Thanks for the question, mlovic, and welcome to the EA forum! Thanks for clarifying, Julian.
If farmed chickens plausibly have overall net positive lives (per the discussion above), and if you’re something like a total utilitarian, then you should want more of them to exist
This might be true, but not necessarily so. I strongly endorse expectedtotalhedonisticutilitarianism (classical utilitarianism), but would not be confident about increasing the consumption of factory-farmed animals even if they had good lives (although my best guess is that chickens do not):
Conditional on factory-farmed animals having good lives, one should arguably guess wild animals also have good lives. Consequently, since the scale of the welfare of wild animals is much larger than that of factory-farmed animals, one should do what increases the welfare of wild animals. So, because animal foods require much more land than plant-based foods, one would still want to decrease the consumption of factory-farmed animals.
Even if one thinks wild animals have bad lives, or is mostly agnostic about it, the increase in the welfare of factory-farmed animals may be outweighted by other negative effects. For example, I think enslaving people with good lives would be bad today[1] under classical utilitarianism, as it would erode impartiality by implicitly attributing a lower welfare range than justified to the enslaved. Likewise for factory-farmed animals, although less so.
If one is not confident about factory-farmed and wild animals having good/​bad lives (I am not), and thinks this is a crucial consideration due to not giving major weight to the 2nd bullet above, one should focus on learning more about that question (e.g. Welfare Footprint Project’s research), or improving their lives (e.g. corporate campaigns for chicken welfare).
Thanks for the question, mlovic, and welcome to the EA forum! Thanks for clarifying, Julian.
This might be true, but not necessarily so. I strongly endorse expected total hedonistic utilitarianism (classical utilitarianism), but would not be confident about increasing the consumption of factory-farmed animals even if they had good lives (although my best guess is that chickens do not):
Conditional on factory-farmed animals having good lives, one should arguably guess wild animals also have good lives. Consequently, since the scale of the welfare of wild animals is much larger than that of factory-farmed animals, one should do what increases the welfare of wild animals. So, because animal foods require much more land than plant-based foods, one would still want to decrease the consumption of factory-farmed animals.
Even if one thinks wild animals have bad lives, or is mostly agnostic about it, the increase in the welfare of factory-farmed animals may be outweighted by other negative effects. For example, I think enslaving people with good lives would be bad today[1] under classical utilitarianism, as it would erode impartiality by implicitly attributing a lower welfare range than justified to the enslaved. Likewise for factory-farmed animals, although less so.
If one is not confident about factory-farmed and wild animals having good/​bad lives (I am not), and thinks this is a crucial consideration due to not giving major weight to the 2nd bullet above, one should focus on learning more about that question (e.g. Welfare Footprint Project’s research), or improving their lives (e.g. corporate campaigns for chicken welfare).
And also in the past, but less bad, holding the quality of life of the enslaved constant.