I think organizations working on wild animal welfare are trying to distance themselves from negative utilitarian views and any impression that they’ll support the destruction of ecosystems or wiping out animals, and at least some people working at them have symmetric views. I don’t know that most have negative views. Well, this is my impression of Wild Animal Initiative and Rethink Priorities. I suspect Animal Ethics might be more negative-leaning than them, but I’m not sure.
I say this as a negative consequentialist myself. I don’t think good lives, even if they’re possible (I’m doubtful), can make up for bad lives. The procreation asymmetry is one of my strongest intuitions, is actually a pretty common intuition generally, and I think there are few ways to apply it as a welfarist consequentialist without ending up at a principled antinatalism (although there may be instrumental reasons to reject antinatalism in practice for someone with such asymmetric views). They all require giving up the independence of irrelevant alternatives, e.g. this paper,this paper, and Dasgupta’s approach discussed here (although I think this is not an unreasonable thing to do).
I think organizations working on wild animal welfare are trying to distance themselves from negative utilitarian views and any impression that they’ll support the destruction of ecosystems or wiping out animals, and at least some people working at them have symmetric views. I don’t know that most have negative views. Well, this is my impression of Wild Animal Initiative and Rethink Priorities. I suspect Animal Ethics might be more negative-leaning than them, but I’m not sure.
I say this as a negative consequentialist myself. I don’t think good lives, even if they’re possible (I’m doubtful), can make up for bad lives. The procreation asymmetry is one of my strongest intuitions, is actually a pretty common intuition generally, and I think there are few ways to apply it as a welfarist consequentialist without ending up at a principled antinatalism (although there may be instrumental reasons to reject antinatalism in practice for someone with such asymmetric views). They all require giving up the independence of irrelevant alternatives, e.g. this paper, this paper, and Dasgupta’s approach discussed here (although I think this is not an unreasonable thing to do).