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excellent post & mirrors my views/practices. an additional argument for humane husbandry is: if you think their lives have positive value (i.e. their existence is ceteris paribus good) then humane husbandry allows for the existence of more animals than would otherwise exist. they would not exist without the demand for them & the demand comes from their meat. this implies that eating the meat of animals raised well is not neutral, it is good. it will cause more of them to exist & live flourishing lives in their context.

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The same argument could be used for slavery.

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I would think it is better for slaves to exist than for slaves to be dead, but so long as they don't pose a threat to other citizens it would be better for them to exist and be free.

The problem with allowing animals to genuinely live free is that it's the same as letting them live in the wild, which is a malthusian meatgrinder where you'll eventually die of disease or starvation or get torn apart by predators. Better than living in a 2x4 cage for ten years, sure, but if maximising utils is your concern you'd be better off keeping animals as pets. Then they get to exist and you don't kill them after a quarter of their natural lifespan. They just have to be neutered.

An intermediate case might be something like various large game species living in wildlife reserves that have to be periodically culled to prevent overgrazing/mass starvation, such as elephants and bison. Ethical hunting is a lot less painful than most of the ways wild animals die, and in principle it's less wasteful to sell their meat for consumption than just leaving it to rot. In theory you could also manage herd sizes with physical or chemical contraception, it's just a lot more difficult/expensive.

I'd contemplate doing that for species as self-aware as, say, whales or elephants- if you get really sci-fi about it you could maybe devise some method for communicating with these species and explain the logic to them- whereas eating something truly brainless like scallops or mealworms just doesn't raise these issues. (There is actually something to be said for eating the bugs.) I think chickens or mackerel are somewhere in-between.

...There's also the problem of what you do with obligate carnivores, but I'll leave that for another discussion

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“But so long as they don’t pose a threat to other citizens”

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that's true, it does count in favor of slavery tout court. but slavery is wrong for other reasons, namely a) that it constitutes a rights violation & b) that it doesn't lead to flourishing lives. plausibly neither of those are true in the humane husbandry case

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I was going to make the same point. I'm surprised I don't hear it made more often.

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Good article. Although I do still struggle with it emotionally as an animal lover, I only eat wild game I hunted my self. Wrote a piece on it: https://open.substack.com/pub/brandonmcmurtrie/p/is-hunting-wrong?r=1kxn90&utm_medium=ios

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Yeah. I mentioned in another comment that well-managed wildlife preserves with regulated hunting are something like the best-case scenario for animal welfare short of essentially keeping entire species as pets. I agree with your point that ethical hunting is a much cleaner way to end an animal's life than most other ways a wild animal can die, and if it helps to keep the overall ecosystem conserved that's probably a net positive.

According to the article Noah linked those standards might be slipping, though: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/fear-factories/

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A very strong blog post that confers Noah Carl considerable prestige.

My own view is that the badness of killing animals for food is proportional to their capacity to suffer, which in turn is a function of their intelligence, which can be (very roughly) proxied by physiological metrics such as neuron count, with adjustments of protein calories per death and the life quality of the animal in question (very bad under factory farming). I wrote about this here: https://akarlin.com/animals/

By this logic, I exclude pork, but not beef or chicken, and certainly not fish or seafood. That is just my personal preference and assessment, it's certainly valid to select other points on the above chain to demarcate the borders of ethical acceptability, though I would argue that crustaceans should be permissible under any reasonable quantification (note that a lobster has 3x fewer neurons than an ant! and ants kill each other by the billions every year).

Ultimately, human welfare by this logic is very important, and the benefits accruing to an individual human from consuming the lower animals are higher than the disutility said animals incur by being killed and eaten. It is sad, but it is what it is. That is also why accelerating artificial meat is a pressing moral imperative by any measure, and additionally why rightoids such as Desantis and Meloni who have banned artificial meat in Florida and Italy are very evil people, worthy of noting but contempt in the judgmental eyes of Elite Human Capital.

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Pity the poor vegetables. At least the animals have a chance to get away...

Seriously though, you make good points. I've pretty much switched to a plant based diet.

