a few miscellaneous & kinda hapazardly formed thoughts:
i think a few liberal assumptions were made which can swing things the other way—namely the confidence that shrimp are sentient, or just how much they feel.
in any case, humans seem to have a net positive benefit if you account for other factors. for instance, insects suffer immensely painful lives (if we have some confidence in their sentience). humans kill a lot of insects prematurely before they live the rest of their painful lives through climate change and stuff. this could mean humans have a net positive moral impact if you account for insect pain.
finally, I have a strong inclination that you're underselling the positive externalities per human. i.e., the existence of human society entails the unprecedented possibility that life might eventually become net positive in utility—that is to say, eventually, human society might progress to the point where humans increase utility. so accounting for long-termism, improving human society may have a much higher positive externality for shrimp than you're considering.
RE: "Insects suffer awful lives and we destroy the ecosystem". I think I'd now like to concede this point to some extent. I hadn't considered it because it's so counterintuitive, but Bentham's Bulldog also pointed it out. Though climate change isn't the best argument, because it heats up the Earth, which means more insects long-term (e.g. African species of mosquitoes and flies in Europe). *Environment or ecosystem destruction* makes more sense.
RE: "Externalities per human". I totally agree with your points here. I thought I had made that clear in the conclusion that I don't want humans to go extinct, but to fix this issue so that we can become net-positive. Throughout the body, I'm talking about current humans rather than longtermism. Longtermism only comes in the conclusion.
Though we might worry about this not being true, due to s-risks like creating many sentient AIs that suffer. You might want to read my "Impartialist Sentientism and Existential Anxiety about Moral Circle Explosion" which is about bugs and AI sentience. https://themoralcircle.substack.com/p/impartialist-sentientism-and-existential
That's a fair view, although pretty counterintuitive and bleak too. Most people haven't grappled with the fact that painlessly killing great populations (through ecosystem interventions) might be the moral thing to do.
Basically all of these calculations are meaningless. The statement "Thus, a shrimp’s suffering capacity might be 50% relative to human suffering" is meaningless, there is no way to verify it or even really understand what that means. It's just a random stab in the dark. The estimate for "percentage of time spent suffering" is also a meaningless, random guess. You also don't factor in how much time a shrimp spends suffering in the wild and a million other things. It is conceivable that most animals spend a considerable amount of time suffering and stressed in nature.
Also you say "Humans are plainly evil. Humanity hasn’t been worth it, so far. Consuming animals causes more moral harm than you, as a human, are worth in moral terms". Do you also think predation and meat eating by other animals makes them evil? Do you not think humans are animals who evolved to eat meat? We certainly have a range of adaptations which indicate that meat is a majority of our natural diet.
*Re: Shrimp suffering capacity is a stab in the dark* - Well, it is a Back of the Envelope Calculation for a reason. Of course, we need more accurate numbers and more scientific research to get to know how much each shrimp can suffer. But just assuming the numbers are wrong and to keep eating shrimp is morally reckless. There's an asymmetry here: if we're wrong and shrimp don't suffer, the cost of avoiding harm is small (not enjoying their taste). If we're right, farming 440 billion shrimp a year is a moral catastrophe. The BOTEC already accounts for uncertainty of empirical factors—feel free to adjust the numbers, but the core conclusion will probably hold: large-scale shrimp farming is ethically indefensible. It's reckless, given the state of the information.
*Re: Predation / Wild animal suffering* -
Nonhuman animals don't commit moral wrongs in the same way that we do, because they lack the capacity to reflect on alternatives courses of action. But their actions can still lead to morally bad outcomes. I do have non-mainstream views on challenging predation and reducing wild animal suffering in the long term, if we were to learn how to substantially modify the environments in a net-positive way, but that's a separate debate. To avoid completely sidetracking the issue, what matters here is that human impact on wild animals has been overwhelmingly negative, mostly through habitat destruction, so bringing up wild animals also makes the situation for the ethical judgements of humans much worse.
*Re: Do you not think that humans are animals who evolved to eat meat?* - This is an appeal to nature fallacy. Humans are also evolved to get things our way through killing, raping, and plundering. Yet we shouldn't do that. We have cognitive abilities that help us reflect on our actions and do other, better things. Having the ability for something doesn't immediately mean we should do it. The simple question that morally matters, is rather, "does eating meat justify the immense suffering it causes?" And the enjoyment we derived from eating meat is comparatively extremely short and small. Eating a plant-based meal and taking a B12 supplement is trivial compared to the immense suffering and painful death experienced by animals in factory farms, who live confined to small spaces for life and are then killed in an extremely painful way.
Re: Hunting - We probably disagree on hunting, but thank you for acknowledging how horrible factory farming can be! :)
Idk exactly how to put what I’m thinking but basically I wonder if one might be more likely to maximize how much good they do by adopting a more default moral outlook than using a thought process that gets them caught between such extremely different potential conclusions.
I get your point. In day-to-day moral decision-making, simpler, broadly acceptable heuristics can indeed minimize harmful second-order effects and prevent moral paralysis or extreme actions. Of course, this is typically how I act day-to-day (aside from my substantial charitable donations and directing my career to working on moral philosophy).
I certainly wouldn't place such significant weight on a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation (BOTEC) that, if I were suddenly granted complete power over humanity tomorrow, I would uncritically act on it. That would indeed be naive and dangerous!
However, I think your comment maybe doesn't fully distinguish between moral views as *decision procedures* and moral views as *criteria of rightness*, a distinction widely recognized by utilitarians. My engagement with these thought experiments is primarily about examining the latter, what is morally good in principle, rather than advocating immediate practical application of the most extreme implications. By engaging with these edge cases, we test and refine our ethical theories, uncover inconsistencies, hidden assumptions, overlooked implications, etc. (More on this distinction can be found here: https://utilitarianism.net/types-of-utilitarianism/#:~:text=In%20the%20literature%20on%20utilitarianism,thinking%20about%20what%20to%20do.)
