While I only had time to quickly read this piece, I agree with much of what I read and think it is a great contribution to the literature.
To clarify my own view, I think animals matter a great deal — now and over the longterm future. The focus on humanity in my work is primarily because we are the only moral agents we know of. In philosophical terms, this means that humanity has immense instrumental value. If we die, then as far as we know, there is nothing at all striving to shape the future of Earth (or our whole galaxy) towards what is good or just. It is with humanity in this role as moral agent, rather than moral patient, that I think the case for avoiding existential risk to humanity is at its most powerful. I don’t know whether the lion’s share of intrinsic value we create over the longterm future will be in the form of human flourishing, animal flourishing, or something else, and welcome much more discussion on that, with your paper being a good example.
As well as avoiding existential risk, I think that work to avoid locking in bad values or practices could also be very important on longtermist grounds, and that values connected to animals are good candidates.
I focused on what could happen to animal species rather than individual animals in those particular passages, but much of my thinking on animal ethics is in terms of individuals.
Like most people, I’m not sold on the idea that wild animal suffering makes the biosphere have negative overall value, such that ecosystem destruction would be good instead of bad (and so forth). But nor am I claiming that we should introduce animals to other planets. My point in those passages was to sketch the magnitude of the kinds of things humanity could achieve in terms of the environment and animal life. What to do with that power raises very big and very uncertain questions. My main claims were that we should protect our potential, and then think very long and hard about how best to fulfil it.
I didn’t write the paper, but thank you for the comment, Prof. Ord! I appreciate your perspective.
I also personally am not sold on the biosphere having negative overall value. I think the immense number of sentient beings that spend large portions of their lives suffering makes it a real possibility, but I am not 100% sure that utilitarianism is true when it comes to balancing wild animal welfare and broader ecological health. I think that humanity needs to spend more effort figuring out what is ultimately of value, and because the ecological view has been dominant in environmental ethics to date, I believe the WAW view deserves more consideration and to be integrated into humanity’s thought process even if it is not ultimately accepted.
Yes, I completely agree. When I was exploring questions about wild animal welfare almost 20 years ago, I was very surprised to see how the idea of thinking about individual animals’ lives was so foreign to the field.
While I only had time to quickly read this piece, I agree with much of what I read and think it is a great contribution to the literature.
To clarify my own view, I think animals matter a great deal — now and over the longterm future. The focus on humanity in my work is primarily because we are the only moral agents we know of. In philosophical terms, this means that humanity has immense instrumental value. If we die, then as far as we know, there is nothing at all striving to shape the future of Earth (or our whole galaxy) towards what is good or just. It is with humanity in this role as moral agent, rather than moral patient, that I think the case for avoiding existential risk to humanity is at its most powerful. I don’t know whether the lion’s share of intrinsic value we create over the longterm future will be in the form of human flourishing, animal flourishing, or something else, and welcome much more discussion on that, with your paper being a good example.
As well as avoiding existential risk, I think that work to avoid locking in bad values or practices could also be very important on longtermist grounds, and that values connected to animals are good candidates.
I focused on what could happen to animal species rather than individual animals in those particular passages, but much of my thinking on animal ethics is in terms of individuals.
Like most people, I’m not sold on the idea that wild animal suffering makes the biosphere have negative overall value, such that ecosystem destruction would be good instead of bad (and so forth). But nor am I claiming that we should introduce animals to other planets. My point in those passages was to sketch the magnitude of the kinds of things humanity could achieve in terms of the environment and animal life. What to do with that power raises very big and very uncertain questions. My main claims were that we should protect our potential, and then think very long and hard about how best to fulfil it.
I didn’t write the paper, but thank you for the comment, Prof. Ord! I appreciate your perspective.
I also personally am not sold on the biosphere having negative overall value. I think the immense number of sentient beings that spend large portions of their lives suffering makes it a real possibility, but I am not 100% sure that utilitarianism is true when it comes to balancing wild animal welfare and broader ecological health. I think that humanity needs to spend more effort figuring out what is ultimately of value, and because the ecological view has been dominant in environmental ethics to date, I believe the WAW view deserves more consideration and to be integrated into humanity’s thought process even if it is not ultimately accepted.
Yes, I completely agree. When I was exploring questions about wild animal welfare almost 20 years ago, I was very surprised to see how the idea of thinking about individual animals’ lives was so foreign to the field.