeling more emotional/​moral obligations to humans than other animals, not thinking human welfare varies a millionfold more, in the same way that people who choose to ‘donate locally’ in rich communities where cost to save a life is hundreds of times greater than abroad don’t think that poor foreigners are a thousand times less conscious, even as they tradeoff charitable options as though weighting locals hundreds of times more than foreigners.
An explicit philosophical articulation of this is found in Shelly Kagan’s book on weighing the interests of different animals. While even on Kagan’s view factory farming is very bad, he describes a view that assigns greater importance of interests of a given strength for beings with more of certain psychological properties (or counterfactual potential for those properties). The philosopher Mary Anne Warren articulates something similar in her book on moral status, which assigns increasing moral status on the basis of a number of grounds including life (possessed by plants and bacteria, and calling for some status), consciousness, capacity to engage in reciprocal social relations, actual relationships, moral understanding, readinesss to forbear in mutual cooperation, various powers, etc.
I predict that if you polled philosophers on cases involving helping different numbers of various animals, those sorts of accounts would be more frequent explanations of the results than doubt about animal consciousness (as a binary or quantitative scale).
This would be pretty susceptible to polling, e.g. you could ask the EA Survey team to try some questions on it (maybe for a random subset).
I agree with this for the broader philanthropic community, but I had the EA community in mind specifically. I think just speciesism and rationalization of eating animals account for most of the differences in society and charity broadly.
I think most of the other reasons you give wouldn’t fit the EA community, especially given how utilitarian we are. The people who have thought about the issues will give answers related to consciousness and intensity of experience, and maybe moral status like Kagan as you mention. I suppose many newer EAs will not have thought about the issues much at all, though, and so could still have more speciesist views. I think half of EAs in the last EA survey were vegetarian or vegan, though.
I might have underestimated how much EAs prioritizing global health and poverty do so for the better evidence base, and the belief that it is more cost-effective with pretty skeptical prior.
I suspect there are biases in the EA conversation where hedonistic-compatible arguments get discussed more than reasons that hedonistic utilitarians would be upset by, and intuitions coming from other areas may then lead to demand and supply subsidies for such arguments.
I would guess most arguments for global health and poverty over animal welfare fall under the following:
See A Debate on Animal Consciousness, Why might one value animals far less than humans? and this thread here.
The arguments for the former mostly depend on nonhuman animals not being sufficiently self-reflective in the right way, and the arguments for the latter depend on brain size/​complexity or particular welfare-relevant capacities that humans have that nonhuman animals lack or have less of, e.g. preferences for the future.
But also see Rethink Priorities’ research:
https://​​www.rethinkpriorities.org/​​publications#moralweight
https://​​www.rethinkpriorities.org/​​invertebrate-sentience-table
ASENT’s research:
https://​​www.lse.ac.uk/​​cpnss/​​research/​​ASENT
And Luke Muehlhauser’s older work:
https://​​www.openphilanthropy.org/​​2017-report-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood
https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​posts/​​2jTQTxYNwo6zb3Kyp/​​preliminary-thoughts-on-moral-weight
There’s also skepticism about the specific interventions supported to help nonhuman animals, because their welfare effects actually seem plausibly bad, or because the evidence is just much less rigorous, or because of interactions with wild animals (as discussed in this thread).
My own view is that farmed vertebrates are very likely to be conscious and brain size/​complexity is relevant and probably the most important factor, and I would tentatively use something between square root and linear weighting for brain regions involved in hedonistic experience. I also think that nonhuman animals (farmed and wild vertebrates) suffer about as much in practice as some of the worst off humans in the world, because of the horrible conditions they face. I also worry about the meat-eater problem, so that helping humans may harm nonhuman animals. Overall, I currently prioritize helping farmed chickens, and doing research on how to best help them and other nonhuman animals (including prioritizing between species).
“I would guess most arguments for global health and poverty over animal welfare fall under the following:
“
I’m pretty skeptical that these arguments descriptively account for most of the people explicitly choosing global poverty interventions over animal welfare interventions, although they certainly account for some people. Polls show wide agreement that birds and mammals are conscious and have welfare to at least some degree. And I think most models on which degree of consciousness (in at least some senses) varies greatly, it’s not so greatly that one would say that, e.g. it’s more expensive to improve consciousness-adjusted welfare in chickens than humans today. And I say that as someone who thinks it pretty plausible that there are important orders-of-magnitude differences in quantitative aspects of consciousness.
I’d say descriptively the bigger thing is people just feeling more emotional/​moral obligations to humans than other animals, not thinking human welfare varies a millionfold more, in the same way that people who choose to ‘donate locally’ in rich communities where cost to save a life is hundreds of times greater than abroad don’t think that poor foreigners are a thousand times less conscious, even as they tradeoff charitable options as though weighting locals hundreds of times more than foreigners.
An explicit philosophical articulation of this is found in Shelly Kagan’s book on weighing the interests of different animals. While even on Kagan’s view factory farming is very bad, he describes a view that assigns greater importance of interests of a given strength for beings with more of certain psychological properties (or counterfactual potential for those properties). The philosopher Mary Anne Warren articulates something similar in her book on moral status, which assigns increasing moral status on the basis of a number of grounds including life (possessed by plants and bacteria, and calling for some status), consciousness, capacity to engage in reciprocal social relations, actual relationships, moral understanding, readinesss to forbear in mutual cooperation, various powers, etc.
I predict that if you polled philosophers on cases involving helping different numbers of various animals, those sorts of accounts would be more frequent explanations of the results than doubt about animal consciousness (as a binary or quantitative scale).
This would be pretty susceptible to polling, e.g. you could ask the EA Survey team to try some questions on it (maybe for a random subset).
I agree with this for the broader philanthropic community, but I had the EA community in mind specifically. I think just speciesism and rationalization of eating animals account for most of the differences in society and charity broadly.
I think most of the other reasons you give wouldn’t fit the EA community, especially given how utilitarian we are. The people who have thought about the issues will give answers related to consciousness and intensity of experience, and maybe moral status like Kagan as you mention. I suppose many newer EAs will not have thought about the issues much at all, though, and so could still have more speciesist views. I think half of EAs in the last EA survey were vegetarian or vegan, though.
I might have underestimated how much EAs prioritizing global health and poverty do so for the better evidence base, and the belief that it is more cost-effective with pretty skeptical prior.
I suspect there are biases in the EA conversation where hedonistic-compatible arguments get discussed more than reasons that hedonistic utilitarians would be upset by, and intuitions coming from other areas may then lead to demand and supply subsidies for such arguments.