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Two points: 1) there is a moral difference: dogs are a man’s best friend , pigs , cows and chickens are more like strangers . People are morally obliged to treat their best friends better than strangers . 2) it’s a typical luxury belief : ‘I can afford ethical meat, let the poor eat vegan slop ‘. Not very convincing for the vast majority of the world population.

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Yeah, I do think reciprocity comes into play. I may not be logically consistent, as I object to the idea that one (human) race has obligations to another due to historical blah blah blah, but... I feel that horses for example, after having served humanity since the dawn of time, obediently charging to their deaths in battle to help us win our wars, pulling plows etc... Have basically earned the right to be taken care of and well treated until the end of time, and to mistreat them or treat them as just another random quadruped would be a sort of betrayal.

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Well said Noah - I agree x

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Good article. Thanks.

Reservations:

* Any assumptions about what some or all animals think and feel is conjectural.

* You do not address the means of killing used in "humane farming".

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Excellent article! But I do believe that animals such as mammals that are higher up on the phylogenetic tree cling to life like we do. They fear death like we do, they experience the same terror as we do. These emotions go way back in our evolutionary history. Darwin himself referred to animals as our brethren in pain and suffering and death.

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Animals don't have a sense of "self" as demonstrated by the mirror self-recognition test, they don't have the mental capacity to understand dead and have no sense of continuity in their lives anyways, so it doesn't matter if a cow dies painlessly and is then replaced by another cow that has the exact same brain functions as the previous one. If an animal is afraid of a wolf chasing it, this is because of an automatic instinct, the animal itself doesn't think "Oh no, this wolf will kill me, I want to live some more years!" as the animal doesn't understand what life and dead are and doesn't have a concept of "self".

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What does that have to do with moral worth, though?

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How on earth do you know factory farmed animals "suffer"? Or suffer more than "ethically raised" animals? Your whole article is based on an entirely anthropomorphized view of what it is to be an animal raised for food. There's no evidence, no science offered at all for what is the basis of your argument.

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I strongly disagree with this article's thesis that factory farming is "morally unconscionable". It's true that most farm animals live in enclosed spaces and are often denied the full range of behaviors that wild animals have. But farm animals are also fed on a regular basis and protected from parasites, predators, dehydration, heat, cold, etc to a greater extent than wild animals. Most wild animals die young from predation, disease, or hunger. Whereas most farm animals die young in a slaughterhouse, and they even have rather humane deaths in some countries. It's not clear how one is supposed to be objectively better than the other.

There are many other problems with hedonism as a theory of value: https://zerocontradictions.net/misc/case-against-efilism#hedonism-is-not-self-evident

Morality is also an illusion: https://thewaywardaxolotl.blogspot.com/2020/07/what-is-morality.html

As for what diet is the healthiest and best for the environment, I endorse Mediterranean-like and plant-based diets, as they are the academic consensus and what I personally prefer. Vegan diets require supplements in order to be maximally healthy. But as long as you take supplements, a vegan diet with no processed foods will be one of the healthiest diets a person can have.

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https://reducing-suffering.org/habitat-loss-not-preservation-generally-reduces-wild-animal-suffering/#The_uncertain_impact_of_meat_production

Yes, its strange that animal welfare advocates don't seem engage with the literature on wild animal suffering, with a couple exceptions. Brian Tomasik has argued in response to the meat eater problem that the human role in reducing insect populations might make us net positive, which is funny for all sorts of reasons. https://open.substack.com/pub/benthams/p/factory-farming-is-not-just-bad-its-35e?utm_source=direct&r=1eio29&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=65242405

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Well, the first issue is whether the alternative even needs to be better for something else to be "morally unconscionable." In my mind, there can be many things that might even be better than their alternatives, but still are morally unconscionable due to their own autotelic elements.

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"...Morality is also an illusion..."

A truer word was never spoken, in my opinion.

Morality is highly subjective. It is also individual in nature and is therefore binding *only* on that individual.

As social animals, individuals seek other to group with. For a group to remain stable individuals in it must share some basic and important *personal* moral positions. Individuals that cannot/will not are driven from the group-perhaps to try out with another group--or are killed; it is an evolutionary triage.

The remainder has a shared body of moral values--not completely congruent, but *mostly* so on major issue such as mate selection, personal responsibility, etc. Personal morals that are incapable are generally hidden by the individual and practiced in private--or this had formerly been the case.

