February 21st, 2167
The New York Daily
There have been cries from locals in Healy, New York, about taking down the statue of Jerry Whittaker. Whittaker was renowned in his time for his breakthroughs in the field of oncology, with his discoveries saving an estimated five million lives.
For the past one hundred and thirty years, he has been the poster child of his hometown: Healy, New York. After his death in 2073, a statue was erected in his honor; however, at a recent town hall meeting Friday, his legacy has come into question.
A group of students at Heatherheight University in Healy have taken issue with the prominent display of an omnivore in the town center. They submitted a petition calling for the removal of the statue last week which prompted the town council to move ahead with setting a date, February 27th, for a vote on the future of the statue.
"The statue whitewashes the history of Whittaker. It was well known the horrors of the factory farming system in Whittaker's time yet he continued to engage in an omnivorous lifestyle. He once said that he considered moving away from meat consumption but then claimed, he would miss bacon and cheese a little too much, laughing about it with the interviewer. We want the statue removed. It makes no sense to celebrate someone who supported the genocide and torture of animal lives," said Michael, a third-year at Heatherheight, who spoke during the meeting in support of the removal.
Others disagree. Owner of Smith's Bakery on Lever street, John Gill said, "It's ridiculous. They try to cancel people for anything and everything these days. Back then, that kind of stuff was normal. We're going to have to take down every statue in the world if we continue down this road."
There are some who favor a middle of the road approach where the statue would be kept but a new paragraph be added to the description at the foot of the statue. It would explain some of the moral complexity of Whittaker's history. Alyson Regalia, librarian at Winchester explained, "We're just asking that this blindspot of Whittaker be included somewhere in the memorial to show that even noble people can engage in heinous acts. It's possible to honor his legacy while acknowledging even Whittaker had faults."
The fate of Whittaker's statue remains to be seen. All town council members have been quiet about how they will vote on the 27th.
But even if the statue remains up, the question of how to reconcile with the history of factory farming and the legacy of those who supported it remains an important one.
To begin with, I am a total-sum utilitarian; that is to say, I do not think the repugnant conclusion is repugnant. Creating people who would prefer to live is doing them a favor. Creating someone on condition he later die for you is ethical as long as he would agree that, yup, existing had totally been worth it, and as long as his life didn't cause enough suffering (in side effects) to counterbalance it. So for this reason, I default to non-vegetarianism.
I think this is built on a false premise. Correct me if I misread your argument with this example. We have 1,000,000 chickens on a factory farm. You are assuming their lives are net util even if their lives may be miserable. (which I think is the repugnant conclusion? I've never really liked the framing of it either) Let's break this down. Of those 1,000,000 chickens, 500,000 are male chicks. They are killed after birth because they are deemed worthless. I don't believe these were net util lives. I believe they were negative lives. Therefore, the repugnant conclusion doesn't come into play here with these lives. The other 500,000 are females. Many of them live a life full of torture from birth, due to genetic modifications that have crippled some of them and made life painful for others. (These genetic modifications include inducing egg production and increasing the amount of meat on their bodies.) They are slaughtered about 7 weeks into their existence. Some of these lives I believe are net negative. I will assume that some of these chickens lead net util lives. Even then, the marginal net util of the sample of females I believe is outweighed by the treatment of their male counterparts.
Additionally, there are other negative externalities which you are not acknowledging, they include the following:
- Environmental Impact
- Psychological trauma of the slaughterhouse workers
- The land that is repurposed for factory farming. Mass plant agriculture requires less land and therefore, we can assume some of the land will be repurposed. This is an assumption but I believe nearly any purpose for the land, whether that be rewilding the terrain or building infrastructure for humans would be a better purpose for the land.
There is still the 'factory farming is uniquely terrible' argument! I have a great deal of sympathy for this argument! However, I think the case is weaker than it seems.
