The article by D Meissner (original post) , the comments on it, and the expanded set of articles on the website utilitarianism , all make good points.
My comments:
1. Specieism. I knew people who lived on farms and raised animals and also grew corn, wheat, and vegetables for food, and also to sell to get cash so they could buy things they couldn’t produce on their farm which they decided they either needed or wanted. (For example a car, truck , phone, or a college education for their children (eg my grandparents, or some of the families in small rural towns i used to live in).
While they were definately not vegans or even vegetarians, many were often not exactly ’specieist—they valued very much the welfare of their cows, chickens, and the wildlife (such as deer , turkeys, trout, bears, bobcats, skunks, weasels, hedgehogs, snakes, etc.) , flora (eg forests), and ecosystems (eg trout stream valleys and the mountains above them) . They took very good care of their animals until they killed or sold them, and they would not tolerate people doing illegal logging to cut down forests to sell as lumber to make paper for newspapers , or use their creeks and valleys as trash dumps and sewers.
Some of the people (even in the same families) decided the only thing that mattered was money—so they permitted illegal dumping, logging, etc. in return for cash, and basically left (with their cash) the areas they grew up in as ecological wastelands , and moved to the city to get a ‘better life’ including a college education and a ‘good job’. the book book ‘hillbilly elegy’ by j d vance shows that perspective.
Some people from cities who do have money have bought up alot of that land and abandoned properties in small towns and now are creating organic farms and vegan restaurants in those areas (while those areas were not really suitable for the kind of large scale ‘factory farming’ except for chickens—there were some cattle but it was nothing like the industrial feedlots of the midwest USA; there were a few (tiny) fish farms—people had a trout pond which was the fish farm equivalent of a small vegetable—they also had small vegetable gardens and sold the produce in front of their homes—and it was a ‘trust system’—they just left the vegetables and the ‘cash register’ on a table (where you put your money—they sold really cheap produce and almost nobody stole anything ( a few teens and preteens might steal stuff, and also break into houses, but it was unusual, and in general people knew who thy were ad just talked to the parents to tell them to ‘behave’).
I heard that has changed now, partly because hard drugs (methamphetamine, heroin) have been introduced into those areas. The level of trust has gone down. (ts near to what is called the ‘heroin highway’). its possible the new organic farms and vegan restaurants can entice the local people to start caring about things beyond drugs, chicken and money, but thats an open question—some of the old time local people resent people they do not know who have alot of money buying up all the property.
while i know most EAs probably hate hunting, the ’old timers from that area (eg anyone over age 20 though it goes up to over 80) hunted and fished for food in part—bass, trout, deer, grouse, turkeys, squirrels, etc. Its brutal, but so is buying a car and driving 60 miles round trip to work in a recycling plant so they can make cash and eat burgers at a Mcdonald’s .
I view Thoreau and Albert Schweitzer as promoting vegetarianism and anti-specieism long beofre p singer.
2. This article and website appears to be written from a philosophical POV. I learned the little i know about utilitarianism from my background as a student in biology—which turned into physics (to study modern biology, you have to take physics, which i did, all the way up into quantum theory and statistical mechanics and a bit of QFT. Once you take those, you realize from a literature search that many of the famous physicists actually wrote papers on utilitarianism (as well as biology). As did economists (who studied biology and physics).
I consider myself a utilitarian—but maybe i should use a different term. (In USA this is like saying you are a ‘socialist’ (some people interpret this as meaning you support Bernie Saunders for president, while others say this means you worship Stalin.
I also consider myself a darwinist (though many interpret this to mean what is called ‘vulgar darwinism’ which is not what darwin said—ie the idea that we are the ‘additive’ sum of our genes.). In a sense i’m also a marxist (but not a vulgar marxist—who are common—who think the world is explained as ‘class struggle’. The LTV has a kernel of truth to it—eg bitcoin).
The 4 postulates of utilitarianism are not what is meant by the term for last 20-40 years though some economists still use that formalism—both ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ ones. The first 1 and the 4th are the most explcitly outdated—‘additivity’ in physics went out decades ago, as did ‘consequentialism’ (ther e is a newer term (which actually goes way back but became more popular or rediscovered after 1990-2000).