As the group evolves, these shared morals evolve into cultural traditions, and from that, eventually into codified laws. Laws tend to be an ironclad agreed-upon subset of the full set of all moral values of the entire population. In a functioning and stable society, each individual can/should feel assured that every other member will act in conformity with the codified moral values (laws) and any violations are enforced. If this is *not* enforced, mutual trust breaks down and much more self-beneficial behavior starts to take place, with less and less attention paid to the codified moral values.

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So what part of morality are we referencing as subjective? Its adherence? Its truth value? On top of this, let's say for a moment that ethics was subjective in nearly any sense you'd throw out there, how does that logically follow that morality is an illusion? And what does it mean to be an illusion in this sense? That it's mind-independent?

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"So what part of morality are we referencing as subjective? "

All parts. They are, as I mentioned they come with the individual, as evolved baggage. Often they drag large parts of it from their parents/close kinship group, but in point of fact they can, as they go thru life they can abandon all or some of these passed-down values might be abandoned or replaced.

Truth I think is on another axis. It can be demonstrated repeatedly and by any given person who tests it in the same manner.

So the way I see it, you're free to create and follow any moral scheme, but truths are objective and provable.

"let's say for a moment that ethics was subjective in nearly any sense you'd throw out there, how does that logically follow that morality is an illusion?"

I don't believe I ever said or implied that morality is an illusion. My intent is that it is self-tailored for each person, and persons tend to form groups on shared moral values.

In a sense, it's like a secret password or a shibboleth: its meaning is contextual and not absolute, but has meaning within its context. E.g., by valuing monogamous lifelong marriage, you are a member of the particular group that shares that value.

No disrepect intended; this is a good discussion and I will be sure to gain from it.

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"Truth I think is on another axis. It can be demonstrated repeatedly and by any given person who tests it in the same manner."

Just for clarification, I wasn't necessarily separating truth value from ethics in this situation. In my comment, I was asking if you were referencing descriptive ethics and/or normative ethics. I think it's pretty facile to understand how ethics deviates from individual to individual from a mere descriptive perspective given what is mountains and mountains worth of ethnographic evidence, but what I was curious over was whether you thought the truth value of ethics is entirely subjective (if you believe it is even truth-apt that is). It would seem this might be the case considering what you mentioned in your concluding paragraph, but I thought I'd ask in a more straightforward manner to understand where you're coming from (something I'll add more onto in a moment).

"I don't believe I ever said or implied that morality is an illusion. My intent is that it is self-tailored for each person, and persons tend to form groups on shared moral values."

I misread your comment, then. I thought you were agreeing in the sense of saying, "No truer word has ever been spoken," not disagreeing with it.

"its meaning is contextual and not absolute, but has meaning within its context. "

I definitely agree that ethics is contextual, highly contextual dare I even say. However, I am not as certain as to why this precludes the notion that ethics can be absolute. Why can't an absolutist perspective take context into consideration, but not conclude the determination must be made solely due to context? As an example, someone might say that rape is absolutely wrong in all contexts. Though, they might also go to the extent to say that the severity of their crimes might be contingent upon context. If a rapist had to rape someone to save humanity (in a strange series of events), they might still conclude that it was unethical given the sheer disutility a person might face (something that likely wouldn't be erased if humanity was saved, if anything else it would vanish given the contrary), but also conclude it's quite a bit disparate from a situation where someone did it just because they had an "itch." Now, if you're referencing the mere factor of determining right from wrong, then I suppose that's a different situation, but I also think there's more to ethics than the determination of right and wrong (as I conveyed above with my thought experiment), so feel free to clarify where you're coming from, then I might be able to throw some more thought experiments your way -- we shall see.

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This is really fun, thanks.

"As an example, someone might say that rape is absolutely wrong in all contexts."

And is the scope of this judgement personal or public? I think it's public in this example, with the individual maybe not necessarily adhering to this, as in former times when married men believed it was not rape if they forced their wife to have sex. This was also group morality, since it was not sanctioned in law, but I think it has since changed.

Here we may differ...

The examples you give, where with a certain context it is at least more broadly justifiable (save humanity--which reminds me of an old joke about the Pope having intercourse to save the world) than on individual whim (an itch) I'd never form the premise that "rape is absolutely wrong in all contexts".