Additionally, I worry your critique might also be overlooking the function of a BOTEC. I explicitly invited feedback precisely because I recognize such calculations are provisional. Bentham's Bulldog raised an important consideration, which influenced my views accordingly. This iterative refinement is precisely what rational engagement with evidence and arguments demands, as opposed to adhering rigidly (dogmatically?) to initial intuitions.
Oh I totally get your purpose, which is in part why I’m chewing on this in this way. I have the cross-wise but I think compatible intention to test my thinking having moved on from utilitarianism. I’ve really enjoyed shrimp welfare discourse for that reason (esp. bc moving to a different moral framework coincided with a shift from vegetarianism to pescatarianism), and have mostly been annoyed by it when I think people (who will go unnamed…) have written a bit too righteously about it.
I’ve been thinking about writing out a piece to test my thinking, so I appreciate your response and the link & reminder re: rightness. I think I’ve been influenced toward a sort of baby’s-first-pragmatism which is worth challenging.
Cool! I just want to say that I appreciated the civil discussion from you. :)
I am aware that it is a pretty radical position compared to most people, but it's likely where utilitarian (and other consequentialist positions) seem to lead.
I hope you keep reflecting on the topic of animal welfare, since I think it's quite morally important.
The bad social ramifications and second-order effects I might not have been considering here. The argument does conclude that currently, most humans are net-bad on the world with regards to suffering. But I believe that humans can turn it around long-term and create greater positive impact, on net. That doesn't mean that *every single human* has a positive impact, though.
Also, as Bentham's Bulldog has commented, there's a point I hadn't considered. Ironically and counterintuitively, humans engaging or promoting habitat destruction might mean that on-net humans are good, because most wild animals might be leading net-negative lives (lives with more suffering than happiness), and we are reducing their populations. https://reducing-suffering.org/habitat-loss-not-preservation-generally-reduces-wild-animal-suffering/
I think this is what people mean when they say “repugnant conclusion.”
If your moral theory claims that it would be better if 99.99% of humans, or basically anyone who didn’t subscribe to your belief system, were dead, then perhaps something is wrong with your moral intuitions in the first place, or at least the reasoning that comes after.
On the contrary, much of my research in ethics focuses on ethical methodology and moral epistemology. Historically, widely-held intuitions have often been wildly mistaken: many people once had intuitive beliefs supporting slavery, sexism, racism, or disgust-based prejudices against marginalized groups. Many laypeople have or had flawed moral intuitions about the putative importance of disgust against homosexuality, other races, or some forms of medicinal therapy. And about how sexism, racism, or slavery is justified because there's a natural hierarchy, etc. Moral philosophy critically assesses these intuitions, aiming to identify and correct such biases and inconsistencies. So it is not surprising that moral philosophers might be ahead of their time and reach conclusions that seem "wild" to most people.
Regarding shrimp welfare specifically, the point isn't that humans inherently lack moral worth or anything like that, but rather that our current actions towards non-human animals, including shrimp, who are farmed and slaughtered by the billions under conditions analogous to industrial-scale concentration camps represent a moral crisis of immense scale. Ignoring or trivializing this crisis may ultimately overshadow all other moral advances made by humanity. This concern is not fringe within contemporary ethics. Most contemporary consequentialist moral philosophers accept the gravity of widespread animal suffering. However, voicing these conclusions openly to non-philosophers can often provoke emotional reactions rather than reasoned debate, so they are often afraid of voicing such views.
Finally, I'd welcome a more explicit argument outlining why you believe my reasoning is wrong, rather than an assertion that my conclusions feel intuitively weird. I acknowledge they are weird, and it took me more than ten years to come to accept such views, but I do believe they are correct. Sadly, most people haven't gone through years of philosophical engagement to reach these conclusions.
Cool, you have a consistent argument that leads from your premises, which are asserted, but approximately line up with the intuitions of other people, so you’ll still end up with a lot of people agreeing with you.
The same reasoning I would use to agree with your premises, is that which I use to disagree with your conclusions. I intuitively agree that pain is bad, and less pain is better than more pain (probably depending on the circumstances). I intuitively disagree that we should willingly exchange the suffering of a few thousand shrimp for a human life, or even worse, determine 99.99% of human lives are moral catastrophes because of their per-capita shrimp consumption.
Comparing this with slavery, or homosexuality is a bit of motte and bailey, no? There are perhaps infinite potential moral catastrophes for every real one, so the evidence of past mistakes is not much evidence this specific hypothetical catastrophe is real.
You have a structure of belief which, to you, leaves very little room for criticism. Conclusions logically follow from the premises, and you confidently accept those conclusions in face of what normal moral intuition would say, creating self consistency. You present your set of premises in a way many people would agree with, and offer a weaker version that would probably lead to the same conclusion (if you have to present multiple versions of your premises, perhaps you’re using motivated reasoning to try and find a starting point that you can take to your desired direction).
This is basically the playbook for what most people call “repugnant conclusions”. Philosophy is about more than simply taking agreeable premises, and logically following them to their conclusions, wherever they might be. It’s the mistake of many philosophers in the past who develop rigid systems, and walk them through to their conclusions that defeat the plausibility of their premises in the eyes of the world by their very absurdity. I believe Shrimp Welfare (at least to the extent it’s being claimed as a catastrophe) is one of those repugnant conclusions that weakens the intuitive value of the premises (and your whole argument rests upon that intuitive value).
