Hi Jason, thank you for writing this. I appreciate the refreshing reiteration that we do and must make trade-offs between the interests of different species, as well as your careful philosophical treatment. A few thoughts:
An animal’s capacity for welfare is how good or bad its life can go. An animal’s moral status is the degree to which an animal’s experiences or interests matter morally.
While capacity and moral weight are important parameters, I think there also remains significant empirical uncertainty about actual experience as well. Without eliminating this uncertainty, estimate of the two former values may not be especially useful.
(1) a holistic approach, in which relevant experts employ their normative and biological expertise to make all-things-considered estimates of the appropriate tradeoffs between different lives, experiences, or interests, and (2) an atomistic approach, in which we identify empirical proxies for morally salient features, then let our best scientific understanding of the degree to which different animals possess those features guide our estimates of comparative moral value. The two approaches are not in principle mutually exclusive.
As you indicate, these are, of course, not mutually exclusive. However, I suspect they overlap so much as to be not worth distinguishing as any reasonable application would apply both approaches. As you suggest, the weightings of the atomistic features would rely on expert judgement, as would estimates of combination effects, which could occur at the species (or even individual) level. For example, Bracke 2019 is the best study I’ve seen on comparing a wide array of chicken housing condition. In the study, a panel of chicken welfare experts were provided a set of “atomistic” attributes (eg, stocking density, temperature, light exposure) about different housing conditions to inform holistic judgments of the relative welfare of each system. While this is not exactly the same task as assessing capacity for welfare and moral status, it seems analogous and illustrative of the need for a hybrid approach.
So I think there is good reason in general to worry that unwanted considerations unduly sway one’s intuitions about the value of nonhuman animals.
I agree, but this might be mitigated by including these as explanatory variables. For example, the impact of speciesism could at least be examined and potentially controlled for by inclusion of the above-cited speciesism scale or the impact of diet patterns by inclusion of a diet screener.
Personally, I think order is probably the right rank at which to investigate the subject.
This seems very unlikely to be the correct taxa in my opinion. First, taxa above genus or family are generally arbitrary in scope. Second, relevant traits would likely be heterogeneous within such a broad group. For example, within the order of bivalves, there are sessile and motile species, and species with a dozen plus compound eyes or “eyes” that detect only light and dark.
Thanks for your comment! I’m happy to chat in more detail if you’d like to set up a call.
While capacity and moral weight are important parameters, I think there also remains significant empirical uncertainty about actual experience as well.
I agree, and I fully support more research aimed at figuring out how to measure realized welfare. For many comparisons of specific interventions, learning more about the realized welfare of a given group of animals (and how a change in conditions would affect realized welfare) is going to be much more action-relevant than information about capacity for welfare. Considerations pertaining to capacity for welfare are most pertinent to big-picture questions about how we should allocate resources across fairly distinct types of animals (e.g., chickens vs. fish vs. crustaceans vs. insects). I think some uncertainties surrounding capacity for welfare can be resolved without fully solving the problem of how to measure realized welfare in every case. Of course, measuring realized welfare and measuring capacity for welfare share many of the same conceptual and practical hurdles, so we may be able to make progress on the two in tandem.
While this is not exactly the same task as assessing capacity for welfare and moral status, it seems analogous and illustrative of the need for a hybrid approach.
Not sure how much we disagree here. I certainly think all-things-considered expert judgments have an important role to play in assessing capacity for welfare. The post emphasizes the atomistic approach because it’s a lot more complicated (and thus warrants deeper explanation) and also because it’s much more likely to uncover action-relevant information that our untutored all-things-considered judgments may miss. (I liken the project to RP’s previous work on invertebrate sentience, which required many subjective judgment calls but ultimately whose main contribution was a compilation of hard data on 53 empirically measurable features that are relevant to assessing whether or not an animal is sentient.)
This seems very unlikely to be the correct taxa in my opinion. First, taxa above genus or family are generally arbitrary in scope. Second, relevant traits would likely be heterogeneous within such a broad group.