To me, if it permitted without sanction (if that would be the case in saving humanity) it is not "wrong" in that case. However, the sanction could be variable, but once *all* sanctions are removed, the behavior now in effect is not governed by the binding group moral code (law), and has slipped back into the scope of personal morality.

So *something* that the group sees as negative has to happen if the group code is violated--public forbearance means then that it's up to the individual, not the group, to decide when it or if is allowed.

This means to me that morality *is* about subjective and group right/wrong. Once there is no negative reaction, either personally (guilt) or publicly (fine/jail/concrete sanction), it is de facto acceptable in that case; if we have categorized the behavior as absolutely wrong in all contexts, and we've just made, at least one context "acceptable"--wow! As a result, some will view it as "good". The bounds of morality are basically a threshold that can be crossed, or not. When crossed, the response can vary, but must in all instances be negative.

This thought experiment is similar in some ways to the moral dilemma faced by the physicists in the film "Oppenheimer" when working on the atomic bomb. Knowingly making a wildly destructive device to be used to kill 10s of thousands of non-combatants. Apparently doing this was not absolutely wrong in all contexts.

Nothing really unambiguously happened to them as a consequence, and so work on genetically tailored pathogens continues, I'd bet.

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Again, a very good discussion from which I will gain.

To start, we're migrating from "morality" to "ethics". I don't see them as interchangeable. They are in the same domain, but refer to different aspects of the same concept: subjective right/wrong. I'd better explain, since much of this is of my own construction, derived--or "seeded"--by reading various uses of the terms, which tend to be amorphous--and developed thru introspection, analysis, characterization, and comparison to life experience, then measured against the same external amorphous definitions I see out there.

To me, morality is the sum of one's own firmly held values, some of which are taken wholesale from one's culture, and some of which are either refined from those cultural templates, or else wholly synthesized from other differing values.

Ethics is one's assessment of how well one is living in concert with that same moral code. One is unethical when one fails to adhere to one's own morality.

Now, I *think* that ethics can also apply to the public's assessment of how well an individual is living up to the general community standards as encoded in law. But I can make no objective sense of using the term "unethical" in reference to someone whose behavior, while not liked or admired, is within the body of the law or governing authority, as in a professional organzation.

So I'm working from this and if we continue let's try to find a common definition for morality and ethics. For example, I see morality as having NO public or communal component, but I do see that like-minded--and one aspect of this is a core of shared moral precepts--individuals living in a community may so strongly favor certain moral values that violation of them are encoded into laws that bind all members of that community.

So morals are personal and non-binding on others until they are encoded into laws or oral tradition.

I don't know what "truth-apt" is. Is it a term of art? Could you explain?

Bear in mind, I tend to dismiss, for my own use, discipline-focused terms of art unless I have found, after personally testing, that they agree with my own observations and subsequent analysis and working conclusions.

If I'm to be gaslighted (gaslit?), I'll gaslight myself.

I do recognize that others use these standard terms and will try to make a good translation from my own conceptual terminology. I don't expect others to understand my own jargon.

Once past this I'll reply to the remainder of your comment, if you are interested.

BTW,

>"...Morality is also an illusion..."

>A truer word was never spoken, in my opinion.

Yes, I messed up here. I screwed up my own context. When I intended was that *public* morality is an illusion. It is personal, not public.

Of course I'll get pushback on this, yep.

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Another point : that a lot of the worlds poor will be condemned to a vegan diet (ethical eggs, milk, etc are also a lot more expensive than the factory farmed stuff) means nutritional deficiencies (vitamin b12, iron, calcium etc), weakness and sickness . Hardly a humane system!

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Actually, vegans have no problem getting enough iron or calcium, if they eat the right foods. They would have to take supplements to get sufficient B12 and maybe a couple other nutrients, but as long as they do that, their diet will be among the healthiest in the world.

It's also true that some vegan foods are more expensive than meat products, but we also have to recall that meat is being unfairly subsidized many governments, and a healthier diet could avoid more medical costs.

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I’m not talking about what the perfect vegan could accomplish with careful planning and supplements , I’m talking about the practice of veganism . We’re living in the real world , not in lala land . In practice veganism means more nutrient deficiencies and the great majority of vegans giving up on their unhealthy diet very quickly .

