JessMasterson
Bio
Participation2
I am a philosopher and ethicist with a PhD in Philosophy (Applied Ethics) from the University of Birmingham. Current research primarily focused on the intersection between animal welfare and AI.
Posts 4
Comments29
Thanks for reading, Karen! The challenge you've mentioned - ensuring economic tools are used in service of moral circle expansion rather than commodification - is a major one. Human history, in this regard, lends itself more easily to pessimism than optimism. I don't have any easy answers and I'd certainly need more time to think about it but my initial thought is that it seems there are two major steps we could consider here. Firstly, we need increased transparency in animal exploitation industries. And secondly, we need engagement in/facilitation of animal abuse to be seen as more of a black mark against a company than it currently is. If all goes well, AI could potentially help us act in service of these goals.
I did suspect that animal welfare wins were moving us away from abolition by easing people's guilt about consuming animal products (guilt that might otherwise have pushed them to give them up entirely). But more recently, I have done some more research on this and I think my instinct was probably wrong. It doesn't seem to play out that way as far as we can tell, and people who support welfare reforms tend to be more amenable to ultimately giving up animal products. So I suspect your position might be right!
It's a tricky one. The more seriously you are taken as a public intellectual, the higher the stakes are. The more people are listening, the less likely it is that you'll take a risk and say something that might later be used to undermine your status as a public intellectual. It seems likely that people with less knowledge and less authority on particular issues actually share their intuitions much more readily because they have less to lose by later looking silly.
An expert or public intellectual also might have good reason, beyond the superficial, to want to preserve the perceived authority of their voice. Nobody wants to be the boy who cried wolf. Although I do agree with you that it'd be refreshing if more people were willing to risk being publicly wrong.
I don't know how stores make ordering decisions, but I strongly suspect that being able to sell off animal products at a reduced rate would disincentivise more careful or conservative ordering of those products - they'll make back the cost either way, and the potential profit would likely make the risk of needing to sell some items at cost price seem worth it. I think freeganism is a pretty solid idea, but only in the sense that does not require the purchasing of any animal products e.g. eating non-vegan leftovers after a family Christmas that would be thrown away otherwise. Buying vegan products is almost certainly worse overall (for the environment, for example) than just eating food that would otherwise be dumped.
This paper shows how strategic menu manipulation in a university canteen achieved a 30.7% reduction in carbon footprint without anyone noticing the nudge. It's such a simple idea that could be implemented in universities, schools, hospital and prison cafeterias etc. It seems harmless and the gains seem disproportionately large when we look at the relative simplicity of carrying this out. The impact could be substantial for animal welfare (cutting down on the consumption of animal-based foods) and climate change.
I don't know what would be needed to get measures like this to be implemented more widely, but it seems promising.
Thanks for reading and for this response - it's valuable. I have to admit that I hadn't considered these ideas (moral trade and ECL) before, but I will certainly look into them now. I will come back to you with a proper response soon.