I’m very skeptical of negative utilitarianism. There are other ways it makes sense if other non-utilitarian considerations matter, as I was saying above.
To try to point you in the direction I was thinking, I’ll quote Michael Huemer below and clarify that I lean toward Huemer’s view that the appropriate thing to do is “draw a line somewhere in the middle” rather than take the extreme view of strict consequentialism:
““How large must the benefits be to justify a rights violation?” (For instance, for what number n is it permissible to kill one innocent person to save n innocent lives?) One extreme answer is “Rights violations are never justified,” but for various reasons, I think this answer [is] indefensible. Another extreme answer is consequentialism, “Rights violations are justified whenever the benefits exceed the harms” – which is really equivalent to saying there are no such things as rights. This is not indefensible, but it is very counter-intuitive. So we’re left with a seemingly arbitrary line somewhere in the middle.”
When drawing the line somewhere in the middle murdering one person to save two may not be permissible (even though under utilitarianismit is), but murdering one to save 1000 may be, say.
Similarly, under one of these “line somewhere in the middle” views killing a sentient cattle for beef may be permissible if one could be certain that the cattle definitely had a net positive life, however killing the cattle may be impermissible given a certain amount of doubt (say 10%) about whether the cattle’s life is net positive (even if one still thinks the cattle’s life is net positive in expectation).
I’m very skeptical of negative utilitarianism. There are other ways it makes sense if other non-utilitarian considerations matter, as I was saying above.
To try to point you in the direction I was thinking, I’ll quote Michael Huemer below and clarify that I lean toward Huemer’s view that the appropriate thing to do is “draw a line somewhere in the middle” rather than take the extreme view of strict consequentialism:
““How large must the benefits be to justify a rights violation?” (For instance, for what number n is it permissible to kill one innocent person to save n innocent lives?) One extreme answer is “Rights violations are never justified,” but for various reasons, I think this answer [is] indefensible. Another extreme answer is consequentialism, “Rights violations are justified whenever the benefits exceed the harms” – which is really equivalent to saying there are no such things as rights. This is not indefensible, but it is very counter-intuitive. So we’re left with a seemingly arbitrary line somewhere in the middle.”
When drawing the line somewhere in the middle murdering one person to save two may not be permissible (even though under utilitarianismit is), but murdering one to save 1000 may be, say.
Similarly, under one of these “line somewhere in the middle” views killing a sentient cattle for beef may be permissible if one could be certain that the cattle definitely had a net positive life, however killing the cattle may be impermissible given a certain amount of doubt (say 10%) about whether the cattle’s life is net positive (even if one still thinks the cattle’s life is net positive in expectation).