But there are important consequentialist reasons that make the doctor killing patients fail in the real world. Once you live in a world in which people are being killed and the organs are being repurposed when they go to hospitals, people cease going to hospitals.
On the other hand, the differences in treatments in farmed animals are not going to trigger responses from said farmed animals that lead to such knock-on effects. You can simply look at the welfare consequences.
I think of it from the perspective I would have if I knew I would die and immediately be reborn as a chicken. Would I rather there be more Georges in the world who are vegan and do not contribute directly to the demand which causes my torture or Henrys who are omnivores and thus contribute directly to the torture, but donate an amount that neutralizes the effect and then some more?
If we actually care about welfare of animals more than we care about moral purity, we would rather there are more Henrys than Georges.
A common qualification added to the healthy patient case is that the killing and distribution could be done in a way with plausible deniability, or it is done in a remote setting where the doctor is the only one who would know what happened. The central challenge of the case is on means versus ends, so make whatever adjustments you need to avoid the evasive rejoinder that not killing is in fact the more utilitarian option.
But lets turn to the other case I gave: would you be ok with others engaging in human trafficking if they donated enough to reduce human trafficking elsewhere? Would this absolve the morally blameworthy acts they commit? If not, then you are drawing a distinction not on the quality or quantity suffering, but simply on who is doing the suffering. If you seek to change my mind rather just reaffirming your own position, you are going to need a make a case that the who (human vs. non-human animal) is sufficiently metaphysically different to warrant using beings as means in one case but not the other.
I’m not drawing a metaphysical distinction between humans and animals. I care about welfare, full stop.
The difference is empirical, not metaphysical. Human suffering triggers compensatory responses from other humans that multiply the costs. People who learn hospitals might harvest organs stop going to hospitals. Communities that tolerate trafficking erode the trust structures enabling cooperation. Social fabric frays. These system-level effects make the total harm enormous and difficult to quantify. You can’t reliably offset what you can’t measure.
Farmed animals don’t generate these dynamics. A chicken doesn’t know some humans eat chickens while others donate to reduce chicken suffering. There’s no institutional trust to erode, no behavioral adaptation that cascades through society. The welfare calculus is direct and measurable.
On the organ case: if you modify it enough to truly eliminate the systemic effects (no fear, no institutional erosion, no social knowledge of what occurred) then yes, I bite the bullet. Saving five lives at the cost of one is better than letting five die to keep one alive. If that conclusion seems monstrous, I’d suggest your intuition is tracking the systemic costs you’ve stipulated away, not the raw welfare math.
But we don’t need to resolve exotic hypotheticals here. You’re arguing from analogy to human cases where offsetting fails. It fails because of empirical features those cases have, not because human suffering can never be weighed against animal suffering.
Ultimately, for me, it all cashes out in the experiences of beings, whether human, chicken, or digital consciousness. That’s what matters.
I think the question is quite similar to the case of a doctor killing a healthy patient to use their organs to save five other sick patients.
Or as another comparison, using trafficked people for personal ends but donating enough to reduce human trafficking elsewhere.
People, and non-human animals, are not simply reducible to means to serve utilitarian ends.
But there are important consequentialist reasons that make the doctor killing patients fail in the real world. Once you live in a world in which people are being killed and the organs are being repurposed when they go to hospitals, people cease going to hospitals.
On the other hand, the differences in treatments in farmed animals are not going to trigger responses from said farmed animals that lead to such knock-on effects. You can simply look at the welfare consequences.
I think of it from the perspective I would have if I knew I would die and immediately be reborn as a chicken. Would I rather there be more Georges in the world who are vegan and do not contribute directly to the demand which causes my torture or Henrys who are omnivores and thus contribute directly to the torture, but donate an amount that neutralizes the effect and then some more?
If we actually care about welfare of animals more than we care about moral purity, we would rather there are more Henrys than Georges.
A common qualification added to the healthy patient case is that the killing and distribution could be done in a way with plausible deniability, or it is done in a remote setting where the doctor is the only one who would know what happened. The central challenge of the case is on means versus ends, so make whatever adjustments you need to avoid the evasive rejoinder that not killing is in fact the more utilitarian option.
But lets turn to the other case I gave: would you be ok with others engaging in human trafficking if they donated enough to reduce human trafficking elsewhere? Would this absolve the morally blameworthy acts they commit? If not, then you are drawing a distinction not on the quality or quantity suffering, but simply on who is doing the suffering. If you seek to change my mind rather just reaffirming your own position, you are going to need a make a case that the who (human vs. non-human animal) is sufficiently metaphysically different to warrant using beings as means in one case but not the other.
I’m not drawing a metaphysical distinction between humans and animals. I care about welfare, full stop.
The difference is empirical, not metaphysical. Human suffering triggers compensatory responses from other humans that multiply the costs. People who learn hospitals might harvest organs stop going to hospitals. Communities that tolerate trafficking erode the trust structures enabling cooperation. Social fabric frays. These system-level effects make the total harm enormous and difficult to quantify. You can’t reliably offset what you can’t measure.
Farmed animals don’t generate these dynamics. A chicken doesn’t know some humans eat chickens while others donate to reduce chicken suffering. There’s no institutional trust to erode, no behavioral adaptation that cascades through society. The welfare calculus is direct and measurable.
On the organ case: if you modify it enough to truly eliminate the systemic effects (no fear, no institutional erosion, no social knowledge of what occurred) then yes, I bite the bullet. Saving five lives at the cost of one is better than letting five die to keep one alive. If that conclusion seems monstrous, I’d suggest your intuition is tracking the systemic costs you’ve stipulated away, not the raw welfare math.
But we don’t need to resolve exotic hypotheticals here. You’re arguing from analogy to human cases where offsetting fails. It fails because of empirical features those cases have, not because human suffering can never be weighed against animal suffering.
Ultimately, for me, it all cashes out in the experiences of beings, whether human, chicken, or digital consciousness. That’s what matters.