It becomes extremely easy to justify obviously immoral acts in the near-term, if you embrace a system of belief with repugnant conclusions. Off the top of my head, if humans cause a large amount of suffering (on average) and the measure of morality is the pain and pleasure we cause, something repugnant, like the poisoning of the water supply of a major city, might save quite a large number of shrimp.
Weighed against all the other considerations like the risk to reputation of your belief system that motivated this, opportunity cost of convincing these people of your beliefs, etc. etc. I would say that this sort of repugnant actions is the truest expression of a moral system like the one you outline above. To me, it seems obvious we must go beyond simply talking about it, and implement the ending of moral catastrophe as soon as possible, and at great cost. John Brown had the right idea, we just have to use more creativity to be way more effective than just seizing a single armory then dying.
I emotionally reject the conclusions, so the original emotionally purchase of the premises should be reconsidered. Repugnant conclusions are usually a criticism in this frame, rather than one disagreeing with the logic that follows.
RE: "The same reasoning I would use to agree with your premises, is that which I use to disagree with your conclusions".
Typically, this isn't how arguments work. You have to deny at least one of the premises and argue as to why you deny it. You can't be like "All humans are mortal, Socrates is a human, but Socrates isn't mortal because I don't like it"
But, trying to be more charitable in interpretation, overall, what I gather from your comment is that you take my view to function as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism (or any view that gives substantial weight to pain and suffering in moral deliberation)?
If so, it's worth noting that rejecting the conclusion comes at a high cost too (the same way that all forms of rejecting the Repugnant Conclusion will lead to even more unpalatable results in population ethics, see Greaves, Hilary (2017). "Population axiology". Philosophy Compass for problems in all solutions in population axiology).
For example, if you attempt to resist these kinds of implications by denying the comparability of pains across individuals, or denying that tiny harms aggregate, or privileging human interests in an absolute way, you risk undermining fundamental structural features of moral theories, such as basic intuitive axioms of transitivity, completeness, or a view of moral impartiality. So while utilitarianism (and nearby views) may entail repugnant conclusions, many proposed alternatives will sacrifice very costly key features of rational choice and moral consistency (like Larry Temkin has done). Most consequentialists will say that this isn't worth the cost. It seems like post-hoc motivated reasoning because we don't like the implication that we might be doing something horribly morally wrong.
RE: "Motte-and-bailey."
I don't see why the animal welfare stuff is a motte-and-bailey. Many contemporary consequentialists take factory farming to perhaps be the worst institution of all of human history, perhaps even worse than slavery and others. This is just a further development of the traditional Peter Singer line of argument, given plausible considerations such as empirical uncertainty (taking into account "what if shrimp aren't sentient?") and moral uncertainty (taking into account "what if utilitarianism isn't true?"). More and more moral philosophers are starting to come closer to these views, rather than the other way around.
RE: "It becomes extremely easy to justify obviously immoral acts in the near-term, if you embrace a system of belief with repugnant conclusions. Off the top of my head, if humans cause a large amount of suffering (on average) and the measure of morality is the pain and pleasure we cause, something repugnant, like the poisoning of the water supply of a major city, might save quite a large number of shrimp."
Again, similar to a different comment, I think this view doesn't properly distinguish between moral views as *decision procedures* and moral views as *criteria of rightness*, a distinction widely recognized by utilitarians. My engagement with these thought experiments is primarily about examining the latter, what is morally good in principle, rather than advocating immediate practical application of the most extreme implications. By engaging with these edge cases, we test and refine our ethical theories, uncover inconsistencies, hidden assumptions, overlooked implications, etc. (More on this distinction can be found here: https://utilitarianism.net/types-of-utilitarianism/#:~:text=In%20the%20literature%20on%20utilitarianism,thinking%20about%20what%20to%20do.)
I do mention in the conclusion that my preferred course of action is reversing our relationship with non-human animals, such as by getting rid of factory farming, donating to animal welfare charities, developing alternative proteins, etc., rather than by something like getting rid of meat-eaters.
>Typically, this isn't how arguments work. You have to deny at least one of the premises and argue as to why you deny it.
Isn't this what happens all the time in reductio ad absurdum? The premises of your moral argument aren't based on an especially firm foundation, so it's quite useful to judge them based on the plausibility of their conclusions, which to me seem quite absurd.
> You can't be like "All humans are mortal, Socrates is a human, but Socrates isn't mortal because I don't like it"
But you can be like; "All humans are immortal, Socrates is a human, so Socrates must be immortal. But Socrates is dead so I guess our premise wasn't as plausible as it first sounded." Perhaps at the beginning of the argument, the claims about minimizing pain, valuing all life (adjusted by their capacity for pain, and our estimate as to their capacity for pain) on an equal basis, and your other premises, are wrong.
There's a reason we don't start from the premise "The suffering of other sentient beings is a moral good", since the conclusions of that premise are terrible and repugnant. Absent a higher moral standard that isn't present in most utilitarian philosophies, we should be very careful as to the possible conclusions of the premises we claim, as we might accidentally make something blatantly wrong, a moral action, or even morally obligatory. It's all well and good when our theories lead to saving the drowning child, but not so much when we determine that the drowning child is only going to suffer a little bit more if we don't help, and he's likely to cause the suffering of many Shrimp if we do, so we let him drown.
>I gather from your comment is that you take my view to function as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism
Yup. I should have read this before commenting above.
I'm less concerned with what you are personally advocating for, and more concerned as to what seems to be the logical conclusion of a philosophy that considers humans (and likely most other animals) as instruments of suffering, of equivalent value to a few thousand shrimp. It's not that I just find these conclusions "weird", but in a literal sense repugnant, as in likely to lead to immoral consequences.
