“But it’s hard to shake the feeling that farming cognitively disabled humans would be even worse than farming pigs.” > I think this feeling is a moral illusion, comparable to an optical illusion where it is hard to shake the feeling that one line is longer than another. I wrote some articles about this: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-020-00282-7
“in principle, it would be a good thing to farm short-lived happy humans (perhaps for their organs) who would otherwise not get to exist at all. But we find the idea repugnant, and that’s probably also a good thing. It causes us to lose out on some life-saving organs, and the value of the farmed lives themselves; but it may also prevent us from committing worse atrocities against each other.”> I think people who have the strong moral intuition that it is wrong to use mentally disabled orphans as merely a means (as food, organs, experimental objects) do not believe that those humans are in fact not moral subjects but the main reason why we ought not to use those disabled humans is that we are too stupid to make a distinction between them and moral subjects, that we are not able to draw a line, that when we use them, we will also use moral subjects as merely a means.
About the idea of breeding happy beings to use them (e.g. happy slaves, happy farm animals): it is very difficult to justify this without stumbling upon very counter-intuitive conclusions. I wrote an article about population ethics and animal farming, arguing that happy animal farming is problematic and should also be avoided, even if the animals have net positive lives: https://www.pdcnet.org/enviroethics/content/enviroethics_2022_0999_10_26_45
“It seems tragic for a human to be stuck with the cognitive capacities of a chicken—we feel that they’ve been deprived of capacities that they ought to have had. By contrast, it isn’t tragic for a chicken to have the cognitive capacity of a chicken.”>Again, I believe this intuition that one thing is more tragic than the other, is a moral illusion, comparable to optical illusions. It is difficult to justify why one thing is more tragic. So, X and Y do not have property P, but the fact that X not having P is worse than Y not having P is because X looks more similar to Z who has property P? In what sense, and how similar? Or X has parents who have property P? Why parents and not cousins? That seems so arbitrary (comparable to arbitrariness behind optical illusions).
″ If we possess a magic pill that would provide typical human intelligence to either individual, it seems we have stronger reason to give it to the cognitively disabled human than to the chicken (bracketing extrinsic factors, like how others would react).”> The only reasons I can think of, are arbitrary, and these are not strong reasons.
“But it’s hard to shake the feeling that farming cognitively disabled humans would be even worse than farming pigs.” > I think this feeling is a moral illusion, comparable to an optical illusion where it is hard to shake the feeling that one line is longer than another. I wrote some articles about this: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-020-00282-7
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10790-015-9507-8
And an infographic
https://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2022/11/08/moral-illusions-infographic/
“in principle, it would be a good thing to farm short-lived happy humans (perhaps for their organs) who would otherwise not get to exist at all. But we find the idea repugnant, and that’s probably also a good thing. It causes us to lose out on some life-saving organs, and the value of the farmed lives themselves; but it may also prevent us from committing worse atrocities against each other.”> I think people who have the strong moral intuition that it is wrong to use mentally disabled orphans as merely a means (as food, organs, experimental objects) do not believe that those humans are in fact not moral subjects but the main reason why we ought not to use those disabled humans is that we are too stupid to make a distinction between them and moral subjects, that we are not able to draw a line, that when we use them, we will also use moral subjects as merely a means.
About the idea of breeding happy beings to use them (e.g. happy slaves, happy farm animals): it is very difficult to justify this without stumbling upon very counter-intuitive conclusions. I wrote an article about population ethics and animal farming, arguing that happy animal farming is problematic and should also be avoided, even if the animals have net positive lives: https://www.pdcnet.org/enviroethics/content/enviroethics_2022_0999_10_26_45
“It seems tragic for a human to be stuck with the cognitive capacities of a chicken—we feel that they’ve been deprived of capacities that they ought to have had. By contrast, it isn’t tragic for a chicken to have the cognitive capacity of a chicken.”>Again, I believe this intuition that one thing is more tragic than the other, is a moral illusion, comparable to optical illusions. It is difficult to justify why one thing is more tragic. So, X and Y do not have property P, but the fact that X not having P is worse than Y not having P is because X looks more similar to Z who has property P? In what sense, and how similar? Or X has parents who have property P? Why parents and not cousins? That seems so arbitrary (comparable to arbitrariness behind optical illusions).
″ If we possess a magic pill that would provide typical human intelligence to either individual, it seems we have stronger reason to give it to the cognitively disabled human than to the chicken (bracketing extrinsic factors, like how others would react).”> The only reasons I can think of, are arbitrary, and these are not strong reasons.