Re: Philosophy's lack of proofs

[bsrkz@xxxxxxxxxx]

> To continue my argument, there exists no consensus even amongst
> vegetarian philosophers. There exists no consensus about applied ethics,
> nor about the princinples or axioms used to prove vegetarianism. For
> example, suppose you believe that there should not be differential
> treatment among species. This is equivalent to saying that all species
> have equal value. I could point out that vegetarians contradict this by
> eating plants.

No one claims that we should treat all species of organisms the same, only
that species alone is not sufficient to account for a moral difference, and
that membership in a species that usually or merely potentially has some
characteristic is not enough. Imagine if there were two human-like species and
the only difference was the number of eyes. It would be ridiculous to say that
the number of eyes was irrelevant, but that nonetheless there is some moral
difference between actions involving members of the two different species,
despite the fact that the only thing that differentiates them is the number of
eyes. So you must find some difference between humans and non-humans that
explains why there is a moral difference. But presumably it will not be the
amount of hair, for example, or the number of legs. When people do try to
point out some significant difference, it is usually cognitive differences.
But there are humans with severe cognitive deficits, and yet we still think
that we ought not to torture them. Even if you have an account of well-being
where species is relevant, say an account where the teleology of a species
determines what is good for the individuals, this would not be able to account
for a difference here: torturing a human with severe mental retardation would
not undermine the human's flourishing as a human any more than torturing a cow
would undermine the cow's flourishing as a cow.

The main axiom that is being relied on here really is self-evident, namely
that differences in morality supervene on non-moral differences. Once we
accept this, it is not clear we would even need a further ethical axiom to say
at least that species is not morally relevant over and above what
differentiates the different species. It is not clear that it would make sense
to say that there is some non-moral difference that explains the moral
difference, and that this is the species of the patient, but that what
differentiates the two species is itself irrelevant.

And the mere fact that the patient in one case is a member of a species that
usually has some characteristic would be an extrinsic difference, not an
intrinsic difference between the actions or their consequences (note that we
could imagine a world where most humans were unintelligent, but torturing one
of the few intelligent humans in such a world would still be immoral -- you
can agree with this even if you think that intelligence is relevant). You
could instead try to say in the case of an infant that the infant has
intelligence as a potential property, and even in the case of some mentally
retarded people you could try to claim that the individual has some potential
property of intelligence such that if the individual had developed differently
the individual would have had higher intelligence (I do not know if this is
true in all cases where perhaps the individual could not have had normal
intelligence and still be the same individual, but it might be true in some
cases, and something similar is true in the case of brain injuries). If you
rely on something like that, then at least it could be said that there is some
intrinsic difference in the moral patient. However, it seems obvious that such
potential properties, or more generally any properties of the patient, cannot
matter morally independently of the relation between the action and the
properties. If what you do in no way affects whether that potential
intelligence will be realised, it is hard to see the moral relevance.
 
As mentioned above, one might think that species is relevant in the sense that
what amounts to flourishing for the member of one species is different from
that of another, but then what would distinguish the two actions would be that
one undermines the patient's flourishing but the other does not, but this is
not the case when comparing the torturing of cognitively equal humans and
non-human animals.

Of course, such axioms are not enough to establish that one should treat
animals in a certain way, or that we should boycott products that involve such
treatment. But once we accept such principles, we can compare the cases
involving animals to cases involving humans, where there is generally more
agreement. I am not saying that this is the only way to make an argument for
veganism. It might be better to just argue directly from certain assumptions
about how expected effects on well-being matter morally, and point out the
negative effects on the well-being of animals used in animal agriculture.

Even if we have moral obligations involving plants, there are important
differences between plants and most animals. You might think that it is pro
tanto wrong to harm any sort of organism, but the type of harms that can be
inflicted on animals is different from plants in most cases (putting aside
very simple animals). Most animals can be harmed psychologically, and not just
physically. It is not plausible that plants have consciousness, and if they
do, it is presumably less complex than, for example, chickens or cows. Even
putting aside psychological well-being and assuming that plants have morally
relevant welfare, things are presumably worse in the case of animal
agriculture than plant agriculture; I would think that the plants generally
are more physically healthy than many of the animals.
  
Regarding insects harmed in agriculture, I do think that we should try to
avoid this as much as possible. But it is doubtful whether the harm done to
insects is as much as the harm done to many non-human animals (merely killing
an insect is not going to be as bad as making a chicken live in a small cage
for extended periods of time, for example; although because so many insects
are harmed, this might make it worse overall). Also, note that animal
agriculture generally relies on plant agriculture, so that you will harm the
insects (and plants, even if there is any morally relevant harm done to
plants) either way. In fact, farmed fish are fed insects, and so fish farming
even relies on insect agriculture. Even if you include insects in the moral
calculus, I do not think that you could justify supporting animal agriculture
in most cases.

