I would expect that living your life in a character building simulator would itself be unvirtuous. You can’t actually express most virtues in such a setting, because the stakes aren’t real. Consistently avoiding situations where there are real stakes seems cowardly, imprudent, uncharitable, etc.. Spending some time in such simulators could be good, though.
Yes, I imagined spending some time in a simulator. I guess I’m making the claim that, in some cases at least, virtue ethics may identify a right action but seemingly without giving a good (IMO) account of what’s right or praiseworthy about it.
On Kantianism, …
There are degrees of coercion, and I’m not sure whether to think of that as “there are two distinct categories of action, the coercive and the non-coercive, but we don’t know exactly where to draw the line between them” or “coerciveness is a continuous property of actions; there can be more or less of it”. (I mean by “coerciveness” here something like “taking someone’s decision out of their own hands”, and IMO taking it as important means prioritising, to some degree, respect for people’s (and animals’) right to make their own decisions over their well-being.)
So my answer to these questions is: It depends on the details, but I expect that I’d judge some things to be clearly coercive, others to be clearly fine, and to be unsure about some borderline cases. More specifically (just giving my quick impressions here):
On Kantianism, would trying to persuade people to not harm animals or to help animals mean using those people as mere means? Or, as long as they aren’t harmed, it’s fine? Or, as long as you’re not misleading them, you’re helping them make more informed decisions, which respects and even promotes their agency (even if your goal is actually not this, but just helping animals, and you just avoid misleading in your advocacy).
I think it depends on whether you also have the person’s interests in mind. If you do it e.g. intending to help them make a more informed or reasoned decision, in accordance with their will, then that’s fine. If you do it trying to make them act against their will (for example, by threatening or blackmailing them, or by lying or withholding information, such that they make a different decision than had they known the full picture), then that’s using as a mere means. (A maxim always contains its ends, i.e. the agent’s intention.)
Could showing people factory farm or slaughterhouse footage be too emotionally manipulative, whether or not that footage is representative?
Yeah, I think it could, but I also think it could importantly inform people of the realities of factory farms. Hard to say whether this is too coercive, it probably depends on the details again (what you show, in which context, how you frame it, etc.).
Should we add the disclaimer to our advocacy that any individual abstaining from animal products almost certainly has no “direct” impact on animals through this?
Time for a caveat: I’d never have the audacity to tell people (such as yourself) in the effective animal advocacy space what’s best to do there, and anyway give some substantial weight to utilitarianism. So what precedes and follows this paragraph aren’t recommendations or anything, nor is it my all-things-considered view, just what I think one Kantian view might entail.
By “direct impact”, you mean you won’t save any specific animal by e.g. going vegan, you’re just likely preventing some future suffering—something like that? Interesting, I’d guess not disclosing this is fine, due to a combination of (1) people probably don’t really care that much about this distinction, and think preventing future suffering is ~just as good, (2) people are usually already aware of something like this (at least upon reflection), and (3) people might have lots of other motivations to do the thing anyway, e.g. not wanting to contribute to an intensively suffering-causing system, which make this difference irrelevant. But I’m definitely open to changing my mind here.
Should we be more upfront about the health risks of veganism (if done poorly, which seems easy to do)?
I hadn’t thought about it, but it seems reasonable to me to guide people to health resources for vegans when presenting arguments in favour of veganism, given the potentially substantial negative effects of doing veganism without knowing how to do it well.
Btw, I’d be really curious to hear your take on all these questions.
What I have in mind for direct impact is causal inefficacy. Markets are very unlikely to respond to your purchase decisions, but we have this threshold argument that the expected value is good (maybe in line with elasticities), because in the unlikely event that they do respond, the impact is very large. But most people probably wouldn’t find the EV argument compelling, given how unlikely the impact is in large markets.
I think it’s probably good to promote health resources to new vegans and reach them pretty early with these, but I’d worry that if we pair this information with all the advocacy we do, we could undermine ourselves. We could share links to resources, like Challenge22 (they have nutritionists and dieticians), VeganHealth and studies with our advocacy, and maybe even say being vegan can take some effort to do healthfully and for some people it doesn’t really work or could be somewhat worse than other diets for them (but it’s worth finding out for yourself, given how important this is), and that seems fine. But I wouldn’t want to emphasize reasons not to go vegan or the challenges with being vegan when people are being exposed to reasons to go vegan, especially for the first time. EDIT: people are often looking for reasons not to go vegan, so many will overweight them, or use confirmation bias when assessing the evidence.