But engaging with the utilitarian calculus on its own terms:
This argument can very easily be turned around to suggest that eating shrimp (at least wild-caught shrimp) is actually incredibly good on a net-suffering calculation basis. Wild-caught shrimp are apparently ~6 months old (https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_br_v3400_046_shrimp.pdf) so not only do we prevent an additional 2.5 years of existence per caught shrimp, we also prevent their descendants from coming into existence, by catching them before they've had a couple of reproductive cycles.
"Shrimp raised in aquaculture or caught in the wild might spend 20% of their life in stressful or painful conditions," so we can assume 20% of those two years are spent in pain, or 6 months. Apparently shrimp are killed via asphyxiation within minutes of pulling them out of the water according to google. So we're weighing ~5 minutes of asphyxiation against 6 months of time spent in pain. That's literally a difference of 52,560x as much time spent in pain should we not kill the shrimp! Probably we assume asphyxiation is worse than the average time spent hungry, or sick, or dying of old age, or whatever it is that Shrimp do, but it couldn't possibly compare to that much long er duration pain.
And whatever their capacity for pain, we can say with a much higher degree of certainty that they don't have the capacity to ponder their mortality or approaching death as they are harvested. And this is all assuming that they aren't killed via the stomach acid of a whale down the road with a likely equivalent level of pain.
And not only that, the consumption of Shrimp probably replaces some level of consumption of other animals, like chicken or beef, which are almost certainly net-negatives with a utilitarian calculus.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that we do need to judge what is moral (at least partially) on the consequences of the theory that justifies the action. A moral theory that seemingly justifies saving a few hundred Shrimp over a human, or any number of shrimp over a human (as human's are net-negative in your calculation), has a flaw in its premises in the same way an initially seemingly good moral theory that justifies the Crusades, or a Jihad, has flaws in either the logic, or the premises of those justifying it.
Okay, now we're getting closer to understanding each other!
RE: "But engaging with the utilitarian calculus on its own terms" onwards.
Your comment does open yet another can of worms, which is the issue of *wild animal suffering*. Like Bentham's Bulldog commented in my post, it seems like most animals living in the wild have *net negative lives*, under utilitarian calculations.
So *IF* animal lives in the wild are net negative, and *IF* we could change environments so that they don't exist anymore, it would be a morally good thing to support their non-existence, rather than existence into a life of mostly suffering.
This seems quite counterintuitive and uncomfortable, but would actually be sound under utilitarian considerations. Following this logic, the ultimate utilitarian position might indeed be that *neither* factory-farmed animals nor wild animals should exist, at least under the present conditions of widespread suffering.
I'll update my original post to include this point from the discussion.
As for the rest, I'm still not convinced that the average human isn't net negative in terms of creating animal suffering.
But, as some other people said (https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/against-lyman-stone-on-animal-welfare), we defenders of animal rights aren't even able to enforce practices such as *veganism*, so much less anything such as the *forced sterilization of people* (which would be unnecessary with veganism). And veganism would be much easier. So the practical considerations don't even follow.
Ultimately, I do believe that we can turn things around (with the popularization of artificial meat, and in the long term, enforcing veganism through democratic means, etc.). Humans' capacities for technologies and for changing the environment are quite powerful.
But it isn't our intrinsic moral worth that turns things around, but the morally extrinsic, cognitive abilities of making new technologies and changing our environment.
Most of these people don't believe that human beings have a qualitative property different than, and arguably higher than other organisms, so a human being is equivalent to a clam or a termite. I don't see how ANYONE in their right mind can actually believe that, except as a severe case of motivated reasoning. I'm still awaiting the day when the earthworms land on the Moon, or the clams build their first nuclear reactor. We banned DDT in the United States because of it's effect on insect populations and hatching of birds like osprey's, and most people thought that was great, but apparently it was actually bad. We should've never done that!! So, we should've continued spraying DDT, causing an increased risk of human beings developing cancer and birth defects, all to prevent insect lives and suffering. And this framework only works if you believe any degree of suffering is so bad that nonexistence is preferable to existence at all, even if existence entails some degree of suffering. Rocks apparently have the best existence of all!! No pain, eons go by, only worn down by weathering n erosion!! Have the schizophrenics all been released from the asylum lately, and I just wasn't told??
RE: "Most of these people don't believe that human beings have a qualitative property different than, and arguably higher than other organisms, so a human being is equivalent to a clam or a termite."
This is simply incorrect. The argument isn't that humans are morally identical to clams or termites, but that all beings capable of happiness and suffering (positively or negatively valenced phenomenal mental states) deserve some form of moral consideration. Humans might have richer experiences, so their suffering can matter more. In fact, I count the value of a human as greater than a shrimp in the BOTEC of the post, but that doesn't justify ignoring the suffering of animals entirely, which is what most people do. That speciesist position is morally implausible.
"RE: this framework only works if you believe any degree of suffering is so bad that nonexistence is preferable to existence at all, even if existence entails some degree of suffering"
This is false. Most consequentialists will add up both happiness and suffering. The issue, however, is that life for non-human animals is mostly suffering. You might want to watch some videos of the lives of animals on factory farms, such as the documentary "Dominion".
I would say that perhaps you're not up to speed on the philosophical discussion. Which is fine, as I mention at the very beginning of the post! But I would recommend reading Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" or Michael Huemer "Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism", and then Jeff Sebo's "The Moral Circle" or Jonathan Birch's "The Edge of Sentience", for engagement on the ethical literature on animal ethics, before engaging with this more cutting-edge debates and lashing out in the comments like this.
a few miscellaneous & kinda hapazardly formed thoughts:
i think a few liberal assumptions were made which can swing things the other way—namely the confidence that shrimp are sentient, or just how much they feel.
in any case, humans seem to have a net positive benefit if you account for other factors. for instance, insects suffer immensely painful lives (if we have some confidence in their sentience). humans kill a lot of insects prematurely before they live the rest of their painful lives through climate change and stuff. this could mean humans have a net positive moral impact if you account for insect pain.
finally, I have a strong inclination that you're underselling the positive externalities per human. i.e., the existence of human society entails the unprecedented possibility that life might eventually become net positive in utility—that is to say, eventually, human society might progress to the point where humans increase utility. so accounting for long-termism, improving human society may have a much higher positive externality for shrimp than you're considering.
