My perspective regarding animal welfare is likely very different from most people's perspectives., and that is part of the reason I'm posting it.
TLDR/Summary
- I'm not completely sure animals have consciousness, although I think it's likely they do, and, if they don't, we don't need to worry about them. So it seems like we should try to look into that before we look into helping them directly.
- We can gather evidence about animal consciousness by finding the physical representation of it in the human brain, and seeing if animals have a similar part of their brains. See my theory of consciousness here if you want to know what I mean more specifically.
- Even if animals have consciousness, we might still not want to count them as people.
- If we decide to count animals as people:
- We are responsible for all of them, not just those we are harming.
- We need to research which animals, specifically, have consciousness.
- We need to research how to compare welfare between species.
- We may want to prevent some species from reproducing if they tend to have short lives and/or little happiness, and so low overall welfare.
- Preventing species from reproducing would likely damage the ecosystem, and that would be a big consideration.
- Overall, I encourage research rather than action at this point, because it will make what we do later regarding animal welfare dramatically more effective.
Do Animals Have Consciousness?
I think the first question regarding animal welfare should be if animals have consciousness or not. If they don't then I don't see any reason that we would need to worry about the welfare of animals, because there is would be no consciousness experiencing whatever happiness or pain those animals are reacting to. My best guess would be that at least some of them have consciousness, but considering how many resources we could avoid spending if they don't have consciousness, it seems important for humans to investigate that a lot more.
If Yes, Which Species Have Consciousness?
I think we'll need to investigate it even if some animals have consciousness, because in that case, we'll still need to figure out which species have consciousness. If any animal has consciousness, I would guess that a chimpanzee would be very likely to have consciousness, but I'm also pretty sure that a single-celled amoeba doesn't. So the question would be of which animals have consciousness and which don't. Unfortunately, I could see figuring this out taking a very long time, like maybe decades. In spite of that, I think it would be more productive for us to wait to figure it out more, before trying to directly benefit animals, without knowing if it's actually useful.
I think the best way to figure out which animals have consciousness, if any, would be to research how consciousness is physically represented in the human brain, and look for something similar in the brains of animals. I have a fairly definitive perspective on the nature of consciousness. I've already posted it on the EA Forum here and also on my personal website here. If you would like more information on how I think we could try to figure out if a species has consciousness, you can find it there. It's entirely possible that animals have lots of behavior that is very similar to humans, including showing signs of suffering and happiness, without having consciousness. Although, I do think the ability to experience suffering and happiness are necessary for something to have consciousness.
Should We Include Animals Even If They Have Consciousness?
There is also the question of if animals should be included in our altruistic goals, even if they do have consciousness. I think consciousness can potentially make a great criteria for who should have personhood, because if something doesn't have consciousness, there is fairly definitely no reason to worry about that thing's welfare. Because, regardless of what happens to it, nothing is experiencing what happens to it. In this sense, it might as well be an inanimate object.
The Foundation of Altruism
However, the foundation of altruism is not quite as simple as wanting to help everyone with consciousness for its own sake. I think the foundation of altruism starts with a given group of people interacting with each other. If they behave selfishly, they will be worse off. But, if instead, they all serve the welfare of all of them equally, the outcome will be better for them all (on average). And this is in spite of the fact that any individual in the group would benefit more from behaving selfishly than altruistically, if that individual alone changed their behavior. This type of cooperation is a subset of altruism. All forms of altruism include this type of cooperation, but a smaller subset of people could also have this type of behavior, in which case it would no longer be altruistic. For example, all the rich and powerful people of the world could decide to cooperate with each other in this way. But it would be evil and not altruistic, and the people in the group would probably take advantage of many other people outside the group, who would then experience terrible outcomes.
We Could Exclude All Non-Humans
I have been taught that to be a good person, a person must be altruistic, and that at least all humans should be included among those that we should try to help for the sake of altruism. This is a big part of who I am, and it is a big part of how I connect to my family and the rest of society. However, I was never taught something similar regarding including animals. For this reason, excluding animals seems like it could be done without necessarily being evil. Although, if a large portion of humanity isn't willing to accept that, I don't think it would be worth fighting them over it. In that case, I'd probably be willing to include animals. However, regardless of how much the rest of humanity believed in it, if they wanted to include animals in a pattern that didn't make sense to me, I don't think I would be willing to agree. For example, if people wanted to only include cute animals and animals that make good pets, I don't think I would want to go along with that perspective, regardless of how popular it might be.
What If We Include the Animals?
