Vasco Grilo🔸 comments on The Meat Eater Problem

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

I’m Not a Speciesist; I’m Just a Utilitarian. Great piece from Brian Tomasik illustrating key differences between animals and humans. Saving human lives might be good even if they decrease welfare in the nearterm (due to negative impacts on animals):

When we examine the above list of points, we see that most of the utilitarian arguments for deontological /​ virtue-ethical behavior only apply regarding our interactions with other humans.^a For example:

1. Game-theoretic considerations only apply to other agents smart enough to interact in a game-theoretic way with us, which seems to exclude most non-human animals.

2. Decision-theoretic motivations for promises and honesty likewise only apply to agents who can understand the relevance of such commitments.

3. Striking fear into the hearts of a populace only applies to animals that read the news or spread gossip (except for other animals that may be present to directly witness or hear, e.g., a slaughter taking place).

4. Breaking down bonds of social cohesion only applies to animals who enter into long-term trusting relationships with humans. (So, e.g., it might be bad on balance to violate the trust of your pet dog even for good reasons but not bad on balance to break the trust of a wild animal for good reasons.)

The only arguments from the previous section that seem to apply clearly in the case of animals are

1. overriding severe miscalculation of costs vs. benefits regarding actions that harm some individuals

2. preventing self-serving behavior that’s justified under the pretext of advancing the greater good.

While these two considerations are important, the main force of the utilitarian arguments for deontology is lost in the case of non-human animals.

In essence, as I commented, humans are not only moral patients, but also moral agents.