RE: "Insects suffer awful lives and we destroy the ecosystem". I think I'd now like to concede this point to some extent. I hadn't considered it because it's so counterintuitive, but Bentham's Bulldog also pointed it out. Though climate change isn't the best argument, because it heats up the Earth, which means more insects long-term (e.g. African species of mosquitoes and flies in Europe). *Environment or ecosystem destruction* makes more sense.
RE: "Externalities per human". I totally agree with your points here. I thought I had made that clear in the conclusion that I don't want humans to go extinct, but to fix this issue so that we can become net-positive. Throughout the body, I'm talking about current humans rather than longtermism. Longtermism only comes in the conclusion.
Though we might worry about this not being true, due to s-risks like creating many sentient AIs that suffer. You might want to read my "Impartialist Sentientism and Existential Anxiety about Moral Circle Explosion" which is about bugs and AI sentience. https://themoralcircle.substack.com/p/impartialist-sentientism-and-existential
Because insects live mostly bad lives and humans reduce insect populations so much, I suspect the average person has a positive impact on welfare.
That's a fair view, although pretty counterintuitive and bleak too. Most people haven't grappled with the fact that painlessly killing great populations (through ecosystem interventions) might be the moral thing to do.
Basically all of these calculations are meaningless. The statement "Thus, a shrimp’s suffering capacity might be 50% relative to human suffering" is meaningless, there is no way to verify it or even really understand what that means. It's just a random stab in the dark. The estimate for "percentage of time spent suffering" is also a meaningless, random guess. You also don't factor in how much time a shrimp spends suffering in the wild and a million other things. It is conceivable that most animals spend a considerable amount of time suffering and stressed in nature.
Also you say "Humans are plainly evil. Humanity hasn’t been worth it, so far. Consuming animals causes more moral harm than you, as a human, are worth in moral terms". Do you also think predation and meat eating by other animals makes them evil? Do you not think humans are animals who evolved to eat meat? We certainly have a range of adaptations which indicate that meat is a majority of our natural diet.
However, I do agree that factory farming, especially of large intelligent mammals is fucked. That's why hunting and/or raising homekill animals is best. https://backcountrypsych.substack.com/p/is-hunting-wrong
*Re: Shrimp suffering capacity is a stab in the dark* - Well, it is a Back of the Envelope Calculation for a reason. Of course, we need more accurate numbers and more scientific research to get to know how much each shrimp can suffer. But just assuming the numbers are wrong and to keep eating shrimp is morally reckless. There's an asymmetry here: if we're wrong and shrimp don't suffer, the cost of avoiding harm is small (not enjoying their taste). If we're right, farming 440 billion shrimp a year is a moral catastrophe. The BOTEC already accounts for uncertainty of empirical factors—feel free to adjust the numbers, but the core conclusion will probably hold: large-scale shrimp farming is ethically indefensible. It's reckless, given the state of the information.
*Re: Predation / Wild animal suffering* -
Nonhuman animals don't commit moral wrongs in the same way that we do, because they lack the capacity to reflect on alternatives courses of action. But their actions can still lead to morally bad outcomes. I do have non-mainstream views on challenging predation and reducing wild animal suffering in the long term, if we were to learn how to substantially modify the environments in a net-positive way, but that's a separate debate. To avoid completely sidetracking the issue, what matters here is that human impact on wild animals has been overwhelmingly negative, mostly through habitat destruction, so bringing up wild animals also makes the situation for the ethical judgements of humans much worse.
*Re: Do you not think that humans are animals who evolved to eat meat?* - This is an appeal to nature fallacy. Humans are also evolved to get things our way through killing, raping, and plundering. Yet we shouldn't do that. We have cognitive abilities that help us reflect on our actions and do other, better things. Having the ability for something doesn't immediately mean we should do it. The simple question that morally matters, is rather, "does eating meat justify the immense suffering it causes?" And the enjoyment we derived from eating meat is comparatively extremely short and small. Eating a plant-based meal and taking a B12 supplement is trivial compared to the immense suffering and painful death experienced by animals in factory farms, who live confined to small spaces for life and are then killed in an extremely painful way.
Re: Hunting - We probably disagree on hunting, but thank you for acknowledging how horrible factory farming can be! :)
What’s the argument to be made in this scenario against painless assassination of human carnivores?
This isn’t bait, I’m just trying to more fully understand the thinking.
Idk exactly how to put what I’m thinking but basically I wonder if one might be more likely to maximize how much good they do by adopting a more default moral outlook than using a thought process that gets them caught between such extremely different potential conclusions.
I get your point. In day-to-day moral decision-making, simpler, broadly acceptable heuristics can indeed minimize harmful second-order effects and prevent moral paralysis or extreme actions. Of course, this is typically how I act day-to-day (aside from my substantial charitable donations and directing my career to working on moral philosophy).
I certainly wouldn't place such significant weight on a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation (BOTEC) that, if I were suddenly granted complete power over humanity tomorrow, I would uncritically act on it. That would indeed be naive and dangerous!