We cannot avoid all harm without committing suicide, but we can avoid more if
we act in certain ways rather than others.

> Often, the killing of species is even deliberate. If rodents spread
> disease among humans, would it not be ethical to kill rats in order to
> save human lives? Similar arguments can be made for killing cockroaches,
> ticks, and mosquitoes. Many of these vectors clearly experience
> sentience and feel pain.

Presumably killing even humans deliberately is morally permissible in some
cases, like self-defence. Note that this would be true even if the human was
not a moral agent. If a severely mentally retarded human kept accidentally
smothering infants to death and we could only stop the person through killing,
then this would clearly be justified. I do not think that this is a
controversial point. Most vegans will presumably agree that if you are being
attacked by an animal, that it is permissible to defend yourself. Even killing
a human who would unintentionally spread disease could presumably be justified
if there is no other way around it and the consequences would otherwise be
severe enough.

> Among vegetarians, there is not even any consensus about the extent to
> which animals can be exploited. Even if all philosophers agreed to not
> kill animals, there would be no agreement about the extent to which
> their labor and products can be used.

I would think that most vegetarians at least would agree that if the products
are produced by putting the animals in horrible conditions, that we should
boycott them.

Some vegetarians are simply ignorant of the conditions of most farm animals,
but might otherwise boycott non-meat products. 

There are also questions here that are not explicitly ethical. Perhaps some
people think that we could reform animal agriculture so that animals live
pretty decent lives and are then painlessly killed. Others might find this
very implausible, and so think that we need to demand a full boycott.

There is also the question of whether there are moral rights, and whether
these apply to non-human animals; the broader dispute about rights is not
specific to vegetarianism/animal ethics. If there are moral rights, I do not
see why we should think that they do not extend to non-human animals. However,
I do not think that the case for veganism depends on this question. So long as
animal agriculture is permitted, I do not think that we can guarantee that
farm animals will be treated well.

Animal ethics is a pretty recent field for the most part, and veganism goes
against centuries of tradition (especially in the West). I would not be
surprised if there is more of a consensus among ethicists in a few centuries
or less about how we should treat non-human animals.

There is a survey of philosophers that asked about animal ethics (among other
questions): <https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4938>. If you
limit the results to specialists in applied ethics (granted, the sample size
then drops significantly), endorsement of omnivorism drops to 36.44% and
endorsement of veganism rises to 28.89%. Among the general survey population
endorsement of omnivorism is at 48.02%, which is fairly high, but much lower,
I imagine, than the number of omnivores in the general population.

> To compound the problem, there are zero methods offered for ethics
> enforcement. When a man chooses or disregards ethics, outside of
> religion, there are zero consequences.

Whether you have a moral obligation to do something and whether you will be
punished for not doing so are completely separate questions.

People outside of religion are often punished for violating various rules,
either by the government or otherwise. Of course, this often does not
correspond to what ought to be punished. If enough people were convinced that
animal agriculture was unjust, we could eventually ban it.

If you are saying that people will not be motivated to do what they think is
right if they are not religious, this is clearly not true, since there are
plenty of non-religious people who do what they think is right despite no
consequences.

Religious people often also do not follow religious rules. Some religions
allow you to merely ask for forgiveness. Even if the religion claims that you
will be punished, many people do not seem to have a strong belief that this is
true.

> The problem therefore is threefold:
>
> 1) No consensus (not even among philosophers)
> 2) No verifiable proofs
> 3) No consequences
>
> The issue is not specific to vegetarianism. The problem is that many
> philosophy problems suffer from the exact same 3 flaws. These flaws
> render discussion of the problems of philosophy completely meaningless.

There is a consensus on some issues in philosophy. But you do not need a
consensus, because you can rely on your own reasoning (although admittedly
this takes time and effort to do well). I am not sure what you mean by
'verifiable proofs', but there are strong arguments in some cases. I do not
see why it is necessary for there to be 'consequences' for the questions to be
worth asking. If the claim is that the questions have no practical relevance,
then this is often not the case, as some do have practical relevance. Of
course, if you have in mind empirical verifiability by 'consequences', then it
is true that philosophical questions do not have consequences that let us
empirically verify them, but I disagree that this makes them not worth
considering. 


By the way, there is a good book on ethical vegetarianism called _Dialogues on
Ethical Vegetarianism_ by Michael Huemer. Prior to being published as a book,
it was published in an open-access journal (that is the version I read). Links
to download the four parts are available at <https://owl232.net/papers.htm> if
you do not want to acquire the book version. One important point I disagree
with it on is the question of insect sentience; it claims that insects are
probably not sentient, but I suspect that they are. If you read the book, see
also this blog post by Bentham's Bulldog
<https://benthams.substack.com/p/michael-huemer-is-wrong-about-insects> that
argues against Huemer's claims about insect sentience.