We Would Be Responsible for All of Them
Even if we reached the point of deciding to include the animals, I don't think the solution would be as simple as all humans becoming vegan. I think we would be responsible for all of them, not just farm animals. If a pack of wolves killed a deer, we'd have to account for that, and both the welfare of the deer and of the wolves. And, it seems likely that including all of those animals not living on farms could dramatically improve the potential for interventions that would help animals, because it would make the world a much more target-rich environment.
We Would Need to Compare Welfare Between Species
Another thing I think would be a big issue, is comparing welfare between species. I think the overall welfare of any human can be calculated by taking the total span of time the human is alive, and either conscious or dreaming, and multiplying that by the average amount of happiness the human experiences during that time. When comparing between species, we would need to get some idea of how much happiness each species typically experiences, as compared to humans. Additionally, lifespans vary quite a lot between species, and that would be another big issue. Many animals that could very plausibly have consciousness, tend to live less than 20 years.
It Matters How Many There Are of Each Species
We would also need to compare possibilities where different numbers of each species exist. My assumption is that we would want to maximize average welfare among all humans and conscious animals. But, for example, if one species normally experiences a level of happiness of '10' and only lives a year, and another species normally experiences '50' happiness and lives 100 years, it might be a good idea to look for an outcome where we have more of the 2nd species and fewer of the first. We would also have to account for differences in how many of each species there tend to be. For example, if ants turned out to have consciousness, the importance of helping them might dramatically exceed the importance of helping humans, because there are about 20 quadrillion ants and only 8 billion humans (2.5 million ants per human).
We Might Want to Sterilize Lots of Species
Given this, it might make sense to try to find all the conscious animals that tend to have short lifespans and low happiness, and sterilize them, or otherwise prevent them from reproducing. Of course, that could create some major problems for the ecosystem. But, if we really want to include the welfare of animals in our altruistic goals, I think these are the kinds of things that we should be looking into.
What It Would Cost
I think people underestimate what it would cost humanity, if we really wanted to include animals. They are effectively a massive number of entities that can't do useful work (for the most part), that we would need to take care of. I've heard some people say that we should just give animals a fractional value relative to humans to try to work around this problem, but I think that's just an attempt to make the problem more palatable. Sometimes when dealing with difficult issues, people try to look for a perspective that is more convenient, rather than a perspective that is more correct, and that seems like a bad idea to me.
Relevant Implications
The main thing that I would suggest when dealing with the issue of animal welfare, is that we invest resources into trying to understand the problem and the relevant issues, rather than already moving forward with interventions that improve the welfare of some animals. I think if we put the resources into interventions, all of the resources could end up being lost with no positive impact, like if it turns out that those animals don't have consciousness. And, if we wait until we have a better understanding of things like animal consciousness and animal welfare, the interventions we use could be dramatically better than the ones that people are putting resources into now.
Feedback
I would be interested in other people's perspectives on my opinions regarding this, and especially where other people's perspectives diverge from mine specifically, and why. But, also, if anyone knows if my perspective on this has been expressed by others somewhere, I would also be interested in finding out about that.
In many cases, it seems very doubtful whether further research into whether animals are conscious will be action-guiding in any meaningful way. Further research into whether chickens are conscious, say, will not produce definitive certainty that they are or aren't. (Finding out whether your favorite theory of consciousness predicts that they are conscious is only so useful, as we should have significant uncertainty about the right theory of consciousness.) And moderate changes in your credence probably shouldn't affect what you should do. E.g., if your credence in chicken consciousness drops 20%, there is still the moral risk argument for acting as if chickens are conscious; if you have some reason for rejecting that argument, that was probably also a reason when your credence was 20% higher. And at the same time, there are potentially very great opportunity costs to waiting to act--costs that don't make sense if decision-relevant information isn't actually likely to come in.
I'm not very worried about the moral risk argument, because I'm not so much looking at the question of if the world should become vegan and stop farming animals or not. If society decided to do that, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But I think if we decided to include animals in our altruistic goals, I think we would be responsible for all of them, and we may even need to count the welfare of each of them as being as important as each of us, and that seems like it would very expensive in many ways. I think if we really wanted to follow through with that, we would have to basically enslave humanity to that cause, because there are so many more of them than us. To be willing to go along with that, I would want to see much better evidence that animals have consciousness.
And I think there is a good chance that there could be useful research into animal consciousness. I don't think it's necessarily easy and it might not happen soon, but I think humanity will figure it out eventually, even if it takes decades. And I think if we wanted to include animals in our altruistic goals, pursuing that more completely (rather than just ending the farming of animals) could have so much more of a positive impact on the welfare of animals that it would be worth waiting.