(There's a relevant post exploring something along your argument here: https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/the-dangers-of-a-little-knowledge)
However, I think your comment maybe doesn't fully distinguish between moral views as *decision procedures* and moral views as *criteria of rightness*, a distinction widely recognized by utilitarians. My engagement with these thought experiments is primarily about examining the latter, what is morally good in principle, rather than advocating immediate practical application of the most extreme implications. By engaging with these edge cases, we test and refine our ethical theories, uncover inconsistencies, hidden assumptions, overlooked implications, etc. (More on this distinction can be found here: https://utilitarianism.net/types-of-utilitarianism/#:~:text=In%20the%20literature%20on%20utilitarianism,thinking%20about%20what%20to%20do.)
Additionally, I worry your critique might also be overlooking the function of a BOTEC. I explicitly invited feedback precisely because I recognize such calculations are provisional. Bentham's Bulldog raised an important consideration, which influenced my views accordingly. This iterative refinement is precisely what rational engagement with evidence and arguments demands, as opposed to adhering rigidly (dogmatically?) to initial intuitions.
Oh I totally get your purpose, which is in part why I’m chewing on this in this way. I have the cross-wise but I think compatible intention to test my thinking having moved on from utilitarianism. I’ve really enjoyed shrimp welfare discourse for that reason (esp. bc moving to a different moral framework coincided with a shift from vegetarianism to pescatarianism), and have mostly been annoyed by it when I think people (who will go unnamed…) have written a bit too righteously about it.
I’ve been thinking about writing out a piece to test my thinking, so I appreciate your response and the link & reminder re: rightness. I think I’ve been influenced toward a sort of baby’s-first-pragmatism which is worth challenging.
Cool! I just want to say that I appreciated the civil discussion from you. :)
I am aware that it is a pretty radical position compared to most people, but it's likely where utilitarian (and other consequentialist positions) seem to lead.
I hope you keep reflecting on the topic of animal welfare, since I think it's quite morally important.
The bad social ramifications and second-order effects I might not have been considering here. The argument does conclude that currently, most humans are net-bad on the world with regards to suffering. But I believe that humans can turn it around long-term and create greater positive impact, on net. That doesn't mean that *every single human* has a positive impact, though.
Also, as Bentham's Bulldog has commented, there's a point I hadn't considered. Ironically and counterintuitively, humans engaging or promoting habitat destruction might mean that on-net humans are good, because most wild animals might be leading net-negative lives (lives with more suffering than happiness), and we are reducing their populations. https://reducing-suffering.org/habitat-loss-not-preservation-generally-reduces-wild-animal-suffering/
I think this is what people mean when they say “repugnant conclusion.”
If your moral theory claims that it would be better if 99.99% of humans, or basically anyone who didn’t subscribe to your belief system, were dead, then perhaps something is wrong with your moral intuitions in the first place, or at least the reasoning that comes after.
On the contrary, much of my research in ethics focuses on ethical methodology and moral epistemology. Historically, widely-held intuitions have often been wildly mistaken: many people once had intuitive beliefs supporting slavery, sexism, racism, or disgust-based prejudices against marginalized groups. Many laypeople have or had flawed moral intuitions about the putative importance of disgust against homosexuality, other races, or some forms of medicinal therapy. And about how sexism, racism, or slavery is justified because there's a natural hierarchy, etc. Moral philosophy critically assesses these intuitions, aiming to identify and correct such biases and inconsistencies. So it is not surprising that moral philosophers might be ahead of their time and reach conclusions that seem "wild" to most people.
Regarding shrimp welfare specifically, the point isn't that humans inherently lack moral worth or anything like that, but rather that our current actions towards non-human animals, including shrimp, who are farmed and slaughtered by the billions under conditions analogous to industrial-scale concentration camps represent a moral crisis of immense scale. Ignoring or trivializing this crisis may ultimately overshadow all other moral advances made by humanity. This concern is not fringe within contemporary ethics. Most contemporary consequentialist moral philosophers accept the gravity of widespread animal suffering. However, voicing these conclusions openly to non-philosophers can often provoke emotional reactions rather than reasoned debate, so they are often afraid of voicing such views.
For a more rigorous philosophical exploration of these topics, please consider my longer and more philosophical discussion here: https://themoralcircle.substack.com/p/impartialist-sentientism-and-existential
Finally, I'd welcome a more explicit argument outlining why you believe my reasoning is wrong, rather than an assertion that my conclusions feel intuitively weird. I acknowledge they are weird, and it took me more than ten years to come to accept such views, but I do believe they are correct. Sadly, most people haven't gone through years of philosophical engagement to reach these conclusions.
Cool, you have a consistent argument that leads from your premises, which are asserted, but approximately line up with the intuitions of other people, so you’ll still end up with a lot of people agreeing with you.
The same reasoning I would use to agree with your premises, is that which I use to disagree with your conclusions. I intuitively agree that pain is bad, and less pain is better than more pain (probably depending on the circumstances). I intuitively disagree that we should willingly exchange the suffering of a few thousand shrimp for a human life, or even worse, determine 99.99% of human lives are moral catastrophes because of their per-capita shrimp consumption.
Comparing this with slavery, or homosexuality is a bit of motte and bailey, no? There are perhaps infinite potential moral catastrophes for every real one, so the evidence of past mistakes is not much evidence this specific hypothetical catastrophe is real.
You have a structure of belief which, to you, leaves very little room for criticism. Conclusions logically follow from the premises, and you confidently accept those conclusions in face of what normal moral intuition would say, creating self consistency. You present your set of premises in a way many people would agree with, and offer a weaker version that would probably lead to the same conclusion (if you have to present multiple versions of your premises, perhaps you’re using motivated reasoning to try and find a starting point that you can take to your desired direction).
This is basically the playbook for what most people call “repugnant conclusions”. Philosophy is about more than simply taking agreeable premises, and logically following them to their conclusions, wherever they might be. It’s the mistake of many philosophers in the past who develop rigid systems, and walk them through to their conclusions that defeat the plausibility of their premises in the eyes of the world by their very absurdity. I believe Shrimp Welfare (at least to the extent it’s being claimed as a catastrophe) is one of those repugnant conclusions that weakens the intuitive value of the premises (and your whole argument rests upon that intuitive value).
