The smallest common demoninator that is widely shared is that suffering is bad.
It is just as widely accepted that making someone happy is good. Otherwise nice surprises and birthday gifts wouldn’t make sense. If you take only one part of the equation, you will always arrive at strange conclusions. That is like running a business and saying: “It is widely accepted that costs are bad, so we will cut costs without regard for revenues.”
it maps to Quiverfull
I don’t see how this would be the case. Since it’s quite obvious that humans bring more suffering than joy to animals, both farmed and wild, and there are orders of magnitude more non-human than human animals, why would we want to increase the human population applying utilitarian logic? In fact, prominent utilitarians like Peter Singer regularly stress the importance of the right to birth control.
You are right, it’s quite an overstatement to call anything obvious in ethics. However, for Quiverfull to be a good thing in utilitarian terms, we would need to think that it is more likely for non-human animals to be worse off without us than the opposite, and that’s a difficult position to defend. As far as I know, biomass has stayed the same. Populations by individuals might have decreased slightly, but not by orders of magnitude. And the animals that are living seem to be worse off. Animals in factory farming experience intense suffering and are denied almost anything that makes for a good life, and when we control “pests”, the preferred method seems to be poisoning, which makes for a slow and painful death. Also, I’ve never heard anyone, expert or layperson alike, claiming that humans are on average good for animals, but many think the opposite is true. That doesn’t mean that there are no such experts and the fact that many believe in it doesn’t make a view right, but we may want to consider this fact in an utilitarian calculation. Do you hold the view that humans are on average good for animals in utalitarian terms, or did you just want to point out that I made too far-reaching a claim?
I think it’s too overreaching a claim. I actually agree with you as an overall statement but many here would not. Many on the forum here though think that because humans drastically reduce wild animal populations, that may well help animals through reducint overall suffering.
Also it depends how general you are trying to be. I would personally argue that in New Zealand, humans have brought sheep more joy than suffering, through treating their diseases well and ensuring good nutrition. Because most animals are factory farmed and so overall humans bring more suffering than joy to farmed animals. But in places where they are well looked after and not family farmed, the inverse could be troo.
It is just as widely accepted that making someone happy is good. Otherwise nice surprises and birthday gifts wouldn’t make sense. If you take only one part of the equation, you will always arrive at strange conclusions. That is like running a business and saying: “It is widely accepted that costs are bad, so we will cut costs without regard for revenues.”
I don’t see how this would be the case. Since it’s quite obvious that humans bring more suffering than joy to animals, both farmed and wild, and there are orders of magnitude more non-human than human animals, why would we want to increase the human population applying utilitarian logic? In fact, prominent utilitarians like Peter Singer regularly stress the importance of the right to birth control.
“Since it’s quite obvious that humans bring more suffering than joy to animals” I don’t think this is quite obvious.
You are right, it’s quite an overstatement to call anything obvious in ethics. However, for Quiverfull to be a good thing in utilitarian terms, we would need to think that it is more likely for non-human animals to be worse off without us than the opposite, and that’s a difficult position to defend. As far as I know, biomass has stayed the same. Populations by individuals might have decreased slightly, but not by orders of magnitude. And the animals that are living seem to be worse off. Animals in factory farming experience intense suffering and are denied almost anything that makes for a good life, and when we control “pests”, the preferred method seems to be poisoning, which makes for a slow and painful death. Also, I’ve never heard anyone, expert or layperson alike, claiming that humans are on average good for animals, but many think the opposite is true. That doesn’t mean that there are no such experts and the fact that many believe in it doesn’t make a view right, but we may want to consider this fact in an utilitarian calculation. Do you hold the view that humans are on average good for animals in utalitarian terms, or did you just want to point out that I made too far-reaching a claim?
I think it’s too overreaching a claim. I actually agree with you as an overall statement but many here would not. Many on the forum here though think that because humans drastically reduce wild animal populations, that may well help animals through reducint overall suffering.
Also it depends how general you are trying to be. I would personally argue that in New Zealand, humans have brought sheep more joy than suffering, through treating their diseases well and ensuring good nutrition. Because most animals are factory farmed and so overall humans bring more suffering than joy to farmed animals. But in places where they are well looked after and not family farmed, the inverse could be troo.