Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

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vdofthegoodkind
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

Post by vdofthegoodkind »

In the way of opportunity cost, by killing it you're also satisfying the animal's interest of not being harmed, hungry, thirsty, stressed, etc all the times in the future. And if you're a pure consequentialist... All the resources not used by the animal you killed will become availalbe to all other living beings.
Given the complexity of population dynamics and the enormous complexity of nature itself, you'd have a VERY hard time proving more interests were violated rather than satisfied with any random killing of an animal, if you're arguing strictly from a consequentialist point of view valueing both pleasure as positively and pain as negatively.

And this is especially true when it comes to animal agriculture. If you claim opportunity cost matters, and that positive experiences have value, then per se (without taking the environmental factors into consideration) there should be no problem at all. Because for every cow we kill to eat, we breed another one into existence who will get to experience the positive value of all the interests that opportunitycost-wise were left unsatisfied for the cow we killed for food. And if we didnt breed that second cow into existence, there would also be an opportunity cost of all its good experiences not coming to fruition.


Ps: as a consequentialist you can't use the cop-out of 'only interests/preferences/pleasure/pain of beings already in existence matter'
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cookiedivine
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

Post by cookiedivine »

The better position to take is one of preference consideration, though, not just consideration of experienced pleasure and pain.
We don't kill people because they don't want to be killed. You can consider the golden rule.
Likewise, it may be a harm to interests (Yes, we do also consider that a kind of harm)
Well then I guess I'm completely unfamiliar with this approach to morality. Atm it doesn't make sense to me, as a violated preference only seems immoral if the victim realises his/her preference been violated, and feels harm as a result (which an instant killing w/o warning would prevent).
I'll need to look into it more (as well as the golden rule). Are there any resources you'd suggest I check out first?
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

Post by brimstoneSalad »

vdofthegoodkind wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 4:05 am In the way of opportunity cost, by killing it you're also satisfying the animal's interest of not being harmed, hungry, thirsty, stressed, etc all the times in the future.
I covered mercy killing.
I already addressed the absurdity of asymmetry arguments, and ignoring good or bad.

If harm to interests is going to exceed good by continuing to exist, and is smaller for a mercy killing, then that's a valid argument for a mercy killing.
vdofthegoodkind wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 4:05 amAnd if you're a pure consequentialist... All the resources not used by the animal you killed will become availalbe to all other living beings.
Correct, which is why we shouldn't be breeding these animals either. Killing one only to invest more resources into a new generation doesn't make any sense.
Euthanizing all of them and eating what's left (and not breeding any more) would have a sound resource argument behind it.
vdofthegoodkind wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 4:05 amGiven the complexity of population dynamics and the enormous complexity of nature itself, you'd have a VERY hard time proving more interests were violated rather than satisfied with any random killing of an animal, if you're arguing strictly from a consequentialist point of view valueing both pleasure as positively and pain as negatively.
If you're arguing we kill off the animals being farmed and not replace them, then that may be worth it in terms of liberated resources, ending the environmental harm of the practice, etc. I'm agnostic on that point, and I wouldn't say anybody was wrong for doing it.

But killing in the context of animal agriculture today is not that; it's part of an ongoing process that involves replacement.
vdofthegoodkind wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 4:05 amAnd this is especially true when it comes to animal agriculture. If you claim opportunity cost matters, and that positive experiences have value, then per se (without taking the environmental factors into consideration) there should be no problem at all.
There's a thread exploring this here:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2583&p=26377#p26377

If you have magical animals that have no environmental cost and no resource cost (which do not exist today, except maybe oysters), and if you actually give them happy lives and kill them painlessly (which isn't reliably done today anywhere), and you are somehow certain that their only interests are hedonic and in-the-moment with no interests to do anything in the future whatsoever (which is not true of any intelligent animal, all of which have some limited concept of future in order to engage in cause and effect learning), then you'd be right.

You're getting far enough from reality at that point that it has no bearing on the conversation.
vdofthegoodkind wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 4:05 amBecause for every cow we kill to eat, we breed another one into existence who will get to experience the positive value of all the interests that opportunitycost-wise were left unsatisfied for the cow we killed for food. And if we didnt breed that second cow into existence, there would also be an opportunity cost of all its good experiences not coming to fruition.
In a being with no future concept whatsoever, that would at best break even. You end up with a continuity of pleasurable experience either way.

Again, this is not reality. As limited as their future concepts might be, they do have one, so the more deaths violates more interests. You're better off leaving the cow until it has no more good days to come, then mercy killing. If you want to eat it after that, that's probably fine since it doesn't affect the cow (and it's very unlikely that they have any notion of funerary rites).

But all of that said, as much as you may want to we can't ignore the environmental and resource costs.

vdofthegoodkind wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 4:05 amPs: as a consequentialist you can't use the cop-out of 'only interests/preferences/pleasure/pain of beings already in existence matter'
You can't violate interests that do not and never will exist, but it is good to bring happy beings into existence to have more happy beings in the world.
Better than allowing happy beings to continue to exist? No. Because not ending lives also avoids violating an interest as frequently (however small or disconnected you think it is) which is violated by death.

One animal living 20 years of happy life with one death > ten animals living two years each of happy life with ten deaths between them.