First, I am not in fact convinced that animals have qualia? Like, that is kind of a weak argument, just multiply the probability that animals have qualia by the total sum of the utility conditional that they do and go on from there? But - we really don't understand where consciousness comes from or how it works and I don't really know that there's anything actually inside a chicken's skull capable of suffering. So I do want this point made before I go on with the second, more important one:
Qualia is a complicated subject regarding animals since they can't explicitly tell us about their experiences. However, this is a limited view and can cast doubt on the qualia experience of humans as well. Even though animals may not be able to communicate their experience in English, we have other analyses that lead us to value animal welfare. There are couple different arguments here that animal welfare advocates will make:
1. We don't care about qualia. We care about suffering. Based off the research of many animals, we believe many of them feel pain. To simplify, these experiments are typically done by shocking an animal (negative stimuli) and then analyzing the animal's behavior against said stimuli in the future. Animals such as dogs/cats/pigs/even crustaceans will try to avoid the negative stimuli in the future. This is one way of trying to understand whether animals suffer.
2. Based off what we know about the human brain, we have no reason to cast doubt over the qualia experience of many animals. The current conception of consciousness (correct me if I'm wrong any neuroscientists in the crowd) is that consciousness is the interaction of the thalamus and the cortex. This thalamus cortex connection is believed to be what constitutes consciousness or rather our level of consciousness. Obviously, consciousness is weird and we can say all things are conscious (Koch) but I think we can both agree you are not operating on the same level of a chair for example. (which someone like Koch who believes all things are conscious also subscribes to) If we accept this view of consciousness, then all animals with a brain or more precisely, the thalamus cortex connection deserve the benefit of the doubt of consciousness as we would give a human who may be non-verbal. It's important to note this view excludes two groups (one of which being some animals): Plants and certain animals like oysters which have nerve ganglia clusters but no brain. It is an ongoing debate in the vegan community about animals like oysters and the different levels of consciousness we ascribe to different beings. Some believe we should give oysters the benefit of the doubt while others believe that this is too slippery of a view and at that point, why not give plants the benefit of the doubt too?
I believe in the hedonic treadmill; that is, that people vastly overestimate and underestimate how much their happiness will change based on predictable factors (see https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/23/the-price-of-glee-in-china/ for a recent extreme case). I know enough history to know that the past was really extremely horrifyingly terrible - and, yet, mass suicides are not a common feature of life at any period in history, even those periods where nobody believed in a morally-relevant afterlife. Mass suicides did still happen occasionally, but (a) only under really extreme circumstances and (b) by people who did not know about the hedonic treadmill. So while I have no doubt that factory farming is worse for animals than conventional farming (other than the doubt of whether or not the animals are morally relevant), the question of "is it literally worse than death" is a much harder one.
(see above argument on male chicks, I believe humans, too, taken away from their parents upon birth, live for a couple days in torturous conditions, and then are slaughtered, lived net negative lives. Increasing the number of these lives is just increasing the amount of suffering of the world.) I don't understand this argument about mass suicides. Some people live net negative lives and won't off themselves because they think suicide is a net neutral decision. (infinite bad and infinite good possibility after death) I don't see how them persisting is justification of net util.
You could still argue that, even if these arguments were persuasive, I should avoid eating meat anyway, just on the off chance it's a moral catastrophe. My response to that really just is that I am uncomfortable around Pascal's Mugging arguments and while I feel that I should probably investigate them I don't feel that I am compelled to obey every request that goes "Change your behavior or be at fault for a moral catastrophe!" I feel that being shaped like that is bad, because then anyone can just extort you effortlessly. Low-probability arguments that might be important are going on a queue based on probability, where I investigate one at a time as I have time. Right now I'm trying to figure out which religion is true, if any. Next on the queue is a Serious Long-Term Investigation Of Animal Welfare, but I expect it will take a while to get there.
I do not find these arguments persuasive and therefore I do not wish to engage in a discussion on Pascal's Mugging.
Thank you.