Yeah, I could be convinced that order is the wrong taxonomic rank. My main concern is tractability. The scale of the potential project is already so enormous, and moving from order to family could easily add another 500-1000 hours of work. My hope was that we would be able to discern some broad trends at the level of order (which could be refined in the future). But if neither time nor money were a particular concern, then, for the reasons you outline, I think family would be a much better rank at which to investigate these questions.
Hi Jason, thank you for writing this. I appreciate the refreshing reiteration that we do and must make trade-offs between the interests of different species, as well as your careful philosophical treatment. A few thoughts:
While capacity and moral weight are important parameters, I think there also remains significant empirical uncertainty about actual experience as well. Without eliminating this uncertainty, estimate of the two former values may not be especially useful.
As you indicate, these are, of course, not mutually exclusive. However, I suspect they overlap so much as to be not worth distinguishing as any reasonable application would apply both approaches. As you suggest, the weightings of the atomistic features would rely on expert judgement, as would estimates of combination effects, which could occur at the species (or even individual) level. For example, Bracke 2019 is the best study I’ve seen on comparing a wide array of chicken housing condition. In the study, a panel of chicken welfare experts were provided a set of “atomistic” attributes (eg, stocking density, temperature, light exposure) about different housing conditions to inform holistic judgments of the relative welfare of each system. While this is not exactly the same task as assessing capacity for welfare and moral status, it seems analogous and illustrative of the need for a hybrid approach.
I agree, but this might be mitigated by including these as explanatory variables. For example, the impact of speciesism could at least be examined and potentially controlled for by inclusion of the above-cited speciesism scale or the impact of diet patterns by inclusion of a diet screener.
This seems very unlikely to be the correct taxa in my opinion. First, taxa above genus or family are generally arbitrary in scope. Second, relevant traits would likely be heterogeneous within such a broad group. For example, within the order of bivalves, there are sessile and motile species, and species with a dozen plus compound eyes or “eyes” that detect only light and dark.
Hi Jacob,
Thanks for your comment! I’m happy to chat in more detail if you’d like to set up a call.
I agree, and I fully support more research aimed at figuring out how to measure realized welfare. For many comparisons of specific interventions, learning more about the realized welfare of a given group of animals (and how a change in conditions would affect realized welfare) is going to be much more action-relevant than information about capacity for welfare. Considerations pertaining to capacity for welfare are most pertinent to big-picture questions about how we should allocate resources across fairly distinct types of animals (e.g., chickens vs. fish vs. crustaceans vs. insects). I think some uncertainties surrounding capacity for welfare can be resolved without fully solving the problem of how to measure realized welfare in every case. Of course, measuring realized welfare and measuring capacity for welfare share many of the same conceptual and practical hurdles, so we may be able to make progress on the two in tandem.
Not sure how much we disagree here. I certainly think all-things-considered expert judgments have an important role to play in assessing capacity for welfare. The post emphasizes the atomistic approach because it’s a lot more complicated (and thus warrants deeper explanation) and also because it’s much more likely to uncover action-relevant information that our untutored all-things-considered judgments may miss. (I liken the project to RP’s previous work on invertebrate sentience, which required many subjective judgment calls but ultimately whose main contribution was a compilation of hard data on 53 empirically measurable features that are relevant to assessing whether or not an animal is sentient.)
Yeah, I could be convinced that order is the wrong taxonomic rank. My main concern is tractability. The scale of the potential project is already so enormous, and moving from order to family could easily add another 500-1000 hours of work. My hope was that we would be able to discern some broad trends at the level of order (which could be refined in the future). But if neither time nor money were a particular concern, then, for the reasons you outline, I think family would be a much better rank at which to investigate these questions.
Again, happy to talk more if you’re interested!
Thanks for the helpful clarifications and responses, Jason. I don’t have anything to add at this point, but look forward to reading more of your work!