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Hello everybody, I have been lurking on the forum for a while and thought I would introduce myself. I encountered EA earlier this year and while I am not as altruistic as many of you, I have become more altruistic than I was before. I have increased my donations, and reprioritized them to hopefully more effecient causes. I have also become almost vegetarian, a lifestyle change I never thought I would attempt.
I have no overaching moral theory. I am attracted to utilitarianism, but I also think there are lots of practical and theoretical problems with it so I am not going to pretend I am committed to it.
I have been very struck by the arguments for the importance of animal welfare. I have a lot of moral uncertainy on the topic, since any attempt to formulate ethical rules involving animals raises difficult questions in the philosophy of consciousness, utilitarianism versus other ethical theories, the inter-individual comparison of utilities and population ethics. Still, my intuition says that industrial scale animal cruelty is bad, and nothing in my attempts to philosophize makes me think that intution is wrong.
Welcome, Roger! 😊 Congrats on moving towards a vegetarian diet, even though you previously thought you wouldn't have attempted it 👏