I believe the consequences of eating vegan are more plausibly characterized as falling under the domain of procreation ethics, rather than that of the ethics of killing. When you eat meat, the only difference you can reasonably expect to make is affecting how many farmed animals are born in the near future, since the fate of the ones that already exist in the farms is sealed (i.e. they’ll be killed no matter what) and can’t be affected by our dietary choices.
So I think, rather than factory farm offsets being similar to murdering someone and then saving others, they’re akin to causing someone’s birth in miserable conditions (who later dies prematurely), and then ‘offsetting’ that harm by preventing the suffering of hundreds of other human beings.
I submit that offsetting still feels morally questionable in this scenario, but at least my intuitions are less clear here.
I didn’t say they fell under the ethics of killing, I was using killing as an example of a generic rights violation under a plausible patient-centered deontological theory to illustrate the difference between “a rights violation happening to one person and help coming for a separate person as an offset” and “one’s harm being directly offset.”
(I agree that it seems a bit more unclear if potential people can have rights, even if they can have moral consideration, and in particular rights to not be brought into existence, but I think it’s very plausible.)
I believe the consequences of eating vegan are more plausibly characterized as falling under the domain of procreation ethics, rather than that of the ethics of killing. When you eat meat, the only difference you can reasonably expect to make is affecting how many farmed animals are born in the near future, since the fate of the ones that already exist in the farms is sealed (i.e. they’ll be killed no matter what) and can’t be affected by our dietary choices.
So I think, rather than factory farm offsets being similar to murdering someone and then saving others, they’re akin to causing someone’s birth in miserable conditions (who later dies prematurely), and then ‘offsetting’ that harm by preventing the suffering of hundreds of other human beings.
I submit that offsetting still feels morally questionable in this scenario, but at least my intuitions are less clear here.
I didn’t say they fell under the ethics of killing, I was using killing as an example of a generic rights violation under a plausible patient-centered deontological theory to illustrate the difference between “a rights violation happening to one person and help coming for a separate person as an offset” and “one’s harm being directly offset.”
(I agree that it seems a bit more unclear if potential people can have rights, even if they can have moral consideration, and in particular rights to not be brought into existence, but I think it’s very plausible.)