A useful test when moral theorizing about animals is to swap “animals” with “humans” and see if your answer changes substantially. In this example, if the answer changes, the relevant difference for you isn’t about pure expected value consequentialism, it’s about some salient difference between the rights or moral status of animals vs. humans. Vegans tend to give significant, even equivalent, moral status to some animals used for food. If you give near-equal moral status to animals, “offsetting meat eating by donating to animal welfare orgs” is similar to “donating to global health charities to offset hiring a hitman to target a group of humans”. There are a series of rebuttals, counter-rebuttals, etc. to this line of reasoning. Not going to get into all of them. But suffice to say that in the animal welfare space, an animal welfarist carnivore is hesitantly trusted—it signals either a lack of commitment or discipline, a diet/health struggle, a discordant belief that animals deserve far less rights and moral status as humans, or (much rarer) a fanatic consequentialist ideology that thinks offsetting human killing is morally coherent and acceptable. A earnest carnivore that cares a lot about animal welfare is incredibly rare.
Are people here against killing one to save two in a vacuum? I thought EA was very utilitarian. I think intuitively, causing harm is repulsive but ultimately, our goal should be creating a better world.
To your “animal” to “human” swap, it’s hard to give “would you kill/eat humans if you could offset” as an double standard since most self-proclaimed utilitarians are still intuitively repulsed to immoral behavior like causing harm to humans, cannibalism, etc. On the other hand, we are biologically programmed to not care when eating animal flesh, even if we deem animal suffering immoral. What this means is that I would be way to horrified to offset killing or eating a human even if I deem it moral. On the other hand, I can offset eating an animal because I don’t intuitively care about the harm I caused. I am too disconnected, biologically preprogrammed, and cognitively dissonant. Therefore, offsetting animal suffering is not repulsive nor immoral to me.
“we are biologically programmed to not care when eating animal flesh”
this isn’t obvious or intuitive to me. It seems like our attitudes toward eating animals are largely culturally conditioned. Regardless, even if it is “innate”, a personal insensitivity to animals is not a moral reason to treat them as interchangeable, expendable, or offsetable.
It seems your justifications for offsets are bit of fanatic consequentialism and a belief that animals do not deserve similar moral status as humans.
Two points in response. First, many vegans were similarly callous towards animals before they became vegan. Cognitive dissonance is incredibly powerful. It’s why many vegans first went vegan for health reasons, then were able to earnestly consider animal moral status, and then stayed vegan for the animals. Second, I think you should be horrified at how some animals are treated as if they were human. Pigs for example are similar enough in biology that they are used for organ transplants and to test painkiller efficacy. There don’t seem to be good reasons to think the experience of pain to a pig is all that different from that of a human infant.
This comment is extremely good. I wish I could incorporate some of it into my comment since it hits the cognitive dissonance aspect far better than I did. It’s near impossible to give significant moral weight to animals and still think it is okay to eat them.
A useful test when moral theorizing about animals is to swap “animals” with “humans” and see if your answer changes substantially. In this example, if the answer changes, the relevant difference for you isn’t about pure expected value consequentialism, it’s about some salient difference between the rights or moral status of animals vs. humans. Vegans tend to give significant, even equivalent, moral status to some animals used for food. If you give near-equal moral status to animals, “offsetting meat eating by donating to animal welfare orgs” is similar to “donating to global health charities to offset hiring a hitman to target a group of humans”. There are a series of rebuttals, counter-rebuttals, etc. to this line of reasoning. Not going to get into all of them. But suffice to say that in the animal welfare space, an animal welfarist carnivore is hesitantly trusted—it signals either a lack of commitment or discipline, a diet/health struggle, a discordant belief that animals deserve far less rights and moral status as humans, or (much rarer) a fanatic consequentialist ideology that thinks offsetting human killing is morally coherent and acceptable. A earnest carnivore that cares a lot about animal welfare is incredibly rare.
Are people here against killing one to save two in a vacuum? I thought EA was very utilitarian. I think intuitively, causing harm is repulsive but ultimately, our goal should be creating a better world.
To your “animal” to “human” swap, it’s hard to give “would you kill/eat humans if you could offset” as an double standard since most self-proclaimed utilitarians are still intuitively repulsed to immoral behavior like causing harm to humans, cannibalism, etc. On the other hand, we are biologically programmed to not care when eating animal flesh, even if we deem animal suffering immoral. What this means is that I would be way to horrified to offset killing or eating a human even if I deem it moral. On the other hand, I can offset eating an animal because I don’t intuitively care about the harm I caused. I am too disconnected, biologically preprogrammed, and cognitively dissonant. Therefore, offsetting animal suffering is not repulsive nor immoral to me.
“we are biologically programmed to not care when eating animal flesh” this isn’t obvious or intuitive to me. It seems like our attitudes toward eating animals are largely culturally conditioned. Regardless, even if it is “innate”, a personal insensitivity to animals is not a moral reason to treat them as interchangeable, expendable, or offsetable.
It seems your justifications for offsets are bit of fanatic consequentialism and a belief that animals do not deserve similar moral status as humans.
Two points in response. First, many vegans were similarly callous towards animals before they became vegan. Cognitive dissonance is incredibly powerful. It’s why many vegans first went vegan for health reasons, then were able to earnestly consider animal moral status, and then stayed vegan for the animals. Second, I think you should be horrified at how some animals are treated as if they were human. Pigs for example are similar enough in biology that they are used for organ transplants and to test painkiller efficacy. There don’t seem to be good reasons to think the experience of pain to a pig is all that different from that of a human infant.
This comment is extremely good. I wish I could incorporate some of it into my comment since it hits the cognitive dissonance aspect far better than I did. It’s near impossible to give significant moral weight to animals and still think it is okay to eat them.