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That depends on the vegan diet you're talking about. Supplements are generally pretty cheap, and one could easily buy a year's worth supply for less than $40. If meat wasn't subsidized by governments, then supplements would easily be far cheaper than buying meat. A supplemented vegan diet doesn't imply nutrient deficiencies, weakness, or sickness.

Of course, I don't necessarily endorse veganism, and I don't think factory farming is "unethical". I think Mediterranean-like and plant-based diets are best. I also wish insect agriculture was more popular.

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Not only what you claim isn't exactly true even for the best carefully planned and supplemented vegan diet (and we are talking lots of time, knowledge, money and access to specific products) but you conveniently ignore all the second order effects just to gain a pretend moral high ground.

Scientifically a vegan diet isn't superior in any way even with all the stupid constraints it brings but you also have to ignore all the long-term issues that abandoning millennia of cohabitation with animals perfectly selected to meet human needs over as much time.

The effects would not just be felt in the food part (basic nutrition which is all the thing shortsighted vegans focus on) but also on secondary and tertiary products. That's before even talking about the deep transformation of society that would follow, considering how many human lives are directly or indirectly linked to this practice/industry.

I'm sorry but your type is somehow funny because you are completely missing the forest for the tree in order to appear virtuous.

To be able to talk about those sorts of things you need to be able to think in a systemic way that has to take into account a lot more variable than what a survivable diet could potentially be.

It's like having a multivariate problem and claiming success because you found a number that happens to satisfy one of the conditions.

But I guess you won't see reason anytime soon because it is all about ideology and a behavior that is closely related to religious zealotry.

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Frankly articles like this make me feel a lot less bad about what Cambridge did to Noah.

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Maybe you should visit some farms instead of relying on urban activists for your information. Take pigs, for example. I've been to large hog farms... CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations)... and smaller, so-called humane farms. The large farms tend to be cleaner because they can afford to install sprinkler systems and ventilation. The smaller farms tend to allow their pigs to forage. Both systems have positive and negative aspects, even when they are well-run. Both also use farrowing crates because it prevents sows from crushing their piglets while birthing and nursing.

As for the "moral superiority" of veganism, there is nothing humane or particularly moral about crop farming. Animals are killed and/or displaced when the land is cleared and cultivated. They are also killed in order to protect crops in the fields and orchards, mills and warehouses. If you buy tropical fruit, you are contributing to the deaths of endangered animals such as orangatans who are killed in order to protect your mangos and papayas.

That said, I am someone who prefers to raise my own livestock and to buy what I don't raise from local farms, but I also understand that this is not an option for many... perhaps not even for most people.

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In my experience, all the people giving that sort of "argument" were never made to live and/or help on a farm, whether small or large, it doesn't matter much.

Because if you do, even the dumbest of human picks up some things from basic observations that would quickly shortcut this type of thinking in its tracks.

I guess we should have some sort of observatory camp for urbanites to learn how they even get to eat, a bit like military service but short and utilitarian.

Then you would see the nonsense about veganism dwindling so fast you couldn't even see mention of it 10 years later.

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I had hoped this would address the meat eater problem, taking animal welfare seriously seems result in all sorts of strange conclusions, most of which are absent from public EA discourse etc.

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Great article, only strengthened by the absurd criticisms in some of the comments here, which mostly amount to “there are fuzzy lines; so this argument is INSANE”

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Are animals really “tortured for weeks on end”? Do most of them even have negative welfare overall? In any case, to push for abolishing factory farming due to “billions” of animals being “tortured” is possibly less effective than simply calling for more humane treatment.

https://jclester.substack.com/p/animal-rights-and-animal-welfare?utm_source=publication-search

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The history of blood sports fascinates me.

It seems that it went from pretty popular to illegal in a few decades (in the West).

What made the culture at the time suddely think «this is barbaric, we must stop doing it»?

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That culture can afford to foster sensibilities and public policies that in prior times were at least marginally required for subsistence. The old practices of routine blood-letting were symbolically raised to ritual used to bring success in the hunt, then later to sport/ritual, like bullfighting, that is basically decadent hunting/killing/animal mastery ritual.

No biggie...

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