The article by D Meissner (original post) , the comments on it, and the expanded set of articles on the website utilitarianism , all make good points.
My comments:
1. Specieism. I knew people who lived on farms and raised animals and also grew corn, wheat, and vegetables for food, and also to sell to get cash so they could buy things they couldn’t produce on their farm which they decided they either needed or wanted. (For example a car, truck , phone, or a college education for their children (eg my grandparents, or some of the families in small rural towns i used to live in).
While they were definately not vegans or even vegetarians, many were often not exactly ’specieist—they valued very much the welfare of their cows, chickens, and the wildlife (such as deer , turkeys, trout, bears, bobcats, skunks, weasels, hedgehogs, snakes, etc.) , flora (eg forests), and ecosystems (eg trout stream valleys and the mountains above them) . They took very good care of their animals until they killed or sold them, and they would not tolerate people doing illegal logging to cut down forests to sell as lumber to make paper for newspapers , or use their creeks and valleys as trash dumps and sewers.
Some of the people (even in the same families) decided the only thing that mattered was money—so they permitted illegal dumping, logging, etc. in return for cash, and basically left (with their cash) the areas they grew up in as ecological wastelands , and moved to the city to get a ‘better life’ including a college education and a ‘good job’. the book book ‘hillbilly elegy’ by j d vance shows that perspective.
Some people from cities who do have money have bought up alot of that land and abandoned properties in small towns and now are creating organic farms and vegan restaurants in those areas (while those areas were not really suitable for the kind of large scale ‘factory farming’ except for chickens—there were some cattle but it was nothing like the industrial feedlots of the midwest USA; there were a few (tiny) fish farms—people had a trout pond which was the fish farm equivalent of a small vegetable—they also had small vegetable gardens and sold the produce in front of their homes—and it was a ‘trust system’—they just left the vegetables and the ‘cash register’ on a table (where you put your money—they sold really cheap produce and almost nobody stole anything ( a few teens and preteens might steal stuff, and also break into houses, but it was unusual, and in general people knew who thy were ad just talked to the parents to tell them to ‘behave’).
I heard that has changed now, partly because hard drugs (methamphetamine, heroin) have been introduced into those areas. The level of trust has gone down. (ts near to what is called the ‘heroin highway’). its possible the new organic farms and vegan restaurants can entice the local people to start caring about things beyond drugs, chicken and money, but thats an open question—some of the old time local people resent people they do not know who have alot of money buying up all the property.
while i know most EAs probably hate hunting, the ’old timers from that area (eg anyone over age 20 though it goes up to over 80) hunted and fished for food in part—bass, trout, deer, grouse, turkeys, squirrels, etc. Its brutal, but so is buying a car and driving 60 miles round trip to work in a recycling plant so they can make cash and eat burgers at a Mcdonald’s .
I view Thoreau and Albert Schweitzer as promoting vegetarianism and anti-specieism long beofre p singer.
2. This article and website appears to be written from a philosophical POV. I learned the little i know about utilitarianism from my background as a student in biology—which turned into physics (to study modern biology, you have to take physics, which i did, all the way up into quantum theory and statistical mechanics and a bit of QFT. Once you take those, you realize from a literature search that many of the famous physicists actually wrote papers on utilitarianism (as well as biology). As did economists (who studied biology and physics).
I consider myself a utilitarian—but maybe i should use a different term. (In USA this is like saying you are a ‘socialist’ (some people interpret this as meaning you support Bernie Saunders for president, while others say this means you worship Stalin.
I also consider myself a darwinist (though many interpret this to mean what is called ‘vulgar darwinism’ which is not what darwin said—ie the idea that we are the ‘additive’ sum of our genes.). In a sense i’m also a marxist (but not a vulgar marxist—who are common—who think the world is explained as ‘class struggle’. The LTV has a kernel of truth to it—eg bitcoin).
The 4 postulates of utilitarianism are not what is meant by the term for last 20-40 years though some economists still use that formalism—both ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ ones. The first 1 and the 4th are the most explcitly outdated—‘additivity’ in physics went out decades ago, as did ‘consequentialism’ (ther e is a newer term (which actually goes way back but became more popular or rediscovered after 1990-2000).