I guess the other side is that deception or misleading (even by omission) in this case could be like lying to the axe murderer, and any reasonable Kantian should endorse lying in that case, and in general should sometimes endorse instrumental harm to prevent someone from harming another, including the use of force, imprisonment, etc. as long as it’s proportionate and no better alternatives are available to achieve the same goal. What the Health, Cowspiracy and some other documentaries might be better examples of deception (although the writers themselves may actually believe what they’re pushing) and a lot of people have probably gone vegan because of them.
Misleasing/deception could also be counterproductive, though, by giving others the impression that vegans are dishonest, or having lots of people leave because they didn’t get resources to manage their diets well, which could even give the overall impression that veganism is unhealthy.
Yes, I imagined spending some time in a simulator. I guess I’m making the claim that, in some cases at least, virtue ethics may identify a right action but seemingly without giving a good (IMO) account of what’s right or praiseworthy about it.
There are degrees of coercion, and I’m not sure whether to think of that as “there are two distinct categories of action, the coercive and the non-coercive, but we don’t know exactly where to draw the line between them” or “coerciveness is a continuous property of actions; there can be more or less of it”. (I mean by “coerciveness” here something like “taking someone’s decision out of their own hands”, and IMO taking it as important means prioritising, to some degree, respect for people’s (and animals’) right to make their own decisions over their well-being.)
So my answer to these questions is: It depends on the details, but I expect that I’d judge some things to be clearly coercive, others to be clearly fine, and to be unsure about some borderline cases. More specifically (just giving my quick impressions here):
I think it depends on whether you also have the person’s interests in mind. If you do it e.g. intending to help them make a more informed or reasoned decision, in accordance with their will, then that’s fine. If you do it trying to make them act against their will (for example, by threatening or blackmailing them, or by lying or withholding information, such that they make a different decision than had they known the full picture), then that’s using as a mere means. (A maxim always contains its ends, i.e. the agent’s intention.)
Yeah, I think it could, but I also think it could importantly inform people of the realities of factory farms. Hard to say whether this is too coercive, it probably depends on the details again (what you show, in which context, how you frame it, etc.).
Time for a caveat: I’d never have the audacity to tell people (such as yourself) in the effective animal advocacy space what’s best to do there, and anyway give some substantial weight to utilitarianism. So what precedes and follows this paragraph aren’t recommendations or anything, nor is it my all-things-considered view, just what I think one Kantian view might entail.
By “direct impact”, you mean you won’t save any specific animal by e.g. going vegan, you’re just likely preventing some future suffering—something like that? Interesting, I’d guess not disclosing this is fine, due to a combination of (1) people probably don’t really care that much about this distinction, and think preventing future suffering is ~just as good, (2) people are usually already aware of something like this (at least upon reflection), and (3) people might have lots of other motivations to do the thing anyway, e.g. not wanting to contribute to an intensively suffering-causing system, which make this difference irrelevant. But I’m definitely open to changing my mind here.
I hadn’t thought about it, but it seems reasonable to me to guide people to health resources for vegans when presenting arguments in favour of veganism, given the potentially substantial negative effects of doing veganism without knowing how to do it well.
Btw, I’d be really curious to hear your take on all these questions.
What I have in mind for direct impact is causal inefficacy. Markets are very unlikely to respond to your purchase decisions, but we have this threshold argument that the expected value is good (maybe in line with elasticities), because in the unlikely event that they do respond, the impact is very large. But most people probably wouldn’t find the EV argument compelling, given how unlikely the impact is in large markets.
I think it’s probably good to promote health resources to new vegans and reach them pretty early with these, but I’d worry that if we pair this information with all the advocacy we do, we could undermine ourselves. We could share links to resources, like Challenge22 (they have nutritionists and dieticians), VeganHealth and studies with our advocacy, and maybe even say being vegan can take some effort to do healthfully and for some people it doesn’t really work or could be somewhat worse than other diets for them (but it’s worth finding out for yourself, given how important this is), and that seems fine. But I wouldn’t want to emphasize reasons not to go vegan or the challenges with being vegan when people are being exposed to reasons to go vegan, especially for the first time. EDIT: people are often looking for reasons not to go vegan, so many will overweight them, or use confirmation bias when assessing the evidence.
I guess the other side is that deception or misleading (even by omission) in this case could be like lying to the axe murderer, and any reasonable Kantian should endorse lying in that case, and in general should sometimes endorse instrumental harm to prevent someone from harming another, including the use of force, imprisonment, etc. as long as it’s proportionate and no better alternatives are available to achieve the same goal. What the Health, Cowspiracy and some other documentaries might be better examples of deception (although the writers themselves may actually believe what they’re pushing) and a lot of people have probably gone vegan because of them.
Misleasing/deception could also be counterproductive, though, by giving others the impression that vegans are dishonest, or having lots of people leave because they didn’t get resources to manage their diets well, which could even give the overall impression that veganism is unhealthy.