So, hey! I'm reading stuff in this forum, and many times I struggle to understand some of the more complex propositions you enunciate. I never thought being utilitarianist was so hard. I don't know John Rawls, or Bayesians, and I'm awful at Economy. It just happened in my life in the past, as a teenager, that I didn't know what to do with my life, everything seemed pointless, and thinking about things I searched for something that I would be very sure of (apart that I was cognitive) and I found that, as a most instinctive reaction, I enjoyed things, that there were things that I enjoyed, that were pleasurable, satisfying. I found that it would make sense to boost those satisfactions in a way that I would be not just momentarily satisfied but overall satisfied, short term and long term.

Thinking this was a most basic truth for me, I implied that this could very well be the case for the rest of people and living beings, and this was before reading Stuart Mill or Peter Singer and finding out it's called Utilitarianism. So although I do stand for utilitarianism and it's awesome (it can result in great consequences), I basically just wish everyone made an effort to be more empathic and understanding of others, more ethical, more caring, as far as people could, push their limits to do so. Care about others' points of view. Be tolerant. Care about the well-being of others. Make donations, either monetary or human work. (Not "just because", but because of the good consequences it brings.)

Which brings me to the regress argument: "Also known as the diallelus, it is a problem in epistemology and, in general, a problem in any situation where a statement has to be justified. According to this argument, any proposition requires a justification. However, any justification itself requires support, since nothing is true “just because”. This means that any proposition whatsoever can be endlessly (infinitely) questioned, like a child who asks "why?" over and over again."

At some point I have to stop thinking because I am just not capable to reach the ultimate satisfactory response in a reasonable time given my limited capabilities. I cannot predict all the outcomes of what I do. I cannot predict how a welfare foundation should act in regards to either saving starving kids in Africa or providing medical aid in War. However, that I cannot work out the BEST course of action, should not stop me from pondering a BETTER course of action, and DO something about it, better than nothing at all.

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So now, to the point where I wanted to get. Alan Dawrst speaks occasionally about ethics and animals in the plain wild (with no human interaction), possible future geoengineering in regards to them. I like this idea, it defeats the most common conception that ethics is a human matter, when I believe the philosophical discipline is, for the most part, human, but not entirely. (Non-human) animals feel. They have preferences. They choose courses of action, ones over others. In the mere act of choosing relies moral experience, that you have free will to an extent, and that you perceive some choices to be better over others. However, the thought of changing nature to benefit plain wild animals, it just isn't there in people's minds. If I were to give more rights in regards to our current beliefs and situation as human society, I feel the line of priority would go like this:

Humans > Domesticated Animals and Wild Animals with whom humans interfere> Wild Wild Animals > Plankton, Plants, Extraterrestrials, Multiverses, etc. (plain weird)

Boosting of course the holistic perspective (which seems to gain momentum in Western society) that being individuals we aren't on our own, that we belong to a whole planet and ecosystem, and that our actions in e.g. Texas affect e.g. China or e.g. Nigeria or the planet.

In regards to (non-human) animal rights. In utilitarianism it is often implied that we should try our best given our limitations. So if you know, that you're going to have to buy eggs for a friend, you might as well buy the eggs "free range", and cause a tiny bit less suffering for the chicken. But what Francione argues is that publicly opposing the property of animals as opposed to publicly defending animal welfare, will make significant animal rights be applied in less time. If I do promote animal rights such as "living in 3m^2" instead of "living in 0.25m^2", we will make people feel less guilty in farming chickens, to the point where rights that are much more significant, like "chickens living their full lifespan" or "chickens caring for their chicks" or "allowing roosters to live", are going to be postponed many years.

I am not against property of animals. If my dog is very happy and I give him all the rights he deserves, whether I or the law consider him "property" is totally irrelevant. But if what Francione says is true, we should consider being abolitionists. What do you think?

Hi, just to pick up a few random points from that post, my favourite expression of the regress argument is the Münchhausen_Trilemma.

Simply put, the trilemma is a breakdown of all possible proofs for a theory into three general types:
The circular argument, in which theory and proof support each other
The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof
The axiomatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts
The first two methods of reasoning are fundamentally weak, and because the Greek skeptics advocated deep questioning of all accepted values they refused to accept proofs of the third sort. The trilemma, then, is the decision among the three equally unsatisfying options.

To give a quick answer to this idea that we should oppose the existence of animals as "property", I think it's off the mark. Opposition to human slavery is a pretty reliable rule of thumb. Humans have high cognitive powers that make the life of slavery miserable for humans. Animal slavery is generally miserable, but not always so. It rarely has any paralell to human slavery. I think the best rule of thumb that we can spread for the treatment of animals today is "don't eat them".

I doubt people will have any significant difference in guilt between animals in 0.25m^2 cages and 3m^2 cages, sort of like how they have been shown to have similar guilt between 100 animals and 1000 animals. Also, I don't see any importance in them living to their full lifespan. If their welfare is improved to the point that their lives are worth living, that's better than farming of animals being eliminated entirely.

Perhaps the best thing is just to invent some cheap drug that makes the animals happy.

The "allowing roosters to live" part doesn't make much sense. If we didn't farm animals, they'd just never have been born.

Hi Mike, your process of becoming a utilitarian sounds very much like my own and that of many of us on this forum: It just seemed obvious, even before we knew there was a term to describe the philosophy. I like the Bertrand Russell quote at the bottom of utilitarian.net on this.

I don't share your ranking of priorities with humans above wild animals, but we're free to disagree on this. After all, I might decide that I care less about computer-simulated suffering than biological suffering, which is a distinction that many others regard as arbitrary.