It becomes extremely easy to justify obviously immoral acts in the near-term, if you embrace a system of belief with repugnant conclusions. Off the top of my head, if humans cause a large amount of suffering (on average) and the measure of morality is the pain and pleasure we cause, something repugnant, like the poisoning of the water supply of a major city, might save quite a large number of shrimp.
Weighed against all the other considerations like the risk to reputation of your belief system that motivated this, opportunity cost of convincing these people of your beliefs, etc. etc. I would say that this sort of repugnant actions is the truest expression of a moral system like the one you outline above. To me, it seems obvious we must go beyond simply talking about it, and implement the ending of moral catastrophe as soon as possible, and at great cost. John Brown had the right idea, we just have to use more creativity to be way more effective than just seizing a single armory then dying.
I emotionally reject the conclusions, so the original emotionally purchase of the premises should be reconsidered. Repugnant conclusions are usually a criticism in this frame, rather than one disagreeing with the logic that follows.
RE: "The same reasoning I would use to agree with your premises, is that which I use to disagree with your conclusions".
Typically, this isn't how arguments work. You have to deny at least one of the premises and argue as to why you deny it. You can't be like "All humans are mortal, Socrates is a human, but Socrates isn't mortal because I don't like it"
But, trying to be more charitable in interpretation, overall, what I gather from your comment is that you take my view to function as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism (or any view that gives substantial weight to pain and suffering in moral deliberation)?
If so, it's worth noting that rejecting the conclusion comes at a high cost too (the same way that all forms of rejecting the Repugnant Conclusion will lead to even more unpalatable results in population ethics, see Greaves, Hilary (2017). "Population axiology". Philosophy Compass for problems in all solutions in population axiology).
For example, if you attempt to resist these kinds of implications by denying the comparability of pains across individuals, or denying that tiny harms aggregate, or privileging human interests in an absolute way, you risk undermining fundamental structural features of moral theories, such as basic intuitive axioms of transitivity, completeness, or a view of moral impartiality. So while utilitarianism (and nearby views) may entail repugnant conclusions, many proposed alternatives will sacrifice very costly key features of rational choice and moral consistency (like Larry Temkin has done). Most consequentialists will say that this isn't worth the cost. It seems like post-hoc motivated reasoning because we don't like the implication that we might be doing something horribly morally wrong.
RE: "Motte-and-bailey."
I don't see why the animal welfare stuff is a motte-and-bailey. Many contemporary consequentialists take factory farming to perhaps be the worst institution of all of human history, perhaps even worse than slavery and others. This is just a further development of the traditional Peter Singer line of argument, given plausible considerations such as empirical uncertainty (taking into account "what if shrimp aren't sentient?") and moral uncertainty (taking into account "what if utilitarianism isn't true?"). More and more moral philosophers are starting to come closer to these views, rather than the other way around.
RE: "It becomes extremely easy to justify obviously immoral acts in the near-term, if you embrace a system of belief with repugnant conclusions. Off the top of my head, if humans cause a large amount of suffering (on average) and the measure of morality is the pain and pleasure we cause, something repugnant, like the poisoning of the water supply of a major city, might save quite a large number of shrimp."
Again, similar to a different comment, I think this view doesn't properly distinguish between moral views as *decision procedures* and moral views as *criteria of rightness*, a distinction widely recognized by utilitarians. My engagement with these thought experiments is primarily about examining the latter, what is morally good in principle, rather than advocating immediate practical application of the most extreme implications. By engaging with these edge cases, we test and refine our ethical theories, uncover inconsistencies, hidden assumptions, overlooked implications, etc. (More on this distinction can be found here: https://utilitarianism.net/types-of-utilitarianism/#:~:text=In%20the%20literature%20on%20utilitarianism,thinking%20about%20what%20to%20do.)
I do mention in the conclusion that my preferred course of action is reversing our relationship with non-human animals, such as by getting rid of factory farming, donating to animal welfare charities, developing alternative proteins, etc., rather than by something like getting rid of meat-eaters.
>Typically, this isn't how arguments work. You have to deny at least one of the premises and argue as to why you deny it.
Isn't this what happens all the time in reductio ad absurdum? The premises of your moral argument aren't based on an especially firm foundation, so it's quite useful to judge them based on the plausibility of their conclusions, which to me seem quite absurd.
> You can't be like "All humans are mortal, Socrates is a human, but Socrates isn't mortal because I don't like it"
But you can be like; "All humans are immortal, Socrates is a human, so Socrates must be immortal. But Socrates is dead so I guess our premise wasn't as plausible as it first sounded." Perhaps at the beginning of the argument, the claims about minimizing pain, valuing all life (adjusted by their capacity for pain, and our estimate as to their capacity for pain) on an equal basis, and your other premises, are wrong.
There's a reason we don't start from the premise "The suffering of other sentient beings is a moral good", since the conclusions of that premise are terrible and repugnant. Absent a higher moral standard that isn't present in most utilitarian philosophies, we should be very careful as to the possible conclusions of the premises we claim, as we might accidentally make something blatantly wrong, a moral action, or even morally obligatory. It's all well and good when our theories lead to saving the drowning child, but not so much when we determine that the drowning child is only going to suffer a little bit more if we don't help, and he's likely to cause the suffering of many Shrimp if we do, so we let him drown.
>I gather from your comment is that you take my view to function as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism
Yup. I should have read this before commenting above.