However, even in a fantasy world where animals aren't harmed as they are in agriculture (and you let them live out their lives and there was no environmental cost), humans will always beat cows and chickens; it's better to use the space and resources we have to support more human beings who are both more sentient and have better lives than these animals can aspire to.
vdofthegoodkind
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

Post by vdofthegoodkind »

Nvm, Im out of this nonsense debate.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

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cookiedivine wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:42 am Well then I guess I'm completely unfamiliar with this approach to morality.[...]
I'll need to look into it more (as well as the golden rule). Are there any resources you'd suggest I check out first?
Don't worry, most people seem to be.
There are mostly theists who follow divine command, and then most atheists seem to be hedonists who are concerned with chemical activation of arbitrary neurons on the brain (experienced pain or pleasure).

There's a lot written on preferences (including extensive discussion on this forum with respect to veganism). I don't have a lot of links off hand, but there's some summary on SEP: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/preferences/#PreWel

This recent thread gets into it a bit after the second page:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3746

There's more extensive argument on objective morality and the problems of intuition here:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3641
You might want to scroll down to discussion with DrSinger.
cookiedivine wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:42 amAtm it doesn't make sense to me, as a violated preference only seems immoral if the victim realises his/her preference been violated, and feels harm as a result (which an instant killing w/o warning would prevent).
The simplest argument is that there are serious problems with hedonistic morality. If hedonism were true, then the greatest good to do to you would be to abduct you and plug you into some electrodes that would endlessly stimulate the pleasure centers of your brain and put you into a mindless euphoria. Effectively losing who you are.

The reason pain is bad and pleasure is good is because we prefer not to experience a lot of pain, and we prefer to experience pleasure.
But pleasure if not ALL we prefer, otherwise you'd be game for being plugged into the mindless pleasure machine for the rest of your bedridden and meaningless life.

Humans, and minds in general, are purpose driven. We establish goals and then pursue them not for pleasure but for their own sake.
What ultimately matters is preferences, not the feeling of pleasure we get from satisfying preferences. This is also proved by people sacrificing their lives for a greater purpose (something they'll never see).
You can open up a brain and see pleasure and pain mechanisms driving cognition, but that doesn't mean that's the purpose.
What hardened hedonist apologist are doing is like opening a clock and deciding the purpose of it is not to tell the time, but to spin the gears as fast as possible, so you attach the gears to a drive shaft and spin them as fast as you can.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

Post by brimstoneSalad »

vdofthegoodkind wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 3:01 pm Nvm, Im out of this nonsense debate.
You're welcome any time.
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cookiedivine
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

Post by cookiedivine »

Cheers for the links! I've bookmark'd em and will get stuck in at some point :D
If hedonism were true, then the greatest good to do to you would be to abduct you and plug you into some electrodes that would endlessly stimulate the pleasure centers of your brain and put you into a mindless euphoria. Effectively losing who you are.
See, I'm not entirely sure this would be a bad thing, mainly because the concept of constant, direct pleasure is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps this WOULD be the greatest good for me?
But pleasure is not ALL we prefer (...) Humans, and minds in general, are purpose driven. We establish goals and then pursue them not for pleasure but for their own sake
Couldn't you argue that, ultimately, it is all for pleasure?
That is, the desire to pursue goals ultimately comes from the desire to experience the pleasure that fulfilling these goals give us?
This is also proved by people sacrificing their lives for a greater purpose
Yeah, this is a tricky one. Perhaps its just the brain deluding itself? It might be so used to experiencing pleasure as a result of doing good things that the idea of not feeling anything post-action is beyond it, so it does it anyway? After all, we can't really comprehend being dead, can we?
Cirion Spellbinder
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

Post by Cirion Spellbinder »

brimstoneSalad wrote:[...] otherwise you'd be game for being plugged into the mindless pleasure machine for the rest of your bedridden and meaningless life.
Why is this significant? An interest based approach would be game for creating extremely sentient and easily reproducible organisms with singular, easily and quickly satisfiable interests. Just as unpleasant.
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Lightningman_42
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

Post by Lightningman_42 »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Wed Jan 24, 2018 3:07 pmThere are mostly theists who follow divine command, and then most atheists seem to be hedonists who are concerned with chemical activation of arbitrary neurons on the brain (experienced pain or pleasure).
Why do you think that most atheists are hedonists, or that pleasure/suffering-fixated morality is the most common type among atheists? Are there any statistics on this? I'd be curious to know what different forms of moral philosophy atheists actually believe in.
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Cirion Spellbinder
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Re: Killing animals painlessly without witnesses?

Post by Cirion Spellbinder »

cookiedivine wrote:Yeah, this is a tricky one. Perhaps its just the brain deluding itself?
It might be so used to experiencing pleasure as a result of doing good things that the idea of not feeling anything post-action is beyond it, so it does it anyway?
Do you have evidence of these claims? Otherwise, they are unnecessary assumptions that we should shave off with Occam's razor.
After all, we can't really comprehend being dead, can we?
But we can comprehend that it might entail an end of pleasure. We do understand the absence of pleasure and we do understand causation, which can lead us to conclude that our action could be pleasureless.
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