Animal advocatestypically focus on sentience in order to base their moral claims. This similarity with humans can easily justify some form of similar (moral) treatment of animals and humans. And under the assumption that pain and pleasure are the sole things that have moral worth, extremely high numbers of sentient animals and their suffering has an overwhelming effect on moral considerations.
As a result, if one only considers the headcounts and the sufferings, the obvious conclusion is: total animal welfare >>> total human welfare.
But one needs to keep in mind that the immediate conclusion of the “unrestricted sentience approach” is not only that animal welfare >>> human welfare. It is rather:
total invertebrate welfare >>>>>>>>>> total rest of the animal welfare >>> human welfare .
This is precisely because of the same reason: total invertebrate welfare is also overwhelming due to their astronomical numbers.
I don’t think most people realise this or really adjust their actions/positions accordingly. If your main starting point is exclusively sentience and hedonism, your vote in the debate should not be only “%100 agree with 100 million dollars spent on animal welfare”, it should also be “%99.99 agree with 100 million dollars spent on invertebrate welfare”.
One might reasonably think that this moral weight framework should be wrong. “Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table, you may also use the table to measure the ruler”.
There might be other goods that cannot be adequately reduced to pain and pleasure: like friendship, knowledge, play, reason, etc. And these may have even more moral weight than mere pleasure and pain. Humans might have much higher capacity to actualize these different goods and therefore have higher status due to their nature. Some animals can also actualize these goods in their own limited capacities which can also justify some form of moral hierarchy between mammals, birds and invertebrates. This can then justify more (at least some) attention to non-invertabrate welfare as well. This can then also justify more (or at least some) attention to human welfare, despite overwhelming numbers of animals.
Thanks for your honesty Engin. This section truly reflects my doubts about animal welfare, which I guess has little to do with cost effectiveness or monitorability.. but more about the shadow of the the repugnant conclusion. The fear that we could end up prioritizing moths over humans simply because we keep insisting that the only thing that reflects value in the world is doing arithmetics with pain and pleasure.
I definately agree there is a lot of room of improvement in animal ethics. Most animal welfare people are cool with being unconventional but I think this kind of misses the point which is that we might not currently have the right moral framework.
I also think utilitarianism got “some” things right like extreme pain is really immoral, or one should be seeking efficiency (within reasonable limits) etc. But it remains weak and weird by itself, without any additional (and multiple) values and principles.
Thanks for your honesty Engin. This section truly reflects my doubts about animal welfare, which I guess has little to do with cost effectiveness or monitorability.. but more about the shadow of the the repugnant conclusion. The fear that we could end up prioritizing moths over humans simply because we keep insisting that the only thing that reflects value in the world is doing arithmetics with pain and pleasure.
I tried to express some of these fears in https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QFh6kiwv36mR8QSiE/are-we-as-rigorous-in-addressing-utilitarianism-s
Thanks!
I definately agree there is a lot of room of improvement in animal ethics. Most animal welfare people are cool with being unconventional but I think this kind of misses the point which is that we might not currently have the right moral framework.
I also think utilitarianism got “some” things right like extreme pain is really immoral, or one should be seeking efficiency (within reasonable limits) etc. But it remains weak and weird by itself, without any additional (and multiple) values and principles.