Thanks for these write-ups! A really broad and informative overview of non-cons literature.
For your interest and perhaps to build on section 5, you might find these papers by Sapontzis (1984) and Fink (2005) interesting. They consider non-consequentialist and vaguely deontological reasons to reject the reductio of the Predation argument (briefly, if vegetarianism is an obligation, we ought also to intervene to prevent predation, which is absurd).
Sapontzis argues that:
Where we can prevent predation without occasioning as much or more suffering than we would prevent, we are obligated to do so by the principle that we are obligated to alleviate avoidable animal suffering.
Fink dissects a few versions of the reductio and challenges Singer for not accepting that we ought to intervene to prevent predation. He also makes this interesting argument:
Consider what our reaction would be if a human being were attacked by a wild animal. No one could reasonably argue that because a wild animal is not a moral agent and cannot, therefore, violate anyone’s rights, this releases us from any obligation to come to that person’s assistance. We have a moral obligation to protect all members of the moral community from harm, whenever possible, whether or not this harm comes from moral agents. If sheep are members of the moral community, therefore, it would certainly seem to follow that there is an obligation to protect them from wolves, whether or not wolves violate their rights.
Great job! The website design looks really slick and certain sections, like ‘Guides and Tips’ are really clear and helpful :)
I was somewhat surprised to see a report I wrote* over a year ago (Big Match Warwick 2016 Review) on the ‘Evaluation and Strategy’ page. I’m not sure it’s something I’d want promoted as an activity local groups should try anymore, since their comparative advantage is community building and not fundraising. I think I frame that kind of campaign in too positive a light and don’t offer reasons for why a group might not want to do it, implying that I think groups should run a Big Match campaign. I won’t request that it be taken down, I just wanted to give those updated thoughts :)
On a more general note, I’m a little concerned that this site overlaps quite a bit with CEA’s Resources and Support and Effective Altruism Community Building pages. Do you intend for this site to compliment these pages and CEA’s approach? Or offer something different? I don’t speak for CEA, by the way, I just know that those pages exist.
*James Aung only added comments in a late stage of editing which is why it might have been mistakenly attributed to him.