I think both sides of the abolitionist debate have some merit. I would tend to lean toward the welfarist side -- the existence of welfare standards of some kinds reinforces the notion that animal emotions do matter, and I don't care if animals are ever fully "liberated" anyway -- but I haven't studied the issue in depth.

DanielLC, I think many animal advocates do care a lot about the difference between 0.25 m^2 and 3 m^2, since welfare is substantially different in the two cases. I would mention one caveat by Bailey Norwood on p. 13 of this book chapter:

Now consider cage-free eggs, which typically come from a different breed of bird that is less productive and has a shorter life span. Even if the same bird breeds were used in cage and cage-free egg production, cage-free production would remain less efficient because mortality rates are higher in a cage free system. Instead of producing 509 eggs throughout its life, a cage-free hen only produces 314 eggs. Consequently, one cage-free egg is associated with (1/314) laying hens and (1/314)*(0.01399) breeding hens. Eating a cage-free egg affects more birds than eating a cage egg. If you believe birds in both cage and cage-free systems suffer, the fact that a cage-free egg requires more birds to suffer should be a salient feature underlying the logic behind our eating ethics.

And as far as "Perhaps the best thing is just to invent some cheap drug that makes the animals happy," pain-free farm animals seem like a potentially good start in that direction.

RyanCarey, as far as our best rule of thumb about animals, I would disagree with "Don't eat them" because it's not completely obvious to me that we shouldn't and because I think the most urgent single meme we can possibly spread is that the suffering of wild animals is a huge problem.

Alan Dawrst, when I gave that line of hierarchy I wasn't just being normative but descriptive. Given how human society thinks overall, it'll be more effective, have better consequences, to observe and loosely stick to that hierarchy, than to use a different one. Not that I personally intrinsically believe myself that a pig is less valuable than a person, or the other way around. I'm stating the hierarchy in order to use it with people and get better results.

Answering RyanCarey, I'll show this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TStN_kRMnZY
Those living conditions of chickens are the norm in the farming industry, not the exception. Chickens laying eggs are kept in very reduced spaces. They are subjugated to conditions that stimulate egg laying to its maximum potential: if you can't imagine how those conditions are unpleasant or stressful to them, you can at least imagine how laying 300 eggs per year is stressful for a chicken (again, maximizing egg laying is the norm, not the exception). The chickens drink water from tubes and eat food from a conveyor belt, that they have to reach in the same manner you would have to if you were to live in a jail all of your living life. The short documentary notes how chickens' expire date comes at 72 weeks, when the eggs they lay are no longer consumption quality. For their hard work, all chickens win an all-expenses-paid trip to the slaughter house. The ability to lay eggs of a chicken goes in decline as they get older, lasting up to 3 to 4 years. The average lifespan of an untouched chicken is 10 years, some living more. Not even free range farms will keep chickens after 2 or 3 years, as the expenses surpass the profit.

Telling people to "not eat meat" clearly barely adresses the issue of animal rights, even if we were only to speak about food consumption. If you'd like more videos, ask me.

DanielC, non-human animals living their full lifespan has the same importance as the importance humans living their full lifespan has. One can say in an utilitarianist fashion that people and animals' lives have value as generators of happiness. It is true that you would rather want a person to live happy throughout their life (avoid pain) if they were to live up to 18 years. It is also true that given that a person's lifespan is regularly much longer than 18 years (say 60 or 70 years), we would like generally to avoid killing that person at the age of 18, given that they still have much potential to be happy. This is no different for other animals.

Returning to Alan Dawst, "pain free" farm animal, "well cared" farm animals, is a good cause. I believe the attempts to make animals lead either a less painful or a more satisfactory life is a good attempt. I applaud Singer's efforts since the 70s to bring animal rights into focus. Yet, I also believe that, any true utilitarianist, will see the strict well-being of farmed animals, as a transition towards the non-exploitation of animals. Amongst people, we do not kill our elderly once they've done their work. Amongst people, we generally do not jail others and administer them drugs to feel no pain. Amongst people, we do not prohibit comfortable socialization with fellow beings and our surroundings. Amongst people, we generally do not prohibit humans to care and raise their offspring. That, if possible, should be no different for animals.

That is why I think abolitionist causes are necessary to more truthful well-being, to more truthful happiness. Abolitionist approaches are more necessary the more extended well-fare approaches become, to not make people feel satisfied about our treatment of animals just because we eat them less, or make them feel less pain. Singer himself has been becoming increasingly vegan and less lacto-ovo-vegetarian as time passed by.

Hi Mike, I think the difference between our views is that mine are more strictly utilitarian. Concepts such as exploitation and sanctity of life have become more and more fuzzy the closer I have examined them. Now, I have given them up altogether. Death, for instance, is only a bad thing to the extent that it deprives us of happiness.

I think that the life of a factory-farmed chicken is far worse than death. That's why I don't find it shocking that chickens are given an "all-expenses paid trip to the slaughterhouse". Rather, I think slaughter would be rather merciful.

The quality of life issue is why I oppose all animal food industries. But I think we should set the more conservative goal of merely opposing the meat industry, rather than milk and egg industries too. By all means, be vegan, at least flexibly, but beware moralising about it. If we argue not only in favour of vegetarianism, but also for veganism, we will overextend ourselves. We will be accused of moralising and we will be excluded from discussion. Vegetarianism must come before veganism because it is more intuitive. Putting another living being in your mouth, makes you feel guilty once you think about it. Widespread vegetarianism seems achievable. But it's also desirable because veganism is good in terms of budget, carbon dioxide, animal welfare, water and human health.