Re: Philosophy's lack of proofs

[chokhmah@xxxxxxxxxx]

Zinov, are you still checking and replying to emails on this list? If
so, I would like to share with you my thoughts on Mill's Utilitarianism.
I finished the book and have much to critique.

chokhmah

On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 04:08:14AM +0000, bsrkz@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > 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.
> 
>