I'm less concerned with what you are personally advocating for, and more concerned as to what seems to be the logical conclusion of a philosophy that considers humans (and likely most other animals) as instruments of suffering, of equivalent value to a few thousand shrimp. It's not that I just find these conclusions "weird", but in a literal sense repugnant, as in likely to lead to immoral consequences.
But engaging with the utilitarian calculus on its own terms:
This argument can very easily be turned around to suggest that eating shrimp (at least wild-caught shrimp) is actually incredibly good on a net-suffering calculation basis. Wild-caught shrimp are apparently ~6 months old (https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_br_v3400_046_shrimp.pdf) so not only do we prevent an additional 2.5 years of existence per caught shrimp, we also prevent their descendants from coming into existence, by catching them before they've had a couple of reproductive cycles.
"Shrimp raised in aquaculture or caught in the wild might spend 20% of their life in stressful or painful conditions," so we can assume 20% of those two years are spent in pain, or 6 months. Apparently shrimp are killed via asphyxiation within minutes of pulling them out of the water according to google. So we're weighing ~5 minutes of asphyxiation against 6 months of time spent in pain. That's literally a difference of 52,560x as much time spent in pain should we not kill the shrimp! Probably we assume asphyxiation is worse than the average time spent hungry, or sick, or dying of old age, or whatever it is that Shrimp do, but it couldn't possibly compare to that much long er duration pain.
And whatever their capacity for pain, we can say with a much higher degree of certainty that they don't have the capacity to ponder their mortality or approaching death as they are harvested. And this is all assuming that they aren't killed via the stomach acid of a whale down the road with a likely equivalent level of pain.
And not only that, the consumption of Shrimp probably replaces some level of consumption of other animals, like chicken or beef, which are almost certainly net-negatives with a utilitarian calculus.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that we do need to judge what is moral (at least partially) on the consequences of the theory that justifies the action. A moral theory that seemingly justifies saving a few hundred Shrimp over a human, or any number of shrimp over a human (as human's are net-negative in your calculation), has a flaw in its premises in the same way an initially seemingly good moral theory that justifies the Crusades, or a Jihad, has flaws in either the logic, or the premises of those justifying it.
Okay, now we're getting closer to understanding each other!
RE: "But engaging with the utilitarian calculus on its own terms" onwards.
Your comment does open yet another can of worms, which is the issue of *wild animal suffering*. Like Bentham's Bulldog commented in my post, it seems like most animals living in the wild have *net negative lives*, under utilitarian calculations.
So *IF* animal lives in the wild are net negative, and *IF* we could change environments so that they don't exist anymore, it would be a morally good thing to support their non-existence, rather than existence into a life of mostly suffering.
This seems quite counterintuitive and uncomfortable, but would actually be sound under utilitarian considerations. Following this logic, the ultimate utilitarian position might indeed be that *neither* factory-farmed animals nor wild animals should exist, at least under the present conditions of widespread suffering.
I'll update my original post to include this point from the discussion.
As for the rest, I'm still not convinced that the average human isn't net negative in terms of creating animal suffering.
But, as some other people said (https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/against-lyman-stone-on-animal-welfare), we defenders of animal rights aren't even able to enforce practices such as *veganism*, so much less anything such as the *forced sterilization of people* (which would be unnecessary with veganism). And veganism would be much easier. So the practical considerations don't even follow.
Ultimately, I do believe that we can turn things around (with the popularization of artificial meat, and in the long term, enforcing veganism through democratic means, etc.). Humans' capacities for technologies and for changing the environment are quite powerful.
But it isn't our intrinsic moral worth that turns things around, but the morally extrinsic, cognitive abilities of making new technologies and changing our environment.
Most of these people don't believe that human beings have a qualitative property different than, and arguably higher than other organisms, so a human being is equivalent to a clam or a termite. I don't see how ANYONE in their right mind can actually believe that, except as a severe case of motivated reasoning. I'm still awaiting the day when the earthworms land on the Moon, or the clams build their first nuclear reactor. We banned DDT in the United States because of it's effect on insect populations and hatching of birds like osprey's, and most people thought that was great, but apparently it was actually bad. We should've never done that!! So, we should've continued spraying DDT, causing an increased risk of human beings developing cancer and birth defects, all to prevent insect lives and suffering. And this framework only works if you believe any degree of suffering is so bad that nonexistence is preferable to existence at all, even if existence entails some degree of suffering. Rocks apparently have the best existence of all!! No pain, eons go by, only worn down by weathering n erosion!! Have the schizophrenics all been released from the asylum lately, and I just wasn't told??
RE: "Most of these people don't believe that human beings have a qualitative property different than, and arguably higher than other organisms, so a human being is equivalent to a clam or a termite."
This is simply incorrect. The argument isn't that humans are morally identical to clams or termites, but that all beings capable of happiness and suffering (positively or negatively valenced phenomenal mental states) deserve some form of moral consideration. Humans might have richer experiences, so their suffering can matter more. In fact, I count the value of a human as greater than a shrimp in the BOTEC of the post, but that doesn't justify ignoring the suffering of animals entirely, which is what most people do. That speciesist position is morally implausible.
"RE: this framework only works if you believe any degree of suffering is so bad that nonexistence is preferable to existence at all, even if existence entails some degree of suffering"
This is false. Most consequentialists will add up both happiness and suffering. The issue, however, is that life for non-human animals is mostly suffering. You might want to watch some videos of the lives of animals on factory farms, such as the documentary "Dominion".
I would say that perhaps you're not up to speed on the philosophical discussion. Which is fine, as I mention at the very beginning of the post! But I would recommend reading Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" or Michael Huemer "Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism", and then Jeff Sebo's "The Moral Circle" or Jonathan Birch's "The Edge of Sentience", for engagement on the ethical literature on animal ethics, before engaging with this more cutting-edge debates and lashing out in the comments like this.